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+Project Gutenberg's The World's Greatest Books, Vol VI., by Various
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: The World's Greatest Books, Vol VI.
+
+Author: Various
+
+Release Date: February 20, 2004 [EBook #11180]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK WORLD'S GREATEST BOOKS ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by John Hagerson, Kevin Handy and PG Distributed Proofreaders
+
+
+
+
+THE WORLD'S GREATEST BOOKS
+
+JOINT EDITORS
+
+ARTHUR MEE Editor and Founder of the Book of Knowledge
+
+J.A. HAMMERTON Editor of Harmsworth's Universal Encyclopaedia
+
+VOL. VI FICTION
+
+
+MCMX
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+_Table of Contents_
+
+LE FANU, SHERIDAN
+  Uncle Silas
+
+LESAGE, RENÉ
+  Gil Blas
+
+LEVER, CHARLES
+  Charles O'Malley
+  Tom Burke of Ours
+
+LEWIS, M.G.
+  Ambrosio, or the Monk
+
+LINTON, MRS. LYNN
+  Joshua Davidson
+
+LOVER, SAMUEL
+  Handy Andy
+
+LYTTON, EDWARD BULWER
+  Eugene Aram
+  Last Days of Pompeii
+  The Last of the Barons
+
+MACKENZIE, HENRY
+  Man of Feeling
+
+MAISTRE, COUNT XAVIER DE
+  A Journey Round my Room
+
+MALORY, SIR THOMAS
+  Morte d'Arthur
+
+MANNING, ANNE
+  Household of Sir Thomas More
+
+MANZONI, ALESSANDRO
+  The Betrothed
+
+MARRYAT, CAPT
+  Mr. Midshipman Easy
+  Peter Simple
+
+MATURIN, CHARLES
+  Melmoth the Wanderer
+
+MENDOZA, DIEGO DE
+  Lazarillo de Tonnes
+
+MEREJOWSKI, DMITRI
+  Death of the Gods
+
+MÉRIMÉE, PROSPER
+  Carmen
+
+MITFORD, MARY RUSSELL
+  Our Village
+
+MOIR, DAVID
+  Mansie Wauch
+
+MORIER, JAMES
+  Hajji Baba
+
+MURRAY, DAVID CHRISTIE
+  Way of the World
+
+NORRIS, FRANK
+  The Pit
+
+OHNET, GEORGES
+  The Ironmaster
+
+OUIDA
+  Under Two Flags
+
+PAYN, JAMES
+  Lost Sir Massingberd
+
+
+A Complete Index of THE WORLD'S GREATEST BOOKS will be found at the end
+of Volume XX.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+
+_Acknowledgment_
+
+Acknowledgment and thanks for permission to use the following selections
+are herewith tendered to G.P. Putnam's Sons, New York, for "The Death of
+the Gods," by Dmitri Merejkowski; and to Doubleday, Page & Company, New
+York, for "The Pit," by Frank Norris.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+
+
+SHERIDAN LE FANU
+
+
+Uncle Silas
+
+
+     Joseph Sheridan le Fanu, Irish novelist, poet, and journalist,
+     was born at Dublin on August 28, 1814. His grandmother was a
+     sister of Richard Brinsley Sheridan, his father a dean.
+     Educated at Trinity College, Dublin, Le Fanu became a
+     contributor to the "Dublin University Magazine," afterwards
+     its editor, and finally its proprietor. He also owned and
+     edited a Dublin evening paper. Le Fanu first came into
+     prominence in 1837 as the author of the two brilliant Irish
+     ballads, "Phaudhrig Croohore" and "Shamus O'Brien." His
+     novels, which number more than a dozen, were first published
+     in most cases in his magazine. His power of producing a
+     feeling of weird mystery ranks him with Edgar Allan Poe. It
+     may be questioned whether any Irish novelist has written with
+     more power. The most representative of his stories is "Uncle
+     Silas, a Tale of Bartram-Haugh," which appeared in 1864. Le
+     Fanu died on February 7, 1873.
+
+
+_I.--Death, the Intruder_
+
+
+It was winter, and great gusts were rattling at the windows; a very dark
+night, and a very cheerful fire, blazing in a genuine old fire-place in
+a sombre old room. A girl of a little more than seventeen, slight and
+rather tall, with a countenance rather sensitive and melancholy, was
+sitting at the tea-table in a reverie. I was that girl.
+
+The only other person in the room was my father, Mr. Ruthyn, of Knowl.
+Rather late in life he had married, and his beautiful young wife had
+died, leaving me to his care. This bereavement changed him--made him
+more odd and taciturn than ever. There was also some disgrace about his
+younger brother, my Uncle Silas, which he felt bitterly, and he had
+given himself up to the secluded life of a student.
+
+He was pacing the floor. I remember the start with which, not suspecting
+he was close by me, I lifted my eyes, and saw him stand looking fixedly
+on me from less than a yard away.
+
+"She won't understand," he whispered, "no, she won't. _Will_ she? They
+are easily frightened--ay, they are. I'd better do it another way, and
+she'll not suspect--she'll not suppose. See, child?" he said, after a
+second or two. "_Remember_ this key."
+
+It was oddly shaped, and unlike others.
+
+"It opens that." And he tapped sharply on the door of a cabinet. "You
+will tell nobody what I have said, under pain of my displeasure."
+
+"Oh, no, sir!"
+
+"Good child! _Except_ under one contingency. That is, in case I should
+be absent and Dr. Bryerly--you recollect the thin gentleman in
+spectacles and a black wig, who spent three days here last
+month?--should come and enquire for the key, you understand, in my
+absence."
+
+"But you will then be absent, sir," I said. "How am I to find the key?"
+
+"True, child. I am glad you are so wise. _That_, you will find, I have
+provided for. I have a very sure friend--a friend whom I once
+misunderstood, but now appreciate."
+
+I wondered silently whether it would be Uncle Silas.
+
+"He'll make me a call some day soon, and I must make a little journey
+with him. He's not to be denied; I have no choice. But on the whole I
+rather like it. Remember, I say, I rather like it."
+
+I think it was about a fortnight after this conversation that I was one
+night sitting in the great drawing-room window, when on a sudden, on the
+grass before me stood an odd figure--a very tall woman in grey
+draperies, courtesying rather fantastically, smiling very unpleasantly
+on me, and gabbling and cackling shrilly--I could not distinctly hear
+_what_--and gesticulating oddly with her long arms and hands. This was
+Madame de la Rougierre, my new governess.
+
+I think all the servants hated her. She was by no means a pleasant
+_gouvernante_ for a nervous girl of my years. She was always making
+excuses to consult my father about my contumacy and temper. She
+tormented me by ghost stories to cover her nocturnal ramblings, and she
+betrayed a terrifying curiosity about his health and his will. My cousin
+Monica, Lady Knollys, who visited us about this time, was shocked at her
+presence in the house; it was the cause of a rupture between my father
+and her. But not even a frustrated attempt to abduct me during one of
+our walks--which I am sure madame connived at--could shake my father's
+confidence in her, though he was perfectly transported with fury on
+hearing what had happened. It was not until I found her examining his
+cabinet by means of a false key that he dismissed her; but madame had
+contrived to leave her glamour over me, and now and then the memory of
+her parting menaces would return with an unexpected pang of fear.
+
+My father never alluded again to Madame de la Rougierre, but, whether
+connected with her exposure and dismissal or not, there appeared to be
+some new trouble at work in his mind.
+
+"I am anxious about you, Maud," he said. "_You_ are more interested than
+_I_ can be in vindicating his character."
+
+"Whose character, sir?" I ventured to inquire during the pause that
+followed.
+
+"Whose? Your Uncle Silas's. In course of nature he must survive me. He
+will then represent the family name. Would you make some sacrifice to
+clear that name, Maud?"
+
+I answered briefly; but my face, I believe, showed my enthusiasm.
+
+"I can tell you, Maud, if my life could have done it, it should not have
+been undone. But I had almost made up my mind to leave all to time to
+illuminate, or _consume_. But I think little Maud would like to
+contribute to the restitution of her family name. It may cost you
+something. Are you willing to buy it at a sacrifice? Your Uncle Silas,"
+he said, speaking suddenly in loud and fierce tones that sounded almost
+terrible, "lies under an intolerable slander. He troubles himself little
+about it; he is selfishly sunk in futurity--a feeble visionary. I am not
+so. The character and influence of an ancient family are a peculiar
+heritage--sacred, but destructible. You and I, we'll leave one proof on
+record which, fairly read, will go far to convince the world."
+
+That night my father bade me good-night early. I had fallen into a doze
+when I was roused by a dreadful crash and a piercing scream from Mrs.
+Rusk. Scream followed scream, pealing one after the other unabated,
+wilder and more terror-stricken. Then came a strange lull, and the dull
+sounds of some heavy body being moved.
+
+What was that dreadful sound? Who had entered my father's chamber? It
+was the visitor whom he had so long expected, with whom he was to make
+the unknown journey, leaving me alone. The intruder was Death!
+
+
+_II.--The Sorceries of Bartram-Haugh_
+
+
+One of those fearful aneurisms that lie close to the heart had given way
+in a moment. He had fallen, with the dreadful crash I had heard, dead
+upon the floor. He fell across the door, which caused a difficulty in
+opening it. Mrs. Rusk could not force it open. No wonder she had given
+way to terror. I think I should have lost my reason.
+
+I do not know how those awful days, and still more awful nights, passed
+over. Lady Knollys came, and was very kind. She was odd, but her
+eccentricity was leavened with strong commonsense; and I have often
+thought since with gratitude of the tact with which she managed my
+grief.
+
+I did not know where to write to Dr. Bryerly, to whom I had promised the
+key, but in accordance with my father's written directions, his death
+was forthwith published in the principal London papers. He came at
+midnight, accordingly, and on the morrow the will was read. Except for a
+legacy of £10,000 to his only brother, Silas Ruthyn, and a few minor
+legacies to relations and servants, my father had left his whole estate
+to me, appointing my Uncle Silas my sole guardian, with full parental
+authority over me until I should have reached the age of twenty-one, up
+to which time I was to reside under his care at Bartram-Haugh, with the
+sum of £2,000 paid yearly to him for my suitable maintenance and
+education.
+
+I was startled by the expression of cousin Monica's face. She looked
+ghastly and angry.
+
+"To whom," she asked, with an effort, "will the property belong in
+case--in case my cousin should die before she comes of age?"
+
+"To the next heir, her uncle, Mr. Silas Ruthyn. He's both heir-at-law
+and next-of-kin," replied the attorney.
+
+She was anxious to persuade my uncle to relinquish his guardianship to
+her; but the evening of the funeral a black-bordered letter came from
+him, bidding me remain at Knowl until he could arrange for my journey to
+him. There was a postscript, which made my cheek tingle.
+
+"Pray present my respects to Lady Knollys, who, I understand, is
+sojourning at Knowl. I would observe that a lady who cherishes, I have
+reason to fear, unfriendly feelings against your uncle is not the most
+desirable companion for his ward. But, upon the express condition that I
+am not made the subject of your discussions, I do not interpose to bring
+your intercourse to an immediate close."
+
+"Did I ever hear! Well, if this isn't impertinent!" exclaimed Lady
+Knollys. "I did not intend to talk about him, but now I _will_." And so
+it was that I heard the story of that enigmatical person--martyr, angel,
+demon--Uncle Silas, with whom my fate was now so strangely linked.
+
+It was twenty years ago. He was not a reformed rake, but a ruined one
+then. My father had helped him again and again, until his marriage with
+a barmaid. After that he allowed him five hundred a year, and the use of
+his estate of Bartram-Haugh. Then Mr. Charke, a gentleman of the turf,
+who was staying with my uncle for Doncaster Races, was found dead in his
+room--he had committed suicide by cutting his throat. And Uncle Silas
+was suspected of having killed him.
+
+This wretched Mr. Charke had won heavy wagers at the races from Uncle
+Silas, and at night they had played very deep at cards. Next morning his
+servant could not enter his room; it was locked on the inside, the
+window was fastened by a screw, and the chimney was barred with iron. It
+seemed that he had hermetically sealed himself in, and then killed
+himself. But he had been in boisterous spirits. Also, though his own
+razor was found near his right hand, the fingers of his left hand were
+cut to the bone. Then the memorandum-book in which his bets were noted
+was nowhere to be found. Besides, he had written two letters to a
+friend, saying how profitable he had found his visit to Bartram-Haugh,
+and that he held Uncle Silas's I O U's for a frightful sum; and although
+my uncle stoutly alleged he did not owe him a guinea, there had scarcely
+been time in one evening for him to win back so much money. In a moment
+the storm was up, and although my uncle met it bravely, he failed to
+overcome it, and became a social outcast, in spite of all my father's
+efforts.
+
+And now I was to rehabilitate him before the world, and accordingly all
+preparations were made for my departure from Knowl; and at last the
+morning came--a day of partings, a day of novelty, and regrets.
+
+I remember we passed a gypsy bivouac on our journey, with fires alight,
+on the edge of a great, heathy moor. I had my fortune told, and I am
+ashamed to confess I paid the gypsy a pound for a brass pin with a round
+bead for a head--a charmed pin, which would keep away rat, and cat, and
+snake, a malevolent spirit, or "a cove to cut my throat," from hurting
+me. The purchase was partly an indication of the trepidations of that
+period of my life. At all events, I had her pin and she my pound, and I
+venture to say I was the gladder of the two.
+
+It was moonlight when we reached Bartram-Haugh. It had a forlorn
+character of desertion and decay, contrasting almost awfully with the
+grandeur of its proportions and richness of its architecture. A shabby
+little old man, a young plump, but very pretty female figure in
+unusually short petticoats, and a dowdy old charwoman, all stood in the
+door among a riot of dogs. I sat shyly back, peeping at the picture
+before me.
+
+"Will you tell me--yes or no--is my cousin in the coach?" screamed the
+young lady. She received me with a hug and a hearty "buss," as she
+called that salutation, and was evidently glad to see me. Then, after
+leading me to my bed-room to make a hurried toilet, she conducted me to
+a handsome wainscotted room, where my Uncle Silas awaited me.
+
+A singular looking old man--a face like marble, with a fearful
+monumental look--an apparition, drawn, as it seemed, in black and white,
+venerable, bloodless, fiery-eyed, with its strange look of power and an
+expression so bewildering. Was it derision, or anguish, or cruelty, or
+patience?
+
+He said something in his clear, gentle, but cold voice, and, taking both
+my hands, led me affectionately to a chair near his own. He was a
+miserable invalid, he told me, after speaking a little eulogy of his
+brother and examining me closely, respecting his illness and its
+symptoms. At last, remarking that I must be fatigued, he rose and kissed
+me with a solemn tenderness, and, placing his hand on a large Bible,
+bade me "Remember that book; in it lives my only hope. Consult it, my
+beloved niece, day and night as the only oracle."
+
+"I'm awful afraid of the governor, I am," said Cousin Milly, when we had
+left him. "I was in a qualm. When he spies me a-napping maybe he don't
+fetch me a prod with his pencil-case over the head."
+
+But Milly was a pretty and a clever creature in spite of her uncouth
+dialect, and I liked her very much. We spent much time taking long
+country rambles and exploring the old house, many of whose rooms were
+closed and shuttered. Of my uncle we saw little. He was "queerish,"
+Milly said, and I learnt afterwards he took much laudanum.
+
+My other cousin, Dudley, I did not meet till later. To my horror, I
+beheld in him one of the party of ruffians who had terrified me so much
+the day of the attempted abduction at Knowl; but he stoutly denied ever
+having been there with an air so confident that I began to think I must
+be the dupe of a chance resemblance. My uncle viewed him with a strange,
+paternal affection. But dear Cousin Monica had written asking Milly and
+me to go to her, and we had some of the pleasantest and happiest days of
+our lives at her house of Elverston, for there Milly met her good little
+curate, the Rev. Sprigge Biddlepen, and Lord Ilbury.
+
+Uncle Silas was terribly ill when we returned to Bartram-Haugh, the
+result of an overdose of opium; but for the doctor's aid he would have
+died. Remembering how desperate Lady Knollys had told me his monetary
+position was, a new and dreadful suspicion began to haunt me.
+
+"Had he attempted to poison himself?"
+
+I remember I was left alone with him while his attendant fetched a fresh
+candle. A small thick Bible lay on the mantle-shelf. I turned over its
+leaves, and lighted on two or three odd-looking papers--promissory
+notes, I believe--when Uncle Silas, dressed in a long white
+morning-gown, slid over the end of the bed and stood behind me with a
+deathlike scowl and simper. Diving over my shoulder, with his long, thin
+hand he snatched the Bible from me, and whispered over my head, "The
+serpent beguiled her, and she did eat."
+
+It seemed an hour before Wyat came back. You may be sure I did not
+prolong my watch. I had a long, hysterical fit of weeping when I got to
+my room: the sorceries of Bartram-Haugh were enveloping.
+
+About this time Dudley began to persecute me with his odious attentions.
+I was obliged to complain of him to my uncle. He was disposed to think
+well of the match; but I could not consent, and it was arranged that my
+cousin should go abroad. And then that night I had the key to some of
+the mysterious doings at Bartram-Haugh--the comings and goings in the
+darkness which had so often startled me--the face of Madame de la
+Rougierre peeped into the room.
+
+
+_III.--A Night of Terror_
+
+
+Shortly afterwards I lost Milly, who was sent to a French school, where
+I was to follow her in three months. I bade her farewell at the end of
+Windmill Wood, and was sitting on the trunk of a tree when Meg Hawkes, a
+girl to whom I had once been kind, passed by.
+
+"Don't ye speak, nor look; fayther spies us," she said quickly. "Don't
+ye be alone wi' Master Dudley nowhere, for the world's sake!"
+
+The injunction was so startling that I had many an hour of anxious
+conjecture, and many a horrible vigil by night. But ten days later I was
+summoned to my uncle's room. He implored me once more to wed Dudley--to
+listen to the appeal of an old and broken-hearted man.
+
+"You see my suspense--my miserable and frightful suspense," he said.
+"I'm very miserable, nearly desperate. I stand before you in the
+attitude of a suppliant."
+
+"Oh, I must--I must--I _must_ say no!" I cried. "Don't question me,
+don't press me. I could not--I _could_ not do what you ask!"
+
+"I yield, Maud--I yield, my dear. I will _not_ press you. I have spoken
+to you frankly, perhaps too frankly; but agony and despair will speak
+out and plead, even with the most obdurate and cruel!"
+
+He shut the door, not violently, but with a resolute hand, and I thought
+I heard a cry.
+
+The discovery that Dudley was already married spared me further
+importunity. I was anxious to relieve my uncle's necessities, which, I
+knew were pressing; and the attorney from Feltram was up with him all
+night, trying in vain to devise some means by which I might do so. The
+morning after, I was told I must write to Lady Knollys to ask if I might
+go to her, as there was shortly to be an execution in the house.
+
+I met Dudley on my way through the hall. He spoke oddly about his
+father, and made a very strange proposal to me--that I should give him
+my written promise for twenty thousand pounds, and he would "take me
+cleverly out o' Bartram-Haugh and put me wi' my cousin Knollys!"
+
+I refused indignantly, but he caught me by the wrist.
+
+"Don't ye be a-flyin' out," he said peremptorily. "Take it or leave
+it--on or off! Can't ye speak wi' common sense for once? I'll take ye
+out o' all this, if you'll gi'e me what I say."
+
+He looked black when I refused again. I judged it best to tell my uncle
+of his offer. He was startled, but made what excuse he could, smiling
+askance, a pale, peaked smile that haunted me. And then, once more,
+entering an unfrequented room, I came upon the great bony figure of
+Madame de la Rougierre. She was to be my companion for a week or two, I
+was told, and shortly after her coming I found my walks curtailed. I
+wrote again to my Cousin Knollys, imploring her to take me away. This
+letter my uncle intercepted, and when she came in reply to my former
+letter, I had but the sight of her carriage driving swiftly away.
+
+The morning after I was informed madame was to take me to join Milly in
+France. As Uncle Silas had directed, I wrote to Cousin Monica from
+London. I know madame asked me what I would do for her if she took me to
+Lady Knollys. I was inwardly startled, but refused, seeing before me
+only a tempter and betrayer; and together we ended our journey, driving
+from the station through the dark and starless night to find ourselves
+at last in Mr. Charke's room at Bartram-Haugh.
+
+There were bailiffs in the house, I was told. I was locked in. I
+entreated madame wildly, piteously, to save me; but she mocked me in my
+agony. I escaped for a brief moment, and sought my uncle. I can never
+forget the look he fixed on me.
+
+"What is the meaning of this? Why is she here?" he asked, in a stern,
+icy tone. "You were always odd, niece. I begin to believe you are
+insane. There's no evil intended you, by--, there is none! Go to your
+room, and don't vex me, there's a good girl!"
+
+I went upstairs with madame, like a somnambulist. She was to leave me to
+sleep alone that night. I had lost the talismanic pin I always stuck in
+the bolster of my bed. Uncle Silas sent up spiced claret in a little
+silver flagon. Madame abstractedly drank it off, and threw herself on my
+bed. I believed she was feigning sleep only, and really watching me; but
+now I think the claret was drugged.
+
+About an hour afterwards I heard them digging in the courtyard. Like a
+thunder-bolt it smote my brain. "They are making my grave!"
+
+After the first dreadful stun, I grew wild, running up and down wringing
+my hands, and gasping prayers to heaven. Then a dreadful calm stole over
+me.
+
+
+_IV.--The Open Door_
+
+
+It was a very still night. A peculiar sound startled me and I saw a man
+descend by a rope, and take his stand on the windowsill. In a moment
+more, window, bars and all, swung noiselessly open, and Dudley Ruthyn
+stepped into the room.
+
+He stole, in a groping way, to the bed, and stooped over it. Nearly at
+the same moment there came a scrunching blow; an unnatural shriek,
+accompanied by a convulsive sound, as of the motion of running, and the
+arms drumming on the bed, and then another blow--and silence. The
+diabolical surgery was over. There came a little tapping at the door.
+
+"Who's that?" whispered Dudley hoarsely.
+
+"A friend," answered a sweet voice, and Uncle Silas entered.
+
+Coolness was given me in that dreadful moment. I knew that all depended
+on my being prompt and resolute. With a mental prayer for help, I glided
+from the room and descended the stairs. I tried the outer door. To my
+wild surprise it was open. In a moment I was in the free air--and as
+instantaneously was seized by Tom Brice, Meg's sweetheart, who was
+waiting to drive the guilty father and son away.
+
+"They shan't hurt ye, miss. Get ye in; I don't care a d----!" he said in
+a wild, fierce whisper. To me it was the voice of an angel. He drove
+over the grass so that our passage was noiseless; then, on reaching the
+highway, at a gallop. At length we entered Elverston. I think I was half
+wild. I could not speak, but ran, with a loud, long scream, into Cousin
+Monica's arms. I forget a great deal after that.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+It was not till two years afterwards that I learnt that Uncle Silas was
+found next morning dead of an overdose of laudanum, and that Dudley had
+disappeared.
+
+Milly married her good little clergyman. I am Lady Ilbury now, happy in
+the affection of a beloved and noble-hearted husband. A tiny voice is
+calling "Mamma;" the shy, useless girl you have known is now a mother,
+thinking, and trembling while she smiles, how strong is love, how frail
+is life.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+
+
+RENÉ LE SAGE
+
+
+Gil Blas
+
+
+     Except that he was born at Sarzeau, in Brittany, on May 8,
+     1668, and that he was the son of the novelist Claude le Sage,
+     little is known of the youth of Alain René le Sage. Until he
+     was eighteen he was educated with the Jesuits at Vannes, when,
+     it is conjectured he went to Paris to continue his studies for
+     the Bar. An early marriage drove him to seek a livelihood by
+     means of literature, and shortly afterwards he found a
+     valuable and sympathetic friend and patron in the Abbé de
+     Lyonne, who not only bestowed upon him a pension of about
+     £125, but also gave him the use of his library. The first
+     results of this favour were adaptations of two plays from
+     Rojas and Lope de Vega, which appeared some time during the
+     first two or three years of the eighteenth century. Le Sage's
+     reputation as a playwright and as a novelist rests, oddly
+     enough, in each case on one work. As the author of "Tuscaret,"
+     produced in 1709, he contributed to the stage one of the best
+     comedies in the French language; as author of "The Adventures
+     of Gil Blas of Santillana" he stands for all time in the front
+     rank of the world's novelists. Here he brought the art of
+     story-writing to the highest level of artistic truth. The
+     first and second parts of the work appeared in 1715, the third
+     in 1724, and the fourth in 1735. Le Sage died at Boulogne on
+     November 17, 1747.
+
+
+_I.--I Start on my Travels_
+
+
+My uncle, Canon Perez, was a worthy priest. To live well was, in his
+opinion, the chief duty of man. He lived very well. He kept the best
+table in the town of Oviedo. I was very glad of this, as I lived with
+him, my parents being too poor to keep me.
+
+My uncle gave me an excellent education. He even learned to read so as
+to be able to teach me himself. There were few ecclesiastics of his rank
+in Spain in the early part of the seventeenth century who could read a
+breviary as well as he could when I left him, at the age of seventeen,
+to continue my duties at the University of Salamanca.
+
+"Here are forty ducats, Gil Blas," he said to me when we parted. "And
+you can take my old mule and sell it when you reach Salamanca. Then you
+will be able to live comfortable until you obtain a good position."
+
+It is, I suppose, about two hundred miles from Oviedo to Salamanca. Not
+very far, you will say, but it took me two years to cover the distance.
+When one travels along a high road at the age of seventeen, master of
+one's actions, of an old mule, and forty ducats, one is bound to meet
+with adventures on the way. I was out to see the world, and I meant to
+see it; my self-confidence was equalled only by my utter inexperience.
+Out of my first misadventure came an extraordinary piece of good luck. I
+fell into the hands of some brigands, and lost my mule and my money.
+Among my fellow prisoners was a wealthy lady, Doña Mencia, of Burgos. I
+helped her to escape and got away myself, and when I came to Burgos she
+rewarded me very handsomely with a diamond ring and a thousand ducats.
+This changed my plan of life completely. Why should I go and study at
+Salamanca? Did I want to become a priest or a pedant? I was now sure
+that I didn't.
+
+"Gil Blas," I said, "you are a good-looking lad, clever, well-educated,
+and ambitious. Why not go to Madrid and try to get some place at the
+court of King Philip the Third?"
+
+I spent sixty ducats in dressing myself out gaily in the manner of a
+rich cavalier, and I engaged a man of about thirty years of age to come
+with me as my servant.
+
+Lamela, as he was called, was quite different from the other valets who
+applied for the position. He did not demand any sum as wages.
+
+"Only let me come with you, sir," he said. "I shall be content with
+whatever you give me."
+
+It seemed to me that I had got a very good servant We slept at Duengas
+the first night, and on the second day we arrived at Valladolid. As I
+was sitting in my inn, a charming lady entered and asked to see me.
+
+"My dear Gil Blas," she exclaimed "Lamela has just told me of your
+arrival. I am a cousin of Doña Mencia, and I received a letter from her
+this morning. How brave it was of you to rescue her from those wicked
+brigands! I can't leave you in this inn. You must come at once to my
+house. My brother, Don Raphael, will be delighted to see you when he
+returns in an hour or two from our country castle."
+
+Doña Camilla, as the lady was called, led me to a great house in the
+best part of the town, and at the door we met Don Raphael. "What a
+handsome young cavalier you are, my dear Gil Blas!" he said. "You must
+make up your mind to stay with us for some weeks."
+
+The supper was a pleasant affair. Doña Camilla and her brother found
+something to admire in everything I said, and I began to fancy myself as
+a wit. It was very late when Lamela led me to my bed-room and helped me
+to undress. And it was very late when I awoke next day. I called to
+Lamela, but he did not come, so I arose and dressed myself and went
+downstairs. To my surprise there was nobody in the house, and all my
+baggage had disappeared. I looked at my hand--the diamond ring had gone.
+Then I understood why Lamela had been willing to come with me without
+troubling about wages. I had fallen for a second time into the hands of
+thieves. They had hired the furnished house for a week, and had trapped
+me in it. It was clear that I had boasted too much at Burgos about the
+thousand ducats which Doña Mencia gave me. Now I found myself at
+Valladolid quite penniless.
+
+As I walked along the street in a very despondent mood, not knowing how
+to get a meal, someone tapped me on the shoulder, and said, "Good
+gracious, Gil Blas, I hardly knew you! What a princely dress you've got
+on. A fine sword, silk stockings, a velvet mantle and doublet with
+silver lacings! Have you come into a fortune?"
+
+I turned around, and found it was Fabrice, an old schoolfellow, the son
+of a barber at Oviedo. I told him of my adventure.
+
+"Pride comes before a fall, you see," he said with a laugh. "But I can
+get you a place if you care to take it. One of the principal physicians
+of the town, Dr. Sangrado, is looking for a secretary. I know you write
+a very good hand. Sell your fine raiment and buy some plain clothes, and
+I will take you to the doctor."
+
+I am glad to say that I obtained the post, but I wasn't altogether
+satisfied with it. Dr. Sangrado believed in vegetarianism, and he gave
+me only peas and beans and baked apples to eat, and not much of those.
+At the end of a fortnight I resolved to go as a servant in some house:
+where meat and wine were to be had.
+
+"Don't be foolish," said Sangrado. "Your fortune is made if you only
+stay with me. I am getting old and I require someone to help me in my
+practice. You can do it. You need not waste your time in studying all
+the nonsense written by other doctors. You have only to follow my
+method. Never give a patient medicine. Bleed him well, and tell him to
+drink a pint of hot water every half hour. If that doesn't cure
+him--well, it's time he died."
+
+So I donned one of Sangrado's gowns, which gave me a very original
+appearance, as it was much too long and ample for me, and then I began
+to attend his patients. A few of them, I believe, managed to recover.
+One day a woman stopped me and took me into her house to look at her
+niece. I recognised the girl as soon as I saw her. It was the pretty
+adventuress, Camilla, who had decoyed me and helped to rob me of my
+thousand ducats. When I took her hand to feel her pulse I perceived that
+she was wearing my diamond ring. Happily, she was too ill to know me.
+After ordering her to be bled and given a pint of warm water every half
+hour, I went out and talked the matter over with Fabrice. We resolved
+not to call in the police, as they would certainly keep whatever money
+of mine they recovered. The ways of the law in Spain in the seventeenth
+century are very strange and intricate.
+
+Nevertheless, I returned late at night to the house accompanied by a
+sergeant of the police and five of his men, all well armed. I then awoke
+Camilla, and told her to dress herself and attend before the magistrate.
+
+"Oh, Gil Blas," she cried, "have pity on me. Lamela and Raphael have run
+off with the money, and left me alone here on a bed of sickness."
+
+I knew this was true, as I had made inquiries; but I also knew that
+Camilla had had a share of the spoil, and had bought some valuable
+jewelry with it. So I said, "Very well, I won't be hard on you. But you
+must give me back the diamond ring which you are wearing, and you must
+satisfy these officers of the police."
+
+Poor Camilla understood what I meant. It is a costly matter to satisfy
+the Spanish police. She gave me the ring, and then, with a sigh, she
+opened a casket and handed the sergeant everything it contained--a
+necklace of beautiful pearls, a pair of fine earrings, and some other
+jewels.
+
+"Isn't this better than calling in the police?" said the sergeant when
+we had left the house. "There are the jewels. Two hundred ducats' worth,
+I'll be bound!"
+
+No doubt, dear reader, you have seen through this little plot. The
+supposed sergeant was my old friend, Fabrice, and his five men were five
+young barbers of his acquaintance. They quickly changed their clothes,
+and we all went to an inn and spent a merry evening together.
+
+
+_II.--In Male Attire_
+
+
+A few days afterwards I took up the plan which I had formed at Burgos,
+and bravely set out for Madrid in the hope of making my fortune there.
+But my money did not last long, for on reaching the capital I fell in
+with a wild company of fashionable actors and actresses.
+
+As my purse grew lighter my conscience became tenderer, and at length I
+humbly accepted the position of lackey in the house of a rich old
+nobleman, Don Vincent de Guzman. He was a widower, with an only child,
+Aurora--a lovely, gay, and accomplished girl of twenty-six years of age.
+
+I had hardly been with him a month when he died, leaving his daughter
+mistress of all his wealth, and free to do what she liked with it. To my
+surprise, Aurora then began to distinguish me from all the other
+servants. I could see by the way she looked at me that there was
+something about me that attracted her. Great ladies, I knew, sometimes
+fall in love with their lackeys, and one evening my hopes were raised to
+the highest pitch; for Aurora's maid then whispered to me that somebody
+would like to talk to me alone at midnight in the garden. Full of wild
+impatience, I arrived at the spot two hours before the time. Oh, those
+two hours! They seemed two eternities.
+
+At midnight Aurora appeared, and I threw myself at her feet, exclaiming,
+"Oh, my dear lady! Even in my wildest dreams of love I never thought of
+such happiness as this!"
+
+"Don't talk so loud!" said Aurora, stepping back and laughing. "You will
+rouse all the household. So you thought I was in love with you? My dear
+boy, I am in love with somebody else. Knowing how clever and ingenious
+you are, I want you to come at once with me to Salamanca and help me to
+win my love."
+
+Naturally, I was much disconcerted by this strange turn of affairs.
+However, I managed to recover myself and listen to my mistress. She had
+fallen in love with a gallant young nobleman, Don Luis Pacheco, who was
+unaware of the passion he inspired. He was going the next day to
+Salamanca to study at the university, and Aurora had resolved to go
+there also, dressed as a young nobleman, and make his acquaintance. She
+had fallen in love with him at sight, and had never found an opportunity
+to speak to him.
+
+"I shall get two sets of rooms in different parts of the town," she said
+to me. "In one I shall live as Aurora de Guzman, with my maid, who must
+play the part of an aunt. In the other, I shall be Don Felix de Mendoc,
+a gallant cavalier, and you must be my valet."
+
+We set off for Salamanca at daybreak, and arrived before Don Luis.
+Aurora took a furnished mansion in the fashionable quarter, and I called
+at the principal inns, and found the one where Don Luis had arranged to
+stay, Aurora then hid her pretty brown tresses under a wig, and put on a
+dashing cavalier's costume, and came and engaged a room at the place
+where her lover was.
+
+"So you have come to study at the university, sir?" said the innkeeper.
+"How lucky! Another gallant young nobleman has just taken a room here
+for the same purpose. You will be able to dine together and entertain
+one another."
+
+He introduced his two guests, and they quickly became fast friends.
+
+"Do you know, Don Felix, you're uncommonly good-looking," said Don Luis,
+as they sat talking over the wine. "Between us we shall set on fire the
+hearts of the pretty girls of Salamanca."
+
+"There's really a lovely girl staying in the town," said my mistress.
+"She's a cousin of mine, Aurora de Guzman. We are said to resemble each
+other in a remarkable way."
+
+"Then she must be a beautiful creature," said Don Luis, "for you have
+fine, regular features and an admirable colour. When can I see this
+paragon?"
+
+"This afternoon, if you like," said my mistress.
+
+They went together to the mansion, where the maid received them, dressed
+as an elderly noblewoman.
+
+"I'm very sorry, Don Felix," said the maid, "but my niece has a bad
+headache, and she has gone to lie down."
+
+"Very well," said the pretended cousin. "I will just introduce my
+friend, Don Luis, to you. Tell Aurora we will call to-morrow morning."
+
+Don Luis was much interested in the lovely girl whom he had not been
+able to see. He talked about her to his companion late into the night.
+The next day, as they were about to set out to visit her, I rushed in,
+as arranged, with a note for my mistress.
+
+"What a nuisance!" she said. "Here is some urgent business I must at
+once attend to. Don Luis, just run round and tell my cousin that I
+cannot come until this afternoon!"
+
+Don Luis retired to put some final touches to his dress, and my mistress
+hurried off with me to her mansion, and there, with the help of her
+maid, she quickly got into her proper clothes. She received Don Luis
+very kindly, and they talked together for quite two hours. Don Luis then
+went away, and Aurora slipped into her cavalier's costume and met him at
+the inn.
+
+"My dear Felix," said Don Luis, "your cousin is an adorable lady. I'm
+madly in love with her. If I can only win her, I'll marry and settle
+down on my estates."
+
+Aurora gazed at him very tenderly, and then, with a gay laugh, she shook
+off her wig and let her curls fall about her shoulders.
+
+Don Felix knelt at her feet and kissed her hands, crying, "Oh, my
+beautiful Aurora! Do you really care for me? How happy we shall be
+together!"
+
+The two lovers resolved to return at once to Madrid, and make
+preparations for the wedding. At the end of a fortnight my mistress was
+married, and I again set out on my travels with a well-lined purse.
+
+
+_III.--Old Acquaintances_
+
+
+I had always had a particular desire to see the famous town of Toledo. I
+arrived there in three days, and lodged at a good inn, where, by reason
+of my fine dress, I passed for a gentleman of importance. But I soon
+discovered that Toledo was one of those places in which it is easier to
+spend money than to gain it.
+
+So I set out for Aragon. On the road I fell in with a young cavalier
+going in the same direction. He was a man of a frank and pleasant
+disposition, and we soon got on a friendly footing. His name, I learned,
+was Don Alfonso; he was, like me, seeking for means of livelihood.
+
+It came on to rain very heavily as we were skirting the base of a
+mountain, and, in looking about for some place of shelter, we found a
+cave in which an aged, white-haired hermit was living. At first he was
+not pleased to see us, but something about me seemed to strike him
+favourably, and he then gave us a kind welcome. We tied our horses to a
+tree, and prepared to stay the night. The hermit began to talk to us in
+a very pious and edifying way, when another aged anchorite ran into the
+cave, and said, "It is all over; we're discovered. The police are after
+us!"
+
+The first hermit tore off his white beard and his hair, and took off his
+long robe, showing a doublet beneath; and his companion followed his
+example. In a few moments they were changed into a couple of young men
+whose faces I recognised.
+
+"Raphael! Lamela! What mischief are you working now? And where are my
+thousand ducats, you rascals?"
+
+"Ah, Gil Blas, I knew you at once!" said Raphael blandly. "One comes on
+old acquaintances when one least expects them. I know we treated you
+badly. But the money's gone, and can't be recovered. Come with us, and
+we will soon make up to you all that you have lost."
+
+It was certainly unwise to remain in a cave which the police were about
+to visit, and, as the rain had ceased and the night had fallen, we all
+set out in the darkness to find some better shelter. We took the road to
+Requena, and came to a forest, where we saw a light shining in the
+distance. Don Alfonso crept up to the spot, and saw four men sitting
+round a fire, eating and quarrelling. It was easy to see what they were
+quarrelling about. An old gentleman and a lovely young girl were bound
+to a tree close by, and by the tree stood a fine carriage.
+
+"They are brigands," said Alfonso, when he returned, "who have captured
+a nobleman and his daughter, I think. Let us attack them. In order, no
+doubt, to prevent their quarrelling turning into a deadly affray, they
+have piled all their arms in a heap some yards away from the fire. So
+they cannot make much of a fight."
+
+And they did not. We quietly surrounded them, and shot them down before
+they were able to move. Don Alfonso and I then set free the captives,
+while Raphael and Lamela rifled the pockets of the dead robbers.
+
+"I am the Count of Polan, and this is my daughter Seraphina," said the
+old gentleman. "If you will help me to get my carriage ready, I will
+drive back to an inn which we passed before entering the forest."
+
+When we came to the inn, the count begged us all to stay with him.
+Raphael and Lamela, however, were afraid that the police would track
+them out; Don Alfonso, who had been talking very earnestly to Seraphina,
+was, for some strange reason, also unwilling to remain; so I fell in
+with their views.
+
+"Why didn't you stay?" I said to Don Alfonso.
+
+"I was afraid the count would recognise me, as Seraphina has done," he
+said. "I killed his son in a duel, just when I was trying to win
+Seraphina's love. Heaven grant that the service I have now rendered will
+make him inclined to forgive me."
+
+The day was breaking when we reached the mountains around Requena. There
+we hid till nightfall, and then we made our way in the darkness to the
+town of Xeloa. We found a quiet, shady retreat beside a woodland stream,
+and there we stayed, while Lamela went into the town to buy provisions.
+He did not return until evening. He brought back some extraordinary
+things.
+
+He opened a great bundle containing a long black mantle and robe,
+another costume, a roll of parchment, a quill, and a great seal in green
+wax.
+
+"Do you remember the trick you played on Camilla?" he said to me. "I
+have a better scheme than that. Listen. As I was buying some provisions
+at a cook-shop, a man entered in a great rage and began abusing a
+certain Samuel Simon, a converted Jew and a cruel usurer. He had ruined
+many merchants at Xeloa, and all the towns-people would like to see him
+ruined in turn. Then, my dear Gil Blas, I remembered your clever trick,
+and brought these clothes so that we might visit this Jew dressed up as
+the officers of the Inquisition."
+
+After we had made a good meal, Lamela put on the robe and mantle of the
+Inquisitor, Raphael the costume of the registrar, and I took the part of
+a sergeant of the police. We walked very solemnly to the house of the
+usurer; Simon opened the door himself, and started back in affright.
+
+"Master Simon," said Lamela, in a grave imperative tone of voice, "I
+command you, on behalf of the Holy Inquisition, to deliver to these
+officers the key of your cabinet. I must have your private papers
+closely examined. Serious charges of heresy have been brought against
+you."
+
+The usurer grew pale with fear. Far from doubting any deceit on our
+part, he imagined that some of his enemies had informed the Holy Office
+against him. He obeyed without the least resistance, and opened his
+cabinet.
+
+"I am glad to see," said Lamela, "that you do not rebel against the
+orders of the Holy Inquisition. Retire now to another room, and let me
+carry out the examination without interference."
+
+Simon withdrew into a farther room, and Lamela and Raphael quickly
+searched in the cabinet for the strongbox. It was unlocked, being so
+full of money that it could not be closed. We filled all our pockets;
+then our hose; and then stuffed the coins in any place in our clothes
+that would hold them. After this, we closed the cabinet, and our
+pretended Inquisitor sealed it down with a great seal of green wax, and
+said very solemnly to the usurer, "Master Simon, I have sealed your
+cabinet with the seal of the Holy Office. Let me find it untouched when
+I return to-morrow morning to inform you of the decision arrived at in
+your case."
+
+The next morning we were a good many leagues from Xeloa. At breakfast,
+we counted over the money which we had taken from Simon. It came to
+three thousand ducats, of which we each took a fourth part. Raphael and
+Lamela then desired to carry out a similar plot against someone in the
+next town; but Don Alfonso and I would not agree to take any part in the
+affair, and set out for Toledo. There, Don Alfonso was reconciled to the
+Count of Polan, and soon afterwards he and Seraphina were happily
+married.
+
+I retired to Lirias, a pleasant estate that Don Alfonso gave me, and
+there I married happily, and grew old among my children. In the reign of
+Philip IV., I went to the court, and served under the great minister,
+Olivarez. But I have now returned to Lirias, and I do not intend to go
+to Madrid again.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+
+
+CHARLES LEVER
+
+
+Charles O'Malley
+
+
+     The author of "Charles O'Malley," perhaps the most typical of
+     Irish novelists, was of English descent on his father's side.
+     But Charles James Lever himself was Irish by birth, being born
+     at Dublin on August 31, 1806--Irish in sentiment and
+     distinctly Irish in temperament. In geniality and extravagance
+     he bore much resemblance to the gay, riotous spirits he has
+     immortalised in his books. "Of all the men I have ever
+     encountered," says Trollope, "he was the surest fund of
+     drollery." Lever was intended for medicine; but financial
+     difficulties forced him to return to literature. His first
+     story was "Harry Lorrequer," published in 1837. It was
+     followed in 1840 by "Charles O'Malley, the Irish Dragoon,"
+     which established his reputation as one of the first humorists
+     of his day. The story is the most popular of all Lever's
+     works, and in many respects the most characteristic. The
+     narrative is told with great vigour, and the delineation of
+     character is at once subtle and life-like. Lever died on June
+     1, 1872.
+
+
+_I.--O'Malley of O'Malley Castle_
+
+
+It was in O'Malley Castle, a very ruinous pile of incongruous masonry
+that stood in a wild and dreary part of Galway, that I passed my infancy
+and youth. When a mere child I was left an orphan to the care of my
+worthy uncle. My father, whose extravagance had well sustained the
+family reputation, had squandered a large and handsome property in
+contesting elections for his native county, and in keeping up that
+system of unlimited hospitality for which Ireland in general, and Galway
+more especially, was renowned. The result was, as might be expected,
+ruin and beggary. When he died the only legacy he left to his brother
+was a boy of four years of age, entreating him, with his last breath,
+"Be anything you like to him, Godfrey, but a father--or, at least, such
+a one as I have proved."
+
+Godfrey O'Malley sometime previous had lost his wife, and when this new
+trust was committed to him he resolved never to re-marry, but to rear me
+as his own child.
+
+From my earliest years his whole anxiety was to fit me for the part of a
+country gentleman, as he regarded that character--_viz._, I rode boldly
+with the fox-hounds; I was about the best shot within twenty miles; I
+could swim the Shannon at Holy Island; I drove four-in-hand better than
+the coachman himself; and from finding a hare to hooking a salmon my
+equal could not be found from Killaloe to Banagher. These were the
+staple of my endowments; besides which, the parish priest had taught me
+a little Latin, a little French, and a little geometry.
+
+When I add to this portraiture of my accomplishments that I was nearly
+six feet high, with more than a common share of activity and strength
+for my years, and no inconsiderable portion of good looks, I have
+finished my sketch, and stand before my reader.
+
+We were in the thick of canvassing the county for the parliamentary seat
+in my uncle's interest. O'Malley Castle was the centre of operations;
+while I, a mere stripling, and usually treated as a boy, was entrusted
+with an important mission, and sent off to canvass a distant relation,
+Mr. Matthew Blake, who might possibly be approachable by a younger
+branch of the family, with whom he had never any collision.
+
+I arrived at his house while the company were breakfasting. After the
+usual shaking of hands and hearty greetings were over, I was introduced
+to Sir George Dashwood, a tall and singularly handsome man of about
+fifty, and his daughter, Lucy Dashwood.
+
+If the sweetest blue eyes that ever beamed beneath a forehead of snowy
+whiteness, over which dark brown and waving hair fell, less in curls
+than masses of locky richness, could only have known what wild work they
+were making of my poor heart, Miss Dashwood, I trust, would have looked
+at her teacup or her muffin rather than at me, as she actually did, on
+that fatal morning.
+
+Beside her sat a tall, handsome man of about five-and-thirty, or perhaps
+forty, years of age, with a most soldierly air, who, as I was presented
+to him, scarcely turned his head, and gave me a half-nod of unequivocal
+coldness. As I turned from the lovely girl, who had received me with
+marked courtesy, to the cold air and repelling hauteur of the
+dark-browed captain, the blood rushed throbbing to my forehead; and as I
+walked to my place at the table, I eagerly sought his eye, to return him
+a look of defiance and disdain, proud and contemptuous as his own.
+
+Captain Hammersly, however, never took further notice of me, and I
+formed a bitter resolution, which I endeavoured to carry into effect
+during the next day's hunt. Mounted on my best horse, I deliberately led
+him across the worst and roughest country, river, and hills, and walls,
+and ditches, till I finished up with a broken head and he with a broken
+arm, and a horse that had to be slaughtered.
+
+On the fourth day after this adventure I was able to enter the
+drawing-room again. Sir George Dashwood made the kindest inquiries about
+my health.
+
+"They tell me you are to be a lawyer, Mr. O'Malley," said he; "and, if
+so, I must advise you to take better care of your headpiece."
+
+"A lawyer, papa? Oh, dear me!" said his daughter. "I should never have
+thought of his being anything so stupid."
+
+"Why, silly girl, what would you have a man to be?"
+
+"A dragoon, to be sure, papa," said the fond girl, as she pressed her
+arm around him, and looked up in his face with an expression of mingled
+pride and affection.
+
+That word sealed my destiny.
+
+
+_II.--I Join the Dragoons_
+
+
+I had been at Mr. Blake's house five days before I recollected my
+uncle's interests; but with one hole in my head and some half-dozen in
+my heart my memory was none of the best. But that night at dinner I
+discovered, to my savage amazement, that Mr. Blake and all the company
+were there in the interest of the opposition candidate, and that Sir
+George Dashwood was their candidate. In my excitement I hurled my
+wineglass at the head of one of the company who expressed himself in
+regard to my uncle in a manner insulting to a degree. In the duel which
+followed I shot my opponent.
+
+I had sprung into man's estate. In three short days I had fallen deeply,
+desperately, in love, and had wounded, if not killed, an antagonist in a
+duel. As I meditated on these things I was aroused by the noise of
+horses' feet. I opened the window, and beheld no less a person than
+Captain Hammersly. I begged of him to alight and come in.
+
+"I thank you very much," he said; "but, in fact, my hours are now
+numbered here. I have just received an order to join my regiment. I
+could not, however, leave the country without shaking hands with you. I
+owe you a lesson in horsemanship, and I'm only sorry that we are not to
+have another day together. I'm sorry you are not coming with us."
+
+"Would to heaven I were!" said I, with an earnestness that almost made
+my brain start.
+
+"Then why not?"
+
+"Unfortunately, my worthy uncle, who is all to me in this world, would
+be quite alone if I were to leave him; and, although he has never said
+so, I know he dreads the possibility of my suggesting such a thing."
+
+"Devilish hard; but I believe you are right. Something, however, may
+turn up yet to alter his mind. And so good-bye, O'Malley, good-bye."
+
+During the contest for the seat--which was frankly fought in pitched
+battles and scrimmages, and by corruption and perjury--I managed to save
+Miss Dashwood's life. When polling-time came, Sir George found the
+feeling against him was so strong, and we were so successful in beating
+his voters out of the town, in spite of police and soldiers, that he
+resigned his candidature.
+
+Afterwards I spent some time in Dublin, nominally in preparation for the
+law, at Trinity College. But my college career convinced my uncle that
+my forte did not lie in the classics, and Sir George succeeded in
+inducing him to yield to my wishes, and interested himself so strongly
+for me that I obtained a cornetcy in the 14th Light Dragoons a week
+before the regiment sailed for Portugal. On the morning of my last day
+in Dublin I met Miss Dashwood riding in the park. For some minutes I
+could scarcely speak. At last I plucked up courage a little, and said,
+"Miss Dashwood, I have wished most anxiously, before I parted for ever
+with those to whom I owe already so much, that I should, at least, speak
+my gratitude."
+
+"But when do you think of going?"
+
+"To-morrow. Captain Power, under whose command I am, has received orders
+to embark immediately for Portugal."
+
+I thought--perhaps it was but a thought--that her cheek grew somewhat
+paler as I spoke; but she remained silent.
+
+Fixing my eyes full upon her I spoke.
+
+"Lucy, I feel I must confess it, cost what it may--I love you. I know
+the fruitlessness, the utter despair, that awaits such a sentiment. My
+own heart tells me that I am not, cannot be, loved in return. I ask for
+nothing; I hope for nothing. I see that you at least pity me. Nay, one
+word more. Do not, when time and distance have separated us, think that
+the expressions I now use are prompted by a mere sudden ebullition of
+boyish feeling; for I swear to you that my love to you is the source and
+spring of every action in my life, and, when I cease to love you, I
+shall cease to feel. And now, farewell; farewell for ever."
+
+I pressed her hand to my lips, gave one long, last look, turned my horse
+rapidly away, and, ere a minute, was out of sight.
+
+
+_III.--I Smell Gunpowder_
+
+
+What a contrast to the dull monotony of our life at sea did the scene
+present which awaited us on landing at Lisbon! The whole quay was
+crowded with hundreds of people, eagerly watching the vessel which bore
+from her mast the broad ensign of Britain.
+
+The din and clamour of a mighty city mingled with the far-off sounds of
+military music; and, in the vistas of the opening streets, masses of
+troops might be seen, in marching order. All betokened the near approach
+of war.
+
+On the morning after we landed, Power rode off with dispatches to
+headquarters, leaving me to execute two commissions with which he had
+been entrusted--a packet for Hammersly from Miss Dashwood and an epistle
+from a love-sick midshipman who could not get on shore, to the Senhora
+Inez da Silviero. I took up the packet for Hammersly with a heavy heart.
+Alas! thought I, how fatally may my life be influenced by it!
+
+The loud call of a cavalry trumpet roused me, and I passed out into the
+street for the morning's inspection. The next day I delivered the packet
+to the Senhora Inez, by whom I was warmly received--rather more on my
+own account than on that of the little midshipman, I fancied. Certainly
+I never beheld a being more lovely, and I found myself paying her some
+attentions. Yet she was nothing to me. It is true, she had, as she most
+candidly informed me, a score of admirers, among whom I was not even
+reckoned; she was evidently a coquette. On May 7, 1809, we set off for
+Oporto. The 14th were detailed to guard the pass to the Douro until the
+reinforcements were up, and then I saw my first engagement. Never till
+now, as we rode to the charge, did I know how far the excitement reaches
+when, man to man, sabre to sabre, we ride forward to the battlefield. On
+we went, the loud shout of "Forward!" still ringing in our ears. One
+broken, irregular discharge from the French guns shook the head of our
+advancing column, but stayed us not as we galloped madly on.
+
+I remember no more. The din, the smoke, the crash--the cry for quarter,
+mingled with the shout of victory, the flying enemy--are all commingled
+in my mind, but leave no trace of clearness or connection between them;
+and it was only when the column wheeled to re-form that I awoke from my
+trance of maddening excitement, and perceived that we had carried the
+position and cut off the guns of the enemy.
+
+The scene was now beyond anything, maddening in its interest. From the
+walls of Oporto the English infantry poured forth in pursuit; while the
+whole river was covered with boats, as they still continued to cross
+over. The artillery thundered from the Sierra, to protect the landing,
+for it was even still contested in places; and the cavalry, charging in
+flank, swept the broken ranks and bore down their squares. Then a final
+impetuous charge carried the day.
+
+From that fight I got my lieutenancy, and then was sent off by Sir
+Arthur Wellesley on special duty to the Lusitanian Legion in
+Alcantara--a flattering position opened to my enterprise. Before I set
+out, I was able to deliver Miss Dashwood's packet to Captain Hammersly,
+barely recovered from a sabre wound. His agitation and his manner in
+receiving it puzzled me greatly, though my own agitation was scarcely
+less.
+
+When I returned after a month with the Legion, during which my services
+were of no very distinguished character, I found a letter from Galway
+which saddened my thoughts greatly. A lawsuit had gone against my uncle,
+and what I had long foreseen was gradually accomplishing--the wreck of
+an old and honoured house. And I could only look on and watch the
+progress of our downfall without power to arrest it.
+
+
+_IV.--Shipwrecked Hopes_
+
+
+Having been sent to the rear with dispatches, I did not reach Talavera
+till two days' hard fighting had left the contending armies without
+decided advantage on either side.
+
+I had scarcely joined my regiment before the 14th were ordered to
+charge.
+
+We came on at a trot. The smoke of the cannonade obscured everything
+until we had advanced some distance, but suddenly the splendid panorama
+of the battlefield broke upon us.
+
+"Charge! Forward!" cried the hoarse voice of our colonel; and we were
+upon them. The French infantry, already broken by the withering musketry
+of our people, gave way before us, and, unable to form a square, retired
+fighting, but in confusion and with tremendous loss, to their position.
+One glorious cheer from left to right of our line proclaimed the
+victory, while a deafening discharge of artillery from the French
+replied to this defiance, and the battle was over.
+
+For several months after the battle of Talavera my life presented
+nothing which I feel worth recording. Our good fortune seemed to have
+deserted us when our hopes were highest; for from the day of that
+splendid victory we began our retrograde movement upon Portugal. Pressed
+hard by overwhelming masses of the enemy, we saw the fortresses of
+Ciudad Rodrigo and Almeida fall successively into their hands, and
+retired, mystified and disappointed, to Torres Vedras.
+
+Wounded in a somewhat scatter-brain night expedition to the lines of
+Ciudad Rodrigo, my campaigning--for some time, at least--was concluded;
+for my wound began to menace the loss of my arm, and I was ordered back
+to Lisbon. Fred Power was the first man I saw, and almost the first
+thing he told me was that Sir George Dashwood was in Lisbon, and that
+his daughter was with him. And then, with conflicting feelings, I found
+that all Lisbon mentioned my name in connection with the senhora, and
+Sir George himself, in appointing me an aide-de-camp, threw increased
+gloom over my thoughts by referring to the report Power had spoken of.
+My torment was completed by meeting Miss Dashwood in the Senhora Inez's
+house under circumstances which led to treat me with stiff, formal
+courtesy.
+
+The next night a letter from a Dublin friend reached me which told me
+that "Hammersly had got his _congé_."
+
+Here, then, was the solution of the whole chaos of mystery; here the
+full explanation of what had puzzled my aching brain for many a night
+long. His own were the letters I had delivered into Hammersly's hands. A
+flood of light poured at once across all the dark passages of my
+history; and Lucy, too--dare I think of her? What if she had really
+cared for me! Oh, the bitter agony of that thought! To think that all my
+hopes were shipwrecked with the very land in sight.
+
+I sprang to my feet with some sudden impulse, but, as I did so, the
+blood rushed madly to my head, and I fell. My arm was again broken, and
+ere day I was delirious.
+
+Hours, days, weeks rolled over, and when I returned to consciousness and
+convalescence I found I had been removed to the senhora's villa, and to
+her I owed, in a large part, my recovery. I was deeper in my dilemma
+than ever. Nevertheless, before I returned to the front, I found an
+opportunity to vindicate to Lucy my unshaken faith, reconciling the
+conflicting evidences with the proofs I proffered of my attachment. We
+were interrupted before I could learn how my protestations were
+received. Power, I found soon after, was the one favoured by the fair
+Inez's affections.
+
+
+_V.--A Desolate Hearth_
+
+
+It is not my intention, were I even adequate to the task, to trace with
+anything like accuracy the events of the war at this period. In fact, to
+those who, like myself, were performing duties of a mere subaltern
+character, the daily movements of our own troops, not to speak of the
+continual changes of the enemy, were perfectly unknown, and an English
+newspaper was more ardently longed for in the Peninsula than by the most
+eager crowd of a London coffee-room.
+
+So I pass over the details of the retreat of the French, and the great
+battle of Fuentes D'Oñoro. In the storming of Ciudad Rodrigo, that death
+struggle of vengeance and despair, I gained some notoriety in leading a
+party of stormers through a broken embrasure, and found myself under
+Lord Wellington's displeasure for having left my duties as aide-de-camp.
+However, the exploit gained me leave to return to England, and the
+additional honour of carrying dispatches to the Prince Regent.
+
+When I arrived in London with the glorious news of the capture of Ciudad
+Rodrigo, the kind and gracious notice of the prince obtained me
+attentions on all sides. Indeed, so flattering was the reception I met
+with, and so overwhelming the civility showered on me, that it required
+no small effort on my part not to believe myself as much a hero as they
+would make me. An eternal round of dinners, balls, and entertainments
+filled up an entire week.
+
+At last I obtained the Prince Regent's permission to leave London, and a
+few mornings after landed in Cork. Hastening my journey, I was walking
+the last eight miles--my chaise having broken down--when suddenly my
+attention was caught by a sound which, faint from the distance, scarce
+struck upon my ear. Thinking it probably some delusion of my heated
+imagination, I rose to push forward; but at the moment a slight breeze
+stirred, and a low, moaning sound swelled upward, increasing each
+instant as it came. It grew louder as the wind bore it towards me, and
+now falling, now swelling, it burst forth into one loud, prolonged cry
+of agony and grief. O God, it was the death-wail!
+
+My suspense became too great to bear; I dashed madly forward. As I
+neared the house, the whole approach was crowded with carriages and
+horsemen. At the foot of the large flight of steps stood the black and
+mournful hearse, its plumes nodding in the breeze, and, as the sounds
+without sank into sobs of bitterness and woe, the black pall of a
+coffin, borne on men's shoulders, appeared at the door, and an old man,
+a life-long friend of my uncle, across whose features a struggle for
+self-mastery was playing, held out his hand to enforce silence. I sprang
+toward him, choked by agony. He threw his arms around me, and muttering
+the words, "Poor Godfrey!" pointed to the coffin.
+
+Mine was a desolate hearth. In respect to my uncle's last wishes, I sold
+out of the army and settled down to a quieter life than the clang of
+battle, the ardour of the march. Gradually new impressions and new
+duties succeeded; and, ere four months elapsed, the quiet monotony of my
+daily life healed up the wounds of my suffering, and a sense of content,
+if not of happiness, crept gently over me, and I ceased to long for the
+clash of arms and the loud blast of the trumpet.
+
+But three years later a regiment of infantry marching to Cork for
+embarkation for the Continent after Bonaparte's return from Elba, roused
+all the eagerness of my old desires, and I volunteered for service
+again.
+
+A few days after I was in Brussels, and attending that most memorable
+and most exciting entertainment, the Duchess of Richmond's ball, on the
+night of June 15, 1815. Lucy Dashwood was there, beautiful beyond
+anything I had ever seen her. When the word came of the advance of
+Napoleon I was sent off with the major-general's orders, and then joined
+the night march to Quatre Bras. There I fell into the hands of a French
+troop and missed the fighting, though I saw Napoleon himself, and had
+the good fortune to effect the escape of Sir George Dashwood, who lay a
+prisoner under sentence of death in the same place as myself. Early in
+the day of Waterloo I contrived my own escape, and was able to give Lord
+Wellington much information as to the French movements.
+
+After the battle I wandered back into Brussels and learned that we had
+gained the day. As I came into the city Sir George met me and took me
+into his hotel, where were Power and the senhora, about to be married.
+Wounded by the innocent raillery of my friends, I escaped into an empty
+room and buried my head in my hands. Oh, how often had the phantom of
+happiness passed within my reach, but glided from my grasp!
+
+"Oh, Lucy, Lucy!" I exclaimed aloud. "But for you, and a few words
+carelessly spoken, I had never trod the path of ambition whose end has
+been the wreck of all my happiness! But for you I had never loved so
+fondly! But for you, and I had never been--"
+
+"A soldier, you would say," whispered a soft voice as a light hand
+gently touched my shoulder. "No, Mr. O'Malley; deeply grateful as I am
+to you for the service you once rendered myself, bound as I am by every
+tie of thankfulness by the greater one to my father, yet do I feel that
+in the impulse I have given to your life I have done more to repay my
+debt to you than by all the friendship, all the esteem I owe you. If,
+indeed, by any means, you became a soldier, then I am indeed proud."
+
+"Alas! Lucy--Miss Dashwood, I would say--how has my career fulfilled the
+promise that gave it birth? For you, and you only, to gain your
+affection, I became a soldier. And now, and now----"
+
+"And now," said she, while her eyes beamed upon me with a very flood of
+tenderness, "is it nothing that I have glowed with pride at triumphs I
+could read of, but dared not share in? I have thought of you. I have
+dreamed, I have prayed for you."
+
+"Alas! Lucy, but not loved me."
+
+Her hand, which had fallen upon mine, trembled violently. I pressed my
+lips upon it, but she moved it not. I dared to look up; her head was
+turned away, but her heaving bosom betrayed emotion.
+
+Our eyes met--I cannot say what it was--but in a moment the whole
+current of my thoughts was changed. Her look was bent upon me, beaming
+with softness and affection; her hand gently pressed my own, and her
+lips murmured my name.
+
+The door burst open at this moment, and Sir George Dashwood appeared.
+Lucy turned one fleeting look upon her father, and fell fainting into my
+arms.
+
+"God bless you, my boy!" said the old general as he hurriedly wiped a
+tear from his eye. "I am now indeed a happy father."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+
+
+Tom Burke of "Ours"
+
+
+     In 1840 Charles Lever, on an invitation from Sir John
+     Crompton, Secretary to the British Embassy in Belgium, forsook
+     Ireland for Brussels, where for a time he followed his
+     profession of medicine. Two years later an offer of the
+     editorship of the "Dublin University Magazine" recalled him to
+     Ireland, when he definitely abandoned a medical career and
+     settled down to literature permanently. The first fruit of
+     that appointment was "Tom Burke of Ours," published, after
+     running serially in the magazine, in 1844. It is more serious
+     in tone than any of his preceding works; in it the author
+     utilises the rich colouring gained from his long residence in
+     France, and the book is less remarkable for the complex, if
+     vigorous, story it contains than for its graphic and exciting
+     pictures of men and events in the campaigns of Napoleon Many
+     of its episodes are conceived in the true spirit of romance.
+
+
+_I.--The Boy Rebel_
+
+
+"Be advised by me," said De Meudon earnestly; "do not embark with these
+Irish rebels in their enterprise! They have none. Their only daring is
+some deed of rapine and murder. No; liberty is not to be achieved by
+such bands as these. France is your country--there liberty has been won;
+there lives one great man whose notice, were it but passingly bestowed,
+is fame."
+
+He sank back exhausted. The energy of his speech was too great for his
+weak and exhausted frame to bear. Captain de Meudon had come to Ireland
+in 1798 to aid in the rebellion; he had seen its failure, but had
+remained in Ireland trying vainly to give to the disaffection some
+military organization. He had realized the hopelessness of his efforts.
+He was ill, and very near to death. Now I stood by his bedside in a
+little cottage in Glenmalure.
+
+Boy as I was, I had already seen enough to make me a rebel in feeling
+and in action. I had stood a short time before the death-bed of my
+father, who disliked me, and who had left nearly all his property to my
+elder brother, who was indifferent to me. My father had indentured me as
+apprentice to his lawyer, and sooner than submit to the rule of this
+man--the evil genius of our family--I had taken flight. The companion of
+my wanderings was Darby M'Keown, the piper, the cleverest and cunningest
+of the agents of rebellion. Then I had met De Meudon, who had turned my
+thoughts and ambitions into another channel.
+
+My companion grew steadily worse.
+
+"Take my pocket-book," he whispered; "there is a letter you'll give my
+sister Marie. There are some five or six thousand francs--they are
+yours; you must be a pupil at the Polytechnique at Paris. If it should
+be your fortune to speak with General Bonaparte, say to him that when
+Charles de Meudon was dying--in exile--with but one friend left--he held
+his portrait to his lips, and, with his last breath, he kissed it."
+
+A shivering ran through his limbs--a sigh--and all was still. He was
+dead.
+
+"Halloa, there!" said a voice. The door opened, and a sergeant entered.
+"I have a warrant to arrest Captain de Meudon, a French officer who is
+concealed here. Where is he?"
+
+I pointed to the bed.
+
+"I arrest you in the king's name!" said the sergeant, approaching.
+"What----" He started back in horror. "He is dead!"
+
+Then entered one I had seen before--Major Barton, the most pitiless of
+the government's agents in suppressing insurrection.
+
+The sergeant whispered to him, and his eye ranged the little chamber
+till it fell on me.
+
+"Ha!" he cried. "You here! Sergeant, here's one prisoner for you, at any
+rate."
+
+Two soldiers seized me, and I was marched away towards Dublin. About
+noon the party halted, and the soldiers lay down and chatted on a patch
+of grass, while my own thoughts turned sadly back to the friend I had
+known.
+
+Suddenly I heard a song sung by a voice I knew, and afterwards a loud
+clapping of hands. Darby M'Keown was there in the midst of the soldiers,
+and as I turned to look at him, my hand came in contact with a
+clasp-knife. I managed with it to free my arms from the ropes that
+fastened them, but what was to be done next?
+
+"I didn't think much of that song of yours," said one of the soldiers.
+"Give us 'The British Grenadiers.'"
+
+"I never heard them play but onst, sir," said Darby, meekly, "and they
+were in such a hurry I couldn't pick up the tune."
+
+"What d'you mean?"
+
+"'Twas the day but one after the French landed, and the British
+Grenadiers was running away."
+
+The party sprang to their legs, and a shower of curses fell upon the
+piper.
+
+"And sure," continued Darby, "'twasn't my fault av they took to their
+heels. Wouldn't anyone run for his life av he had the opportunity?"
+
+These words were uttered in a raised voice, and I took the hint. While
+Darby was scuffling with the soldiers, I slipped away.
+
+For miles I pressed forward without turning, and in the evening I found
+myself in Dublin. The union with England was being debated in the
+Parliament House; huge and angry crowds raged without. Remembering the
+tactics De Meudon had taught me, I sought to organize the crowd in a
+kind of military formation against the troops; but a knock on the head
+with a musket-butt ended my labours, and I knew nothing more until I
+came to myself in the quarters of an old chance acquaintance--Captain
+Bubbleton.
+
+Here, in the house of this officer--an eccentric and impecunious man,
+but a most loyal friend--I was discovered by Major Barton and dragged to
+prison. I was released by the intervention of my father's lawyer, who
+claimed me as his apprentice.
+
+For weeks I lived with Captain Bubbleton and his brother officers, and
+nothing could be more cordial than their treatment of me. "Tom Burke of
+'Ours,'" the captain used proudly to call me. Only one officer held
+aloof from me, and from all Irishmen--Montague Crofts--through whom it
+came about that I left Ireland.
+
+One day an uncouth and ragged woman entered the barracks, and addressed
+me. It was Darby M'Keown, and he brought me nothing less precious than
+De Meudon's pocket-book, which had been taken from me, and had been
+picked up by him on the road. A few minutes later Bubbleton lost a sum
+at cards to Crofts; knowing he could not pay, I passed a note quietly to
+him. When Bubbleton had gone, Crofts held up the note before me. It was
+a French note of De Meudon's! I demanded my property back. He refused,
+and threatened to inform against me. On my seeking to prevent him from
+leaving the room, he drew his sword, and wounded me; but in the nick of
+time a blow from a strong arm laid him senseless--dead, perhaps--on the
+floor.
+
+"We must be far from this by daybreak," whispered Darby.
+
+I walked out of the barracks as steadily as I could. For all I knew, I
+was implicated in murder--and Ireland was no place for me. In a few days
+I stood on the shores of France.
+
+
+_II.--A Blow for the Emperor_
+
+
+By means of a letter of introduction to the head of the Polytechnique,
+which De Meudon had placed for me in his pocket-book, I was able to
+enter that military college, and, after a spell of earnest study, I was
+appointed to a commission in the Eighth Hussars. Proud as I was to
+become a soldier of France, yet I could not but feel that I was a
+foreigner, and almost friendless--unlucky, indeed, in the choice of the
+few friends I possessed. Chief of them was the Marquis de Beauvais,
+concerning whom I soon made two discoveries--that he was in the thick of
+an intrigue against the republic I served, and its First Consul, and
+that he was in love with Marie de Meudon, my dead friend's sister.
+
+To her, as soon as an opportunity came, I gave the news of her brother's
+end, and his last message. She was terribly affected; and the love we
+bore in common to the dead, and her own wonderful beauty, aroused in me
+a passion that was not the less fervent because I felt it was almost
+hopeless. I did not dare to ask her love, but I had her friendship
+without asking. She it was who warned me of the dangerous intrigues of
+De Beauvais and his associates. She it was who, when I fell a victim to
+their intrigues, laboured with General d'Auvergne, who had befriended me
+while I was at college, to restore me to liberty.
+
+I had heard that De Beauvais and his fellow royalists were plotting in a
+château near Versailles, and that a scheme was afoot to capture them. In
+hot haste I rode to the château, hoping secretly to warn my friend. He
+did indeed escape, but it was my lot to be caught with the conspirators.
+For the second time in my short life I saw the inside of a prison; I was
+in danger of the guillotine; despair had almost overpowered me, when I
+learnt that my friends had prevailed--my sword was returned to me. I
+became again an officer of the army of him who was now emperor, and I
+set forth determined to wipe out on the battlefield the doubts that
+still clung to my loyalty. Marie de Meudon was wedded, by the emperor's
+wish, to the gallant and beloved soldier on whose staff I proudly
+served--General d'Auvergne.
+
+In four vast columns of march, the mighty army poured into the heart of
+Germany. But not until we reached Mannheim did we learn the object of
+the war. We were to destroy the Austro-Russian coalition, and the first
+blow was to be struck at Ulm. When Ulm had capitulated, General
+d'Auvergne and his staff returned to Elchingen, and on the night when we
+reached the place I was on the point of lying down supperless in the
+open air, when I met an old acquaintance, Corporal Pioche, a giant
+cuirassier of the Guard, who had fought in all Bonaparte's campaigns.
+
+"Ah, mon lieutenant," said he, "not supped yet, I'll wager. Come along
+with me; Mademoiselle Minette has opened her canteen!"
+
+Presently we entered a large room, at one end of which sat a very pretty
+Parisian brunette, who bade me a gracious welcome. The place was crowded
+with captains and corporals, lieutenants and sergeants, all hobnobbing,
+hand-shaking, and even kissing each other. "Each man brings what he can
+find, drinks what he is able, and leaves the rest," remarked Pioche, and
+invited me to take my share in the common stock.
+
+All went well until I absent-mindedly called out, as if to a waiter, for
+bread. There was a roar of laughter at my mistake, and a little
+dark-whiskered fellow stuck his sword into a loaf and handed it to me.
+As I took the loaf, he disengaged his point, and scratched the back of
+my hand with it. Obviously an insult was intended.
+
+"Ah, an accident, _morbleu_!" said he, with an impertinent shrug.
+
+"So is this!" said I, as I seized his sword and smashed it across my
+knee.
+
+"It's François, _maitre d'armes_ of the Fourth," whispered Pioche; "one
+of the cleverest duellists of the army."
+
+I was hurried out to the court, one adviser counselling me to beware of
+François's lunge in tierce, another to close on him at once, and so on.
+For a long time after we had crossed swords, I remained purely on the
+defensive; at last, after a desperate rally, he made a lunge at my
+chest, which I received in the muscles of my back; and, wheeling round,
+I buried my blade in his body.
+
+François lingered for a long time between life and death, and for
+several days I was incapacitated, tenderly nursed by Minette.
+
+As soon as I was recovered the order came to advance.
+
+Not many days passed ere the chance came to me for which I had longed--
+the chance of striking a blow for the emperor. Hand-to-hand with the
+Russian dragoons on the field of Austerlitz, sweeping along afterwards
+with the imperial hosts in the full tide of victory, I learnt for the
+first time the exhilaration of military glory; and I had the good
+fortune to receive the emperor's favour--not only was I promoted, but I
+was appointed to the _compagnie d'élite_ that was to carry the spoils of
+victory to Paris.
+
+A few weeks after my return to Paris, the whole garrison was placed in
+review order to receive the wounded of Austerlitz.
+
+As the emperor rode forward bareheaded to greet his maimed veterans, I
+heard laughter among the staff that surrounded him. Stepping up, I saw
+my old friend Pioche, who had been dangerously wounded, with his hand in
+salute.
+
+"Thou wilt not have promotion, nor a pension," said Napoleon, smiling.
+"Hast any friend whom I could advance?"
+
+"Yes," answered Pioche, scratching his forehead in confusion. "She is a
+brave girl, and had she been a man----"
+
+"Whom can he mean?"
+
+"I was talking of Minette, our _vivandière_."
+
+"Dost wish I should make her my aide-de-camp?" said Napoleon, laughing.
+
+"_Parbleu_! Thou hast more ill-favoured ones among them," said Pioche,
+with a glance at the grim faces of Rapp and Daru. "I've seen the time
+when thou'd have said, 'Is it Minette that was wounded at the Adige and
+stood in the square at Marengo? I'll give her the Cross of the Legion!'"
+
+"And she shall have it!" said Napoleon. Minette advanced, and as the
+emperor's own cross was attached to her buttonhole she sat pale as
+death, overcome by her pride.
+
+For two hours waggon after waggon rolled on, filled with the shattered
+remnants of an army. Every eye brightened as the emperor drew near, the
+feeblest gazed with parted lips when he spoke, and the faint cry of
+"_Vive l'Empéreur_" passed along the line.
+
+
+_III.--Broken Dreams_
+
+
+Ere I had left Paris to join in the campaign against Prussia, I had
+made, and broken off, another dangerous friendship. In the _compagnie
+d'élite_ was an officer named Duchesne who took a liking to me--a
+royalist at heart, and a cynic who was unfailing in his sneers at all
+the doings of Napoleon. His attitude was detected, and he was forced to
+resign his commission; and his slights upon the uniform I wore grew so
+unbearable that I abandoned his company--little guessing the revenge he
+would take upon me.
+
+Once more the Grand Army was set in motion, and the hosts of France
+pressed upon Russia from the south and west. Napoleon turned the enemy's
+right flank, and compelled him to retire and concentrate his troops
+around Jena, which was plainly to be the scene of a great battle.
+
+My regiment was ordered on September 13, 1806, to proceed without delay
+to the emperor's headquarters at Jena, and I was sent ahead to make
+arrangements for quarters. In the darkness I lost my way, and came upon
+an artillery battery stuck fast in a ravine, unable to move back or
+forwards. The colonel was in despair, for the whole artillery of the
+division was following him, and would inevitably be involved in the same
+mishap. Wild shouting had been succeeded by a sullen silence, when a
+stern voice called out: "Cannoniers, dismount; bring the torches to the
+front!"
+
+When the order was obeyed, the light of the firewood fell upon the
+features of Napoleon himself. Instantly the work began afresh, directed
+by the emperor with a blazing torch in his hand. Gradually the
+gun-carriages were released, and began to move slowly along the ravine.
+Napoleon turned, and rode off at full speed in the darkness towards
+Jena. It was my destination, and I followed him.
+
+He preceded me by about fifty paces--the greatest monarch of the world,
+alone, his thoughts bent on the great events before him. On the top of
+an ascent the brilliant spectacle of a thousand watch-fires met the eye.
+Napoleon, lost in meditation, saw nothing, and rode straight into the
+lines. Twice the challenge "_Qui vive?"_ rang out. Napoleon heard it
+not. There was a bang of a musket, then another, and another. Napoleon
+threw himself from his horse, and lay flat on the ground. I dashed up,
+shouting, "The emperor! The emperor!" My horse was killed, and I was
+wounded in the shoulder; but I repeated the cry until Napoleon stepped
+calmly forward.
+
+"Ye are well upon the alert, _mes enfants_," he said, smiling. Then,
+turning to me, he asked quickly, "Are you wounded?"
+
+"A mere scratch, sire."
+
+"Let the surgeon see to it, and do you come to headquarters when you are
+able."
+
+In the morning I went to headquarters, but the emperor was busy;
+seemingly I was forgotten. My regiment was out of reach, so, at the
+invitation of my old duelling antagonist, François, I joined the
+Voltigeurs. My friends could not understand why, after tasting the
+delights of infantry fighting, I should wish to rejoin the hussars; but
+I went back to my old regiment after the victory, and rode with it to
+Berlin.
+
+Soon after our arrival there I read my name in a general order among
+those on whom the Cross of the Legion was to be conferred. On the
+morning of the day when I was to receive the decoration, I was requested
+to attend the bureau of the adjutant-general. There I was confronted
+with Marshal Berthier, who held up a letter before me. I saw, by the
+handwriting, it was Duchesne's.
+
+"There, sir, that letter belongs to you," he said. "There is enough in
+it to make your conduct the matter of a court-martial; but I am
+satisfied that a warning will be sufficient. I need hardly say that you
+will not receive the Cross of the Legion."
+
+I glanced at the letter, and realised Duchesne's treachery. Knowing that
+all doubtful letters were opened and read by the authorities, he had
+sent me a letter bitterly attacking the emperor, and professing to
+regard me as a royalist conspirator.
+
+Exasperated, I drew my sword.
+
+"I resign, sir," I said. "The career I can no longer follow honourably
+and independently, I shall follow no more."
+
+With a half-broken heart and faltering step, I regained my quarters; the
+whole dream of life was over. Broken in spirit, I made my way slowly
+back through Germany to Paris, and back to Ireland.
+
+
+_IV.--The Call of the Sword_
+
+
+On reaching my native country I found that my brother had died, and that
+I had inherited an income of £4,000 a year. I sought to forget the past.
+But a time came when I could resist the temptation no longer, and the
+first fact I read of was the burning of Moscow. As misfortune followed
+misfortune, an impulse came to me that it was useless to resist. My
+heart was among the glittering squadrons of France. I thought suddenly,
+was this madness? And the thought was followed by a resolve as sudden. I
+wrote some lines to my agent, saddled my horse, and rode away. At
+Verviers I offered my sword to the emperor as an old officer, and went
+forward in charge of a squadron to Brienne. This place was held by the
+Prussians, and Blücher and his Prussians were near at hand. Once more I
+beheld the terrific spectacle of an attack by the army of Napoleon. But
+alas! the attack was vain; I heard the trumpet sound a retreat. And as I
+turned, I saw the body of an aged general officer among a heap of slain.
+With a shriek of horror, I recognized the friend of my heart, General
+d'Auvergne. Round his neck he wore a locket with a portrait of his
+wife--Marie de Meudon. I detached the locket, and bade the dead a last
+adieu.
+
+Why should I dwell on a career of disaster? Retreat followed retreat,
+until the fate of Napoleon's empire depended on the capture of the
+bridge of Montereau. Regiment after regiment strove to cross, only to be
+shattered and mangled by the tremendous fire of the enemy. Four sappers
+at length laid a petard beneath the gate at the other side of the
+bridge. But the fuse went out.
+
+"This to the man who lights the fuse!" cried Napoleon, holding up his
+great Cross of the Legion.
+
+I snatched a burning match from a gunner beside me, and rushed across
+the bridge. Partly protected by the high projecting parapet, I lit the
+fuse, and then fell, shot in the chest. My senses reeled; for a time I
+knew nothing; then I felt a flask pressed to my lips. I looked up, and
+saw Minette. "Dear, dear girl, what a brave heart is thine!" said I, as
+she pressed her handkerchief to my wound.
+
+Her fingers became entangled in the ribbon of the general's locket that
+I had tied round my neck, and by accident the locket opened. She became
+deathly pale as she saw its contents; then, springing to her feet, she
+gave me one glance--fleeting, but how full of sorrow!--and ran to the
+middle of the bridge. The petard had done its work. She beckoned to the
+column to come on; they answered with a cheer. Presently four grenadiers
+fell to the rear, carrying between them the body of Minette.
+
+They gave her a military funeral; and I was told that a giant soldier, a
+corporal it was thought, kneeled down to kiss her before she was covered
+with the earth, then lay quietly down in the grass. When they sought to
+move him, he was stone dead.
+
+When I had recovered from my wound, it was nothing to me that Napoleon,
+besides giving me his Grand Cross, had made me general of brigade. For
+Napoleon was no longer emperor, and I would not serve the king who
+succeeded him. But ere I left France I saw Marie de Meudon, it might be,
+I thought, for the last time. At the sight of her my old passion
+returned, and I dared to utter it. I know not how incoherently the tale
+was told; I can but remember the bursting feeling of my bosom, as she
+placed her hand in mine, and said, "It is yours."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+
+
+M.G. LEWIS
+
+
+Ambrosio, or the Monk
+
+
+     There was a time--of no great duration--when Lewis' "Monk" was
+     the most popular book in England. At the end of the eighteenth
+     century the vogue of the "Gothic" romance of ghosts and
+     mysteries was at its height; and this work, written in ten
+     weeks by a young man of nineteen, caught the public fancy
+     tremendously, and Matthew Gregory Lewis was straightway
+     accepted as an adept at making the flesh creep. Taste changes
+     in horrors, as in other things, and "Ambrosio, or The Monk,"
+     would give nightmares to few modern readers. Its author, who
+     was born in London on July 9, 1775, and published "The Monk"
+     in 1795, wrote many supernatural tales and poems, and also
+     several plays--one of which, "The Castle Spectre," caused the
+     hair of Drury Lane audiences to stand on end for sixty
+     successive nights, a long run in those days. Lewis, who was a
+     wealthy man, sat for some years in Parliament; he had many
+     distinguished friends among men of letters--Scott and Southey
+     contributed largely to the first volume of his "Tales of
+     Wonder." He died on May 13, 1818.
+
+
+_I.--The Recluse_
+
+
+The Church of the Capuchins in Madrid had never witnessed a more
+numerous assembly than that which gathered to hear the sermon of
+Ambrosio, the abbot. All Madrid rang with his praises. Brought
+mysteriously to the abbey door while yet an infant, he had remained for
+all the thirty years of his life within its precincts. All his days had
+been spent in seclusion, study, and mortification of the flesh; his
+knowledge was profound, his eloquence most persuasive; his only fault
+was an excess of severity in judging the human feelings from which he
+himself was exempted.
+
+Among the crowd that pressed into the church were two women--one
+elderly, the other young--who had seats offered them by two richly
+habited cavaliers. The younger cavalier, Don Lorenzo, discovered such
+exquisite beauty and sweetness in the maiden to whom he had given his
+seat--her name was Antonia--that when she left the church he was
+desperately in love with her.
+
+He had promised to see his sister Agnes, a nun in the Convent of St.
+Clare; so he remained in the church, whither the nuns were presently to
+come to confess to the Abbot Ambrosio. As he waited he observed a man
+wrapped up in a cloak hurriedly place a letter beneath a statue of St.
+Francis, and then retire.
+
+The nuns entered, and removed their veils out of respect to the saint to
+whom the building was dedicated. One of the nuns dropped her rosary
+beside the statue, and, as she stooped to pick it up, she dexterously
+removed the letter and placed it in her bosom. As she did so, the light
+flashed full in her face.
+
+"Agnes, by Heaven!" cried Lorenzo.
+
+He hastened after the cloaked stranger, and overtook him with drawn
+sword. Suddenly the cloaked man turned and exclaimed, "Is it possible?
+Lorenzo, have you forgotten Raymond de las Cisternas?"
+
+"You here, marquis?" said the astonished Lorenzo. "You engaged in a
+clandestine correspondence with my sister?"
+
+"Her affections have ever been mine, and not the Church's. She entered
+the convent tricked into a belief that I had been false to her; but I
+have proved to her that it is otherwise. She had agreed to fly with me,
+and my uncle, the cardinal, is securing for her a dispensation from her
+vows."
+
+Raymond told at length the story of his love, and at the end Lorenzo
+said, "Raymond, there is no one on whom I would bestow Agnes more
+willingly than on yourself. Pursue your design, and I will accompany
+you."
+
+Meanwhile, Agnes tremblingly advanced toward the abbot, and in her
+nervousness let fall the precious letter. She turned to pick it up. The
+abbot claimed and read it; it was the proposal of Agnes's escape with
+her lover that very night.
+
+"This letter must to the prioress!" said he sternly.
+
+"Hold father, hold!" cried Agnes, flinging herself at his feet. "Be
+merciful! Do not doom me to destruction!"
+
+"Hence, unworthy wretch! Where is the prioress?"
+
+The prioress, when she came, gazed upon Agnes with fury. "Away with her
+to the convent!" she exclaimed.
+
+"Oh, Raymond, save me, save me!" shrieked the distracted Agnes. Then,
+casting upon the abbot a frantic look, "Hear me," she continued, "man of
+a hard heart! Insolent in your yet unshaken virtue, your day of trial
+will arrive. Think then upon your cruelty; and despair of pardon!"
+
+
+_II.--The Abbot's Infatuation_
+
+
+Leaving the church, Ambrosio bent his steps towards a grotto in the
+abbey garden, formed in imitation of a hermitage. On reaching the
+grotto, he found it already occupied. Extended upon one of the seats,
+lay a man in a melancholy posture, lost in meditation. Ambrosio
+recognised him; it was Rosario, his favourite novice, a youth of whose
+origin none knew anything, save that his bearing, and such of his
+features as accident had discovered--for he seemed fearful of being
+recognised, and was continually muffled up in his cowl--proved him to be
+of noble birth.
+
+"You must not indulge this disposition to melancholy, Rosario," said
+Ambrosio tenderly.
+
+The youth flung himself at Ambrosio's feet.
+
+"Oh, pity me!" he cried. "How willingly would I unveil to you my heart!
+But I fear------"
+
+"How shall I reassure you? Reveal to me what afflicts you, and I swear
+that your secret shall be safe in my keeping."
+
+"Father," said Rosario, in faltering accents, "I am a woman!"
+
+The abbot stood still for a moment in astonishment, then turned hastily
+to go. But the suppliant clasped his knees.
+
+"Do not fly me!" she cried. "You are my beloved; but far is it from
+Matilda's wish to draw you from the paths of virtue. All I ask is to see
+you, to converse with you, to adore you!"
+
+Confusion and resentment mingled in Ambrosio's mind with secret pleasure
+that a young and lovely woman had thus for his sake abandoned the world.
+But he recognised the need for austerity.
+
+"Matilda," he said, "you must leave the abbey to-morrow."
+
+"Cruel, cruel!" she exclaimed, wringing her hands in agony. "Farewell,
+my friend! And yet, methinks, I would fain bear with me some token of
+your regard."
+
+"What shall I give you?"
+
+"Anything--one of those flowers will be sufficient."
+
+Ambrosio approached a bush, and stooped to pick one of the flowers. He
+uttered a piercing cry, and Matilda rushed towards him.
+
+"A serpent," he said in a faint voice, "concealed among the roses."
+
+With loud shrieks the distressed Matilda summoned assistance. Ambrosio
+was carried to the abbey, his wound was examined, and the surgeon
+pronounced that there was no hope. He had been stung by a centipedoro,
+and would not live three days.
+
+Mournfully the monks left the bedside, and Ambrosio was entrusted to the
+care of the despairing Matilda. Next morning the surgeon was astonished
+to find that the inflammation had subsided, and when he probed the wound
+no traces of the venom were perceptible.
+
+"A miracle! A miracle!" cried the monks. Joyfully they proclaimed that
+St. Francis had saved the life of their sainted abbot.
+
+But Ambrosio was still weak and languid, and again the monks left him in
+Matilda's care. As he listened to an old ballad sung by her sweet voice,
+he found renewed pleasure in her society, and was conscious of the
+influence upon him of her beauty. For three days she nursed him, while
+he watched her with increasing fondness. But on the next day she came
+not. A lay-brother entered instead.
+
+"Hasten, reverend father," said he. "Young Rosario lies at the point of
+death, and he earnestly requests to see you."
+
+In deep agitation he followed the lay-brother to Matilda's apartment.
+Her face glowed at the sight of him. "Leave me, my brethren," she said
+to the monks; much have I to tell this holy man in private."
+
+"Father, I am poisoned," she said, when they had gone, "but the poison
+once circulated in your veins."
+
+"Matilda!"
+
+"I loosened the bandage from your arm; I drew out the poison with my
+lips. I feel death at my heart."
+
+"And you have sacrificed yourself for me! Is there, indeed, no hope?"
+
+"There is but one means of life in my power--a dangerous and dreadful
+means; life would be purchased at too dear a rate--unless it were
+permitted me to live for you."
+
+"Then live for me," cried the infatuated monk, clasping her in his arms.
+"Live for me!"
+
+"Then," she cried joyfully, "no dangers shall appall me. Swear that you
+will never inquire by what means I shall preserve myself, and procure
+for me the key of the burying-ground common to us and the sisterhood of
+St. Clare."
+
+When Ambrosio had obtained the key, Matilda left him. She returned
+radiant with joy.
+
+"I have succeeded!" she cried. "I shall live, Ambrosio--shall live for
+you!"
+
+
+_III.--Unavailing Remorse_
+
+
+Raymond and Lorenzo had gone to the rendezvous appointed in the letter,
+and had waited to be joined by Agnes and to enable her to escape from
+the convent.
+
+But Agnes had not come, and the two friends withdrew in deep
+mortification. Presently arrived a message from Raymond's uncle, the
+cardinal, enclosing the Pope's bull ordering that Agnes should be
+released from her vows, and restored to her relatives. Lorenzo at once
+conveyed the bull to the prioress.
+
+"It is out of my power to obey this order," said she, in a voice of
+anger which she strove in vain to disguise. "Agnes is dead!"
+
+Lorenzo hastened with the fatal news to Raymond, whose terrible
+affliction led to a dangerous illness.
+
+One morning, as Ambrosio was leaving the chapel after listening to many
+penitents--he was the favourite confessor in Madrid--Antonia stepped
+timidly up to him and begged him to visit her mother, who was stretched
+on a bed of sickness. Charmed with her beauty and innocence, he
+consented.
+
+The monk retired to his cell, whither he was pursued by Antonia's image.
+"What would be too dear a price," he meditated, "for this lovely girl's
+affections?"
+
+Not once but often did Ambrosio visit Antonia and her mother; and each
+time he saw the innocent girl his love increased. Matilda, who had first
+opened his heart to love, saw the change, and penetrated his secret.
+
+"Since your love can no longer be mine," she said to him sadly, "I
+request the next best gift--your confidence and friendship. You love
+Antonia, but you love her despairingly. I come to point out the road to
+success."
+
+"Oh, impossible!"
+
+"To those who dare, nothing is impossible. Listen! My guardian was a man
+of uncommon knowledge, and from him I had training in the arts of magic.
+One terrible power he gave me--the power of raising a demon. I shuddered
+at the thought of employing it, until it became my only means of saving
+my life--a life that you prized. For your sake I performed the mystic
+rites in the sepulchre of St. Clare. For your sake I will perform them
+again."
+
+"No, no, Matilda!" cried the monk, "I will not ally myself with God's
+enemy."
+
+"Look!" Matilda held before him a mirror of polished steel, its borders
+marked with various strange characters. A mist spread over the surface;
+it cleared, and Ambrosio gazed upon the countenance of Antonia in all
+its beauty.
+
+"I yield!" he cried passionately. "Matilda, I follow you!"
+
+They passed into the churchyard; they reached the entry to the vaults;
+Ambrosio tremblingly followed Matilda down the staircase. They went
+through narrow passages strewn with skulls and bones, and reached a
+spacious cavern. Matilda drew a circle around herself, and another
+around him; bending low, she muttered a few indistinct sentences, and a
+thin, blue, sulphurous flame arose from the ground.
+
+Suddenly she uttered a piercing shriek, and plunged a poniard into her
+left arm; the blood poured down, a dark cloud arose, and a clap of
+thunder was heard. Then a full strain of melodious music sounded and the
+demon stood before them.
+
+He was a youth of perfect face and form. Crimson wings extended from his
+shoulders; many-coloured fires played about his locks; but there was a
+wildness in his eyes, a mysterious melancholy in his features, that
+betrayed the fallen angel.
+
+Matilda conversed with him in unintelligible language; he bowed
+submissively, and gave to her a silver branch, imitating myrtle, that he
+bore in his right hand. The music was heard again, and ceased; the cloud
+spread itself afresh; the demon vanished.
+
+"With this branch," said Matilda, "every door will open before you. You
+may gain access to Antonia; a touch of the branch will send her into a
+deep sleep, and you may carry her away whither you will."
+
+Ashamed and fearful, yet borne away by his love, the monk set forth. The
+bolts of Antonia's house flew back, and the doors opened before the
+silver myrtle.
+
+But as he passed stealthily through the house a woman confronted him. It
+was Antonia's mother, roused by a fearful dream.
+
+"Monster of hypocrisy!" she cried in fury. "I had already suspected you,
+but I kept silence. Now I will unmask you, villain!"
+
+"Forgive me, lady!" begged the terrified monk. "I swear by all that is
+holy------"
+
+"No! All Madrid shall shudder at your perfidy."
+
+He turned to fly. She seized him and screamed for help. He grasped
+her by the throat with all his strength, strangled her, and flung her to
+the ground, where she lay motionless. After a minute of horror-struck
+shuddering, the murderer fled. He entered the abbey unobserved, and
+having shut himself into his cell, he abandoned his soul to the tortures
+of unavailing remorse.
+
+
+_IV.--A Living Death_
+
+
+"Do not despair," counselled Matilda, when the monk revealed his
+failure. "Your crime is unsuspected. Antonia may still be yours. The
+prioress of St. Clare has a mysterious liquor, the effect of which is to
+give those who drink it the appearance of death for three days. Procure
+some of this liquor, visit Antonia, and cause her to drink it; have her
+body conveyed to a sepulchre in the vaults of St. Clare."
+
+Ambrosio hastened to secure a phial of the mysterious potion. He went to
+comfort Antonia in her distress, and contrived to pour a few drops from
+the phial into a draught that she was taking. In a few hours he heard
+that she was dead, and her body was conveyed to the vaults.
+
+Meanwhile, Lorenzo had learned, not indeed that his sister was alive,
+but that she had been the victim of terrible cruelty. A nun, who had
+been Agnes's friend, hinted at atrocious vengeance taken by the prioress
+for Agnes's attempt to escape. She suggested that Lorenzo should bring
+the officers of the Inquisition with him and arrest the prioress during
+a public procession of the nuns in honour of St Clare.
+
+Accordingly, as the prioress passed along the street among her nuns with
+a devout and sanctified air, the officers advanced and arrested her.
+
+"Ah!" she cried frantically, "I am betrayed!"
+
+"Betrayed!" replied the nun who had revealed the secret to Lorenzo. "I
+charge the prioress with murder!"
+
+She told how Agnes had been secretly poisoned by the prioress. The mob,
+mad with indignation, rushed to the convent determined to destroy it.
+Lorenzo and the officers hastened to endeavour to do what they could to
+save the convent and the terrified nuns who had taken refuge there.
+
+Antonia's heart throbbed, her eyes opened; she raised herself and cast a
+wild look around her. Her clothing was a shroud; she lay in a coffin
+among other coffins in a damp and hideous vault. Confronting her with a
+lantern in his hand, and eyeing her greedily, stood Ambrosio.
+
+"Where am I?" she said abruptly. "How came I here? Let me go!"
+
+"Why these terrors, Antonia?" replied the abbot. "What fear you from
+me--from one who adores you? You are imagined dead; society is for ever
+lost to you. You are absolutely in my power!"
+
+She screamed, and strove to escape; he clutched at her and struggled to
+detain her. Suddenly Matilda entered in haste.
+
+"The mob has set fire to the convent," she said to Ambrosio, "and the
+abbey is in danger. Don Lorenzo and the officers are searching the
+vaults. You cannot escape; you must remain here. They may not, perhaps,
+enter this vault."
+
+Antonia heard that rescue was at hand.
+
+"Help! help!" she screamed, and ran out of the vault. The abbot pursued
+her in desperation; he caught her; he could not stifle her cries.
+Frantic in his desire to escape, he grasped Matilda's dagger, plunged it
+twice in the bosom of Antonia, and fled back to the vault. It was too
+late he had been seen, the glare of torches filled the vault, and
+Ambrosio and Matilda were seized and bound by the officers of the
+Inquisition.
+
+Meanwhile, Lorenzo, running to and fro, had flashed his lantern upon a
+creature so wretched, so emaciated, that he doubted to think her woman.
+He stopped petrified with horror.
+
+"Two days, and yet no food!" she moaned. "No hope, no comfort!" Suddenly
+she looked up and addressed him.
+
+"Do you bring me food, or do you bring me death?"
+
+"I come," he replied, "to relieve your sorrows."
+
+"God, is it possible? Oh, yes! Yes, it is!"--she fainted. Lorenzo
+carried her in his arms to the nuns above.
+
+Loud shrieks summoned him below again. Hastening after the officers, he
+saw a woman bleeding on the ground. He went to her; it was his beloved
+Antonia. She was dying; with a few sweet words of farewell, her spirit
+passed away.
+
+Broken-hearted, he returned. He had lost Antonia, but he was to learn
+that Agnes was restored to him. The woman he had rescued was indeed his
+sister, saved from a living death and brought back to life and love.
+
+
+_V.--Lucifer_
+
+
+Ambrosio was tortured into confession, and condemned to be burned at the
+stake. Matilda, terrified at the sight of her fellow-criminal's
+torments, confessed without torture, and was sentenced to be burned at
+his side.
+
+They were to perish at midnight, and as the monk, in panic-stricken
+despair, awaited the awful hour, suddenly Matilda stood before him,
+beautifully attired, with a look of wild pleasure in her eyes.
+
+"Matilda!" he cried, "how have you gained entrance?"
+
+"Ambrosio," she replied, "I am free. For life and liberty I have sold my
+soul to Lucifer. Dare you do the same?"
+
+The monk shuddered.
+
+"I cannot renounce my God," he said.
+
+"Fool! What hope have you of God's mercy?" She handed him a book. "If
+you repent of your folly, read the first four lines in the seventh page
+backwards." She vanished.
+
+A fearful struggle raged in the monk's spirit. What hope had he in any
+case of escaping eternal torment? And yet--was not the Almighty's mercy
+infinite? Then the thought of the stake and the flames entered his mind
+and appalled him.
+
+At last the fatal hour came. The steps of his gaolers were heard in the
+passage. In uttermost terror he opened the book and ran over the lines,
+and straightway the fiend appeared--not seraph-like as when he appeared
+formerly, but dark, hideous, and gigantic, with hissing snakes coiling
+around his brows.
+
+He placed a parchment before Ambrosio.
+
+"Bear me hence!" cried the monk.
+
+"Will you be mine, body and soul?" said the demon. "Resolve while there
+is time!"
+
+"I must!"
+
+"Sign, then!" Lucifer thrust a pen into the flesh of Ambrosio's arm, and
+the monk signed. A moment later he was carried through the roof of the
+dungeon into mid-air.
+
+The demon bore him with arrow-like speed to the brink of a precipice in
+the Sierra Morena.
+
+"Carry me to Matilda!" gasped the monk.
+
+"Wretch!" answered Lucifer. "For what did you stipulate but rescue from
+the Inquisition? Learn that when you signed, the steps in the corridor
+were the steps of those who were bringing you a pardon. But now you are
+mine beyond reprieve, to all eternity, and alive you quit not these
+mountains."
+
+Darting his talons into the monk's shaven crown, he sprang with him from
+the rock. From a dreadful height he flung him headlong, and the torrent
+bore away with it the shattered corpse of Ambrosio.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+
+
+ELIZA LYNN LINTON
+
+
+Joshua Davidson
+
+
+     Mrs. Lynn Linton, daughter of a vicar of Crosthwaite, was born at
+     Keswick, England, Feb. 10, 1822. At the age of three-and-twenty
+     she embarked on a literary career, and as a journalist,
+     magazine contributor, and novelist wrote vigorously for over
+     fifty years. Before her marriage, in 1858, to W.J. Linton, the
+     eminent wood-engraver, who was also a poet, she had served on
+     the staff of the "Morning Chronicle," as Paris correspondent.
+     Later, she contributed to "All the Year Round," and to the
+     "Saturday Review." After nine years of married life, the
+     Lintons parted amicably. In 1872 Mrs. Lynn Linton published
+     "The True History of Joshua Davidson," a powerfully simple
+     story that has had much influence on working-class thought.
+     "Christopher Kirkland," a later story, is largely
+     autobiographical. Mrs. Linton died in London on July 14, 1898.
+     She was a trenchant critic of what she regarded as tendencies
+     towards degeneration in modern women.
+
+
+_I.--A Cornish Christ_
+
+
+Joshua Davidson was the only son of a village carpenter, born in the
+small hamlet of Trevalga, on the North Cornwall coast, in the year 1835.
+There was nothing very remarkable about Joshua's childhood. He was
+always a quiet, thoughtful boy, and from his earliest years noticeably
+pious. He had a habit of asking why, and of reasoning out a principle,
+from quite a little lad, which displeased people, so that he did not get
+all the credit from the schoolmaster and the clergyman to which his
+diligence and good conduct entitled him.
+
+He was never well looked on by the vicar since a famous scene that took
+place in the church one Sunday. After catechism was over, Joshua stood
+out before the rest, just in his rough country clothes as he was, and
+said very respectfully to the vicar, "Mr. Grand, if you please I would
+like to ask you a few questions."
+
+"Certainly, my lad. What have you to say?" said Mr. Grand rather
+shortly.
+
+"If we say, sir, that Jesus Christ was God," said Joshua, "surely all
+that He said and did must be real right? There cannot be a better way
+than His?"
+
+"Surely not, my lad," Mr. Grand made answer.
+
+"And His apostles and disciples, they showed the way, too?" said Joshua.
+
+"And they showed the way, too, as you say; and if you come up to half
+they taught you'll do well, Joshua."
+
+The vicar laughed a little laugh as he said this, but it was a laugh,
+Joshua's mother said, that seemed to mean the same thing as a "scat"--
+our Cornish word for a blow--only the boy didn't seem to see it.
+
+"Yes; but, sir, if we are Christians, why don't we live as Christians?"
+said Joshua.
+
+"Ah, indeed, why don't we?" said Mr. Grand. "Because of the wickedness
+of the human heart; because of the world, the flesh, and the devil."
+
+"Then, sir, if you feel this, why don't you and all the clergy live like
+the apostles, and give what you have to the poor?" cried Joshua,
+clasping his hands and making a step forward, the tears in his eyes.
+
+"Why do you live in a fine house, and have grand dinners, and let Peggy
+Bray nearly starve in that old mud hut of hers, and Widow Tregellis
+there, with her six children, and no fire or clothing for them? I can't
+make it out, sir!"
+
+"Who has been putting these bad thoughts into your head?" said Mr. Grand
+sternly.
+
+"No one, sir. I have been thinking for myself. Michael, out by Lion's
+Den, is called an infidel--he calls himself one. And you preached last
+Sunday that no infidel can be saved. But Michael helped Peggy and her
+child when the orphan fund people took away her pension; and he worked
+early and late for Widow Tregellis and her children, and shared with
+them all he had, going short for them many a time. And I can't help
+thinking, sir, that Christ would have helped Peggy, and that Michael,
+being an infidel and such a good man, is something like that second son
+in the parable who said he would not do his Lord's will when he was
+ordered, but who went all the same------"
+
+"And that your vicar is like the first?" interrupted Mr. Grand angrily.
+
+"Well, yes, sir, if you please," said Joshua quite modestly, but very
+fervently.
+
+There was a stir among the ladies and gentlemen when Joshua said this;
+and some laughed a little, under their breath, and others lifted up
+their eyebrows and said, "What an extraordinary boy!" But Mr. Grand was
+very angry, and said, in a severe tone, "These things are beyond the
+knowledge of an ignorant lad like you, Joshua. I consider you have done
+a very impertinent thing to-day, and I shall mark you for it!"
+
+"I meant no harm. I meant only the truth and to hear the things of God,"
+repeated Joshua sadly, as he took his seat among his companions, who
+tittered.
+
+And so Joshua was not well looked on by the clergyman, who was his
+enemy, as one may say, ever after.
+
+"Mother," said Joshua, "I mean, when I grow up, to live as our Lord and
+Saviour lived when He was on the earth."
+
+"He is our example, lad," said his mother. "But I doubt lest you fall by
+over-boldness."
+
+
+_II.--Faith That Moveth Mountains_
+
+
+Joshua did not leave home early. He wrought at his father's bench, and
+was content to bide with his people. But his spirit was not dead if his
+life was uneventful. He gathered about him a few youths of his own age,
+and held with them prayer-meetings and Bible readings, either at home in
+his father's house, or in the fields when the throng was too great for
+the cottage.
+
+No one ever knew Joshua tell the shadow of a lie, or go back from his
+word, or play at pretence. And he had such an odd way of coming right
+home to us. He seemed to have felt all that we felt, and to have thought
+all our thoughts.
+
+The youths that Joshua got together as his friends were as
+well-conditioned a set of lads as you would wish to see--sober,
+industrious, chaste. Their aim was to be thorough and like Christ.
+Joshua's great hope was to bring back the world to the simplicity and
+broad humanity of Christ's acted life, and he could not understand how
+it had been let drop.
+
+He was but a young man at this time, remember--enthusiastic, with little
+or no scientific knowledge, and putting the direct interposition of God
+above the natural law. Wherefore, he accepted the text about faith
+removing mountains as literally true. And one evening he went down into
+the Rocky Valley, earnest to try conclusions with God's promise, and
+sure of proving it true.
+
+He prayed to God to grant us this manifestation--to redeem His promise.
+Not a shadow of doubt chilled or slacked him. As he stood there in the
+softening twilight, with his arms raised above his head and his face
+turned up to the sky, his countenance glowed as Moses' of old. He seemed
+inspired, transported beyond himself, beyond humanity.
+
+He commanded the stone to move in God's name, and because Christ had
+promised. But the rock stood still, and a stonechat went and perched on
+it.
+
+Another time he took up a viper in his hand, quoting the passage, "They
+shall take up serpents." But the beast stung him, and he was ill for
+days after.
+
+"Take my advice," said the doctor. "Put all these thoughts out of your
+head. Get some work to do in a new part of the country, fall in love
+with some nice girl, and marry as soon as you can make a home for her.
+That's the only life for you, depend upon it."
+
+"God has given me other thoughts," said Joshua, "and I must obey them."
+
+The doctor said afterwards that he was quite touched at the lad's
+sweetness and wrong-headedness combined.
+
+The failure of these trials of faith perplexed us all, and profoundly
+afflicted Joshua. "Friends," he said at last, "it seems to me--indeed, I
+think we must all see it now--that His Word is not to be accepted
+literally. The laws of nature are supreme, and even faith cannot change
+them. Can it be," he then said solemnly, "that much of the Word is a
+parable--that Christ was truly, as He says of Himself, the corner-stone,
+but not the whole building--and that we have to carry on the work in His
+spirit, but in our own way, and not merely to try and repeat His acts?"
+
+It was after this that we noticed a certain restlessness in Joshua. But
+in time he had an offer to go up to London to follow his trade at a
+large house in the City, and got me a job as well, that I might be
+alongside of him. For we were like brothers. A few days before he went,
+Joshua happened to be coming out of his father's workshop just as Mr.
+Grand was passing, driving the neat pair-horse phaeton he had lately
+bought.
+
+"Well, Joshua, and how are you doing? And why have you not been to
+church lately?" said the parson, pulling up.
+
+"Well, sir," said Joshua, "I don't go to church, you know."
+
+"A new light on your own account, hey?" and he laughed as if he mocked
+him.
+
+"No, sir; only a seeker."
+
+"The old path's not good enough for you?"
+
+"I must answer for my conscience to God, sir," said Joshua.
+
+"And your clergyman, appointed by God and the state to be your guide,
+what of him? Has he no authority in his own parish?"
+
+"Look here, sir," said Joshua, quite respectfully; "I deny your
+appointment as a God-given leader of souls. The Church is but the old
+priesthood as it existed in the days of our Lord. I see no sacrifice of
+the world, no brotherhood with the poor----"
+
+"The poor!" interrupted Mr. Grand disdainfully. "What would you have,
+you young fool? The poor have the laws of their country to protect them,
+and the Gospel preached to them for their salvation."
+
+"Why, sir, the poor of our day are the lepers of Christ's, and who among
+you Christian priests consorts with them? Who ranks the man above his
+station, or the soul above the man?"
+
+"Now we have come to it!" cried Mr. Grand. "I thought I should touch the
+secret spring at last! And you would like us to associate with you as
+equals--is that it, Joshua? Gentlemen and common men hob-and-nob
+together, and no distinctions made? You to ride in our carriages, and
+perhaps marry our daughters?"
+
+"That's just it, sir. You are gentlemen, as you say, but not the
+followers of Christ. If you were, you would have no carriages to ride
+in, and your daughters would be what Martha and Mary and Lydia and
+Dorcas were, and their title to ladyhood founded on their degrees of
+goodness."
+
+"Shall I tell you what would be the very thing for you," said Mr. Grand,
+quite quietly.
+
+"Yes, sir; what?" asked Joshua eagerly.
+
+"This whip across your shoulders! And, by George, if I were not a
+clergyman, I would lay it there with a will!" cried the parson.
+
+No one had ever seen Joshua angry since he had grown up. His temper was
+proverbially sweet, and his self-control was a marvel. But this time he
+lost both.
+
+"God shall smite thee, thou white wall!" he cried with vehemence. "You
+are the gentleman, sir, and I am only a poor carpenter's son; but I
+spurn you with a deeper and more solemn scorn than you have spurned me!"
+
+He lifted his hand as he said this, with a strange and passionate
+gesture, then turned himself about and went in, and Mr. Grand drove off
+more his ill-wisher than before. He also made old Davidson, Joshua's
+father, suffer for his son, for he took away his custom from him, and
+did him what harm in the neighbourhood a gentleman's ill word can do a
+working man.
+
+
+_III.--Is Christ's Way Livable?_
+
+
+In London a new view of life opened to Joshua. The first thing that
+struck him in our workshop was the avowed infidelity of the workmen.
+Distrust had penetrated to their inmost souls. Christianity represents
+to the poor, not Christ tender to the sinful, visiting the leprous, the
+brother of publicans, at Whose feet sat the harlots and were comforted,
+but the gentleman taking sides with God against the poor and oppressed,
+an elder brother in the courts of heaven kicking the younger out of
+doors.
+
+At this time Joshua's mind was like an unpiloted vessel. He was beset
+with doubts, in which the only thing that kept its shape or place was
+the character of Christ. For the rest, everything had failed him. During
+this time he did not neglect what I suppose may be called the secular
+life. He attended all such science classes as he had time for, and being
+naturally quick in study, he picked up a vast deal of knowledge in a
+very short time; he interested himself in politics, in current social
+questions, specially those relating to labour and capital, and in the
+condition of the poor.
+
+So his time passed, till at last one evening, "Friends," he said, "I
+have at last cleared my mind and come to a belief. I have proved to
+myself the sole meaning of Christ: it is humanity. The modern Christ
+would be a politician. His aim would be to raise the whole platform of
+society. He would work at the destruction of caste, which is the vice at
+the root of all our creeds and institutions. He would accept the truths
+of science, and He would teach that a man saves his own soul best by
+helping his neighbour. Friends, the doctrine I have chosen for myself is
+Christian Communism, and my aim will be, the life after Christ in the
+service of humanity."
+
+It was this which made him begin his "night school," where he got
+together all who would come, and tried to interest them in a few homely
+truths in the way of cleanliness, health, good cooking, and the like,
+with interludes, so to speak, of lessons in morality.
+
+We lodged in a stifling court, Church Court, where every room was filled
+as if cubic inches were gold, as indeed they are to London house-owners,
+if human life is but dross. Opposite us lived Mary Prinsep, who was what
+the world calls lost--a bad girl--a castaway--but I have reason to speak
+well of her, for to her we owe the life of Joshua. Joshua fell ill in
+our wretched lodgings, where we lived and did for ourselves, and I was
+obliged to leave him for twelve hours and more at a stretch; but Mary
+Prinsep came over and nursed him, and kept him alive. We helped her all
+we could, and she helped us. This got us the name of associating with
+bad women.
+
+Among the rest of the doubtful characters with which our court abounded
+was one Joe Traill, who had been in prison many a time for petty larceny
+and the like. He was one of those who stink in the nostrils of cleanly,
+civilised society, and who are its shame and secret sore. There was no
+place for Joe in this great world of ours. He said to Joshua one night
+in his blithe way that there was nothing for him but to make a running
+fight for it, now up, now down, as his luck went.
+
+"Burglary's a bad trade," said Joshua.
+
+"Only one I've got at my fingers' ends, governor," laughed the thief;
+"and starvation is a worse go than quod."
+
+"Well, till you've learned a better, share with us," said Joshua. So now
+we had a reformed burglar and a reformed prostitute in our little
+circle.
+
+"It is what Christ would have done," said Joshua, when he was
+remonstrated with.
+
+But the police did not see it. Wherefore, "from information received,"
+Joshua and I were called up before the master, and had our dismissal
+from the shop, and we found ourselves penniless in the wilds of London.
+But Joshua was undisturbed. He told both Joe and Mary that he would not
+forsake them, come what might.
+
+It was a hard time, and, bit by bit, everything we possessed passed over
+the pawnbroker's counter, even to our tools. But when we were at the
+worst Joshua received a letter enclosing a five-pound note, "from a
+friend." We never knew where it came from, and there was no clue by
+which we could guess. Immediately after both Joshua and I got a job, and
+Joe and Mary still bided with us.
+
+Joshua's life of work and endeavour brought with it no reward of praise
+or popularity. It suffered the fate of all unsectarianism, and made him
+to be as one man in the midst of foes. He soon began to see that the
+utmost he could do was only palliative and temporary. So he turned to
+class organisation as something more hopeful than private charity. When
+the International Workingmen's Association was formed, he joined it as
+one of its first members; indeed, he mainly helped to establish it. And
+though he never got the ear of the International, because he was so
+truly liberal, he had some little influence, and what influence he had
+ennobled their councils as they have never been ennobled since.
+
+One evening Joe Traill, who had been given a situation, came into the
+night school staggering drunk, and made a commotion, and though Joshua
+quieted him, after being struck by him, the police, attracted by the
+tumult, came up into the room and marched Joshua and myself off to the
+police station, where we were locked up for the night. As we had to be
+punished, reason or none, we were both sent to prison for a couple of
+weeks next morning.
+
+Well, Christ was the criminal of his day!
+
+Such backslidings and failures at that of Joe Traill were among the
+greatest difficulties of Joshua's work. Men and women whom he had
+thought he had cleansed and set on a wholesome way of living, turned
+back again to the drink and the deviltry of their lives, and the various
+sectarians who came along all agreed that the cause of his failures
+was--Joshua was not a Christian!
+
+Next a spasmodic philanthropist, Lord X., struck up a friendship with
+Joshua, who, he said, wanted, as a background, a man of position. This
+led to Joshua's first introduction into a wealthy house of the upper
+classes, and the luxury and lavishness almost stupefied him. Lady X.
+liked Joshua, and felt he was a master-spirit, but when she came to
+Church Court, and found out what Mary had been, she went away offended,
+and we saw her no more.
+
+
+_IV.--The Pathway of Martyrdom_
+
+
+Sometimes Joshua went as a lecturer to various towns, for his political
+associates were willing to use his political zeal, though they did not
+go in for his religious views. He insisted on the need of the working
+classes raising themselves to a higher level in mind and circumstance,
+and on the right of each man to a fair share of the primary essentials
+for good living. His discourses roused immense antagonism, and he was
+sometimes set upon and severely handled by the men to whom he spoke. I
+have known swindlers and murderers more gently entreated. When, after
+the war between France and Prussia the Commune declared itself in Paris,
+Joshua went over to help, as far as he could, in the cause of humanity.
+I went with him, and poor, loving, faithful Mary followed us. But there,
+notwithstanding all that we and others of like mind could do, blood was
+shed which covered liberty with shame, and in the confusion that
+followed Mary was shot as a pétroleuse while she was succouring the
+wounded. We buried her tenderly, and I laid part of my life in her
+grave.
+
+On our return Joshua was regarded as the representative of social
+destruction and godless licence, for the very name of the Commune was a
+red rag to English thought.
+
+At last we came to a place called Lowbridge, where Joshua was announced
+to lecture on Communism in the town hall. Grave as he always was, that
+night he was grave to sadness, like a martyr going to his death. He
+shook hands with me before going on the platform, and said, "God bless
+you, John; you have been a true friend to me."
+
+In the first row in front of him was the former clergyman of Trevalga,
+Mr. Grand, who had lately been given the rich living of Lowbridge and
+one or two stately cathedral appointments. At the first word Joshua
+spoke there broke out such a tumult as I had never heard in any public
+meeting. The yells, hisses, cat-calls, whoopings, were indescribable. It
+only ceased when Mr. Grand rose, and standing on a chair, appealed to
+the audience to "Give him your minds, my men, and let him understand
+that Lowbridge is no place for a godless rascal like him."
+
+I will do Mr. Grand the justice to say I do not think he intended his
+words to have the effect they did have. A dozen men leaped on the
+platform, and in a moment I saw Joshua under their feet. They had it all
+their own way, and while he lay on the ground, pale and senseless, one,
+with a fearful oath, kicked him twice on the head. Suddenly a whisper
+went round, they all drew a little, way off, the gas was turned down,
+and the place cleared as if by magic. When the lights were up again, I
+went to lift him--and he was dead.
+
+The man who had lived the life after Christ more exactly than any human
+being ever known to me was killed by the Christian party of order. So
+the world has ever disowned its best when they came.
+
+The death of my friend has left me not only desolate but uncertain. Like
+Joshua in earlier days, my mind is unpiloted and unanchored. Everywhere
+I see the sifting of competition, and nowhere Christian protection of
+weakness; everywhere dogma adored, and nowhere Christ realised. And
+again I ask, Which is true--modern society in its class strife and
+consequent elimination of its weaker elements, or the brotherhood and
+communism taught by the Jewish Carpenter of Nazareth? Who will answer
+me? Who will make the dark thing clear?
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+
+
+SAMUEL LOVER
+
+
+Handy Andy
+
+
+     Samuel Lover, born at Dublin on February 24, 1797, was the
+     most versatile man of his age. He was a song-writer, a
+     novelist, a painter, a dramatist, and an entertainer; and in
+     each of these parts he was remarkably successful. In 1835 he
+     came to London, and set up as a miniature painter; then he
+     turned to literature, and in "Rory O'More," published in 1837,
+     and "Handy Andy, a Tale of Irish Life," which appeared in
+     1842, he took the town. Lover was a typical Irishman of the
+     old school--high-spirited, witty, and jovially humorous; and
+     his work is informed with a genuine Irish raciness that gives
+     it a perennial freshness. He is a man gaily in love with life,
+     and with a quick eye for all the varied humours of it. "Handy
+     Andy" is one of the most amusing books ever written; a roaring
+     farce, written by a man who combined the liveliest sense of
+     fun with a painter's gift of portraying real character in a
+     few vivid touches. Samuel Lover died on July 6, 1868.
+
+
+_I.--The Squire Gets a Surprise_
+
+
+Andy Rooney was a fellow with a most ingenious knack of doing everything
+the wrong way. "Handy" Andy was the nickname the neighbours stuck on
+him, and the poor simple-minded lad liked the jeering jingle. Even Mrs.
+Rooney, who thought that her boy was "the sweetest craythur the cun
+shines on," preferred to hear him called "Handy Andy" rather than
+"Suds."
+
+For sad memories attached to the latter nickname. Knowing what a hard
+life Mrs. Rooney had had--she had married a stranger, who disappeared a
+month after marriage, so Andy came into the world with no father to beat
+a little sense into him--Squire Egan of Merryvale engaged the boy as a
+servant. One of the first things that Andy was called upon to do was to
+wait at table during an important political dinner given by the squire.
+Andy was told to ice the champagne, and the wine and a tub of ice were
+given to him.
+
+"Well, this is the quarest thing I ever heered of," said Andy. "Musha!
+What outlandish inventions the quality has among them! They're not
+content with wine, but they must have ice along with it--and in a tub,
+too, like pigs! Troth, its a' dirty thrick, I think. But here goes!"
+said he; and opening a bottle of champagne, he poured it into the tub
+with the ice.
+
+Andy distinguished himself right at the beginning of the dinner. One of
+the guests asked him for soda-water.
+
+"Would you like it hot or cold, sir?" he said.
+
+"Never mind," replied the guest, with a laugh. But Andy was anxious to
+please, and the squire's butler met him hurrying to the kitchen,
+bewildered, but still resolute.
+
+"One of the gintlemen wants some soap and wather with his wine,"
+exclaimed Andy. "Shall I give it hot or cold?"
+
+The distracted and irate butler took Andy to the sideboard and pushed a
+small soda into his hand, saying, "Cut the cord, you fool!" Andy took it
+gingerly, and holding it over the table, carried out the order. Bang I
+went the bottle, and the cork, after knocking out two of the lights,
+struck the squire in the eye, while the hostess had a cold bath down her
+back. Poor Andy, frightened by the soda-water jumping out of the bottle,
+kept holding it out at arm's-length, exclaiming at every fizz, "Ow, ow,
+ow!"
+
+"Send that fellow out of the room," said the squire to the butler, "and
+bring in the champagne."
+
+In staggered Andy with the tub.
+
+"Hand it round the table," said the squire.
+
+Andy tried to lift up the tub "to hand it round the table," but finding
+he could not, he whispered, "I can't get it up, sir!"
+
+"Draw it then," murmured his master, thinking that Andy meant he had got
+a bottle which was not effervescent enough to expel its own cork.
+
+"Here it is," said Andy, pulling the tub up to the squire's chair.
+
+"What do you mean, you stupid rascal?" exclaimed the squire, staring at
+the strange stuff before him. "There's not a single bottle there!"
+
+"To be sure there's no bottle there, sir," said Andy. "I've poured every
+dhrop of wine in the ice, as you towld me, sir. If you put your hand
+down into it, you'll feel it."
+
+A wild roar of laughter uprose from the listening guests. Happily they
+were now too merry to be upset by the mishap, and it was generally voted
+that the joke was worth twice as much as the wine. Handy Andy was,
+however, expelled from the dining-room in disgrace, and for days kept
+out of his master's way, and the servants for months would call him by
+no other name but "Suds."
+
+
+_II.--O'Grady Gets a Blister_
+
+
+Mr. Egan was a kind-hearted man, and, instead of dismissing Andy, he
+kept him on for out-door work. Our hero at once distinguished himself in
+his new walk of life.
+
+"Ride into the town and see if there is a letter for me," said the
+squire.
+
+"I want a letther, if you plaze!" shouted Andy, rushing into the
+post-office.
+
+"Who do you want it for?" asked the postmaster.
+
+"What consarn is that o' yours?" exclaimed Andy.
+
+Happily, a man who knew Andy looked in for a letter, paid the postage of
+fourpence on it, and then settled the dispute between Andy and the
+postmaster by mentioning Mr. Egan's name.
+
+"Why didn't you tell me you came from the squire?" said the postmaster.
+"Here's a letter for him. Elevenpence postage."
+
+"Elevenpence postage!" Andy cried. "Didn't I see you give that man a
+letther for fourpence, and a bigger letther than this? Do you think I'm
+a fool?"
+
+"No," said the postmaster; "I'm sure of it."
+
+He walked off to serve another customer, and Andy meditated. His master
+wanted the letter badly, so he would have to pay the exorbitant price.
+He snatched two other letters from the heap on the counter while the
+postmaster's back was turned, paid the elevenpence, received the epistle
+to which he was entitled, and rode home triumphant.
+
+"Look at that!" he exclaimed, slapping the three letters down under his
+broad fist on the table before the astonished squire. "He made me pay
+elevenpence, by gor! But I've brought your honour the worth of your
+money, anyhow."
+
+"Well, by the powers!" said the squire, as Andy stalked out of the room
+with an air of supreme triumph. "That's the most extraordinary genius I
+ever came across!"
+
+He read the letter for which he had been anxiously waiting. It was from
+his lawyer about the forthcoming election. In it he was warned to beware
+of his friend O'Grady, who was selling his interest to the government
+candidate.
+
+"So that's the work O'Grady's at!" exclaimed the squire angrily. "Foul,
+foul! And after all the money I lent him, too!"
+
+He threw down the letter, and his eye caught the other two that Andy had
+stolen.
+
+"More of that mad fool's work! Robbing the mail now. That's a hanging
+job. I'd better send them to the parties to whom they're addressed."
+
+Picking up one of the epistles, he found it was a government letter
+directed to his new enemy, O'Grady. "All's fair in war," thought the
+squire, and pinching the letter until it gaped, he peeped in and read:
+"As you very properly remark, poor Egan is a spoon--a mere spoon." "Am I
+a spoon, your villain!" roared the squire, tearing the letter and
+throwing it into the fire. "I'm a spoon you'll sup sorrow with yet!"
+
+"Get out a writ on O'Grady for all the money he owes me," he wrote to
+his lawyer. "Send me the blister, and I'll slap it on him."
+
+Unfortunately, he sent Andy with this letter; still more unfortunately,
+Mrs. Egan also gave the simple fellow a prescription to be made up at
+the chemist's. Andy surpassed himself on this occasion. He called at the
+chemist's on his way back from the lawyer's, and carefully laid the
+sealed envelope containing the writ on the counter, while he was getting
+the medicine. On leaving, he took up a different envelope.
+
+"My dear Squire," ran the letter Andy brought back, "I send you the
+blister for O'Grady, as you insist on it; but I don't think you will
+find it easy to serve him with it.--Your obedient, MURTOUGH MURPHY."
+
+When the squire opened the accompanying envelope, and found within a
+real instead of a figurative blister, he grew crimson with rage. But he
+was consoled when he went to horsewhip his attorney, and met the chemist
+pelting down the street with O'Grady tearing after him with a cudgel.
+For some years O'Grady had successfully kept out of his door every
+process-server sent by his innumerable creditors; but now, having got a
+cold, he had dispatched his man to the chemist for a blister, and owing
+to Handy Andy, he obtained Squire Egan's writ against him.
+
+"You've made a mistake this time, you rascal," said the squire to Andy,
+"for which I'll forgive you."
+
+And this was only fair, for through it he was able to carry the
+election, and become Edward Egan, Esq., M.P.
+
+
+_III.--Andy Gets Married_
+
+
+Andy was among the guests invited to the wedding feast of pretty Matty
+Dwyer and handsome young James Casey; like everybody else he came to the
+marriage full of curiosity. Matty's father, John Dwyer, was a hard,
+close-fisted fellow, and, as all the neighbours knew, there had been
+many fierce disputes between him and Casey over the question of a farm
+belonging to Dwyer going into the marriage settlement.
+
+A grand dinner was laid in the large barn, but it was kept waiting owing
+to the absence of the bridegroom. Father Phil, the kindly, jovial parish
+priest, who had come to help James and Matty "tie with their tongues the
+knot they couldn't undo with their teeth," had not broken his fast that
+day, and wanted the feast to go on. To the great surprise of the
+company, Matty backed him, and full of life and spirits, began to lay
+the dinner. For some time the hungry guests were busy with the good
+cheer provided for them, but the women at last asked in loud whispers,
+"Where in the world is James Casey?" Still the bride kept up her smiles,
+but old Jack Dwyer's face grew blacker and blacker. Unable to bear the
+strain any longer, he stood up and addressed the expectant crowd.
+
+"You see the disgrace that's put on me!"
+
+"He'll come yet, sir," said Andy.
+
+"No, he won't!" cried Dwyer, "I see he won't. He wanted to get
+everything his own way, and he thinks to disgrace me in doing what he
+likes, but he shan't;" and he struck the table fiercely. "He goes back
+of his bargain now, thinkin' I'll give in to him; but I won't. Friends
+and neighbours, here's the lease of the three-cornered field below there
+and a snug little cottage, and it's ready for my girl to walk in with
+the man that will have her! If there's a man among you here that's
+willing, let him say the word, and I'll give her to him!"
+
+Matty tried to protest, but her father silenced her with a terrible
+look. When old Dwyer's blood was up, he was capable of murder. No guest
+dared to speak.
+
+"Are yiz all dumb?" shouted Dwyer. "It's not every day a farm and a fine
+girl falls in a man's way."
+
+Still no one spoke, and Andy thought they were using Dwyer and his
+daughter badly.
+
+"Would I do, sir?" he timidly said.
+
+Andy was just the last man Dwyer would have chosen, but he was
+determined that someone should marry the girl, and show Casey "the
+disgrace should not be put on him." He called up Andy and Matty, and
+asked the priest to marry them.
+
+"I can't, if your daughter objects," said Father Phil.
+
+Dwyer turned on the girl, and there was the devil in his eye.
+
+"I'll marry him," said Matty.
+
+So the rites and blessings of the Church were dispensed between two
+persons who an hour before had never given a thought to each other. Yet
+it was wonderful with what lightness of heart Matty went through the
+honours consequent on a peasant bridal in Ireland. She gaily led off the
+dance with Andy, and the night was far spent before the bride and
+bridegroom were escorted to the cottage which was to be their home.
+
+Matty sat quiet, looking at the fire, while Andy bolted the door; but
+when he tried to kiss her she leaped up furiously.
+
+"I'll crack your silly head if you don't behave yourself," she cried,
+seizing a stool and brandishing it above him.
+
+"Oh, wirra, wirra!" said Andy. "Aren't you my wife? Why did you marry
+me?"
+
+"Did I want owld Jack Dwyer to murther me as soon as the people's backs
+was turned?" said Matty. "But though I'm afraid of him, I'm not afraid
+of you!"
+
+"Och!" cried poor Andy, "what'll be the end of it?"
+
+There was a tap at the door as he spoke, and Matty ran and opened it.
+
+In came James Casey and half a dozen strong young fellows. Behind them
+crept a reprobate, degraded priest who got his living and his name of
+"Couple-Beggar" by performing irregular marriages. The end of it was
+that Matty was married over again to Casey, whom she had sent for while
+the dancing was going on. Poor Andy, bound hand and foot, was carried
+out of the cottage to a lonely by-way, and there he passed his
+wedding-night roped to the stump of an old tree.
+
+
+_IV.--Andy Gets Married Again_
+
+
+Misfortunes now accumulated on Andy's head. At break of day he was
+released from the tree-stump by Squire Egan, who was riding by with some
+bad news for the man he thought was now a happy bridegroom. Owing to an
+indiscreet word dropped by our simple-minded hero, a gang of smugglers,
+who ran an illicit still on the moors, had gathered something about Andy
+stealing the letters from the post-office and Squire Egan burning them.
+They had already begun to blackmail the squire, and in order to defeat
+them it was necessary to get Andy out of the country for some time. So
+nothing could be done against Casey.
+
+And, on going home to prepare for a journey to England with a friend of
+the squire's, Andy found his mother in a sad state of anxiety. His
+pretty cousin, Oonah, was crying in a corner of the room, and Ragged
+Nance, an unkempt beggar-woman, to whom the Rooneys had done many a good
+turn, was screaming, "I tell you Shan More means to carry off Oonah
+to-night. I heard them laying the plan for it."
+
+"We'll go to the squire," sobbed Mrs. Rooney. "The villain durst not!"
+
+"He's got the squire under his thumb, I tell you," replied Ragged Nance.
+"You must look after yourselves. I've got it," she said, turning to
+Andy. "We'll dress him as a girl, and let the smugglers take him."
+
+Andy roared with laughter at the notion of being made a girl of. Though
+Shan More was the blackguardly leader of the smugglers who were giving
+the squire trouble, Andy was too taken up with the fun of being
+transformed into the very rough likeness of a pleasing young woman to
+think of the danger. It was difficult to give his angular form the
+necessary roundness of outline; but Ragged Nance at last padded him out
+with straw, and tied a bonnet on his head to shade his face, saying,
+"That'll deceive them. Shan More won't come himself. He'll send some of
+his men, and they're all dhrunk already."
+
+"But they'll murdher my boy when they find out the chate," said Mrs.
+Rooney.
+
+"Suppose they did," exclaimed Andy stoutly; "I'd rather die, sure, than
+the disgrace should fall upon Oonah there."
+
+"God bless you, Andy dear!" said Oonah.
+
+The tramp of approaching horses rang through the stillness of the night,
+and Oonah and Nance ran out and crouched in the potato tops in the
+garden. Four drunken vagabonds broke into the cottage, and, seeing Andy
+in the dim light clinging to his mother, they dragged him away and
+lifted him on a horse, and galloped off with him.
+
+As it happened, luck favoured Andy. When he came to the smugglers' den,
+Shan More was lying on the ground stunned, and his sister, Red Bridget,
+was tending him; in going up the ladder from the underground
+whisky-still, he had fallen backward. The upshot was that Andy was left
+in charge of Red Bridget. But, alas! just as he was hoping to escape,
+she penetrated through his disguise. More unfortunately still, Andy was,
+with all his faults, a rather good-looking young fellow, and Red Bridget
+took a fancy to him, and the "Couple-Beggar" was waiting for a job.
+
+Smugglers' whisky is very strong, and Bridget artfully plied him with
+it. Andy was still rather dazed when he reached home next morning.
+
+"I've married again," he said to his mother.
+
+"Married?" interrupted Oonah, growing pale. "Who to?"
+
+"Shan More's sister," said Andy.
+
+"Wirasthru!" screamed Mrs. Rooney, tearing her cap off her head. "You
+got the worst woman in Ireland."
+
+"Then I'll go and 'list for a sojer," said he.
+
+
+_V.--Andy Gets Married a Third Time_
+
+
+It was Father Phil that brought the extraordinary news to Squire Egan.
+
+"Do you remember those two letters that Andy stole from the post-office,
+and that someone burnt?" he asked, with a smile.
+
+"I've been meaning to tell you, father, that one was for you," said the
+squire, looking very uncomfortable.
+
+"Oh, Andy let it out long ago," said the kindly old priest. "But the
+joke is that by stealing my letter Andy nearly lost a title and a great
+fortune. Ever heard of Lord Scatterbrain? He died a little time ago,
+confessing in his will that it was he that married Mrs. Rooney, and
+deserted her."
+
+"So Handy Andy is now a lord!" exclaimed the squire, rocking with
+laughter.
+
+Andy took it like a true son of the wildest and most eccentric of Irish
+peers. On getting over the first shock of astonishment, he broke out
+into short peals of laughter, exclaiming at intervals, that "it was
+mighty quare." When, after much questioning, his wishes in regard to his
+new life were made clear, it was found that they all centred on one
+object, which was "to have a goold watch."
+
+The squire was perplexed what to do with a great nobleman of this sort,
+and at last he got a kinsman, Dick Dawson, who loved fun, to take Andy
+under his especial care to London. When they arrived there it was
+wonderful how many persons were eager to show civility to his new
+lordship, and he who as Handy Andy had been cried down all his life as a
+"stupid rascal," "a blundering thief," "a thick-headed brute," suddenly
+acquired, under the title of Lord Scatterbrain, a reputation for being
+"vastly amusing, a little eccentric, perhaps, but so droll."
+
+All this was very delightful for Andy--so delightful that he quite
+forgot Red Bridget. But Red Bridget did not forget him.
+
+"Lady Scatterbrain!" announced the servant one day; and in came Bridget
+and Shan More and an attorney.
+
+The attorney brought out a settlement in which an exorbitant sum was to
+be settled on Bridget, and Shan More, with a threatening air, ordered
+Andy to sign the deed.
+
+"I can't," cried Andy, retreating to the fire-place, "and I won't!"
+
+"You must sign your name!" roared Shan More.
+
+"I can't, I tell you!" yelled Andy, seizing the poker. "I've never
+larned to write."
+
+"Your lordship can make your mark," said the attorney.
+
+"I'll make my mark with this poker," cried Andy, "if you don't all clear
+out!"
+
+The noise of a frightful row brought Dick Dawson into the room, and he
+managed to get rid of the intruders by inducing the attorney to conduct
+the negotiations through Lord Scatterbrain's solicitors.
+
+But while the negotiations were going on, a fact came to light that
+altered the whole complexion of the matter, and Andy went post-haste
+over to Ireland to the fine house in which his mother and his cousin
+were living.
+
+Bursting into the drawing-room, he made a rush upon Oonah, whom he
+hugged and kissed most outrageously, with exclamations of the wildest
+affection.
+
+When Oonah freed herself from his embraces, and asked him what he was
+about, Andy turned over the chairs, threw the mantelpiece ornaments into
+the fire, and banged the poker and tongs together, shouting! "Hurroo!
+I'm not married at all!"
+
+It had been discovered that Red Bridget had a husband living when she
+forced Andy to marry her, and as soon as it was legally proved that Lord
+Scatterbrain was a free man, Father Phil was called in, and Oonah, who
+had all along loved her wild cousin, was made Lady Scatterbrain.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+
+
+EDWARD BULWER LYTTON
+
+
+Eugene Aram
+
+
+     Novelist, poet, essayist, and politician, Edward Bulwer Lytton
+     was born in London on May 25, 1805. His father was General
+     Earle Bulwer. He assumed his mother's family name on her death
+     in 1843, and was elevated to the peerage as Baron Lytton in
+     1866. At seventeen Lytton published a volume entitled,
+     "Ismael, and Other Poems." An unhappy marriage in 1827 was
+     followed by extraordinary literary activity, and during the
+     next ten years he produced twelve novels, two poems, a play,
+     "England and the English," and "Athens: Its Rise and Fall,"
+     besides an enormous number of shorter stories, essays, and
+     articles for contemporary periodicals. Altogether his output
+     is represented by nearly sixty volumes. Few books on their
+     publication have created a greater furore than Lord Lytton's
+     "Eugene Aram," which was published in 1832. One section of the
+     novel-reading public hailed its moving, dramatic story with
+     manifest delight, while the other severely condemned it on the
+     plea of its false morality. The story takes its title from
+     that remarkable scholar and criminal, Eugene Aram, at one time
+     a tutor in the Lytton family, who was executed at York in
+     1759, for a murder committed fourteen years before. The crime
+     caused much consternation at the time, Aram's refined and mild
+     disposition being apparently in direct contradiction to his
+     real nature. The novel is an unusually successful, though
+     perhaps one-sided psychological study. In a revised edition
+     Lytton made the narrative agree with his own conclusion that,
+     though an accomplice in robbery, Aram was not guilty of
+     premeditated or actual murder. Edward Bulwer Lytton died on
+     January 18, 1873.
+
+
+_I.--At the Sign of the Spotted Dog_
+
+
+In the county of ---- was a sequestered hamlet, to which I shall give
+the name of Grassdale. It lay in a fruitful valley between gentle and
+fertile hills. Its single hostelry, the Spotted Dog, was owned by one
+Peter Dealtry, a small farmer, who was also clerk of the parish. On
+summer evenings Peter was frequently to be seen outside his inn
+discussing psalmody and other matters with Jacob Bunting, late a
+corporal in his majesty's army, a man who prided himself on his
+knowledge of the world, and found Peter's too easy fund of merriment
+occasionally irritating.
+
+On one such evening their discussion was interrupted by an
+unprepossessing and travel-stained stranger, who, when his wants, none
+too amiably expressed, had been attended to, exhibited a marked
+curiosity concerning the people of the locality. As the stranger paid
+for his welcome with a liberal hand, Peter became more than usually
+communicative.
+
+He described the lord of the manor, a distinguished nobleman who lived
+at the castle some six miles away. He talked of the squire and his
+household. "But," he continued, "the most noticeable man is a great
+scholar. There, yonder," said he, "you may just catch a glimpse of the
+tall what-d'ye-call-it he has built on the top of his house that he may
+get nearer to the stars."
+
+"The scholar, I suppose," observed the stranger, "is not very rich.
+Learning does not clothe men nowadays, eh, corporal?"
+
+"And why should it?" asked Bunting. "Zounds! can it teach a man how to
+defend his country? Old England wants soldiers. But the man's well
+enough, I must own--civil, modest----"
+
+"And by no means a beggar," added Peter. "He gave as much to the poor
+last winter as the squire himself. But if he were as rich as Lord----he
+could not be more respected. The greatest folk in the country come in
+their carriages-and-four to see him. There is not a man more talked on
+in the whole county than Eugene Aram----"
+
+"What!" cried the traveller, his countenance changing as he sprang from
+his seat. "What! Aram! Did you say _Aram_? Great heavens! How strange!"
+
+"What! You know him?" gasped the astonished landlord.
+
+Instead of replying, the stranger muttered inaudible words between his
+teeth. Now he strode two steps forward, clenching his hands. Now smiled
+grimly. Then he threw himself upon his seat, still in silence.
+
+"Rum tantrums!" ejaculated the corporal. "What the devil! Did the man
+eat your grandmother?"
+
+The stranger lifted his head, and addressing Peter, said, with a forced
+smile, "You have done me a great kindness, my friend. Eugene Aram was an
+early acquaintance of mine. We have not met for many years. I never
+guessed that he lived in these parts."
+
+And then, directed, in answer to his inquiries, to Aram's dwelling, a
+lonely grey house in the middle of a broad plain, the traveller went his
+way.
+
+
+_II.--The Squire's Guest_
+
+
+The man the stranger went to seek was one who perhaps might have
+numbered some five-and-thirty years, but at a hasty glance would have
+seemed considerably younger. His frame was tall, slender, but well-knit
+and fair proportioned; his cheek was pale, but with thought; his hair
+was long, and of a rich, deep brown; his brow was unfurrowed; his face
+was one that a physiognomist would have loved to look upon, so much did
+it speak of both the refinement and the dignity of intellect.
+
+Eugene Aram had been now about two years settled in his present retreat,
+with an elderly dame as housekeeper. From almost every college in Europe
+came visitors to his humble dwelling, and willingly he imparted to
+others any benefit derived from his lonely researches. But he proffered
+no hospitality, and shrank from all offers of friendship. Yet, unsocial
+as he was, everyone loved him. The peasant threw kindly pity into his
+respectful greeting. Even that terror of the village, Mother Darkmans,
+saved her bitterest gibes for others; and the village maiden, as she
+curtseyed by him, stole a glance at his handsome but melancholy
+countenance, and told her sweetheart she was certain the poor scholar
+had been crossed in love.
+
+At the manor house he was often the subject of remark, but only on the
+day of the stranger's appearance at the Spotted Dog had the squire found
+an opportunity of breaking through the scholar's habitual reserve, and
+so persuaded him to dine with him and his family on the day following.
+
+The squire, Rowland Lester, a man of cultivated tastes, was a widower,
+with two daughters and a nephew. Walter, the only son of Rowland's
+brother Geoffrey, who had absconded, leaving his wife and child to shift
+for themselves, was in his twenty-first year, tall and strong, with a
+striking if not strictly handsome face; high-spirited, jealous of the
+affections of those he loved; cheerful outwardly, but given to moody
+reflections on his orphaned and dependent lot, for his mother had not
+long survived her desertion.
+
+Madeline Lester, at the age of eighteen, was the beauty and toast of the
+whole country; with a mind no less beautiful than her form was graceful,
+and a desire for study equalled only by her regard for those who
+possessed it, a regard which had extended secretly, if all but
+unacknowledged to herself, to the solitary scholar of whom I have been
+speaking. Ellinor, her junior by two years, was of a character equally
+gentle, but less elevated, and a beauty akin to her sister's.
+
+When Eugene Aram arrived at the manor house in keeping with his promise,
+something appeared to rest upon his mind, from which, however, by the
+excitement lent by wine and occasional bursts of eloquence, he seemed
+striving to escape, and at length he apparently succeeded.
+
+When the ladies had retired, Lester and his guest resumed their talk in
+the open, Walter declining to join them.
+
+Aram was advancing the view that it is impossible for a man who leads
+the life of the world ever to experience content.
+
+"For me," observed the squire, "I have my objects of interest in my
+children."
+
+"And I mine in my books," said Aram.
+
+As they passed over the village green, the gaunt form of Corporal
+Bunting arrested their progress.
+
+"Beg pardon, your honour," said he to the scholar, "but strange-looking
+dog here last evening--asked after you--said you were old friend of
+his--trotted off in your direction--hope all was right, master--augh!"
+
+"All right," repeated Aram, fixing his eyes on the corporal, who had
+concluded his speech with a significant wink. Then, as if satisfied with
+his survey, he added, "Ay, ay; I know whom you mean. He had become
+acquainted with me some years ago. I don't know--I know very little of
+him." And the student was turning away, but stopped to add, "The man
+called on me last night for assistance. I gave what I could afford, and
+he has now proceeded on his journey. Good evening!"
+
+Lester and his companion passed on, the former somewhat surprised, a
+feeling increased when shortly afterwards Aram abruptly bade him
+farewell. But, recalling the peculiar habits of the scholar, he saw that
+the only way to hope for a continuance of that society which had so
+pleased him was to indulge Aram at first in his unsocial inclinations;
+and so, without further discourse, he shook hands with him, and they
+parted.
+
+
+_III.--The Old Riding-Whip_
+
+
+When Lester regained the little parlour in his home he found his nephew
+sitting, silent and discontented, by the window. Madeline had taken up a
+book, and Ellinor, in an opposite corner, was plying her needle with an
+earnestness that contrasted with her customary cheerful vivacity.
+
+The squire thought he had cause to complain of his nephew's conduct to
+their guest. "You eyed the poor student," he said, "as if you wished him
+amongst the books of Alexandria."
+
+"I would he were burnt with them!" exclaimed Walter sharply. "He seems
+to have bewitched my fair cousins here into a forgetfulness of all but
+himself."
+
+"Not me!" said Ellinor eagerly.
+
+"No, not you; you are too just. It is a pity Madeline is not more like
+you."
+
+Thus was disturbance first introduced into a peaceful family. Walter was
+jealous; he could not control his feelings. An open breach followed, not
+only between him and Aram, but a quarrel between him and Madeline. The
+position came as a revelation to his uncle, who, seeing no other way out
+of the difficulty, yielded to Walter's request that he should be allowed
+to travel.
+
+Meanwhile, Aram, drawn out of his habitual solitude by the sweet
+influence of Madeline, became a frequent visitor to the manor house and
+the acknowledged suitor for Madeline's hand. As for Walter, when he set
+out for London, with Corporal Bunting as his servant, he had found
+consolation in the discovery that Ellinor's regard for him had gone
+beyond mere cousinly affection. His uncle gave him several letters of
+introduction to old friends; among them one to Sir Peter Hales, and
+another to a Mr. Courtland.
+
+An incident that befell him on the London road revived to an
+extraordinary degree Walter's desire to ascertain the whereabouts of his
+long-lost father. At the request of Sir Peter Hales he had alighted at a
+saddler's for the purpose of leaving a parcel committed to him, when his
+attention was attracted by an old-fashioned riding-whip. Taking it up,
+he found it bore his own crest, and his father's initials, "G.L." Much
+agitated, he made quick inquiries, and learned that the whip had been
+left for repair about twelve years previously by a gentleman who was
+visiting Mr. Courtland, and had not been heard of since.
+
+Eagerly he sought out Mr. Courtland, and gleaned news which induced him,
+much to Corporal Bunting's disgust, to set his back on London, and make
+his way with all speed in the direction of Knaresborough. It appeared
+that at the time the whip was left at the saddler's, Geoffrey Lester had
+just returned from India, and when he called on his old acquaintance,
+Mr. Courtland, he was travelling to the historic town in the West Riding
+to claim a legacy his old colonel--he had been in the army--had left him
+for saving his life. The name Geoffrey Lester had assumed on entering
+the army was Clarke.
+
+
+_IV.--Hush-Money_
+
+
+While Walter Lester and Corporal Bunting were passing northward, the
+squire of Grassdale saw, with evident complacency, the passion growing
+up between his friend and his daughter. He looked upon it as a tie that
+would permanently reconcile Aram to the hearth of social and domestic
+life; a tie that would constitute the happiness of his daughter and
+secure to himself a relation in the man he felt most inclined of all he
+knew to honour and esteem. Aram seemed another man; and happy indeed was
+Madeline in the change. But one evening, while the two were walking
+together, and Aram was discoursing on their future, Madeline uttered a
+faint shriek, and clung trembling to her lover's arm.
+
+Amazed and roused from his enthusiasm, Aram looked up, and, on seeing
+the cause of her alarm, seemed himself transfixed, as by a sudden terror
+to the earth.
+
+But a few paces distant, standing amidst the long and rank fern that
+grew on each side of their path, quite motionless, and looking on the
+pair with a sarcastic smile, stood the ominous stranger whom we first
+met at the sign of the Spotted Dog.
+
+"Pardon me, dear Madeline," said Aram, softly disengaging himself from
+her, "but for one moment."
+
+He then advanced to the stranger, and after a conversation that lasted
+but a minute, the latter bowed, and, turning away, soon vanished among
+the shrubs.
+
+Aram, regaining the side of Madeline, explained, in answer to her
+startled inquiries, that the man, whom he had known well some fourteen
+years ago, had again come to ask for his help, and he supposed that he
+would again have to aid him.
+
+"And is that indeed _all_?" said Madeline, breathing more freely. "Well,
+poor man, if he be your friend, he must be inoffensive. Here, Eugene."
+And the simple-hearted girl put her purse into Aram's hand.
+
+"No, dearest," said he, shrinking back. "I can easily spare him enough.
+But let us turn back. It grows chill."
+
+"And why did he leave us, Eugene?"
+
+"Because," was the reply, "I desired him to visit me at home an hour
+hence."
+
+There was a past shared by these two men, and Houseman--for that was the
+stranger's name--had come for the price of his silence. The next day, on
+the plea of an old debt that suddenly had to be met, Aram approached his
+prospective father-in-law for the loan of £300. This sum was readily
+placed at his disposal. Indeed, he was offered double the amount. His
+next action was to travel to London, where, with all the money at his
+command, he purchased an annuity for Houseman, falling back, for his own
+needs, upon the influence of Lord ---- to secure for him a small state
+allowance which it was in that nobleman's power to grant to him as a
+needy man of letters.
+
+Houseman was surprised at the scholar's generosity when the paper
+ensuring the annuity was placed in his hands. "Before daybreak
+to-morrow," he said, "I will be on the road. You may now rest assured
+that you are free of me for life. Go home--marry--enjoy your existence.
+Within four days, if the wind set fair, I shall be in France."
+
+The pale face of Eugene Aram brightened. He had resolved, had Houseman's
+attitude been different, to surrender Madeline at once.
+
+
+_V.--Human Bones_
+
+
+The unexpected change in her lover's demeanour, on his return to
+Grassdale, brought unspeakable joy to the heart of Madeline Lester. But
+hardly had Aram left Houseman's squalid haunt in Lambeth when a letter
+was put into the ruffian's hand telling of his daughter's serious
+illness. For this daughter Houseman, villain as he was, would willingly
+have given his life. Now, casting all other thoughts aside, he set
+forth, not for France, but for Knaresborough, where his daughter was
+lying, and whither, guided by his inquiries concerning his father,
+Walter Lester was also on his way.
+
+It was not long ere Walter found that a certain Colonel Elmore had died
+in 17--, leaving £1,000 and a house to one Daniel Clarke, and that an
+executor of the colonel's will survived in the person of a Mr. Jonas
+Elmore. From Mr. Elmore, Walter learned that Clarke had disappeared
+suddenly, after receiving the legacy, taking with him a number of jewels
+with which Mr. Elmore had entrusted him. His disappearance had caused a
+sensation at the time, and a man named Houseman had assigned as a cause
+of Clarke's disappearance a loan which he did not mean to repay. It was
+true that Houseman and a young scholar named Eugene Aram had been
+interrogated by the authorities, but nothing could be proved against
+them, and certainly nothing was suspected where Aram was concerned. He
+left Knaresborough soon after Clarke had disappeared, having received a
+legacy from a relative at York.
+
+This story of a legacy Walter was not inclined to believe, but proof of
+it was forthcoming. Another circumstance in Aram's favour was that his
+memory was still honoured in the town, by the curate, Mr. Summers, as
+well as by others.
+
+Accompanied by Mr. Summers, Walter visited the house where Daniel Clarke
+had stayed and also the woman at whose house Aram had lived. It was a
+lonely, desolate-looking house; its solitary occupant a woman who
+evidently had been drinking. When the name of Eugene Aram was mentioned,
+the woman assumed a mysterious air, and eventually disclosed the fact
+that she had seen Mr. Clarke, Houseman and Aram enter Aram's room early
+one morning. They went away together. A little later Aram and Houseman
+returned. She found out afterwards that they had been burning some
+clothes. She also discovered a handkerchief belonging to Houseman with
+blood upon it. She had shown this to Houseman, who had threatened to
+shoot her should she say a word to anyone regarding himself or his
+companions.
+
+Armed with this narrative, extracted by the promise of pecuniary reward,
+Walter and Mr. Summers were making their way to a magistrate's when
+their attention was attracted by a crowd. A workman, digging for
+limestone, had unearthed a big wooden chest. The chest contained a
+skeleton!
+
+In the midst of the commotion caused by this discovery a voice broke out
+abruptly. It was that of Richard Houseman. His journey had been in vain.
+His daughter was dead. His appearance revealed all too plainly to what
+source he had flown for consolation.
+
+"What do ye here, fools?" he cried, reeling forward. "Ha! Human bones!
+And whose may they be, think ye?"
+
+There were in the crowd those who remembered the disappearance which had
+so surprised them years before, and more than one repeated the name of
+"Daniel Clarke."
+
+"Clarke's bones!" exclaimed Houseman. "Ha, ha! They are no more Clarke's
+than mine!"
+
+At this moment Walter stepped forward.
+
+"Behold!" he cried, in a ringing voice, vibrant with emotion--"behold
+the murderer!"
+
+Pale, confused, conscience-stricken, the bewilderment of intoxication
+mingling with that of fear, Houseman gasped out that if they wanted the
+bones of Clarke they should search St. Robert's Cave. And in the place
+he named they found at last the unhallowed burial-place of the murdered
+dead.
+
+But Houseman, now roused by a sense of personal danger, denied that he
+was the guilty man. Drawing his breath hard, and setting his teeth as
+with steeled determination, he cried, "The murderer is Eugene Aram!"
+
+
+_VI.--"I Murdered my Own Life"_
+
+
+It was a chill morning in November. But at Grassdale all was bustle and
+excitement. The church bells were ringing merry peals. It wanted but an
+hour or so to the wedding of Eugene Aram and Madeline Lester. In this
+interval the scholar was alone with his thoughts. His reverie was rudely
+disturbed by a loud knocking, the noise of which penetrated into his
+study. The outer door was opened. Voices were heard.
+
+"Great God!" he exclaimed. "'Murderer!' Was that the word I heard
+shouted forth? The voice, too, is Walter Lester's. Can he have
+learned----"
+
+Calm succeeded to the agitation of the moment. He met the newcomers with
+a courageous front. But, followed by his bride who was to be, by her
+sister Ellinor, and by their father, all confident that Walter had made
+some horrible mistake, Eugene Aram was taken away to be committed to
+York on the capital charge.
+
+The law's delays were numerous. Winter passed into spring, and spring
+into summer before the trial came on. Eugene Aram's friends were
+numerous. Lord ---- firmly believed in his innocence, and proffered
+help. But the prisoner refused legal aid, and conducted his own
+defence--how ably history records. Madeline was present at the closing
+scene, in her wedding dress. Her father was all but broken in his grief
+for daughter and friend. Walter was distraught by the havoc he had
+caused, and in doubt whether, after all, his action had not been too
+impetuous. The court was deeply impressed by the prisoner's defence. But
+the judge's summing-up was all against the accused, and the verdict was
+"Guilty!" Madeline lived but a few hours after hearing it.
+
+The following evening Walter obtained admittance to the condemned cell.
+
+"Eugene Aram," he said, in tones of agony, "if at this moment you can
+lay your hand on your heart, and say, 'Before God, and at peril of my
+soul, I am innocent of this deed,' I will depart; I will believe you,
+and bear as I may the reflection that I have been one of the unconscious
+agents in condemning to a fearful death an innocent man. But if you
+cannot at so dark a crisis take that oath, then, oh then, be generous,
+even in guilt, and let me not be haunted through life by the spectre of
+a ghastly and restless doubt!"
+
+On the eve of the day destined to be his last on earth Eugene Aram
+placed in Walter's hands a paper which that young man pledged himself
+not to read till Rowland Lester's grey hairs had gone to the grave. This
+document set forth at length the story of Aram's early life, how he
+sought knowledge amidst grinding poverty, and how, when a gigantic
+discovery in science gleamed across his mind, a discovery which only
+lack of means prevented him from realising to the vast benefit of truth
+and man, the tempter came to him. This tempter took the form of a
+distant relative, Richard Houseman, with his doctrine that "Laws order
+me to starve, but self-preservation is an instinct more sacred than
+society," and his demand for co-operation in an act of robbery from one
+Daniel Clarke, whose crimes were many, who was, moreover, on the point
+of disappearing with a number of jewels he had borrowed on false
+pretences.
+
+"Houseman lied," wrote the condemned man. "I did not strike the blow. I
+never designed a murder. But the deed was done, and Houseman divided the
+booty. My share he buried in the earth, leaving me to withdraw it when I
+chose. There, perhaps, it lies still. I never touched what I had
+murdered my _own_ life to gain. Three days after that deed a relative,
+who had neglected me in life, died and left me wealth--wealth, at least,
+to me! Wealth greater than that for which I had----My ambition died in
+remorse!"
+
+Houseman passed away in his own bed. But he had to be buried secretly in
+the dead of night, for, ten years after Eugene Aram had died on the
+scaffold, the hatred of the world survived for his accomplice. Rowland
+Lester did not live long after Madeline's death. But when Walter
+returned from a period of honourable service with the great Frederick of
+Prussia, it was with no merely cousinly welcome that Ellinor received
+him.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+
+
+The Last Days of Pompeii
+
+
+     "The Last Days of Pompeii," the most popular of Lytton's
+     historical romances, was begun and almost completed at Naples
+     in the winter of 1832-3, and was first published in 1834. The
+     period dealt with is that of 79 A.D., during the short reign
+     of Titus, when Rome was at its zenith and the picturesque
+     Campanian city a kind of Rome-by-the-Sea. Lytton wrote the
+     novel some thirty years before the excavations of Pompeii had
+     been systematically begun; but his pictures of the life, the
+     luxuries, the pastimes and the gaiety of the half-Grecian
+     colony, its worship of Isis, its trade with Alexandria, and
+     the early struggles of Christianity with heathen superstition
+     are exceptionally vivid. The creation of Nydia, the blind
+     flower-girl, was suggested by the casual remark of an
+     acquaintance that at the time of the destruction of Pompeii
+     the sightless would have found the easiest deliverance.
+
+
+_I.--The Athenian's Love Story_
+
+
+Within the narrow compass of the walls of Pompeii was contained a
+specimen of every gift which luxury offered to power. In its minute but
+glittering shops, its tiny palaces, its baths, its forum, its theatre,
+its circus--in the energy yet corruption, in the refinement yet the
+vice, of its people, you beheld a model of the whole Roman Empire. It
+was a toy, a plaything, a show-box, in which the gods seemed pleased to
+keep the representation of the great monarchy of earth, and which they
+afterwards hid from time, to give to the wonder of posterity--the moral
+of the maxim, that under the sun there is nothing new.
+
+Crowded in the glassy bay were vessels of commerce and gilded galleys
+for the pleasures of the rich citizens. The boats of the fishermen
+glided to and fro, and afar off you saw the tall masts of the fleet
+under the command of Pliny.
+
+Drawing a comrade from the crowded streets, Glaucus the Greek, newly
+returned to Pompeii after a journey to Naples, bent his steps towards a
+solitary part of the beach; and the two, seated on a small crag which
+rose amidst the smooth pebbles, inhaled the voluptuous and cooling
+breeze which, dancing over the waters, kept music with its invisible
+feet. There was something in the scene which invited them to silence and
+reverie.
+
+Clodius, the aedile, who sought the wherewithal for his pleasures at the
+gaming table, shaded his eyes from the burning sky, and calculated the
+gains of the past week. He was one of the many who found it easy to
+enrich themselves at the expense of his companion. The Greek, leaning
+upon his hand, and shrinking not from that sun, his nation's tutelary
+deity, with whose fluent light of poesy and joy and love his own veins
+were filled, gazed upon the broad expanse, and envied, perhaps, every
+wind that bent its pinions toward the shores of Greece.
+
+Glaucus obeyed no more vicious dictates when he wandered into the
+dissipations of his time that the exhilarating voices of youth and
+health. His heart never was corrupted. Of far more penetration than
+Clodius and others of his gay companions deemed, he saw their design to
+prey upon his riches and his youth; but he despised wealth save as the
+means of enjoyment, and youth was the great sympathy that united him to
+them. To him the world was one vast prison to which the sovereign of
+Rome was the imperial gaoler, and the very virtues which, in the free
+days of Athens, would have made him ambitious, in the slavery of earth
+made him inactive and supine.
+
+"Tell me, Clodius," said the Athenian at last, "hast thou ever been in
+love?"
+
+"Yes, very often."
+
+"He who has loved often," answered Glaucus, "has loved never."
+
+"Art thou, then, soberly and earnestly in love? Hast thou that feeling
+which the poets describe--a feeling which makes us neglect our suppers,
+forswear the theatre, and write elegies? I should never have thought it.
+You dissemble well."
+
+"I am not far gone enough for that," returned Glaucus, smiling. "In
+fact, I am not in love; but I could be if there but be occasion to see
+the object."
+
+"Shall I guess the object? Is it not Diomed's daughter? She adores you,
+and does not affect to conceal it. She is both handsome and rich. She
+will bind the door-post of her husband with golden fillets."
+
+"No, I do not desire to sell myself. Diomed's daughter is handsome, I
+grant; and at one time, had she not been the grandchild of a freedman, I
+might have--yet, no--she carries all her beauty in her face; her manners
+are not maiden-like, and her mind knows no culture save that of
+pleasure."
+
+"You are ungrateful. Tell me, then, who is the fortunate virgin."
+
+"You shall hear, my Clodius. Several months ago I was sojourning at
+Naples, a city utterly to my own heart. One day I entered the temple of
+Minerva to offer up my prayers, not for myself more than for the city on
+which Pallas smiles no longer. The temple was empty and deserted. The
+recollections of Athens crowded fast and meltingly upon me. Imagining
+myself still alone, my prayer gushed from my heart to my lips, and I
+wept as I prayed. I was startled in the midst of my devotions, however,
+by a deep sigh. I turned suddenly, and just behind me was a female. She
+had raised her veil also in prayer, and when our eyes met, methought a
+celestial ray shot from those dark and smiling orbs at once into my
+soul.
+
+"Never, my Clodius, have I seen mortal face more exquisitely moulded. A
+certain melancholy softened, and yet elevated, its expression. Tears
+were rolling down her eyes. I guessed at once that she was of Athenian
+lineage. I spoke to her, though with a faltering voice. 'Art thou not,
+too, Athenian?' said I. At the sound of my voice she blushed, and half
+drew her veil across her face. 'My forefathers' ashes,' she said,
+'repose by the waters of Ilyssus; my birth is of Naples; but my heart,
+as my lineage, is Athenian.'
+
+"'Let us, then,' said I, 'make our offerings together!' And as the
+priest now appeared, we stood side by side, and so followed the
+ceremonial prayer. Together we touched the knees of the goddess;
+together we laid our olive garlands on the altar. Silently we left the
+temple, and I was about to ask her where she dwelt, when a youth, whose
+features resembled hers, took her by the hand. She turned and bade me
+farewell, the crowd parted us, and I saw her no more; nor when I
+returned to Naples after a brief absence at Athens, was I able to
+discover any clue to my lost country-woman. So, hoping to lose in gaiety
+all remembrance of that beautiful apparition, I hastened to plunge
+myself amidst the luxuries of Pompeii. This is all my history, I do not
+love but I remember and regret."
+
+So said Glaucus. But that very night, in a house at Pompeii, whither she
+had come from Naples during his absence, Glaucus came face to face once
+more with the beautiful lone, the object of his dreams. And no longer
+was he able to say, "I do not love."
+
+
+_II.--Arbaces, the Egyptian_
+
+
+Amongst the wealthy dwellers in Pompeii was one who lived apart, and was
+at once an object of suspicion and fear. The riches of this man, who was
+known as Arbaces, the Egyptian, enabled him to gratify to the utmost the
+passions which governed him--the passion of sensual indulgence and the
+blind force which impelled him to seek relief from physical satiety in
+the pursuit of that occult knowledge which he regarded as the heritage
+of his race.
+
+In Naples, Arbaces had known the parents of Ione and her brother
+Apaecides, and it was under his guardianship that they had come to
+Pompeii. The confidence which, before their death, their parents had
+reposed in the Egyptian was in turn fully given to him by lone and her
+brother. For Apaecides the Egyptian felt nothing but contempt; the youth
+was to him but an instrument that might be used by him in bending lone
+to his will. But the mind of Ione, no less than the beauty of her form,
+appealed to Arbaces. With her by his side, his willing slave, he saw no
+limit to the heights his ambition might soar to. He sought primarily to
+impress her with his store of unfamiliar knowledge. She, in turn,
+admired him for his learning, and felt grateful to him for his
+guardianship. Apaecides, docile and mild, with a soul peculiarly alive
+to religious fervour, Arbaces placed amongst the priests of Isis, and
+under the special care of a creature of his own, named Calenus. It
+pleased his purpose best, where Ione was concerned, to leave her awhile
+surrounded by the vain youth of Pompeii, so that he might gain by
+comparison.
+
+It fell not within Arbaces' plans to show himself too often to his ward.
+Consequently it was some time before he became aware of the warmth of
+the friendship that was growing up between Ione and the handsome Greek.
+He knew not of their evening excursions on the placid sea, of their
+nightly meetings at Ione's dwelling, till these had become regular
+happenings in their daily lives. But one day he surprised them together,
+and his eyes were suddenly opened. No sooner had the Greek departed than
+the Egyptian sought to poison Ione's mind against him by exaggerating
+his love of pleasure and by unscrupulously describing him as making
+light of Ione's love.
+
+Following up the advantage he gained by this appeal to her pride,
+Arbaces reminded Ione that she had never seen the interior of his home.
+It might, he said, amuse her. "Devote then," he went on, "to the austere
+friend of your youth one of these bright summer evenings, and let me
+boast that my gloomy mansion has been honoured with the presence of the
+admired Ione."
+
+Unconscious of the pollutions of the mansion, of the danger that awaited
+her, Ione readily assented to the proposal. But there was one who, by
+accident, had become aware of the nature of the spells cast by Arbaces
+upon his visitors, and who was to be the humble means of saving lone
+from his toils. This was the blind flower-girl Nydia.
+
+Of Thessalian extraction, and gentle nurture, Nydia had been stolen and
+sold into the slavery of an ex-gladiator named Burbo, a relative of the
+false priest Calenus. To save her from the cruelty of Burbo, Glaucus had
+purchased her, and, in return, the blind girl had become devoted to
+him--so devoted that her gentle heart was torn when he made it plain to
+her that his action was prompted by mere natural kindness of heart, and
+that it was his purpose to send her to Ione.
+
+But she cast all feeling of jealousy aside when she heard of Ione's
+visit to the Egyptian, and quickly apprised Glaucus and Apaecides of the
+fair Athenian's peril.
+
+On her arrival, Arbaces greeted Ione with deep respect. But he found it
+harder than he thought to resist the charm of her presence in his house,
+and in a moment of forgetful passion he declared his love for her.
+"Arbaces," he declared, "shall have no ambition save the pride of
+obeying thee--Ione. Ione, do not reject my love!" And as he spoke he
+knelt before her.
+
+Alone, and in the grip of this singular and powerful man, Ione was not
+yet terrified; the respect of his language, the softness of his voice,
+reassured her; and in her own purity she felt protection. But she was
+confused, astonished. It was some moments before she could recover the
+power of reply.
+
+"Rise, Arbaces," said she at length. "Rise! and if thou art serious, if
+thy language be in earnest----"
+
+"_If_----" said he tenderly.
+
+"Well, then, listen. You have been my guardian, my friend, my monitor.
+For this new character I was not prepared. Think not," she added
+quickly, as she saw his dark eyes glitter with the fierceness of his
+passion, "think not that I scorn; that I am untouched; that I am not
+honoured by this homage; but, say, canst thou hear me calmly?"
+
+"Ay, though the words were lightning and could blast me!"
+
+"_I love another_!" said Ione blushingly, but in a firm voice.
+
+"By the gods," shouted Arbaces, rising to his fullest height, "dare not
+tell me that! Dare not mock me! It is impossible! Whom hast thou seen?
+Whom known? Oh, Ione, it is thy woman's invention, thy woman's art that
+speaks; thou wouldst gain time. I have surprised--I have terrified
+thee."
+
+"Alas!" began Ione; and then, appalled before his sudden and unlooked
+for violence, she burst into tears.
+
+Arbaces came nearer to her, his breath glowed fiercely on her cheek. He
+wound his arms round her; she sprang from his embrace. In the struggle a
+tablet fell from her bosom. Arbaces perceived, and seized it; it was a
+letter she had received that morning from Glaucus.
+
+Ione sank upon the couch, half-dead with terror.
+
+Rapidly the eyes of Arbaces ran over the writing. He read it to the end,
+and then, as the letter fell from his hand, he said, in a voice of
+deceitful calmness, "Is the writer of this the man thou lovest?"
+
+Ione sobbed, but answered not.
+
+"Speak!" he demanded.
+
+"It is--it is!"
+
+"Then hear me," said Arbaces, sinking his voice into a whisper. "_Thou
+shalt go to thy tomb rather than to his arms_."
+
+At this instant a curtain was rudely torn aside, and Glaucus and
+Apsecides appeared. There was a severe struggle, which might have had a
+more sinister ending had not the marble head of a goddess, shaken from
+its column, fallen upon Arbaces as he was about to stab the Greek, and
+struck the Egyptian senseless to the ground. As it was, Ione was saved,
+and she and her lover were then and for ever reconciled to one another.
+
+
+_III.--The Love Philtre_
+
+
+Clodius had not spoken without warrant when he had said that Julia, the
+daughter of the rich merchant Diomed, thought herself in love with
+Glaucus. But since Glaucus was denied to her, her thoughts were
+concentrated on revenge. In this mood she sought out Arbaces, presenting
+herself as one loving unrequitedly, and seeking in sorrow the aid of
+wisdom.
+
+"It is a love charm," admitted Julia, "that I would seek from thy skill.
+I know not if I love him who loves me not, but I know that I would see
+myself triumph over a rival. I would see him who has rejected me my
+suitor. I would see her whom he has preferred in her turn despised."
+
+Very quickly Arbaces discerned Julia's secret, and when he heard that
+Glaucus and Ione were shortly to be wedded, he gladly availed himself of
+this opportunity to rid himself of his hated rival. But he dealt not in
+love potions, he said; he would, however, take Diomed's daughter to one
+who did--the witch who dwelt on the slopes of Vesuvius.
+
+He kept his promise; but the entire philtre given to Julia was one which
+went direct to the brain, and the effects of which--for neither Arbaces
+nor his creature, the witch, wished to place themselves within the power
+of the law--were such as caused those who witnessed them to attribute
+them to some supernatural agency.
+
+But once again, though less happily than on the former occasion, Nydia
+was destined to be the means of thwarting the schemes of the Egyptian.
+The devotion of the blind flower-girl had deepened into love for her
+deliverer. She was jealous of Ione. Now, for Julia had taken her into
+confidence, and both believed in the love charm, she was confronted with
+another rival. By a simple ruse Nydia obtained the poisoned draught and
+in its place substituted a phial of simple water.
+
+At the close of a banquet given by Diomed, to which the Greek was
+invited, Julia duly administered that which she imagined to be the
+secret love potion. She was disappointed when she found Glaucus coldly
+replace the cup, and converse with her in the same unmoved tone as
+before.
+
+"But to-morrow," thought she, "to-morrow, alas for Glaucus!"
+
+Alas for him, indeed!
+
+When Glaucus arrived at his own house that evening, Nydia was waiting
+for him. She had, as usual, been tending the flowers and had lingered
+awhile to rest herself.
+
+"It has been warm," said Glaucus. "Wilt thou summon Davus? The wine I
+have drunk heats me, and I long for some cooling drink."
+
+Here at once, suddenly and unexpectedly, the very opportunity that Nydia
+awaited presented itself. She breathed quickly. "I will prepare for you
+myself," said she, "the summer draught that Ione loves--of honey and
+weak wine cooled in snow."
+
+"Thanks," said the unconscious Glaucus. "If Ione loves it, enough; it
+would be grateful were it poison."
+
+Nydia frowned, and then smiled. She withdrew for a few moments, and
+returned with the cup containing the beverage. Glaucus took it from her
+hand.
+
+What would not Nydia have given then to have seen the first dawn of the
+imagined love! Far different, as she stood then and there, were the
+thoughts and emotions of the blind girl from those of the vain Pompeian
+under a similar suspense!
+
+Glaucus had raised the cup to his lips. He had already drained about a
+fourth of its contents, when, suddenly glancing upon the face of Nydia,
+he was so forcibly struck by its alteration, by its intense, and
+painful, and strange expression, that he paused abruptly, and still
+holding the cup near his lips, exclaimed. "Why, Nydia--Nydia, art thou
+ill or in pain? What ails thee, my poor child?"
+
+As he spoke, he put down the cup--happily for him, unfinished--and rose
+from his seat to approach her, when a sudden pang shot coldly to his
+heart, and was followed by a wild, confused, dizzy sensation at the
+brain.
+
+The floor seemed to glide from under him, his feet seemed to move on
+air, a mighty and unearthly gladness rushed upon his spirit. He felt too
+buoyant for the earth; he longed for wings--nay, it seemed as if he
+possessed them. He burst involuntarily into a loud and thrilling laugh.
+He clapped his hands, he bounced aloft. Suddenly this perpetual
+transport passed, though only partially, away. He now felt his blood
+rushing loudly and rapidly through his veins.
+
+Then a kind of darkness fell over his eyes. Now a torrent of broken,
+incoherent, insane words gushed from his lips, and, to Nydia's horror,
+he passed the portico with a bound, and rushed down the starlit streets,
+striking fear into the hearts of all who saw him.
+
+
+_IV.--The Day of Ghastly Night_
+
+
+Anxious to learn if the drug had taken effect, Arbaces set out for
+Julia's house on the morrow. On his way he encountered Apaecides. Hot
+words passed between them, and stung by the scorn of the youth, he
+stabbed him into the heart with his stylus. At this moment Glaucus came
+along. Quick as thought the Egyptian struck the already half-senseless
+Greek to the ground, and steeping his stylus in the blood of Apaecides,
+and recovering his own, called loudly for help. The next moment he was
+accusing Glaucus of the crime.
+
+For a time fortune favoured the Egyptian. Glaucus, his strong frame
+still under the influence of the poison, was sentenced to encounter a
+lion in the amphitheatre, with no weapon beyond the incriminating
+stylus. Nydia, in her terror, confessed to the Egyptian the exchange of
+the love philtre. She he imprisoned in his own house. Calenus, who had
+witnessed the deed, sought Arbaces with the intention of using his
+knowledge to his own profit. He, by a stratagem, was incarcerated in one
+of the dungeons of the Egyptian's dwelling. The law gave Ione into the
+guardianship of Arbaces. But, for a third time, Nydia was the means of
+frustrating the plans of Arbaces.
+
+The blind girl, when vainly endeavouring to escape from the toils of the
+Egyptian, overheard, in his garden, the conversation of Arbaces and
+Calenus; and she heard the cries of Calenus from behind the door of the
+chamber in which he was imprisoned. She herself was caught again by
+Arbaces' servant, but she contrived to bribe her keeper to take a
+message to Glaucus's friend, Sallust; and he, taking his servants to
+Arbaces' house released the two captives, and reached the arena with
+them, to accuse Arbaces before the multitude at the very moment when the
+lion was being goaded to attack the Greek, and Arbaces' victory seemed
+within his grasp.
+
+Even now the nerve of the Egyptian did not desert him. He met the charge
+with his accustomed coolness. But the frenzied accusation of the priest
+of Isis turned the huge assembly against him. With loud cries they rose
+from their seats and poured down toward the Egyptian.
+
+Lifting his eyes at this terrible moment, Arbaces beheld a strange and
+awful apparition. He beheld, and his craft restored his courage. He
+stretched his hand on high; over his lofty brow and royal features there
+came an expression of unutterable solemnity and command.
+
+"Behold," he shouted, with a voice of thunder, which stilled the roar of
+the crowd, "behold how the gods protect the guiltless! The fires of the
+avenging Orcus burst forth against the false witness of my accusers!"
+
+The eyes of the crowd followed the gesture of the Egyptian, and beheld,
+with ineffable dismay, a vast vapour shooting from the summit of
+Vesuvius in the form of a gigantic pine-tree; the trunk blackness, the
+branches fire--a fire that shifted and wavered in its hues with every
+moment, now fiercely luminous, now of a dull and dying red, that again
+blazed terrifically forth with intolerable glare. The earth shook. The
+walls of the theatre trembled. In the distance was heard the crash of
+falling roofs. The cloud seemed to roll towards the assembly, casting
+forth from its bosom showers of ashes mixed with fragments of burning
+stone. Then the burning mountain cast up columns of boiling water.
+
+In the ghastly night thus rushing upon the realm of noon, all thought of
+justice and of Arbaces left the minds of the terrified people. There
+ensued a mad flight for the sea. Through the darkness Nydia guided
+Glaucus, now partly recovered from the effects of the poisoned draught,
+and Ione to the shore. Her blindness rendered the scene familiar to her
+alone.
+
+While Arbaces perished with the majority, these three eventually gained
+the sea, and joined a group, who, bolder than the rest, resolved to
+hazard any peril rather than continue on the stricken land.
+
+Utterly exhausted, Ione slept on the breast of Glaucus, and Nydia lay at
+his feet. Meanwhile, showers of dust and ashes fell into the waves,
+scattered their snows over the deck of the vessel they had boarded, and,
+borne by the winds, descended upon the remotest climes, startling even
+the swarthy African, and whirling along the antique soil of Syria and of
+Egypt.
+
+Meekly, softly, beautifully dawned at last the light over the trembling
+deep! The winds were sinking into rest, the foam died from the azure of
+that delicious sea. Around the east thin mists caught gradually the rosy
+hues that heralded the morning. Light was about to resume her reign.
+There was no shout from the mariners at the dawning light--it had come
+too gradually, and they were too wearied for such sudden bursts of
+joy--but there was a low, deep murmur of thankfulness amidst those
+watchers of the long night. They looked at each other, and smiled; they
+took heart. They felt once more that there was a world around and a God
+above them!
+
+In the silence of the general sleep Nydia had risen gently. Bending over
+the face of Glaucus, she softly kissed him. She felt for his hand; it
+was locked in that of Ione. She sighed deeply, and her face darkened.
+Again she kissed his brow, and with her hair wiped from it the damps of
+night.
+
+"May the gods bless you, Athenian!" she murmured "May you be happy with
+your beloved one! May you sometimes remember Nydia! Alas! she is of no
+further use on earth."
+
+With these words she turned away. A sailor, half-dozing on the deck,
+heard a slight splash on the waters. Drowsily he looked up, and behind,
+as the vessel bounded merrily on, he fancied he saw something white
+above the waves; but it vanished in an instant. He turned round again
+and dreamed of his home and children.
+
+When the lovers awoke, their first thought was of each other, their next
+of Nydia. Every crevice of the vessel was searched--there was no trace
+of her! Mysterious from first to last, the blind Thessalian had vanished
+from the living world! They guessed her fate in silence, and Glaucus and
+Ione, while they drew nearer to each other, feeling each other the world
+itself, forgot their deliverance, and wept as for a departed sister.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+
+
+The Last of the Barons
+
+
+     A romance of York and Lancaster's "long wars," "The Last of
+     the Barons" was published in 1843, shortly before the death of
+     Bulwer's mother, when, on inheriting the Knebworth estates, he
+     assumed the surname of Lytton. The story is an admirably
+     chosen historical subject, and in many respects is worked out
+     with even more than Lytton's usual power and effect. Incident
+     is crowded upon incident; revolutions, rebellions,
+     dethronements follow one another with amazing rapidity--all
+     duly authenticated and elaborated by powerful dialogue. It is
+     thronged with historical material, sufficient, according to
+     one critic, to make at least three novels. The period dealt
+     with, 1467-1471, witnessed the rise of the trading class and
+     the beginning of religious freedom in England. Lytton leans to
+     the Lancastrian cause, with which the fortunes of one of his
+     ancestors were identified, and his view of Warwick is more
+     favourable to the redoubtable "king-maker" than that of the
+     historians.
+
+
+_I.--Warwick's Mission to France_
+
+
+Lacking sympathy with the monastic virtues of the deposed Henry VI., and
+happy in the exile of Margaret of Anjou, the citizens of London had
+taken kindly to the regime of Edward IV. In 1467 Edward still owed to
+Warwick the support of the more powerful barons, as well as the favour
+of that portion of the rural population which was more or less dependent
+upon them. But he encouraged, to his own financial advantage, the
+enterprises of the burgesses, and his marriage with Elizabeth Woodville
+and his favours to her kinsfolk indicated his purpose to reign in fact
+as well as in name. The barons were restless, but the rising
+middle-class, jealous of the old power of the nobles, viewed with
+misgiving the projected marriage, at Warwick's suggestion, of the king's
+sister Margaret and the brother of Louis XI. of France.
+
+This was the position of affairs when young Marmaduke Nevile came to
+London to enter the service of his relative the Earl of Warwick; and
+some points of it were explained to the young man by the earl himself
+when he had introduced the youth to his daughters, Isabel and Anne.
+
+"God hath given me no son," he said. "Isabel of Warwick had been a
+mate for William the Norman; and my grandson, if heir to his grandsire's
+soul, should have ruled from the throne of England over the realms of
+Charlemagne! But it hath pleased Him Whom the Christian knight alone
+bows to without shame, to order otherwise. So be it. I forgot my just
+pretensions--forgot my blood--and counselled the king to strengthen his
+throne by an alliance with Louis XI. He rejected the Princess Bona of
+Savoy to marry widow Elizabeth Grey. I sorrowed for his sake, and
+forgave the slight to my counsels. At his prayer I followed the train of
+the queen, and hushed the proud hearts of the barons to obeisance. But
+since then this Dame Woodville, whom I queened, if her husband mismated,
+must dispute this royaulme with mine and me! A Neville, nowadays, must
+vail his plume to a Woodville! And not the great barons whom it will
+suit Edward's policy to win from the Lancastrians, not the Exeters and
+the Somersets, but the craven varlets, and lackeys, and dross of the
+camp--false alike to Henry and to Edward--are to be fondled into
+lordships and dandled into power. Young man, I am speaking hotly.
+Richard Neville never lies nor conceals; but I am speaking to a kinsman,
+am I not? Thou hearest--thou wilt not repeat?"
+
+"Sooner would I pluck forth my tongue by the roots!" was Marmaduke's
+reply.
+
+"Enough!" returned the earl, with a pleased smile. "When I come from
+France I will speak more to thee. Meanwhile, be courteous to all men,
+servile to none. Now to the king."
+
+Warwick sought his royal cousin at the Tower, where the court exhibited
+a laxity of morals and a faculty for intrigue that were little to the
+stout earl's taste.
+
+It was with manifest reluctance that Edward addressed himself to the
+object of Warwick's visit.
+
+"Knowst thou not," said he, "that this French alliance, to which thou
+hast induced us, displeases sorely our good traders of London?"
+
+"_Mort Dieu_!" returned Warwick bluntly. "And what business have the
+flat-caps with the marriage of a king's sister? You have spoiled them,
+good my lord king. Henry IV. staled not his majesty to consultation with
+the mayor of his city. Henry V. gave the knighthood of the Bath to the
+heroes of Agincourt, not to the vendors of cloth and spices."
+
+"Thou forgettest, man," said the king carelessly, "the occasion of those
+honours--the eve before Elizabeth was crowned. As to the rest," pursued
+the king, earnestly and with dignity, "I and my house have owed much to
+London. Thou seest not, my poor Warwick, that these burgesses are
+growing up into power. And if the sword is the monarch's appeal for his
+right, he must look to contented and honest industry for his buckler in
+peace. This is policy, policy, Warwick; and Louis XI. will tell thee the
+same truths, harsh though they grate in a warrior's ear."
+
+The earl bowed his head.
+
+"If thou doubtest the wisdom of this alliance," he said, "it is not too
+late yet. Let me dismiss my following, and cross not the seas. Unless
+thy heart is with the marriage, the ties I would form are but threads
+and cobwebs."
+
+"Nay," returned Edward irresolutely. "In these great state matters thy
+wit is older than mine. But men do say the Count of Charolois is a
+mighty lord, and the alliance with Burgundy will be more profitable to
+staple and mart."
+
+"Then, in God's name so conclude it!" said the earl hastily. "Give thy
+sister to the heir of Burgundy, and forgive me if I depart to the castle
+of Middleham. Yet think well. Henry of Windsor is thy prisoner, but his
+cause lives in Margaret and his son. There is but one power in Europe
+that can threaten thee with aid to the Lancastrians. That power is
+France. Make Louis thy friend and ally, and thou givest peace to thy
+life and thy lineage. Make Louis thy foe, and count on plots and
+stratagems and treason. Edward, my loved, my honoured liege, forgive
+Richard Nevile for his bluntness, and let not his faults stand in bar of
+his counsels."
+
+"You are right, as you are ever, safeguard of England and pillar of my
+state," said the king frankly; and pressing Warwick's arm, he added, "go
+to France, and settle all as thou wilt."
+
+When Warwick had departed, Edward's eye followed him, musingly. The
+frank expression of his face vanished, and with the deep breath of a man
+who is throwing a weight from his heart, he muttered, "He loves me--yes;
+but will suffer no one else to love me! This must end some day. I am
+weary of the bondage."
+
+
+_II.--A Dishonoured Embassy_
+
+
+One morning, some time after Warwick's departure for France, the Lord
+Hastings was summoned to the king's presence. There was news from
+France, in a letter to Lord Rivers, from a gentleman in Warwick's train.
+The letter was dated from Rouen, and gave a glowing account of the
+honours accorded to the earl by Louis XI. Edward directed Hastings'
+attention to a passage in which the writer suggested that there were
+those who thought that so much intercourse between an English ambassador
+and the kinsman of Margaret of Anjou boded small profit to the English
+king.
+
+"Read and judge, Hastings," said the king.
+
+"I observe," said Hastings, "that this letter is addressed to my Lord
+Rivers. Can he avouch the fidelity of his correspondent?"
+
+"Surely, yes," answered Rivers. "It is a gentleman of my own blood."
+
+"Were he not so accredited," returned Hastings, "I should question the
+truth of a man who can thus consent to play the spy upon his lord and
+superior."
+
+"The public weal justifies all things," said Lord Worcester, who, with
+Lord Rivers, viewed with jealous scorn the power of the Earl of Warwick.
+
+"And what is to become of my merchant-ships," said the king, "if
+Burgundy take umbrage and close its ports?"
+
+Hastings had no cause to take up the quarrel on Warwick's behalf. The
+proud earl had stepped in to prevent his marriage with his sister. But
+Hastings, if a foe, could be a noble one.
+
+"Beau sire," said he, "thou knowest how little cause I have to love the
+Earl of Warwick. But in this council I must be all and only the king's
+servant. I say first, then, that Warwick's faith to the House of York is
+too well proven to become suspected because of the courtesies of King
+Louis. Moreover, we may be sure that Warwick cannot be false if he
+achieve the object of his embassy and detach Louis from the side of
+Margaret and Lancaster by close alliance with Edward and York. Secondly,
+sire, with regard to that alliance, which it seems you would repent, I
+hold now, as I have held ever, that it is a master-stroke in policy, and
+the earl in this proves his sharp brain worthy his strong arm; for, as
+his highness the Duke of Gloucester has discovered that Margaret of
+Anjou has been of late in London, and that treasonable designs were
+meditated, though now frustrated, so we may ask why the friends of
+Lancaster really stood aloof--why all conspiracy was, and is, in vain?
+Because the gold and subsidies of Louis are not forthcoming, because the
+Lancastrians see that if once Lord Warwick wins France from the Red Rose
+nothing short of such a miracle as their gaining Warwick instead can
+give a hope to their treason."
+
+"Your pardon, my Lord Hastings," said Lord Rivers, "there is another
+letter I have not yet laid before the king." He drew forth a scroll and
+read from it as follows.
+
+"Yesterday the earl feasted the king, and as, in discharge of mine
+office, I carved for my lord, I heard King Louis say, '_Pasque Dieu_, my
+Lord Warwick, our couriers bring us word that Count de Charolais
+declares he shall yet wed the Lady Margaret, and that he laughs at your
+embassage. What if our brother King Edward fall back from the treaty?'
+'He durst not,' said the earl."
+
+"'Durst not!'" exclaimed Edward, starting to his feet, and striking the
+table with his clenched hand. "'Durst not!' Hastings, heard you that?"
+
+Hastings bowed his head in assent.
+
+"Is that all, Lord Rivers?"
+
+"All! And, methinks, enough!"
+
+"Enough, by my halidame!" said Edward, laughing bitterly. "He shall see
+what a king dares when a subject threatens."
+
+Lord Rivers had not read the whole of the letter. The sentence read: "He
+durst not, because what a noble heart dares least is to belie the
+plighted word, and what the kind heart shuns most is to wrong the
+confiding friend."
+
+When Warwick returned, with the object of his mission achieved, it was
+to find Margaret of England the betrothed of the Count de Charolais, and
+his embassy dishonoured. He retired in anger and grief to his castle of
+Middleham, and though the king declared that "Edward IV. reigns alone,"
+most of the great barons forsook him to rally round their leader in his
+retirement.
+
+
+_III.--The Scholar and his Daughter_
+
+
+Sybill Warner had been at court in the train of Margaret of Anjou. Her
+father, Adam Warner, was a poor scholar, with his heart set upon the
+completion of an invention which should inaugurate the age of steam.
+They lived together in an old house, with but one aged serving-woman.
+Even necessaries were sacrificed that the model of the invention might
+be fed. Then one day there came to Adam Warner an old schoolfellow,
+Robert Hilyard, who had thrown in his lot with the Lancastrians, and
+become an agent of the vengeful Margaret. Hilyard told so moving a tale
+of his wrongs at the hands of Edward that the old man consented to aid
+him in a scheme for communicating with the imprisoned Henry.
+
+Henry was still permitted to see visitors, and Hilyard's proposal was
+that Warner should seek permission to exhibit his model, in the
+mechanism of which were to be hidden certain treasonable papers for
+Henry to sign.
+
+As we have seen, from Hastings' remark to the king, the plot failed.
+Hilyard escaped, to stir up the peasantry, who knew him as Robin of
+Redesdale. Warner's fate was inclusion in the number of astrologers and
+alchemists retained by the Duchess of Bedford, who also gave a place
+amongst her maidens to Sybill, to whom Hastings had proffered his
+devoted attachment, though he was already bound by ties of policy and
+early love to Margaret de Bonville.
+
+Meanwhile, it became the interest of the king's brothers to act as
+mediators between Edward and his powerful subject. The Duke of Clarence
+was anxious to wed the proud earl's equally proud elder daughter Isabel;
+the hand of the gentle Anne was sought more secretly by Richard of
+Gloucester. At last the peacemakers effected their object.
+
+But the peace was only partial, the final rupture not far off. The king
+restored to Warwick the governorship of Calais--outwardly as a token of
+honour; really as a means of ridding himself of one whose presence came
+between the sun and his sovereignty. Moreover, he forbade the marriage
+between Clarence and Isabel, to the mortification of his brother, the
+bitter disappointment of Isabel herself, and the chagrin of the earl.
+
+However, Edward had once more to experience indebtedness at the hands of
+the man whom he treated so badly, but whose devotion to him it seemed
+that nothing could destroy. There arose the Popular Rebellion, and
+Warwick only arrived at Olney, where the king was sorely pressed, in
+time to save him and to secure, on specific terms, a treaty of peace.
+
+Again Edward's relief was but momentary. Proceeding to Middleham as
+Warwick's guest, when he beheld the extent of the earl's retinue his
+jealous passions were roused more than ever before; and he formed a plan
+not only for attaching to himself the allegiance of the barons, but of
+presenting the earl to the peasants in the light of one who had betrayed
+them.
+
+Smitten, too, by the charms of the Lady Anne, he meditated a still more
+unworthy scheme. Dismissing the unsuspecting Warwick to the double task
+of settling with the rebels and calling upon his followers to range
+themselves under the royal banner, he commanded Anne's attendance at
+court.
+
+Events leading to the final breach between king and king-maker followed
+rapidly. One night the Lady Anne fled in terror from the Tower--fled
+from the dishonouring addresses of her sovereign, now grown gross in his
+cups, however brave in battle. The news reached Warwick too late for him
+to countermand the messages he had sent to his friends on the king's
+behalf. And, so rapid were Edward's movements that Warwick, his eyes at
+length opened to Edward's true character, was compelled to flee to the
+court of King Louis at Amboise, there to plan his revenge, hampered in
+doing so by his daughter Isabel's devotion to Clarence, who followed him
+to France, and by the fact that, in regard to his own honour, he could
+communicate to none save his own kin the secret cause of his open
+disaffection.
+
+
+_IV.--The Return of the King-Maker_
+
+
+There was no love between Warwick and Margaret of Anjou. But his one
+means of exacting penance from Edward was alliance with the unlucky
+cause of Lancaster. And this alliance was brought about by the suave
+diplomacy of Louis, and the discovery of the long-existing attachment
+between the Lady Anne and her old play-fellow, Edward, the only son of
+Henry and Margaret, and the hope of the Red Rose.
+
+Coincidently with the marriage of Clarence and Isabel on French soil,
+the young Edward and Isabel's sister were betrothed. Richard of
+Gloucester was thus definitely estranged from Warwick's cause. And
+secret agencies were set afoot to undermine the loyalty of the weak
+Clarence to the cause which he had espoused.
+
+At first, however, Warwick's plans prospered. He returned to England,
+forced Edward to fly the country in his turn, and restored Henry VI. to
+the throne. So far, Clarence and Isabel accompanied him; while Margaret
+and her son, with Lady Warwick and the Lady Anne, remained at Amboise.
+
+Then the very elements seemed to war against the Lancastrians. The
+restoration came about in October 1470. Margaret was due in London in
+November, but for nearly six months the state of the Channel was such
+that she was unable to cross it.
+
+Warwick sickened of his self-imposed task. The whole burden of
+government rested upon the shoulders of the great earl, great where
+deeds of valour were to be done, but weak in the niceties of
+administration.
+
+The nobles, no less than the people, had expected miracles. The
+king-maker, on his return, gave them but justice. Such was the earl's
+position when Edward, with a small following, landed at Ravenspur. A
+treacherous message, sent to Warwick's brother Montagu by Clarence,
+caused Montagu to allow the invader to march southwards unmolested. This
+had so great an effect on public feeling that when Edward reached the
+Midlands, he had not a mere handful of supporters at his back, but an
+army of large dimensions. Then the wavering Clarence went over to his
+brother, and it fell to the lot of the earl sorrowfully to dispatch
+Isabel to the camp of his enemy.
+
+But Warwick's cup of bitterness was not yet full. The Tower was
+surrendered to Edward's friends, and on the following day Edward himself
+entered the capital, to be received by the traders with tumultuous
+cheers.
+
+Raw, cold, and dismal dawned the morning of the fateful 14th of March,
+1471, when Margaret at last reached English soil, and Edward's forces
+met those of Warwick on the memorable field of Barnet. All was not yet
+lost to the cause of the Red Rose. But a fog settled down over the land
+to complete, as it were, the disadvantages caused by the prolonged
+storms at sea. At a critical period of the battle the silver stars on
+the banners of one of the Lancastrians, the Earl of Oxford, being
+mistaken for the silver suns of Edward's cognisance, two important
+sections of Warwick's army fell upon one another. Friend was
+slaughtering friend ere the error was detected. While all was yet in
+doubt, confusion, and dismay, rushed full into the centre Edward
+himself, with his knights and riders; and his tossing banners added to
+the general incertitude and panic.
+
+Warwick and his brother gained the shelter of a neighbouring wood, where
+a trusty band of the earl's northern archers had been stationed. Here
+they made their last stand, Warwick destroying his charger to signify to
+his men that to them and to them alone he entrusted his fortunes and his
+life.
+
+A breach was made in the defence, and Warwick and his brother fell side
+by side, choosing death before surrender. And by them fell Hilyard,
+shattered by a bombard. Young Marmaduke Nevile was among the few notable
+survivors.
+
+The cries of "Victory!" reached a little band of watchers gathered in
+the churchyard on the hill of Hadley. Here Henry the Peaceful had been
+conveyed. And here, also, were Adam Warner and his daughter. The
+soldiers, hearing from one of the Duchess of Bedford's creatures whose
+chicanery had been the object of his scorn, that Warner was a wizard,
+had desired that his services should be utilised. Till the issue was
+clear, he had been kept a prisoner. When it was beyond doubt, he was
+hanged. Sybill was found lying dead at her father's feet. Her heart was
+already broken, for the husband of Margaret de Bonville having died,
+Lord Hastings had been recalled to the side of his old love, his thought
+of marriage with Sybill being abandoned for ever.
+
+King Edward and his brothers went to render thanksgiving at St. Paul's;
+thence to Baynard's Castle to escort the queen and her children once
+more to the Tower.
+
+At the sight of the victorious king, of the lovely queen, and, above
+all, of the young male heir, the crowd burst forth with a hearty cry:
+"Long live the king and the king's son!"
+
+Mechanically, Elizabeth turned her moistened eyes from Edward to
+Edward's brother, and suddenly clasped her infant closer to her bosom
+when she caught the glittering and fatal eye of Richard, Duke of
+Gloucester--Warwick's grim avenger in the future--fixed upon that
+harmless life, destined to interpose a feeble obstacle between the
+ambition of a ruthless intellect and the heritage of the English throne!
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+
+
+HENRY MACKENZIE
+
+
+The Man of Feeling
+
+
+     Henry Mackenzie, the son of an Edinburgh physician, was born
+     in that city on August 26, 1745. He was educated for the law,
+     and at the age of twenty became attorney for the crown in
+     Scotland. It was about this time that he began to devote his
+     attention to literature. His first story, "The Man of
+     Feeling," was published anonymously in 1771, and such was its
+     popularity that its authorship was claimed in many quarters.
+     Considered as a novel, "The Man of Feeling" is frankly
+     sentimental. Its fragmentary form was doubtlessly suggested by
+     Sterne's "Sentimental Journey," and the adventures of the hero
+     himself are reminiscent of those of Moses in "The Vicar of
+     Wakefield." But of these two masterpieces Mackenzie's work
+     falls short: it has none of Sterne's humour, nor has it any of
+     Goldsmith's subtle characterisation. "The Man of Feeling" was
+     followed in 1773 by "The Man of the World," and later by a
+     number of miscellaneous articles and stories. Mackenzie died
+     on January 14, 1831.
+
+
+_I.--A Whimsical History_
+
+
+I was out shooting with the curate on a burning First of September, and
+we had stopped for a minute by an old hedge.
+
+Looking round, I discovered for the first time a venerable pile, to
+which the enclosure before us belonged. An air of melancholy hung about
+it, and just at that instant I saw pass between the trees a young lady
+with a book in her hand. The curate sat him down on the grass and told
+me that was the daughter of a neighbouring gentleman of the name of
+Walton, whom he had seen walking there more than once.
+
+"Some time ago," he said, "one Harley lived there, a whimsical sort of
+man, I am told. The greatest part of his history is still in my
+possession. I once began to read it, but I soon grew weary of the task;
+for, besides that the hand is intolerably bad, I never could find the
+author in one strain for two chapters together. The way I came by it was
+this. Some time ago a grave, oddish kind of a man boarded at a farmer's
+in this parish. He left soon after I was made curate, and went nobody
+knows whither; and in his room was found a bundle of papers, which was
+brought to me by his landlord."
+
+"I should be glad to see this medley," said I.
+
+"You shall see it now," answered the curate, "for I always take it along
+with me a-shooting. 'Tis excellent wadding."
+
+When I returned to town I had leisure to peruse the acquisition I had
+made, and found it a little bundle of episodes, put together without
+art, yet with something of nature.
+
+The curate must answer for the omissions.
+
+
+_II.--The Man of Feeling in Love_
+
+
+Harley lost his father, the last surviving of his parents, when he was a
+boy. His education, therefore, had been but indifferently attended to;
+and after being taken from a country school, the young gentleman was
+suffered to be his own master in the subsequent branches of literature,
+with some assistance from the pastor of the parish in languages and
+philosophy, and from the exciseman in arithmetic and book-keeping.
+
+There were two ways of increasing his fortune. One of these was the
+prospect of succeeding to an old lady, a distant relation, who was known
+to be possessed of a very large sum in the stocks. But the young man was
+so untoward in his disposition, and accommodated himself so ill to her
+humour, that she died and did not leave him a farthing.
+
+The other method pointed out to him was an endeavour to get a lease of
+some crown lands which lay contiguous to his little paternal estate. As
+the crown did not draw so much rent as Harley could afford to give, with
+very considerable profit to himself, it was imagined this lease might be
+easily procured. However, this needed some interest with the great,
+which neither Harley nor his father ever possessed.
+
+His neighbour, Mr. Walton, having heard of this affair, generously
+offered his assistance to accomplish it, and said he would furnish him
+with a letter of introduction to a baronet of his acquaintance who had a
+great deal to say with the first lord of the treasury.
+
+Harley, though he had no great relish for the attempt, could not resist
+the torrent of motives that assaulted him, and a day was fixed for his
+departure.
+
+The day before he set out he went to take leave of Mr. Walton--there was
+another person of the family to whom also the visit was intended. For
+Mr. Walton had a daughter; and such a daughter!
+
+As her father had some years retired to the country, Harley had frequent
+opportunities of seeing her. He looked on her for some time merely with
+that respect and admiration which her appearance seemed to demand; he
+heard her sentiments with peculiar attention, but seldom declared his
+opinions on the subject. It would be trite to observe the easy gradation
+from esteem to love; in the bosom of Harley there scarce needed a
+transition.
+
+Harley's first effort to interview the baronet met with no success, but
+he resolved to make another attempt, fortified with higher notions of
+his own dignity, and with less apprehensions of repulse. By the time he
+had reached Grosvenor Square and was walking along the pavement which
+led to the baronet's he had brought his reasoning to the point that by
+every rule of logic his conclusions should have led him to a thorough
+indifference in approaching a fellow-mortal, whether that fellow-mortal
+was possessed of six or six thousand pounds a year. Nevertheless, it is
+certain that when he approached the great man's door he felt his heart
+agitated by an unusual pulsation.
+
+He observed a young gentleman coming out, dressed in a white frock and a
+red laced waistcoat; who, as he passed, very politely made him a bow,
+which Harley returned, though he could not remember ever having seen him
+before. The stranger asked Harley civilly if he was going to wait on his
+friend the baronet. "For I was just calling," said he, "and am sorry to
+find that he is gone some days into the country."
+
+Harley thanked him for his information, and turned from the door, when
+the other observed that it would be proper to leave his name, and very
+obligingly knocked for that purpose.
+
+"Here is a gentleman, Tom, who meant to have waited on your master."
+
+"Your name, if you please, sir?"
+
+"Harley."
+
+"You'll remember, Tom, Harley."
+
+The door was shut.
+
+"Since we are here," said the stranger, "we shall not lose our walk if
+we add a little to it by a turn or two in Hyde Park."
+
+The conversation as they walked was brilliant on the side of his
+companion.
+
+When they had finished their walk and were returning by the corner of
+the park they observed a board hung out of a window signifying, "An
+excellent ordinary on Saturdays and Sundays." It happened to be
+Saturday, and the table was covered for the purpose.
+
+"What if we should go in and dine, sir?" said the young gentleman.
+Harley made no objection, and the stranger showed him the way into the
+parlour.
+
+Over against the fire-place was seated a man of a grave aspect, who wore
+a pretty large wig, which had once been white, but was now of a brownish
+yellow; his coat was a modest coloured drab; and two jack-boots
+concealed in part the well-mended knees of an old pair of buckskin
+breeches. Next him sat another man, with a tankard in his hand and a
+quid of tobacco in his cheek, whose dress was something smarter.
+
+The door was soon opened for the admission of dinner. "I don't know how
+it is with you, gentlemen," said Harley's new acquaintance, "but I am
+afraid I shall not be able to get down a morsel at this horrid
+mechanical hour of dining." He sat down, however, and did not show any
+want of appetite by his eating. He took upon him the carving of the
+meat, and criticised the goodness of the pudding, and when the
+tablecloth was removed proposed calling for some punch, which was
+readily agreed to.
+
+While the punch lasted the conversation was wholly engrossed by this
+young gentleman, who told a great many "immensely comical stories" and
+"confounded smart things," as he termed them. At last the man in the
+jack-boots, who turned out to be a grazier, pulling out a watch of very
+unusual size, said that he had an appointment. And the young gentleman
+discovered that he was already late for an appointment.
+
+When the grazier and he were gone, Harley turned to the remaining
+personage, and asked him if he knew that young gentleman. "A gentleman!"
+said he. "I knew him, some years ago, in the quality of a footman. But
+some of the great folks to whom he has been serviceable had him made a
+ganger. And he has the assurance to pretend an acquaintance with men of
+quality. The impudent dog! With a few shillings in his pocket, he will
+talk three times as much as my friend Mundy, the grazier there, who is
+worth nine thousand if he's worth a farthing. But I know the rascal, and
+despise him as he deserves!"
+
+Harley began to despise him, too, but he corrected himself by reflecting
+that he was perhaps as well entertained, and instructed, too, by this
+same ganger, as he should have been by such a man of fashion as he had
+thought proper to personate.
+
+
+_III.--Harley's Success with the Baronet_
+
+
+The card he received was in the politest style in which disappointment
+could be communicated. The baronet "was under a necessity of giving up
+his application for Mr. Harley, as he was informed that the lease was
+engaged for a gentleman who had long served his majesty in another
+capacity, and whose merit had entitled him to the first lucrative thing
+that should be vacant." Even Harley could not murmur at such a disposal.
+"Perhaps," said he to himself, "some war-worn officer, who had been
+neglected from reasons which merited the highest advancement; whose
+honour could not stoop to solicit the preferment he deserved; perhaps,
+with a family taught the principles of delicacy without the means of
+supporting it; a wife and children--gracious heaven!--whom my wishes
+would have deprived of bread--!"
+
+He was interrupted in his reverie by someone tapping him on the
+shoulder, and on turning round, he discovered it to be the very man who
+had recently explained to him the condition of his gay companion.
+
+"I believe we are fellows in disappointment," said he. Harley started,
+and said that he was at a loss to understand him.
+
+"Pooh! you need not be so shy," answered the other; "everyone for
+himself is but fair, and I had much rather you had got it than the
+rascally ganger. I was making interest for it myself, and I think I had
+some title. I voted for this same baronet at the last election, and made
+some of my friends do so, too; though I would not have you imagine that
+I sold my vote. No, I scorn it--let me tell you I scorn it; but I
+thought as how this man was staunch and true, and I find he's but a
+double-faced fellow after all, and speechifies in the House for any side
+he hopes to make most by. A murrain on the smooth-tongued knave, and
+after all to get it for this rascal of a ganger."
+
+"The ganger! There must be some mistake," said Harley. "He writes me
+that it was engaged for one whose long services--"
+
+"Services!" interrupted the other; "some paltry convenience to the
+baronet. A plague on all rogues! I shall but just drink destruction to
+them to-night and leave London to-morrow by sunrise."
+
+"I shall leave it, too," said Harley; and so he accordingly did.
+
+In passing through Piccadilly, he had observed on the window of an inn a
+notification of the departure of a stage-coach for a place on his road
+homewards; on the way back to his lodgings, he took a seat in it.
+
+
+_IV.--He Meets an Old Acquaintance_
+
+
+When the stage-coach arrived at the place of its destination, Harley,
+who did things frequently in a way different from what other people call
+natural, set out immediately afoot, having first put a spare shirt in
+his pocket and given directions for the forwarding of his portmanteau.
+It was a method of travelling which he was accustomed to take.
+
+On the road, about four miles from his destination, Harley overtook an
+old man, who from his dress had been a soldier, and walked with him.
+
+"Sir," said the stranger, looking earnestly at him, "is not your name
+Harley? You may well have forgotten my face, 'tis a long time since you
+saw it; but possibly you may remember something of old Edwards? When you
+were at school in the neighbourhood, you remember me at South Hill?"
+
+"Edwards!" cried Harley, "O, heavens! let me clasp those knees on which
+I have sat so often. Edwards! I shall never forget that fireside, round
+which I have been so happy! But where have you been? Where is Jack?
+Where is your daughter?"
+
+"'Tis a long tale," replied Edwards, "but I will try to tell it you as
+we walk."
+
+Edwards had been a tenant farmer where his father, grandfather, and
+great-grandfather had lived before him. The rapacity of a land steward,
+heavy agricultural losses, and finally the arrival of a press-gang had
+reduced him to misery. By paying a certain sum of money he had been
+accepted by the press-gang instead of his son, and now old Edwards was
+returning home invalided from the army.
+
+When they had arrived within a little way of the village they journeyed
+to, Harley stopped short and looked steadfastly on the mouldering walls
+of a ruined house that stood by the roadside.
+
+"What do I see?" he cried. "Silent, unroofed, and desolate! That was the
+very school where I was boarded when you were at South Hill; 'tis but a
+twelve-month since I saw it standing and its benches filled with
+cherubs. That opposite side of the road was the green on which they
+sported; see, it is now ploughed up!"
+
+Just then a woman passed them on the road, who, in reply to Harley, told
+them the squire had pulled the school-house down because it stood in the
+way of his prospects.
+
+"If you want anything with the school-mistress, sir," said the woman. "I
+can show you the way to her house."
+
+They followed her to the door of a snug habitation, where sat an elderly
+woman with a boy and a girl before her, each of whom held a supper of
+bread and milk in their hands.
+
+"They are poor orphans," the school-mistress said, when Harley addressed
+her, "put under my care by the parish, and more promising children I
+never saw. Their father, sir, was a farmer here in the neighbourhood,
+and a sober, industrious man he was; but nobody can help misfortunes.
+What with bad crops and bad debts, his affairs went to wreck, and both
+he and his wife died of broken hearts. And a sweet couple they were,
+sir. There was not a properer man to look on in the county than John
+Edwards, and so, indeed, were all the Edwardses of South Hill."
+
+"Edwards! South Hill!" said the old soldier, in a languid voice, and
+fell back in the arms of the astonished Harley.
+
+He soon recovered, and folding his orphan grandchildren in his arms,
+cried, "My poor Jack, art thou gone--"
+
+"My dear old man," said Harley, "Providence has sent you to relieve
+them. It will bless me if I can be the means of assisting you."
+
+"Yes, indeed, sir," answered the boy. "Father, when he was a-dying, bade
+God bless us, and prayed that if grandfather lived he might send him to
+support us. I have told sister," said he, "that she should not take it
+so to heart. She can knit already, and I shall soon be able to dig. We
+shall not starve, sister, indeed we shall not, nor shall grandfather
+neither."
+
+The little girl cried afresh. Harley kissed off her tears, and wept
+between every kiss.
+
+
+_V.--The Man of Feeling is Jealous_
+
+
+Shortly after Harley's return home his servant Peter came into his room
+one morning with a piece of news on his tongue.
+
+"The morning is main cold, sir," began Peter.
+
+"Is it?" said Harley.
+
+"Yes, sir. I have been as far as Tom Dowson's to fetch some barberries.
+There was a rare junketting at Tom's last night among Sir Harry Benson's
+servants. And I hear as how Sir Harry is going to be married to Miss
+Walton. Tom's wife told it me, and, to be sure, the servants told her;
+but, of course, it mayn't be true, for all that."
+
+"Have done with your idle information," said Harley. "Is my aunt come
+down into the parlour to breakfast?"
+
+"Yes, sir."
+
+"Tell her I'll be with her immediately."
+
+His aunt, too, had been informed of the intended match between Sir Harry
+Benson and Miss Walton, Harley learnt.
+
+"I have been thinking," said she, "that they are distant relations, for
+the great-grandfather of this Sir Harry, who was knight of the shire in
+the reign of Charles I., married a daughter of the Walton family."
+
+Harley answered drily that it might be so, but that he never troubled
+himself about those matters.
+
+"Indeed," said she, "you are to blame, nephew, for not knowing a little
+more of them; but nowadays it is money, not birth, that makes people
+respected--the more shame for the times."
+
+Left alone, Harley went out and sat down on a little seat in the garden.
+
+"Miss Walton married!" said he. "But what is that to me? May she be
+happy! Her virtues deserve it. I had romantic dreams. They are fled."
+
+That night the curate dined with him, though his visits, indeed, were
+more properly to the aunt than the nephew. He had hardly said grace
+after dinner when he said he was very well informed that Sir Harry
+Benson was just going to be married to Miss Walton. Harley spilt the
+wine he was carrying to his mouth; he had time, however, to recollect
+himself before the curate had finished the particulars of his
+intelligence, and, summing up all the heroism he was master of, filled a
+bumper, and drank to Miss Walton.
+
+"With all my heart," said the curate; "the bride that is to be!" Harley
+would have said "bride," too, but it stuck in his throat, and his
+confusion was manifest.
+
+
+_VI.--He Sees Miss Walton and is Happy_
+
+
+Miss Walton was not married to Sir Harry Benson, but Harley made no
+declaration of his own passion after that of the other had been
+unsuccessful. The state of his health appears to have been such as to
+forbid any thoughts of that kind. He had been seized with a very
+dangerous fever caught by attending old Edwards in one of an infectious
+kind. From this he had recovered but imperfectly, and though he had no
+formed complaint, his health was manifestly on the decline.
+
+It appears that some friend had at length pointed out to his aunt a
+cause from which this decline of health might be supposed to proceed, to
+wit, his hopeless love for Miss Walton--for, according to the
+conceptions of the world, the love of a man of Harley's modest fortune
+for the heiress of £4,000 a year is indeed desperate.
+
+Be that as it may, I was sitting with him one morning when the door
+opened and his aunt appeared, leading in Miss Walton. I could observe a
+transient glow upon his face as he rose from his seat. She begged him to
+resume his seat, and placed herself on the sofa beside him. I took my
+leave, and his aunt accompanied me to the door. Harley was left with
+Miss Walton alone. She inquired anxiously about his health.
+
+"I believe," said he, "from the accounts which my physicians unwillingly
+give me, that they have no great hopes of my recovery."
+
+She started as he spoke, and then endeavoured to flatter him into a
+belief that his apprehensions were groundless.
+
+"I do not wish to be deceived," said he. "To meet death as becomes a man
+is a privilege bestowed on few. I would endeavour to make it mine. Nor
+do I think that I can ever be better prepared for it than now." He
+paused some moments. "I am in such a state as calls for sincerity. Let
+that also excuse it. It is perhaps the last time we shall ever meet." He
+paused again. "Let it not offend you to know your power over one so
+unworthy. To love Miss Walton could not be a crime; if to declare it is
+one, the expiation will be made."
+
+Her tears were now flowing without control.
+
+"Let me entreat you," said she, "to have better hopes. Let not life be
+so indifferent to you, if my wishes can put any value on it. I know your
+worth--I have known it long. I have esteemed it. What would you have me
+say? I have loved it as it deserved."
+
+He seized her hand, a languid colour reddened her cheek; a smile
+brightened faintly in his eye. As he gazed on her it grew dim, it fixed,
+it closed. He sighed, and fell back on his seat. Miss Walton screamed at
+the sight.
+
+His aunt and the servants rushed into the room. They found them lying
+motionless together.
+
+His physician happened to call at that instant. Every art was tried to
+recover them. With Miss Walton they succeeded, but Harley was gone for
+ever.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+
+
+XAVIER DE MAISTRE
+
+
+A Journey Round My Room
+
+
+     Count Xavier de Maistre was born in October 1763 at Chambéry,
+     in Savoy. When, in the war and the upheaval that followed on
+     the French Revolution, his country was annexed to France, he
+     emigrated to Russia, and being a landscape painter of fine
+     talent, he managed to live on the pictures which he sold. He
+     died at St. Petersburg on June 12, 1852. His famous "Journey
+     Round My Room" ("Voyage autour de ma chambre") was written in
+     1794 at Turin, where he was imprisoned for forty-two days over
+     some affair of honour. The style of his work is clearly
+     modelled on that of Sterne, but the ideas, which he pours out
+     with a delightful interplay of wit and fancy, are marked with
+     the stamp of a fine, original mind. The work is one of the
+     most brilliant _tours de force_ in a literature remarkable for
+     its lightness, grace, and charm. Being a born writer, de
+     Maistre whiled away his time by producing a sparkling little
+     masterpiece, which will be cherished long after the heavy,
+     philosophical works written by his elder brother, Joseph de
+     Maistre, have mouldered into the dust. In the lifetime of the
+     two brothers, Joseph was regarded throughout Europe as a man
+     of high genius, while Xavier was looked down on as a trifler.
+
+
+_I.--My Great Discovery_
+
+
+How glorious it is to open a new career, and to appear suddenly in the
+world of science with a book of discoveries in one's hand like an
+unexpected comet sparkling in space! Here is the book, gentleman. I have
+undertaken and carried out a journey of forty-two days in my room. The
+interesting observations I have made, and the continual pleasure I have
+felt during this long expedition, excited in me the wish to publish it;
+the certitude of the usefulness of my work decided me. My heart is
+filled with an inexpressible satisfaction when I think of the infinite
+number of unhappy persons to whom I am now able to offer an assured
+resource against the tediousness and vexations of life. The delight one
+finds in travelling in one's own room is a pure joy, exempt from the
+unquiet jealousies of men and independent of ill-fortune.
+
+In the immense family of men that swarm on the surface of the earth,
+there is not one--no, not one (I am speaking, of course, of those who
+have a room to live in)--who can, after having read this book, refuse
+his approbation to the new way of travelling which I have invented. It
+costs nothing, that is the great thing! Thus it is certain of being
+adopted by very rich people! Thousands of persons who have never thought
+of travelling will now resolve to follow my example.
+
+Come, then, let us go forth! Follow me, all ye hermits who through some
+mortification in love, some negligence in friendship, have withdrawn
+into your rooms far from the pettiness and infidelity of mankind! But
+quit your dismal thoughts, I pray you. Every minute you lose some
+pleasure without gaining any wisdom in place of it. Deign to accompany
+me on my travels. We shall go by easy stages, laughing all along the
+road at every tourist who has gone to Rome or Paris. No obstacle shall
+stop us, and, surrendering ourselves to our imagination, we will follow
+it wherever it may lead us.
+
+But persons are so curious. I am sure you would like to know why my
+journey round my room lasted forty-two days instead of forty-three, or
+some other space of time. But how can I tell you when I do not know
+myself? All I can say is that if you find my work too long, it was not
+my fault. In spite of the vanity natural in a traveller, I should have
+been very glad if it had only run a single chapter. The fact is, that
+though I was allowed in my room all the pleasures and comfort possible,
+I was not permitted to leave it when I wished.
+
+Is there anything more natural and just than to fight to the death with
+a man who has inadvertently trodden on your foot, or let fall some sharp
+words in a moment of vexation of which your imprudence was the cause?
+Nothing, you will admit, is more logical; and yet there are some people
+who disapprove of this admirable custom.
+
+But, what is still more natural and logical, the very people who
+disapprove it and regard it as a grave crime treat with greater rigour
+any man who refuses to commit it. Many an unhappy fellow has lost his
+reputation and position through conforming with their views, so that if
+you have the misfortune to be engaged in what is called "an affair of
+honour," it is best to toss up to see if you should follow the law or
+the custom; and as the law and the custom in regard to duelling are
+contradictory, the magistrates would also do well to frame their
+sentence on the throw of the dice. Probably, it was in this way that
+they determined that my journey should last exactly forty-two days.
+
+
+_II.--My Armchair and my Bed_
+
+
+My chamber forms a square, round which I can take thirty-six steps, if I
+keep very close to the wall. But I seldom travel in a straight line. I
+dislike persons who are such masters of their feet and of their ideas
+that they can say: "To-day I shall make three calls, I shall write four
+letters, I shall finish this work that I have begun." So rare are the
+pleasures scattered along our difficult path in life, that we must be
+mad not to turn out of our way and gather anything of joy which is
+within our reach.
+
+To my mind, there is nothing more attractive than to follow the trail of
+one's ideas, like a hunter tracking down game, without holding to any
+road. I like to zigzag about. I set out from my table to the picture in
+the corner. From there I journey obliquely towards the door; but if I
+come upon my armchair I stand on no ceremonies, but settle myself in it
+at once. 'Tis an excellent piece of furniture, an armchair, and
+especially useful to a meditative man. In long winter evenings it is
+sometimes delightful and always wise to stretch oneself in it easily,
+far from the din of the numerous assemblies.
+
+After my armchair, in walking towards the north I discover my bed, which
+is placed at the end of my room, and there forms a most agreeable
+perspective. So happily is it arranged that the earliest rays of
+sunlight come and play on the curtains. I can see them, on fine summer
+mornings, advancing along the white wall with the rising sun; some elms,
+growing before my window, divide them in a thousand ways, and make them
+dance on my bed, which, by their reflection, spread all round the room
+the tint of its own charming white and rose pattern. I hear the
+twittering of the swallows that nest in the roof, and of other birds in
+the elms; a stream of charming thoughts flows into my mind, and in the
+whole world nobody has an awakening as pleasant and as peaceful as mine.
+
+
+_III.--The Beast_
+
+
+Only metaphysicians must read this chapter. It throws a great light on
+the nature of man. I cannot explain how and why I burnt my fingers at
+the first steps I made in setting out on my journey around my room,
+until I expose my system of the soul and the beast. In the course of
+diverse observations I have found out that man is composed of a soul and
+a beast.
+
+It is often said that man is made up of a soul and a body, and this body
+is accused of doing all sorts of wrong things. In my opinion, there is
+no ground for such accusations, for the body is as incapable of feeling
+as it is of thinking. The beast is the creature on whom the blame should
+be laid. It is a sensible being, perfectly distinct from the soul, a
+veritable individual, with its separate existence, tastes, inclinations,
+and will; it is superior to other animals only because it has been
+better brought up, and endowed with finer organs. The great art of a man
+of genius consists in knowing how to train his beast so well that it can
+run alone, while the soul, delivered from its painful company, rises up
+into the heavens. I must make this clear by an example.
+
+One day last summer I was walking along on my way to the court. I had
+been painting all the morning, and my soul, delighted with her
+meditation on painting, left to the beast the care of transporting me to
+the king's palace.
+
+"What a sublime art painting is!" thought my soul. "Happy is the man who
+has been touched by the spectacle of nature, who is not compelled to
+paint pictures for a living, and still less just to pass the time away;
+but who, struck by the majesty of a fine physiognomy and by the
+admirable play of light that blends in a thousand tints on a human face,
+tries to approach in his works the sublime effects of nature!"
+
+While my soul was making these reflections, the beast was running its
+own way. Instead of going to court, as it had been ordered to, it
+swerved so much to the left that at the moment when my soul caught it
+up, it was at the door of Mme. de Hautcastel's house, half a mile from
+the palace.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+If it is useful and pleasant to have a soul so disengaged from the
+material world that one can let her travel all alone when one wishes to,
+this faculty is not without its inconveniences. It was through it, for
+instance, that I burnt my fingers. I usually leave to my beast the duty
+of preparing my breakfast. It toasts my bread and cuts it in slices.
+Above all, it makes coffee beautifully, and it drinks it very often
+without my soul taking part in the matter, except when she amuses
+herself with watching the beast at work. This, however, is rare, and a
+very difficult thing to do.
+
+It is easy, during some mechanical act, to think of something else; but
+it is extremely difficult to study oneself in action, so to speak; or,
+to explain myself according to my own system, to employ one's soul in
+examining the conduct of one's beast, to see it work without taking any
+part. This is really the most astonishing metaphysical feat that man can
+execute.
+
+I had laid my tongs on the charcoal to toast my bread, and some time
+after, while my soul was on her travels, a flaming stump rolled on the
+grate; my poor beast went to take up the tongs, and I burnt my fingers.
+
+
+_IV.--A Great Picture_
+
+
+The first stage of my journey round my room is accomplished. While my
+soul has been explaining my new system of metaphysic, I have been
+sitting in my armchair in my favourite attitude, with the two front feet
+raised a couple of inches off the floor. By swaying my body to and fro,
+I have insensibly gained ground, and I find myself with a start close to
+the wall. This is the way in which I travel when I am not in a hurry.
+
+My chamber is hung with prints and paintings which embellish it in an
+admirable manner. I should like the reader to examine them one after the
+other, and to entertain himself during the long journey that we must
+make in order to arrive at my desk. Look, here is a portrait of Raphael.
+Beside it is a likeness of the adorable lady whom he loved.
+
+But I have something still finer than these, and I always reserve it for
+the last. I find that both connoisseurs and ignoramuses, both women of
+the world and little children, yes, and even animals, are pleased and
+astonished by the way in which this sublime work renders every effect in
+nature. What picture can I present to you, gentlemen; what scene can I
+put beneath your lovely eyes, ladies, more certain of winning your
+favour than the faithful image of yourselves? The work of which I speak
+is a looking-glass, and nobody up to the present has taken it into his
+head to criticise it; it is, for all those who study it, a perfect
+picture in which there is nothing to blame. It is thus the gem of my
+collection.
+
+You see this withered rose? It is a flower of the Turin carnival of last
+year. I gathered it myself at Valentin's, and in the evening, an hour
+before the ball, I went full of hope and joy to present it to Mme. de
+Hautcastel. She took it, and placed it on her dressing-table without
+looking at it, and without looking at me. But how could she take any
+notice of me? Standing in an ectasy before a great mirror, she was
+putting the last touches to her finery. So totally was she absorbed in
+the ribbons, the gauzes, the ornaments heaped up before her, that I
+could not obtain a glance, a sign. I finished my losing patience, and
+being unable to resist the feeling of anger that swept over me, I took
+up the rose and walked out without taking leave of my sweetheart.
+
+"Are you going?" she said, turning round to see her figure in profile.
+
+I did not answer, but I listened at the door to learn if my brusque
+departure produced any effect.
+
+"Do you not see," exclaimed Mme. de Hautcastel to her maid, after a
+short silence, "that this pelisse is much too full at the bottom? Get
+some pins and make a tuck in it."
+
+That is how I come to have a withered rose on my desk. I shall make no
+reflections on the affair. I shall not even draw any conclusions from it
+concerning the force and duration of a woman's love.
+
+My forty-two days are coming to an end, and an equal space of time would
+not suffice to describe the rich country in which I am now travelling,
+for I have at last reached my bookshelf. It contains nothing but
+novels--yes, I shall be candid--nothing but novels and a few choice
+poets. As though I had not enough troubles of my own, I willingly share
+in those of a thousand imaginary persons, and I feel them as keenly as
+if they were mine. What tears have I shed over the unhappiness of
+Clarissa!
+
+But if I thus seek for feigned afflictions, I find, in compensation, in
+this imaginary world, the virtue, the goodness, the disinterestedness
+which I have been unable to discover together in the real world in which
+I exist. It is there that I find the wife that I desire, without temper,
+without lightness, without subterfuge; I say nothing about beauty--you
+can depend on my imagination for that! Then, closing the book which no
+longer answers to my ideas, I take her by the hand, and we wander
+together through a land a thousand times more delicious than that of
+Eden. What painter can depict the scene of enchantment in which I have
+placed the divinity of my heart? But when I am tired of love-making I
+take up some poet, and set out again for another world.
+
+
+_V.--In Prison Again_
+
+
+O charming land of imagination which has been given to men to console
+them for the realities of life, it is time for me to leave thee! This is
+the day when certain persons pretend to give me back my freedom, as
+though they had deprived me of it! As though it were in their power to
+take it away from me for a single instant, and to hinder me from
+scouring as I please the vast space always open before me! They have
+prevented me from going out into a single town--Turin, a mere point on
+the earth--but they have left to me the entire universe; immensity and
+eternity have been at my service.
+
+To-day, then, I am free, or rather I am going to be put back into irons.
+The yoke of business is again going to weigh me down; I shall not be
+able to take a step which is not measured by custom or duty. I shall be
+fortunate if some capricious goddess does not make me forget one and the
+other, and if I escape from this new and dangerous captivity.
+
+Oh, why did they not let me complete my journey! Was it really to punish
+me that they confined me in my room? In this country of delight which
+contains all the good things, all the riches of the world? They might as
+well have tried to chastise a mouse by shutting him up in a granary.
+
+Yet never have I perceived more clearly that I have a double nature. All
+the time that I am regretting my pleasures of the imagination, I feel
+myself consoled by force. A secret power draws me away. It tells me that
+I have need of the fresh air and the open sky, and that solitude
+resembles death. So here am I dressed and ready. My door opens; I am
+rambling under the spacious porticoes of the street of Po; a thousand
+charming phantoms dance before my eyes. Yes, this is her mansion, this
+is the door; I tremble with anticipation.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+
+
+SIR THOMAS MALORY
+
+
+Morte d'Arthur
+
+
+     Little is known of Sir Thomas Malory, who, according to
+     Caxton, "did take out of certain French books a copy of the
+     noble histories of King Arthur and reduced it to English." We
+     learn from the text that "this book was finished in the ninth
+     year of the reign of King Edward the Fourth, by Sir Thomas
+     Malory, Knight." That would be in the year 1469. Malory is
+     said to have been a Welshman. The origin of the Arthurian
+     romance was probably Welsh. Its first literary form was in
+     Geoffrey of Monmouth's prose, in 1147. Translated into French
+     verse, and brightened in the process, these legends appear to
+     have come back to us, and to have received notable additions
+     from Walter Map (1137-1209), another Welshman. A second time
+     they were worked on and embellished by the French
+     romanticists, and from these later versions Malory appears to
+     have collated the materials for his immortal translation. The
+     story of Arthur and Launcelot is the thread of interest
+     followed in this epitome.
+
+
+_I.--The Coming of Arthur_
+
+
+It befell in the days of the noble Utherpendragon, when he was King of
+England, there was a mighty and noble duke in Cornwall, named the Duke
+of Tintagil, that held long war against him. And the duke's wife was
+called a right fair lady, and a passing wise, and Igraine was her name.
+And the duke, issuing out of the castle at a postern to distress the
+king's host, was slain. Then all the barons, by one assent, prayed the
+king of accord between the Lady Igraine and himself. And the king gave
+them leave, for fain would he have accorded with her; and they were
+married in a morning with great mirth and joy.
+
+When the Queen Igraine grew daily nearer the time when the child Arthur
+should be born, Merlin, by whose counsel the king had taken her to wife,
+came to the king and said: "Sir, you must provide for the nourishing of
+your child. I know a lord of yours that is a passing true man, and
+faithful, and he shall have the nourishing of your child. His name is
+Sir Ector, and he is a lord of fair livelihood." "As thou wilt," said
+the king, "be it." So the child was delivered unto Merlin, and he bare
+it forth unto Sir Ector, and made a holy man to christen him, and named
+him Arthur.
+
+But, within two years, King Uther fell sick of a great malady, and
+therewith yielded up the ghost, and was interred as belonged unto a
+king; wherefore Igraine the queen made great sorrow, and all the barons.
+
+Then stood the realm in great jeopardy a long while, for many weened to
+have been king. And Merlin went to the Archbishop of Canterbury, and
+counselled him to send for all the lords of the realm, and all the
+gentlemen of arms, to London before Christmas, upon pain of cursing,
+that Jesus, of His great mercy, should show some miracle who should be
+rightwise king. So in the greatest church of London there was seen
+against the high altar a great stone and in the midst thereof there was
+an anvil of steel, and therein stuck a fair sword, naked by the point,
+and letters of gold were written about the sword that said, "Whoso
+pulleth out this sword of this stone and anvil is rightwise king born of
+England."
+
+And many essayed, but none might stir the sword.
+
+And on New Year's Day the barons made a joust, and Sir Ector rode to the
+jousts; and with him rode Sir Kaye, his son, and young Arthur, that was
+his nourished brother.
+
+And Sir Kaye, who was made knight at Allhallowmas afore, had left his
+sword at his father's lodging, and so prayed young Arthur to ride for
+it. Then Arthur said to himself, "I will ride to the churchyard and take
+the sword that sticketh in the stone for my brother Kaye." And so,
+lightly and fiercely, he pulled it out of the stone, and took horse and
+delivered to Sir Kaye the sword. "How got you this sword?" said Sir
+Ector to Arthur. "Sir, I will tell you," said Arthur; "I pulled it out
+of the stone without any pain." "Now," said Sir Ector, "I understand you
+must be king of this land." "Wherefore I?" said Arthur. "And for what
+cause?" "Sir," said Sir Ector, "for God will have it so." And
+therewithal Sir Ector kneeled down to the earth, and Sir Kaye also.
+
+Then Sir Ector told him all how he had betaken him to nourish him; and
+Arthur made great moan when he understood that Sir Ector was not his
+father.
+
+And at the Feast of Pentecost all manner of men essayed to pull out the
+sword, and none might prevail but Arthur, who pulled it out before all
+the lords and commons. And the commons cried, "We will have Arthur unto
+our king." And so anon was the coronation made.
+
+And Merlin said to King Arthur, "Fight not with the sword that you had
+by miracle till you see that you go to the worst, then draw it out and
+do your best." And the sword, Excalibur, was so bright that it gave
+light like thirty torches.
+
+
+_II.--The Marriage of Arthur_
+
+
+In the beginning of King Arthur, after that he was chosen king by
+adventure and by grace, for the most part the barons knew not that he
+was Utherpendragon's son but as Merlin made it openly known. And many
+kings and lords made great war against him for that cause, but King
+Arthur full well overcame them all; for the most part of the days of his
+life he was much ruled by the counsel of Merlin. So it befell on a time
+that he said unto Merlin, "My barons will let me have no rest, but needs
+they will have that I take a wife, and I will none take but by thy
+advice."
+
+"It is well done," said Merlin, "for a man of your bounty and nobleness
+should not be without a wife. Now, is there any fair lady that ye love
+better than another?"
+
+"Yea," said Arthur; "I love Guinever, the king's daughter, of the land
+of Cameliard. This damsel is the gentlest and fairest lady I ever could
+find."
+
+"Sir," said Merlin, "she is one of the fairest that live, and as a man's
+heart is set he will be loth to return."
+
+But Merlin warned the king privily that Guinever was not wholesome for
+him to take to wife, for he warned him that Launcelot should love her,
+and she him again. And Merlin went forth to King Leodegraunce, of
+Cameliard, and told him of the desire of the king that he would have to
+his wife Guinever, his daughter. "That is to me," said King
+Leodegraunce, "the best tidings that ever I heard; and I shall send him
+a gift that shall please him, for I shall give him the Table Round, the
+which Utherpendragon gave me; and when it is full complete there is a
+place for a hundred and fifty knights; and a hundred good knights I have
+myself, but I lack fifty, for so many have been slain in my days."
+
+And so King Leodegraunce delivered his daughter, Guinever, to Merlin,
+and the Table Round, with the hundred knights, and they rode freshly and
+with great royalty, what by water and what by land.
+
+And when Arthur heard of the coming of Guinever and the hundred knights
+of the Round Table he made great joy; and in all haste did ordain for
+the marriage and coronation in the most honourable wise that could be
+devised. And Merlin found twenty-eight good knights of prowess and
+worship, but no more could he find. And the Archbishop of Canterbury was
+sent for, and blessed the seats of the Round Table with great devotion.
+
+Then was the high feast made ready, and the king was wedded at Camelot
+unto Dame Guinever, in the Church of St. Steven's, with great solemnity.
+
+
+_III.--Sir Launcelot and the King_
+
+
+And here I leave off this tale, and overskip great books of Merlin, and
+Morgan le Fay, and Sir Balin le Savage, and Sir Launcelot du Lake, and
+Sir Galahad, and the Book of the Holy Grail, and the Book of Elaine, and
+come to the tale of Sir Launcelot, and the breaking up of the Round
+Table.
+
+In the merry month of May, when every heart flourisheth and rejoiceth,
+it happened there befel a great misfortune, the which stinted not till
+the flower of the chivalry of all the world was destroyed and slain.
+
+And all was along of two unhappy knights named Sir Agravaine and Sir
+Mordred, that were brethren unto Sir Gawaine. For these two knights had
+ever privy hate unto the queen, and unto Sir Launcelot. And Sir
+Agravaine said openly, and not in counsel, "I marvel that we all be not
+ashamed to see and know how Sir Launcelot cometh daily and nightly to
+the queen, and it is shameful that we suffer so noble a king to be
+ashamed." Then spake Sir Gawaine, "I pray you have no such matter any
+way before me, for I will not be of your counsel." And so said his
+brothers, Sir Gaheris and Sir Gareth. "Then will I," said Sir Mordred.
+And with these words they came to King Arthur, and told him they could
+suffer it no longer, but must tell him, and prove to him that Sir
+Launcelot was a traitor to his person.
+
+"I would be loth to begin such a thing," said King Arthur, "for I tell
+you Sir Launcelot is the best knight among you all." For Sir Launcelot
+had done much for him and for his queen many times, and King Arthur
+loved him passing well.
+
+Then Sir Agravaine advised that the king go hunting, and send word that
+he should be out all that night, and he and Sir Mordred, with twelve
+knights of the Round Table should watch the queen. So on the morrow King
+Arthur rode out hunting.
+
+And Sir Launcelot told Sir Bors that night he would speak with the
+queen. "You shall not go this night by my counsel," said Sir Bors.
+
+"Fair nephew," said Sir Launcelot, "I marvel me much why ye say this,
+sithence the queen hath sent for me." And he departed, and when he had
+passed to the queen's chamber, Sir Agravaine and Sir Mordred, with
+twelve knights, cried aloud without, "Traitor knight, now art thou
+taken!"
+
+But Sir Launcelot after he had armed himself, set the chamber door wide
+open, and mightily and knightly strode among them, and slew Sir
+Agravaine and twelve of his fellows, and wounded Sir Mordred, who fled
+with all his might, and came straight to King Arthur, wounded and
+beaten, and all be-bled.
+
+"Alas!" said the king, "now am I sure the noble fellowship of the Round
+Table is broken for ever, for with Launcelot will hold many a noble
+knight."
+
+And the queen was adjudged to death by fire, for there was none other
+remedy but death for treason in those days. Then was Queen Guinever led
+forth without Carlisle, and despoiled unto her smock, and her ghostly
+father was brought to her to shrive her of her misdeeds; and there was
+weeping and wailing and wringing of hands.
+
+But anon there was spurring and plucking up of horses, for Sir Launcelot
+and many a noble knight rode up to the fire, and none might withstand
+him. And a kirtle and gown were cast upon the queen, and Sir Launcelot
+rode his way with her to Joyous Gard, and kept her as a noble knight
+should.
+
+Then came King Arthur and Sir Gawaine, whose brothers, Sir Gaheris and
+Sir Gareth, had been slain by Sir Launcelot unawares, and laid a siege
+to Joyous Gard. And Launcelot had no heart to fight against his lord,
+King Arthur; and Arthur would have taken his queen again, and would have
+accorded with Sir Launcelot, but Sir Gawaine would not suffer him. Then
+the Pope called unto him a noble clerk, the Bishop of Rochester, and
+gave him bulls, under lead, unto King Arthur, charging him that he take
+his queen, Dame Guinever, to him again, and accord with Sir Launcelot.
+And as for the queen, she assented. And the bishop had of the king
+assurance that Sir Launcelot should come and go safe. So Sir Launcelot
+delivered the queen to the king, who assented that Sir Launcelot should
+not abide in the land past fifteen days.
+
+Then Sir Launcelot sighed, and said these words, "Truly me repenteth
+that ever I came into this realm, that I should be thus shamefully
+banished, undeserved, and causeless." And unto Queen Guinever he said,
+"Madam, now I must depart from you and this noble fellowship for ever;
+and since it is so, I beseech you pray for me, and send me word if ye be
+noised with any false tongues." And therewith Launcelot kissed the
+queen, and said openly, "Now let me see what he be that dare say the
+queen is not true to King Arthur--let who will speak, and he dare!" And
+he took his leave and departed, and all the people wept.
+
+
+_IV.--The Passing of Arthur_
+
+
+Now, to say the truth, Sir Launcelot and his nephews were lords of the
+realm of France, and King Arthur and Sir Gawaine made a great host ready
+and shipped at Cardiff, and made great destruction and waste on his
+lands. And Arthur left the governance of all England to Sir Mordred. And
+Sir Mordred caused letters to be made that specified that King Arthur
+was slain in battle with Sir Launcelot; wherefore Sir Mordred made a
+parliament, and they chose him king, and he was crowned at Canterbury.
+But Queen Guinever came to London, and stuffed it with victuals, and
+garnished it with men, and kept it.
+
+Then King Arthur raised the siege on Sir Launcelot, and came homeward
+with a great host to be avenged on Sir Mordred. And Sir Mordred drew
+towards Dover to meet him, and most of England held with Sir Mordred,
+the people were so new-fangled.
+
+Then was there launching of great boats and small, and all were full of
+noble men of arms, and there was much slaughter of gentle knights; but
+King Arthur was so courageous none might let him to land; and his
+knights fiercely followed him, and put back Sir Mordred, and he fled.
+
+But Sir Gawaine was laid low with a blow smitten on an old wound given
+him by Sir Launcelot. Then Sir Gawaine, after he had been shriven, wrote
+with his own hand to Sir Launcelot, flower of all noble knights: "I
+beseech thee, Sir Launcelot, return again to this realm, and see my
+tomb, and pray some prayer more or less for my soul. Make no tarrying
+but come with thy noble knights and rescue that noble king that made
+thee knight, for he is straitly bestood with a false traitor." And so
+Sir Gawaine betook his soul into the hands of our Lord God.
+
+And many a knight drew unto Sir Mordred and many unto King Arthur, and
+never was there seen a dolefuller battle in a Christian land. And they
+fought till it was nigh night, and there were a hundred thousand laid
+dead upon the down.
+
+"Alas! that ever I should see this doleful day," said King Arthur, "for
+now I come unto mine end. But would to God that I wist where that
+traitor Sir Mordred is, which hath caused all this mischief."
+
+Then was King Arthur aware where Sir Mordred leaned upon his sword, and
+there King Arthur smote Sir Mordred throughout the body more than a
+fathom, and Sir Mordred smote King Arthur with his sword held in both
+hands on the side of the head, that the sword pierced the helmet and the
+brain-pan. And Sir Mordred fell dead; and the noble King Arthur fell in
+a swoon, and Sir Lucan and Sir Bedivere laid him in a little chapel not
+far from the sea-side.
+
+And when he came to himself again, he said unto Sir Bedivere, "Take thou
+Excalibur, my good sword, and throw it into that water." And when Sir
+Bedivere (at the third essay) threw the sword into the water, as far as
+he might, there came an arm and a hand above the water, and met and
+caught it, and so shook and brandished it thrice; and then the hand
+vanished away with the sword in the water.
+
+Then Sir Bedivere bore King Arthur to the water's edge, and fast by the
+bank hovered a little barge, and there received him three queens with
+great mourning. And Arthur said, "I will unto the vale of Avillon for to
+heal me of my grievous wound, and if thou never hear more of me, pray
+for my soul." And evermore the ladies wept.
+
+And in the morning Sir Bedivere was aware between two hills of a chapel
+and a hermitage; and he saw there a hermit fast by a tomb newly graven.
+And the hermit said, "My son, here came ladies which brought this corpse
+and prayed me to bury him."
+
+"Alas," said Sir Bedivere, "that was my lord, King Arthur."
+
+And when Queen Guinever understood that her lord, King Arthur, was
+slain, she stole away and went to Almesbury, and made herself a nun, and
+was abbess and ruler as reason would.
+
+And Sir Launcelot passed over into England, and prayed full heartily at
+the tomb of Sir Gawaine, and then rode alone to find Queen Guinever. And
+when Sir Launcelot was brought unto her, she said: "Through this knight
+and me all the wars were wrought, and through our love is my noble lord
+slain; therefore, Sir Launcelot, I require thee that thou never look me
+more in the visage."
+
+And Sir Launcelot said: "The same destiny ye have taken you unto I will
+take me unto." And he besought the bishop that he might be his brother;
+then he put a habit on Sir Launcelot, and there he served God day and
+night, with prayers and fastings.
+
+And when Queen Guinever died Sir Launcelot buried her beside her lord,
+King Arthur. Then mourned he continually until he was dead, so within
+six weeks after they found him stark dead, and he lay as he had smiled.
+Then there was weeping and dolor out of measure. And they buried Sir
+Launcelot with great devotion.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+
+
+ANNE MANNING
+
+
+The Household of Sir Thomas More
+
+
+     Anne Manning, one of the most active women novelists of Queen
+     Victoria's reign, was born in London on February 17, 1807. Her
+     first book, "A Sister's Gift: Conversations on Sacred
+     Subjects," was written in the form of lessons for her brothers
+     and sisters, and published at her own expense in 1826. It was
+     followed in 1831 by "Stories from the History of Italy," and
+     in 1838 her first work of fiction, "Village Belles," made its
+     appearance. In their day Miss Manning's novels had a great
+     vogue, only equalled by her amazing output. Altogether some
+     fifty-one stories appeared under her name, of which the best
+     remembered is "The Household of Sir Thomas More," an imaginary
+     diary written by More's daughter, Margaret. After appearing in
+     "Sharpe's Magazine," it was published in book form in 1860. It
+     is wonderfully vivid, and is written with due regard to
+     historical facts. It is interesting to compare it with the
+     "Life of Sir Thomas More," written by William Roper, Margaret
+     More's husband, with which it is now frequently reprinted.
+     Miss Manning died on September 14, 1879.
+
+
+_I.--Of the Writing of My Libellus_
+
+
+                                                   _Chelsea, June_ 18.
+
+On asking Mr. Gunnel to what use I should put this fayr _Libellus_, he
+did suggest my making it a kinde of family register, wherein to note the
+more important of our domestic passages, whether of joy or griefe--my
+father's journies and absences--the visits of learned men, theire
+notable sayings, etc. "You are ready at the pen, Mistress Margaret," he
+was pleased to say, "and I woulde humblie advise your journaling in the
+same fearless manner in the which you framed that letter which so well
+pleased the Bishop of Exeter that he sent you a Portugal piece. 'Twill
+be well to write it in English, which 'tis expedient for you not
+altogether to negleckt, even for the more honourable Latin."
+
+Methinks I am close upon womanhood. My master Gonellus doth now "humblie
+advise" her he hath so often chid. 'Tis well to make trial of his
+"humble" advice.
+
+...As I traced the last word methoughte I heard the well-known tones of
+Erasmus, his pleasant voyce, and indeede here is the deare little man
+coming up from the riverside with my father, who, because of the heat,
+had given his cloak to a tall stripling behind him to bear, I flew
+upstairs, to advertise mother, and we found 'em alreadie in the hall.
+
+So soon as I had obtayned their blessings, the tall lad stept forth, and
+who should he be but William Roper, returned from my father's errand
+overseas! His manners are worsened, for he twice made to kiss me and
+drew back. I could have boxed his ears, 'speciallie as father, laughing,
+cried, "The third time's lucky!"
+
+After supper, we took deare Erasmus entirely over the house, in a kind
+of family procession. In our own deare Academia, with its glimpse of the
+cleare-shining Thames, Erasmus noted and admired our cut flowers, and
+glanced, too, at the books on our desks--Bessy's being Livy; Daisy's,
+Sallust; and mine, St. Augustine, with father's marks where I was to
+read, and where desist. He tolde Erasmus, laying hand fondlie on my
+head, "Here is one who knows what is implied in the word 'trust.'" Dear
+father, well I may! Thence we visitted the chapel, and gallery, and all
+the dumb kinde. Erasmus doubted whether Duns Scotus and the Venerable
+Bede had been complimented in being made name-fathers to a couple of
+owls; but he said Argus and Juno were good cognomens for peacocks.
+
+Anon, we rest and talk in the pavilion. Sayth Erasmus to my father, "I
+marvel you have never entered into the king's service in some publick
+capacitie."
+
+Father smiled. "I am better and happier as I am. To put myself forward
+would be like printing a book at request of friends, that the publick
+may be charmed with what, in fact, it values at a doit. When the
+cardinall offered me a pension, as retaining fee to the king, I told him
+I did not care to be a mathematical point, to have position without
+magnitude."
+
+"We shall see you at court yet," says Erasmus.
+
+Sayth father, "With a fool's cap and bells!"
+
+                                                            _Tuesday_.
+
+This morn I surprised father and Erasmus in the pavillion. Erasmus sayd,
+the revival of learning seemed appoynted by Heaven for some greate
+purpose.
+
+In the evening, Will and Rupert, spruce enow with nosegays and ribbons,
+rowed us up to Putney. We had a brave ramble through Fulham meadows,
+father discoursing of the virtues of plants, and how many a poor knave's
+pottage would be improved if he were skilled in the properties of
+burdock and old man's pepper.
+
+                                                            _June 20_.
+
+Grievous work overnighte with the churning. Gillian sayd that Gammer
+Gurney, dissatisfyde last Friday with her dole, had bewitched the
+creame. Mother insisted on Bess and me, Daisy and Mercy Giggs, churning
+until the butter came. We sang "Chevy Chase" from end to end, and then
+chaunted the 119th Psalme; and by the time we had attained to _Lucerna
+Pedibus_, I heard the buttermilk separating and splashing in righte
+earnest. 'Twas neare midnighte, however. Gillian thinketh our Latin
+brake the spell.
+
+                                                            _June 21_.
+
+Erasmus to Richmond with _Polus_ (for soe he Latinises Reginald Pole),
+and some other of his friends.
+
+I walked with William _juxta fluvium_, and he talked not badlie of his
+travels. There is really more in him than one would think.
+
+To-day I gave this book to Mr. Gunnel in mistake for my Latin exercise!
+Was ever anything so downright disagreeable?
+
+                                                            _June 24_.
+
+Yesternighte, St. John's Eve, we went into town to see the mustering of
+the watch. The streets were like unto a continuation of fayr bowers or
+arbours, which being lit up, looked like an enchanted land. To the sound
+of trumpets, came marching up Cheapside two thousand of the watch and
+seven hundred cressett bearers, and the Lord Mayor and sheriffs, with
+morris dancers, waits, giants, and pageants, very fine. The streets
+uproarious on our way back to the barge, but the homeward passage under
+the stars delicious.
+
+                                                            _June 25_.
+
+Poor Erasmus caughte colde on the water last nighte, and keeps house. He
+spent the best part of the morning in our Academia, discussing the
+pronunciation of Latin and Greek with Mr. Gunnel, and speaking of his
+labours on his Greek and Latin Testament, which he prays may be a
+blessing to all Christendom. He talked of a possible _Index Bibliorum_,
+saying 'twas onlie the work of patience and Industrie. Methoughte, if
+none else would undertake it, why not I?
+
+                                                            _June 29_.
+
+Dr. Linacre at dinner. At table discourse flowed soe thicke and faste
+that I might aim in vain to chronicle it, and why should I, dwelling as
+I doe at the fountayn head?
+
+In the hay-field alle the evening. Swathed father in a hay-rope. Father
+reclining on the hay with his head in my lap. Said he was dreaming "of a
+far-off future day, when thou and I shall looke back on this hour, and
+this hay-field, and my head on thy lap."
+
+"Nay, but what a stupid dream, Mr. More," says mother. "If I dreamed at
+all, it shoulde be of being Lord Chancellor at the leaste."
+
+"Well, wife," sayd father, "I forgive thee for not saying at the most."
+
+                                                             _July 2_.
+
+Erasmus is gone. His last saying to father was, "They will have you at
+court yet;" and father's answer, "When Plato's year comes round."
+
+To me he gave a copy--how precious!--of his Greek Testament.
+
+                                                            _July 11_.
+
+A forayn mission hath been proposed to father and he did accept. Lengthe
+of his stay uncertain, which caste a gloom on alle.
+
+
+_II.--Father Goeth to the Court_
+
+
+                                                       _May 27, 1523_.
+
+'Tis so manie months agone since I made an entry in my _Libellus_, as
+that my motto, _Nulla dies sine linea_, hath somewhat of sarcasm in it.
+In father's prolonged absence I have toiled at my _Opus_ (the _Index
+Bibliorum_), but 'twas not to purpose, and then came that payn in my
+head. Father discovered my _Opus_, and with alle swete gentlenesse told
+me firmly that there are some things a woman cannot, and some she had
+better not do. Yet if I would persist, I shoulde have leisure and quiet
+and the help of his books.
+
+Hearing Mercy propound the conditions of an hospital for aged and sick
+folk, father hath devised and given me the conduct of a house of refuge,
+and oh, what pleasure have I derived from it! "Have I cured the payn in
+thy head, miss?" said he. Then he gave me the key of the hospital,
+saying, "'Tis yours now, my joy, by livery and seisin."
+
+                                                           _August 6_.
+
+I wish William would give me back my Testament.
+
+                                                           _August 7_.
+
+Yesterday, father, taking me unawares, asked, "Come, tell me, Meg, why
+canst not affect Will Roper?"
+
+I was a good while silent, at length made answer, "He is so unlike alle
+I have been taught to esteem and admire by you."
+
+"Have at you," he returned laughing, "I wist not I had been sharpening
+weapons against myself."
+
+Then did he plead Will's cause and bid me take him for what he is.
+
+                                                          _August 30_.
+
+Will is in sore doubte and distresse, and I fear it is my Testament that
+hath unsettled him. I have bidden him fast, pray, and use such
+discipline as our church recommends.
+
+                                                        _September 2_.
+
+I have it from Barbara through her brother, one of the men-servants,
+that Mr. Roper hath of late lien on the ground and used a knotted cord.
+I have made him an abstract from the Fathers for his soul's comfort.
+
+                                                      _1524, October_.
+
+The king took us by surprise this morning. Mother had scarce time to
+slip on her scarlet gown and coif ere he was in the house. His grace was
+mighty pleasant to all, and at going, saluted all round, which Bessy
+took humourously, Daisy immoveablie, Mercy humblie, I distastefullie,
+and mother delightedlie. She calls him a fine man; he is indeed big
+enough, and like to become too big; with long slits of eyes that gaze
+freelie on all. His eyebrows are supercilious, and his cheeks puffy. A
+rolling, straddling gait and abrupt speech.
+
+                                                _Tuesday, October 25_.
+
+Will troubleth me noe longer with his lovefitt, nor with his religious
+disquietations. Hard studdy of the law hath filled his head with other
+matters, and made him infinitely more rationall and more agreeable. I
+shall ne'er remind him.
+
+T'other evening, as father and I were strolling down the lane, there
+accosts us a poor, shabby fellow, who begged to be father's fool. Father
+said he had a fancy to be prime fooler in his own establishment, but
+liking the poor knave's wit, civilitie, and good sense, he agreed to
+halve the businesse, he continuing the fooling, and Patteson--for that
+is the simple good fellow's name--receiving the salary. Father
+delighteth in sparring with Patteson far more than in jesting with the
+king, whom he alwaies looks on as a lion that may, any minute, rend him.
+
+                                                       _1525, July 2_.
+
+Soe my fate is settled. Who knoweth at sunrise what will chance before
+sunsett? No; the Greeks and Romans mighte speak of chance and fate, but
+we must not. Ruth's hap was to light on the field of Boaz, but what she
+thought casual, the Lord had contrived.
+
+'Twas no use hanging back for ever and ever, soe now there's an end, and
+I pray God to give Will and me a quiet life.
+
+                                                   _1528, September_.
+
+Father hath had some words with the cardinall touching the draught of
+some foreign treaty. "By the Mass," exclaimed his grace, nettled, "thou
+art the verist fool in all the council."
+
+Father, smiling, rejoined, "God be thanked that the king, our master,
+hath but one fool therein."
+
+The cardinall's rage cannot rob father of the royal favour. Howbeit,
+father says he has no cause to be proud thereof. "If my head," said he
+to Will, "could win the king a castle in France, it shoulde not fail to
+fly off."
+
+...I was senseless enow to undervalue Will. Yes, I am a happy wife, a
+happy mother. When my little Bill stroaked dear father's face just now,
+and murmured "Pretty!" he burst out a-laughing, and cried, "You are like
+the young Cyrus, who exclaimed, 'Oh, mother, how pretty is my
+grandfather!'"
+
+I often sitt for an hour or more, watching Hans Holbein at his brush. He
+hath a rare gift of limning; but in our likeness, which he hath painted
+for deare Erasmus, I think he has made us very ugly.
+
+
+_III.--The Great Seal is Resigned_
+
+
+                                                         _June, 1530_.
+
+Events have followed too quick and thick for me to note 'em. Father's
+embassade to Cambray, and then his summons to Woodstock. Then the fire
+in the men's quarter, the outhouses and barns. Then, more unlookt for,
+the fall of my lord cardinall and father's elevation to the
+chancellorship.
+
+On the day succeeding his being sworn in, Patteson marched hither and
+thither, in mourning and paper weepers, bearing a huge placard,
+inscribed, "Partnership dissolved," and crying, "My brother is dead; for
+now they've made him Lord Chancellor, we shall ne'er see Sir Thomas
+more."
+
+Father's dispatch of business is such that one day before the end of
+term he was told there was no cause or petition to be sett before him, a
+thing unparalleled, which he desired might be formally recorded.
+
+                                                            _July 28_.
+
+Here's father at issue with half the learned heads in Christendom
+concerning the king's marriage. And yet for alle that, I think father is
+in the right.
+
+He taketh matters soe to heart that e'en his appetite fails.
+
+                                                             _August_.
+
+He hath resigned the Great Seal! And none of us knew it until after
+morning prayer to-day, when, instead of one of his gentlemen stepping up
+to my mother in her pew, with the words, "Madam, my lord is gone," he
+cometh up to her himself, smiling, and with these selfsame words. She
+takes it at first for one of his manie jests whereof she misses the
+point.
+
+Our was but a short sorrow, for we have got father to ourselves again.
+Patteson skipped across the garden, crying, "Let a fatted calf be
+killed, for this my brother who was dead is alive again!"
+
+How shall we contract the charges of Sir Thomas More? Certain servants
+must go; poor Patteson, alas! can be easier spared than some.
+
+                                                       _September 22_.
+
+A tearfull morning. Poor Patteson has gone, but father had obtained him
+good quarters with my Lord Mayor, and he is even to retain his office
+with the Lord Mayor, for the time being.
+
+                                                      _1533, April 1_.
+
+The poor fool to see me, saying it is his holiday, and having told the
+Lord Mayor overnight that if he lookt for a fool this morning, he must
+look in the glass.
+
+Patteson brought news of the coronation of Lady Anne this coming Easter,
+and he begs father to take a fool's advice and eat humble pie; for, says
+he, this proud madam is as vindictive as Herodias, and will have
+father's head on a charger.
+
+                                                            _April 4_.
+
+Father bidden to the coronation by three bishops. He hath, with
+curtesie, declined to be present. I have misgivings of the issue.
+
+                                                           _April 15_.
+
+Father summoned forth to the Council to take the oathe of supremacie.
+Having declared his inabilitie to take the oathe as it stoode, they bade
+him take a turn in the garden to reconsider. When called in agayn, he
+was as firm as ever, and was given in ward to the Abbot of Westminster
+until the king's grace was informed of the matter. And now the fool's
+wise saying of vindictive Herodians came true, for 'twas the king's mind
+to have mercy on his old servant, and tender him a qualified oathe, but
+Queen Anne, by her importunate clamours, did overrule his proper will,
+and at four days' end father was committed to the Tower. Oh, wicked
+woman, how could you!... Sure you never loved a father.
+
+                                                             _May 22_.
+
+Mother hath at length obtaynd access to dear father. He is stedfaste and
+cheerfulle as ever. He hath writ us a few lines with a coal, ending with
+"_Sursum corda_, dear children! Up with your hearts."
+
+                                                          _August 16_.
+
+The Lord begins to cut us short. We are now on very meagre commons, dear
+mother being obliged to pay fifteen shillings a week for the board,
+meagre as it is, of father and his servant. She hath parted with her
+velvet gown.
+
+                                                          _August 20_.
+
+I have seen him, and heard his precious words. He hath kist me for us
+alle.
+
+                                                 _November. Midnight_.
+
+Dear little Bill hath ta'en a feverish attack. Early in the night his
+mind wandered, and he says fearfullie, "Mother, why hangs yon hatchet in
+the air with its sharp edge turned towards us?"
+
+I rise, to move the lamp, and say, "Do you see it now?"
+
+He sayth, "No, not now," and closes his eyes.
+
+                                                        _November 17_.
+
+He's gone, my pretty! ... Slipt through my fingers like a bird upfled to
+his native skies. My Billy-bird! His mother's own heart! They are alle
+wondrous kind to me....
+
+                                                        _March, 1535_.
+
+Spring comes, that brings rejuvenescence to the land and joy to the
+heart, but none to me, for where hope dieth joy dieth. But patience,
+soul; God's yet in the aumry!
+
+
+_IV.--The Worst is Done_
+
+
+                                                              _May 7_.
+
+Father arraigned.
+
+                                                             _July 1_.
+
+By reason of Willie minding to be present at the triall, which, for the
+concourse of spectators, demanded his earlie attendance, he committed
+the care of me, with Bess, to Dancey, Bess's husband, who got us places
+to see father on his way from the Tower to Westminster Hall. We coulde
+not come at him for the crowd, but clambered on a bench to gaze our very
+hearts away after him as he went by, sallow, thin, grey-haired, yet in
+mien not a whit cast down. His face was calm but grave, but just as he
+passed he caught the eye of some one in the crowd, and smiled in his old
+frank way; then glanced up towards the windows with the bright look he
+hath so oft caste up to me at my casement, but saw us not; perchance soe
+'twas best.
+
+...Will telleth me the indictment was the longest ever heard: on four
+counts. First, his opinion concerning the king's marriage. Second, his
+writing sundrie letters to the Bishop of Rochester, counselling him to
+hold out. Third, refusing to acknowledge his grace's supremacy. Fourth,
+his positive deniall of it, and thereby willing to deprive the king of
+his dignity and title.
+
+They could not make good their accusation. 'Twas onlie on the last count
+he could be made out a traitor, and proof of't had they none. He shoulde
+have been acquitted out of hand, but his bitter enemy, my Lord
+Chancellor, called on him for his defence, whereat a general murmur ran
+through the court.
+
+He began, but a moment's weakness of the body overcame him and he was
+accorded a seat. He then proceeded to avow his having always opposed the
+king's marriage to his grace himself, deeming it rather treachery to
+have withholden his opinion when solicited. Touching the supremacy he
+held there could be no treachery in holding his peace, God only being
+cognizant of our thoughts.
+
+"Nay," interposeth the attorney generall, "your silence was the token of
+a malicious mind."
+
+"I had always understood," answers father, "that silence stoode for
+consent," which made sundrie smile.
+
+The issue of the black day was aforehand fixed. The jury retired and
+presentlie returned with a verdict of guilty; for they knew what the
+king's grace would have 'em doe in that case....
+
+And then came the frightful sentence....
+
+They brought him back by water ... The first thing I saw was the axe,
+_turned with its edge towards him._
+
+Some one laid a cold hand on mine arm; 'twas poor Patteson. He sayth,
+"Bide your time, Mistress Meg; when he comes past, I'll make a passage
+for ye." ...
+
+O, brother, brother, what ailed thee to refuse the oath? I've taken it!
+... "Now, Mistress, now!" and flinging his arms right and left, made a
+breach, through which I darted, fearless of bills and halberds, and did
+cast mine arms about father's neck. He cries, "My Meg!" and hugs me to
+him as though our very souls shoulde grow together. He sayth, "Bless
+thee, bless thee! Kiss them alle for me thus and thus." ... Soe gave me
+back into Dancey's arms, the guards about him alle weeping.
+
+I did make a second rush, and agayn they had pitie on me and made pause
+while I hung upon his neck. He whispered, "Meg, for Christ's sake don't
+unman me. God's blessing be with you," he sayth with a last kiss, then
+adding, with a passionate upward regard, "The chariot of Israel and the
+horsemen thereof!"
+
+I look up, almost expecting a beautific vision, and when I turn about,
+he's gone.
+
+                                                           _July 5,6_.
+
+Alle's over now.... They've done theire worst, and yet I live. Dr.
+Clement sayth he went up as blythe as a bridegroom, to be clothed upon
+with immortality.
+
+                                                            _July 19_.
+
+They have let us bury his poor mangled trunk; but as sure as there's a
+sun in heaven, I'll have his head!--before another sun has risen, too.
+If wise men won't speed me, I'll e'en content me with a fool.
+
+                                                            _July 20_.
+
+Quoth Patteson: "Fool and fayr lady will cheat 'em yet."
+
+At the stairs lay a wherry with a couple of boatmen. We went down the
+river quietlie enow--nor lookt I up till aneath the bridge gate, when,
+casting up one fearsome look, I beheld the dark outline of the ghastly
+yet precious relic; and falling into a tremour, did wring my hands and
+exclaim, "Alas, alas! That head hath lain full manie a time in my lap,
+woulde God it lay there now!" When o' suddain, I saw the pole tremble
+and sway towardes me; and stretching forth my apron I did, in an extasy
+of gladness, pity, and horror, catch its burthen as it fell.
+
+Patteson, shuddering, yet grinning, cries under his breath, "Managed I
+not well, mistress? Let's speed away with our theft, but I think not
+they'll follow hard after us, for there are well-wishers on the bridge.
+I'll put ye into the boat and then say, 'God sped ye, lady, with your
+burthen.'"
+
+                                                            _July 23_.
+
+I've heard Bonvisi tell of a poor Italian girl who buried her murdered
+lover's heart in a pot of basil, which she watered day and night with
+her tears, just as I do my coffer. Will hath promised it shall be buried
+with me; layd upon my heart, and since then I've been easier.
+
+He thinks he shall write father's life, when we are settled in a new
+home. We are to be cleared out o' this in alle haste; for the king
+grutches at our lingering over father's footsteps, and yet when the news
+of the bloody deed was taken to him, he scowled at Queen Anne, saying,
+"Thou art the cause of this man's death!"
+
+Flow on, bright shining Thames. A good, brave man hath walked aforetime
+on your margent, himself as bright, and usefull, and delightsome as you,
+sweet river. There's a river whose streams make glad the city of our
+God. He now rests beside it. Good Christian folks, as they hereafter
+pass this spot, will, maybe, point this way and say, "There dwelt Sir
+Thomas More," but whether they doe or not, _Vox Populi_ is no very
+considerable matter. Theire favourite of to-day may, for what they care,
+goe hang himself to-morrow in his surcingle. Thus it must be while the
+world lasts; and the very racks and scrues wherewith they aim to
+overcome the nobler spiritt onlie lift and reveal its power of
+exaltation above the heaviest gloom of circumstance.
+
+_Interfecistis, interfecistis hominem omnium anglorum optimum._
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+
+
+ALESSANDRO MANZONI
+
+
+The Betrothed
+
+
+     Poet, dramatist, and novelist, Alessandro Francesco Tommaso
+     Manzoni was born at Milan on March 7, 1785. In early manhood
+     he became an ardent disciple of Voltairianism, but after
+     marriage embraced the faith of the Church of Rome; and it was
+     in reparation of his early lapse that he composed his first
+     important literary work, which took the form of a treatise on
+     Catholic morality, and a number of sacred lyrics. Although
+     Manzoni was perhaps surpassed as a poet by several of his own
+     countrymen, his supreme position as novelist of the romantic
+     school in Italy is indisputable. His famous work, "The
+     Betrothed" ("I Promessi Sposi"), completed in 1822 and
+     published at the rate of a volume a year during 1825-27, was
+     declared by Scott to be the finest novel ever written. Manzoni
+     died on May 22, 1873.
+
+
+_I.--The Schemes of Don Rodrigo_
+
+
+Don Abbondio, curé of a little town near Como, was no hero. It was,
+therefore, the less difficult for two armed bravos whom he encountered
+one evening in the year 1628 to convince him that the wedding of Renzo
+Tramaglino and Lucia Mondella must not take place, as it did not suit
+the designs of their master, Don Rodrigo. Renzo, however, was by no
+means disposed to take this view of the matter, and was like to have
+taken some desperate steps to express his disapproval. From this course
+he was dissuaded by Fra Cristoforo, a Capuchin, renowned for his wisdom
+and sanctity, who undertook to attempt to soften the heart of Don
+Rodrigo.
+
+The friar was held in affectionate esteem by all, even by Rodrigo's
+bravos, and on his arrival at the castle he was at once shown into the
+presence of its master.
+
+"I come," said he, "to propose to you an act of justice. Some men of bad
+character have made use of the name of your illustrious lordship to
+alarm a poor curé, and dissuade him from performing his duty, and to
+oppress two innocent persons--"
+
+"In short, father," said Rodrigo, "I suppose there is some young girl
+you are concerned about. Since you seem to think that I am so powerful,
+advise her to come and put herself under my protection; she shall be
+well looked after. Cowled rascal!" he shouted. "Vile upstart! Thank the
+cassock that covers your cowardly shoulders for saving them from the
+caresses that such scoundrels should receive. Depart, or--"
+
+In the meantime, plans were being discussed in Lucia's cottage.
+
+"Listen, my children," said Agnese, her mother; "if you were married,
+that would be the great difficulty out of the way."
+
+"Is there any doubt," said Renzo; "_if_ we were married--At Bergamo, not
+far from here, a silk-weaver would be received with open arms. You know
+my cousin Bartolo has wanted me to go there and make my fortune, as he
+has done. Once married, we could all go thither together, and live in
+blessed peace, out of this villain's reach."
+
+"Listen, then," said Agnese. "There must be two witnesses; all four must
+go to the priest and take him by surprise, that he mayn't have time to
+escape. The man says, 'Signor Curé, this is my wife'; the woman says,
+'Signor Curé, this is my husband.' It is necessary that the curé and the
+witnesses hear it, and the marriage is then as valid and sacred as if
+the Pope himself had blessed it."
+
+"But why, then," said Lucia, "didn't this plan come into Fra
+Cristoforo's mind?"
+
+"Do you think it didn't?" replied she. "But--if you must know--the
+friars disapprove of that sort of thing."
+
+"If it isn't right, we ought not to do it."
+
+"What! Would I give you advice contrary to the fear of God; if it were
+against the will of your parents? But when I am satisfied, and he who
+makes all this disturbance is a villain----Once it is done, what do you
+think the father will say? 'Ah! daughter; it was a sad error, but it is
+done.' In his heart he will be very well satisfied."
+
+On the following night Don Abbondio was disturbed at a late hour by a
+certain Tonio, who came with his cousin Gervase to pay a small debt.
+While he was giving him a receipt for it, Renzo and Lucia slipped in
+unperceived. The curé was startled on suddenly hearing the words,
+"Signor Curé, in the presence of these witnesses, this is my wife."
+Instantly grasping the situation, and before Lucia's lips could form a
+reply, Don Abbondio seized the tablecloth, and at a bound wrapped her
+head in it, so that she could not complete the formula. "Perpetua!" he
+shouted to his housekeeper. "Help!"
+
+Dashing to an inner room, he locked himself in, flung open the window,
+and shouted for help. Hearing the uproar, the sexton, who lived next
+door, shouted out, "What is it?"
+
+"Help!" repeated the curé. Not being over desirous of thrusting himself
+blindly in upon unknown dangers, the sexton hastened to the belfry and
+vigorously rang the great bell. This ringing the bell had more
+far-reaching consequences than he anticipated. Enraged by the friar's
+visit, Rodrigo had determined to abduct Lucia, and sent his bravos to
+effect his purpose that very night. At the very moment that the bell
+began to ring they had just broken into Agnese's house, and were
+searching for the occupants. Convinced that their action was the cause
+of commotion, they beat a hasty retreat.
+
+The discomfited betrothed--still only betrothed--hastily rejoined
+Agnese, who was waiting for them in the street. As they hurriedly turned
+their steps homeward a child threw himself into their way.
+
+"Back! Back!" he breathlessly exclaimed. "This way to the monastery!"
+
+"What is it?" asked Renzo.
+
+"There are devils in your house," said the boy, panting. "I saw them;
+Fra Cristoforo said so; he sent me to warn you. He had news from someone
+at the castle; you must go to him at the monastery at once."
+
+"My children," said Fra Cristoforo on their arrival, "the village is no
+longer safe for you; for a time, at least, you must take refuge
+elsewhere. I will arrange for you, Lucia, to be taken care of in a
+convent at Monza. You, Renzo, must put yourself in safety from the anger
+of others, and your own. Carry this letter to Father Bonaventura, in our
+monastery at Milan. He will find you work."
+
+
+_II.--The Riot of the Hungry_
+
+
+Fra Bonaventura was out when Renzo arrived to present his letter.
+
+"Go and wait in the church, where you may employ yourself profitably,"
+was the porter's advice, which Renzo was about to follow, when a
+tumultuous crowd came in sight. Here, apparently, was matter of greater
+interest, so he turned aside to see the cause of the uproar.
+
+The cause, though Renzo did not at the time discover it, was the
+shortage of the bread supply. Owing to the ravages of war and the
+disturbed state of the country, much land lay uncultivated and deserted;
+insupportable taxes were levied; and no sooner had the deficient harvest
+been gathered in than the provisions for the army, and the waste which
+always accompanies them, made a fearful void in it. What had attracted
+Renzo's attention was but the sudden exacerbation of a chronic disease.
+
+Mingling with the hurrying mob, Renzo soon discovered that they had been
+engaged in sacking a bakery, and were filled with fury to find large
+quantities of flour, the existence of which the authorities had denied.
+"The superintendent! The tyrant! We'll have him, dead or alive!"
+
+Renzo found himself borne along in the thickest of the throng to the
+house of the superintendent, where a tremendous crowd was endeavouring
+to break in the doors. The tumult being allayed by the arrival of
+Ferrer, the chancellor, a popular favourite, Renzo became involved in
+conversation with some of the rioters. He asked to be directed to an inn
+where he could pass the night.
+
+"I know an inn that will suit you," said one who had listened to all the
+speeches without himself saying a word. "The landlord is a friend of
+mine, a very worthy man."
+
+So saying, he took Renzo off to an inn at some little distance, taking
+pains to ascertain who he was and whence he came. Arrived at the inn,
+the new companions shared a bottle of wine which, in Renzo's excited
+condition, soon mounted to his head. Another bottle was called for; and
+the landlord, being asked if he had a bed, produced pen, ink, and paper,
+and demanded his name, surname and country.
+
+"What has all this to do with my bed?"
+
+"I do my duty. We are obliged to report everyone that sleeps in the
+house."
+
+"Oh, so I'm to tell my business, am I? This is something new. Supposing
+I had come to Milan to confess, I should go to a Capuchin father, not to
+an innkeeper."
+
+"Well, if you won't, you won't!" said the landlord, with a glance at
+Renzo's companion. "I've done my duty."
+
+So saying, he withdrew, and shortly afterwards the new-found friend
+insisted on taking his departure. At daybreak Renzo was awakened by a
+shake and a voice calling, "Lorenzo Tramaglino."
+
+"Eh, what does this mean? What do you want? Who told you my name?" said
+Renzo, starting up, amazed to find three men, two of them fully armed,
+standing at his bedside.
+
+"You must come with us. The high sheriff wants to have some words with
+you."
+
+Renzo now found himself being led through the streets, that were still
+filled with a considerable number of last night's rioters, by no means
+yet pacified. When they had gone a little way some of the crowd,
+noticing them, began to form around the party.
+
+"If I don't help myself now," thought Renzo, "it's my own fault. My
+friends," he shouted, "they're carrying me off because yesterday I
+shouted 'Bread and Justice!' Don't abandon me, my friends!"
+
+The crowd at once began to press forward, and the bailiffs, fearing
+danger, let go of his hands and tried to disappear into the crowd. Renzo
+was carried off safely.
+
+His only hope of safety now lay in getting entirely clear of Milan and
+hiding himself in some other town out of the jurisdiction of the duchy.
+He decided to go to Bergamo, which was under Venetian government, where
+he could live safely with his cousin until such time as Milan had
+forgotten him.
+
+
+_III.--The Unnamed's Penitence_
+
+
+Don Rodrigo was now more determined than ever to accomplish his
+praiseworthy undertaking, and to this end he sought the help of a very
+formidable character, a powerful noble, whose bravos had long been the
+terror of the countryside, and who was always referred to as "The
+Unnamed."
+
+Lucia, having been sent one day with a note from the convent where she
+had found refuge to a monastery at some little distance, found herself
+suddenly seized from behind, and, regardless of her screams, bundled
+into a carriage, which drove off at a great pace.
+
+When the carriage stopped, after a long drive, Lucia was hurried into a
+litter, which bore her up a steep hill to a castle, where she was shut
+up in a room with an old crone. After a while a resounding knock was
+heard on the door, and the Unnamed strode in.
+
+Casting a glance around, he discovered Lucia crouched down on the floor
+in a corner.
+
+"Come, get up!" he said to her.
+
+The unhappy girl raised herself on her knees, and raised her hands to
+him.
+
+"Oh, what have I done to you? Where am I? Why do you make me suffer the
+agonies of hell? In the name of God--"
+
+"God!" interrupted he; "always God! They who cannot defend themselves
+must always bring forward this God. What do you expect by this word? To
+make me--"
+
+"Oh, signor, what can a poor girl like me expect, except that you should
+have mercy upon me? God pardons so many sins for one deed of mercy. For
+charity's sake, let me go! I will pray for you all my life. Oh, see, you
+are moved to pity! Say one word; oh, say it! God pardons so many sins
+for one deed of mercy!"
+
+"Oh, why isn't she the daughter of one of the dogs who outlawed me?"
+thought the Unnamed. "Then I should enjoy her sufferings; but instead--"
+
+"Don't drive away a good inspiration!" continued Lucia earnestly, seeing
+a certain hesitation in his face.
+
+"Perhaps some day even you--But no--no, I will always pray the Lord to
+keep you from every evil."
+
+"Come, take courage," said the Unnamed, with unusual gentleness. "Have I
+done you any harm? To-morrow morning--"
+
+"Oh set me free now!"
+
+"To-morrow I will see you again."
+
+When he left her, the unhappy girl flung herself on her knees. "O most
+holy Virgin," she prayed, "thou to whom I have so often recommended
+myself, and who hast so often comforted me! Bring me out of this danger,
+bring me safely to my mother, and I vow unto thee to continue a virgin!
+I renounce for ever my unfortunate betrothed, that I may belong only to
+thee!"
+
+The Unnamed retired for the night, but not to sleep. "God pardons so
+many sins for one deed of mercy!" kept ringing in his ears. Suppose
+there was a God, after all? He had so many sins in need of pardon.
+
+About daybreak a confused murmur reached his ear from the valley below;
+a distant chiming of bells began to make itself heard; nearer bells took
+up the peal, until the whole air rang with the sound. He demanded the
+cause of all this rejoicing, and was informed that Cardinal Boromeo had
+arrived, and that the festival was in his honour.
+
+He went to Lucia's apartment, and found her still huddled up in a
+corner, but sleeping. The hag explained that she could not be prevailed
+upon to go to bed.
+
+"Then let her sleep. When she wakes, tell her that I will do all she
+wishes."
+
+Leaving the castle with rapid steps, the Unnamed hastened to the village
+where the cardinal had rested the previous night.
+
+"Oh," cried Federigo Boromeo, "what a welcome visit is this. You have
+good news for me, I am sure."
+
+"Good news! What good news can you expect from such as I?"
+
+"That God has touched your heart, and would make you His own."
+
+"God! God! If I could but see Him! If He be such as they say, what do
+you suppose that He can do with me?"
+
+"The world has long cried out against you," replied Federigo in a solemn
+voice. "He can acquire through you a glory such as others cannot give
+Him. How must He love you, Who has bid and enabled me to regard you with
+a charity that consumes me!" So saying, he extended his hand.
+
+"No!" cried the penitent. "Defile not your hand! You know not all that
+the one you would grasp has committed."
+
+"Suffer me to press the hand which will repair so many wrongs, comfort
+so many afflicted, be extended peacefully and humbly to so many
+enemies."
+
+"Unhappy man that I am," exclaimed the signor, "one thing, at least, I
+can quickly arrest and repair."
+
+Federigo listened attentively to the relation of Lucia's abduction. "Ah,
+let us lose no time!" he exclaimed breathlessly. "This is an earnest of
+God's forgiveness, to make you an instrument of safety to one whom you
+would have ruined."
+
+
+_IV.--In a Lazzeretto_
+
+
+Thanks to his cousin, Renzo was enabled to earn very good wages, and
+would have been quite content to remain had it not been for his desire
+to rejoin Lucia. A terrible outbreak of plague in Milan spread to
+Bergamo, and our friend was among the first to be stricken down, his
+recovery being due more to his excellent constitution than to any
+medical skill. Thereafter, he lost no more time, and after many
+inquiries he succeeded in tracing Lucia to an address in Milan.
+
+Secure in an _alias_, he set out to the plague-stricken city, which he
+found in the most deplorable condition. Having found the house of which
+he was in search, he knocked loudly at the door and inquired if Lucia
+still lived there. To his horror, he found that she had been taken to
+the Lazzeretto!
+
+Let the reader imagine the enclosure of the Lazzeretto, peopled with
+16,000 persons ill of the plague; the whole area encumbered, here with
+tents and cabins, there with carts, and elsewhere with people; crowded
+with dead or dying, stretched on mattresses, or on bare straw; and
+throughout the whole a commotion like the swell of the sea.
+
+"Lucia, I've found you! You're living!" exclaimed Renzo, all in a
+tremble.
+
+"Oh, blessed Lord!" cried she, trembling far more violently. "You?"
+
+"How pale you are! You've recovered, though?"
+
+"The Lord has pleased to leave me here a little longer. Ah, Renzo, why
+are you here?"
+
+"Why? Need I say why? Am I no longer Renzo? Are you no longer Lucia?"
+
+"Ah, what are you saying? Didn't my mother write to you?"
+
+"Ay, that indeed she did. Fine things to offer to an unfortunate,
+afflicted, fugitive wretch who had never done you wrong."
+
+"But, Renzo, Renzo, you don't think what you're saying! A promise to the
+Madonna--a vow!"
+
+"And I think better of the Madonna than you do, for I believe she
+doesn't wish for promises that injure one's fellow-creatures. Promise
+her that our first daughter shall be called Maria, for that I'm willing
+to promise, too. That is a devotion that may have some use, and does no
+harm to anyone."
+
+"You don't know what it is to make a vow. Leave me, for heaven's sake,
+and think no more about me--except in your prayers!"
+
+"Listen, Lucia! Fra Cristoforo is here. I spoke with him but a short
+while ago, while I was searching for you, and he told me that I did
+right to come and look for you; and that the Lord would approve my
+acting so, and would surely help me to find you, which has come to
+pass."
+
+"But if he said so, he didn't know------"
+
+"How should he know of things you've done out of your own head, and
+without the advice of a priest? A good man, as he is, would never think
+of things of this kind. And he spoke, too, like a saint. He said that
+perhaps God designed to show mercy to that poor fellow, for so I must
+now call him, Don Rodrigo, who is now in this place, and waits to take
+him at the right moment, but wishes that we should pray for him
+together. Together! You hear? He told me to go back and tell him whether
+I'd found you. I'm going. We'll hear what he says."
+
+After a while, Renzo returned with Fra Cristoforo. "My daughter," said
+the father, "did you recollect, when you made that vow, that you were
+bound by another promise?"
+
+"When it related to the Madonna?"
+
+"My daughter, the Lord approves of offerings when we make them of our
+own. It is the heart, the will that He desires. But you could not offer
+Him the will of another, to Whom you had pledged yourself."
+
+"Have I done wrong?"
+
+"No, my poor child. But tell me, have you no other motive that hinders
+you from fulfilling your promise to Renzo?"
+
+Lucia blushed crimson. "Nothing else," she whispered.
+
+"Then, my child, you know that the Church has power to absolve you from
+your vow?"
+
+"But, father, is it not a sin to turn back and repent of a promise made
+to the Madonna? I made it at the time with my whole heart----" said
+Lucia, violently agitated by so unexpected a hope.
+
+"A sin? A sin to have recourse to the Church, and to ask her minister to
+make use of the authority which he has received, through her, from God?
+And if you request me to declare you absolved from this vow, I shall not
+hesitate to do it; nay, I wish that you may request me."
+
+"Then--then--I do request it!"
+
+In an explicit voice the father then said, "By the authority I have
+received from the Church, I declare you absolved from the vow of
+virginity, and free you from every obligation you may thereby have
+contracted. Beseech the Lord again for those graces you once besought to
+make you a holy wife; and rely on it, He will bestow them upon you after
+so many sorrows."
+
+"Has Renzo told you," Fra Cristoforo continued, "whom he has seen here?"
+
+"Oh, yes, father, he has!"
+
+"You will pray for him. Don't be weary of doing so. And pray also for
+me."
+
+Some weeks later, Don Abbondio received a visit, as unexpected as it was
+gratifying, from the marquis who, on Rodrigo's death from the plague,
+succeeded to his estates.
+
+"I come," said he, "to bring you the compliments of the cardinal
+archbishop. He wishes to have news of the young betrothed persons of
+this parish, who had to suffer on account of the unfortunate Don
+Rodrigo."
+
+"Everything is settled, and they will be man and wife as soon as
+possible."
+
+"And I request that you be good enough to tell me if I can be of any
+service to them."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+And here we may safely leave Renzo and Lucia. Their powerful protector
+easily secured Renzo's pardon, and shortly afterwards they were happily
+married and settled in Bergamo, where abundant prosperity came to them;
+and, furthermore, they were blessed with a large family, of whom the
+first, being a girl, was named Maria.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+
+
+FREDERICK MARRYAT
+
+
+Mr. Midshipman Easy
+
+
+     Frederick Marryat, novelist and captain in the navy, was born
+     in London on July 10, 1792. As a boy he chiefly distinguished
+     himself by repeatedly running away from school with the
+     intention of going to sea. His first experience of naval
+     service was under Lord Cochrane, whom he afterwards reproduced
+     as Captain Savage of the Diomede in "Peter Simple." Honourable
+     though Marryat's life at sea was, it is as a graphic depictor
+     of naval scenes, customs, and character that he is known to
+     the present generation. His first story, "Frank Mildmay"
+     (1829), took the reading public by storm, and from that time
+     onward he produced tale after tale with startling rapidity.
+     "Peter Simple" is the best of Captain Marryat's novels, and
+     "Mr. Midshipman Easy" is the most humorous. Published in
+     volume form in 1836, after appearing serially in the pages of
+     the "Metropolitan Magazine," of which Marryat was then editor,
+     the latter story immediately caught the fancy of the public,
+     and considerably widened his already large circle of readers.
+     "Mr. Midshipman Easy" is frankly farcical; it shows its author
+     not only as a graphic writer, but as one gifted with an
+     abundance of whimsical humour and a keen sense of
+     characterisation. Opinions may differ as to the actual merits
+     of "Mr. Midshipman Easy," but it has more than served its
+     author's purpose--it has held the public for over seventy
+     years. Captain Marryat died on August 9, 1848.
+
+
+_I.--Mr. Easy Joins His Majesty's Service_
+
+
+Mr. Nicodemus Easy was a gentleman who lived down in Hampshire. He was a
+married man, and in very easy circumstances, and having decided to be a
+philosopher, he had fixed upon the rights of man, equality, and all
+that--how every person was born to inherit his share of the earth--for
+his philosophy.
+
+At the age of fourteen his only son, Jack, decided to go to sea.
+
+"It has occurred to me, father," he said, "that although the whole earth
+has been so nefariously divided among the few, the waters at least are
+the property of all. No man claims his share of the sea; everyone may
+there plough as he pleases without being taken up for a trespasser. It
+is, then, only upon the ocean that I am likely to find that equality and
+rights of man which we are so anxious to establish on shore; and
+therefore I have resolved not to go to school again, which I detest, but
+to go to sea."
+
+"I cannot listen to that, Jack. You must return to school."
+
+"All I have to say is, father, that I swear by the rights of man I will
+not go back to school, and that I will go to sea. Was I not born my own
+master? Has anyone a right to dictate to me as if I were not his equal?"
+
+Mr. Easy had nothing to reply.
+
+"I will write to Captain Wilson," he said mournfully.
+
+Captain Wilson, who was under considerable obligations to Mr. Easy,
+wrote in reply promising that he would treat Jack as his own son, and
+our hero very soon found his way down to Portsmouth.
+
+As Jack had plenty of money, and was very much pleased at finding
+himself his own master, he was in no hurry to join his ship, and five or
+six companions whom he had picked up strongly advised him to put it off
+until the very last moment. So he was three weeks at Portsmouth before
+anyone knew of his arrival.
+
+At last, Captain Wilson, receiving a note from Mr. Easy, desired Mr.
+Sawbridge, the first lieutenant, to make inquiries; and Mr. Sawbridge,
+going on shore, and being informed by the waiter at the Fountain Inn
+that Mr. Easy had been there three weeks, was justly indignant.
+
+Mr. Sawbridge was a good officer, who had really worked his way up to
+the present rank--that is, he had served seven-and-twenty years, and had
+nothing but his pay. He was a good-hearted man; but when he entered
+Jack's room, and saw the dinner-table laid out in the best style for
+eight, his bile was raised by the display.
+
+"May I beg to ask," said Jack, who was always remarkably polite in his
+address, "in what manner I may be of service to you?"
+
+"Yes sir, you may--by joining your ship immediately."
+
+Hereupon, Jack, who did not admire the peremptory tone of Mr. Sawbridge,
+very coolly replied. "And, pray, who are you?"
+
+"Who am I, sir? My name is Sawbridge, sir, and I am the first lieutenant
+of the Harpy. Now, sir, you have your answer."
+
+Mr. Sawbridge was not in uniform, but he imagined the name of the first
+lieutenant would strike terror to a culprit midshipman.
+
+"Really, sir," replied Jack. "What may be your exact situation on board?
+My ignorance of the service will not allow me to guess; but if I may
+judge from your behaviour, you have no small opinion of yourself."
+
+"Look ye, young man, you may not know what a first lieutenant is; but,
+depend upon it, I'll let you know very soon! In the meantime, sir, I
+insist that you go immediately on board."
+
+"I'm sorry that I cannot comply with your very moderate request,"
+replied Jack coolly. "I shall go on board when it suits my convenience,
+and I beg that you will give yourself no further trouble on my account."
+He then rang the bell. "Waiter, show this gentleman downstairs."
+
+"By the god of wars!" exclaimed the first lieutenant. "But I'll soon
+show you down to the boat, my young bantam! I shall now go and report
+your conduct to Captain Wilson, and if you are not on board this
+evening, to-morrow morning I shall send a sergeant and a file of marines
+to fetch you."
+
+"You may depend upon it," replied Jack, "that I also shall not fail to
+mention to Captain Wilson that I consider you a very quarrelsome,
+impertinent fellow, and recommend him not to allow you to remain on
+board. It will be quite uncomfortable to be in the same ship with such
+an ungentlemanly bear."
+
+"He must be mad--quite mad!" exclaimed Sawbridge, whose astonishment
+even mastered his indignation. "Mad as a March hare!"
+
+"No, sir," replied Jack, "I am not mad, but I am a philosopher."
+
+"A _what_? Well, my joker, all the better for you. I shall put your
+philosophy to the proof."
+
+"It is for that very reason, sir, that I have decided upon going to sea;
+and if you do remain on board, I hope to argue the point with you, and
+make you a convert to the truth of equality and the rights of man. We
+are all born equal. I trust you'll allow that?"
+
+"Twenty-seven years have I been in the service!" roared Sawbridge. "But
+he's mad--downright, stark, staring mad!" And the first lieutenant
+bounced out of the room.
+
+"He calls me mad," thought Jack. "I shall tell Captain Wilson what is my
+opinion about his lieutenant." Shortly afterwards the company arrived,
+and Jack soon forgot all about it.
+
+In the meantime, Sawbridge called at the captain's lodgings, and made a
+faithful report of all that had happened.
+
+Sawbridge and Wilson were old friends and messmates, and the captain put
+it to the first lieutenant that Mr. Easy, senior, having come to his
+assistance and released him from heavy difficulties with a most generous
+cheque, what could he do but be a father to his son?
+
+"I can only say," replied Sawbridge, "that, not only to please you, but
+also from respect to a man who has shown such goodwill towards one of
+our cloth, I shall most cheerfully forgive all that has passed between
+the lad and me."
+
+Captain Wilson then dispatched a note to our hero, requesting the
+pleasure of his company to breakfast on the ensuing morning, and Jack
+answered in the affirmative.
+
+Captain Wilson, who knew all about Mr. Easy's philosophy, explained to
+Jack the details and rank of every person on board, and that everyone
+was equally obliged to obey orders. Lieutenant Sawbridge's demeanour was
+due entirely to his zeal for his country.
+
+That evening Mr. Jack Easy was safe on board his majesty's sloop Harpy.
+
+
+_II.--On Board the Harpy_
+
+
+Jack remained in his hammock during the first few days at sea. He was
+very sick, bewildered, and confused, every minute knocking his head
+against the beams with the pitching and tossing of the sloop.
+
+"And this is going to sea," thought Jack. "No wonder that no one
+interferes with another here, or talks about a trespass; for I am sure
+anyone is welcome to my share of the ocean."
+
+When he was well enough he was told to go to the midshipman's berth, and
+Jack, who now felt excessively hungry, crawled over and between chests
+until he found himself in a hole infinitely inferior to the dog-kennels
+which received his father's pointers.
+
+"I'd not only give up the ocean," thought Jack, "and my share of it, but
+also my share of the Harpy, unto anyone who fancies it. Equality enough
+here, for everyone appears equally miserably off."
+
+But when he had gained the deck, the scene of cheerfulness, activity,
+and order lightened his heart after the four days of suffering, close
+air, and confinement from which he had just emerged.
+
+Jack dined with the captain that night, and was very much pleased to
+find that everyone drank wine with him, and that everybody at the
+captain's table appeared to be on an equality. Before the dessert had
+been on the table five minutes, Jack became loquacious on his favourite
+topic. All the company stared with surprise at such an unheard-of
+doctrine being broached on board of a man-of-war.
+
+This day may be considered as the first in which Jack really made his
+appearance on board, and it also was on this first day that Jack made
+known, at the captain's table, his very peculiar notions. If the company
+at the captain's table were astonished at such heterodox opinions being
+started, they were equally astonished at the cool, good-humoured
+ridicule with which they were received by Captain Wilson. The report of
+Jack's boldness, and every word and opinion that he had uttered--of
+course, much magnified--were circulated that evening through the whole
+ship; the matter was canvassed in the gun-room by the officers, and
+descanted upon by the midshipmen as they walked the deck. The boatswain
+talked it over with the other warrant officers, till the grog was all
+gone, and then dismissed it as too dry a subject.
+
+The bully of the midshipman's berth--a young man about seventeen, named
+Vigors--at once attacked our hero.
+
+"So, my chap, you are come on board to raise a mutiny here with your
+equality? You came off scot free at the captain's table, but it won't
+do, I can tell you; someone must knock under in the midshipman's berth,
+and you are one of them."
+
+"I can assure you that you are mistaken," replied Easy.
+
+At school Jack had fought and fought again, until he was a very good
+bruiser, and although not so tall as Vigors, he was much better built
+for fighting.
+
+"I've thrashed bigger fellows than he," he said to himself.
+
+"You impudent blackguard!" exclaimed Vigors. "If you say another word,
+I'll give you a good thrashing, and knock some of your equality out of
+you!"
+
+"Indeed!" replied Jack, who almost fancied himself back at school.
+"We'll try that!"
+
+Vigors had gained his assumed authority more by bullying than fighting;
+others had submitted to him without a sufficient trial. Jack, on the
+contrary, had won his way up in school by hard and scientific combat.
+The result, therefore, may easily be imagined. In less than a quarter of
+an hour Vigors, beaten dead, with his eyes closed and three teeth out,
+gave in; while Jack, after a basin of water, looked as fresh as ever.
+
+After that, Jack declared that as might was right in a midshipman's
+berth, he would so far restore equality that, let who would come, they
+must be his master before they should tyrannise over those weaker than
+he.
+
+
+_III.--The Triangular Duel_
+
+
+Jack, although generally popular on board, had made enemies of Mr.
+Biggs, the boatswain, and Mr. Easthupp, the purser's steward. The
+latter--a cockney and a thief--had even been kicked down the hatchway by
+our hero.
+
+When the Harpy was at Malta, Jack, wroth at the way the two men talked
+at him, declared he would give them satisfaction.
+
+"Mr. Biggs, let you and this fellow put on plain clothes, and I will
+meet you both."
+
+"One at a time?" said the boatswain.
+
+"No, sir; not one at a time, but both at the same time. I will fight
+both or none. If you are my superior officer, you must _descend_ to meet
+me, or I will not descend to meet that fellow, whom I believe to have
+been little better than a pickpocket!"
+
+Mr. Biggs having declared that he would fight, of course, had to look
+out for a second, and he fixed upon Mr. Tallboys, the gunner, and
+requested him to be his friend. Mr. Tallboys consented, but he was very
+much puzzled how to arrange that _three_ were to fight at the same time,
+for he had no idea of there being two duels. Jack had no one to confide
+in but Gascoigne, a fellow-midshipman; and although Gascoigne thought it
+was excessively _infra dig._ of Jack to meet even the boatswain, as the
+challenge had been given there was no retracting, and he therefore
+consented and went to meet Mr. Tallboys.
+
+"Mr. Gascoigne," said the gunner, "you see that there are three parties
+to fight. Had there been two or four there would have been no
+difficulty, as the straight line or square might guide us in that
+instance; but we must arrange it upon the triangle in this."
+
+Gascoigne stared. He could not imagine what was coming.
+
+"The duel between three can only be fought upon the principle of the
+triangle," the gunner went on. "You observe," he said, taking a piece of
+chalk and making a triangle on the table, "in this figure we have three
+points, each equidistant from each other; and we have three combatants,
+so that, placing one at each point, it is all fair play for the three.
+Mr. Easy, for instance, stands here, the boatswain here, and the
+purser's steward at the third corner. Now, if the distance is fairly
+measured it will be all right."
+
+"But then," replied Gascoigne, delighted at the idea, "how are they to
+fire?"
+
+"It certainly is not of much consequence," replied the gunner; "but
+still, as sailors, it appears to me that they should fire with the
+sun--that is, Mr. Easy fires at Mr. Biggs, Mr. Biggs fires at Mr.
+Easthupp, and Mr. Easthupp fires at Mr. Easy, so that you perceive that
+each party has his shot at one, and at the same time receives the fire
+of another."
+
+Gascoigne was in ecstasies at the novelty of the proceeding.
+
+"Upon my word, Mr. Tallboys, I give you great credit. You have a
+profound mathematical head, and I am delighted with your arrangement. I
+shall insist upon Mr. Easy consenting to your excellent and scientific
+proposal."
+
+Gascoigne went out and told Jack what the gunner had proposed, at which
+Jack laughed heartily. The gunner also explained it to the boatswain,
+who did not very well comprehend, but replied, "I daresay it's all
+right. Shot for shot, and d---- all favours!"
+
+The parties then repaired to the spot with two pairs of ship's pistols,
+which Mr. Tallboys had smuggled on shore; and as soon as they were on
+the ground, the gunner called Mr. Easthupp. In the meantime, Gascoigne
+had been measuring an equilaterial triangle of twelve paces, and marked
+it out. Mr. Tallboys, on his return with the purser's steward, went over
+the ground, and finding that it was "equal angles subtended by equal
+sides," declared that it was all right. Easy took his station, the
+boatswain was put into his, and Mr. Easthupp, who was quite in a
+mystery, was led by the gunner to the third position.
+
+"But, Mr. Tallboys," said the purser's steward, "I don't understand
+this. Mr. Easy will first fight Mr. Biggs, will he not?"
+
+"No," replied the gunner; "this is a duel of three. You will fire at Mr.
+Easy, Mr. Easy will fire at Mr. Biggs, and Mr. Biggs will fire at you.
+It is all arranged, Mr. Easthupp."
+
+"But," said Mr. Easthupp, "I do not understand it. Why is Mr. Biggs to
+fire at me? I have no quarrel with Mr. Biggs."
+
+"Because Mr. Easy fires at Mr. Biggs, and Mr. Biggs must have his shot
+as well."
+
+"But still, I've no quarrel with Mr. Biggs, and therefore, Mr. Biggs, of
+course you will not aim at me."
+
+"Why, you don't think that I'm going to be fired at for nothing?"
+replied the boatswain. "No, no; I'll have my shot, anyhow!"
+
+"But at your friend, Mr. Biggs?"
+
+"All the same, I shall fire at somebody, shot for shot, and hit the
+luckiest."
+
+"Vel, gentlemen, I purtest against these proceedings," remarked Mr.
+Easthupp. "I came here to have satisfaction from Mr. Easy, and not to be
+fired at by Mr. Biggs."
+
+"So you would have a shot without receiving one?" cried Gascoigne. "The
+fact is that this fellow's a confounded coward."
+
+At this affront, Mr. Easthupp rallied, and accepted the pistol offered
+by the gunner.
+
+"You 'ear those words, Mr. Biggs? Pretty language to use to a gentleman!
+I purtest no longer, Mr. Tallboys. Death before dishonour--I'm a
+gentleman!"
+
+The gunner gave the word as if he were exercising the great guns on
+board ship.
+
+"Cock your locks! Take good aim at the object! Fire!"
+
+Mr. Easthupp clapped his hand to his trousers, gave a loud yell, and
+then dropped down, having presented his broadside as a target to the
+boatswain. Jack's shot had also taken effect, having passed through both
+the boatswain's cheeks, without further mischief than extracting two of
+his best upper double teeth, and forcing through the hole of the farther
+cheek the boatswain's own quid of tobacco. As for Mr. Easthupp's ball,
+as he was very unsettled and shut his eyes before he fired, it had gone
+heaven knows where.
+
+The purser's steward lay on the ground and screamed; the boatswain threw
+down his pistol in a rage. The former was then walked off to the
+hospital, attended by the gunner, and also the boatswain, who thought he
+might as well have a little medical advice before going on board.
+
+"Well, Easy," said Gascoigne, collecting the pistols and tying them up
+in his handkerchief, "I'll be shot, but we're in a pretty scrape;
+there's no hushing this up. I'll be hanged if I care; it's the best
+piece of fun I ever met with."
+
+"I'm afraid that our leave will be stopped for the future," replied
+Jack.
+
+"Confound it, and they say that the ship is to be here six weeks at
+least. I won't go on board. Look ye, Jack, we'll pretend to be so much
+alarmed at the result of this duel, that we dare not show ourselves lest
+we should be hung. I will write a note and tell all the particulars to
+the master's mate, and refer to the gunner for the truth of it, and beg
+him to intercede with the captain and first lieutenant. I know that
+although we should be punished, they will only laugh; but I will pretend
+that Easthupp is killed, and we are frightened out of our lives. That
+will be it; and then let's get on board one of the fruit boats, sail in
+the night for Palermo, and then we'll have a cruise for a fortnight, and
+when the money is all gone we'll come back."
+
+"That's a capital idea, Ned, and the sooner we do it the better."
+
+They were two very nice lads.
+
+
+_IV.--Jack Leaves the Service_
+
+
+At the end of four years at sea, Jack had been cured of his philosophy
+of equality. The death of his mother, and a letter from the old family
+doctor that his father was not in his senses, decided him to return
+home.
+
+"It is fortunate for you that the estate is entailed," wrote Dr.
+Middleton, "or you might soon be a beggar, for there is no saying what
+debts your father might, in his madness, be guilty of. He has turned
+away his keepers, and allowed poachers to go all over the manor. I
+consider that it is absolutely necessary that you should immediately
+return home and look after what will one day be your property. You have
+no occasion to follow the profession with your income of £8,000 per
+annum. You have distinguished yourself, now make room for those who
+require it for their subsistence."
+
+Captain Wilson approved of the decision, and Jack left the service. At
+his request, his devoted admirer Mesty--an abbreviation of
+Mephistopheles--an African, once a prince in Ashantee and now the cook
+of the midshipmen's mess, was allowed to leave the service and accompany
+our hero to England as his servant.
+
+From the first utterances of Jack on the subject of liberty and
+equality, he had won Mesty's heart, and in a hundred ways the black had
+proved his fidelity and attachment. His delight at going home with his
+patron was indescribable.
+
+Jack had not written to his father to announce his arrival, and when he
+reached home he found things worse than he expected.
+
+His father was at the mercy of his servants, who, insolent and
+insubordinate, robbed, laughed at, and neglected him. The waste and
+expense were enormous. Our hero, who found how matters stood, soon
+resolved what to do.
+
+He rose early; Mesty was in the room, with warm water, as soon as he
+rang.
+
+"By de power, Massa Easy, your fader very silly old man!"
+
+"I'm afraid so," replied Jack. "How are they getting on in the servants'
+hall?"
+
+"Regular mutiny, sar--ab swear dat dey no stand our nonsense, and dat we
+both leave the house to-morrow."
+
+Jack went to his father.
+
+"Do you hear, sir, your servants declare that I shall leave your house
+to-morrow."
+
+"You leave my house, Jack, after four years' absence! No, no, I'll
+reason with them--I'll make them a speech. You don't know how I can
+speak, Jack."
+
+"Look you, father, I cannot stand this. Either give me _carte blanche_
+to arrange this household as I please, or I shall quit it myself
+to-morrow morning."
+
+"Quit my house, Jack! No, no--shake hands and make friends with them; be
+civil, and they will serve you."
+
+"Do you consent, sir, or am I to leave the house?"
+
+"Leave the house! Oh, no; not leave the house, Jack. I have no son but
+you. Then do as you please--but you will not send away my butler--he
+escaped hanging last assizes on an undoubted charge of murder? I
+selected him on purpose, and must have him cured, and shown as a proof
+of a wonderful machine I have invented."
+
+"Mesty," said Jack, "get my pistols ready for to-morrow morning, and
+your own too--do you hear? It is possible, father, that you may not have
+yet quite cured your murderer, and therefore it is as well to be
+prepared."
+
+Mr. Easy did not long survive his son's return, and under Jack's
+management, in which Mesty rendered invaluable assistance, the household
+was reformed, and the estate once more conducted on reasonable lines.
+
+A year later Jack was married, and Mesty, as major domo, held his post
+with dignity, and proved himself trustworthy.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+
+
+Peter Simple
+
+
+     "Peter Simple," published in 1833, is in many respects the
+     best of all Marryat's novels. Largely drawn from Marryat's own
+     professional experiences, the story, with its vivid
+     portraiture and richness of incident, is told with rare
+     atmosphere and style. Hogg placed the character of "Peter
+     Simple" on a level with Fielding's "Parson Adams;" Edgar Allan
+     Poe, on the other hand, found Marryat's works "essentially
+     mediocre."
+
+
+_I.--I am Sacrificed to the Navy_
+
+
+I think that had I been permitted to select my own profession in
+childhood, I should in all probability have bound myself apprentice to a
+tailor, for I always envied the comfortable seat which they appeared to
+enjoy upon the shopboard. But my father, who was a clergyman of the
+Church of England and the youngest brother of a noble family, had a
+lucrative living, and a "soul above buttons," if his son had not. It has
+been from time immemorial the custom to sacrifice the greatest fool of
+the family to the prosperity and naval superiority of the country, and
+at the age of fourteen, I was selected as the victim.
+
+My father, who lived in the North of England, forwarded me by coach to
+London, and from London I set out by coach for Portsmouth.
+
+A gentleman in a plaid cloak sat by me, and at the Elephant and Castle a
+drunken sailor climbed up by the wheel of the coach and sat down on the
+other side.
+
+I commenced a conversation with the gentleman in the plaid cloak
+relative to my profession, and asked him whether it was not very
+difficult to learn.
+
+"Larn," cried the sailor, interrupting us, "no; it may be difficult for
+such chaps as me before the mast to larn; but you, I presume, is a
+reefer, and they ain't not much to larn, 'cause why, they pipe-clays
+their weekly accounts, and walks up and down with their hands in their
+pockets. You must larn to chaw baccy and drink grog, and then you knows
+all a midshipman's expected to know nowadays. Ar'n't I right, sir?" said
+the sailor, appealing to the gentleman in a plaid cloak. "I axes you,
+because I see you're a sailor by the cut of your jib. Beg pardon, sir,"
+continued he, touching his hat; "hope no offence."
+
+"I am afraid that you have nearly hit the mark, my good fellow," replied
+the gentleman.
+
+At the bottom of Portsdown Hill I inquired how soon we should be at
+Portsmouth. He answered that we were passing the lines; but I saw no
+lines, and I was ashamed to show my ignorance. The gentleman in a plaid
+cloak asked me what ship I was going to join, and whether I had a letter
+of introduction to the captain.
+
+"Yes, I have," replied I. And I pulled out my pocket-book, in which the
+letter was. "Captain Savage, H.M. ship Diomede," I read.
+
+To my surprise, he very coolly took the letter and proceeded to open it,
+which occasioned me immediately to snatch the letter from him, stating
+my opinion at the same time that it was a breach of honour, and that in
+my opinion he was no gentleman.
+
+"Just as you please, youngster," replied he. "Recollect, you have told
+me I am no gentleman."
+
+He wrapped his plaid around him and said no more, and I was not a little
+pleased at having silenced him by my resolute behaviour.
+
+I stayed at the Blue Posts, where all the midshipmen put up, that night,
+and next morning presented myself at the George Inn with my letter of
+introduction to Captain Savage.
+
+"Mr. Simple, I am glad to see you," said a voice. And there sat, with
+his uniform and epaulets, and his sword by his side, the passenger in
+the plaid cloak who wanted to open my letter and whom I had told to his
+face that he was "no gentleman!"
+
+I thought I should have died, and was just sinking down upon my knees to
+beg for mercy, when the captain, perceiving my confusion, burst out into
+a laugh, and said, "So you know me again, Mr. Simple? Well, don't be
+alarmed. You did your duty in not permitting me to open the letter,
+supposing me, as you did, to be some other person, and you were
+perfectly right, under that supposition, to tell me that I was not a
+gentleman. I give you credit for your conduct. Now, I think the sooner
+you go on board the better."
+
+On my arrival on board, the first lieutenant, after looking at me
+closely, said, "Now, Mr. Simple, I have looked attentively at your face,
+and I see at once that you are very clever, and if you do not prove so
+in a _very_ short time, why--you had better jump overboard, that's all."
+
+I was very much terrified at this speech, but at the same time I was
+pleased to hear that he thought me clever. My unexpected reputation was
+shortly afterwards strengthened, when, noticing the first lieutenant in
+consultation with the gunner, the former, on my approaching, said,
+"Youngster hand me that _monkey's tail_."
+
+I saw nothing like a monkey's tail, but I was so frightened that I
+snatched up the first thing that I saw, which was a short bar of iron,
+and it so happened that it was the very article which he wanted.
+
+"So you know what a monkey's tail is already, do you?" said the first
+lieutenant. "Now don't you ever sham stupid after that."
+
+A fortnight later, at daylight, a signal from the flagship in harbour
+was made for us to unmoor; our orders had come to cruise in the Bay of
+Biscay. The captain came on board, the anchor weighed, and we ran
+through the Needles with a fine breeze. Presently I felt so very ill
+that I went down below. What occurred for the next six days I cannot
+tell. I thought I should die every moment, and lay in my hammock,
+incapable of eating, drinking, or walking about.
+
+O'Brien, the senior midshipman and master's mate, who had been very kind
+to me, came to me on the seventh, morning and said that if I did not
+exert myself I never should get well; that he had taken me under his
+protection, and to prove his regard would give me a good basting, which
+was a sovereign remedy for sea-sickness. He suited the action to the
+word, and drubbed me on the ribs without mercy until I thought the
+breath was out of my body; but I obeyed his orders to go on deck
+immediately, and somehow or other did contrive to crawl up the ladder to
+the main deck, where I sat down and cried bitterly. What would I have
+given to have been at home again! It was not my fault that I was the
+greatest fool of the family, yet how was I punished for it! But, by
+degrees, I recovered myself, and certainly that night I slept very
+soundly.
+
+The next morning O'Brien came to me again.
+
+"It's a nasty slow fever, that sea-sickness, my Peter, and we must drive
+it out of you."
+
+And then he commenced a repetition of yesterday's remedy until I was
+almost a jelly. Whether the fear of being thrashed drove away my
+sickness, I do not know, but this is certain, that I felt no more of it
+after the second beating, and the next morning when I awoke I was very
+hungry.
+
+
+_II.--I am Taken Prisoner_
+
+
+One morning at daybreak we found ourselves about four miles from the
+town of Cette, and a large convoy of vessels coming round a point. We
+made all sail in chase, and they anchored close in shore under a
+battery, which we did not discover until it opened fire upon us. The
+captain tacked the ship, and stood out again, until the boats were
+hoisted out, and all ready to pull on shore and storm the battery.
+O'Brien, who was the officer commanding the first cutter on service, was
+in his boat, and I obtained permission from him to smuggle myself into
+it.
+
+We ran ashore, amidst the fire of the gunboats which protected the
+convoy, by which we lost three men, and made for the battery, which we
+took without opposition, the French artillerymen running out as we ran
+in. The directions of the captain were very positive not to remain in
+the battery a minute after it was taken, but to board the gunboats,
+leaving only one of the small boats, with the armourer, to spike the
+guns, for the captain was aware that there were troops stationed along
+the coast who might come down upon us and beat us off.
+
+The first lieutenant, who commanded, desired O'Brien to remain with the
+first cutter, and after the armourer had spiked the guns, as officer of
+the boat he was to shove off immediately. O'Brien and I remained in the
+battery with the armourer, the boat's crew being ordered down to the
+boat to keep her afloat and ready to shove off at a moment's warning. We
+had spiked all the guns but one, when all of a sudden a volley of
+musketry was poured upon us, which killed the armourer, and wounded me
+in the leg above the knee. I fell down by O'Brien, who cried out, "By
+the powers, here they are, and one gun not spiked!" He jumped down,
+wrenched the hammer from the armourer's hand, and seizing a nail from
+the bag, in a few moments he had spiked the gun.
+
+At this time I heard the tramping of the French soldiers advancing, when
+O'Brien threw away the hammer and lifting me upon his shoulders cried,
+"Come along, Peter, my boy," and made for the boat as fast as he could.
+But he was too late; he had not got half-way to the boat before he was
+collared by two French soldiers and dragged back into the battery. The
+French troops then advanced and kept up a smart fire; our cutter escaped
+and joined the other boat, who had captured the gunboats and convoy with
+little opposition.
+
+In the meantime, O'Brien had been taken into the battery with me on his
+back; but as soon as he was there he laid me gently down, saying,
+"Peter, my boy, as long as you were under my charge, I'd carry you
+through thick and thin; but now that you are under the charge of these
+French beggars, why, let them carry you."
+
+When the troops ceased firing (and if O'Brien had left one gun unspiked
+they must have done a great deal of mischief to our boats), the
+commanding officer came up to O'Brien, and looking at him, said,
+"Officer?" to which O'Brien nodded his head. He then pointed to
+me--"Officer?" O'Brien nodded his head again, at which the French troops
+laughed, and called me an _enfant_.
+
+Then, as I was very faint and could not walk, I was carried on three
+muskets, O'Brien walking by my side, till we reached the town of Cette;
+there we were taken to the commanding officer's house. It turned out
+that this officer's name was also O'Brien, and that he was of Irish
+descent. He and his daughter Celeste, a little girl of twelve, treated
+us both with every kindness. Celeste was my little nurse, and we became
+very intimate, as might be expected. Our chief employment was teaching
+each other French and English.
+
+Before two months were over, I was quite recovered, and soon the time
+came when we were to leave our comfortable quarters for a French prison.
+Captain Savage had sent our clothes and two hundred dollars to us under
+a flag of truce, and I had taken advantage of this to send a letter off
+which I dictated to Colonel O'Brien, containing my statement of the
+affair, in which I mentioned O'Brien's bravery in spiking the gun and in
+looking after me. I knew that he would never tell if I didn't.
+
+At last the day came for us to leave, and my parting with Celeste was
+very painful. I promised to write to her, and she promised to answer my
+letters if it were permitted. We shook hands with Colonel O'Brien,
+thanking him for his kindness, and much to his regret we were taken in
+charge by two French cuirassiers, and so set off, on parole, on
+horseback for Toulon.
+
+From Toulon we were moved to Montpelier, and from Montpelier to Givet, a
+fortified town in the department of Ardennes, where we arrived exactly
+four months after our capture.
+
+
+_III.--We Make Our Escape_
+
+
+O'Brien had decided at once that we should make our escape from the
+prison at Givet.
+
+First he procured a plan of the fortress from a gendarme, and then, when
+we were shown into the room allotted to us, and our baggage was
+examined, the false bottom of his trunk was not noticed, and by this
+means various instruments he had bought on the road escaped detection.
+Round his body O'Brien had also wound a rope of silk, sixty feet long,
+with knots at every two feet.
+
+The practicability of escape from Givet seemed to me impossible. The
+yard of the fortress was surrounded by a high wall; the buildings
+appropriated for the prisoners were built with lean-to roofs on one
+side, and at each side of the square was a sentry looking down upon us.
+We had no parole, and but little communication with the towns-people.
+
+But O'Brien, who often examined the map he had procured from the
+gendarme, said to me one day, "Peter, can you swim?"
+
+"No," replied I; "but never mind that."
+
+"But I must mind it, Peter; for observe we shall have to cross the River
+Meuse, and boats are not always to be had. This fortress is washed by
+the river on one side; and as it is the strongest side it is the least
+guarded--we must escape by it. I can see my way clear enough till we get
+to the second rampart on the river, but when we drop into the river, if
+you cannot swim, I must contrive to hold you up somehow or other. But
+first tell me, do you intend to try your luck with me?"
+
+"Yes," replied I, "most certainly, if you have sufficient confidence in
+me to take me as your companion."
+
+"To tell you the truth, Peter, I would not give a farthing to escape
+without you. We were taken together, and, please God, we'll take
+ourselves off together, directly we get the dark nights and foul
+weather."
+
+We had been about two months in Givet when letters arrived. My father
+wrote requesting me to draw for whatever money I might require, and also
+informing me that as my Uncle William was dead, there was now only one
+between him and the title, but that my grandfather, Lord Privilege, was
+in good health. O'Brien's letter was from Captain Savage; the frigate
+had been sent home with despatches, and O'Brien's conduct represented to
+the Admiralty, which had, in consequence, promoted him to the rank of
+lieutenant. We read each other's letters, and O'Brien said, "I see your
+uncle is dead. How many more uncles have you?"
+
+"My Uncle John, who is married, and has already two daughters."
+
+"Blessings on him! Peter, my boy, you shall be a lord before you die."
+
+"Nonsense, O'Brien; I have no chance."
+
+"What chance had I of being lieutenant, and am I not one? And now, my
+boy, prepare yourself to quit this cursed hole in a week, wind and
+weather permitting. But, Peter, do me one favour. As I am really a
+lieutenant, just touch your hat to me, only once, that's all; but I wish
+the compliment, just to see how it looks."
+
+"Lieutenant O'Brien," said I, touching my hat, "have you any further
+orders?"
+
+"Yes, sir," replied he; "that you never presume to touch your hat to me
+again, unless we sail together, and then that's a different sort of
+thing."
+
+A week later, O'Brien's preparations were complete. I had bought a new
+umbrella on his advice, and this he had painted with a preparation of
+oil and beeswax. He had also managed to procure a considerable amount of
+twine, which he had turned into a sort of strong cord, or square plait.
+
+At twelve o'clock on a dark November night we left our room and went
+down into the yard. By means of pieces of iron, which he drove into the
+interstices of the stone, we scaled a high wall, and dropped down on the
+other side by a drawbridge. Here the sentry was asleep, but O'Brien
+gagged him, and I threw open the pan of his musket to prevent him from
+firing.
+
+Then I followed O'Brien into the river. The umbrella was opened and
+turned upwards, and I had only to hold on to it at arm's-length. O'Brien
+had a tow line, and taking this in his teeth, he towed me down with the
+stream to about a hundred yards clear of the fortress, where we landed.
+O'Brien was so exhausted that for a few minutes he remained quite
+motionless. I also was benumbed with the cold.
+
+"Peter," said he, "thank God we have succeeded so far. Now we must push
+on as far as we can, for we shall have daylight in two hours."
+
+It was not till some months later that, after many adventures, we
+reached Flushing, and procured the services of a pilot. With a strong
+tide and a fair wind we were soon clear of the Scheldt, and next morning
+a cutter hove in sight, and in a few minutes we found ourselves once
+more under the British pennant.
+
+
+_IV.--In Bedlam_
+
+
+Once, in the West Indies, O'Brien and I had again come across our good
+friend Colonel O'Brien and his daughter Celeste. He was now General
+O'Brien, Governor of Martinique; and Celeste was nineteen, and I
+one-and-twenty. And though France and England were still at war, before
+we parted Celeste and I were lovers, engaged to be married; and the
+general raised no objection to our attachment.
+
+On our return from that voyage a series of troubles overtook me. My
+grandfather, Lord Privilege, had begun to take some interest in me; but
+before he died my uncle went to live with him, and so poisoned his mind
+against me that when the old lord's will was read it was found that
+£10,000 bequeathed to me had been cancelled by a codicil. As both my
+brothers and my other uncle were dead, my uncle was enraged at the
+possibility of my succeeding to the title.
+
+The loss of £10,000 was too much for my father's reason, and from lunacy
+he went quietly to his grave, leaving my only sister, Ellen, to find a
+home among strangers.
+
+In the meantime, O'Brien had been made a captain, and had sailed for the
+East Indies. I was to have accompanied him, but my uncle, who had now
+succeeded to the title, had sufficient influence at the Admiralty to
+prevent this, and I was appointed first lieutenant to a ship whose
+captain, an illegitimate son of Lord Privilege, was determined to ruin
+me. Captain Hawkins was a cowardly, mean, tyrannical man, and, although
+I kept my temper under all his petty persecutions, he managed at last to
+string together a number of accusations and, on our return, send me to a
+court-martial.
+
+The verdict of the court-martial was that "the charges of
+insubordination had been partly proved, and therefore that Lieutenant
+Peter Simple was dismissed his ship; but in consideration of his good
+character and services his case was strongly recommended to the
+consideration of the Lords Commissioners of the Admiralty."
+
+I hardly knew whether I felt glad or sorry at this sentence. On the one
+hand, in spite of the fourteen years I had served, it was almost a
+death-blow to my future advancement or employment in the service; on the
+other, the recommendation very much softened down the sentence, and I
+was quite happy to be quit of Captain Hawkins and free to hasten to my
+poor sister.
+
+I hurried on shore, but on my journey north fell ill with fever, and for
+three weeks was in a state of alternate stupor and delirium, lying in a
+cottage by the roadside.
+
+My uncle, learning of my condition, thought this too favourable an
+opportunity, provided I should live, not to have me in his power. He
+sent to have me removed, and some days afterwards--for I recollect
+nothing about the journey--I found myself in bed in a dark room, and my
+arms confined. Where was I? Presently the door opened, and a man entered
+who took down a shutter, and the light streamed in. The walls were bare
+and whitewashed. I looked at the window; it was closed up with two iron
+bars.
+
+"Why, where am I?" I inquired, with alarm.
+
+"Where are you?" replied he. "Why, in Bedlam!"
+
+As I afterwards discovered, my uncle had had me confined upon the plea
+that I was a young man who was deranged with an idea that his name was
+Simple, and that he was the heir to the title and estates, and that it
+was more from the fear of my coming to some harm than from any ill-will
+toward the poor young man that he wished me to remain in the hospital
+and be taken care of. Under these circumstances, I remained in Bedlam
+for one year and eight months.
+
+A chance visit from General O'Brien, a prisoner on parole, who was
+accompanied by his friend, Lord Belmore, secured my release; and shortly
+afterwards I commenced an action for false imprisonment against Lord
+Privilege. But the sudden death of my uncle stopped the action, and gave
+me the title and estates. The return of my old messmate, Captain
+O'Brien, who had just been made Sir Terence O'Brien, in consequence of
+his successes in the East Indies, added to my happiness.
+
+I found that Sir Terence had been in love with my sister Ellen from the
+day I had first taken him home, and that Ellen was equally in love with
+him; so when Celeste consented to my entreaties that our wedding should
+take place six weeks after my assuming the title, O'Brien took the hint
+and spoke.
+
+Both unions have been attended with as much happiness as this world can
+afford. O'Brien and I are blessed with children, until we can now muster
+a large Christmas party in the two families.
+
+Such is the history of Peter Simple, Viscount Privilege, no longer the
+fool, but the head, of the family.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+
+
+CHARLES MATURIN
+
+
+Melmoth the Wanderer
+
+
+     The romances of Charles Robert Maturin mark the transition
+     stage between the old crude "Gothic" tales of terror and the
+     subtler and weirder treatment of the supernatural that had its
+     greatest master in Edgar Allan Poe. Maturin was born at Dublin
+     in 1782, and died there on October 30, 1824. He became a
+     clergyman of the Church of Ireland; but his leanings were
+     literary rather than clerical, and his first story, "Montorio"
+     (1807), was followed by others that brought him increasing
+     popularity. Over-zealousness on a friend's behalf caused him
+     heavy financial losses, for which he strove to atone by an
+     effort to write for the stage. Thanks to the good offices of
+     Scott and Byron, his tragedy, "Bertram," was acted at Drury
+     Lane in 1816, and proved successful. But his other dramatic
+     essays were failures, and he returned to romance. In 1820 was
+     published his masterpiece, "Melmoth the Wanderer," the central
+     figure of which is acknowledged to be one of the great Satanic
+     creations of literature. The book has been more appreciated in
+     France than in England; one of its most enthusiastic admirers
+     was Balzac, who paid it the compliment of writing a kind of
+     sequel to it.
+
+
+_I.--The Portrait_
+
+
+"I want a glass of wine," groaned the old man; "it would keep me alive a
+little longer."
+
+John Melmoth offered to get some for him. The dying man clutched the
+blankets around him, and looked strangely at his nephew.
+
+"Take this key," he said. "There is wine in that closet."
+
+John knew that no one but his uncle had entered the closet for sixty
+years--his uncle who had spent his life in greedily heaping treasure
+upon treasure, and who, now, on his miserable death-bed, grudged the
+clergyman's fee for the last sacrament.
+
+When John stepped into the closet, his eyes were instantly riveted by a
+portrait that hung on the wall. There was nothing remarkable about
+costume or countenance, but the eyes, John felt, were such as one feels
+they wish they had never seen. In the words of Southey, "they gleamed
+with demon light." John held the candle to the portrait, and could
+distinguish the words on the border: "Jno. Melmoth, anno 1646." He gazed
+in stupid horror until recalled by his uncle's cough.
+
+"You have seen the portrait?" whispered old Melmoth.
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Well, you will see him again--he is still alive."
+
+Later in the night, when the miser was at the point of death, John saw a
+figure enter the room, deliberately look round, and retire. The face of
+the figure was the face of the portrait! After a moment of terror, John
+sprang up to pursue, but the shrieks of his uncle recalled him. The
+agony was nearly ended; in a few minutes old Melmoth was dead.
+
+In the will, which made John a wealthy man, there was an instruction to
+him to destroy the portrait in the closet, and also to destroy a
+manuscript that he would find in the mahogany chest under the portrait;
+he was to read the manuscript if he pleased.
+
+On a cold and gloomy evening John entered the closet, found the
+manuscript, and with a feeling of superstitious awe, began to read it.
+The task was a hard one, for the manuscript was discoloured and
+mutilated, and much was quite indecipherable.
+
+John was able to gather, however, that it was the narrative of an
+Englishman, named Stanton, who had travelled in Spain in the seventeenth
+century. On one night of storm, Stanton had seen carried past him the
+bodies of two lovers who had been killed by lightning. As he watched, a
+man had stepped forward, had looked calmly at the bodies, and had burst
+into a horrible demoniac laugh. Stanton saw the man several times,
+always in circumstances of horror; he learnt that his name was Melmoth.
+This being exercised a kind of fascination over Stanton, who searched
+for him far and wide. Ultimately, Stanton was confined in a madhouse by
+relatives who wanted to secure his property; and from the madhouse he
+was offered, but refused, release by Melmoth as a result of some
+bargain, the nature of which was not revealed.
+
+After reading this story, John Melmoth raised his eyes, and he started
+involuntarily as they encountered those of the portrait. With a shudder,
+he tore the portrait from its frame, and rushed into his room, where he
+flung its fragments on the fire.
+
+The mansion was close by the iron-bound coast of Wicklow, in Ireland,
+and on the next night John was summoned forth by the news that a vessel
+was in distress. He saw immediately that the ship was doomed. She lay
+beating upon a rock, against which the tempest hurled breakers that
+dashed their foam to a height of thirty feet.
+
+In the midst of the tumult John descried, standing a little above him on
+the rock, a figure that showed neither sympathy nor terror, uttered no
+sound, offered no help. A few minutes afterwards he distinctly heard the
+words, "Let them perish!"
+
+Just then a tremendous wave dashing over the vessel extorted a cry of
+horror from the spectators. When the cry had ceased, Melmoth heard a
+laugh that chilled his blood. It was from the figure that stood above
+him. He recalled Stanton's narrative. In a blind fury of eagerness, he
+began to climb the rock; but a stone gave way in his grasp, and he was
+hurled into the roaring deep below.
+
+It was several days before he recovered his senses, and he then learned
+that he had been rescued by the one survivor of the wreck, a Spaniard,
+who had clutched at John and dragged him ashore with him. As soon as
+John had recovered somewhat, he hastened to thank his deliverer, who was
+lodged in the mansion. Having expressed his gratitude, Melmoth was about
+to retire, when the Spaniard detained him.
+
+"Señor," he said, "I understand your name is"--he gasped--"Melmoth?"
+
+"It is."
+
+"Had you," said the Spaniard rapidly, "a relative who was, about one
+hundred and forty years ago, said to be in Spain?"
+
+"I believe--I fear--I had."
+
+"Are you his descendant? Are you the repository of that terrible secret
+which--?" He gave way to uncontrollable agitation. Gradually he
+recovered himself, and went on. "It is singular that accident should
+have placed me within the reach of the only being from whom I could
+expect either sympathy or relief in the extraordinary circumstances in
+which I am placed--circumstances which I did not believe I should ever
+disclose to mortal man, but which I shall disclose to you."
+
+
+_II.--The Spaniard's Story_
+
+
+I am, as you know, a native of Spain; but you are yet to learn that I am
+a descendant of one of its noblest houses--the house of Monçada. While I
+was yet unborn, my mother vowed that I should be devoted to religion. As
+the time drew near when I was to forsake the world and retire to a
+monastery, I revolted in horror at the career before me, and refused to
+take the vows. But my family were completely under the influence of a
+cunning and arrogant priest, who threatened God's curse upon me if I
+disobeyed; and ultimately, with a despairing heart, I consented.
+
+"The horror with which I had anticipated monastic life was nothing to my
+disgust and misery at the realisation of its evils. The narrowness and
+littleness of it, the hypocrisies, all filled me with revolt; and it was
+only by brooding over possibilities of escape that I could avoid utter
+despair. At length a ray of hope came to me. My younger brother, a lad
+of spirit, who had quarrelled with the priest who dominated our family,
+succeeded with great difficulty in communicating with me, and promised
+that a civil process should be undertaken for the reclamation of my
+vows.
+
+"But presently my hopes were destroyed by the news that my civil process
+had failed. Of the desolation of mind into which this failure plunged
+me, I can give no account--despair has no diary. I remember that I used
+to walk for hours in the garden, where alone I could avoid the
+neighbourhood of the other monks. It happened that the fountain of the
+garden was out of repair, and the workmen engaged upon it had had to
+excavate a passage under the garden wall. But as this was guarded by day
+and securely locked by night, it offered but a tantalising image of
+escape and freedom.
+
+"One evening, as I sat gloomily by the door of the passage, I heard my
+name whispered. I answered eagerly, and a paper was thrust under the
+door. I knew the handwriting--it was that of my brother Juan. From it I
+learned that Juan was still planning my escape, and had found a
+confederate within the monastery--a parricide who had turned monk to
+evade his punishment.
+
+"Juan had bribed him heavily, yet I feared to trust him until he
+confided to me that he himself also intended to escape. At length our
+plans were completed; my companion had secured the key of a door in the
+chapel that led through the vaults to a trap-door opening into the
+garden. A rope ladder flung by Juan over the wall would give us liberty.
+
+"At the darkest hour of the night we passed through the door, and
+crawled through the dreadful passages beneath the monastery. I reached
+the top of the ladder-a lantern flashed in my eyes. I dropped down into
+my brother's arms.
+
+"We hurried away to where a carriage was waiting. I sprang into it.
+
+"'He is safe,' cried Juan, following me.
+
+"'But are you?' answered a voice behind him. He staggered and fell back.
+I leapt down beside him. I was bathed in his blood. He was dead. One
+moment of wild, fearful agony, and I lost consciousness.
+
+"When I came to myself, I was lying in an apartment not unlike my cell,
+but without a crucifix. Beside me stood my companion in flight.
+
+"'Where am I?' I asked.
+
+"'You are in the prison of the Inquisition,' he replied, with a mocking
+laugh.
+
+"He had betrayed me! He had been all the while in league with the
+superior.
+
+"I was tried again and again by the Inquisition--, charged not only with
+the crime of escaping from the convent and breaking my religious vows,
+but with the murder of my brother. My spirits sank with each appearance
+before the judges. I foresaw myself doomed to die at the stake.
+
+"One night, and for several nights afterwards, a visitor presented
+himself to me. He came and went apparently without help or hindrance--as
+if he had had a master-key to all the recesses of the prison. And yet he
+seemed no agent of the Inquisition--indeed, he denounced it with caustic
+satire and withering severity. But what struck me most of all was the
+preternatural glare of his eyes. I felt that I had never beheld such
+eyes blazing in a mortal face. It was strange, too, that he constantly
+referred to events that must have happened long before his birth as if
+he had actually witnessed them.
+
+"On the night before my final trial, I awoke from a hideous dream of
+burning alive to behold the stranger standing beside me. With an impulse
+I could not resist, I flung myself before him and begged him to save me.
+He promised to do so--on one awful and incommunicable condition. My
+horror brought me courage; I refused, and he left me.
+
+"Next day I was sentenced to death at the stake. But before my fearful
+doom could be accomplished, I was free--and by that very agency of fire
+that was to have destroyed me. The prison of the Inquisition was burned
+to the ground, and in the confusion I escaped.
+
+"When my strength was exhausted by running through the deserted streets,
+I leaned against a door; it gave way, and I found myself within the
+house. Concealed, I heard two voices--an old man's and a young man's.
+The old man was confessing to the young one--his son--that he was a Jew,
+and entreating the son to adopt the faith of Israel.
+
+"I knew I was in the presence of a pretended convert--one of those Jews
+who profess to become Catholics through fear of the Inquisition. I had
+become possessed of a valuable secret, and instantly acted upon it. I
+burst out upon them, and threatened that unless the old man gave me
+hiding I should betray him. At first he was panic-stricken, then,
+hastily promising me protection, he conducted me within the house. In an
+inner room he raised a portion of the floor; we descended and went along
+a dark passage, at the end of which my guide opened a door, through
+which I passed. He closed it behind me, and withdrew.
+
+"I was in an underground chamber, the walls of which were lined with
+skeletons, bottles containing strange misshapen creatures, and other
+hideous objects. I shuddered as I looked round.
+
+"'Why fearest thou these?' asked a voice.' Surely the implements of the
+healing art should cause no terror.'
+
+"I turned and beheld a man immensely old seated at a table. His eyes,
+although faded with years, looked keenly at me.
+
+"'Thou hast escaped from the clutches of the Inquisition?' he asked me.
+
+"'Yes,' I answered.
+
+"'And when in its prison,' he continued, leaning forward eagerly, 'didst
+thou face a tempter who offered thee deliverance at a dreadful price?'
+
+"'It was so,' I answered, wondering.
+
+"'My prayer, then, is granted,' he said. 'Christian youth, thou art safe
+here. None save mine own Jewish people know of my existence. And I have
+employment for thee.'
+
+"He showed me a huge manuscript.
+
+"'This,' he said, 'is written in characters that the officers of the
+Inquisition understand not. But the time has come for transcribing it,
+and my own eyes, old with age, are unequal to the labour. Yet it was
+necessary that the work should be done by one who has learnt the dread
+secret.'
+
+"A glance at the manuscript showed me that the language was Spanish, but
+the characters Greek. I began to read it, nor did I raise my eyes until
+the reading was ended."
+
+
+_III.--The Romance of Immalee_
+
+
+"The manuscript told how a Spanish merchant had set forth for the East
+Indies, taking his wife and son with him, and leaving an infant daughter
+behind. He prospered, and decided to settle in the East; he sent for his
+daughter, who came with her nurse. But their ship was wrecked; the child
+and the nurse alone escaped, and were stranded on an uninhabited island
+near the mouth of the Hooghly. The nurse died; but the child survived,
+and grew up a wild and beautiful daughter of nature, dwelling in lonely
+innocence, and revered as a goddess by the natives who watched her from
+afar.
+
+"To the Island, when Immalee (so she called herself) was growing into
+pure and lovely womanhood, there came a stranger--pale-faced, wholly
+different from the dark-skinned people she had seen from the shores of
+the island. She welcomed him with innocent joy. He came often; he told
+her of the outer world, of its wickedness and its miseries. She, too
+untutored to realise the sinister bitterness of his tone, listened with
+rapt attention and sympathy. She loved him. She told him that he was her
+all, that she would cling to him wheresoever he went. He looked at her
+with stern sorrow; he left her abruptly, nor did he ever visit the
+island again.
+
+"Immalee was rescued, her origin was discovered, and she became Isidora
+de Aliaga, the carefully nurtured daughter of prosperous and devout
+Spanish parents. The island and the stranger were memories of the past.
+Yet one day, in the streets of Madrid, she beheld once more the
+well-remembered eyes. Soon afterwards she was visited by the stranger.
+How he entered and left her home when he came to her--and again he came
+often--she could not tell. She feared him, and yet she loved him.
+
+"At length her father, who had been on another voyage, announced that he
+was returning, and bringing with him a suitable husband for his
+newly-found daughter. Isidora, in panic, besought the stranger to save
+her. He was unwilling. At last, in response to her tears, he consented.
+They were wedded, so Isidora believed, by a hermit in a ruined
+monastery. She returned home, and he renewed his visits, promising to
+reveal their marriage in the fullness of time.
+
+"Meanwhile, tales had reached her father's ears of a malignant being who
+was permitted to wander over the earth and tempt men in dire extremity
+with release from their troubles as the result of their concluding an
+unspeakable bargain. This being himself appeared to the father, and
+warned him that his daughter was in danger.
+
+"He returned, and pressed on with preparations for the bridal ceremony.
+Isidora entreated her husband to rescue her. He promised, and went away.
+A masked ball was given in celebration of the nuptials. At the hour of
+twelve Isidora felt a touch upon her shoulder. It was her husband. They
+hastened away, but not unperceived. Her brother called on the pair to
+stop, and drew his sword. In an instant he lay bleeding and lifeless.
+The family and the guests crowded round in horror. The stranger waved
+them back with his arm. They stood motionless, as if rooted to the
+ground.
+
+"'Isidora, fly with me!' he said. She looked at him, looked at the body
+of her brother, and sank in a swoon. The stranger passed out amid the
+powerless onlookers.
+
+"Isidora, the confessed bride of an unhallowed being, was taken before
+the Inquisition, and sentenced to life-long imprisonment. But she did
+not survive long; and ere she died, her husband appeared to her, and
+offered her freedom, happiness, and love--at a dreadful price she would
+not pay. Such was the history of the ill-fated love of Immalee for a
+being to whom mortal love was a boon forbidden."
+
+
+_IV.--The Fate of Melmoth_
+
+
+When Monçada had completed the tale of Immalee, he announced his
+intention of describing how he had left the house of the Jewish doctor,
+and what was his purpose in coming to Ireland. A time was fixed for the
+continuation of the recital.
+
+The night when Monçada prepared to resume his story was a dark and
+stormy one. The two men drew close to the fire.
+
+"Hush!" suddenly said Monçada.
+
+John Melmoth listened, and half rose from his chair.
+
+"We are watched!" he exclaimed.
+
+At that moment the door opened, and a figure appeared at it. The figure
+advanced slowly to the centre of the room. Monçada crossed himself, and
+attempted to pray. John Melmoth, nailed to his chair, gazed upon the
+form that stood before him--it was indeed Melmoth the Wanderer. But the
+eyes were dim; those beacons lit by an infernal fire were no longer
+visible.
+
+"Mortals," said the Wanderer, in strange and solemn accents, "you are
+here to talk of my destiny. That distiny is accomplished. Your ancestor
+has come home," he continued, turning to John Melmoth. "If my crimes
+have exceeded those of mortality, so will my punishment. And the time
+for that punishment is come.
+
+"It is a hundred and fifty years since I first probed forbidden secrets.
+I have now to pay the penalty. None can participate in my destiny but
+with his own consent. _None has consented._ It has been reported of me,
+as you know, that I obtained from the enemy of souls a range of
+existence beyond the period of mortality--a power to pass over space
+with the swiftness of thought--to encounter perils unharmed, to
+penetrate into dungeons, whose bolts were as flax and tow at my touch.
+It has been said that this power was accorded to me that I might be
+enabled to tempt wretches at their fearful hour of extremity with the
+promise of deliverance and immunity on condition of their exchanging
+situations with me.
+
+"No one has ever changed destinies with Melmoth the Wanderer. _I have
+traversed the world in search, and no one to gain that world would lose
+his own soul!_" He paused. "Let me, if possible, obtain an hour's
+repose. Ay, repose--sleep!" he repeated, answering the astonishment of
+his hearers' looks. "My existence is still human!"
+
+And a ghastly and derisive smile wandered over his features as he spoke.
+John Melmoth and Monçada quitted the apartment, and the Wanderer,
+sinking back in his chair slept profoundly.
+
+The two men did not dare to approach the door until noon next day. The
+Wanderer started up, and they saw with horror the change that had come
+over him. The lines of extreme age were visible in every feature.
+
+"My hour is come," he said. "Leave me alone. Whatever noises you may
+hear in the course of the awful night that is approaching, come not
+near, at peril of your lives. Be warned! Retire!"
+
+They passed that day in intense anxiety, and at night had no thought of
+repose. At midnight sounds of indescribable horror began to issue from
+the Wanderer's apartment, shrieks of supplication, yells of blasphemy--
+they could not tell which. The sounds suddenly ceased. The two men
+hastened into the room. It was empty.
+
+A small door leading to a back staircase was open, and near it they
+discovered the trace of footsteps of a person who had been walking in
+damp sand or clay. They traced the footsteps down the stairs, through
+the garden, and across a field to a rock that overlooked the sea.
+
+Through the furze that clothed this rock, there was a kind of track as
+if a person had dragged his way, or been dragged, through it. The two
+men gained the summit of the rock; the wide, waste, engulfing ocean was
+beneath. On a crag below, something hung as floating to the blast.
+Melmoth clambered down and caught it. It was the handkerchief which the
+Wanderer had worn about his neck the preceding night. That was the last
+trace of the Wanderer.
+
+Melmoth and Monçada exchanged looks of silent horror, and returned
+slowly home.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+
+
+DIEGO DE MENDOZA
+
+
+Lazarillo de Tormes
+
+
+     Don Diego Hurtado de Mendoza's career was hardly of a kind
+     that would be ordinarily associated with a lively romance of
+     vagabondage. A grandee of high birth, an ambassador of the
+     Emperor Charles V., an accomplished soldier and a learned
+     historian--such was the creator of the hungry rogue Lazarillo,
+     and the founder of the "picaresque" school of fiction, or the
+     romance of roguery, which is not yet extinct. Don Diego de
+     Mendoza, born early in 1503, was educated at the University of
+     Salamanca, and spent most of the rest of his days in courts
+     and camps. He died at Madrid in April 1575. Although written
+     during Mendoza's college days, "Lazarillo de Tormes" did not
+     appear until 1533, when it was published anonymously at
+     Antwerp. During the following year it was reprinted at Bruges,
+     but it fell under the ban of the Inquisition, and subsequent
+     editions were considerably expurgated. Such was its popularity
+     that it was continued by inferior authors after Mendoza's
+     death.
+
+
+_I.--The Blind Man_
+
+
+You must know, in the first place, that my name is Lazarillo de Tormes,
+and that I am the son of Thomas Gonzalez and Antonia Perez, natives of
+Tejares, a village of Salamanca. My father was employed to superintend
+the operations of a water-mill on the river Tormes, from which I took my
+surname; and I had only reached my ninth year, when he was taken into
+custody for administering certain copious, but injudicious, bleedings to
+the sacks of customers. Being thrown out of employment by this disaster,
+he joined an armament then preparing against the Moors in the quality of
+mule-driver to a gentleman; and in that expedition he, along with his
+master, finished his life and services together.
+
+My widowed mother hired a small place in the city of Salamanca, and
+opened an eating-house for the accommodation of students. It happened
+some time afterwards that a blind man came to lodge at the house, and
+thinking that I should do very well to lead him about, asked my mother
+to part with me. He promised to receive me not as a servant, but as a
+son; and thus I left Salamanca with my blind and aged master. He was as
+keen as an eagle in his own calling. He knew prayers suitable for all
+occasions, and could repeat them with a devout and humble countenance;
+he could prognosticate; and with respect to the medicinal art, he would
+tell you that Galen was an ignoramus compared with him. By these means
+his profits were very considerable.
+
+With all this, however, I am sorry to say that I never met with so
+avaricious and so wicked an old curmudgeon; he allowed me almost daily
+to die of hunger, without troubling himself about my necessities; and,
+to say the truth, if I had not helped myself by means of a ready wit I
+should have closed my account from sheer starvation.
+
+The old man was accustomed to carry his food in a sort of linen
+knapsack, secured at the mouth by a padlock; and in adding to or taking
+from his store he used such vigilance that it was almost impossible to
+cheat him of a single morsel. By means of a small rent, however, which I
+slyly effected in one of the seams of the bag, I helped myself to the
+choicest pieces.
+
+Whenever we ate, he kept a jar of wine near him; and I adopted the
+practice of bestowing on it sundry loving though stolen embraces. The
+fervency of my attachment was soon discovered in the deficiency of the
+wine, and the old man tied the jar to himself by the handle. I now
+procured a large straw, which I dipped into the mouth of the jar; but
+the old traitor must have heard me drink with it, for he placed the jar
+between his knees, keeping the mouth closed with his hand.
+
+I then bored a small hole in the bottom of the jar, and closed it very
+delicately with wax. As the poor old man sat over the fire, with the jar
+between his knees, the heat melted the wax, and I, placing my mouth
+underneath, received the whole contents of the jar. The old boy was so
+enraged and surprised that he thought the devil himself had been at
+work. But he discovered the hole; and when next day I placed myself
+under the jar, he brought the jar down with full force on my mouth.
+Nearly all my teeth were broken, and my face was horribly cut with the
+fragments of the broken vessel.
+
+After this, he continually ill-treated me; on the slightest occasion he
+would flog me without mercy. If any humane person interfered, he
+immediately recounted the history of the jar; they would laugh, and say,
+"Thrash him well, good man; he deserves it richly!" I determined to
+revenge myself on the old tyrant, and seized an opportunity on a rainy
+day when a stream was flowing down the street. I took him to a point
+where the stream passed a stone pillar, told him that the water was
+narrowest there, and invited him to jump. He jumped accordingly, and
+gave his poor old pate such a smash against the pillar that he fell
+senseless. I took to my heels as swiftly as possible; nor did I even
+trouble to inquire what became of him.
+
+
+_II.--The Priest_
+
+
+The next day I went to a place called Maqueda, where, as it were in
+punishment for my evil deeds, I fell in with a certain priest. I
+accosted him for alms, when he inquired whether I knew how to assist at
+mass. I answered that I did, which was true, for the blind man had
+taught me. The priest, therefore, engaged me on the spot.
+
+There is an old proverb which speaks of getting out of the frying-pan
+into the fire, which was indeed my unhappy case in this change of
+masters. This priest was, without exception, the most niggardly of all
+miserable devils I have ever met with. He had a large old chest, the key
+of which he always carried about him; and when the charity bread came
+from the church, he would with his own hands deposit it in the chest and
+turn the key. The only other eatable we had was a string of onions, of
+which every fourth day I was allowed _one_. Five farthings' worth of
+meat was his allowance for dinner and supper. It is true he divided the
+broth with me; but my share of the meat I might have put in my eye
+instead of my mouth, and have been none the worse for it; but sometimes,
+by good luck, I got a little morsel of bread.
+
+At the end of three weeks I was so exhausted with sheer hunger that I
+could hardly stand on my legs. One day, when my miserable, covetous
+thief of a master had gone out, an angel, in the likeness of a tinker,
+knocked at the door, and inquired whether I had anything to mend.
+Suddenly a light flashed upon me. "I have lost the key of this chest,"
+said I, "can you fit it?" He drew forth a bunch of keys, fitted it, and
+lo! the lid of the chest arose. "I have no money," I said to my
+preserver, "but give me the key and help yourself." He helped himself,
+and so, when he had gone, did I.
+
+But it was not predestined for me that such good luck should continue
+long; for on the third day I beheld the priest turning and counting the
+loaves over and over again. At last he said, "If I were not assured of
+the security of this chest, I should say that somebody had stolen my
+bread; but from this day I shall count the loaves; there remain now
+exactly nine and a piece."
+
+"May nine curses light upon you, you miserable beggar!" said I to
+myself. The utmost I dared do, for some days, was to nibble here and
+there a morsel of the crust. At last it occurred to me that the chest
+was old and in parts broken. Might it not be supposed that rats had made
+an entrance? I therefore picked one loaf after another until I made up a
+tolerable supply of crumbs, which I ate like so many sugar-plums.
+
+The priest, when he returned, beheld the havoc with dismay.
+
+"Confound the rats!" quoth he. "There is no keeping anything from them."
+I fared well at dinner, for he pared off all the places which he
+supposed the rats had nibbled at, and gave them to me, saying, "There,
+eat that; rats are very clean animals." But I received another shock
+when I beheld my tormentor nailing pieces of wood over all the holes in
+the chest. All I could do was to scrape other holes with an old knife;
+and so it went on until the priest set a trap for the rats, baiting it
+with bits of cheese that he begged from his neighbours. I did not nibble
+my bread with less relish because I added thereto the bait from the
+rat-trap. The priest, almost beside himself with astonishment at finding
+the bread nibbled, the bait gone, and no rat in the trap, consulted his
+neighbours, who suggested, to his great alarm, that the thief must be a
+snake.
+
+For security, I kept my precious key in my mouth--which I could do
+without inconvenience, as I had been in the habit of carrying in my
+mouth the coins I had stolen from my former blind master. But one night,
+when I was fast asleep, it was decreed by an evil destiny that the key
+should be placed in such a position in my mouth that my breath caused a
+loud whistling noise. My master concluded that this must be the hissing
+of the snake; he arose and stole with a club in his hand towards the
+place whence the sound proceeded; then, lifting the club, he discharged
+with all his force a blow on my unfortunate head. When he had fetched a
+light, he found me moaning, with the tell-tale key protruding from my
+mouth.
+
+"Thank God," he exclaimed, "that the rats and snakes which have so long
+devoured my substance are at last discovered!"
+
+As soon as my wounds were healed, he turned me out of his door as if I
+had been in league with the evil one.
+
+
+_III.--The Poor Gentleman_
+
+
+By the assistance of some kind people I made my way to Toledo, where I
+sought my living by begging from door to door. But one day I encountered
+a certain esquire; he was well dressed, and walked with an air of ease
+and consequence. "Are you seeking a master, my boy?" he said. I replied
+that I was, and he bade me follow him.
+
+He led me through a dark and dismal entry to a house absolutely bare of
+furniture; and the hopes I had formed when he engaged me were further
+depressed when he told me that he had already breakfasted, and that it
+was not his custom to eat again till the evening. Disconsolately I began
+to eat some crusts that I had about me.
+
+"Come here, boy," said my master. "What are you eating?" I showed him
+the bread. "Upon my life, but this seems exceedingly nice bread," he
+exclaimed; and seizing the largest piece, he attacked it fiercely.
+
+When night came on, and I was expecting supper, my master said, "The
+market is distant, and the city abounds with rogues; we had better pass
+the night as we can, and to-morrow we will fare better. Nothing will
+ensure length of life so much as eating little."
+
+"Then truly," said I to myself in despair, "I shall never die."
+
+I spent the night miserably on a hard cane bedstead without a mattress.
+In the morning my master arose, washed his hands and face, dried them on
+his garments for want of a towel, and then carefully dressed himself,
+with my assistance. Having girded on his sword, he went forth to hear
+mass, without saying a word about breakfast. "Who would believe," I
+said, observing his erect bearing and air of gentility as he walked up
+the street, "that such a fine gentleman had passed the whole of
+yesterday without any other food than a morsel of bread? How many are
+there in this world who voluntarily suffer more for their false idea of
+honour, than they would undergo for their hopes of an hereafter!"
+
+The day advanced, and my master did not return; my hopes of dinner
+disappeared like those of breakfast. In desperation, I went out begging,
+and such was the talent I had acquired in this art that I came back with
+four pounds of bread, a piece of cow-heel, and some tripe. I found my
+master at home, and he did not disapprove of what I had done.
+
+"It is much better," said he, "to ask, for the love of God, than to
+steal. I only charge you on no account to say you live with me."
+
+When I sat down to supper, my poor master eyed me so longingly that I
+resolved to invite him to partake of my repast; yet I wondered whether
+he would take it amiss if I did so. But my wishes towards him were soon
+gratified.
+
+"Ah!" said he; "cow-heel is delicious. There is nothing I am more fond
+of."
+
+"Then taste it, sir," said I, "and try whether this is as good as you
+have eaten." Presently he was grinding the food as ravenously as a
+greyhound.
+
+In this manner we passed eight or ten days, my master taking the air
+every day with the most perfect ease of a man of fashion, and returning
+home to feast on the contributions of the charitable, levied by poor
+Lazaro. Whereas my former masters declined to feed me, this one expected
+that I should maintain him. But I was much more sorry for him than angry
+at him, and with all his poverty I found greater satisfaction in serving
+him than either of the others.
+
+At length a man came to demand the rent, which of course my master could
+not pay. He answered the man very courteously that he was going out to
+change a piece of gold. But this time he made his exit for good. Next
+morning the man came to seize my master's effects, and on finding there
+were none, he had me arrested. But I was soon found to be innocent, and
+released. Thus did I lose my third and poorest master.
+
+
+_IV.--The Dealer in Indulgences_
+
+
+My fourth master was a holy friar, eager in the pursuit of every kind of
+secular business and amusement. He kept me so incessantly on the trot
+that I could not endure it, so I took my leave of him without asking it.
+
+The next master that fortune threw in my way was a bulero, or dealer in
+papal indulgences, one of the cleverest and most impudent rogues that I
+have ever seen. He practised all manner of deceit, and resorted to the
+most subtle inventions to gain his end. A regular account of his
+artifices would fill a volume; but I will only recount a little
+manoeuvre which will give you some idea of his genius and invention.
+
+He had preached two or three days at a place near Toledo, but found his
+indulgences go off but slowly. Being at his wits' end what to do, he
+invited the people to the church next morning to take his farewell.
+After supper at the inn that evening, he and the alguazil quarrelled and
+began to revile each other, my master calling the alguazil a thief, the
+alguazil declaring that the bulero was an impostor, and that his
+indulgences were forged. Peace was not restored until the alguazil had
+been taken away to another inn.
+
+Next morning, during my master's farewell sermon, the alguazil entered
+the church and publicly repeated his charge, that the indulgences were
+forged. Whereupon my devout master threw himself on his knees in the
+pulpit, and exclaimed: "O Lord, Thou knowest how cruelly I am
+calumniated! I pray Thee, therefore, to show by a miracle the whole
+truth as to this matter. If I deal in iniquity may this pulpit sink with
+me seven fathoms below the earth, but if what is said be false let the
+author of the calumny be punished, so that all present may be convinced
+of his malice."
+
+Hardly had he finished his prayer when the alguazil fell down, foaming
+at the mouth, and rolled about in the utmost apparent agony. At this
+wonderful interposition of Providence, there was a general clamour in
+the church, and some terrified people implored my sainted master, who
+was kneeling in the pulpit, with his eyes towards heaven, to intercede
+for the poor wretch. He replied that no favour should be sought for one
+whom God had chastised, but that as we were bidden to return good for
+evil, he would try to obtain pardon for the unhappy man. Desiring the
+congregation to pray for the sinner, he commanded the holy bull to be
+placed on the alguazil's head. Gradually the sufferer was restored, and
+fell at the holy commissary's feet, imploring his pardon, which was
+granted with benevolent words of comfort.
+
+Great now was the demand for indulgences; people came flocking from all
+parts, so that no sermons were necessary in the church to convince them
+of the benefits likely to result to the purchasers. I must confess that
+I was deceived at the time, but hearing the merriment which it afforded
+to the holy commissary and the alguazil, I began to suspect that it
+originated in the fertile brain of my master, and from that time I
+ceased to be a child of grace. For, I argued, "If I, being an
+eye-witness to such an imposition, could almost believe it, how many
+more, amongst this poor innocent people, must be imposed on by these
+robbers?"
+
+On leaving the bulero I entered the service of a chaplain, which was the
+first step I had yet made towards attaining an easy life, for I had here
+a mouthful at will. Having bidden the chaplain farewell, I attached
+myself to an alguazil. But I did not long continue in the train of
+justice; it pleased Heaven to enlighten and put me into a much better
+way, for certain gentlemen procured me an office under government. This
+I yet keep, and flourish in it, with the permission of God and every
+good customer. In fact, my charge is that of making public proclamation
+of the wine which is sold at auctions, etc.; of bearing those company
+who suffer persecution for justice's sake, and publishing to the world,
+with a loud voice, their faults.
+
+About this time the arch-priest of Salvador, to whom I was introduced,
+and who was under obligations to me for crying his wine, showed his
+sense of it by uniting me with one of his own domestics. About this time
+I was at the top of the ladder, and enjoyed all kinds of good fortune.
+This happy state I conceived would continue; but fortune soon began to
+show another aspect, and a fresh series of miseries and difficulties
+followed her altered looks--troubles which it would be too cruel a task
+for me to have to recount.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+
+
+DMITRI MEREJKOWSKI
+
+
+The Death of the Gods
+
+
+     Among Russian writers whose works have achieved European
+     reputation, prominence must be given to Dmitri Merejkowski.
+     The son of a court official, Merejkowski was born in 1866, and
+     began to write verses at the age of fifteen, his first volume
+     of poems appearing in 1888. Then, nine years later, came the
+     first of his great trilogy, "The Death of the Gods," which is
+     continued in "The Resurrection of the Gods," and completed by
+     "Anti-Christ," the last-named having for its central character
+     the figure of Peter the Great, the creator of modern Russia.
+     "The Death of the Gods," by many considered the finest of the
+     three, is a vivid picture of the times of the Roman Emperor
+     Julian, setting forth the doctrine that the pagan and the
+     Christian elements in human nature are equally legitimate and
+     sacred, a doctrine which, in its various guises, runs through
+     the trilogy.
+
+
+_I.--Julian's Boyhood_
+
+
+All was dark in the great palace at Macellum, an ancient residence of
+Cappadocian princes. Here dwelt Julian and Gallus, the youthful cousins
+of the reigning Emperor Constantius, and the nephews of Constantine the
+Great. They were the last representatives of the hapless house of the
+Flavii. Their father, Julian Constantius, brother of Constantine, was
+murdered by the orders of Constantius on his accession to the throne,
+and the two orphans lived in constant fear of death.
+
+Julian was not asleep. He listened to the regular breathing of his
+brother, who slept near him on a more comfortable bed, and to the heavy
+snore of his tutor Mardonius in the next room. Suddenly the door of the
+secret staircase opened softly, and a bright light dazzled Julian.
+Labda, an old slave, entered, carrying a metal lamp in her hand.
+
+The old woman, who loved Julian, and held him to be the true successor
+of Constantine the Great, placed the lamp in a stone niche above his
+head, and produced honey cakes for him to eat. Then she blessed him with
+the sign of the cross and disappeared.
+
+A heavy slumber fell on Julian, and then he awoke full of fears. He sat
+up on his bed, and listened in the silence to the beatings of his own
+heart. Suddenly, voices and steps resounded from room to room. Then the
+steps approached, the voices became distinct.
+
+The boy called out, "Gallus, wake up! Mardonius, can't you hear
+something?"
+
+Gallus awoke, and at the same moment old Mardonius, with his grey hair
+all dishevelled, entered and rushed towards the secret door.
+
+"The soldiers of the Prefect! ... Dress! ... We must fly! ..." he
+exclaimed.
+
+Mardonius was too late; all he could do was to draw an old sword and
+stand in warlike attitude before the door, brandishing his weapon. The
+centurion, who was drunk, promptly seized him by the throat and threw
+him out of the way, and the Roman legionaries entered.
+
+"In the name of the most orthodox and blessed Augustus Constantius
+Imperator! I, Marcus Scuda, Tribune of the Fretensian Legion, take under
+my safeguard Julian and Gallus, sons of the Patrician Julius Flavius."
+
+It was Scuda's plan to gain favour with his superiors by boldly carrying
+off the lads and sending them down to his barracks at Caesarea. There
+were rumours from time to time of their escaping from Macellum, and
+Scuda knew, the emperor's fear lest these possible claimants for the
+throne should gain a following among the soldiers of the people. At
+Caesarea they would be in safe custody.
+
+For the first time he gazed upon Gallus and Julian. The former, with his
+indolent and listless blue eyes and flaxen hair, trembled and blinked,
+his eyelids heavy with sleep, and crossed himself. The latter, thin,
+sickly, and pale, with large shining eyes, stared at Scuda fixedly, and
+shook with bridled rage. In his right hand, hidden by the panther skin
+of his bed, which he had flung over his shoulder, he gripped the handle
+of a Persian dagger given him by Labda; it was tipped with the keenest
+of poisons.
+
+A wild chance of safety suddenly occurred to Mardonius. Throwing aside
+his sword, he caught hold of the tribune's mantle, and shrieked out, "Do
+you know what you're doing, rascals? How dare you insult an envoy of
+Constantius? It is I who am charged to conduct these two princes to
+court. The august emperor has restored them to his favour. Here is the
+order from Constantinople!"
+
+"What is he saying? What order is it?" Scuda waited in perplexity while
+Mardonius, after hunting in a drawer, pulled out a roll of parchment,
+and presented it to the tribune. Scuda saw the name of the emperor, and
+read the first lines, without remarking the date of the document. At the
+sight of the great imperial seal of dark green wax he became frightened.
+
+"Pardon, there is some mistake," said the tribune humbly. "Don't ruin
+us! We are all brothers and fellow-sinners! I beseech you in the name of
+Christ!"
+
+"I know what acts you commit in the name of Christ. Away with you!
+Begone at once!" screamed Mardonius. The tribune gave the order to
+retire, and only when the sound of the steps dying away assured
+Mardonius that all peril was over did the old man forget his tutorial
+dignity. A wild fit of laughter seized him, and he began to dance.
+
+"Children, children!" he cried gleefully. "Glory to Hermes! We've done
+them cleverly! That edict was annulled three years ago! Ah, the idiots,
+the idiots!"
+
+At daybreak Julian fell into a deep sleep.
+
+
+_II.--Julian the Emperor_
+
+
+Gallus had fallen at the hands of the imperial executioner, and Julian
+had been banished to the army in Gaul. Constantius hoped to get news of
+the defeat and death of Julian, and was horribly disappointed when
+nothing was heard but tidings of victory.
+
+Julian, successful in arms and worshipped by his soldiers, became more
+and more convinced that the old Olympian gods were protecting him and
+advancing his cause, and only for prudential reasons did he continue to
+attend Christian churches. In his heart he abhorred the crucified
+Galilean God of the Christians, and longed for the restoration of the
+old worship of Apollo and the gods of Greece and Rome.
+
+More than two years after the victory of Argentoratum, when Julian had
+delivered all Gaul from the barbarians, he received an important letter
+from the Emperor Constantius.
+
+Each new victory in Gaul had maddened the soul of Constantius, and
+smitten his vanity to the quick. He writhed with jealousy, and grew thin
+and sleepless and sick. At the same time he sustained defeat after
+defeat in his own campaign in Asia against the Persians. Musing, during
+nights of insomnia, the emperor blamed himself for having let Julian
+live.
+
+Finally, Constantius decided to rob Julian of his best soldiers, and
+then, by gradually disarming him, to draw him into his toils and deal
+him the mortal blow.
+
+With this intention he sent a letter to Julian by the tribune Decensius,
+commanding him to select the most trusted legions, namely, the Heruli,
+Batavians, and Celts, and to dispatch them into Asia for the emperor's
+own use. Each remaining legion was also to be deflowered of its three
+hundred bravest warriors, and Julian's transport crippled of the pick of
+the porters and baggage carriers.
+
+Julian at once warned Decensius, and proved to him that rebellion was
+inevitable among the savage legions raised in Gaul, who would almost
+certainly prefer to die rather than quit their native soil. But
+Decensius took no account of these warnings.
+
+On the departure of the first cohorts, the soldiers, hitherto only
+restrained by Julian's stern and wise discipline, became excited and
+tumultuous. Savage murmurs ran through the crowd. The cries came nearer;
+wild agitation seized the garrison.
+
+"What has happened?" asked a veteran.
+
+"Twenty soldiers have been beaten to death!"
+
+"Twenty! No; a hundred!"
+
+A legionary, with torn clothes and terrified appearance, rushed into the
+crowd, shouting, "Comrades, quick to the palace! Quick! Julian's just
+been beheaded!"
+
+These words kindled the long-smouldering flame. Everyone began to shout,
+"Where is the envoy from the Emperor Constantius?"
+
+"Down with the envoy!"
+
+"Down with the emperor!"
+
+Another mob swept by the barracks, calling out, "Glory to the Emperor
+Julian! Glory to Augustus Julian!"
+
+Then the cohorts, who had marched out the night before, mutinied, and
+were soon seen returning. The crowd grew thicker and thicker, like a
+raging flood.
+
+"To the palace! To the palace!" the cry was raised. "Let us make Julian
+emperor! Let us crown him with the diadem!"
+
+Foreseeing the revolt, Julian had not left his quarters nor shown
+himself to the soldiers, but for two days and two nights had waited for
+a sign.
+
+The indistinct cries of the mutineers came to him, borne faintly upon
+the wind.
+
+A servant entered, and announced that an old man from Athens desired to
+see the Caesar on urgent business. Julian ran to meet the newcomer; it
+was the high-priest of the mysteries of Eleusis, whom he had impatiently
+expected.
+
+"Caesar," said the old man, "be not hasty. Decide nothing to-night; wait
+for the morrow, the gods are silent."
+
+Outside could be heard the noise of soldiers pouring into the courtyard,
+and thrilling the old palace with their cries. The die was cast, Julian
+put on his armour, warcloak, and helmet, buckled on his sword, and ran
+down the principal staircase to the main entrance. In a moment the crowd
+felt his supremacy; in action his will never vacillated; at his first
+gesture the mob was silenced.
+
+Julian spoke to the soldiers, asked them to restore order, and declared
+that he would neither abandon them nor permit them to be taken from
+Gaul.
+
+"Down with Constantius!" cried the legionaries. "Thou art our emperor!
+Glory to Augustus Julian the Invincible!"
+
+Admirably did Julian affect surprise, lowering his eyes, and turning
+aside his head with a deprecating gesture of his lifted palms.
+
+The shouts redoubled. "Silence!" exclaimed Julian, striding towards the
+crowd. "Do you think that I can betray my sovereign? Are we not sworn?"
+
+The soldiers seized his hands, and many, falling at his feet, kissed
+them, weeping and crying, "We are willing to die for you! Have pity on
+us; be our emperor!"
+
+With an effort that might well have been thought sincere, Julian
+answered, "My children, my dear comrades, I am yours in life and in
+death! I can refuse you nothing!"
+
+A standard-bearer pulled from his neck the metal chain denoting his
+rank, and Julian wound it twice around his own neck. This chain made him
+Emperor of Rome.
+
+"Hoist him on a shield," shouted the soldiery. A round buckler was
+tendered. Hundreds of arms heaved the emperor. He saw a sea of helmeted
+heads, and heard, like the rolling of thunder, the exultant cry, "Glory
+to Julian, the divine Augustus!"
+
+It seemed the will of destiny.
+
+
+_III.--The Worship of Apollo_
+
+
+Constantius was dead, and Julian sole emperor of Rome.
+
+Before all the army the golden cross had been wrenched from the imperial
+standard, and a little silver statue of the sun-god, Mithra-Helios, had
+been soldered to the staff of the Labarum.
+
+One of the men in the front rank uttered a single word so distinctly
+that Julian heard it, "Anti-Christ!"
+
+Toleration was promised to the Christians, but Julian organised
+processions in honour of the Olympian gods, and encouraged in every way
+the return of the old and dying worship.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Five miles from Antioch stood the celebrated wood of Daphne, consecrated
+to Apollo. A temple had been built there, where every year the praises
+of the sun-god were celebrated.
+
+Julian, without telling anyone of his intention, quitted Antioch at
+daybreak. He wished to find out for himself whether the inhabitants
+remembered the ancient sacred feast. All along the road he mused on the
+solemnity, hoping to see lads and maidens going up the steps of the
+temple, the crowd of the faithful, the choirs, and the smoke of incense.
+
+Presently the columns and pediments of the temple shone through the
+wood, but not a worshipper yet had Julian encountered. At last he saw a
+boy of twelve years old, on a path overgrown with wild hyacinth.
+
+"Do you know, child, where are the sacrificers and the people?" Julian
+asked.
+
+The child made no answer.
+
+"Listen, little one. Can you not lead me to the priest of Apollo?"
+
+The boy put a finger to his lips and then to both his ears, and shook
+his head gravely. Suddenly he pointed out to Julian an old man, clothed
+in a patched and tattered tunic, and Julian recognised a temple priest.
+The weak and broken old man stumbled along in drunken fashion, carrying
+a large basket and laughing and mumbling to himself as he went. He was
+red-nosed, and his watery and short-sighted eyes had an expression of
+childlike benevolence.
+
+"The priest of Apollo?" asked Julian.
+
+"I am he. I am called Gorgius. What do you want, good man?"
+
+He smelt strongly of wine. Julian thought his behaviour indecent.
+
+"You seem to be drunk, old man!"
+
+Gorgius, in no wise dismayed, put down his basket and rubbed his bald
+head.
+
+"Drunk? I don't think so. But I may have had four or five cups in honour
+of the celebration; and, as to that, I drink more through sorrow than
+mirth. May the Olympians have you in their keeping!"
+
+"Where are the victims?" asked Julian. "Have many people been sent from
+Antioch? Are the choirs ready?"
+
+"Victims! Small thanks for victims! Many's the long year, my brother,
+since we saw that kind of thing. Not since the time of Constantine. It
+is all over--done for! Men have forgotten the gods. We don't even get a
+handful of wheat to make a cake; not a grain of incense, not a drop of
+oil for the lamps. There's nothing for it but to go to bed and die....
+The monks have taken everything.... Our tale is told.... And you say
+'don't drink.' But it's hard not to drink when one suffers. If I didn't
+drink I should have hanged myself long ago."
+
+"And no one has come from Antioch for this great feast day?" asked
+Julian.
+
+"None but you, my son. I am the priest, you are the people! Together we
+will offer the victim to the god. It is my own offering. We've eaten
+little for three days, this lad and I, to save the necessary money.
+Look; it is a sacred bird!"
+
+He raised the lid of the basket. A tethered goose slid out its head,
+cackling and trying to escape.
+
+"Have you dwelt long in this temple; and is this lad your son?"
+questioned Julian.
+
+"For forty years, and perhaps longer; but I have neither relatives nor
+friends. This child helps me at the hour of sacrifice. His mother was
+the great sibyl Diotima, who lived here, and it is said that he is the
+son of a god," said Gorgius.
+
+"A deaf mute the son of a god?" murmured the emperor, surprised.
+
+"In times like ours if the son of a god and a sibyl were not a deaf mute
+he would die of grief," said Gorgius.
+
+"One thing more I want to ask you," said Julian. "Have you ever heard
+that the Emperor Julian desired to restore the worship of the old gods?"
+
+"Yes, but ... what can he do, poor man? He will not succeed. I tell
+you--all's over. Once I sailed in a ship near Thessalonica, and saw
+Mount Olympus. I mused and was full of emotion at beholding the
+dwellings of the gods; and a scoffing old man told me that travellers
+had climbed Olympus, and seen that it was an ordinary mountain, with
+only snow and ice and stones on it. I have remembered those words all my
+life. My son, all is over; Olympus is deserted. The gods have grown
+weary and have departed. But the sun is up, the sacrifice must be
+performed. Come!"
+
+They passed into the temple alone.
+
+From behind the trees came the sound of voices, a procession of monks
+chanting psalms. In the very neighbourhood of Apollo's temple a tomb had
+been built in honour of a Christian martyr.
+
+
+_IV.--"Thou Hast Conquered, Galilean!"_
+
+
+At the beginning of spring Julian quitted Antioch for a Persian campaign
+with an army of sixty-five thousand men.
+
+"Warriors, my bravest of the brave," said Julian, addressing his troops
+at the outset, "remember the destiny of the world is in our hands. We
+are going to restore the old greatness of Rome! Steel your hearts, be
+ready for any fate. There is to be no turning back, I shall be at your
+head, on horseback or on foot, taking all dangers and toils with the
+humblest among you; because, henceforth, you are no longer my servants,
+but my children and my friends. Courage then, my comrades; and remember
+that the strong are always conquerors!"
+
+He stretched his sword, with a smile, toward the distant horizon. The
+soldiers, in unison, held up their bucklers, shouting in rapture,
+"Glory, glory to conquering Caesar!"
+
+But the campaign so bravely begun ended in treachery and disaster.
+
+At the end of July, when the Roman army was in steady retreat, came the
+last battle with the Persians. The emperor looked for a miracle in this
+battle, the victory which would give him such renown and power that the
+Galileans could no longer resist; but it was not till the close of the
+day that the ranks of the enemy were broken. Then a cry of triumph came
+from Julian's lips. He galloped ahead, pursuing the fugitives, not
+perceiving that he was far in advance of his main body. A few bodyguards
+surrounded the Caesar, among them old General Victor. This old man,
+though wounded, was unconscious of his hurt, not quitting the emperor's
+side, and shielding him time after time from mortal blows. He knew that
+it was as dangerous to approach a fleeing enemy as to enter a falling
+building.
+
+"Take heed, Caesar!" he shouted. "Put on this mail of mine!" But Julian
+heard him not, and still rode on, as if he, unsupported, unarmed, and
+terrible, were hunting his countless enemies by glance and gesture only
+from the field.
+
+Suddenly a lance, aimed by a flying Saracen who had wheeled round,
+hissed, and grazing the skin of the emperor's right hand, glanced over
+the ribs, and buried itself in his body. Julian thought the wound a
+slight one, and seizing the double-edged barb to withdraw it, cut his
+fingers. Blood gushed out, Julian uttered a cry, flung his head back,
+and slid from his horse into the arms of the guard.
+
+They carried the emperor into his tent, and laid him on his camp-bed.
+Still in a swoon, he groaned from time to time. Oribazius, the
+physician, drew out the iron lance-head, and washed and bound up the
+deep wound. By a look Victor asked if any hope remained, and Oribazius
+sadly shook his head. After the dressing of the wound Julian sighed and
+opened his eyes.
+
+Hearing the distant noise of battle, he remembered all, and with an
+effort, rose upon his bed. His soul was struggling against death. Slowly
+he tottered to his feet.
+
+"I must be with them to the end.... You see, I am able-bodied still....
+Quick, give me my sword, buckler, horse!"
+
+Victor gave him the shield and sword. Julian took them, and made a few
+unsteady steps, like a child learning to walk. The wound re-opened; he
+let fall his sword and shield, sank into the arms of Oribazius and
+Victor, and looking up, cried contemptuously, "All is over! Thou hast
+conquered, Galilean!" And making no further resistance, he gave himself
+up to his friends, and was laid on the bed.
+
+At night he was in delirium.
+
+"One must conquer ... reason must.... Socrates died like a god.... I
+will not believe!... What do you want from me?... Thy love is more
+terrible than death.... I want sunlight, the golden sun!"
+
+At dawn the sick man lay calm, and the delirium had left him.
+
+"Call the generals--I must speak."
+
+The generals came in, and the curtain of the tent was raised so that the
+fresh air of the morning might blow on the face of the dying. The
+entrance faced east, and the view to the horizon was unbroken.
+
+"Listen, friends," Julian began, and his voice was low, but clear. "My
+hour is come, and like an honest debtor, I am not sorry to give back my
+life to nature, and in my soul is neither pain nor fear. I have tried to
+keep my soul stainless; I have aspired to ends not ignoble. Most of our
+earthly affairs are in the hands of destiny. We must not resist her. Let
+the Galileans triumph. We shall conquer later on!"
+
+The morning clouds were growing red, and the first beam of the sun
+washed over the rim of the horizon. The dying man held his face towards
+the light, with closed eyes.
+
+Then his head fell back, and the last murmur came from his half-open
+lips, "Helios! Receive me unto thyself!"
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+
+
+PROSPER MÉRIMÉE
+
+
+Carmen
+
+
+     Novelist, archaeologist, essayist, and in all three
+     departments one of the greatest masters of French style of his
+     century, Prosper Mérimée was born in Paris on September 23,
+     1803. The son of a painter, Mérimée was intended for the law,
+     but at the age of twenty-two achieved fame as the author of a
+     number of plays purporting to be translations from the
+     Spanish. From that time until his death at Cannes on September
+     23, 1870, a brilliant series of plays, essays, novels, and
+     historical and archaeological works poured from his fertile
+     pen. Altogether he wrote about a score of tales, and it is on
+     these and on his "Letters to an Unknown" that Mérimée's fame
+     depends. His first story to win universal recognition was
+     "Colombo," in 1830. Seventeen years later appeared his
+     "Carmen, the Power of Love," of which Taine, in his celebrated
+     essay on the work, says, "Many dissertations on our primitive
+     savage methods, many knowing treatises like Schopenhauer's on
+     the metaphysics of love and death, cannot compare to the
+     hundred pages of 'Carmen.'"
+
+
+_I.--I Meet Don José_
+
+
+One day, wandering in the higher part of the plain of Cachena, near
+Cordova, harassed with fatigue, dying of thirst, burned by an overhead
+sun, I perceived, at some distance from the path I was following, a
+little green lawn dotted with rushes and reeds. It proclaimed to me the
+neighbourhood of a spring, and I saw that a brook issued from a narrow
+gorge between two lofty spurs of the Sierra de Cabra.
+
+At the mouth of the gorge my horse neighed, and another horse that I did
+not see answered immediately. A hundred steps farther, and the gorge,
+suddenly widening, revealed a sort of natural circus, shaded by the
+cliffs which surrounded it. It was impossible to light upon a place
+which promised a pleasanter halt to the traveller.
+
+But the honour of discovering this beautiful spot did not belong to me.
+A man was resting there already, and it my entrance, he had risen and
+approached his horse. He was a young fellow of medium height, but robust
+appearance, with a gloomy and haughty air. In one hand he held his
+horse's halter, in the other a brass blunderbuss. The fierce air of the
+man somewhat surprised me, but not having seen any robbers I no longer
+believed in them. My guide Antonio, however, who came up behind me,
+showed evident signs of terror, and drew near very much against his
+will.
+
+I stretched myself on the grass, drew out my cigar-case, and asked the
+man with the blunderbuss if he had a tinder-box on him. The unknown,
+without speaking, produced his tinder-box, and hastened to strike a
+light for me. In return I gave him one of my best Havanas, for which he
+thanked me with an inclination of the head.
+
+In Spain a cigar given and received establishes relations of
+hospitality, like the sharing of bread and salt in the East. My unknown
+now proved more talkative than I had expected. He seemed half famished,
+and devoured some slices of excellent ham, which I had put in my guide's
+knapsack, wolfishly. When I mentioned I was going to the Venta del
+Cuervo for the night he offered to accompany me, and I accepted
+willingly.
+
+As we rode along Antonio endeavoured to attract my attention by
+mysterious signs, but I took no notice. Doubtless my companion was a
+smuggler, or a robber. What did it matter to me? I knew I had nothing to
+fear from a man who had eaten and smoked with me.
+
+We arrived at the venta, which was one of the most wretched I had yet
+come across. An old woman opened the door, and on seeing my companion,
+exclaimed, "Ah, Señor Don José!"
+
+Don José frowned and raised his hand, and the old woman was silent at
+once.
+
+The supper was better than I expected, and after supper Don José played
+the mandoline and sang some melancholy songs. My guide decided to pass
+the night in the stable, but Don José and I stretched ourselves on mule
+cloths on the floor.
+
+Very disagreeable itchings snatched me from my first nap, and drove me
+to a wooden bench outside the door. I was about to close my eyes for the
+second time, when, to my surprise, I saw Antonio leading a horse. He
+stopped on seeing me, and said anxiously, "Where is he?"
+
+"In the venta; he is sleeping. He is not afraid of the fleas. Why are
+you taking away my horse?"
+
+I then observed that, in order to prevent any noise, Antonio had
+carefully wrapped the animal's feet in the remains of an old sack.
+
+"Hush!" said Antonio. "That man there is José Navarro, the most famous
+bandit of Andalusia. There are two hundred ducats for whoever gives him
+up. I know a post of lancers a league and a half from here, and before
+it is day I will bring some of them here."
+
+"What harm has the poor man done you that you denounce him?" said I.
+
+"I am a poor wretch, sir!" was all Antonio could say. "Two hundred
+ducats are not to be lost, especially when it is a matter of delivering
+the country from such vermin."
+
+My threats and requests were alike unavailing. Antonio was in the
+saddle, he set spurs to his horse after freeing its feet from the rags,
+and was soon lost to sight in the darkness.
+
+I was very much annoyed with my guide, and somewhat uneasy; but quickly
+making up my mind, returned to the inn, and shook Don José to awaken
+him.
+
+"Would you be very pleased to see half a dozen lancers arrive here?" I
+said.
+
+He leapt to his feet.
+
+"Ah, your guide has betrayed me! Your guide! I had suspected him. Adieu,
+sir. God repay you the service I am in your debt for. I am not quite as
+bad as you think. Yes, there is still something in me deserving the pity
+of a gentleman. Adieu!"
+
+He ran to the stable, and some minutes later I heard him galloping into
+the fields.
+
+As for me, I asked myself if I had been right in saving a robber,
+perhaps a murderer, from the gallows only because I had eaten ham and
+rice and smoked with him.
+
+I think Antonio cherished a grudge against me; but, nevertheless, we
+parted good friends at Cordova.
+
+
+_II.--My Experience with Carmen_
+
+
+I passed some days at Cordova searching for a certain manuscript in the
+Dominican's library.
+
+One evening I was leaning on the parapet of the quay, smoking, when a
+woman came up the flight of stairs leading to the river and sat down
+beside me. She was simply dressed, all in black, and we fell into
+conversation.
+
+On my taking out my repeater watch she was greatly astonished.
+
+"What inventions they have among you foreigners!"
+
+Then she told me she was a gipsy, and proposed to tell my fortune.
+
+"Have you heard people speak of La Carmencita?" she added. "That is me!"
+
+"Good!" I said to myself. "Last week I supped with a highway robber; now
+to-day I will eat ices with a gipsy. When travelling one must see
+everything."
+
+With that I escorted the Señorita Carmen to a café, and we had ices.
+
+My gipsy had a strange and wild beauty, a face which astonished at
+first, but which one could not forget. Her eyes, in particular, had an
+expression, at once loving and fierce, that I have found in no human
+face since.
+
+It would have been ridiculous to have had my fortune told in a public
+café and I begged the fair sorceress to allow me to accompany her to her
+domicile. She at once consented, but insisted on seeing my watch again.
+
+"Is it really of gold?" she said, examining it with great attention.
+
+Night had set in, and most of the shops were closed and the streets
+almost deserted as we crossed the Guadalquiver bridge, and went on to
+the outskirts of the town.
+
+The house we entered was by no means a palace. A child opened the door,
+and disappeared when the gipsy said some words to it in the Romany
+tongue.
+
+Then the gipsy produced some cards, a magnet, a dried chameleon, and
+other things necessary for her art. She told me to cross my left hand
+with a piece of money, and the magic ceremonies began. It was evident to
+me that she was no half-sorceress.
+
+Unfortunately, we were soon disturbed. Of a sudden the door opened
+violently, and a man entered, who denounced the gipsy in a manner far
+from polite.
+
+I at once recognised my friend Don José, and greeted him cheerfully.
+
+"The same as ever! This will have an end," he said turning fiercely to
+the gipsy, who now started talking to him in her own language. She grew
+animated as she spoke, and her eyes became terrible. It appeared to me
+she was urging him warmly to do something at which he hesitated. I think
+I understood what it was only too well from seeing her quickly pass and
+repass her little hand under her chin. There was some question of a
+throat to cut, and I had a suspicion that the throat was mine.
+
+Don José only answered with two or three words in a sharp tone, and the
+gipsy, casting a look of deep contempt at him, retired to a corner of
+the room, and taking an orange, peeled it and began to eat it.
+
+Don José took my arm, opened the door, and led me into the street. We
+walked some way together in the profoundest silence. Then, stretching
+out his hand, "Keep straight on," he Said, "and you will find the
+bridge."
+
+With that he turned his back on me, and walked rapidly away. I returned
+to my inn a little crestfallen and depressed. Worst of all was that, as
+I was undressing, I discovered my watch was missing.
+
+I departed for Seville next day, and after several months of rambling in
+Andalusia, was once more back in Cordova, on my way to Madrid.
+
+The good fathers at the Dominican convent received me with open arms.
+
+"Your watch has been found again, and will be returned to you," one of
+them told me. "The rascal is in gaol, and is to be executed the day
+after to-morrow. He is known in the country under the name of José
+Navarro, and he is a man to be seen."
+
+I went to see the prisoner, and took him some cigars. At first he
+shrugged his shoulders and received me coldly, but I saw him again on
+the morrow, and passed a part of the day with him. It was from his mouth
+I learnt the sad adventures of his life.
+
+
+_III.--Don José's Story_
+
+
+"I was born," he said, "at Elizondo, and my name--Don José
+Lizzarrabengoa--will tell you that I am Basque, and an old Christian. If
+I take the _don_, it is because I have the right to do so. One day when
+I had been playing tennis with a lad from Alava I won, and he picked a
+quarrel with me. We took our iron-tipped sticks, and fought, and again I
+had the advantage; but it forced me to quit the country. I met some
+dragoons, and enlisted in the Almanza regiment of cavalry. Soon I became
+a corporal, and they were under promise to make me sergeant when, to my
+misfortune, I was put on guard at the tobacco factory at Seville.
+
+"I was young then, and I was always thinking of my native country, and
+was afraid of the Andalusian young women and their jesting ways. But one
+Friday--I shall never forget it--when I was on duty, I heard people
+saying, 'Here's the gipsy.' And, looking up, I saw her for the first
+time. I saw that Carmen whom you know, in whose house I met you some
+months ago.
+
+"She made some joke at me as she passed into the factory, and flipped a
+cassia flower just between my eyes. When she had gone, I picked it up
+and put it carefully in my pocket. First piece of folly!
+
+"A few hours afterwards I was ordered to take two of my men into the
+factory. There had been a quarrel, and Carmen had slashed another woman
+with two terrible cuts of her knife across the face. The case was clear.
+I took Carmen by the arm, and bade her follow me. At the guard-house the
+sergeant said it was serious, and that she must be taken to prison. I
+placed her between two dragoons, and, walking behind, we set out for the
+town.
+
+"At first the gipsy kept silence, but presently she turned to me, and
+said softly, 'You are taking me to prison! Alas! what will become of me?
+Have pity on me, Mr. Officer! You are so young, so good-looking! Let me
+escape, and I will give you a piece of the loadstone which will make all
+women love you.'
+
+"I answered her as seriously as I could that the order was to take her
+to prison, and that there was no help for it.
+
+"My accent told her I was from the Basque province, and she began to
+speak to me in my native tongue. Gipsies, you know, sir, speak all
+languages. She told me she had been carried off by gipsies from Navarro,
+and was working at the factory in order to earn enough to return home to
+her poor mother. Would I do nothing for a country-woman? The Spanish
+women at the factory had slandered her native place.
+
+"It was all lies, sir. She always lied. But I believed her at the time.
+
+"'If I pushed you and you fell,' she resumed, in Basque, 'it would not
+be these two conscripts who would hold me.'
+
+"I forgot my order and everything, and said, "'Very well, my country-
+woman; and may our Lady of the Mountain be your aid!'
+
+"Suddenly Carmen turned round and dealt me a blow on the chest with her
+fist. I let myself fall backwards on purpose, and, with one bound, she
+leapt over me, and started to run. There was no risk of overtaking her
+with our spurs, our sabres, and our lances. The prisoner disappeared in
+no time, and all the women-folk in the quarter favoured her escape, and
+made fun of us, pointing out the wrong road on purpose. We had to return
+at last to the guard-house without a receipt from the governor of the
+prison.
+
+"The result of this was I was degraded and sent to prison for a month.
+Farewell to the sergeant's stripes, I thought.
+
+"One day in prison the jailor entered, and gave me a special loaf of
+bread.
+
+"'Here,' he said, 'see what your cousin has sent you.'
+
+"I was astonished, for I had no cousin in Seville, and when I broke the
+loaf I found a small file and a gold piece inside it. No doubt then, it
+was a present from Carmen, for a gipsy would set fire to a town to
+escape a day's imprisonment, and I was touched by this mark of
+remembrance.
+
+"But I served my sentence, and, on coming out, was put on sentry outside
+the colonel's door, like a common soldier. It was a terrible
+humiliation.
+
+"While I was on duty I saw Carmen again. She was dressed out like a
+shrine, all gold and ribbons, and was going in one evening with a party
+of gipsies to amuse the colonel's guests. She recognised me, and named a
+place where I could meet her next day. When I gave her back the gold
+piece she burst into laughter, but kept it all the same. Do you know, my
+son,' she said to me when we parted, 'I believe I love you a little. But
+that cannot last. Dog and wolf do not keep house together long. Perhaps,
+if you adopted the gipsy law, I would like to become your wife. But it
+is nonsense; it is impossible. Think no more of Carmencita, or she will
+bring you to the gallows.'
+
+"She spoke the truth. I would have been wise to think no more of her;
+but after that day I could think of nothing else, and walked about
+always hoping to meet her, but she had left the town.
+
+"It was some weeks later, when I had been placed as a night sentinel at
+one of the town gates that I saw Carmen. I was put there to prevent
+smuggling; but Carmen persuaded me to let five of her friends pass in,
+and they were all well laden with English goods. She told me I might
+come and see her next day at the same house I had visited before.
+
+"Carmen had moods, like the weather in our country. She would make
+appointments and not keep them, and at another time, would be full of
+affection.
+
+"One evening when I had called on a friend of Carmen's the gipsy entered
+the room, followed by a young man, a lieutenant in our regiment.
+
+"He told me to decamp, and I said something sharp to him. We soon drew
+our swords, and presently the point of mine entered his body. Then
+Carmen extinguished the lamp, and, wounded though I was, we started
+running down the street. 'Great fool,' she said. 'You can do nothing but
+foolish things. Besides, I told you I would bring you bad luck.' She
+made me take off my uniform and put on a striped cloak, and this with a
+handkerchief over my head, enabled me to pass fairly well for a peasant.
+Then she took me to a house at the end of a little lane, and she and
+another gipsy washed and dressed my wounds. Next day Carmen pointed out
+to me the new career she destined me for. I was to go to the coast and
+become a smuggler. In truth it was the only one left me, now that I had
+incurred the punishment of death. Besides, I believed I could make sure
+of her love. Carmen introduced me to her people, and at first the
+freedom of the smuggler's life pleased me better than the soldier's
+life. I saw Carmen often, and she showed more liking for me than ever;
+but, she would not admit that she was willing to be my wife."
+
+
+_IV.--The End of Don José's Story_
+
+
+"One becomes a rogue without thinking, sir. A pretty girl makes one lose
+one's head, one fights for her, a misfortune happens, one is driven to
+the mountains, from smuggler one becomes robber before reflecting.
+
+"Carmen often made me jealous, especially after she accepted me as her
+husband, and she warned me not to interfere with her freedom. On my part
+I wanted to change my way of life, but when I spoke to her about
+quitting Spain and trying to live honestly in America, she laughed at
+me.
+
+"'We are not made for planting cabbages,' she said; '_our_ destiny is to
+live at the expense of others.' Then she told me of a fresh piece of
+smuggling on hand, and I let myself be persuaded to resume the wretched
+traffic.
+
+"While I was in hiding at Granada, there were bullfights to which Carmen
+went. When she returned, she spoke much of a very skilful picador, named
+Lucas. She knew the name of his horse, and how much his embroidered
+jacket cost him. I paid no heed to this, but began to grow alarmed when
+I heard that Carmen had been seen about with Lucas. I asked her how and
+why she had made his acquaintance.
+
+"'He is a man,' she said, 'with whom business can be done. He has won
+twelve hundred pounds at the bullfights. One of two things: we must
+either have the money, or, as he is a good horseman, we can enroll him
+in our band.'
+
+"'I wish,' I replied, 'neither his money nor his person, and I forbid
+you to speak to him.'
+
+"'Take care,' she said; 'when anyone dares me to do a thing it is soon
+done.'
+
+"Luckily the picador left for Malaga, and I set about my smuggling. I
+had a great deal to do in this expedition, and it was about that time I
+first met you. Carmen robbed you of your watch at our last interview,
+and she wanted your money as well. We had a violent dispute about that,
+and I struck her. She turned pale and wept. It was the first time I saw
+her weep, and it had a terrible effect on me. I begged her pardon, but
+it was not till three days later that she would kiss me.
+
+"'There is a fête at Cordova,' she said, when we were friends again. 'I
+am going to see it, then I shall find out the people who carry money
+with them and tell you.'
+
+"I let her go, but when a peasant told me there was a bull-fight at
+Cordova, I set off like a madman to the spot. Lucas was pointed out to
+me, and on the bench close to the barrier I recognised Carmen. It was
+enough for me to see her to be certain how things stood. Lucas, at the
+first bull, did the gallant, as I had foreseen. He tore the bunch of
+ribbons from the bull and carried it to Carmen, who put it in her hair
+on the spot. The bull took upon itself the task of avenging me. Lucas
+was thrown down with his horse on his chest, and the bull on the top of
+both. I looked at Carmen, she had already left her seat, but I was so
+wedged in I was obliged to wait for the end of the fights.
+
+"I got home first, however, and Carmen only arrived at two o'clock in
+the morning.
+
+"'Come with me,' I said.
+
+"'Very well, let us go,' she answered.
+
+"I went and fetched my horse; I put her behind me, and we travelled all
+the rest of the night without speaking. At daybreak we were in a
+solitary gorge.
+
+"'Listen,' I said to Carmen, 'I forget everything. Only swear to me one
+thing, that you will follow me to America, and live there quietly with
+me.'
+
+"'No,' she said, in a sulky tone, 'I do not want to go to America. I am
+quite comfortable here.'
+
+"I implored her to let us change our way of life and Carmen answered, 'I
+will follow you to death, but I will not live with you any longer. I
+always thought you meant to kill me, and now I see that is what you are
+going to do. It is destiny, but you will not make me yield.'
+
+"'Listen to me!' I said, 'for the last time. You know that it is for you
+I have become a robber and a murderer. Carmen! my Carmen, there is still
+time for us to save ourselves,' I promised anything and everything if
+she would love me again.
+
+"'José,' she replied, 'you ask me for the impossible. I do not love you
+any more. All is over between us. You have the right to kill me. But
+Carmen must always be free. To love you is impossible, and I do not wish
+to live with you.'
+
+"Fury took possession of me, and I killed her with my knife. An hour
+later I laid her in a grave in the wood. Then I mounted my horse,
+galloped to Cordova, and gave myself up at the first guard-house....
+Poor Carmen! it is the gipsies who are to blame for having brought her
+up like that."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+
+
+MARY RUSSELL MITFORD
+
+
+Our Village
+
+
+     Mary Russell Mitford was known first as a dramatist, with
+     tragedy as her forte, and in later years as a novelist, but by
+     posterity she will be remembered as a portrayer of country
+     life, in simply worded sketches, with a quiet colouring of
+     humour. These sketches were collected, as "Our Village," into
+     five volumes, between 1824 and 1832. Miss Mitford was born
+     Dec. 16, 1787, at Alresford, Hampshire, England, the daughter
+     of a foolish spendthrift father, to whom she was pathetically
+     devoted, and lived in her native county almost throughout her
+     life. In her later years she received a Civil List pension.
+     She died on January 10, 1855. The quietness of the country is
+     in all Miss Mitford's writing, but it is a cheerful country,
+     pervaded by a rosy-cheeked optimism. Her letters, too,
+     scribbled on small scraps of paper, are as attractive as her
+     books.
+
+
+_I.--Some of the Inhabitants_
+
+
+Will you walk with me through our village, courteous reader? The journey
+is not long. We will begin at the lower end, and proceed up the hill.
+
+The tidy, square, red cottage on the right hand, with the long,
+well-stocked garden by the side of the road, belongs to a retired
+publican from a neighbouring town; a substantial person with a comely
+wife--one who piques himself on independence and idleness, talks
+politics, reads the newspapers, hates the minister, and cries out for
+reform. He hangs over his gate, and tries to entice passengers to stop
+and chat. Poor man! He is a very respectable person, and would be a very
+happy one if he would add a little employment to his dignity. It would
+be the salt of life to him.
+
+Next to his house, though parted from it by another long garden with a
+yew arbour at the end, is the pretty dwelling of the shoemaker, a pale,
+sickly-looking, black-haired man, the very model of sober industry.
+There he sits in his little shop from early morning till late at night.
+An earthquake would hardly stir him. There is at least as much vanity in
+his industry as in the strenuous idleness of the retired publican. The
+shoemaker has only one pretty daughter, a light, delicate, fair-haired
+girl of fourteen, the champion, protectress, and play-fellow of every
+brat under three years old, whom she jumps, dances, dandles, and feeds
+all day long. A very attractive person is that child-loving girl. She
+likes flowers, and has a profusion of white stocks under her window, as
+pure and delicate as herself.
+
+The first house on the opposite side of the way is the blacksmith's--a
+gloomy dwelling, where the sun never seems to shine; dark and smoky
+within and without, like a forge. The blacksmith is a high officer in
+our little state, nothing less than a constable; but alas, alas! when
+tumults arise, and the constable is called for, he will commonly be
+found in the thickest of the fray. Lucky would it be for his wife and
+her eight children if there were no public-house in the land.
+
+Then comes the village shop, like other village shops, multifarious as a
+bazaar--a repository for bread, shoes, tea, cheese, tape, ribbons, and
+bacon; for everything, in short, except the one particular thing which
+you happen to want at the moment, and will be sure not to find.
+
+Divided from the shop by a narrow yard is a habitation of whose inmates
+I shall say nothing. A cottage--no, a miniature house, all angles, and
+of a charming in-and-outness; the walls, old and weather-stained,
+covered with hollyhocks, roses, honeysuckles, and a great apricot-tree;
+the casements full of geraniums (oh, there is our superb white cat
+peeping out from among them!); the closets (our landlord has the
+assurance to call them rooms) full of contrivances and corner-cupboards;
+and the little garden behind full of common flowers. That house was
+built on purpose to show in what an exceeding small compass comfort may
+be packed.
+
+The next tenement is a place of importance, the Rose Inn--a whitewashed
+building, retired from the road behind its fine swinging sign, with a
+little bow-window room coming out on one side, and forming, with our
+stable on the other, a sort of open square, which is the constant resort
+of carts, waggons, and return chaises.
+
+Next door lives a carpenter, "famed ten miles around, and worthy all his
+fame," with his excellent wife and their little daughter Lizzy, the
+plaything and queen of the village--a child three years old according to
+the register, but six in size and strength and intellect, in power and
+self-will. She manages everybody in the place; makes the lazy carry her,
+the silent talk to her, and the grave to romp with her. Her chief
+attraction lies in her exceeding power of loving, and her firm reliance
+on the love and the indulgence of others.
+
+How pleasantly the road winds up the hill, with its broad, green borders
+and hedgerows so thickly timbered! How finely the evening sun falls on
+that sandy, excavated bank, and touches the farmhouse on the top of the
+eminence!
+
+
+_II.--Hannah Bint_
+
+
+The shaw leading to Hannah Bint's habitation is a very pretty mixture of
+wood and coppice. A sudden turn brings us to the boundary of the shaw,
+and there, across the open space, the white cottage of the keeper peeps
+from the opposite coppice; and the vine-covered dwelling of Hannah Bint
+rises from amidst the pretty garden, which lies bathed in the sunshine
+around it.
+
+My friend Hannah Bint is by no means an ordinary person. Her father,
+Jack Bint (for in all his life he never arrived at the dignity of being
+called John), was a drover of high repute in his profession. No man
+between Salisbury Plain and Smithfield was thought to conduct a flock of
+sheep so skilfully through all the difficulties of lanes and commons,
+streets and high-roads, as Jack Bint, aided by Jack Bint's famous dog,
+Watch.
+
+No man had a more thorough knowledge of the proper night stations, where
+good feed might be procured for his charge, and good liquor for Watch
+and himself; Watch, like other sheepdogs, being accustomed to live
+chiefly on bread and beer, while his master preferred gin.
+
+But when a rheumatic fever came one hard winter, and finally settled in
+Jack Bint's limbs, reducing the most active and handy man in the parish
+to the state of a confirmed cripple, poor Jack, a thoughtless but kind
+creature, looked at his three motherless children with acute misery.
+Then it was that he found help where he least expected it--in the sense
+and spirit of his young daughter, a girl of twelve years old.
+
+Hannah was a quick, clever lass of a high spirit, a firm temper, some
+pride, and a horror of accepting parochial relief--that surest safeguard
+to the sturdy independence of the English character. So when her father
+talked of giving up their comfortable cottage and removing to the
+workhouse, while she and her brothers must move to service, Hannah
+formed a bold resolution, and proceeded to act at once on her own plans
+and designs.
+
+She knew that the employer in whose service her father's health had
+suffered so severely was a rich and liberal cattle-dealer in the
+neighbourhood, who would willingly aid an old and faithful servant. Of
+Farmer Oakley, accordingly, she asked, not money, but something much
+more in his own way--a cow! And, amused and interested by the child's
+earnestness, the wealthy yeoman gave her a very fine young Alderney.
+
+She then went to the lord of the manor, and, with equal knowledge of
+character, begged his permission to keep her cow on the shaw common. He,
+too, half from real good nature, and half not to be outdone in
+liberality by his tenant, not only granted the requested permission, but
+reduced the rent so much that the produce of the vine seldom failed to
+satisfy their kind landlord.
+
+Now Hannah showed great judgment in setting up as a dairy-woman. One of
+the most provoking of the petty difficulties which beset a small
+establishment in this neighbourhood is the trouble, almost the
+impossibility, of procuring the pastoral luxuries of milk, eggs, and
+butter. Hannah's Alderney restored us to our rural privilege. Speedily
+she established a regular and gainful trade in milk, eggs, butter,
+honey, and poultry--for poultry they had always kept.
+
+In short, during the five years she has ruled at the shaw cottage the
+world has gone well with Hannah Bint. She has even taught Watch to like
+the buttermilk as well as strong beer, and has nearly persuaded her
+father to accept milk as a substitute for gin. Not but that Hannah hath
+had her enemies as well as her betters. The old woman at the lodge, who
+always piqued herself on being spiteful, and crying down new ways,
+foretold that she would come to no good; nay, even Ned Miles, the
+keeper, her next neighbour, who had whilom held entire sway over the
+shaw common, as well as its coppices, grumbled as much as so
+good-natured and genial a person could grumble when he found a little
+girl sharing his dominion, a cow grazing beside his pony, and vulgar
+cocks and hens hovering around the buckwheat destined to feed his noble
+pheasants.
+
+Yes! Hannah hath had her enemies, but they are passing away. The old
+woman at the lodge is dead, poor creature; and the keeper?--why, he is
+not dead, or like to die, but the change that has taken place there is
+the most astonishing of all--except perhaps the change in Hannah
+herself.
+
+Few damsels of twelve years old, generally a very pretty age, were less
+pretty than Hannah Bint. Short and stunted in her figure, thin in face,
+sharp in feature, with a muddied complexion, wild, sunburnt hair, and
+eyes whose very brightness had in them something startling,
+over-informed, too clever for her age; at twelve years old she had quite
+the air of a little old fairy.
+
+Now, at seventeen, matters are mended. Her complexion has cleared; her
+countenance has developed itself; her figure has shot up into height and
+lightness, and a sort of rustic grace; her bright, acute eye is softened
+and sweetened by a womanly wish to please; her hair is trimmed and
+curled and brushed with exquisite neatness; and her whole dress arranged
+with that nice attention to the becoming which would be called the
+highest degree of coquetry if it did not deserve the better name of
+propriety. The lass is really pretty, and Ned Miles has discovered that
+she is so. There he stands, the rogue, close at her side (for he hath
+joined her whilst we have been telling her little story, and the milking
+is over); there he stands holding her milk-pail in one hand, and
+stroking Watch with the other. There they stand, as much like lovers as
+may be; he smiling and she blushing; he never looking so handsome, nor
+she so pretty, in their lives.
+
+There they stand, and one would not disturb them for all the milk and
+the butter in Christendom. I should not wonder if they were fixing the
+wedding-day.
+
+
+_III.--A Country Cricket Match_
+
+
+I doubt if there be any scene in the world more animating or delightful
+than a cricket match. I do not mean a set match at Lord's Ground--no!
+the cricket I mean is a real solid, old-fashioned match between
+neighbouring parishes, where each attacks the other for honour and a
+supper.
+
+For the last three weeks our village has been in a state of great
+excitement, occasioned by a challenge from our north-western neighbours,
+the men of B----, to contend with us at cricket. Now, we have not been
+much in the habit of playing matches. The sport had languished until the
+present season, when the spirit began to revive. Half a dozen fine,
+active lads, of influence among their comrades, grew into men and
+yearned for cricket. In short, the practice recommenced, and the hill
+was again alive with men and boys and innocent merriment. Still, we were
+modest and doubted our own strength.
+
+The B---- people, on the other hand, must have been braggers born. Never
+was such boasting! Such ostentatious display of practice! It was a
+wonder they did not challenge all England. Yet we firmly resolved not to
+decline the combat; and one of the most spirited of the new growth,
+William Grey by name, and a farmer's son by station, took up the glove
+in a style of manly courtesy that would have done honour to a knight in
+the days of chivalry.
+
+William Grey then set forth to muster his men, remembering with great
+complacency that Samuel Long, the very man who had bowled us out at a
+fatal return match some years ago at S--, our neighbours south-by-east,
+had luckily, in a remove of a quarter of a mile last Lady Day, crossed
+the boundaries of his old parish and actually belonged to us. Here was a
+stroke of good fortune! Our captain applied to him instantly, and he
+agreed at a word. We felt we had half gained the match when we had
+secured him. Then James Brown, a journeyman blacksmith and a native,
+who, being of a rambling disposition, had roamed from place to place for
+half a dozen years, had just returned to our village with a prodigious
+reputation in cricket and gallantry. To him also went the indefatigable
+William Grey, and he also consented to play. Having thus secured two
+powerful auxiliaries, we began to reckon the regular forces.
+
+Thus ran our list. William Grey, 1; Samuel Long, 2; James Brown, 3;
+George and John Simmons, one capital, the other so-so--an uncertain
+hitter, but a good fieldsman, 5; Joel Brent, excellent, 6; Ben
+Appleton--here was a little pause, for Ben's abilities at cricket were
+not completely ascertained, but then he was a good fellow, so full of
+fun and waggery! No doing without Ben. So he figured in the list as 7.
+George Harris--a short halt there too--slowish, but sure, 8; Tom
+Coper--oh, beyond the world Tom Coper, the red-headed gardening lad,
+whose left-handed strokes send _her_ (a cricket-ball is always of the
+feminine gender) send her spinning a mile, 9; Harry Willis, another
+blacksmith, 10.
+
+We had now ten of our eleven, but the choice of the last occasioned some
+demur. John Strong, a nice youth--everybody likes John Strong--was the
+next candidate, but he is so tall and limp that we were all afraid his
+strength, in spite of his name, would never hold out. So the eve of the
+match arrived and the post was still vacant, when a little boy of
+fifteen, David Willis, brother to Harry, admitted by accident to the
+last practice, saw eight of them out, and was voted in by acclamation.
+
+Morning dawned. On calling over our roll, Brown was missing; and it
+transpired that he had set off at four o'clock in the morning to play in
+a cricket match at M----, a little town twelve miles off, which had been
+his last residence. Here was desertion! Here was treachery! How we cried
+him down! We were well rid of him, for he was no batter compared with
+William Grey; not fit to wipe the shoes of Samuel Long as a bowler; the
+boy David Willis was worth fifty of him. So we took tall John Strong. I
+never saw any one prouder than the good-humoured lad was at this not
+very flattering piece of preferment.
+
+_They_ began the warfare--these boastful men of B----! And what think
+you was the amount of their innings? These challengers--the famous
+eleven--how many did they get? Think! Imagine! Guess! You cannot. Well,
+they got twenty-two, or, rather, they got twenty, for two of theirs were
+short notches, and would never have been allowed, only that, seeing what
+they were made of, we and our umpires were not particular. Oh, how well
+we fielded.
+
+Then we went in. And what of our innings? Guess! A hundred and sixty-nine!
+We headed them by a hundred and forty-seven; and then they gave in,
+as well they might. William Grey pressed them much to try another
+innings, but they were beaten sulky and would not move.
+
+The only drawback in my enjoyment was the failure of the pretty boy
+David Willis, who, injudiciously put in first, and playing for the first
+time in a match amongst men and strangers, was seized with such a fit of
+shamefaced shyness that he could scarcely hold his bat, and was bowled
+out without a stroke, from actual nervousness. Our other modest lad,
+John Strong, did very well; his length told in the field, and he got
+good fame. William Grey made a hit which actually lost the cricket-ball.
+We think she lodged in a hedge a quarter of a mile off, but nobody could
+find her. And so we parted; the players retired to their supper and we
+to our homes, all good-humoured and all happy--except the losers.
+
+
+_IV.--Love, the Leveller_
+
+
+The prettiest cottage on our village green is the little dwelling of
+Dame Wilson. The dame was a respected servant in a most respectable
+family, which she quitted only on her marriage with a man of character
+and industry, and of that peculiar universality of genius which forms
+what is called, in country phrase, a handy fellow. His death, which
+happened about ten years ago, made quite a gap in our village
+commonwealth.
+
+Without assistance Mrs. Wilson contrived to maintain herself and her
+children in their old, comfortable home. The house had still, within and
+without, the same sunshiny cleanliness, and the garden was still famous
+over all other gardens. But the sweetest flower of the garden, and the
+joy and pride of her mother's heart, was her daughter Hannah. Well might
+she be proud of her! At sixteen, Hannah Wilson was, beyond a doubt, the
+prettiest girl in the village, and the best. Her chief characteristic
+was modesty. Her mind was like her person: modest, graceful, gentle and
+generous above all.
+
+Our village beauty had fairly reached her twentieth year without a
+sweetheart; without the slightest suspicion of her having ever written a
+love-letter on her own account, when, all of a sudden, appearances
+changed. A trim, elastic figure, not unaccompanied, was descried walking
+down the shady lane. Hannah had gotten a lover!
+
+Since the new marriage act, we, who belong to the country magistrates,
+have gained a priority over the rest of the parish in matrimonial news.
+We (the privileged) see on a work-day the names which the Sabbath
+announces to the generality. One Saturday, walking through our little
+hall, I saw a fine athletic young man, the very image of health and
+vigour, mental and bodily, holding the hand of a young woman, who was
+turning bashfully away, listening, and yet not seeming to listen, to his
+tender whispers. Hannah! And she went aside with me, and a rapid series
+of questions and answers conveyed the story of the courtship. "William
+was," said Hannah, "a journeyman hatter, in B----. He had walked over to
+see the cricketing, and then he came again. Her mother liked him.
+Everybody liked him--and she had promised. Was it wrong?"
+
+"Oh, no! And where are you to live?" "William had got a room in B----.
+He works for Mr. Smith, the rich hatter in the market-place, and Mr.
+Smith speaks of him, oh, so well! But William will not tell me where our
+room is. I suppose in some narrow street or lane, which he is afraid I
+shall not like, as our common is so pleasant. He little
+thinks--anywhere--" She stopped suddenly. "Anywhere with him!"
+
+The wedding-day was a glorious morning.
+
+"What a beautiful day for Hannah!" was the first exclamation at the
+breakfast-table. "Did she tell you where they should dine?"
+
+"No, ma'am; I forgot to ask."
+
+"I can tell you," said the master of the house, with the look of a man
+who, having kept a secret as long as it was necessary, is not sorry to
+get rid of the burthen. "I can tell you--in London."
+
+"In London?"
+
+"Yes. Your little favourite has been in high luck. She has married the
+only son of one of the best and richest men in B----, Mr. Smith, the
+great hatter. It is quite a romance. William Smith walked over to see a
+match, saw our pretty Hannah, and forgot to look at the cricketers. He
+came again and again, and at last contrived to tame this wild dove, and
+even to get the _entrée_ of the cottage. Hearing Hannah talk is not the
+way to fall out of love with her. So William, finding his case serious,
+laid the matter before his father, and requested his consent to the
+marriage. Mr. Smith was at first a little startled. But William is an
+only son, and an excellent son; and after talking with me, and looking
+at Hannah, the father relented. But, having a spice of his son's
+romance, and finding that he had not mentioned his station in life, he
+made a point of its being kept secret till the wedding-day. I hope the
+shock will not kill Hannah."
+
+"Oh, no! Hannah loves her husband too well."
+
+And I was right. Hannah has survived the shock. She is returned to
+B----, and I have been to call on her. She is still the same Hannah, and
+has lost none of her old habits of kindness and gratitude. She did
+indeed just hint at her trouble with visitors and servants; seemed
+distressed at ringing the bell, and visibly shrank from the sound of a
+double knock. But in spite of these calamities Hannah is a happy woman.
+The double rap was her husband's, and the glow on her cheek, and the
+smile of her lips and eyes when he appeared spoke more plainly than
+ever: "Anywhere with him!"
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+
+
+DAVID MOIR
+
+
+Autobiography of Mansie Wauch
+
+
+     David Macbeth Moir was born at Musselburgh, Scotland, Jan. 5,
+     1798, and educated at the grammar school of the Royal Burgh
+     and at Edinburgh University, from which he received the
+     diploma of surgeon in 1816. He practised as a physician in his
+     native town from 1817 until 1843, when, health failing, he
+     practically withdrew from the active duties of his profession.
+     Moir began to write in both prose and verse for various
+     periodicals when quite a youth, but his long connection with
+     "Blackwood's Magazine" under the pen name of "Delta",
+     began in 1820, and he became associated with
+     Christopher North, the Ettrick Shepherd, and others of the
+     Edinburgh coterie distinguished in "Noctes Ambrosianae." He
+     contributed to "Blackwood," histories, biographies, essays,
+     and poems, to the number of about 400. His poems were esteemed
+     beyond their merits by his generation, and his reputation now
+     rests almost solely on the caustic humour of his
+     "Autobiography of Mansie Wauch," published in 1828, a series
+     of sketches of the manner of life in the shop-keeping and
+     small-trading class of a Scottish provincial town at the
+     beginning of the nineteenth century. Moir died at Dumfries on
+     July 6, 1851.
+
+
+_I.--Mansie's Forebears and Early Life_
+
+
+Some of the rich houses and great folk pretend to have histories of the
+ancientness of their families, which they can count back on their
+fingers almost to the days of Noah's Ark, and King Fergus the First, but
+it is not in my power to come further back than auld grand-faither, who
+died when I was a growing callant. I mind him full well. To look at him
+was just as if one of the ancient patriarchs had been left on the earth,
+to let succeeding survivors witness a picture of hoary and venerable
+eld.
+
+My own father, auld Mansie Wauch, was, at the age of thirteen, bound a
+'prentice to the weaver trade, which he prosecuted till a mortal fever
+cut through the thread of his existence. Alas, as Job says, "How time
+flies like a weaver's shuttle!" He was a decent, industrious,
+hard-working man, doing everything for the good of his family, and
+winning the respect of all who knew the value of his worth. On the
+five-and-twentieth year of his age he fell in love with, and married, my
+mother, Marion Laverock.
+
+I have no distinct recollection of the thing myself, but there is every
+reason to believe that I was born on October 13, 1765, in a little house
+in the Flesh-Market Gate, Dalkeith, and the first thing I have any clear
+memory of was being carried on my auntie's shoulders to see the Fair
+Race. Oh! but it was a grand sight! I have read since the story of
+Aladdin's Wonderful Lamp, but that fair and the race, which was won by a
+young birkie who had neither hat nor shoon, riding a philandering beast
+of a horse thirteen or fourteen years auld, beat it all to sticks.
+
+In time, I was sent to school, where I learned to read and spell, making
+great progress in the Single and Mother's Carritch. What is more, few
+could fickle me in the Bible, being mostly able to spell it all over,
+save the second of Ezra and the seventh of Nehemiah, which the Dominie
+himself could never read through twice in the same way, or without
+variation.
+
+Being of a delicate make--nature never intended me for the naval or
+military line, or for any robustious profession--I was apprenticed to
+the tailoring trade. Just afterwards I had a terrible stound of
+calf-love, my first flame being the minister's lassie, Jess, a buxom and
+forward queen, two or three years older than myself. I used to sit
+looking at her in the kirk, and felt a droll confusion when our eyes
+met. It dirled through my heart like a dart. Fain would I have spoken to
+her, but aye my courage failed me, though whiles she gave me a smile
+when she passed. She used to go to the well every night with her two
+stoups to draw water, so I thought of watching to give her two apples
+which I had carried in my pocket for more than a week for that purpose.
+How she started when I stappit them into her hand, and brushed by
+without speaking!
+
+Jamie Coom, the blacksmith, who I aye jealoused was my rival, came up
+and asked Jess, with a loud guffaw, "Where is the tailor?" When I heard
+that, I took to my heels till I found myself on the little stool by the
+fireside with the hamely sound of my mother's wheel bum-bumming in my
+lug, like a gentle lullaby.
+
+The days of the years of my 'prenticeship having glided cannily over, I
+girt myself round about with a proud determination of at once cutting my
+mother's apron-string. So I set out for Edinburgh in search of a
+journeyman's place, which I got the very first day in the Grassmarket.
+My lodging was up six pairs of stairs, in a room which I rented for
+half-a-crown a week, coals included; but my heart was sea-sick of
+Edinburgh folk and town manners, for which I had no stomach. I could
+form no friendly acquaintanceship with a living soul. Syne I abode by
+myself, like St. John in the Isle of Patmos, on spare allowance, making
+a sheep-head serve me for three days' kitchen.
+
+Everything around me seemed to smell of sin and pollution, and often did
+I commune with my own heart, that I would rather be a sober, poor,
+honest man in the country, able to clear my day and way by the help of
+Providence, than the provost himself, my lord though he be, or even the
+mayor of London, with his velvet gown trailing for yards in the glaur
+behind him, or riding about the streets in a coach made of clear crystal
+and wheels of beaten gold.
+
+But when my heart was sickening unto death, I fell in with the greatest
+blessing of my life, Nanse Cromie, a bit wench of a lassie frae the
+Lauder direction, who had come to be a servant in the flat below our
+workshop, and whom I often met on the stairs.
+
+If ever a man loved, and loved like mad, it was me; and I take no shame
+in the confession. Let them laugh who like; honest folk, I pity them;
+such know not the pleasures of virtuous affection. Matters were by and
+bye settled full tosh between us; and though the means of both parties
+were small, we were young, and able and willing to help one another.
+Nanse and me laid our heads together towards the taking a bit house in
+the fore-street of Dalkeith, and at our leisure bought the plenishing.
+
+Two or three days after Maister Wiggie, the minister, had gone through
+the ceremony of tying us together, my sign was nailed up, painted in
+black letters on a blue ground, with a picture of a jacket on one side
+and a pair of shears on the other; and I hung up a wheen ready-made
+waistcoats, caps, and Kilmarnock cowls in the window. Business in fact,
+flowed in upon us in a perfect torrent.
+
+Both Nanse and I found ourselves so proud of our new situation that we
+slipped out in the dark and had a prime look with a lantern at the sign,
+which was the prettiest ye ever saw, although some sandblind creatures
+had taken the neatly painted jacket for a goose.
+
+
+_II.--The Resurrection Men_
+
+
+A year or two after the birth and christening of wee Benjie, my son, I
+was cheated by a swindling black-aviced Englishman out of some weeks'
+lodgings and keep, and a pair of new velveteen knee-breeches.
+
+Then there arose a great surmise that some loons were playing false with
+the kirkyard; and, on investigation, it was found that four graves had
+been opened, and the bodies harled away to the college. Words cannot
+describe the fear, the dool, and the misery it caused, and the righteous
+indignation that burst through the parish.
+
+But what remead? It was to watch in the session-house with loaded guns,
+night about, three at a time. It was in November when my turn came. I
+never liked to go into the kirkyard after darkening, let-a-be sit
+through a long winter night with none but the dead around us. I felt a
+kind of qualm of faintness and downsinking about my heart and stomach,
+to the dispelling of which I took a thimbleful of spirits, and, tying my
+red comforter about my neck, I marched briskly to the session-house.
+
+Andrew Goldie, the pensioner, lent me his piece and loaded it to me. Not
+being well acquaint with guns, I kept the muzzle aye away from me, as it
+is every man's duty not to throw his precious life into jeopardy. A
+bench was set before the sessions-house fire, which bleezed brightly. My
+spirits rose, and I wondered, in my bravery, that a man like me should
+be afraid of anything. Nobody was there but a towzy, carroty-haired
+callant.
+
+The night was now pitmirk. The wind soughed amid the headstones and
+railings of the gentry (for we must all die), and the black corbies in
+the steeple-holes cackled and crawed in a fearsome manner. Oh, but it
+was lonesome and dreary; and in about an hour the laddie wanted to rin
+awa hame; but, trying to look brave, though half-frightened out of my
+seven senses, I said, "Sit down, sit down; I've baith whiskey and porter
+wi' me. Hae, man, there's a cawker to keep your heart warm; and set down
+that bottle of Deacon Jaffrey's best brown stout to get a toast."
+
+The wind blew like a hurricane; the rain began to fall in perfect
+spouts. Just in the heart of the brattle the grating of the yett turning
+on its rusty hinges was but too plainly heard.
+
+"The're coming; cock the piece, ye sumph!" cried the laddie, while his
+red hair rose, from his pow like feathers. "I hear them tramping on the
+gravel," and he turned the key in the lock and brizzed his back against
+the door like mad, shouting out, "For the Lord's sake, prime the gun, or
+our throats will be cut before you can cry Jack Robinson."
+
+I did the best I could, but the gun waggled to and fro like a cock's
+tail on a rainy day. I trust I was resigned to die, but od' it was a
+frightful thing to be out of one's bed to be murdered in an old
+session-house at the dead hour of the night by devils incarnate of
+ressurrection men with blacked faces, pistols, big sticks, and other
+deadly weapons.
+
+After all, it was only Isaac, the bethrel, who, when we let him in, said
+that he had just keppit four ressurrectioners louping over the wall. But
+that was a joke. I gave Isaac a dram to kep his heart up, and he sung
+and leuch as if he had been boozing with some of his drucken cronies;
+for feint a hair cared he about auld kirkyards, or vouts, or dead folk
+in their winding-sheets, with the wet grass growing over them. Then,
+although I tried to stop him, he began to tell stories of Eirish
+ressurrectioners, and ghaists, seen in the kirkyard at midnight.
+
+Suddenly a clap like thunder was heard, and the laddie, who had fallen
+asleep on the bench, jumped up and roared "Help!" "Murder!" "Thieves!"
+while Isaac bellowed out, "I'm dead! I'm killed!--shot through the head!
+Oh, oh, oh!" Surely, I had fainted away, for, when I came to myself, I
+found my red comforter loosed, my face all wet, Isaac rubbing down his
+waistcoat with his sleeve--the laddie swigging ale out of a bicker--and
+the brisk brown stout, which, by casting its cork, had caused all the
+alarm, whizz-whizz, whizzing in the chimney lug.
+
+
+_III.--The Friends of the People_
+
+
+The sough of war and invasion flew over the land at this time, like a
+great whirlwind; and the hearts of men died within their persons with
+fear and trembling. Abroad the heads of crowned kings were cut off, and
+great dukes and lords were thrown into dark dungeons, or obligated to
+flee for their lives to foreign countries.
+
+But worst of all the trouble seemed a smittal one, and even our own land
+began to show symptoms of the plague spot. Agents of the Spirit of
+Darkness, calling themselves the Friends of the People, held secret
+meetings, and hatched plots to blow up our blessed king and
+constitution. Yet the business, though fearsome in the main, was in some
+parts almost laughable. Everything was to be divided, and everyone made
+alike. Houses and lands were to be distributed by lots, and the mighty
+man and the beggar--the old man and the hobble-de-hoy--the industrious
+man and the spendthrift, the maimed, the cripple, and the blind, the
+clever man of business, and the haveril simpleton, made all just
+brethern, and alike. Save us! but to think of such nonsense! At one of
+their meetings, held at the sign of the Tappet Hen and the Tankard,
+there was a prime fight of five rounds between Tammy Bowsie, the snab,
+and auld Thrashem, the dominie, about their drawing cuts which was to
+get Dalkeith Palace, and which Newbottle Abbey! Oh, sic riff-raff!
+
+It was a brave notion of the king to put the loyalty of the land to the
+test, that the daft folk might be dismayed, and that the clanjamphrey
+might be tumbled down before their betters, like the windle-straes in a
+hurricane. And so they were. Such crowds came forward when the names of
+the volunteers were taken down. I will never forget the first day that I
+got my regimentals on, and when I looked myself in the glass, just to
+think I was a sodger who never in my life could thole the smell of
+powder! Oh, but it was grand! I sometimes fancied myself a general, and
+giving the word of command. Big Sam, who was a sergeant in the
+fencibles, and enough to have put five Frenchmen to flight any day of
+the year, whiles came to train us; but as nature never intended me for
+the soldiering trade, I never got out of the awkward squad, though I had
+two or three neighbours to keep me in countenance.
+
+We all cracked very crouse about fighting; but one dark night we got a
+fleg in sober earnest. Jow went the town bell, and row-de-dow gaed the
+drums, and all in a minute was confusion and uproar in ilka street. I
+was seized with a severe shaking of the knees and a flapping at the
+heart, when, through the garret window, I saw the signal posts were in a
+bleeze, and that the French had landed. This was in reality to be a
+soldier! I never got such a fright since the day I was cleckit. There
+was such a noise and hullabaloo in the streets, as if the Day of
+Judgment had come to find us all unprepared.
+
+Notwithstanding, we behaved ourselves like true-blue Scotsmen, called
+forth to fight the battles of our country, and if the French had come,
+as they did not come, they would have found that to their cost, as sure
+as my name is Mansie. However, it turned out that it was a false alarm,
+and that the thief Buonaparte had not landed at Dunbar, as it was
+jealoused; so, after standing under arms for half the night, we were
+sent home to our beds.
+
+But next day we were taken out to be taught the art of firing. We went
+through our motions bravely--to load, ram down the cartridge, made
+ready, present, fire. But so flustered and confused was I that I never
+had mind to pull the tricker, though I rammed down a fresh cartridge at
+the word of command. At the end of the firing the sergeant of the
+company ordered all that had loaded pieces to come to the front, and six
+of us stepped out in a little line in face of the regiment. Our pieces
+were cocked, and at the word "Fire!" off they went. It was an act of
+desperation on my part to draw the tricker, and I had hardly well shut
+my blinkers when I got such a thump on the shoulder as knocked me
+backwards, head over heels, on the grass. When I came to my senses and
+found myself not killed outright, and my gun two or three ells away, I
+began to rise up. Then I saw one of the men going forward to lift the
+fatal piece, but my care for the safety of others overcame the sense of
+my own peril. "Let alane, let alane!" cried I to him, "and take care of
+yoursell, for it has to gang off five times yet." I thought in my
+innocence that we should hear as many reports as I had crammed
+cartridges down her muzzle. This was a sore joke against me for a length
+of time; but I tholed it patiently, considering cannily within myself,
+that even Johnny Cope himself had not learned the art of war in a single
+morning.
+
+
+_IV.--My First and Last Play_
+
+
+Maister Glen, a farmer from the howes of the Lammermoor, Hills, a
+far-awa cousin of our neighbour Widow Grassie, came to Dalkeith to buy a
+horse at our fair. He put up free of expense at the widow's, who asked
+me to join him and her at a bit warm dinner, as may be, being a
+stranger, he would not like to use the freedom of drinking by himself--a
+custom which is at the best an unsocial one--especially with none but
+women-folk near him.
+
+When we got our joy filled for the second time, and began to be better
+acquainted, we became merry, and cracked away just like two pen-guns. I
+asked him, ye see, about sheep and cows, and ploughing and thrashing,
+and horses and carts, and fallow land and lambing-time, and such like;
+and he, in his turn, made inquiries regarding broad and narrow cloth,
+Shetland hose, and mittens, thread, and patent shears, measuring, and
+all other particulars belonging to our trade, which he said, at long and
+last, after we had joked together, was a power better one than the
+farming line; and he promised to bind his auldest callant 'prentice to
+me to the tailoring trade.
+
+On the head of this auld Glen and I had another jug, three being cannie,
+after which we were both a wee tozymozy. Mistress Grassie saw plainly
+that we were getting into a state where we could not easily make a halt,
+and brought in the tea-things and told us that a company of strolling
+players had come to the town and were to give an exhibition in Laird
+Wheatley's barn. Many a time I had heard of play-acting, and I
+determined to run the risk of Maister Wiggie, our minister's rebuke, for
+the transgression. Auld Glen, being as full of nonsense and as fain to
+gratify his curiosity as myself, volunteered to pay the ransom of a
+shilling for admission, so we went to the barn, which had been browley
+set out for the occasion by Johnny Hammer, the joiner.
+
+The place was choke-full, just to excess, and when the curtain was
+hauled up in came a decent old gentleman in great distress, and implored
+all the powers of heaven and earth to help him find his runaway daughter
+that had decamped with some ne'er-do-weel loon of a half-pay captain.
+Out he went stumping on the other side, determined, he said, to find
+them, though he should follow them to Johnny Groat's house, or something
+to that effect. Hardly was his back turned than in came the birkie and
+the very young lady the old gentleman described, arm-and-arm together,
+laughing like daft Dog on it! It was a shameless piece of business. As
+true as death, before all the crowd of folk, he put his arm round her
+waist and called her his sweetheart, and love, and dearie, and darling,
+and everything that is fine.
+
+In the middle of their goings on, the sound of a coming foot was heard,
+and the lassie, taking guilt to her, cried out, "Hide me, hide me, for
+the sake of goodness, for yonder comes my old father!" No sooner said
+than done. In he stappit her into a closit, and, after shutting the door
+on her, he sat down upon a chair, pretending to be asleep in the
+twinkling of a walking-stick. The old father came bounsing in, shook him
+up, and gripping him by the cuff of the neck, aske him, in a fierce
+tone, what he had made of his daughter. Never since I was born did I
+ever see such brazen-faced impudence! The rascal had the face to say at
+once that he had not seen the lassie for a month. As a man, as a father,
+as an elder of our kirk, my corruption was raised, for I aye hated lying
+as a poor cowardly sin, so I called out, "Dinna believe him, auld
+gentleman; he's telling a parcel of lees. Never saw her for a month!
+Just open that press-door, and ye'll see whether I am speaking truth or
+not!" The old man stared and looked dumfounded; and the young one,
+instead of running forward with his double nieves to strike me, began
+a-laughing, as if I had done him a good turn.
+
+But never since I had a being did I ever witness such an uproar and
+noise as immediately took place. The whole house was so glad that the
+scoundrel had been exposed that they set up siccan a roar of laughter,
+and thumped away at siccan a rate with their feet that down fell the
+place they called the gallery, all the folk in't being hurl'd
+topsy-turvy among the sawdust on the floor below.
+
+Then followed cries of "Murder," "Hold off me," "My ribs are in," "I'm
+killed," "I'm speechless." There was a rush to the door, the lights were
+knocked out, and such tearing, swearing, tumbling, and squealing was
+never witnessed in the memory of man since the building of Babel. I was
+carried off my feet, my wind was fairly gone, and a sick qualm came over
+me, which entirely deprived me of my senses. On opening my eyes in the
+dark, I found myself leaning with my broadside against the wall on the
+opposite side of the close, with the tail of my Sunday coat docked by
+the hainch buttons. So much for plays and play-actors--the first and the
+last I trust in grace that I shall ever see.
+
+Next morning I had to take my breakfast in bed, a thing very uncommon to
+me, except on Sunday mornings whiles, when each one according to the
+bidding of the Fourth Commandment, has a licence to do as he likes.
+Having a desperate sore head, our wife, poor body, put a thimbleful of
+brandy into my first cup of tea which had a wonderful virtue in putting
+all things to rights.
+
+In the afternoon Thomas Burlings, the ruling elder in the kirk, popped
+into the shop, and, in our two-handed crack, after asking me in a dry,
+curious way if I had come by no skaith in the business of the play, he
+said the thing had now spread far and wide, and was making a great noise
+in the world. I thought the body a wee sharp in his observe, so I
+pretended to take it quite lightly. Then he began to tell me a wheen
+stories, each one having to do with drinking.
+
+"It's a wearyfu' thing that whisky," said Thomas. "I wish it could be
+banished to Botany Bay."
+
+"It is that," said I. "Muckle and nae little sin does it breed and
+produce in this world."
+
+"I'm glad," quoth Thomas, stroking down his chin in a slee way, "I'm
+glad the guilty should see the folly o' their ain ways; it's the first
+step, ye ken, till amendment. And indeed I tell't Maister Wiggie, when
+he sent me here, that I could almost become guid for your being mair
+wary of your conduct for the future time to come."
+
+This was a thunder-clap to me, but I said briskly, "So ye're after some
+session business in this visit, are ye?"
+
+"Ye've just guessed it," answered Thomas, sleeking down his front hair
+with his fingers in a sober way. "We had a meeting this forenoon, and it
+was resolved ye should stand a public rebuke in the meeting house next
+Sunday."
+
+"Hang me if I do!" answered I. "Not for all the ministers and elders
+that were ever cleckit. I was born a free man, I live in a free country,
+I am the subject of a free king and constitution, and I'll be shot
+before I submit to such rank diabolical papistry."
+
+"Hooly and fairly, Mansie," quoth Thomas. "They'll maybe no be sae hard
+as they threaten. But ye ken, my friend, I'm speaking to you as a
+brither; it was an unco'-like business for an elder, not only to gang
+till a play, which is ane of the deevil's rendevouses, but to gan there
+in a state of liquor, making yourself a world's wonder, and you an elder
+of our kirk! I put the question to yourself soberly."
+
+His threatening I could despise; but ah, his calm, brotherly, flattering
+way I could not thole with. So I said till him, "Weel, weel, Thomas, I
+ken I have done wrong, and I am sorry for't; they'll never find me in
+siccan a scrape again."
+
+Thomas Burlings, in a friendly way, shook hands with me; telling that he
+would go back and plead with the session in my behalf. To do him justice
+he was not worse than his word, for I have aye attended the kirk as
+usual, standing, when it came to my rotation, at the plate, and nobody,
+gentle or simple, ever spoke to me on the subject of the playhouse, or
+minted the matter of the rebuke from that day to this.
+
+
+_V.--Benjie a Barber_
+
+
+When wee Benjie came to his thirteenth year, many and long were the
+debates between his fond mother and me what trade we would bring him up
+to. His mother thought that he had just the physog of an admiral, and
+when the matter was put to himsell, Benjie said quite briskly he would
+like to be a gentleman. At which I broke through my rule never to lift
+my fist to the bairn, and gave him such a yerk in the cheek with the
+loof of my hand, as made, I am sure, his lugs ring, and sent him dozing
+to the door like a peerie.
+
+We discussed, among other trades and professions, a lawyer's advocatt, a
+preaching minister, a doctor, a sweep, a rowley-powley man, a
+penny-pie-man, a man-cook, that easiest of all lives, a gentleman's
+gentleman; but in the end Nanse, when I suggested a barber, gave a
+mournful look and said in a state of Christian resignation, "Tak' your
+ain way, gudeman."
+
+And so Benjie was apprenticed to be a barber, for, as I made the
+observe, "Commend me to a safe employment, and a profitable. They may
+give others the nick, and draw blood, but catch them hurting themselves.
+The foundations of the hair-cutting and the shaving line are as sure as
+that of the everlasting rocks; beards being likely to roughen, and heads
+to require polling as long as wood grows and water runs."
+
+Benjie is now principal shop-man in a Wallflower Hair-Powder and Genuine
+Macassar Oil Warehouse, kept by three Frenchmen, called Moosies
+Peroukey, in the West End of London. But, though our natural enemies, he
+writes me that he has found them agreeable and shatty masters, full of
+good manners and pleasant discourse, and, except in their language,
+almost Christians.
+
+I aye thought Benjie was a genius, and he is beginning to show himself
+his father's son, being in thoughts of taking out a patent for making a
+hair-oil from rancid butter. If he succeeds it will make the callant's
+fortune. But he must not marry Madamoselle Peroukey without my special
+consent, as Nance says that her having a French woman for a
+daughter-in-law would be the death of her.
+
+As for myself, I have now retired from business with my guid wife Nanse
+to our ain cottage at Lugton, with a large garden and henhouse attached,
+there to spend the evening of our days. I have enjoyed a pleasant run of
+good health through life, reading my Bible more in hope than fear; our
+salvation, and not our destruction, being, I should suppose, its
+purpose. And I trust that the overflowing of a grateful heart will not
+be reckoned against me for unrighteousness.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+
+
+JAMES MORIER
+
+
+The Adventures of Hajji Baba of Ispahan
+
+
+     "Hajji Baba" stands by itself among the innumerable books
+     written of the East by Europeans. For these inimitable
+     concessions of a Persian rogue are intended to give a picture
+     of Oriental life as seen by Oriental and not by Western
+     eyes---to present the country and people of Persia from a
+     strictly Persian standpoint. This daring attempt to look at
+     the East from the inside, as it were, is acknowledged to be
+     successful; all Europeans familiar with Persia testify to the
+     truth, often very caustic truth, of James Morier's
+     portraiture. The author of "The Adventures of Hajji Baba of
+     Ispahan" was born about 1780, and spent most of his days as a
+     diplomatic representative of Great Britain in the East. He
+     first visited Persia in 1808-09, as private secretary to the
+     mission mentioned in the closing pages of "Hajji Baba." He
+     returned to Persia in 1811-12, and again in 1814, and wrote
+     two books about the country. But the thoroughness and candour
+     of his intimacy with the Persian character were not fully
+     revealed until the publication of "Hajji Baba" in 1824. So
+     popular was the work that Morier wrote an amusing sequel to it
+     entitled "Hajji Baba in England." He died on March 23, 1849.
+
+
+_I.--The Turcomans_
+
+
+My father, Kerbelai Hassan, was one of the most celebrated barbers of
+Ispahan. I was the son of his second wife, and as I was born when my
+father and mother were on a pilgrimage to the tomb of Hosein, in
+Kerbelah, I was called Hajji, or the pilgrim, a name which has procured
+for me a great deal of unmerited respect, because that honoured title is
+seldom conferred on any but those who have made the great pilgrimage to
+the tomb of the blessed Prophet of Mecca.
+
+I was taught to read and write by a mollah, or priest, who kept a school
+in a mosque near at hand; when not in school I attended the shop, and by
+the time I was sixteen it would be difficult to say whether I was most
+accomplished as a barber or a scholar. My father's shop, being situated
+near the largest caravanserai in the city, was the common resort of the
+foreign merchants; and one of them, Osman Aga, of Bagdad, took a great
+fancy to me, and so excited me by describing the different cities he had
+visited, that I soon felt a strong desire to travel. He was then in want
+of someone to keep his accounts, and as I associated the two
+qualifications of barber and scribe, he made me such advantageous offers
+that I agreed to follow him.
+
+His purpose was to journey to Meshed with the object of purchasing the
+lambskins of Bokhara. Our caravan proceeded without impediment to
+Tehran; but the dangerous part of the journey was yet to come, as a
+tribe of Turcomans were known to infest the road.
+
+We advanced by slow marches over a parched and dreary country, and our
+conversation chiefly turned upon the Turcomans. Everyone vaunted his own
+courage; my master above the rest, his teeth actually chattering with
+apprehension, boasted of what he would do in case we were attacked. But
+when we in reality perceived a body of Turcomans coming down upon us,
+the scene instantly changed. Some ran away; others, and among them my
+master, yielded to intense fear, and began to exclaim: "O Allah! O
+Imams! O Mohammed the Prophet, we are gone! We are dying! We are dead!"
+A shower of arrows, which the enemy discharged as they came in, achieved
+their conquest, and we soon became their prey. The Turcomans having
+completed their plunder, placed each of us behind a horseman, and we
+passed through wild tracts of mountainous country to a large plain,
+covered with the black tents and the flocks and herds of our enemies.
+
+My master was set to tend camels in the hills; but when the Turcomans
+discovered my abilities as a barber and a surgeon, I became a general
+favourite, and gained the confidence of the chief of the tribe himself.
+Finally, he determined to permit me to accompany him on a predatory
+excursion into Persia--a permission which I hoped would lead to my
+escaping. I was the more ready to do so, in that I secretly possessed
+fifty ducats. These had been concealed by my master, Osman Aga, in his
+turban at the outset of his journey. The turban had been taken from him
+and carried to the women's quarters, whence I had recovered it. I had
+some argument with myself as to whether I ought to restore the ducats to
+him; but I persuaded myself that the money was now mine rather than his.
+"Had it not been for me," I said, "the money was lost for ever; who,
+therefore, has a better claim to it than myself?"
+
+We carried off much property on the raid, but as our only prisoners were
+a court poet, a carpet-spreader, and a penniless cadi, we had little to
+hope for in the way of ransom. On our return journey we perceived a
+large body of men, too compact for a caravan--plainly some great
+personage and his escort. The Turcomans retired hastily, but I lagged
+behind, seeing in this eventuality a means of escape. I was soon
+overtaken and seized, plundered of my fifty ducats and everything else,
+and dragged before the chief personage of the party--a son of the Shah,
+on his way to become governor of Khorassan.
+
+Kissing the ground before him, I related my story, and petitioned for
+the return of my fifty ducats. The rogues who had taken the money were
+brought before the prince, who ordered them to be bastinadoed until they
+produced it. After a few blows they confessed, and gave up the ducats,
+which were carried to the prince. He counted the money, put it under the
+cushion on which he was reclining, and said loudly to me, "You are
+dismissed."
+
+"My money, where is it?" I exclaimed.
+
+"Give him the shoe," said the prince to his master of the ceremonies,
+who struck me over the mouth with the iron-shod heel of his slipper,
+saying: "Go in peace, or you'll have your ears cut off."
+
+"You might as well expect a mule to give up a mouthful of fresh grass,"
+said an old muleteer to whom I told my misfortune, "as a prince to give
+up money that has once been in his hands."
+
+Reaching Meshed in a destitute state, I practised for a time the trade
+of water-carrier, and then became an itinerant vendor of smoke. I was
+not very scrupulous about giving my tobacco pure; and when one day the
+_Mohtesib_, or inspector, came to me, disguised as an old woman, I gave
+him one of my worst mixtures. Instantly he summoned half a dozen stout
+fellows; my feet were noosed, and blow after blow was inflicted on them
+until they were a misshapen mass of flesh and gore. All that I possessed
+was taken from me, and I crawled home miserably on my hands and knees.
+
+I felt I had entered Meshed in an unlucky hour, and determined to leave
+it. Dressed as a dervish I joined a caravan for Tehran.
+
+
+_II.--The Fate of the Lovely_
+
+
+I at first resolved to follow the career of a dervish, tempted thereto
+by the confidences of my companion, Dervish Sefer, who befriended me
+after my unhappy encounter with the Mohtesib.
+
+"With one-fiftieth of your accomplishments, and a common share of
+effrontery," he told me, "you may command both the purses and the lives
+of your hearers. By impudence I have been a prophet, by impudence I have
+wrought miracles--by impudence, in short, I live a life of great ease."
+
+But a chance came to me of stealing a horse, the owner of which
+confessed he had himself stolen it; and by selling it I hoped to add to
+the money I had obtained as a dervish, and thereby get into some
+situation where I might gain my bread honestly. Unfortunately, when I
+had reached Tehran, the real owner of the horse appeared. I was
+compelled to refund to the dealer the money I had been paid for the
+horse, and had some difficulty, when we went before the magistrate at
+the bazaar, in proving that I was not a thief. I had heard that the
+court poet, with whom I had formed a friendship during his captivity
+among the Turcomans, had escaped and returned to Tehran. To him,
+therefore, I repaired, and through his good offices I secured a post as
+assistant to Mirza Ahmak, the king's chief physician.
+
+Although the physician was willing to have my services, he was too
+avaricious to pay me anything for them; and I would not have remained
+long with him had I not fallen in love. In the heat of summer I made any
+bed in the open air, in a corner of a terrace that overlooked an inner
+court where the women's apartments were situated. I came presently to
+exchanging glances with a beautiful Curdish slave. From glances we came
+to conversation. At length, when Zeenab--for that was her name--was
+alone in the women's apartments, she would invite me down from the
+terrace, and we would spend long hours feasting and singing together.
+
+But our felicity was destined to be interrupted. The Shah was about to
+depart for his usual summer campaign, and, according to his wont, paid a
+round of visits to noblemen, thereby reaping for himself a harvest of
+presents. The physician, being reputed rich, was marked out as prey fit
+for the royal grasp. The news of the honour to be paid him left him
+half-elated at the distinction, half-trembling at the ruin that awaited
+his finances. The Shah came with his full suite, dined gorgeously at my
+master's expense, and, as is customary, visited the women's apartments.
+Presently came the news that my master had presented the Shah with
+Zeenab! She was to be trained as a dancing-girl, and was to dance before
+the Shah on his return from the campaign.
+
+When Zeenab was thus removed out of my reach, I had no inducement to
+remain in the physician's service. I therefore sought and secured a post
+as _nasakchi_, or officer of the chief executioner. I was now a person
+of authority with the crowd, and used my stick so freely upon their
+heads and backs that I soon acquired a reputation for courage. Nor did I
+fail to note the advice given to me by my brother officers as to the
+making of money by extortion--how an officer inflicts the bastinado
+fiercely or gently according to the capacity of the sufferer to pay; how
+bribes may be obtained from villages anxious not to have troops
+quartered upon them, and so on. I lived in such an atmosphere of
+violence and cruelty--I heard of nothing but slitting noses, putting out
+eyes, and chopping men in two--that I am persuaded I could almost have
+impaled my own father.
+
+The chief executioner was a tall and bony man, extremely ferocious.
+"Give me good hard fighting," he was accustomed to declare; "let me have
+my thrust with the lance, and my cut with the sabre, and I want no more.
+We all have our weaknesses--these are mine." This terrible man
+accompanied the Shah in his campaign, and I and the others went along
+with him, in the army that was to expel the Muscovite infidels from
+Georgia. Having heard that the Muscovites were posted on the Pembaki
+river, the chief executioner, with a large body of cavalry and infantry,
+proceeded to advance upon them.
+
+On reaching the river, we found two Muscovite soldiers on the opposite
+bank. The chief put on a face of the greatest resolution. "Go, seize,
+strike, kill!" he exclaimed. "Bring me their heads!"
+
+Several men dashed into the river, but the Russians, firing steadily,
+killed two of them, whereupon the rest retreated; nor could all the
+chief's oaths, entreaties, and offers of money persuade anybody to go
+forward.
+
+While we were thus parleying, a shot hit the chief executioner's
+stirrup, which awoke his fears to such a degree that he recalled his
+troops, and himself rode hastily away, exclaiming, "Curses be on their
+beards! Whoever fought after this fashion? Killing, killing, as if we
+were so many hogs! They will not run away, do all you can to them. They
+are worse than brutes! O Allah, Allah, if there was no dying in the
+case, how the Persians would fight!"
+
+On our return to the camp, a proclamation was issued announcing that an
+army of 50,000 infidels had been vanquished by the all-victorious armies
+of the Shah, that 10,000 of the dogs had given up their souls, and that
+the prisoners were so many that the prices of slaves had diminished a
+hundred per cent.
+
+When we went back with the Shah to Tehran, a horrid event occurred which
+plunged me in the greatest misery. I heard that Zeenab was ill, and
+unable to dance before the Shah; and, knowing the royal methods of
+treating unsatisfactory slaves, I feared greatly for the consequences.
+My fears were warranted. I was ordered, with others, to wait below the
+tower of the royal harem at midnight and bear away a corpse. We saw a
+woman struggling with two men at the top of the tower. The woman was
+flung over. We rushed forward. At my feet, in the death-agony, lay my
+beloved Zeenab. I hung over her in the deepest despair; my feelings
+could not be concealed from the ruffians around me.
+
+I abandoned everything, and left Tehran next day determined to become a
+real dervish, and spend the rest of my life in penitence and privations.
+
+
+_III.--Among the Holy Men_
+
+
+As I was preparing next night to sleep on the bare ground outside a
+caravanserai--for I was almost destitute--I saw a horseman ride up whom
+I recognised. It was one of the nasakchis who had assisted in the burial
+of Zeenab. I had been betrayed, then; my love for the king's slave had
+been revealed, and they were pursuing me.
+
+I went into the caravanserai, sought out a friend--the dervish whom I
+had known at Meshed--and asked his advice. "I can expect no mercy from
+this man," I said, "particularly as I have not enough money to offer
+him, for I know his price. Where shall I go?"
+
+The dervish replied, "You must lose not a moment in getting within the
+sanctuary of the tomb of Fatimeh at Kom. You can reach it before
+morning, and then you will be safe even from the Shah's power."
+
+"But how shall I live when I am there?" I asked.
+
+"I shall soon overtake you, and then, Inshallah (please God), you will
+not fare so ill as you imagine."
+
+As the day broke, I could distinguish the gilt cupola of the tomb before
+me; and as I perceived the horseman at some distance behind, I made all
+possible speed until I had passed the gateway of the sanctuary. Kissing
+the threshold of the tomb, I said my prayers with all the fervency of
+one who has got safe from a tempest into port.
+
+My friend the dervish arrived soon afterwards, and immediately urged
+upon me the importance of saying my prayers, keeping fasts, and wearing
+a long and mortified countenance. As he assured me that unless I made a
+pretence of deep piety I should be starved or stoned to death, I assumed
+forthwith the character of a rigid Mussulman. I rose at the first call,
+made my ablutions at the cistern in the strictest forms, and then prayed
+in the most conspicuous spot I could find.
+
+By the intensity of my devotion I won the goodwill of Mirza Abdul
+Cossim, the first _mashtehed_ (divine) of Persia, and by his influence I
+obtained a pardon from the Shah. Now that I was free from the sanctuary,
+I became anxious to gain some profit by my fame for piety; so I applied
+to Mirza Abdul Cossim, who straightway sent me to assist the mollah
+Nadân, one of the principal men of the law in Tehran. My true path of
+advancement, I believed, was now open. I was on the way to become a
+mollah.
+
+Nadân was an exemplary Mussulman in all outward matters; but I was not
+long in discovering that he had two ruling passions--jealousy of the
+chief priest of Tehran, and a hunger for money. My earliest duty was to
+gratify his second passion by negotiating temporary marriages for
+handsome fees. In these transactions we prospered fairly well; but
+unfortunately Nadân's desire to supplant the chief priest led him to
+stir up the populace to attack the Christians of the city, and plunder
+their property. The Shah was then in a humour to protect the Christians;
+consequently, Nadân had his beard plucked out by the roots, was mounted
+on an ass with his face to its tail, and was driven out of the city with
+blows and execrations.
+
+Once more homeless and almost penniless, not knowing what to do, I
+strolled in the dusk into a bath, and undressed. The bath was empty save
+for one man, whom I recognized as the chief priest. He was splashing
+about in a manner that struck me as remarkable for so sedate a
+character; then a most unusual floundering, attended with a gurgling of
+the throat, struck my ear. To my horror, I saw that he was drowned. Here
+was a predicament; it was inevitable that I should be charged with his
+murder.
+
+Suddenly it occurred to me that I bore a close resemblance to the dead
+man. For an hour or two, at any rate, I might act as an impostor. So, in
+the dim light, I dressed myself in the chief priest's clothes, and
+repaired to his house.
+
+I was there received by two young slaves, who paid me attentions that
+would at most times have delighted me; but just then they filled me with
+apprehension, and I was heartily glad when I got rid of the slaves and
+fastened the door. I then explored the chief priest's pockets, and found
+therein two letters. One was from the chief executioner--a notorious
+drunkard--begging permission to take unlimited wine for his health's
+sake. The other was from a priest at the mollah's village saying that he
+had extracted from the peasantry one hundred tomauns (£80), which would
+be delivered to a properly qualified messenger.
+
+To the chief executioner I wrote cheerfully granting the permission he
+sought, and suggesting that the loan of a well-caparisoned horse would
+not be amiss. I wrote a note to the priest requesting that the money be
+delivered to the bearer, our confidential Hajji Baba. Next morning I
+rose early, and made certain alterations in the chief priest's clothes
+so as to avoid detection. I went to the chief executioner's house,
+presented the letter, and received the horse, upon which I rode hastily
+away to the village. Having obtained the hundred tomauns I escaped
+across the frontier to Bagdad.
+
+
+_IV.--Hajji and the Infidels_
+
+
+On reaching Bagdad, I sought the house of my old master, Osman Aga, long
+since returned from his captivity, and through his assistance, and with
+my hundred tomauns as capital, I was able to set up in business as a
+merchant in pipe-sticks, and, having made myself as like as possible to
+a native of Bagdad, I travelled in Osman Aga's company to
+Constantinople. Having a complaint to make, I went to Mirza Ferouz,
+Persian ambassador on a special mission to Constantinople.
+
+"Your wit and manner are agreeable," he said to me; "you have seen the
+world and its business; you are a man who can make play under another's
+beard. Such I am in want of."
+
+"I am your slave and your servant," I replied.
+
+"Lately an ambassador came from Europe to Tehran," said Mirza Ferouz,
+"saying he was sent, with power to make a treaty, by a certain
+Boonapoort, calling himself Emperor of the French. He promised, that
+Georgia should be reconquered for us from the Russians, and that the
+English should be driven from India. Soon afterwards the English
+infidels in India sent agents to impede the reception of the Frenchman.
+We soon discovered that much was to be got between the rival curs of
+uncleanness; and the true object of my mission here is to discover all
+that is to be known of these French and English. In this you can help
+me."
+
+This proposal I gladly accepted, and went forth to interview a scribe of
+the Reis Effendi with whom I had struck up a friendship. He told me that
+Boonapoort was indeed a rare and daring infidel, who, from a mere
+soldier, became the sultan of an immense nation, and gave the law to all
+the Europeans.
+
+"And is there not a tribe of infidels called Ingliz?" I asked.
+
+"Yes, truly. They live in an island, are powerful in ships, and in
+watches and broad-cloth are unrivalled. They have a shah, but it is a
+farce to call him by that title. The power lies with certain houses full
+of madmen, who meet half the year round for the purposes of quarrelling.
+Nothing can be settled in the state, be it only whether a rebellious aga
+is to have his head cut off and his property confiscated, or some such
+trifle, until these people have wrangled. Let us bless Allah and our
+Prophet that we are not born to eat the miseries of the poor English
+infidels, but can smoke our pipes in quiet on the shores of our own
+peaceful Bosphorus!"
+
+I returned to my ambassador full of the information I had acquired;
+daily he sent me in search of fresh particulars, and before long I felt
+able to draw up the history of Europe that the Shah had ordered Mirza
+Ferouz to provide. So well pleased was the ambassador with my labours,
+that he announced his intention of taking me back to Persia and
+continuing me in Government employ. To this I readily agreed, knowing
+that, with the protection of men in office, I might show myself in my
+own country with perfect safety.
+
+On out return to Tehran we found an English ambassador negotiating a
+treaty, the French having gone away unsuccessful. Owing to the knowledge
+I had acquired of European affairs when at Constantinople, I was much
+employed in these transactions with the infidels, and when I gained the
+confidence of the grand vizier himself, destiny almost as much as
+whispered that the buffetings of the world had taken their departure
+from me.
+
+The negotiations reached a difficult point, and threatened to break
+down; neither the Persians nor the infidels would give way. I was sent
+by the grand vizier on a delicate mission to the English ambassador. I
+prevailed. I returned to the grand vizier with a sack of gold for him
+and the promise of a diamond ring, and the treaty was signed.
+
+It was decided to send an ambassador to England. Mirza Berouz was
+appointed, and I was chosen as his first mirza, or secretary. What
+pleased me most of all was that I was sent to Ispahan to raise part of
+the money for the presents to be taken to England. Hajji Baba, the
+barber's son, entered his native place as Mirza Hajji Baba, the Shah's
+deputy, with all the parade of a man of consequence, and on a mission
+that gave him unbounded opportunity of enriching himself. I found
+myself, after all my misfortunes, at the summit of what, in my Persian
+eyes, was perfect human bliss.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+
+
+DAVID CHRISTIE MURRAY
+
+
+The Way of the World
+
+
+     David Christie Murray was born at West Bromwich, England,
+     April 13, 1847, and began his journalistic career at
+     Birmingham. In 1873 he moved to London and joined the staff of
+     the "Daily News" and in 1878 he was correspondent of the
+     "Times" and the "Scotsman" in the Russo-Turkish war. He now
+     began to transfer his abundant experience of life to the pages
+     of fiction. His first novel, "A Life's Atonement," was
+     published in 1880, and was followed a year later by "Joseph's
+     Coat." In "The Way of the World," published in 1884, his art
+     as a story-teller and his keen observation of men and manners
+     were displayed as strikingly as in any of his later works--
+     several of which were written in collaboration with other
+     authors. Altogether he produced over thirty volumes of short
+     stories and novels single-handed. At the end of last century
+     he emerged from his literary seclusion in Wales and became
+     active in current affairs; he was one of the leading English
+     champions of Dreyfus, and obtained the warm friendship of
+     Emile Zola. He died on August 1, 1907.
+
+
+_I.--The Upstart_
+
+
+Your sympathies are requested for Mr. Bolsover Kimberley, a gentleman
+embarrassed beyond measure.
+
+Mr. Kimberley was thirty-five years of age. He was meek, and had no
+features to speak of. His hair was unassuming, and his whiskers were too
+shy to curl. He was a clerk in a solicitor's office in the town of
+Gallowbay, and he seemed likely to live to the end of his days in the
+pursuit of labours no more profitable or pretentious.
+
+A cat may look at a king. A solicitor's clerk may love an earl's
+daughter. It was an undeniable madness in Kimberley even to dream of
+loving the Lady Ella Santerre. He knew perfectly well what a fool he
+was; but he was in love for all that.
+
+To Bolsover Kimberley, seated in a little room with a dingy red desk and
+cobwebbed skylight, there entered Mr. Ragshaw, senior clerk to Messrs.
+Begg, Batter, and Bagg, solicitors.
+
+"My dear Mr. Kimberley," said Mr. Ragshaw, "allow me the honour of
+shaking hands with you. I believe that I am the first bearer of good
+news."
+
+Mr. Kimberley turned pale.
+
+"My firm, sir," pursued Mr. Ragshaw, "represented the trustees of the
+late owner of the Gallowbay Estate, who died three months ago at the age
+of twenty, leaving no known relatives. We instituted a search, which
+resulted in the discovery of an indisputable title to the estate. Permit
+me to congratulate you, sir--the estate is yours."
+
+Bolsover Kimberley gasped, and his voice was harsh.
+
+"How much?"
+
+"The estate, sir, is now approximately valued at forty-seven thousand
+per annum."
+
+Kimberley lurched forward, and fell over in a dead faint. Mr. Ragshaw's
+attentions restored him to his senses, and he drank a little water, and
+sobbed hysterically.
+
+When he had recovered a little, he arose weakly from the one office
+chair, took off his office coat, rolled it up neatly, and put it in his
+desk. Then he put on his walking coat and his hat and went out.
+
+"Don't you think, Mr. Kimberley," asked Mr. Ragshaw, with profound
+respect, "that a little something----"
+
+They were outside the Windgall Arms, and Kimberley understood.
+
+"Why, yes, sir," he said; "but I never keep it in the 'ouse, and having
+had to pay a tailor's bill this week, I don't happen----"
+
+"My _dear_ sir, allow me!" said Ragshaw, with genuine emotion.
+
+The champagne, the dinner that followed, the interviews with pressmen,
+the excitement and obsequiousness of everybody, conveyed to Kimberley's
+mind, in a dizzy sort of a way, that he was somebody in the world, and
+ought to be proud of it. But his long life of servitude, his shyness and
+want of nerve, all weighed heavily upon him, and he was far from being
+happy.
+
+Mr. Begg, senior partner of Messrs. Begg, Batter, and Bagg, was sitting
+in his office a day or two later when a clerk ushered in the Earl of
+Windgall.
+
+"What's this news about Gallowbay, Begg? Is it true?" asked the earl.
+
+"It is certainly true," answered Begg.
+
+"What sort of fellow is this Kimberley?"
+
+"Well, he seems to be a shy little man, _gauche_, and--and--underbred,
+even for his late position."
+
+"That's a pity. I should like to see him," added the grey little
+nobleman. "I suppose you will act for him as you did for poor young
+Edward?"
+
+Poor young Edward was the deceased minor whose early death had wrecked
+the finest chances the Windgall family craft had ever carried.
+
+"I suppose so," said Begg.
+
+"I presume," said the earl, "that even if he wanted to call in his money
+you could arrange elsewhere?"
+
+"With regard to the first mortgage?" asked Mr. Begg. "Certainly."
+
+"And what about the new arrangement?" asked the earl nervously.
+
+"Impossible, I regret to say."
+
+"Very well," returned the earl, with a sigh. "I suppose the timber must
+go. If poor Edward had lived, it would all have been very different."
+
+Next day, when Kimberley, preposterously overdressed and thoroughly
+ashamed of himself, was trying to talk business in Mr. Begg's office,
+the Earl of Windgall was announced. There was nothing in the world that
+could have terrified him more. And when the father of his ideal love,
+Lady Ella Santerre, shook him by the hand, he could only gasp and gurgle
+in response. But the earl's manner gradually reassured him, and in a
+little time he began to plume himself in harmless trembling vanity upon
+sitting in the same room with a nobleman and a great lawyer.
+
+"I am pleased to have met Mr. Kimberley," said the earl, in going; "and
+I trust we shall see more of each other."
+
+Mr. Kimberley flushed, and bowed in a violent flutter.
+
+As the earl was driven homeward he could not help feeling that he was
+engaged in a shameful enterprise. People would talk if he invited this
+gilded little snob to Shouldershott Castle, and would know very well why
+he was asked there. Let them talk.
+
+"A million and a quarter!" said the poor peer. "And if I don't catch
+him, somebody else will."
+
+Meanwhile, Captain Jack Clare, an extremely popular young officer of
+dragoons, was in the depths of despair. He was the younger brother of
+Lord Montacute, whose family was poor; he loved Lady Ella Santerre,
+whose family was still poorer. The heads of the families had forbidden
+the match for financial reasons. He had stolen an interview with Ella,
+and had found that she bowed to the decision of the seniors.
+
+"It is all quite hopeless and impossible," she had said. "Good-bye,
+Jack!"
+
+As he rode dispiritedly away, he could not see, for the intervening
+trees, that she was kneeling in the fern and crying.
+
+
+_II.--A Peer in Difficulties_
+
+
+The Lady Ella slipped an arm about her father's neck.
+
+"You are in trouble, dear," she said. "Can I help you?"
+
+"No," said the poor nobleman. "There's no help for it, Beggs says, and
+they'll have to cut down the timber in the park. Poverty, my dear,
+poverty."
+
+This was a blow, and a heavy one.
+
+"That isn't the worst of it," said Windgall, after a pause. "I am in the
+hands of the Jews. A wretched Hebrew fellow says he _will_ have a
+thousand pounds by this day week. He might as well ask me for a
+million."
+
+"The diamonds are worth more than a thousand pounds, dear," she said
+gently.
+
+"No, no, my darling," he answered. "I have robbed you of everything
+already."
+
+"You must take them, papa," she said in tender decision. She left him,
+only to return in a few minutes' time with a dark shagreen case in her
+hands. The earl paced about the room for a minute or two.
+
+"I take these," he said at last, "in bitter unwillingness, because I
+can't help taking them, my dear. I had best get the business over, Ella.
+I will go up to town this afternoon."
+
+During the whole of his journey the overdressed figure of Kimberley
+seemed to stand before the embarrassed man, and a voice seemed to issue
+from it. "Catch me, flatter me, wheedle me, marry me to one of your
+daughters, and see the end of your woes." He despised himself heartily
+for permitting the idea to enter his mind, but he could not struggle
+against its intrusion.
+
+Next day Kimberley entered his jewellers to consult him concerning a
+scarf-pin. It was a bull-dog's head, carved in lava, and not quite
+life-size. The eyes were rubies, the collar was of gold and brilliants.
+This egregious jewel was of his own designing, and was of a piece with
+his general notions of how a millionaire should attire himself.
+
+As he passed through the door somebody leapt from a cab carrying
+something in his hands, and jostled against him. He turned round
+apologetically, and confronted the Earl of Windgall.
+
+His lordship looked like a man detected in a theft, and shook hands with
+a confused tremor.
+
+"Can you spare me half an hour?" he asked. Then he handed the package to
+the shop-man. "Take care of that," he stammered. "It is valuable. I will
+call to-morrow."
+
+That afternoon Kimberley accepted an invitation to stay at Shouldershott
+Castle.
+
+He was prodigiously flattered and fluttered. When he thought of being
+beneath the same roof with Lady Ella, he flushed and trembled as he had
+never done before.
+
+"I shall see her," he muttered wildly to himself. "I shall see her in
+the 'alls, the 'alls of dazzling light." It is something of a wonder
+that he did not lose his mental balance altogether.
+
+When he was daily in the presence of Ella, the little man's heart ached
+with sweet anguish and helpless worship and desire. Yet before her he
+was tongue-tied, incapable of uttering a consecutive sentence. With her
+sister, Lady Alice Santerre, who had been the intended bride of the
+deceased heir to the Gallowbay Estate, Kimberley felt on a different
+footing. He had hardly ever been so much at ease with anybody in his
+life as this young lady made him.
+
+Kimberley's own anxious efforts at self-improvement, Lady Alice's
+good-natured advice, and the bold policy of the earl, who persuaded him
+to undergo the terrors of an election, and get returned to Parliament as
+member for Gallowbay, gradually made the millionaire a more presentable
+person. He learned how to avoid dropping his h's; but two vices were
+incurable--the shyness and his appalling taste in dress.
+
+The world, meanwhile, had guessed at the earl's motives in extending his
+friendship to Kimberley, and the little man's name was knowingly linked
+with that of Lady Alice. Kimberley came to hear what the world was
+saying through meeting Mr. Blandy, his former employer. Mr. Blandy
+invited him to his house, honoured the occasion with champagne, drank
+freely of it, and became confidential.
+
+"The noble earl'll nail you f' one o' the girls, Kimbly. I'm a lill bit
+'fected when I think, seeing my dear Kimbly 'nited marriage noble
+family. That's what makes me talk like this. I b'leeve you're gone coon
+already, ole man. 'Gratulate you, allmy heart."
+
+Kimberley went away in a degradation of soul. Was it possible that this
+peer of the realm could be so coarsely and openly bent on securing him
+and his money that the whole world should know of it? What had
+Kimberley, he asked himself bitterly, to recommend him but his money?
+But then, triumphing over his miseries, came the fancy--he could have
+his dream of love; he had cried for the moon, and now he could have it.
+
+
+_III.--Ella's Martyrdom_
+
+
+The earl's liabilities amounted roughly to ninety thousand pounds. The
+principal mortgagee was insisting upon payment or foreclosure, and there
+was a general feeling abroad that the estate was involved beyond its
+capacity to pay.
+
+Kimberley learned these circumstances in an interview with Mr. Begg. A
+few days afterwards he drove up desperately to the castle and asked for
+a private interview with his lordship.
+
+"My lord," he said, when they were alone, "I want to ask your lordship's
+acceptance of these papers."
+
+The earl understood them at a glance. Kimberley had bought his debts.
+
+"I ask you to take them now," Kimberley went on, "before I say another
+word."
+
+He rose, walked to the fire, and dropped the papers on the smouldering
+coal. The earl seized the papers and rescued them, soiled but unsinged.
+
+"Kimberley," he said, "I dare not lay myself under such an obligation to
+any man alive."
+
+"They are yours, my lord," replied Kimberley. "I shall never touch them
+again. You're under no obligation to me, my lord. But"--he blushed and
+stammered--"I want to ask you for the hand of Lady Ella."
+
+It took Windgall a full minute to pull himself together. He had schooled
+himself to the trembling hope that Alice might be chosen; but Ella!
+"Forgive me," he began, "I was unprepared--I was not altogether
+unprepared--" Then he lapsed into silence.
+
+"I will submit your proposal to my daughter," he said after a time,
+"but--I am powerless--altogether powerless."
+
+Kimberley went home in a tremor of nervous anxiety, and Windgall sent
+for his daughter.
+
+"I want you to understand, my dear," he began nervously, "that you are
+free to act just as you will. Mr. Kimberley gave these into my hands
+this morning"--showing her the papers. "He gave them freely, as a gift.
+If I could accept them I should be free from the nightmare of debt. But
+in the same breath with that unconditional gift, he asked me for your
+hand in marriage."
+
+She kept silence.
+
+"You know our miserable necessities, Ella," he pleaded. "But I can't
+force your inclinations in a matter like this, my dear."
+
+She ran to him, and threw her arms about his neck.
+
+"If it depends upon me to end your troubles, my dear, they are ended
+already."
+
+"Shall I," he asked lamely, "make Kimberley happy?"
+
+She answered simply, "Yes."
+
+Kimberley came to luncheon next day. Lady Ella gave him a hand like
+marble, and he kissed it. Her father, anxious to preserve a seeming
+satisfaction, put his arm about her waist and kissed her. Her cheek was
+like ice and her whole figure trembled.
+
+It was a dull, dreadful meal to all three who sat at table, and the
+millionaire's heart was the heaviest and the sorest.
+
+If Ella suffered, she had the consolation, so dear to the nobler sort of
+women, that she was a sacrifice. If Windgall suffered, he had a solid
+compensation locked in the drawers of his library table. But Kimberley
+had no consolation, and knew only that he was expected somehow to be
+happy, and was, in spite of his prosperous wooing, more miserable than
+he had ever been before.
+
+As time went on, Kimberley grew no happier. The gulf between Lady Ella
+and himself had not been bridged by their betrothal. She was always
+courteous to him, but always cold. She had accepted him, and yet----
+
+The first inkling that something was wrong came through the altered
+demeanour of Alice. The girl was furious at her father for sacrificing
+her sister, and furious with her sister for consenting to the sacrifice;
+her former half-humourous comradeship for Kimberley was changed into
+chilly disdain.
+
+The suspicions that were thus suggested to him were confirmed by a
+meeting with Ella outside the castle lodge. As he approached, he caught
+sight of her face as she was nodding a smiling good-bye to the old
+gate-keeper. She saw Kimberley, and the smile fled from her face with so
+swift a change, and left for a mere second something so like terror
+there, that he could scarcely fail to notice it.
+
+He returned home possessed with remorse and shame. There was no doubt
+what the end should be. Ella must be released.
+
+"She never cared about the money," he said, pacing the room with
+tear-blotted face. "She wanted to save her father, and she was ready to
+break her heart to do it. But she shall never break her heart through
+me. No, no. What a fool I was to think she could ever be happy with a
+man like me!"
+
+
+_IV.--The Renunciation_
+
+
+Jack Clare, with a heart burning with rage at what he deemed Ella's
+treachery, had resigned his commission and bought an estate in New
+Zealand with a sum of money that had been left him. He became possessed
+of a desire to see Ella once more. He wrote to her that he was about to
+start for New Zealand, and wished to say good-bye to her. This letter he
+brought to the castle gate-keeper, and caused it to be taken to Ella.
+Then he paced up and down the avenue, impatiently awaiting her.
+
+Destiny ordained that Kimberley should come that way just then on his
+fateful errand of releasing Ella from her engagement. As he entered the
+park his resolve failed him; he wandered unhappily to and fro, until he
+became aware of a strange gentleman prowling about the avenue in a
+mighty hurry. The stranger caught sight of him.
+
+"Pardon me," said Kimberley nervously, "have you lost your way?"
+
+Jack eyed him from head to foot--the vulgar glories of his attire, the
+extraordinary bull-dog pin. This, he guessed, was Kimberley--the man to
+whom Ella had sold herself. He smiled bitterly, and turned on his heel.
+
+"I beg your pardon, sir," said Kimberley ruffled. "I did myself the
+honour to address you."
+
+"You pestilential little cad!" cried Jack, wheeling round and letting
+out his wrath; "go home!"
+
+"Cad, sir!" answered Kimberley in indignation.
+
+"I call any man a cad, sir," answered Jack, "who goes about dressed like
+that."
+
+Jack walked on and Kimberley stood rooted to the ground. He was crushed
+and overwhelmed beneath the sense of his own humiliation. His fineries
+had been the one thing on which he had relied to make himself look like
+a gentleman, and he knew now what they made him look like.
+
+He retreated to a little arboured seat, and a few minutes later would
+have given anything to escape from it. For he was a witness of the
+parting of Jack and Ella. He saw the tears streaming from her eyes; he
+heard Jack tell her that he had never loved another woman and never
+would. As they clasped each other's hands for the final good-bye, Jack
+seized her passionately and kissed her. Her head fell back from his
+shoulder; she had fainted. He laid her down upon the grass, and looked
+upon her in an agony of fear and self-reproach. Then his mood changed.
+
+"Curse the man that broke her heart and mine!" he cried wildly.
+"Darling, look up!"
+
+Presently she recovered, and he begged her forgiveness.
+
+"I am better," said Ella feebly. "Leave me now. Good-bye, dear!"
+
+Soon afterwards a little man, with a tear-stained face and enormous
+bull-dog scarf-pin, arrived at the castle, and asked in a breaking voice
+to see his lordship.
+
+"Did you know, my lord," he began, "that Lady Ella was breaking her
+heart because she was to marry me?"
+
+"Really--"
+
+"You didn't know it? I should be glad to think you didn't. Perhaps in
+spite of all I said, you thought I had bought those papers to have you
+in my grasp. I am not a gentleman, my lord, but I hope I am above that.
+I was a fool to think I could ever make Lady Ella happy, and I resign my
+claim upon her hand, my lord, and I must leave your roof for ever."
+
+"Stop, sir!" cried the earl, in a rage of embarrassment and despair. He
+seemed face to face with the wreck of all his hopes. "Do you know that
+this is an insult to my daughter and to me?"
+
+"My lord," returned Kimberley, "I am very sorry, but it was a shame to
+ask her to marry a man like me. I won't help to break her heart--I
+can't--not if I break my own a million times over."
+
+The earl beat his foot upon the carpet. It was true enough. It _had_
+been a shame; and yet the man was a gentleman when all was said and
+done.
+
+"By heaven, Kimberley," cried his lordship, in spite of himself, "you
+are a noble-hearted fellow!"
+
+"Excuse me the trouble I have caused you. Good-bye, my lord." Kimberley
+bowed and left.
+
+That night Kimberley received a package containing the papers and a note
+from the earl congratulating him on the magnanimous manner in which he
+had acted, but declaring that he felt compelled to return the documents.
+This added another drop to the bitterness of Kimberley's cup. He could
+well nigh have died for shame; he could well nigh have died for pity of
+himself.
+
+
+_V.--Kimberley's Wedding Gift_
+
+
+"My lord," said Kimberley, as he met the earl of Windgall outside the
+London hotel where the earl was staying, "can you give me a very few
+minutes?"
+
+"Certainly," said his lordship. "You are not well?" he added, with
+solicitude.
+
+He had brought a dispatch-box with him; he put it on the table and
+slowly unlocked it. The earl's heart beat violently as he looked once
+more upon the precious documents.
+
+"You sent these back to me," said Kimberley. "Will you take 'em now? My
+lord, my lord, marry lady Ella to the man she loves, and take these for
+a wedding gift. I helped to torture her. I have a right to help to make
+her happy."
+
+Windgall was as wildly agitated as Kimberley himself. He recoiled and
+waved his hands.
+
+"I--I do not think, Kimberley," he said with quivering lip, "that I have
+ever known so noble an act before."
+
+"If I die," said Kimberley in a loud voice which quavered suddenly down
+into a murmur, "everything is to go to Lady Ella, with my dearest love
+and worship."
+
+Windgall caught only the first three words; he tugged at the bell-pull,
+and sent for a doctor.
+
+An hour afterwards Kimberley was in bed with brain fever.
+
+On the following morning Jack Clare stood in the rain on the deck of the
+steamship Patagonia, a travelling-cap pulled moodily over his eyes,
+watching the bestowal of his belongings in the hold.
+
+"Honourable Captain Clare aboard?" cried a voice from the quay. A
+messenger came and handed Jack a letter. He saw with amazement that it
+bore the Windgall crest.
+
+It was a hastily written note from the earl stating that circumstances
+had occurred which enabled him to withdraw his opposition to the union
+of Clare with Lady Ella.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Kimberley recovered. He can speak now to Clare's wife without
+embarrassment and without pain. Has he forgotten his love? No. He will
+never love again, never marry; but he is by no means unhappy or solitary
+or burdened with regrets. And he knows that those for whom he made his
+great sacrifice have given him their profoundest gratitude and sincerest
+friendship.
+
+The ways of the world are various and many. And along them travel all
+sorts of people. Very dark grey, indeed--almost black some of
+them--middling grey, light grey, and here and there a figure that shines
+with a pure white radiance.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+
+
+FRANK NORRIS
+
+
+The Pit
+
+
+     Frank Norris, one of the most brilliant of contemporary
+     American novelists, was born at Chicago in 1870. He was
+     educated at the University of California and at Harvard, and
+     also spent three years as an art student in Paris. Afterwards
+     he adopted journalism, and served in the capacity of war
+     correspondent for various newspapers. His first novel,
+     "McTeague," a virile, realistic romance, brought him instant
+     recognition. This was followed in 1900 by "Moran of the Lady
+     Betty," a romantic narrative of adventures on the Californian
+     Coast. In 1901 Norris conceived the idea of trilogy of novels
+     dealing with wheat, the object being an arraignment of wheat
+     operations at Chicago, and the consequent gambling with the
+     world's food-supply. The first of the series, "The Octopus,"
+     deals with wheat raising and transportation; the second, "The
+     Pit," a vigorous, human story covers wheat-exchange gambling,
+     and appeared in 1903; the third, which was to have been
+     entitled "The Wolf," was cut short by the author's death,
+     which occurred on October 25, 1902.
+
+
+_I.--Curtis Jadwin and His Wife_
+
+
+Laura Dearborn's native town was Barrington, in Massachusetts. Both she
+and her younger sister Page had lived there until the death of their
+father. The mother had died long before, and of all their relations,
+Aunt Wess, who lived at Chicago, alone remained. It was at the
+entreaties of Aunt Wess and of their dearest friends, the Cresslers,
+that the two girls decided to live with their aunt in Chicago. Both
+Laura and Page had inherited money, and when they faced the world they
+had the assurance that, at least, they were independent.
+
+Chicago, the great grey city, interested Laura at every instant and
+under every condition. The life was tremendous. All around, on every
+side, in every direction, the vast machinery of commonwealth clashed and
+thundered from dawn to dark, and from dark to dawn. For thousands of
+miles beyond its confines the influence of the city was felt. At times
+Laura felt a little frightened at the city's life, and of the men for
+whom all the crash of conflict and commerce had no terrors. Those who
+could subdue this life to their purposes, must they not be themselves
+terrible, pitiless, brutal? What could women ever know of the life of
+men, after all?
+
+Her friend, Mr. Cressler, who had been almost a second father to her,
+was in business, and had once lost a fortune by a gamble in wheat; and
+there was Mr. Curtis Jadwin, whom she had met at the opera with the
+Cresslers.
+
+Mrs. Cressler had told Laura, very soon after her arrival in Chicago,
+that Mr. Jadwin wanted to marry her.
+
+"I've known Curtis Jadwin now for fifteen years--nobody better," said
+Mrs. Cressler. "He's as old a family friend as Charlie and I have. And I
+tell you the man is in love with you. He told me you had more sense and
+intelligence than any girl he had ever known, and that he never
+remembered to have seen a more beautiful woman. What do you think of
+him, Laura--of Mr. Jadwin?"
+
+"I don't know," Laura answered. "I thought he was a _strong_
+man--mentally, and that he would be kindly and generous. But I saw very
+little of him."
+
+"Jadwin struck you as being a kindly man, a generous man? He's just
+that, and charitable. You know, he has a Sunday-school over on the West
+side--a Sunday-school for mission children--and I do believe he's more
+interested in that than in his business. He wants to make it the biggest
+Sunday-school in Chicago. It's an ambition of his. Laura," she
+exclaimed, "he's a _fine man_. No one knows Curtis Jadwin better than
+Charlie and I, and we just _love_ him. The kindliest, biggest-hearted
+fellow. Oh, well, you'll know him for yourself, and then you'll see!"
+
+"I don't know anything about him," Laura had remarked in answer to this.
+"I never heard of him before the theatre party."
+
+But Mrs. Cressler promptly supplied information. Curtis Jadwin was a man
+about thirty-five, who had begun life without a _sou_ in his pockets.
+His people were farmers in Michigan, hardy, honest fellows, who ploughed
+and sowed for a living. Curtis had only a rudimentary schooling, and had
+gone into business with a livery-stable keeper. Someone in Chicago owed
+him money, and, in default of payment, had offered him a couple of lots
+of ground on Wabash Avenue. That was how he happened to come to Chicago.
+Naturally enough, as the city grew the Wabash Avenue property increased
+in value. He sold the lots, and bought other real estate; sold that, and
+bought somewhere else, and so on till he owned some of the best business
+sites in the city, and was now one of the largest real-estate owners in
+Chicago. But he no longer bought and sold. His property had grown so
+large, that just the management of it alone took up most of his time. As
+a rule, he deplored speculation. He had no fixed principles about it,
+and occasionally he hazarded small operations.
+
+It was after this that Laura's first aversion to the great grey city
+fast disappeared, and she saw it in a kindlier aspect.
+
+Soon it was impossible to deny that Curtis Jadwin--"J" as he was called
+in business--was in love with her. The business man, accustomed to deal
+with situations with unswerving directness, was not in the least afraid
+of Laura. He was aggressive, assertive, and his addresses had all the
+persistence and vehemence of veritable attack. He contrived to meet her
+everywhere, and even had the Cresslers and Laura over to his mission
+Sunday-school for the Easter festival, an occasion of which Laura
+carried away a confused recollection of enormous canvas mottoes, sheaves
+of lilies, imitation bells of tinfoil, revival hymns vociferated from
+seven hundred distended mouths, and through it all the smell of poverty,
+the odour of uncleanliness, that mingled strangely with the perfume of
+the lilies.
+
+Somehow Laura found that with Jadwin all the serious, all the sincere,
+earnest side of her character was apt to come to the front.
+
+Yet for a long time Laura could not make up her mind that she loved him,
+but "J" refused to be dismissed.
+
+"I told him I did not love him. Only last week I told him so," Laura
+explained to Mrs. Cressler.
+
+"Well, then, why did you promise to marry him?"
+
+"My goodness! You don't realise what it's been. Do you suppose you can
+say 'no' to that man?"
+
+"Of course not--of course not!" declared Mrs. Cressler joyfully. "That's
+'J' all over. I might have known he'd have you if he set out to do it."
+
+They were married on the last day of June of that summer in the
+Episcopalian church. Immediately after the wedding the couple took the
+train for Geneva Lake, where Jadwin had built a house for his bride.
+
+
+_II.--A Corner in Wheat_
+
+
+The months passed. Soon three years had gone by since the ceremony in
+St. James's Church, and all that time the price of wheat had been
+steadily going down. Heavy crops the world over had helped the decline.
+
+Jadwin had been drawn into the troubled waters of the Pit, and was by
+now "blooded to the game." It was in April that he decided that better
+times and higher prices were coming for wheat, and announced his
+intentions to Sam Gretry, his broker.
+
+"Sam," he said, "the time is come for a great big chance. We've been
+hammering wheat down and down and down till we've got it below the cost
+of production, and now she won't go any further with all the hammering
+in the world. The other fellows, the rest of the bear crowd, don't seem
+to see it; but I see it. Before fall we're going to have higher prices.
+Wheat is going up, and when it does I mean to be right there. I'm going
+to _buy_. I'm going to buy September wheat, and I'm going to buy it
+to-morrow--500,000 bushels of it; and if the market goes as I think it
+will later on, I'm going to buy more. I'm going to boost this market
+right through till the last bell rings, and from now on Curtis Jadwin
+spells b-u-double l--bull."
+
+"They'll slaughter you," said Gretry; "slaughter you in cold blood.
+You're just one man against a gang--a gang of cut-throats. Those bears
+have got millions and millions back of them. 'J,' you are either
+Napoleonic, or--or a colossal idiot!"
+
+All through the three years that had passed Jadwin had grown continually
+richer. His real estate appreciated in value; rents went up. Every time
+he speculated in wheat it was upon a larger scale, and every time he
+won. Hitherto he had been a bear; now, after the talk with Gretry, he
+had secretly "turned bull" with the suddenness of a strategist.
+
+A marvellous golden luck followed Jadwin all that summer. The crops were
+poor, the yield moderate.
+
+Jadwin sold out in September, having made a fortune, and then, in a
+single vast clutch, bought 3,000,000 bushels of the December option.
+
+Never before had he ventured so deeply into the Pit.
+
+One morning in November, at breakfast, Laura said to her husband,
+"Curtis, dear, when is it all going to end--your speculating? You never
+used to be this way. It seems as though, nowadays, I never had you to
+myself. Even when you are not going over papers and reports, or talking
+by the hour to Mr. Gretry in the library, your mind seems to be away
+from me. I--I am lonesome, dearest, sometimes. And, Curtis, what is the
+use? We're so rich now we can't spend our money."
+
+"Oh, it's not the money!" he answered. "It's the fun of the thing--the
+excitement."
+
+That very week Jadwin made 500,000 dollars.
+
+"I don't own a grain of wheat now," he assured his wife. "I've got to be
+out of it."
+
+But try as he would, the echoes of the rumbling of the Pit reached
+Jadwin at every hour of the day and night. He stayed at home over
+Christmas. Inactive, he sat there idle, while the clamour of the Pit
+swelled daily louder, and the price of wheat went up.
+
+Jadwin chafed and fretted at his inaction and his impatience harried him
+like a gadfly. Would no one step into the place of high command.
+
+Very soon the papers began to speak of an unknown "bull" clique who were
+rapidly coming into control of the market, and it was no longer a secret
+to Laura that her husband had gone back to the market, and that, too,
+with such an impetuosity that his rush had carried him to the very heart
+of the turmoil.
+
+He was now deeply involved; his influence began to be felt. Not an
+important move on the part of the "unknown bull," the nameless,
+mysterious stranger, that was not noted and discussed.
+
+It was very late in the afternoon of a lugubrious March day when Jadwin
+and Gretry, in the broker's private room, sat studying the latest
+Government reports as to the supply of wheat, and Jadwin observed, "Why,
+Sam, there's less than 100,000,000 bushels in the farmers' hands. That's
+awfully small."
+
+"It ain't, as you might say, colossal," admitted Gretry.
+
+"Sam," said Jadwin again, "the shipments have been about 5,000,000 a
+week; 20,000,000 a month, and it's four months before a new crop. Europe
+will take 80,000,000 out of the country. I own 10,000,000 now. Why,
+there ain't going to be any wheat left in Chicago by May! If I get in
+now, and buy a long line of cash wheat, where are all these fellows
+going to get it to deliver to me? Say, where are they going to get it?
+Come on, now, tell me, where are they going to get it?"
+
+Gretry laid down his pencil, and stared at Jadwin.
+
+"'J,'" he faltered, "'J,' I'm blest if I know."
+
+And then, all in the same moment, the two men were on their feet.
+
+Jadwin sprang forward, gripping the broker by the shoulder.
+
+"Sam," he shouted, "do you know----Great God! Do you know what this
+means? Sam, we can corner the market!"
+
+
+_III.--The Corner Breaks_
+
+
+The high prices meant a great increase of wheat acreage. In June the
+preliminary returns showed 4,000,000 more acres under wheat in the two
+states of Dakota alone, and in spite of all Gretry's remonstrances,
+Jadwin still held on, determined to keep up prices to July.
+
+But now it had become vitally necessary for Jadwin to sell out his
+holdings. His "long line" was a fearful expense; insurance and storage
+charges were eating rapidly into the profits. He _must_ get rid of the
+load he was carrying little by little.
+
+A month ago, and the foreign demand was a thing almost insensate. There
+was no question as to the price. It was, "Give us the wheat, at whatever
+figure, at whatever expense."
+
+At home in Chicago Jadwin was completely master of the market. His
+wealth increased with such rapidity that at no time was he able even to
+approximate the gains that accrued to him because of his corner. It was
+more than twenty million, and less than fifty million. That was all he
+knew.
+
+It was then that he told Gretry he was going to buy in the July crops.
+
+"' J,' listen to me," said Gretry. "Wheat is worth a dollar and a half
+to-day, and not one cent more. If you run it up to two dollars--"
+
+"It will go there of itself, I tell you."
+
+"If you run it up to two dollars it will be that top-heavy that the
+littlest kick in the world will knock it over. Be satisfied now with
+what you've, got. Suppose the price does break a little, you'd still
+make your pile. But swing this deal over into July, and it's ruin. The
+farmers all over the country are planting wheat as they've never planted
+it before. Great Scott, 'J,' you're fighting against the earth itself."
+
+"Well, we'll fight it then."
+
+"Here's another point," went on Gretry. "You ought to be in bed this
+very minute. You haven't got any nerves left at all. You acknowledge you
+don't sleep. You ought to see a doctor."
+
+"Fiddlesticks!" exclaimed Jadwin. "I'm all right. Haven't time to see a
+doctor."
+
+So the month of May drew to its close, and as Jadwin beheld more and
+more the broken speculators, with their abject humility, a vast contempt
+for human nature grew within him. The business hardened his heart, and
+he took his profits as if by right of birth.
+
+His wife he saw but seldom. Occasionally they breakfasted together; more
+often they met at dinner. But that was all.
+
+And now by June 11 the position was critical.
+
+"The price broke to a dollar and twenty yesterday," said Gretry. "Just
+think, we were at a dollar and a half a little while ago."
+
+"And we'll be at two dollars in another ten days, I tell you."
+
+"Do you know how we stand, 'J'?" said the broker gravely. "Do you know
+how we stand financially? It's taken pretty nearly every cent of our
+ready money to support this July market. Oh, we can figure out our paper
+profits into the millions. We've got thirty, forty, fifty million
+bushels of wheat that's worth over a dollar a bushel; but if we can't
+sell it we're none the better off--and that wheat is costing us six
+thousand dollars a day. Where's the money going to come from, old man?
+You don't seem to realise that we are in a precarious condition. The
+moment we can't give our boys buying orders, the moment we admit that we
+can't buy all the wheat that's offered, there's the moment we bust."
+
+"Well, we'll buy it," cried Jadwin. "I'll show those brutes. I'll
+mortgage all my real estate, and I'll run up wheat so high before the
+next two days that the Bank of England can't pull it down; then I'll
+sell our long line, and with the profits of that I'll run it up again.
+Two dollars! Why, it will be two-fifty before you know how it happened."
+
+That day Jadwin placed as heavy a mortgage as the place would stand upon
+every piece of real estate that he owned. He floated a number of
+promissory notes, and taxed his credit to its farthest stretch. But sure
+as he was of winning, Jadwin could, not bring himself to involve his
+wife's money in the hazard, though his entire personal fortune swung in
+the balance.
+
+Jadwin knew the danger. The new harvest was coming in--the new harvest
+of wheat--huge beyond all possibility of control; so vast that no money
+could buy it. And from Liverpool and Paris cables had come in to Gretry
+declining to buy wheat, though he had offered it cheaper than he had
+ever done before.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+On the morning of June 13, Gretry gave his orders to young Landry Court
+and his other agents in the Pit, to do their best to keep the market up.
+"You can buy each of you up to half a million bushels apiece. If that
+don't keep the price up--well, I'll let you know what to do. Look here,
+keep your heads cool. I guess to-day will decide things."
+
+In the Pit roar succeeded roar. It seemed that a support long thought to
+be secure was giving way. Not a man knew what he or his neighbour was
+doing. The bids leaped to and fro, and the price of July wheat could not
+so much as be approximated.
+
+Landry caught one of the Gretry traders by the arm.
+
+"What shall we do?" he shouted. "I've bought up to my limit. No more
+orders have come in. What's to be done?"
+
+"I don't know," the other shouted back--"I don't know! Looks like a
+smash; something's gone wrong."
+
+In Gretry's office Jadwin stood hatless and pale. Around him were one of
+the heads of a great banking house and a couple of other men,
+confidential agents, who had helped to manipulate the great corner.
+
+"It's the end of the game," Gretry exclaimed, "you've got no more money!
+Not another order goes up to that floor."
+
+"It's a lie!" Jadwin cried, "keep on buying, I tell you! Take all
+they'll offer. I tell you we'll touch the two dollar mark before noon."
+
+"It's useless, Mr. Jadwin," said the banker quietly, "You were
+practically beaten two days ago."
+
+But Jadwin was beyond all appeal. He threw off Gretry's hand.
+
+"Get out of my way!" he shouted. "Do you hear? I'll play my hand alone
+from now on."
+
+"'J,' old man--why, see here!" Gretry implored, still holding him by the
+arm. "Here, where are you going?"
+
+Jadwin's voice rang like a trumpet-call:
+
+"_Into the Pit!_ If you won't execute my orders I'll act myself. I'm
+going into the Pit, I tell you!"
+
+"'J,' you're mad, old fellow! You're ruined--don't you
+understand?--you're ruined!"
+
+"Then God curse you, Sam Gretry, for the man who failed me in a crisis!"
+And, as he spoke, Curtis Jadwin struck the broker full in the face.
+
+Gretry staggered back from the blow. His pale face flashed to crimson
+for an instant, his fists clenched; then his hands fell to his sides.
+
+"No," he said; "let him go--let him go. The man is merely mad!"
+
+Jadwin thrust the men who tried to hold him to one side, and rushed from
+the room.
+
+"It's the end," Gretry said simply. He wrote a couple of lines, and
+handed the note to the senior clerk. "Take that to the secretary of the
+board at once."
+
+Straight into the turmoil and confusion of the Pit, into the scene of so
+many of his victories, came the "Great Bull." The news went flashing and
+flying from lip to lip. The wheat Pit, torn and tossed and rent asunder,
+stood dismayed, so great had been his power. What was about to happen?
+Jadwin himself, the great man, in the Pit! Had his enemies been too
+premature in their hope of his defeat? For a second they hesitated, then
+moved by a common impulse, feeling the push of the wonderful new harvest
+behind them, gathered themselves together for the final assault, and
+again offered the wheat for sale--offered it by thousands upon thousands
+of bushels.
+
+Blind and insensate, Jadwin strove against the torrent of the wheat.
+Under the stress and violence of the hour, something snapped in his
+brain; but he stood erect there in the middle of the Pit, iron to the
+end, proclaiming over the din of his enemies, like a bugle sounding to
+the charge of a forlorn hope.
+
+"Give a dollar for July--give a dollar for July!"
+
+Then little by little the tumult of the Pit subsided. There were sudden
+lapses in the shouting, and again the clamour would break out.
+
+All at once the Pit, the entire floor of the Board of Trade, was struck
+dumb. In the midst of the profound silence the secretary announced. "All
+trades with Gretry & Co. must be closed at once!"
+
+The words were greeted with a wild yell of exultation. Beaten--beaten at
+last, the Great Bull! Smashed! The great corner smashed! Jadwin busted!
+Cheer followed cheer, hats went into the air. Men danced and leaped in a
+frenzy of delight.
+
+Young Landry Court, who had stood by Jadwin in the Pit, led his defeated
+captain out. Jadwin was in a daze--he saw nothing, heard nothing, but
+submitted to Landry's guidance.
+
+From the Pit came the sound of dying cheers.
+
+"They can cheer now all they want. _They didn't do it,"_ said a man at
+the door. "It was the wheat itself that beat him; no combination of men
+could have done it."
+
+
+_IV.--A Fresh Start_
+
+
+The evening had closed in wet and misty, and when Laura Jadwin came down
+to the dismantled library a heavy rain was falling.
+
+"There, dear," Laura said, "now sit down on the packing-box there. You
+had better put your hat on. It is full of draughts now that the
+furniture and curtains are out. You've had a pretty bad siege of it, you
+know, and this is only the first week you've been up."
+
+"I've had too good a nurse," he answered, stroking her hand, "not to be
+as fit as a fiddle by now. You must be tired yourself, Laura. Why, for
+whole days there--and nights, too, they tell me--you never left the
+room."
+
+Laura shook her head, and said:
+
+"I wonder what the West will be like. Do you know I think I am going to
+like it, Curtis?"
+
+"It will be starting in all over again, old girl. Pretty hard at first,
+I'm afraid."
+
+"Hard--now?" She took his hand and laid it to her cheek.
+
+"By all the rules you ought to hate me," he began. "What have I done for
+you but hurt you, and at last bring you to----"
+
+But she shut her gloved-hand over his mouth.
+
+"The world is all before us where to choose, now, isn't it?" she
+answered. "And this big house and all the life we have led in it was
+just an incident in our lives--an incident that is closed."
+
+"We're starting all over again, honey.... Well, there's the carriage, I
+guess."
+
+They rose, gathering up their valises.
+
+"Ho!" said Jadwin. "No servants now, Laura, to carry our things down for
+us and open the door; and it's a hack, old girl, instead of the
+victoria."
+
+"What if it is?" she cried. "What do servants, money, and all amount to
+now?"
+
+As Jadwin laid his hand upon the knob of the front door, he all at once
+put down his valise and put his arm about his wife. She caught him about
+the neck, and looked deep into his eyes a long moment, and then, without
+speaking, they kissed each other.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+
+
+GEORGES OHNET
+
+
+The Ironmaster
+
+
+     Georges Ohnet, one of the most prolific and popular of French
+     novelists and playwrights, was born in Paris on April 3, 1848.
+     His father was an architect, and, after a period devoted to
+     the study of law, Georges Ohnet adopted a journalistic career.
+     He first came into prominence as the part-author of the drama
+     "Regina Sarpi," in 1875. "The Ironmaster, or Love and Pride,"
+     was originally conceived as a play, and as such was submitted
+     in vain to the theatrical managers of Paris. It was entitled
+     "Marrying for Money" ("Les Mariages d'Argent") and on its
+     rejection he laid it aside and directed his attention to the
+     novel, "Serge Panine." This was immediately successful, and
+     was crowned with honour by the French Academy. Its author
+     adapted it as a play, and then, in 1883, did the opposite with
+     "Les Manages d'Argent," calling it "Le Maitre de Forges." As a
+     novel, "The Ironmaster," with its dramatic plot and strong,
+     moving story, attracted universal attention, and has been
+     translated into several European languages.
+
+
+_I.--The Faithless Lover_
+
+
+The Château de Beaulieu, in the Louis XIII. style, is built of white
+stone with red brick dressings. A broad terrace more than five hundred
+yards long, with a balustrade in red granite, and decked with parterres
+of flowers, becomes a delightful walk in autumn. M. Derblay's ironworks
+may have somewhat spoilt the beauty of the landscape, but Beaulieu
+remains a highly covetable estate.
+
+Madame de Beaulieu sat in the drawing-room knitting woollen hoods for
+the children in the village, while her daughter Claire contemplated,
+without seeing it, the admirable horizon before her. At last, turning
+her beautiful, sad face to her mother, she asked, "How long is it since
+we have had any letters from St. Petersburg?"
+
+"Come," said the marchioness, taking hold of Claire's hands--"come, why
+do you always think about that, and torture your mind so?"
+
+"What can I think of," answered Claire bitterly, "but of my betrothed?
+And how can I avoid torturing my mind as you say, in trying to divine
+the reason of his silence?"
+
+"I own it is difficult to explain," rejoined the marchioness. "After
+spending a week with us last year, my nephew, the Duc de Bligny, started
+off promising to return to Paris during the winter. He next began by
+writing that political complications detained him at his post. Summer
+came, but not the duke. Here now is autumn, and Gaston no longer even
+favours us with pretences. He does not even trouble to write."
+
+"But supposing he were ill?" Claire ventured to say.
+
+"That is out of the question," replied the marchioness pitilessly. "The
+embassy would have informed us. You may be sure he is in perfect health,
+and that he led the cotillon all last winter in the ball-rooms of St.
+Petersburg."
+
+Claire, forcing herself to smile, said, "It must be confessed, mother,
+he is not jealous, and yet I have been courted wherever I have gone, and
+am scarcely allowed to remain in peace, even in this desert of Beaulieu.
+It would seem I have attracted the attention of our neighbour the
+ironmaster."
+
+"Monsieur Derblay?"
+
+"Yes, mother; but his homage is respectful, and I have no cause to
+complain of him. I only mentioned him as an example--as one of many. The
+duke stays away, and I remain here alone, patient and--"
+
+"And you act very wrongly!" exclaimed the marchioness.
+
+The opportunity of easing her mind was not to be lost, and she told
+Claire that if the marriage ever did take place she feared there would
+be cause for regret. But her daughter's violent emotion made her realise
+more forcibly than ever how deeply and firmly Claire was attached to the
+Due de Bligny. So she assured her she had heard nothing fresh about him,
+and hoped they might have news from the De Prefonts, who were to arrive
+that day from Paris.
+
+"Ah!" interrupted Mdlle. de Beaulieu, "here is Octave coming with
+Monsieur Bachelin, the notary." And she went to meet them, looking the
+living incarnation of youth in all its grace and vigour.
+
+"You have had good sport, it seems," she said, waylaying her brother,
+and feeling the weight of his game-bag.
+
+"Oh, I'll be modest. This game was not killed by me," answered the
+marquis; and explained that he had lost his way on the Pont Avesnes
+land, and had been rather haughtily accosted by another sportsman, who,
+however, as soon as he heard his name, became very polite, and forced
+him to accept the contents of his own bag.
+
+Maitre Bachelin immediately informed them that this must have been the
+ironmaster himself, whom he had been to see that morning, and all
+questions at issue about the boundaries of the estates were as good as
+settled.
+
+"For," said he, "my worthy friend accepts whatever conditions you may
+lay down. The only point now is to sign the preliminaries, and with this
+object Monsieur Derblay proposes to call at Beaulieu with his sister,
+Mile. Suzanne; that is, if you are pleased to authorise him, Madame la
+Marquise."
+
+"Oh, certainly. Let him come by all means. I shall be glad to see this
+Cyclops, who is blackening all the valley. But come, you have, no doubt,
+brought me some fresh documents in reference to our English lawsuit."
+
+"Yes, Madame la Marquise, yes," rejoined Bachelin, with an appealing
+look. "We will talk business if you desire it."
+
+Without asking any questions, Claire and the marquise gave their mother
+a smile, and left the drawing-room.
+
+"Well, Bachelin, have the English courts decided? Is the action lost?"
+
+The notary lacked courage to reply in words, but his gesture was
+sufficient. The marchioness bit her lips, and a tear glittered for a
+moment.
+
+"Ah!" said the notary. "It is a terrible blow for the house of
+Beaulieu."
+
+"Terrible indeed," said the marchioness; "for it implies my son's and my
+daughter's ruin. Misfortunes seldom come singly," she resumed. "I
+suppose you have some other bad news for me, Bachelin. Tell me
+everything. You have news of the Duc de Bligny?"
+
+"For the last six weeks M. le Duc de Bligny has been in Paris."
+
+"He is aware of the misfortune that has overtaken us?"
+
+"He knew of it one of the first, Madame la Marquise."
+
+The marchioness was grieved more cruelly by this than by the money loss;
+and the notary was thus emboldened to tell her that a gallant friend of
+his, M. Derblay, whose father had been kind enough to call Maitre
+Bachelin his friend, had fallen passionately in love with Mdlle. de
+Beaulieu, and would be the happiest man in the world if he were even
+allowed to hope. He advised the marchioness not to say anything at
+present to her daughter. Maybe the duke would return to more honourable
+feelings, and it would always be time enough for Mdlle. Claire to
+suffer."
+
+"You are right; but, at all events, I must inform my son of this blow
+that strikes him."
+
+Octave was not surprised, but affectionately taking his mother's hand,
+said, "My only concern was for my sister, whose dowry was at stake. You
+must leave her the part of your fortune you were reserving for me. Don't
+you think, mother, that our cousin De Bligny's silence has some
+connection with the loss of this lawsuit?"
+
+"You are mistaken, child," cried the marchioness eagerly. "For the
+duke----"
+
+"Oh, fear nothing, mother," said Octave. "If Gaston hesitates now that
+Mdlle. de Beaulieu no longer comes to him with a million in either hand,
+we are not, I fancy, the sort of folk to seize him by the collar and
+compel him to keep his promises."
+
+"Well said, my son," cried the marchioness.
+
+Bachelin took respectful leave of his noble clients, and hurried off to
+Pont Avesnes as fast as his legs could carry him.
+
+
+_II.--M. Derblay's Passion_
+
+
+It was really M. Derblay whom the Marquis de Beaulieu had met in the
+woods of Pont Avesnes. Letting Octave call after him as loud as he
+liked, he hurried on through the woods. Chance had brought him nearer to
+the woman he adored from afar, in a dream as it were, and his heart was
+full of joy. He, Philippe, might approach her--he would be able to speak
+to her. But at the thought of the Duc de Bligny, a feeling of deep
+sadness overcame him, and his strength waned.
+
+He recalled to mind all the exploits of his life, and asked himself if,
+in virtue of the task he had accomplished, he were not really deserving
+of happiness. After very brilliant studies, he had left the polytechnic
+school with first honours, and had chosen the state mining service when
+the Franco-German war had broken out. He was then two-and-twenty, and
+had just obtained an appointment, but at once enlisted as a volunteer.
+He served with distinction, and when at last he started for home he wore
+on his breast the ribbon of the Legion of Honour. He found the house in
+mourning. His mother had just died, and his little sister, Suzanne, just
+seven years old, clung to him with convulsive tenderness. Within six
+months his father also died, leaving his affairs in a most confused
+state.
+
+Philippe renounced the brilliant career as an engineer already chalked
+out before him, and that his sister might not be dowerless, became a
+manufacturer. In seven years he had liquidated the paternal inheritance;
+his property was really his own, and he felt capable of greatly
+extending his enterprises. Popular in the district, he might come
+forward at the elections to be returned as a deputy. Who knew? Hope
+revived in Philippe Derblay's heart.
+
+After a long talk with Maitre Bachelin, he, on considering the
+situation, felt it was not unfavourable to his hopes. When he presented
+himself at Beaulieu, the marchioness received him kindly, and, touching
+Suzanne's fair hair with her lips, "There is peace signed on this
+child's forehead," said she. "All your sins are forgiven you, neighbour.
+And now come and let me introduce you to the family."
+
+A burning flush suffused Philippe's face, and he bowed low before the
+girl he adored.
+
+"Why, he's a gentleman, dear!" whispered the baroness to Claire. "And
+think, I pictured him with a leather apron! Why, he's decorated, and the
+baron isn't! He's really very good-looking, and his eyes are superb!"
+
+Claire looked at him almost sternly. The contrast was complete between
+him and Bligny, far away. Philippe was relieved to find the Baron de
+Préfont present; he had read a treatise of his, which delighted the
+baron, who at once became very friendly, and insisted on visiting the
+ironworks. Only Claire remained frigid and indifferent, and this on his
+second visit, instead of disconcerting the ironmaster, only irritated
+him; and the more she pretended to ignore him the more determined he
+became to compel her to notice him. They were all on the terrace when
+Monsieur and Mademoiselle Monlinet were announced.
+
+"What can these people want?" said Madame de Beaulieu.
+
+Monsieur Monlinet was a wealthy tradesman, who had just bought the
+Château de la Varenne, near by. His daughter had been at school with
+Claire and the Baroness de Préfont, and a bitter warfare was waged
+incessantly between the juvenile aristocrats and the monied damsels
+without handles to their names. All recollections of Athénais had faded
+from Claire's mind, but hatred was still rife in Mlle. Monlinet's heart;
+and when her father, in view of her marriage, bought La Varenne for her,
+the château was a threatening fortress, whence she might pounce down on
+her enemy.
+
+Now she advanced towards Mlle, de Beaulieu when she entered the
+drawing-room at Beaulieu and threw her arms round her neck, and boldly
+exclaimed, "Ah, my beautiful Claire! How happy am I to see you!"
+
+This young person had wonderfully improved, had become very pretty, and
+now paralysed her adversaries by her audacity. She soon contrived to
+leave the others, and when alone with Claire informed her she had come
+to beg for advice respecting her marriage.
+
+Mlle, de Beaulieu instantly divined what her relatives had been hiding
+so carefully, and though she became very pale while Athénais looked at
+her in fiendish delight, she determined to die rather than own her love
+for Gaston, and exerted all her will to master herself. The noise of a
+furious gallop resounded, and the Duc de Bligny dashed into the
+courtyard on a horse white with foam. He would have entered the
+drawing-room, but the baron hindered him, while Maître Bachelin went to
+ask if he might be received.
+
+Claire wore a frightful expression of anger.
+
+"Be kind enough"--she turned to Bachelin--"to ask the duke to go round
+to the terrace and wait a moment. Don't bring him in till I make you a
+sign from the window; but, in the meantime, send M. Derblay to me."
+
+The marchioness and the baroness immediately improvided a
+_mise-en-scéne,_ so that when the duke entered, he perceived the
+marchioness seated as usual in her easy chair, the baroness standing
+near the chimney-piece, and Claire with her back to the light. He bowed
+low before the noble woman who had been his second mother.
+
+"Madame la Marquise," he said, "my dear aunt, you see my emotion--my
+grief! Claire, I cannot leave this room till you have forgiven me!"
+
+"But you owe me no explanation, duke," Claire said, with amazing
+serenity; "and you need no forgiveness. I have been told you intend to
+marry. You had the right to do so, it seems to me. Were you not as free
+as myself?"
+
+Thereupon, approaching the doorway, she made a sign to Philippe. Athénais
+boldly followed the ironmaster.
+
+"I must introduce you to one another, gentlemen. Monsieur le Duc de
+Bligny--my cousin." Then, turning towards her faithless lover, and
+defying him, as it were, with her proud gaze, she added, "Duke, Monsieur
+Derblay, my future husband."
+
+
+_III.--The Ironmaster's Disappointment_
+
+
+Touched by the disinterested delicacy of M. Derblay, the marchioness
+sanctioned her daughter's sudden determination without anxiety. In her
+mother's presence, Claire showed every outward sign of happiness, but
+her heart became bitter and her mind disturbed, and nought remained of
+the noble, tender-hearted Claire.
+
+Her only object now was to avenge herself on Athénais and humiliate the
+duke; and the preparations for the wedding were carried on with
+incredible speed. Left ignorant of the ironmaster's generous intentions,
+she attributed his ready deference to all her wishes to his ambition to
+become her husband, and even felt contempt for the readiness with which
+he had enacted his part in the humiliating comedy played before the
+duke, so thoroughly did she misjudge passionate, generous-hearted
+Philippe, whose only dream was to restore her happiness.
+
+Mlle, de Beaulieu arrived at two decisions which stupefied everybody.
+She wished the wedding to take place at midnight, without the least
+pomp, and only the members of the two families to be present. The
+marchioness raised her hands to heaven, and the marquis asked his sister
+if she were going mad, but Philippe declared these wishes seemed very
+proper to him, and so they were carried out.
+
+The marriage contract was signed on the eve of the great day. Claire
+remained ignorant of the fact that she was ruined, and signed quite
+unsuspectingly the act which endowed her with half M. Derblay's fortune.
+
+The service was performed with the same simplicity as would have been
+observed at a pauper's wedding. The dreary music troubled the duke, and
+reminded him of his father's funeral, when his aunt and cousins wept
+with him. He was now alone. Separated for ever from the dear ones who
+had been so kind to him, he compared Philippe's conduct with his own,
+and, turning his eyes to Claire, divined that she wept. A light broke on
+him; he realised the ironmaster's true position, and decided he might
+revenge himself very sweetly.
+
+"She weeps," he said to himself. "She hates that man, and still loves
+me."
+
+After the service he looked in vain for traces of tears. She was calm
+and smiling, and spoke in perfect self-possession.
+
+But when she was left alone, all on a sudden she found herself face to
+face with the cruel reality. She held herself and Philippe in horror.
+She must have been mad, and he had acted most unworthily in lending
+himself to her plans. When he at last ventured to come to her, her harsh
+expression astonished him. She managed to convey to him her wish to
+remain alone, and he showed himself so proud and magnanimous, she asked
+herself if it would be possible for her to live apart from him. How
+could she for ever repel such a loyal, generous man without showing
+herself unjust and cruel?
+
+Her husband approached her. His lips touched her forehead. "Till
+to-morrow," he said. But as he touched her he was seized with a mad,
+passionate longing. He caught her in his arms in an irresistible
+transport. "Oh, if you only knew how much I love you!"
+
+Surprised at first, Claire turned livid.
+
+"Leave me!" she cried in an angry voice.
+
+Philippe drew back. "What!" he said, in a troubled voice. "You repel me
+with horror! Do you hate me, then? And why? Ah, that man who forsook you
+so cowardly--that man, do you still happen to love him?"
+
+"Ah, have you not perceived that I have been mad?" cried Claire, ceasing
+to restrain herself. "I have deserved your anger and contempt, no doubt.
+Come, take everything belonging to me except myself! My fortune is
+yours. I give it you. Let it be the ransom of my liberty."
+
+Philippe was on the point of revealing the truth, which he had hitherto
+hidden with such delicacy and care, but he cast the idea aside. "Do you
+really take me for a man who sells himself?" he asked coldly. "I, who
+came here but a little while ago, palpitating and trembling to tell my
+love! Wasn't I more than mad, more than grotesque? For, after all, I
+have your fortune. I'm paid. I have no right to complain."
+
+Philippe burst into a bitter laugh, and falling on the sofa, hid his
+face in his hands.
+
+"Monsieur," said Claire haughtily, "let us finish this. Spare me useless
+raillery----"
+
+Philippe showed his face, down which tears were streaming. "I am not
+railing, madame; I am weeping--mourning my happiness, for ever lost. But
+this is enough weakness. You wished to purchase your liberty. I give it
+you for nothing. You will realise one day that you have been even more
+unjust than cruel, and you may then think of trying to undo what you
+have done. But it will be useless. If I saw you on your knees begging my
+forgiveness, I should not have a word of pity for you. Adieu, madame. We
+shall live as you have willed it."
+
+Claire simply bent her head in assent. Philippe gave her a last glance,
+hoping for some softening; but she remained inert and frigid. He slowly
+opened the door, and closed it, pausing again to listen if a cry or a
+sigh would give him--wounded as he was--a pretext for returning and
+offering to forgive. But all was silent.
+
+"Proud creature," said he. "You refuse to bend, but I will break you."
+
+The next morning Claire was found insensible, and for months she lay
+ill, nursed by Philippe with silent devotion. From that time forth his
+manner did not change. Gentle and most attentive to Claire in the
+presence of strangers, he was cold, grave, and strictly polite when they
+were alone.
+
+
+_IV.--The Lover's Reward_
+
+
+In the first expansion of her return to life she had decided she would
+be amiable, and frankly grant her friendship to Philippe, but saw, to
+her mortification, she was disposed to grant more than was asked of her.
+When he handed her "the income of her fortune, for six months," she
+became in a moment the proud Claire of other times, and refused to take
+it. Their eyes met; she relapsed, conquered. He it was she loved now.
+She constantly looked at him, and did whatever she thought would please
+him. She learnt with surprise that her husband was on the high road to
+becoming one of the princes of industry--that great power of the
+century. And when she learnt, accidentally from her brother, that she
+herself had had no dowry, she said, "I must win him back, or I shall
+die!"
+
+The Duc and Duchess de Bligny arrived at La Varenne. La Varenne became
+the scene of numerous fetes, but Claire excused herself from attending
+on the ground that she was not yet well enough to sit up late. Athénais'
+anticipated pleasure was all lost, since she could not crush her rival
+with her magnificence. In her jealous rage she began to devote
+particular attention to Monsieur Derblay. At last, Claire judged the cup
+was full, and on her fête day, encouraged for the first time by her
+husband's glances, called Athénais aside and entreated her to stay away
+from their home for a time, at least. Athénais, pale with rage, replied
+insultingly, and Claire summoned the duke to take his wife away if he did
+not wish her to be turned out in presence of everyone.
+
+With perfect composure Bligny asked Philippe if he approved of what
+Madame Derblay had done. In a grave voice, the ironmaster answered,
+"Monsieur le Duc, whatever Madame Derblay may do, whatever reason she
+may have for doing it, I consider everything she does as well done."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Claire saw two pistols lowered. With a shriek, she bounded forward and
+clapped her hand on the muzzle of Bligny's pistol!
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+An hour had elapsed without her regaining consciousness. The ironmaster
+was leaning over her. Suddenly her eyes opened, and she threw her arms
+round his neck. An acute pain passed through her hand, and she
+remembered everything--her despair, her anguish, and her sacrifice.
+
+"One word?" she asked. "Tell me, do you love me?"
+
+Philippe showed her a radiant face.
+
+"Yes, I love you," he replied.
+
+A cry escaped Claire. She clung frantically to Philippe; their eyes met,
+and in inexpressible ecstasy they exchanged their first kiss of love.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+
+
+OUIDA (LOUISE DE LA RAMÉE)
+
+
+Under Two Flags
+
+
+     There are few women writers who have created more stir by
+     their works than Louise de la Ramée, the lady who wrote under
+     the pen name of Ouida. Born of English and French parentage at
+     Bury St. Edmund, England, in 1840, she began to turn to
+     account her undoubted literary talents at the age of twenty,
+     when she contributed to the "New Monthly" and "Bentley's
+     Magazine." In the same year appeared her first long story,
+     "Granville de Vigne," which was afterwards renamed and
+     republished as "Held in Bondage." From that time an amazing
+     output of romances fell in rapid succession from her pen, the
+     most picturesque of them, perhaps, being "Under Two Flags"
+     (1867) and "Moths." With respect to the former, although on
+     occasions it exhibits a tendency towards inaccurate
+     observation, the story is told with rare dramatic force and
+     descriptive power. From 1874, Mlle. Ramée made her home in
+     Italy, where, at Lucca, in spite of her reputation as a
+     novelist, she died in straightened circumstances Jan. 25,
+     1908.
+
+
+_I.--An Officer of the Guards_
+
+
+A Guardsman at home is always luxuriously accommodated, and the Hon.
+Bertie Cecil, second son of Viscount Royallieu, was never behind his
+fellows in anything; besides, he was one of the crack officers of the
+1st Life Guards, and ladies sent him pretty things enough to fill the
+Palais Royal.
+
+Then Hon. Bertie was known generally in the brigade as "Beauty," and the
+appellative, gained at Eton, was in no way undeserved. His face, with as
+much delicacy and brilliancy as a woman's, was at once handsome,
+thoroughbred, languid, nonchalant with a certain latent recklessness,
+under the impassive calm of habit.
+
+Life petted him and pampered him; lodged him like a prince, dined him
+like a king, and had never let him feel the want of all that is bought
+by money. How could he understand that he was not as rich a man as his
+oldest and closest comrade, Lord Rockingham, a Colossus, known as "the
+Seraph," the eldest son of the Duke of Lyonesse?
+
+A quarrel with his father (whom he always alluded to as "Royal")
+reminded him that he was ruined; that he would get no help from the old
+lord, or from his elder brother, the heir. He was hopelessly in debt;
+nothing but the will of his creditors stood between him and the fatal
+hour when he must "send in his papers to sell," and be "nowhere" in the
+great race of life.
+
+An appeal for money from his young brother, Berkeley, whom he really
+loved, forced Cecil to look, for the first time, blankly in the face of
+ruin that awaited him.
+
+Berkeley, a boy of twenty, had been gambling, and came to Cecil, as he
+had come often enough before, with his tale of needs. It was £300
+Berkeley wanted, and he had already borrowed £100 from a friend--a
+shameless piece of degradation in Cecil's code.
+
+"It is no use to give you false hopes, young one," said Cecil gently. "I
+can do nothing. If the money were mine it should be yours at a word. But
+I am all downhill, and my bills may be called in at any moment."
+
+"You are such chums with Rockingham, and he's as rich as all the Jews
+put together. What harm could there be if you asked him to lend you some
+money for me?"
+
+Cecil's face darkened.
+
+"You will bring some disgrace on us before you die, Berkeley," he said.
+"Have you no common knowledge of honour? If I did such a thing I should
+deserve to be hounded out of the Guards to-morrow. The only thing for
+you to do is to go down and tell Royal, he will sell every stick and
+stone for your sake."
+
+"I would rather cut my throat," said the boy. "I have had so much from
+him lately."
+
+But in the end he promised to go.
+
+It was hard for Bertie to get it into his brain that he really was at
+the end of his resources. There still seemed one chance open to him. He
+was a fearless rider, and his horse, Forest King, was famous for its
+powers. He entered him for a great race at Baden, and piled on all he
+could, determined to be sunk or saved by the race. If he won he might be
+able to set things right for a time, and then family influence ought to
+procure him an advance in the Guards.
+
+Forest King had never failed its master hitherto, and Bertie would have
+been saved by his faithful steed, but for the fact that a blackguardly
+turf welcher doctored the horse's mouth, and Forest King was beaten, and
+couldn't finish the course.
+
+"Something ails King," said Cecil calmly, "he is fairly knocked off his
+legs. Some vet must look to him; ridden a yard further he will fall."
+
+
+_II "A Mystery--An Error"_
+
+
+Cecil knew that with the failure of Forest King had gone the last plank
+that saved him from ruin, perhaps the last chance that stood between him
+and dishonour. He had never looked on it as within the possibilities of
+hazard that the horse could be defeated, and the blow fell with crushing
+force; the fiercer because his indolence had persisted in ignoring his
+danger, and his whole character was so accustomed to ease and to
+enjoyment.
+
+He got away from his companions, and wandered out alone into the gardens
+in the evening sunlight, throwing himself on a bench beneath a
+mountain-ash.
+
+Here the little Lady Venetia, the eight-year-old sister of the colossal
+Seraph, found him, and Cecil roused himself, and smiled at her.
+
+"They say you have lost all your money," said the child, "and I want you
+to take mine. It is my _very_ own. Papa gives it to me to do just what I
+like with it. Please do take it."
+
+Twenty bright Napoleons fell in a glittering shower on the grass.
+
+"_Petite reine_," Cecil murmured gently, "how some man will love you one
+day. I cannot take your money, and you will understand why when you are
+older. But I will take this if you will give it me," and he picked up a
+little enamelled sweetmeat box, and slipped it into his waistcoat
+pocket. It was only a child's gift, but he kept it through many a dark
+day and wild night.
+
+At that moment as he stood there, with the child beside him, one of the
+men of the gardens brought him an English letter, marked "instant."
+Cecil took it wearily, broke the envelope, and read a scrawled,
+miserable letter, blotted with hot tears, and scored out in impulsive
+misery. The Lady Venetia went slowly away and when next they met it was
+under the burning sun of Africa.
+
+Alone, Cecil's head sank down upon his hands.
+
+"Oh, God!" he thought. "If it were anything--anything except disgrace!"
+
+An hour later and the Seraph's servant brought him a message, asking him
+to come to Lord Rockingham's rooms immediately.
+
+Cecil went, and the Seraph crossed the room with his hand held out; not
+for his life in that moment would he have omitted that gesture of
+friendship. There was a third person in the room, a Jew, M. Baroni, who
+held a folded paper, with the forged signature of _Rockingham_ on it,
+and another signature, the name of the forger in whose favour the bill
+was drawn; that other signature was--_Bertie Cecil_.
+
+"Cecil, my dear fellow," said the Seraph, "I'm ashamed to send for you
+on such a blackguard errand! Here, M. Baroni, make your statement. Later
+on, Mr. Cecil can avenge it."
+
+"My statement is easily made," said the Jew. "I simply charge the Hon.
+Bertie Cecil with having negotiated a bill with my firm for £750 month,
+drawn in his own favour, and accepted at two months' date by your
+lordship. Your signature you, my lord marquis, admit to be a forgery.
+With that forgery I charge your friend!"
+
+Cecil stood silent, with a strange anguish on his face.
+
+"I am not guilty," he said quietly.
+
+"Beauty--Beauty! Never say that to _me_!" said the Seraph. "Do you think
+_I_ can ever doubt you?"
+
+"It is a matter of course," replied Baroni, "that Mr. Cecil denies the
+accusation. It is very wise. But I _must_ arrest Mr. Cecil! Were you
+alone, my lord, you could prosecute or not, as you please; but ours is
+the money obtained by that forgery. If Mr. Cecil will accompany me
+unresistingly, I will not summon legal force."
+
+"Cecil, tell me what is to be done?" said the Seraph hoarsely. "I will
+send for the duke--"
+
+"Send for no one. I will go with this man. He is right as far as he
+knows. The whole is a--a mystery--an error."
+
+Cecil hesitated a moment; then he stretched out his hand. "Will you take
+it--still?"
+
+"Take it! Before all the world, always, come what will!"
+
+The Seraph's voice rang clear as the ring of silver. Another moment, and
+the door had closed. Cecil went slowly out beside his accuser, not
+blaming the Jew in anything.
+
+Once out in the air, the Hebrew laid his hand on his arm. Presently, in
+a side-street, three figures loomed in the shadow of the houses--a
+German official, the commissary of police, and an English detective. The
+Hebrew had betrayed him, and arrested him in the open street.
+
+In an instant all the pride and blood of his race was up. He wrenched
+his wrists free and with his left arm felled the detective to earth with
+a crushing blow. The German---a powerful and firmly-built man--was on
+him at once, but Cecil's science was the finer. For a second the two
+rocked in close embrace, and then the German fell heavily.
+
+The cries of Baroni drew a crowd at once, but Cecil dashed, with the
+swiftness of the deer, forward into the gathering night.
+
+Flight! The craven's refuge--the criminal's resource! Flight! He wished
+in the moment's agony that they would send a bullet through his brain.
+
+Soon the pursuers were far behind. But Cecil knew that he had but the
+few remaining hours of night left to save those for whom he had elected
+to sacrifice his life.
+
+
+_III.--Under Another Flag_
+
+
+Cigarette was the pet of the army of Africa, and was as lawless as most
+of her patrons. She was the Friend of the Flag. Soldiers had been about
+her from her cradle. They had been her books, her teachers, her
+guardians, and, later on, her lovers, all the days of her life. She had
+no sense of duty taught her, except to face fire boldly, never to betray
+a comrade, and to worship but two deities--"_la Gloire_" and "_la
+France_." Her own sex would have seen no good in her, but her
+comrades-in-arms could, and did. A certain chasseur d'Afrique in this
+army at Algiers puzzled her. He treated her with a grave courtesy, that
+made her wish, with impatient scorn for the wish, that she knew how to
+read, and had not her hair cut short like a boy's--a weakness the little
+vivandière had never been visited with before.
+
+"You are too fine for us, _mon brave_," she said pettishly once to this
+chasseur. "They say you are English, but I don't believe it. Say what
+you are, then?"
+
+"A soldier of France. Can you wish me more?"
+
+"True," she said simply. "But you were not always a soldier of France?
+You joined, they say, twelve years ago. What were you before then?"
+
+"Before?" he answered slowly. "Well--a fool"
+
+"You belonged to the majority, then!" said Cigarette. "But why did you
+come into the service? You were born in the noblesse--bah, I know an
+aristocrat at a glance! What ruined you, Monsieur l'Aristocrat?"
+
+"Aristocrat? I am none. I am Louis Victor, a corporal of the chasseurs."
+
+"You are dull, _mon brave_."
+
+Cigarette left him, and made her way to the officers' quarters. High or
+low, they were all the same to Cigarette, and she would have talked to
+the emperor himself as coolly as she did to any private.
+
+She praised the good looks of the corporal of chasseurs, and his
+colonel, M. le Marquis de Châteauroy, answered, with a curse, "I wish my
+corporal were shot! One can never hear the last of him!"
+
+Meanwhile, the corporal of chasseurs sat alone among the stones of a
+ruined mosque. He was a dashing cavalry soldier, who had a dozen wounds
+cut over his body by the Bedouin swords in many and hot skirmishes; who
+had waited through sultry African nights for the lion's tread; and who
+had served well in fierce, arduous work in trying campaigns and in close
+discipline.
+
+From the extremes of luxury and indolence Cecil came to the extremes of
+hardship and toil. He had borne the change mutely, and without a murmur,
+though the first years were years of intense misery. His comrades had
+grown to love him, seeing his courage and his willingness to help them,
+with a rough, dog-like love.
+
+Twelve years ago in England it was accepted that Bertie Cecil and his
+servant Rake had been killed in a railway accident in France.
+
+And the solitary corporal of chasseurs read in the "Galignani" of the
+death of his father, Viscount Royallieu, and of his elder brother. The
+title and estate that should have been his had gone to his younger
+brother.
+
+
+_IV.--From Death to Life_
+
+
+The Seraph, now Duke of Lyonesse, and his sister Venetia, Princess
+Corona, came on a visit to the French camp, and with them Berkeley,
+Viscount Royallieu. Corporal Louis Victor saw them, and, safe from
+recognition himself, knew them. But Cecil was not to go down to the
+grave unreleased. First, his brother Berkeley coming upon him alone in
+the solitude of a desert camp, made concealment impossible.
+
+"Have you lived stainlessly _since_?" were Cecil's only words, stern as
+the demand of a judge.
+
+"God is my witness, yes! But you--they said you were dead. That was my
+first disgrace, and my last; you bore the weight of my shame. What can I
+say? Such nobility, such sacrifice--"
+
+It was for himself that Berkeley trembled.
+
+"I have kept your secret twelve years; I will keep it still," said Cecil
+gravely. "Only leave Algeria at once."
+
+A slight incident revealed the corporal's identity to the Princess
+Corona. By his bearing he had attracted the attention of the visitors to
+the camp, and on being admitted to the villa of the princess to restore
+a gold chain dropped carelessly in the road, he disclosed the little
+enamelled box, marked "Venetia," the gift of the child in the garden at
+Baden.
+
+"That box is mine!" cried the princess. "I gave it! And you? You are my
+brother's friend? You are Bertie Cecil?"
+
+"_Petite reine_!" he murmured.
+
+Then he acknowledged who he was, not even for his brother's sake could
+he have lied to _her_; but he implored her to say nothing to the Seraph.
+"I was innocent, but in honour I can never give you or any living thing
+_proof_ that this crime was not mine."
+
+"He is either a madman or a martyr," she mused, when Cecil had left her.
+That he loved her was plain, and the time was not far distant when she
+should love him, and be willing to share any sacrifice love and honour
+might demand.
+
+The hatred of Colonel Châteauroy for his corporal brought matters to a
+climax. Meeting Cecil returning from his visit to Venetia, Châteauroy
+could not refrain from saying insulting things concerning the princess.
+
+"_You lie_!" cried Cecil; "and you know that you lie! Breathe her name
+once more, and, as we are both living men, I will have your life for
+your outrage!"
+
+And as he spoke Cecil smote him on the lips.
+
+Châteauroy summoned the guard, the corporal was placed under arrest, and
+brought to court-martial.
+
+In three days' time Corporal Louis Victor would be shot by order of the
+court-martial.
+
+Cigarette, and Cigarette alone, prevented the sentence being carried
+out, and that at the cost of her life.
+
+She was away from the camp at the time in a Moorish town when the news
+came to her; and she stumbled on Berkeley Cecil, and, knowing him for an
+Englishman, worked on his feelings, and gave him no rest till he had
+acknowledged the condemned man for his elder brother and the lawful
+Viscount Royallieu, peer of England.
+
+With this document, signed and sealed by Berkeley, Cigarette galloped
+off to the fortress where the marshal of France, who was Viceroy of
+Africa, had arrived. The marshal knew Cigarette; he had decorated her
+with the cross for her valour in battle, and with the whole army of
+Africa he loved and admired her.
+
+Cigarette gave him the document, and told him all she knew of the
+corporal's heroism. And the marshal promised the sentence should be
+deferred until he had found out the whole truth of the matter.
+
+With the order of release in her bosom Cigarette once more vaulted into
+the saddle, to ride hard through the day and night--for at sunrise on
+the morrow will the sentence be executed.
+
+And now it is sunrise, and the prisoner has been brought out to the
+slope of earth out of sight of the camp.
+
+At the last the Seraph appeared, and found in the condemned man the
+friend of his youth. It was only with great difficulty that Rockingham
+was overpowered, for he swore Cecil should not be killed, and a dozen
+soldiers were required to get him away.
+
+Then Cecil raised his hand, and gave the signal for his own death-shot.
+
+The levelled carbines covered him; ere they could fire a shrill cry
+pierced the air: "Wait! In the name of France!"
+
+Dismounted and breathless, Cigarette was by the side of Cecil, and had
+flung herself on his breast.
+
+Her cry came too late; the volley was fired, and while the prisoner
+stood erect, grazed only by some of the balls, Cigarette fell, pierced
+and broken by the fire. She died in Cecil's arms, with the comrades she
+had loved around her.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+It is spring. Cecil is Lord of Royallieu, the Lady Venetia is his bride.
+
+"It was worth banishment to return," he murmured to her. "It was worth
+the trials that I bore to learn the love that I have known."
+
+And the memories of both went back to a place in a desert land where the
+folds of the tricolour drooped over one little grave--a grave where the
+troops saluted as they passed it, because on the white stone there was
+carved a name that spoke to every heart:
+
+              CIGARETTE
+    ENFANT DE L'ARMÉE, SOLDAT DE LA FRANCE.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+
+
+JAMES PAYN
+
+
+Lost Sir Massingberd
+
+
+     James Payn, one of the most prolific literary workers of the
+     second half of the nineteenth century, was born at Cheltenham,
+     England, Feb. 28, 1830, and died March 23, 1898. After a false
+     start in education for the army, he went to Cambridge
+     University, where he was president of the Union, and published
+     some poems. The acceptance of his contributions by "Household
+     Words" turned him to his true vocation. After writing some
+     years for "Chambers's Journal" he became its editor from 1850
+     till 1874. His first work of fiction, "The Foster Brothers," a
+     story founded on his college life, appeared in 1859, but it
+     was not until five years later that Payn's name was
+     established as a novelist. This was on the publication of
+     "Lost Sir Massingberd, a Romance of Real Life." The story
+     first appeared in "Chambers's Journal," and is marked by all
+     his good qualities--ingenious construction, dramatic
+     situations, and a skilful arrangement of incidents.
+     Altogether, Payn wrote about sixty volumes of novels and short
+     stories.
+
+
+_I.--Neither Fearing God Nor Regarding Man_
+
+
+In a Midland county, not as yet scarred by factories, there stands a
+village called Fairburn, which at the time I knew it first had for its
+squire, its lord, its despot, one Sir Massingberd Heath. Its rector, at
+that date, was the Rev. Matthew Long, into whose wardship I, Peter
+Meredith, an Anglo-Indian lad, was placed by my parents. I loved Mr.
+Long, although he was my tutor; and oh, how I feared and hated Mr.
+Massingberd! It was not, however, my boyhood alone that caused me to
+hold this man as a monster of iniquity; it was the opinion which the
+whole county entertained of him, more or less. Like the unjust judge, he
+neither feared God nor regarded man.
+
+He had been a fast, very fast friend of the regent; but they were no
+longer on speaking terms. Sir Massingberd had left the gay, wicked world
+for good, and was obliged to live at his beautiful country seat in spite
+of himself. He was irretrievably ruined, and house and land being
+entailed upon his nephew Marmaduke, he had nothing but a life interest
+in anything.
+
+Marmaduke Heath was Mr. Long's pupil as well as myself, and he resided
+with his uncle at the Hall. He dreaded his relative beyond measure. All
+the pretended frankness with which the old man sometimes treated the lad
+was unable to hide the hate with which Sir Massingberd really regarded
+him; but for this heir-presumptive to the entail, the baronet might
+raise money to any extent, and once more take his rightful station in
+the world.
+
+Abject terror obscured the young existence of Marmaduke Heath. The
+shadow of Sir Massingberd cast itself over him alike when he went out
+from his hated presence and when he returned to it.
+
+Soon after my first meeting with Marmaduke, Sir Massingberd unexpectedly
+appeared before me. He was a man of Herculean proportions, dressed like
+an under-gamekeeper, but with the face of one who was used to command.
+On his forehead was a curious indented frown like the letter V, and his
+lips curled contemptuously upward in the same shape. These two together
+gave him a weird, demoniacal look, which his white beard, although long
+and flowing, had not enough of dignity to do away with. He ordered his
+nephew to go home, and the boy instantly obeyed, as though he almost
+dreaded a blow from his uncle. Then the baronet strode away, and his
+laugh echoed again and again, for it was joy to know that he was feared.
+
+Mr. Long determined to buy a horse for me, and upon my suggestion that I
+wished Marmaduke Heath to spend more time in my company, he and I went
+up to the Hall to ask Sir Massingberd if he were willing. The squire
+received us curtly, and upon hearing of my tutor's intention, declared
+that he himself would select a horse for Marmaduke. Then, since he
+wished to talk with Mr. Long concerning Mr. Chint, the family lawyer, he
+bade me go to his nephew's room, calling upon Grimjaw, a loathsome old
+dog, to act as my guide. This beast preceded me up the old oak staircase
+to a chamber door, before which it sat and whined. Marmaduke opened this
+and admitted me, and we sat talking together.
+
+My tutor found us together, and knowing the house better than the heir
+did, offered to play cicerone and show me over. In the state bed-room, a
+great room facing the north, he disclosed to us a secret stairway that
+opened behind a full-length portrait. Marmaduke, who had been unaware of
+its existence, grew ghastly pale.
+
+"The foot of the stairway is in the third bookcase on the left of the
+library door," said Mr. Long. "I dare say that nobody has moved the
+picture for twenty years."
+
+"Yes, yes!" said Marmaduke passionately. "My uncle has moved it. When I
+was ill, upon my coming to Fairburn, I slept here, and I had terrible
+visions. I see it all now. He wanted to frighten me to death, or to make
+me mad. He would come and stand by my bedside and stare at me. Cruel--
+cruel coward!"
+
+Then he begged us to go away. "My uncle will wonder at your long delay.
+He will suspect something," he said.
+
+"Peter," observed my tutor gravely, as we went homeward, "whatever you
+may think of what has passed to-day, say nothing. I am not so ignorant
+of the wrongs of that poor boy as I appear, but there is nothing for it
+but patience."
+
+
+_II.--A Gypsy's Curse_
+
+
+In a few days I was in possession of an excellent horse, and Marmaduke
+had the like fortune. My tutor examined the steed Sir Massingberd had
+bought with great attention, and after commenting on the tightness of
+the curb, declared that he would accompany us on our first ride. After
+we had left the village, he expressed a wish to change mounts with
+Marmaduke, and certainly if he had been a horsebreaker he could not have
+taken more pains with the animal. In the end he expressed himself highly
+satisfied. Some days afterwards, however, Panther, for so we called the
+horse, behaved in a strange and incomprehensible fashion, and at last
+became positively fiendish. Shying at a gypsy encampment, he rushed at
+headlong speed down a zigzagged chalk road, and at last pitched
+head-first over a declivity. When I found Marmaduke blood was at his
+mouth, blood at his ears, blood everywhere.
+
+"Marmaduke, Marmaduke!" I cried. "Speak! Speak, if it be but a single
+word! Great heaven, he is dead!"
+
+"Dead! No, not he," answered a hoarse, cracked voice at my ear. "The
+devil would never suffer a Heath of Fairburn to die at his age!"
+
+"Woman," cried I, for it was an old gypsy, who had somehow transported
+herself to the spot, "for God's sake go for help! There is a house
+yonder amongst the trees."
+
+"And why should I stir a foot," replied she fiercely, "for the child of
+a race that has ever treated me and mine as dogs?"
+
+Then she cursed Sir Massingberd as the oppressor of her kith and kin,
+concluding with the terrible words, "May he perish, inch by inch, within
+reach of the aid that shall never come, ere the God of the poor take him
+into His hand!"
+
+"If you hate Sir Massingberd Heath," said I despairingly, "and want to
+do him the worst service that lies in your power, flee, flee to that
+house, and bid them save this boy's life, which alone stands between his
+beggared uncle and unknown riches!"
+
+Revenge accomplished what pity had failed to work. She knelt at his
+side, from a pocket produced a spirit-flask in a leathern case, and
+applied it to his lips. After a painful attempt to swallow, he
+succeeded; his eyelids began tremulously to move, and the colour to
+return to his pallid cheeks. She disappeared; during her absence I noted
+that the tarnished silver top of the flask bore upon it a facsimile of
+one of the identical griffins which guarded each side of the broad steps
+that led to Fairburn Hall.
+
+After a short interval, a young and lovely girl appeared, accompanied by
+a groom and butler, who bore between them a small sofa, on which
+Marmaduke was lifted and gently carried to the house. The master came in
+soon, accompanied by the local doctor, who at last delivered the verdict
+that my friend "would live to be a baronet."
+
+He said, moreover, that the youth must be kept perfectly quiet, and not
+moved thence on any consideration--it might be for weeks. Harvey Gerard,
+a noble-looking gentleman, refused to admit Sir Massingberd under his
+roof.
+
+The baronet, however, did appear towards twilight, and forced his way
+into the house, where Harvey Gerard met him with great severity. Soon
+hatred took the place of all other expressions on the baronet's face,
+and he swore that he would see his nephew.
+
+"That you shall not do, Sir Massingberd," said the gentleman. "If you
+attempt to do so, my servants will put you out of the house by force."
+
+"Before night, then, I shall send for him, and he shall be carried back
+to Fairburn, to be nursed in his proper home."
+
+"Nursed!" repeated Harvey Gerard hoarsely. "Nursed by the gravedigger!"
+
+Sir Massingberd turned livid.
+
+"To hear you talk one would think that I had tried to murder the boy,"
+he said.
+
+"I _know_ you did!" cried Harvey Gerard solemnly. "To-day you sent your
+nephew forth upon that devil with a snaffle-bridle instead of a curb!
+See, I track your thoughts like slime. Base ruffian, begone from beneath
+this roof, false coward!"
+
+Sir Massingberd started up like one stung by an adder.
+
+"Yes, I say coward!" continued Harvey Gerard. "Heavens, that this
+creature should still feel touch of shame! Be off, be off; molest not
+anyone within this house at peril of your life! Murderer!"
+
+For once Sir Massingberd had met his match--and more. He seized his hat,
+and hurried from the room.
+
+
+_III.--A Wife Undesired_
+
+
+When Marmaduke recovered consciousness, twelve hours after his terrible
+fall, he told me that he had been given a sign of his approaching
+demise.
+
+"I have seen a vision in the night," he said, "far too sweet and fair
+not to have been sent from heaven itself. They say the Heaths have
+always ghastly warnings when their hour is come; but this was surely a
+gentle messenger."
+
+"Your angel is Lucy Gerard," replied I quietly, "and we are at this
+moment in her father's house."
+
+He was silent for a time, with features as pale as the pillow on which
+he lay; then he repeated her name as though it were a prayer.
+
+"It would indeed be bitter for me to die _now_," he said.
+
+I myself was stricken with love for Lucy Gerard, and would have laid
+down my life to kiss her finger-tips. Nearly half a century has passed
+over my head since the time of which I write, and yet, I swear to you,
+my old heart glows again, and on my withered cheeks there comes a blush
+as I call to mind the time when I first met that pure and lovely girl.
+But from the moment that Marmaduke Heath spoke to me as he did, upon his
+bed of sickness, of our host's daughter, I determined within myself not
+only to stand aside, and let him win if he could, but to help him by all
+the means within my power. And so it came about that later I told Lucy
+that his recovery depended upon her kindness, and won her to look upon
+him with compassion and with tenderness.
+
+Mr. Clint, the lawyer, came from London, and arrangements were made for
+Marmaduke to continue in Harvey Gerard's care, and when Marmaduke was
+convalescent the Gerards removed him to their residence in Harley
+street. After I had bidden them farewell, I rode slowly towards
+Fairburn, but was stopped at some distance by a young gypsy boy, who
+summoned me to the encampment to converse with the aged woman whom I had
+seen on the occasion of the accident. She bade me sit down beside her,
+and after a time produced the silver-mounted flask, concerning whose
+history I felt great curiosity. I asked her how it came into her
+possession, and she herself asked a question in turn.
+
+"Has it never struck you why Sir Massingberd has not long ago taken to
+himself a young wife, and begotten an heir for the lands of Fairburn, in
+despite of his nephew?"
+
+"If that be so," said I, "why does not Sir Massingberd marry?"
+
+Thereupon she told me that many years ago he had joined their company,
+and shared their wandering fortune. Her sister Sinnamenta, a beautiful
+girl beloved by the handsome Stanley Carew, had fascinated him, and he
+would have married her according to gypsy rites; but since her father
+did not believe that he meant to stay with the tribe longer than it
+suited him, he peremptorily refused his request. Sir Massingberd left
+them; they struck tent at once, and travelled to Kirk Yetholm, in
+Roxburghshire, a mile from the frontier of Northumberland. There the
+wretch followed her, and again proposed to go through the Cingari
+ceremony, and this time the father consented. It was on the wedding-day
+that he gave my informant the shooting-flask as a remembrance, just
+before he and his wife went away southward. Long months afterwards
+Sinnamenta returned heart-stricken, woebegone, about to become a mother,
+with nothing but wretchedness in the future, and even her happy past a
+dream dispelled.
+
+The gypsies were at Fairburn again, and Sinnamenta's father sent for Sir
+Massingberd, and he was told that the marriage was legal, Kirk Yetholm
+being over the border. An awful silence succeeded this disclosure. Sir
+Massingberd turned livid, and twice in vain essayed to speak; he was
+well-nigh strangled with passion. At last he caught Sinnamenta's Wrist
+with fingers of steel.
+
+"What man shall stop me from doing what I will with my own?" he cried.
+"Come along with me, my pretty one!"
+
+Stanley Carew flung himself upon him, knife in hand; but the others
+plucked him backward, and Sir Massingberd signed to his wife to followed
+him, and she obeyed. That night Stanley Carew was arrested on a false
+charge of horse-stealing, and lying witnesses soon afterwards brought
+him to the gallows.
+
+"I know not what she suffered immediately after she was taken from us,"
+concluded the old woman. "But this I have heard, that when he told her
+of the death of Stanley Carew, she fell down like one dead, and
+presently, being delivered of a son, the infant died after a few hours.
+Yonder," she looked menacingly towards Fairburn Hall, "the mother
+lives--a maniac. What else could keep me here in a place that tortures
+me with memories of my youth, and of loving faces that have crumbled
+into dust? What else but the hope of one day seeing my little sister
+yet, and the vengeance of Heaven upon him who has worked her ruin? If
+Massingberd Heath escape some awful end, there is no Avenger on high. I
+am old, but I shall see it yet, I shall see it before I die."
+
+
+_IV.--The Curse Fulfilled_
+
+
+I returned to Fairburn, and soon Sir Massingberd, finding that all
+correspondence with his nephew was interrupted by Harvey Gerard, began
+to pay small attentions to my tutor and myself. At last he appeared at
+the rectory, and desired me to forward a letter to Marmaduke.
+This--finding nothing objectionable in the contents--I agreed to do, and
+he departed, after inviting me to make use of his grounds whenever I
+pleased. On the morrow I yielded to curiosity, and after wandering to
+and fro in the park, came near a small stone house with unglazed,
+iron-grated windows. A short, sharp shriek clove the humid air, and
+approaching, I looked into a sitting-room, where an ancient female sat
+eating a chicken without knife or fork. Her hair was scanty and white as
+snow, but hung almost to the ground.
+
+"Permit me to introduce myself," she said. "I am Sinnamenta, Lady Heath.
+You are not Stanley Carew, are you? They told me that he was hung, but I
+know better than that. To be hung for nothing must be a terrible thing;
+but how much worse to be hung for love! It is not customary to watch a
+lady when she is partaking of refreshment."
+
+Then the poor mad creature turned her back, and I withdrew from the sad
+scene. A day or two afterwards the post carried misfortune from me to
+Harley Street. The wily baronet had fooled me, and had substituted a
+terrible letter for that which he had persuaded me to enclose to his
+nephew.
+
+"Return hither, sir, at once," he had written. "It is far worse than
+idle to attempt to cross my will. I give you twenty-four hours to arrive
+after the receipt of this letter. I shall consider your absence to be
+equivalent to a contumacious refusal. However well it may seem with you,
+it will not be well. Whenever you think yourself safest, you will be
+most in danger. There is, indeed, but one place of safety for you; come
+you home."
+
+Very soon afterwards, and before we knew of this villainy, word reached
+us that the baronet was lost, and could not be found. He had started on
+his usual nocturnal rounds in the preserves, and nobody had seen him
+since midnight. Old Grimjaw, the dog, had been found on the doorstep,
+nigh frozen to death.
+
+The news spread like wild-fire through Fairburn village. I myself joined
+the searchers, but soon separated from them, and passing the home
+spinney, near by which was the famous Wolsey oak, a tree of great age. I
+heard a sound that set my heart beating, and fluttering like the wings
+of a prisoned bird against its cage. Was it a strangled cry for "Help!"
+repeated once, twice, thrice, or was it the cold wind clanging and
+grinding the naked branches of the spinney? But nought living was to be
+seen; a bright wintry sun completely penetrated the leafless woodland.
+At last I came upon the warm but lifeless body of Grimjaw lying on the
+grass, and I hurried madly from the accursed place to where the men were
+dragging the lake.
+
+No clue was found, and my tutor began to fear that the gypsies had made
+away with their enemy. Word came that they had passed through the
+turnpike with a covered cart, and we rode out to interview them. The old
+woman met us, and conducted us to the vehicle, when we found Sinnamenta,
+Lady Heath, weaving rushes into crowns.
+
+"My little sister is not beaten now," said the beldam. "May God's curse
+have found Sir Massingberd! I would that I had his fleshless bones to
+show you. Where he may be we know not; we only hope that in some hateful
+spot he may be suffering unimagined pains!"
+
+By the next post I received bitter news from Harley Street. A copy of
+the menacing epistle reached me from Harvey Gerard. In a postscript Lucy
+added that Marmaduke was too ill to write. An hour later Mr. Long and I
+set off to town, where we found the lad in a less morbid state than we
+had expected. He had asked, and gained, Harvey Gerard's permission to
+marry his daughter, and the beautiful girl was supporting him with all
+her strength.
+
+The services of Townsend, the great Bow street runner, were called for;
+but in spite of his endeavours, no solution was discovered to the
+mystery of Sir Massingberd's disappearance. Fairburn Hall remained
+without a master, occupied only by the servants.
+
+At last Marmaduke came of age, and as he and Lucy were now man and wife,
+it was decreed that they must return to the old home. Art changed that
+sombre house into a comfortable and splendid mansion, and when Lucy
+brought forth a son, the place seemed under a blessing, and no longer
+under a curse. But it was not until the christening feast of the young
+heir was celebrated with due honour that the secret of Sir Massingberd's
+disappearance was discovered.
+
+Some young boys, playing at hide-and-seek, were using the Wolsey oak for
+"home," and, whilst waiting there, dug a hole with their knives, and
+came upon a life-preserver that the baronet had always carried. Then a
+keeper climbed the tree, and cried out that it was hollow, and there was
+a skeleton inside.
+
+"It's my belief," said the man, "that Sir Massingberd must have climbed
+up into the fork to look about him for poachers, and that the wood gave
+way beneath him, and let him down feet foremost into the trunk."
+
+Later, as I looked upon the ghastly relics of humanity, the old gypsy's
+curse recurred to my mind with dreadful distinctness. "May he perish,
+inch by inch, within reach of the aid that shall never come, ere the God
+of the poor take him into His hand."
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+End of Project Gutenberg's The World's Greatest Books, Vol VI., by Various
+
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+
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+<pre>
+
+Project Gutenberg's The World's Greatest Books, Vol VI., by Various
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: The World's Greatest Books, Vol VI.
+
+Author: Various
+
+Release Date: February 20, 2004 [EBook #11180]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK WORLD'S GREATEST BOOKS ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by John Hagerson, Kevin Handy and PG Distributed Proofreaders
+
+
+
+
+
+</pre>
+
+
+<h1>THE WORLD'S</h1> <h1>GREATEST</h1> <h1>BOOKS</h1>
+
+<h2>JOINT EDITORS</h2>
+
+<h3>ARTHUR MEE</h3> <h4>Editor and Founder of the Book of Knowledge</h4>
+
+<h3>J.A. HAMMERTON</h3> <h4>Editor of Harmsworth's Universal Encyclopaedia</h4>
+
+<h3>VOL. VI</h3> <h3>FICTION</h3>
+
+
+<h4>Copyright, MCMX</h4>
+
+<hr />
+
+<h2><i>Table of Contents</i></h2>
+
+<a href="#SHERIDAN_LE_FANU">LE FANU, SHERIDAN</a><br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;<a href="#Uncle_Silas">Uncle Sila</a>s<br /><br />
+<a href="#RENE_LE_SAGE">LESAGE, REN&Eacute;</a><br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;<a href="#Gil_Blas">Gil Blas</a><br /><br />
+<a href="#CHARLES_LEVER">LEVER, CHARLES</a><br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;<a href="#Charles_OMalley">Charles O'Malley</a><br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;<a href="#Tom_Burke_of_Ours">Tom Burke of Ours</a><br /><br />
+<a href="#MG_LEWIS">LEWIS, M.G.</a><br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;<a href="#Ambrosio_or_the_Monk">Ambrosio, or the Monk</a><br /><br />
+<a href="#ELIZA_LYNN_LINTON">LINTON, MRS. LYNN</a><br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;<a href="#Joshua_Davidson">Joshua Davidson</a><br /><br />
+<a href="#SAMUEL_LOVER">LOVER, SAMUEL</a><br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;<a href="#Handy_Andy">Handy Andy</a><br /><br />
+<a href="#EDWARD_BULWER_LYTTON">LYTTON, EDWARD BULWER</a><br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;<a href="#Eugene_Aram">Eugene Aram</a><br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;<a href="#The_Last_Days_of_Pompeii">Last Days of Pompeii</a><br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;<a href="#The_Last_of_the_Barons">The Last of the Barons</a><br /><br />
+<a href="#HENRY_MACKENZIE">MACKENZIE, HENRY</a><br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;<a href="#The_Man_of_Feeling">Man of Feeling</a><br /><br />
+<a href="#XAVIER_DE_MAISTRE">MAISTRE, COUNT XAVIER DE</a><br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;<a href="#A_Journey_Round_My_Room">A Journey Round my Room</a><br /><br />
+<a href="#SIR_THOMAS_MALORY">MALORY, SIR THOMAS</a><br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;<a href="#Morte_dArthur">Morte d'Arthur</a><br /><br />
+<a href="#ANNE_MANNING">MANNING, ANNE</a><br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;<a href="#The_Household_of_Sir_Thomas_More">Household of Sir Thomas More</a><br /><br />
+<a href="#ALESSANDRO_MANZONI">MANZONI, ALESSANDRO</a><br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;<a href="#The_Betrothed">The Betrothed</a><br /><br />
+<a href="#FREDERICK_MARRYAT">MARRYAT, CAPT</a><br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;<a href="#Mr_Midshipman_Easy">Mr. Midshipman Easy</a><br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;<a href="#Peter_Simple">Peter Simple</a><br /><br />
+<a href="#CHARLES_MATURIN">MATURIN, CHARLES</a><br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;<a href="#Melmoth_the_Wanderer">Melmoth the Wanderer</a><br /><br />
+<a href="#DIEGO_DE_MENDOZA">MENDOZA, DIEGO DE</a><br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;<a href="#Lazarillo_de_Tormes">Lazarillo de Tonnes</a><br /><br />
+<a href="#DMITRI_MEREJKOWSKI">MEREJOWSKI, DMITRI</a><br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;<a href="#The_Death_of_the_Gods">Death of the Gods</a><br /><br />
+<a href="#PROSPER_MERIMEE">M&Eacute;RIM&Eacute;E, PROSPER</a><br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;<a href="#Carmen">Carmen</a><br /><br />
+<a href="#MARY_RUSSELL_MITFORD">MITFORD, MARY RUSSELL</a><br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;<a href="#Our_Village">Our Village</a><br /><br />
+<a href="#DAVID_MOIR">MOIR, DAVID</a><br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;<a href="#Autobiography_of_Mansie_Wauch">Mansie Wauch</a><br /><br />
+<a href="#JAMES_MORIER">MORIER, JAMES</a><br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;<a href="#The_Adventures_of_Hajji_Baba_of_Ispahan">Hajji Baba</a><br /><br />
+<a href="#DAVID_CHRISTIE_MURRAY">MURRAY, DAVID CHRISTIE</a><br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;<a href="#The_Way_of_the_World">Way of the World</a><br /><br />
+<a href="#FRANK_NORRIS">NORRIS, FRANK</a><br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;<a href="#The_Pit">The Pit</a><br /><br />
+<a href="#GEORGES_OHNET">OHNET, GEORGES</a><br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;<a href="#The_Ironmaster">The Ironmaster</a><br /><br />
+<a href="#OUIDA_LOUISE_DE_LA_RAMEE">OUIDA</a><br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;<a href="#Under_Two_Flags">Under Two Flags</a><br /><br />
+<a href="#JAMES_PAYN">PAYN, JAMES</a><br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;<a href="#Lost_Sir_Massingberd">Lost Sir Massingberd</a><br /><br />
+
+
+<p>A Complete Index of THE WORLD'S GREATEST BOOKS will be found at the end
+of Volume XX.</p>
+
+<hr />
+
+
+
+<h3><i>Acknowledgment</i></h3>
+
+<p>Acknowledgment and thanks for permission to use the following selections
+are herewith tendered to G.P. Putnam's Sons, New York, for "The Death of
+the Gods," by Dmitri Merejkowski; and to Doubleday, Page &amp; Company, New
+York, for "The Pit," by Frank Norris.</p>
+
+<hr />
+
+
+
+
+<h2><a name="SHERIDAN_LE_FANU"></a>SHERIDAN LE FANU</h2>
+
+
+<h3><a name="Uncle_Silas"></a>Uncle Silas</h3>
+
+
+<blockquote> Joseph Sheridan le Fanu, Irish novelist, poet, and journalist,
+was born at Dublin on August 28, 1814. His grandmother was a sister of
+Richard Brinsley Sheridan, his father a dean. Educated at Trinity College,
+Dublin, Le Fanu became a contributor to the "Dublin University Magazine,"
+afterwards its editor, and finally its proprietor. He also owned and edited
+a Dublin evening paper. Le Fanu first came into prominence in 1837 as the
+author of the two brilliant Irish ballads, "Phaudhrig Croohore" and "Shamus
+O'Brien." His novels, which number more than a dozen, were first published
+in most cases in his magazine. His power of producing a feeling of weird
+mystery ranks him with Edgar Allan Poe. It may be questioned whether any
+Irish novelist has written with more power. The most representative of his
+stories is "Uncle Silas, a Tale of Bartram-Haugh," which appeared in 1864.
+Le Fanu died on February 7, 1873. </blockquote>
+
+
+<h4><i>I.--Death, the Intruder</i></h4>
+
+
+<p>It was winter, and great gusts were rattling at the windows; a very dark
+night, and a very cheerful fire, blazing in a genuine old fire-place in a
+sombre old room. A girl of a little more than seventeen, slight and rather
+tall, with a countenance rather sensitive and melancholy, was sitting at
+the tea-table in a reverie. I was that girl.</p>
+
+<p>The only other person in the room was my father, Mr. Ruthyn, of Knowl.
+Rather late in life he had married, and his beautiful young wife had died,
+leaving me to his care. This bereavement changed him--made him more odd and
+taciturn than ever. There was also some disgrace about his younger brother,
+my Uncle Silas, which he felt bitterly, and he had given himself up to the
+secluded life of a student.</p>
+
+<p>He was pacing the floor. I remember the start with which, not suspecting
+he was close by me, I lifted my eyes, and saw him stand looking fixedly on
+me from less than a yard away.</p>
+
+<p>"She won't understand," he whispered, "no, she won't. <i>Will</i> she?
+They are easily frightened--ay, they are. I'd better do it another way, and
+she'll not suspect--she'll not suppose. See, child?" he said, after a
+second or two. "<i>Remember</i> this key."</p>
+
+<p>It was oddly shaped, and unlike others.</p>
+
+<p>"It opens that." And he tapped sharply on the door of a cabinet. "You
+will tell nobody what I have said, under pain of my displeasure."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, no, sir!"</p>
+
+<p>"Good child! <i>Except</i> under one contingency. That is, in case I
+should be absent and Dr. Bryerly--you recollect the thin gentleman in
+spectacles and a black wig, who spent three days here last month?--should
+come and enquire for the key, you understand, in my absence."</p>
+
+<p>"But you will then be absent, sir," I said. "How am I to find the
+key?"</p>
+
+<p>"True, child. I am glad you are so wise. <i>That</i>, you will find, I
+have provided for. I have a very sure friend--a friend whom I once
+misunderstood, but now appreciate."</p>
+
+<p>I wondered silently whether it would be Uncle Silas.</p>
+
+<p>"He'll make me a call some day soon, and I must make a little journey
+with him. He's not to be denied; I have no choice. But on the whole I
+rather like it. Remember, I say, I rather like it."</p>
+
+<p>I think it was about a fortnight after this conversation that I was one
+night sitting in the great drawing-room window, when on a sudden, on the
+grass before me stood an odd figure--a very tall woman in grey draperies,
+courtesying rather fantastically, smiling very unpleasantly on me, and
+gabbling and cackling shrilly--I could not distinctly hear <i>what</i>--and
+gesticulating oddly with her long arms and hands. This was Madame de la
+Rougierre, my new governess.</p>
+
+<p>I think all the servants hated her. She was by no means a pleasant
+<i>gouvernante</i> for a nervous girl of my years. She was always making
+excuses to consult my father about my contumacy and temper. She tormented
+me by ghost stories to cover her nocturnal ramblings, and she betrayed a
+terrifying curiosity about his health and his will. My cousin Monica, Lady
+Knollys, who visited us about this time, was shocked at her presence in the
+house; it was the cause of a rupture between my father and her. But not
+even a frustrated attempt to abduct me during one of our walks--which I am
+sure madame connived at--could shake my father's confidence in her, though
+he was perfectly transported with fury on hearing what had happened. It was
+not until I found her examining his cabinet by means of a false key that he
+dismissed her; but madame had contrived to leave her glamour over me, and
+now and then the memory of her parting menaces would return with an
+unexpected pang of fear.</p>
+
+<p>My father never alluded again to Madame de la Rougierre, but, whether
+connected with her exposure and dismissal or not, there appeared to be some
+new trouble at work in his mind.</p>
+
+<p>"I am anxious about you, Maud," he said. "<i>You</i> are more interested
+than <i>I</i> can be in vindicating his character."</p>
+
+<p>"Whose character, sir?" I ventured to inquire during the pause that
+followed.</p>
+
+<p>"Whose? Your Uncle Silas's. In course of nature he must survive me. He
+will then represent the family name. Would you make some sacrifice to clear
+that name, Maud?"</p>
+
+<p>I answered briefly; but my face, I believe, showed my enthusiasm.</p>
+
+<p>"I can tell you, Maud, if my life could have done it, it should not have
+been undone. But I had almost made up my mind to leave all to time to
+illuminate, or <i>consume</i>. But I think little Maud would like to
+contribute to the restitution of her family name. It may cost you
+something. Are you willing to buy it at a sacrifice? Your Uncle Silas," he
+said, speaking suddenly in loud and fierce tones that sounded almost
+terrible, "lies under an intolerable slander. He troubles himself little
+about it; he is selfishly sunk in futurity--a feeble visionary. I am not
+so. The character and influence of an ancient family are a peculiar
+heritage--sacred, but destructible. You and I, we'll leave one proof on
+record which, fairly read, will go far to convince the world."</p>
+
+<p>That night my father bade me good-night early. I had fallen into a doze
+when I was roused by a dreadful crash and a piercing scream from Mrs. Rusk.
+Scream followed scream, pealing one after the other unabated, wilder and
+more terror-stricken. Then came a strange lull, and the dull sounds of some
+heavy body being moved.</p>
+
+<p>What was that dreadful sound? Who had entered my father's chamber? It
+was the visitor whom he had so long expected, with whom he was to make the
+unknown journey, leaving me alone. The intruder was Death!</p>
+
+
+<h4><i>II.--The Sorceries of Bartram-Haugh</i></h4>
+
+
+<p>One of those fearful aneurisms that lie close to the heart had given way
+in a moment. He had fallen, with the dreadful crash I had heard, dead upon
+the floor. He fell across the door, which caused a difficulty in opening
+it. Mrs. Rusk could not force it open. No wonder she had given way to
+terror. I think I should have lost my reason.</p>
+
+<p>I do not know how those awful days, and still more awful nights, passed
+over. Lady Knollys came, and was very kind. She was odd, but her
+eccentricity was leavened with strong commonsense; and I have often thought
+since with gratitude of the tact with which she managed my grief.</p>
+
+<p>I did not know where to write to Dr. Bryerly, to whom I had promised the
+key, but in accordance with my father's written directions, his death was
+forthwith published in the principal London papers. He came at midnight,
+accordingly, and on the morrow the will was read. Except for a legacy of
+&pound;10,000 to his only brother, Silas Ruthyn, and a few minor legacies
+to relations and servants, my father had left his whole estate to me,
+appointing my Uncle Silas my sole guardian, with full parental authority
+over me until I should have reached the age of twenty-one, up to which time
+I was to reside under his care at Bartram-Haugh, with the sum of
+&pound;2,000 paid yearly to him for my suitable maintenance and
+education.</p>
+
+<p>I was startled by the expression of cousin Monica's face. She looked
+ghastly and angry.</p>
+
+<p>"To whom," she asked, with an effort, "will the property belong in
+case--in case my cousin should die before she comes of age?"</p>
+
+<p>"To the next heir, her uncle, Mr. Silas Ruthyn. He's both heir-at-law
+and next-of-kin," replied the attorney.</p>
+
+<p>She was anxious to persuade my uncle to relinquish his guardianship to
+her; but the evening of the funeral a black-bordered letter came from him,
+bidding me remain at Knowl until he could arrange for my journey to him.
+There was a postscript, which made my cheek tingle.</p>
+
+<p>"Pray present my respects to Lady Knollys, who, I understand, is
+sojourning at Knowl. I would observe that a lady who cherishes, I have
+reason to fear, unfriendly feelings against your uncle is not the most
+desirable companion for his ward. But, upon the express condition that I am
+not made the subject of your discussions, I do not interpose to bring your
+intercourse to an immediate close."</p>
+
+<p>"Did I ever hear! Well, if this isn't impertinent!" exclaimed Lady
+Knollys. "I did not intend to talk about him, but now I <i>will</i>." And
+so it was that I heard the story of that enigmatical person--martyr, angel,
+demon--Uncle Silas, with whom my fate was now so strangely linked.</p>
+
+<p>It was twenty years ago. He was not a reformed rake, but a ruined one
+then. My father had helped him again and again, until his marriage with a
+barmaid. After that he allowed him five hundred a year, and the use of his
+estate of Bartram-Haugh. Then Mr. Charke, a gentleman of the turf, who was
+staying with my uncle for Doncaster Races, was found dead in his room--he
+had committed suicide by cutting his throat. And Uncle Silas was suspected
+of having killed him.</p>
+
+<p>This wretched Mr. Charke had won heavy wagers at the races from Uncle
+Silas, and at night they had played very deep at cards. Next morning his
+servant could not enter his room; it was locked on the inside, the window
+was fastened by a screw, and the chimney was barred with iron. It seemed
+that he had hermetically sealed himself in, and then killed himself. But he
+had been in boisterous spirits. Also, though his own razor was found near
+his right hand, the fingers of his left hand were cut to the bone. Then the
+memorandum-book in which his bets were noted was nowhere to be found.
+Besides, he had written two letters to a friend, saying how profitable he
+had found his visit to Bartram-Haugh, and that he held Uncle Silas's I O
+U's for a frightful sum; and although my uncle stoutly alleged he did not
+owe him a guinea, there had scarcely been time in one evening for him to
+win back so much money. In a moment the storm was up, and although my uncle
+met it bravely, he failed to overcome it, and became a social outcast, in
+spite of all my father's efforts.</p>
+
+<p>And now I was to rehabilitate him before the world, and accordingly all
+preparations were made for my departure from Knowl; and at last the morning
+came--a day of partings, a day of novelty, and regrets.</p>
+
+<p>I remember we passed a gypsy bivouac on our journey, with fires alight,
+on the edge of a great, heathy moor. I had my fortune told, and I am
+ashamed to confess I paid the gypsy a pound for a brass pin with a round
+bead for a head--a charmed pin, which would keep away rat, and cat, and
+snake, a malevolent spirit, or "a cove to cut my throat," from hurting me.
+The purchase was partly an indication of the trepidations of that period of
+my life. At all events, I had her pin and she my pound, and I venture to
+say I was the gladder of the two.</p>
+
+<p>It was moonlight when we reached Bartram-Haugh. It had a forlorn
+character of desertion and decay, contrasting almost awfully with the
+grandeur of its proportions and richness of its architecture. A shabby
+little old man, a young plump, but very pretty female figure in unusually
+short petticoats, and a dowdy old charwoman, all stood in the door among a
+riot of dogs. I sat shyly back, peeping at the picture before me.</p>
+
+<p>"Will you tell me--yes or no--is my cousin in the coach?" screamed the
+young lady. She received me with a hug and a hearty "buss," as she called
+that salutation, and was evidently glad to see me. Then, after leading me
+to my bed-room to make a hurried toilet, she conducted me to a handsome
+wainscotted room, where my Uncle Silas awaited me.</p>
+
+<p>A singular looking old man--a face like marble, with a fearful
+monumental look--an apparition, drawn, as it seemed, in black and white,
+venerable, bloodless, fiery-eyed, with its strange look of power and an
+expression so bewildering. Was it derision, or anguish, or cruelty, or
+patience?</p>
+
+<p>He said something in his clear, gentle, but cold voice, and, taking both
+my hands, led me affectionately to a chair near his own. He was a miserable
+invalid, he told me, after speaking a little eulogy of his brother and
+examining me closely, respecting his illness and its symptoms. At last,
+remarking that I must be fatigued, he rose and kissed me with a solemn
+tenderness, and, placing his hand on a large Bible, bade me "Remember that
+book; in it lives my only hope. Consult it, my beloved niece, day and night
+as the only oracle."</p>
+
+<p>"I'm awful afraid of the governor, I am," said Cousin Milly, when we had
+left him. "I was in a qualm. When he spies me a-napping maybe he don't
+fetch me a prod with his pencil-case over the head."</p>
+
+<p>But Milly was a pretty and a clever creature in spite of her uncouth
+dialect, and I liked her very much. We spent much time taking long country
+rambles and exploring the old house, many of whose rooms were closed and
+shuttered. Of my uncle we saw little. He was "queerish," Milly said, and I
+learnt afterwards he took much laudanum.</p>
+
+<p>My other cousin, Dudley, I did not meet till later. To my horror, I
+beheld in him one of the party of ruffians who had terrified me so much the
+day of the attempted abduction at Knowl; but he stoutly denied ever having
+been there with an air so confident that I began to think I must be the
+dupe of a chance resemblance. My uncle viewed him with a strange, paternal
+affection. But dear Cousin Monica had written asking Milly and me to go to
+her, and we had some of the pleasantest and happiest days of our lives at
+her house of Elverston, for there Milly met her good little curate, the
+Rev. Sprigge Biddlepen, and Lord Ilbury.</p>
+
+<p>Uncle Silas was terribly ill when we returned to Bartram-Haugh, the
+result of an overdose of opium; but for the doctor's aid he would have
+died. Remembering how desperate Lady Knollys had told me his monetary
+position was, a new and dreadful suspicion began to haunt me.</p>
+
+<p>"Had he attempted to poison himself?"</p>
+
+<p>I remember I was left alone with him while his attendant fetched a fresh
+candle. A small thick Bible lay on the mantle-shelf. I turned over its
+leaves, and lighted on two or three odd-looking papers--promissory notes, I
+believe--when Uncle Silas, dressed in a long white morning-gown, slid over
+the end of the bed and stood behind me with a deathlike scowl and simper.
+Diving over my shoulder, with his long, thin hand he snatched the Bible
+from me, and whispered over my head, "The serpent beguiled her, and she did
+eat."</p>
+
+<p>It seemed an hour before Wyat came back. You may be sure I did not
+prolong my watch. I had a long, hysterical fit of weeping when I got to my
+room: the sorceries of Bartram-Haugh were enveloping.</p>
+
+<p>About this time Dudley began to persecute me with his odious attentions.
+I was obliged to complain of him to my uncle. He was disposed to think well
+of the match; but I could not consent, and it was arranged that my cousin
+should go abroad. And then that night I had the key to some of the
+mysterious doings at Bartram-Haugh--the comings and goings in the darkness
+which had so often startled me--the face of Madame de la Rougierre peeped
+into the room.</p>
+
+
+<h4><i>III.--A Night of Terror</i></h4>
+
+
+<p>Shortly afterwards I lost Milly, who was sent to a French school, where
+I was to follow her in three months. I bade her farewell at the end of
+Windmill Wood, and was sitting on the trunk of a tree when Meg Hawkes, a
+girl to whom I had once been kind, passed by.</p>
+
+<p>"Don't ye speak, nor look; fayther spies us," she said quickly. "Don't
+ye be alone wi' Master Dudley nowhere, for the world's sake!"</p>
+
+<p>The injunction was so startling that I had many an hour of anxious
+conjecture, and many a horrible vigil by night. But ten days later I was
+summoned to my uncle's room. He implored me once more to wed Dudley--to
+listen to the appeal of an old and broken-hearted man.</p>
+
+<p>"You see my suspense--my miserable and frightful suspense," he said.
+"I'm very miserable, nearly desperate. I stand before you in the attitude
+of a suppliant."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, I must--I must--I <i>must</i> say no!" I cried. "Don't question me,
+don't press me. I could not--I <i>could</i> not do what you ask!"</p>
+
+<p>"I yield, Maud--I yield, my dear. I will <i>not</i> press you. I have
+spoken to you frankly, perhaps too frankly; but agony and despair will
+speak out and plead, even with the most obdurate and cruel!"</p>
+
+<p>He shut the door, not violently, but with a resolute hand, and I thought
+I heard a cry.</p>
+
+<p>The discovery that Dudley was already married spared me further
+importunity. I was anxious to relieve my uncle's necessities, which, I knew
+were pressing; and the attorney from Feltram was up with him all night,
+trying in vain to devise some means by which I might do so. The morning
+after, I was told I must write to Lady Knollys to ask if I might go to her,
+as there was shortly to be an execution in the house.</p>
+
+<p>I met Dudley on my way through the hall. He spoke oddly about his
+father, and made a very strange proposal to me--that I should give him my
+written promise for twenty thousand pounds, and he would "take me cleverly
+out o' Bartram-Haugh and put me wi' my cousin Knollys!"</p>
+
+<p>I refused indignantly, but he caught me by the wrist.</p>
+
+<p>"Don't ye be a-flyin' out," he said peremptorily. "Take it or leave
+it--on or off! Can't ye speak wi' common sense for once? I'll take ye out
+o' all this, if you'll gi'e me what I say."</p>
+
+<p>He looked black when I refused again. I judged it best to tell my uncle
+of his offer. He was startled, but made what excuse he could, smiling
+askance, a pale, peaked smile that haunted me. And then, once more,
+entering an unfrequented room, I came upon the great bony figure of Madame
+de la Rougierre. She was to be my companion for a week or two, I was told,
+and shortly after her coming I found my walks curtailed. I wrote again to
+my Cousin Knollys, imploring her to take me away. This letter my uncle
+intercepted, and when she came in reply to my former letter, I had but the
+sight of her carriage driving swiftly away.</p>
+
+<p>The morning after I was informed madame was to take me to join Milly in
+France. As Uncle Silas had directed, I wrote to Cousin Monica from London.
+I know madame asked me what I would do for her if she took me to Lady
+Knollys. I was inwardly startled, but refused, seeing before me only a
+tempter and betrayer; and together we ended our journey, driving from the
+station through the dark and starless night to find ourselves at last in
+Mr. Charke's room at Bartram-Haugh.</p>
+
+<p>There were bailiffs in the house, I was told. I was locked in. I
+entreated madame wildly, piteously, to save me; but she mocked me in my
+agony. I escaped for a brief moment, and sought my uncle. I can never
+forget the look he fixed on me.</p>
+
+<p>"What is the meaning of this? Why is she here?" he asked, in a stern,
+icy tone. "You were always odd, niece. I begin to believe you are insane.
+There's no evil intended you, by--, there is none! Go to your room, and
+don't vex me, there's a good girl!"</p>
+
+<p>I went upstairs with madame, like a somnambulist. She was to leave me to
+sleep alone that night. I had lost the talismanic pin I always stuck in the
+bolster of my bed. Uncle Silas sent up spiced claret in a little silver
+flagon. Madame abstractedly drank it off, and threw herself on my bed. I
+believed she was feigning sleep only, and really watching me; but now I
+think the claret was drugged.</p>
+
+<p>About an hour afterwards I heard them digging in the courtyard. Like a
+thunder-bolt it smote my brain. "They are making my grave!"</p>
+
+<p>After the first dreadful stun, I grew wild, running up and down wringing
+my hands, and gasping prayers to heaven. Then a dreadful calm stole over
+me.</p>
+
+
+<h4><i>IV.--The Open Door</i></h4>
+
+
+<p>It was a very still night. A peculiar sound startled me and I saw a man
+descend by a rope, and take his stand on the windowsill. In a moment more,
+window, bars and all, swung noiselessly open, and Dudley Ruthyn stepped
+into the room.</p>
+
+<p>He stole, in a groping way, to the bed, and stooped over it. Nearly at
+the same moment there came a scrunching blow; an unnatural shriek,
+accompanied by a convulsive sound, as of the motion of running, and the
+arms drumming on the bed, and then another blow--and silence. The
+diabolical surgery was over. There came a little tapping at the door.</p>
+
+<p>"Who's that?" whispered Dudley hoarsely.</p>
+
+<p>"A friend," answered a sweet voice, and Uncle Silas entered.</p>
+
+<p>Coolness was given me in that dreadful moment. I knew that all depended
+on my being prompt and resolute. With a mental prayer for help, I glided
+from the room and descended the stairs. I tried the outer door. To my wild
+surprise it was open. In a moment I was in the free air--and as
+instantaneously was seized by Tom Brice, Meg's sweetheart, who was waiting
+to drive the guilty father and son away.</p>
+
+<p>"They shan't hurt ye, miss. Get ye in; I don't care a d----!" he said in
+a wild, fierce whisper. To me it was the voice of an angel. He drove over
+the grass so that our passage was noiseless; then, on reaching the highway,
+at a gallop. At length we entered Elverston. I think I was half wild. I
+could not speak, but ran, with a loud, long scream, into Cousin Monica's
+arms. I forget a great deal after that.</p>
+
+<hr />
+
+<p>It was not till two years afterwards that I learnt that Uncle Silas was
+found next morning dead of an overdose of laudanum, and that Dudley had
+disappeared.</p>
+
+<p>Milly married her good little clergyman. I am Lady Ilbury now, happy in
+the affection of a beloved and noble-hearted husband. A tiny voice is
+calling "Mamma;" the shy, useless girl you have known is now a mother,
+thinking, and trembling while she smiles, how strong is love, how frail is
+life.</p>
+
+<hr />
+
+
+
+
+<h2><a name="RENE_LE_SAGE"></a>REN&Eacute; LE SAGE</h2>
+
+
+<h3><a name="Gil_Blas"></a>Gil Blas</h3>
+
+
+<blockquote> Except that he was born at Sarzeau, in Brittany, on May 8,
+1668, and that he was the son of the novelist Claude le Sage, little is
+known of the youth of Alain Ren&eacute; le Sage. Until he was eighteen he
+was educated with the Jesuits at Vannes, when, it is conjectured he went to
+Paris to continue his studies for the Bar. An early marriage drove him to
+seek a livelihood by means of literature, and shortly afterwards he found a
+valuable and sympathetic friend and patron in the Abb&eacute; de Lyonne,
+who not only bestowed upon him a pension of about &pound;125, but also gave
+him the use of his library. The first results of this favour were
+adaptations of two plays from Rojas and Lope de Vega, which appeared some
+time during the first two or three years of the eighteenth century. Le
+Sage's reputation as a playwright and as a novelist rests, oddly enough, in
+each case on one work. As the author of "Tuscaret," produced in 1709, he
+contributed to the stage one of the best comedies in the French language;
+as author of "The Adventures of Gil Blas of Santillana" he stands for all
+time in the front rank of the world's novelists. Here he brought the art of
+story-writing to the highest level of artistic truth. The first and second
+parts of the work appeared in 1715, the third in 1724, and the fourth in
+1735. Le Sage died at Boulogne on November 17, 1747. </blockquote>
+
+
+<h4><i>I.--I Start on my Travels</i></h4>
+
+
+<p>My uncle, Canon Perez, was a worthy priest. To live well was, in his
+opinion, the chief duty of man. He lived very well. He kept the best table
+in the town of Oviedo. I was very glad of this, as I lived with him, my
+parents being too poor to keep me.</p>
+
+<p>My uncle gave me an excellent education. He even learned to read so as
+to be able to teach me himself. There were few ecclesiastics of his rank in
+Spain in the early part of the seventeenth century who could read a
+breviary as well as he could when I left him, at the age of seventeen, to
+continue my duties at the University of Salamanca.</p>
+
+<p>"Here are forty ducats, Gil Blas," he said to me when we parted. "And
+you can take my old mule and sell it when you reach Salamanca. Then you
+will be able to live comfortable until you obtain a good position."</p>
+
+<p>It is, I suppose, about two hundred miles from Oviedo to Salamanca. Not
+very far, you will say, but it took me two years to cover the distance.
+When one travels along a high road at the age of seventeen, master of one's
+actions, of an old mule, and forty ducats, one is bound to meet with
+adventures on the way. I was out to see the world, and I meant to see it;
+my self-confidence was equalled only by my utter inexperience. Out of my
+first misadventure came an extraordinary piece of good luck. I fell into
+the hands of some brigands, and lost my mule and my money. Among my fellow
+prisoners was a wealthy lady, Do&ntilde;a Mencia, of Burgos. I helped her to
+escape and got away myself, and when I came to Burgos she rewarded me very
+handsomely with a diamond ring and a thousand ducats. This changed my plan
+of life completely. Why should I go and study at Salamanca? Did I want to
+become a priest or a pedant? I was now sure that I didn't.</p>
+
+<p>"Gil Blas," I said, "you are a good-looking lad, clever, well-educated,
+and ambitious. Why not go to Madrid and try to get some place at the court
+of King Philip the Third?"</p>
+
+<p>I spent sixty ducats in dressing myself out gaily in the manner of a
+rich cavalier, and I engaged a man of about thirty years of age to come
+with me as my servant.</p>
+
+<p>Lamela, as he was called, was quite different from the other valets who
+applied for the position. He did not demand any sum as wages.</p>
+
+<p>"Only let me come with you, sir," he said. "I shall be content with
+whatever you give me."</p>
+
+<p>It seemed to me that I had got a very good servant. We slept at Duengas
+the first night, and on the second day we arrived at Valladolid. As I was
+sitting in my inn, a charming lady entered and asked to see me.</p>
+
+<p>"My dear Gil Blas," she exclaimed. "Lamela has just told me of your
+arrival. I am a cousin of Do&ntilde;a Mencia, and I received a letter from her
+this morning. How brave it was of you to rescue her from those wicked
+brigands! I can't leave you in this inn. You must come at once to my house.
+My brother, Don Raphael, will be delighted to see you when he returns in an
+hour or two from our country castle."</p>
+
+<p>Do&ntilde;a Camilla, as the lady was called, led me to a great house in the
+best part of the town, and at the door we met Don Raphael. "What a handsome
+young cavalier you are, my dear Gil Blas!" he said. "You must make up your
+mind to stay with us for some weeks."</p>
+
+<p>The supper was a pleasant affair. Do&ntilde;a Camilla and her brother found
+something to admire in everything I said, and I began to fancy myself as a
+wit. It was very late when Lamela led me to my bed-room and helped me to
+undress. And it was very late when I awoke next day. I called to Lamela,
+but he did not come, so I arose and dressed myself and went downstairs. To
+my surprise there was nobody in the house, and all my baggage had
+disappeared. I looked at my hand--the diamond ring had gone. Then I
+understood why Lamela had been willing to come with me without troubling
+about wages. I had fallen for a second time into the hands of thieves. They
+had hired the furnished house for a week, and had trapped me in it. It was
+clear that I had boasted too much at Burgos about the thousand ducats which
+Do&ntilde;a Mencia gave me. Now I found myself at Valladolid quite penniless.</p>
+
+<p>As I walked along the street in a very despondent mood, not knowing how
+to get a meal, someone tapped me on the shoulder, and said, "Good gracious,
+Gil Blas, I hardly knew you! What a princely dress you've got on. A fine
+sword, silk stockings, a velvet mantle and doublet with silver lacings!
+Have you come into a fortune?"</p>
+
+<p>I turned around, and found it was Fabrice, an old schoolfellow, the son
+of a barber at Oviedo. I told him of my adventure.</p>
+
+<p>"Pride comes before a fall, you see," he said with a laugh. "But I can
+get you a place if you care to take it. One of the principal physicians of
+the town, Dr. Sangdado, is looking for a secretary. I know you write a
+very good hand. Sell your fine raiment and buy some plain clothes, and I
+will take you to the doctor."</p>
+
+<p>I am glad to say that I obtained the post, but I wasn't altogether
+satisfied with it. Dr. Sangrado believed in vegetarianism, and he gave me
+only peas and beans and baked apples to eat, and not much of those. At the
+end of a fortnight I resolved to go as a servant in some house: where meat
+and wine were to be had.</p>
+
+<p>"Don't be foolish," said Sangrado. "Your fortune is made if you only
+stay with me. I am getting old and I require someone to help me in my
+practice. You can do it. You need not waste your time in studying all the
+nonsense written by other doctors. You have only to follow my method. Never
+give a patient medicine. Bleed him well, and tell him to drink a pint of
+hot water every half hour. If that doesn't cure him--well, it's time he
+died."</p>
+
+<p>So I donned one of Sangrado's gowns, which gave me a very original
+appearance, as it was much too long and ample for me, and then I began to
+attend his patients. A few of them, I believe, managed to recover. One day
+a woman stopped me and took me into her house to look at her niece. I
+recognised the girl as soon as I saw her. It was the pretty adventuress,
+Camilla, who had decoyed me and helped to rob me of my thousand ducats.
+When I took her hand to feel her pulse I perceived that she was wearing my
+diamond ring. Happily, she was too ill to know me. After ordering her to be
+bled and given a pint of warm water every half hour, I went out and talked
+the matter over with Fabrice. We resolved not to call in the police, as
+they would certainly keep whatever money of mine they recovered. The ways
+of the law in Spain in the seventeenth century are very strange and
+intricate.</p>
+
+<p>Nevertheless, I returned late at night to the house accompanied by a
+sergeant of the police and five of his men, all well armed. I then awoke
+Camilla, and told her to dress herself and attend before the
+magistrate.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, Gil Blas," she cried, "have pity on me. Lamela and Raphael have run
+off with the money, and left me alone here on a bed of sickness."</p>
+
+<p>I knew this was true, as I had made inquiries; but I also knew that
+Camilla had had a share of the spoil, and had bought some valuable jewelry
+with it. So I said, "Very well, I won't be hard on you. But you must give
+me back the diamond ring which you are wearing, and you must satisfy these
+officers of the police."</p>
+
+<p>Poor Camilla understood what I meant. It is a costly matter to satisfy
+the Spanish police. She gave me the ring, and then, with a sigh, she opened
+a casket and handed the sergeant everything it contained--a necklace of
+beautiful pearls, a pair of fine earrings, and some other jewels.</p>
+
+<p>"Isn't this better than calling in the police?" said the sergeant when
+we had left the house. "There are the jewels. Two hundred ducats' worth,
+I'll be bound!"</p>
+
+<p>No doubt, dear reader, you have seen through this little plot. The
+supposed sergeant was my old friend, Fabrice, and his five men were five
+young barbers of his acquaintance. They quickly changed their clothes, and
+we all went to an inn and spent a merry evening together.</p>
+
+
+<h4><i>II.--In Male Attire</i></h4>
+
+
+<p>A few days afterwards I took up the plan which I had formed at Burgos,
+and bravely set out for Madrid in the hope of making my fortune there. But
+my money did not last long, for on reaching the capital I fell in with a
+wild company of fashionable actors and actresses.</p>
+
+<p>As my purse grew lighter my conscience became tenderer, and at length I
+humbly accepted the position of lackey in the house of a rich old nobleman,
+Don Vincent de Guzman. He was a widower, with an only child, Aurora--a
+lovely, gay, and accomplished girl of twenty-six years of age.</p>
+
+<p>I had hardly been with him a month when he died, leaving his daughter
+mistress of all his wealth, and free to do what she liked with it. To my
+surprise, Aurora then began to distinguish me from all the other servants.
+I could see by the way she looked at me that there was something about me
+that attracted her. Great ladies, I knew, sometimes fall in love with their
+lackeys, and one evening my hopes were raised to the highest pitch; for
+Aurora's maid then whispered to me that somebody would like to talk to me
+alone at midnight in the garden. Full of wild impatience, I arrived at the
+spot two hours before the time. Oh, those two hours! They seemed two
+eternities.</p>
+
+<p>At midnight Aurora appeared, and I threw myself at her feet, exclaiming,
+"Oh, my dear lady! Even in my wildest dreams of love I never thought of
+such happiness as this!"</p>
+
+<p>"Don't talk so loud!" said Aurora, stepping back and laughing. "You will
+rouse all the household. So you thought I was in love with you? My dear
+boy, I am in love with somebody else. Knowing how clever and ingenious you
+are, I want you to come at once with me to Salamanca and help me to win my
+love."</p>
+
+<p>Naturally, I was much disconcerted by this strange turn of affairs.
+However, I managed to recover myself and listen to my mistress. She had
+fallen in love with a gallant young nobleman, Don Luis Pacheco, who was
+unaware of the passion he inspired. He was going the next day to Salamanca
+to study at the university, and Aurora had resolved to go there also,
+dressed as a young nobleman, and make his acquaintance. She had fallen in
+love with him at sight, and had never found an opportunity to speak to
+him.</p>
+
+<p>"I shall get two sets of rooms in different parts of the town," she said
+to me. "In one I shall live as Aurora de Guzman, with my maid, who must
+play the part of an aunt. In the other, I shall be Don Felix de Mendoc, a
+gallant cavalier, and you must be my valet."</p>
+
+<p>We set off for Salamanca at daybreak, and arrived before Don Luis.
+Aurora took a furnished mansion in the fashionable quarter, and I called at
+the principal inns, and found the one where Don Luis had arranged to stay,
+Aurora then hid her pretty brown tresses under a wig, and put on a dashing
+cavalier's costume, and came and engaged a room at the place where her
+lover was.</p>
+
+<p>"So you have come to study at the university, sir?" said the innkeeper.
+"How lucky! Another gallant young nobleman has just taken a room here for
+the same purpose. You will be able to dine together and entertain one
+another."</p>
+
+<p>He introduced his two guests, and they quickly became fast friends.</p>
+
+<p>"Do you know, Don Felix, you're uncommonly good-looking," said Don Luis,
+as they sat talking over the wine. "Between us we shall set on fire the
+hearts of the pretty girls of Salamanca."</p>
+
+<p>"There's really a lovely girl staying in the town," said my mistress.
+"She's a cousin of mine, Aurora de Guzman. We are said to resemble each
+other in a remarkable way."</p>
+
+<p>"Then she must be a beautiful creature," said Don Luis, "for you have
+fine, regular features and an admirable colour. When can I see this
+paragon?"</p>
+
+<p>"This afternoon, if you like," said my mistress.</p>
+
+<p>They went together to the mansion, where the maid received them, dressed
+as an elderly noblewoman.</p>
+
+<p>"I'm very sorry, Don Felix," said the maid, "but my niece has a bad
+headache, and she has gone to lie down."</p>
+
+<p>"Very well," said the pretended cousin. "I will just introduce my
+friend, Don Luis, to you. Tell Aurora we will call to-morrow morning."</p>
+
+<p>Don Luis was much interested in the lovely girl whom he had not been
+able to see. He talked about her to his companion late into the night. The
+next day, as they were about to set out to visit her, I rushed in, as
+arranged, with a note for my mistress.</p>
+
+<p>"What a nuisance!" she said. "Here is some urgent business I must at
+once attend to. Don Luis, just run round and tell my cousin that I cannot
+come until this afternoon!"</p>
+
+<p>Don Luis retired to put some final touches to his dress, and my mistress
+hurried off with me to her mansion, and there, with the help of her maid,
+she quickly got into her proper clothes. She received Don Luis very kindly,
+and they talked together for quite two hours. Don Luis then went away, and
+Aurora slipped into her cavalier's costume and met him at the inn.</p>
+
+<p>"My dear Felix," said Don Luis, "your cousin is an adorable lady. I'm
+madly in love with her. If I can only win her, I'll marry and settle down
+on my estates."</p>
+
+<p>Aurora gazed at him very tenderly, and then, with a gay laugh, she shook
+off her wig and let her curls fall about her shoulders.</p>
+
+<p>Don Felix knelt at her feet and kissed her hands, crying, "Oh, my
+beautiful Aurora! Do you really care for me? How happy we shall be
+together!"</p>
+
+<p>The two lovers resolved to return at once to Madrid, and make
+preparations for the wedding. At the end of a fortnight my mistress was
+married, and I again set out on my travels with a well-lined purse.</p>
+
+
+<h4><i>III.--Old Acquaintances</i></h4>
+
+
+<p>I had always had a particular desire to see the famous town of Toledo. I
+arrived there in three days, and lodged at a good inn, where, by reason of
+my fine dress, I passed for a gentleman of importance. But I soon
+discovered that Toledo was one of those places in which it is easier to
+spend money than to gain it.</p>
+
+<p>So I set out for Aragon. On the road I fell in with a young cavalier
+going in the same direction. He was a man of a frank and pleasant
+disposition, and we soon got on a friendly footing. His name, I learned,
+was Don Alfonso; he was, like me, seeking for means of livelihood.</p>
+
+<p>It came on to rain very heavily as we were skirting the base of a
+mountain, and, in looking about for some place of shelter, we found a cave
+in which an aged, white-haired hermit was living. At first he was not
+pleased to see us, but something about me seemed to strike him favourably,
+and he then gave us a kind welcome. We tied our horses to a tree, and
+prepared to stay the night. The hermit began to talk to us in a very pious
+and edifying way, when another aged anchorite ran into the cave, and said,
+"It is all over; we're discovered. The police are after us!"</p>
+
+<p>The first hermit tore off his white beard and his hair, and took off his
+long robe, showing a doublet beneath; and his companion followed his
+example. In a few moments they were changed into a couple of young men
+whose faces I recognised.</p>
+
+<p>"Raphael! Lamela! What mischief are you working now? And where are my
+thousand ducats, you rascals?"</p>
+
+<p>"Ah, Gil Blas, I knew you at once!" said Raphael blandly. "One comes on
+old acquaintances when one least expects them. I know we treated you badly.
+But the money's gone, and can't be recovered. Come with us, and we will
+soon make up to you all that you have lost."</p>
+
+<p>It was certainly unwise to remain in a cave which the police were about
+to visit, and, as the rain had ceased and the night had fallen, we all set
+out in the darkness to find some better shelter. We took the road to
+Requena, and came to a forest, where we saw a light shining in the
+distance. Don Alfonso crept up to the spot, and saw four men sitting round
+a fire, eating and quarrelling. It was easy to see what they were
+quarrelling about. An old gentleman and a lovely young girl were bound to a
+tree close by, and by the tree stood a fine carriage.</p>
+
+<p>"They are brigands," said Alfonso, when he returned, "who have captured
+a nobleman and his daughter, I think. Let us attack them. In order, no
+doubt, to prevent their quarrelling turning into a deadly affray, they have
+piled all their arms in a heap some yards away from the fire. So they
+cannot make much of a fight."</p>
+
+<p>And they did not. We quietly surrounded them, and shot them down before
+they were able to move. Don Alfonso and I then set free the captives, while
+Raphael and Lamela rifled the pockets of the dead robbers.</p>
+
+<p>"I am the Count of Polan, and this is my daughter Seraphina," said the
+old gentleman. "If you will help me to get my carriage ready, I will drive
+back to an inn which we passed before entering the forest."</p>
+
+<p>When we came to the inn, the count begged us all to stay with him.
+Raphael and Lamela, however, were afraid that the police would track them
+out; Don Alfonso, who had been talking very earnestly to Seraphina, was,
+for some strange reason, also unwilling to remain; so I fell in with their
+views.</p>
+
+<p>"Why didn't you stay?" I said to Don Alfonso.</p>
+
+<p>"I was afraid the count would recognise me, as Seraphina has done," he
+said. "I killed his son in a duel, just when I was trying to win
+Seraphina's love. Heaven grant that the service I have now rendered will
+make him inclined to forgive me."</p>
+
+<p>The day was breaking when we reached the mountains around Requena. There
+we hid till nightfall, and then we made our way in the darkness to the town
+of Xeloa. We found a quiet, shady retreat beside a woodland stream, and
+there we stayed, while Lamela went into the town to buy provisions. He did
+not return until evening. He brought back some extraordinary things.</p>
+
+<p>He opened a great bundle containing a long black mantle and robe,
+another costume, a roll of parchment, a quill, and a great seal in green
+wax.</p>
+
+<p>"Do you remember the trick you played on Camilla?" he said to me. "I
+have a better scheme than that. Listen. As I was buying some provisions at
+a cook-shop, a man entered in a great rage and began abusing a certain
+Samuel Simon, a converted Jew and a cruel usurer. He had ruined many
+merchants at Xeloa, and all the towns-people would like to see him ruined
+in turn. Then, my dear Gil Blas, I remembered your clever trick, and
+brought these clothes so that we might visit this Jew dressed up as the
+officers of the Inquisition."</p>
+
+<p>After we had made a good meal, Lamela put on the robe and mantle of the
+Inquisitor, Raphael the costume of the registrar, and I took the part of a
+sergeant of the police. We walked very solemnly to the house of the usurer;
+Simon opened the door himself, and started back in affright.</p>
+
+<p>"Master Simon," said Lamela, in a grave imperative tone of voice, "I
+command you, on behalf of the Holy Inquisition, to deliver to these
+officers the key of your cabinet. I must have your private papers closely
+examined. Serious charges of heresy have been brought against you."</p>
+
+<p>The usurer grew pale with fear. Far from doubting any deceit on our
+part, he imagined that some of his enemies had informed the Holy Office
+against him. He obeyed without the least resistance, and opened his
+cabinet.</p>
+
+<p>"I am glad to see," said Lamela, "that you do not rebel against the
+orders of the Holy Inquisition. Retire now to another room, and let me
+carry out the examination without interference."</p>
+
+<p>Simon withdrew into a farther room, and Lamela and Raphael quickly
+searched in the cabinet for the strongbox. It was unlocked, being so full
+of money that it could not be closed. We filled all our pockets; then our
+hose; and then stuffed the coins in any place in our clothes that would
+hold them. After this, we closed the cabinet, and our pretended Inquisitor
+sealed it down with a great seal of green wax, and said very solemnly to
+the usurer, "Master Simon, I have sealed your cabinet with the seal of the
+Holy Office. Let me find it untouched when I return to-morrow morning to
+inform you of the decision arrived at in your case."</p>
+
+<p>The next morning we were a good many leagues from Xeloa. At breakfast,
+we counted over the money which we had taken from Simon. It came to three
+thousand ducats, of which we each took a fourth part. Raphael and Lamela
+then desired to carry out a similar plot against someone in the next town;
+but Don Alfonso and I would not agree to take any part in the affair, and
+set out for Toledo. There, Don Alfonso was reconciled to the Count of
+Polan, and soon afterwards he and Seraphina were happily married.</p>
+
+<p>I retired to Lirias, a pleasant estate that Don Alfonso gave me, and
+there I married happily, and grew old among my children. In the reign of
+Philip IV., I went to the court, and served under the great minister,
+Olivarez. But I have now returned to Lirias, and I do not intend to go to
+Madrid again.</p>
+
+<hr />
+
+
+
+
+<h2><a name="CHARLES_LEVER"></a>CHARLES LEVER</h2>
+
+
+<h3><a name="Charles_OMalley"></a>Charles O'Malley</h3>
+
+
+<blockquote> The author of "Charles O'Malley," perhaps the most typical of
+Irish novelists, was of English descent on his father's side. But Charles
+James Lever himself was Irish by birth, being born at Dublin on August 31,
+1806--Irish in sentiment and distinctly Irish in temperament. In geniality
+and extravagance he bore much resemblance to the gay, riotous spirits he
+has immortalised in his books. "Of all the men I have ever encountered,"
+says Trollope, "he was the surest fund of drollery." Lever was intended for
+medicine; but financial difficulties forced him to return to literature.
+His first story was "Harry Lorrequer," published in 1837. It was followed
+in 1840 by "Charles O'Malley, the Irish Dragoon," which established his
+reputation as one of the first humorists of his day. The story is the most
+popular of all Lever's works, and in many respects the most characteristic.
+The narrative is told with great vigour, and the delineation of character
+is at once subtle and life-like. Lever died on June 1, 1872. </blockquote>
+
+
+<h4><i>I.--O'Malley of O'Malley Castle</i></h4>
+
+
+<p>It was in O'Malley Castle, a very ruinous pile of incongruous masonry
+that stood in a wild and dreary part of Galway, that I passed my infancy
+and youth. When a mere child I was left an orphan to the care of my worthy
+uncle. My father, whose extravagance had well sustained the family
+reputation, had squandered a large and handsome property in contesting
+elections for his native county, and in keeping up that system of unlimited
+hospitality for which Ireland in general, and Galway more especially, was
+renowned. The result was, as might be expected, ruin and beggary. When he
+died the only legacy he left to his brother was a boy of four years of age,
+entreating him, with his last breath, "Be anything you like to him,
+Godfrey, but a father--or, at least, such a one as I have proved."</p>
+
+<p>Godfrey O'Malley sometime previous had lost his wife, and when this new
+trust was committed to him he resolved never to re-marry, but to rear me as
+his own child.</p>
+
+<p>From my earliest years his whole anxiety was to fit me for the part of a
+country gentleman, as he regarded that character--<i>viz.</i>, I rode
+boldly with the fox-hounds; I was about the best shot within twenty miles;
+I could swim the Shannon at Holy Island; I drove four-in-hand better than
+the coachman himself; and from finding a hare to hooking a salmon my equal
+could not be found from Killaloe to Banagher. These were the staple of my
+endowments; besides which, the parish priest had taught me a little Latin,
+a little French, and a little geometry.</p>
+
+<p>When I add to this portraiture of my accomplishments that I was nearly
+six feet high, with more than a common share of activity and strength for
+my years, and no inconsiderable portion of good looks, I have finished my
+sketch, and stand before my reader.</p>
+
+<p>We were in the thick of canvassing the county for the parliamentary seat
+in my uncle's interest. O'Malley Castle was the centre of operations; while
+I, a mere stripling, and usually treated as a boy, was entrusted with an
+important mission, and sent off to canvass a distant relation, Mr. Matthew
+Blake, who might possibly be approachable by a younger branch of the
+family, with whom he had never any collision.</p>
+
+<p>I arrived at his house while the company were breakfasting. After the
+usual shaking of hands and hearty greetings were over, I was introduced to
+Sir George Dashwood, a tall and singularly handsome man of about fifty, and
+his daughter, Lucy Dashwood.</p>
+
+<p>If the sweetest blue eyes that ever beamed beneath a forehead of snowy
+whiteness, over which dark brown and waving hair fell, less in curls than
+masses of locky richness, could only have known what wild work they were
+making of my poor heart, Miss Dashwood, I trust, would have looked at her
+teacup or her muffin rather than at me, as she actually did, on that fatal
+morning.</p>
+
+<p>Beside her sat a tall, handsome man of about five-and-thirty, or perhaps
+forty, years of age, with a most soldierly air, who, as I was presented to
+him, scarcely turned his head, and gave me a half-nod of unequivocal
+coldness. As I turned from the lovely girl, who had received me with marked
+courtesy, to the cold air and repelling hauteur of the dark-browed captain,
+the blood rushed throbbing to my forehead; and as I walked to my place at
+the table, I eagerly sought his eye, to return him a look of defiance and
+disdain, proud and contemptuous as his own.</p>
+
+<p>Captain Hammersly, however, never took further notice of me, and I
+formed a bitter resolution, which I endeavoured to carry into effect during
+the next day's hunt. Mounted on my best horse, I deliberately led him
+across the worst and roughest country, river, and hills, and walls, and
+ditches, till I finished up with a broken head and he with a broken arm,
+and a horse that had to be slaughtered.</p>
+
+<p>On the fourth day after this adventure I was able to enter the
+drawing-room again. Sir George Dashwood made the kindest inquiries about my
+health.</p>
+
+<p>"They tell me you are to be a lawyer, Mr. O'Malley," said he; "and, if
+so, I must advise you to take better care of your headpiece."</p>
+
+<p>"A lawyer, papa? Oh, dear me!" said his daughter. "I should never have
+thought of his being anything so stupid."</p>
+
+<p>"Why, silly girl, what would you have a man to be?"</p>
+
+<p>"A dragoon, to be sure, papa," said the fond girl, as she pressed her
+arm around him, and looked up in his face with an expression of mingled
+pride and affection.</p>
+
+<p>That word sealed my destiny.</p>
+
+
+<h4><i>II.--I Join the Dragoons</i></h4>
+
+
+<p>I had been at Mr. Blake's house five days before I recollected my
+uncle's interests; but with one hole in my head and some half-dozen in my
+heart my memory was none of the best. But that night at dinner I
+discovered, to my savage amazement, that Mr. Blake and all the company were
+there in the interest of the opposition candidate, and that Sir George
+Dashwood was their candidate. In my excitement I hurled my wineglass at the
+head of one of the company who expressed himself in regard to my uncle in a
+manner insulting to a degree. In the duel which followed I shot my
+opponent.</p>
+
+<p>I had sprung into man's estate. In three short days I had fallen deeply,
+desperately, in love, and had wounded, if not killed, an antagonist in a
+duel. As I meditated on these things I was aroused by the noise of horses'
+feet. I opened the window, and beheld no less a person than Captain
+Hammersly. I begged of him to alight and come in.</p>
+
+<p>"I thank you very much," he said; "but, in fact, my hours are now
+numbered here. I have just received an order to join my regiment. I could
+not, however, leave the country without shaking hands with you. I owe you a
+lesson in horsemanship, and I'm only sorry that we are not to have another
+day together. I'm sorry you are not coming with us."</p>
+
+<p>"Would to heaven I were!" said I, with an earnestness that almost made
+my brain start.</p>
+
+<p>"Then why not?"</p>
+
+<p>"Unfortunately, my worthy uncle, who is all to me in this world, would
+be quite alone if I were to leave him; and, although he has never said so,
+I know he dreads the possibility of my suggesting such a thing."</p>
+
+<p>"Devilish hard; but I believe you are right. Something, however, may
+turn up yet to alter his mind. And so good-bye, O'Malley, good-bye."</p>
+
+<p>During the contest for the seat--which was frankly fought in pitched
+battles and scrimmages, and by corruption and perjury--I managed to save
+Miss Dashwood's life. When polling-time came, Sir George found the feeling
+against him was so strong, and we were so successful in beating his voters
+out of the town, in spite of police and soldiers, that he resigned his
+candidature.</p>
+
+<p>Afterwards I spent some time in Dublin, nominally in preparation for the
+law, at Trinity College. But my college career convinced my uncle that my
+forte did not lie in the classics, and Sir George succeeded in inducing him
+to yield to my wishes, and interested himself so strongly for me that I
+obtained a cornetcy in the 14th Light Dragoons a week before the regiment
+sailed for Portugal. On the morning of my last day in Dublin I met Miss
+Dashwood riding in the park. For some minutes I could scarcely speak. At
+last I plucked up courage a little, and said, "Miss Dashwood, I have wished
+most anxiously, before I parted for ever with those to whom I owe already
+so much, that I should, at least, speak my gratitude."</p>
+
+<p>"But when do you think of going?"</p>
+
+<p>"To-morrow. Captain Power, under whose command I am, has received orders
+to embark immediately for Portugal."</p>
+
+<p>I thought--perhaps it was but a thought--that her cheek grew somewhat
+paler as I spoke; but she remained silent.</p>
+
+<p>Fixing my eyes full upon her I spoke.</p>
+
+<p>"Lucy, I feel I must confess it, cost what it may--I love you. I know
+the fruitlessness, the utter despair, that awaits such a sentiment. My own
+heart tells me that I am not, cannot be, loved in return. I ask for
+nothing; I hope for nothing. I see that you at least pity me. Nay, one word
+more. Do not, when time and distance have separated us, think that the
+expressions I now use are prompted by a mere sudden ebullition of boyish
+feeling; for I swear to you that my love to you is the source and spring of
+every action in my life, and, when I cease to love you, I shall cease to
+feel. And now, farewell; farewell for ever."</p>
+
+<p>I pressed her hand to my lips, gave one long, last look, turned my horse
+rapidly away, and, ere a minute, was out of sight.</p>
+
+
+<h4><i>III.--I Smell Gunpowder</i></h4>
+
+
+<p>What a contrast to the dull monotony of our life at sea did the scene
+present which awaited us on landing at Lisbon! The whole quay was crowded
+with hundreds of people, eagerly watching the vessel which bore from her
+mast the broad ensign of Britain.</p>
+
+<p>The din and clamour of a mighty city mingled with the far-off sounds of
+military music; and, in the vistas of the opening streets, masses of troops
+might be seen, in marching order. All betokened the near approach of
+war.</p>
+
+<p>On the morning after we landed, Power rode off with dispatches to
+headquarters, leaving me to execute two commissions with which he had been
+entrusted--a packet for Hammersly from Miss Dashwood and an epistle from a
+love-sick midshipman who could not get on shore, to the Senhora Inez da
+Silviero. I took up the packet for Hammersly with a heavy heart. Alas!
+thought I, how fatally may my life be influenced by it!</p>
+
+<p>The loud call of a cavalry trumpet roused me, and I passed out into the
+street for the morning's inspection. The next day I delivered the packet to
+the Senhora Inez, by whom I was warmly received--rather more on my own
+account than on that of the little midshipman, I fancied. Certainly I never
+beheld a being more lovely, and I found myself paying her some attentions.
+Yet she was nothing to me. It is true, she had, as she most candidly
+informed me, a score of admirers, among whom I was not even reckoned; she
+was evidently a coquette. On May 7, 1809, we set off for Oporto. The 14th
+were detailed to guard the pass to the Douro until the reinforcements were
+up, and then I saw my first engagement. Never till now, as we rode to the
+charge, did I know how far the excitement reaches when, man to man, sabre
+to sabre, we ride forward to the battlefield. On we went, the loud shout of
+"Forward!" still ringing in our ears. One broken, irregular discharge from
+the French guns shook the head of our advancing column, but stayed us not
+as we galloped madly on.</p>
+
+<p>I remember no more. The din, the smoke, the crash--the cry for quarter,
+mingled with the shout of victory, the flying enemy--are all commingled in
+my mind, but leave no trace of clearness or connection between them; and it
+was only when the column wheeled to re-form that I awoke from my trance of
+maddening excitement, and perceived that we had carried the position and
+cut off the guns of the enemy.</p>
+
+<p>The scene was now beyond anything, maddening in its interest. From the
+walls of Oporto the English infantry poured forth in pursuit; while the
+whole river was covered with boats, as they still continued to cross over.
+The artillery thundered from the Sierra, to protect the landing, for it was
+even still contested in places; and the cavalry, charging in flank, swept
+the broken ranks and bore down their squares. Then a final impetuous charge
+carried the day.</p>
+
+<p>From that fight I got my lieutenancy, and then was sent off by Sir
+Arthur Wellesley on special duty to the Lusitanian Legion in Alcantara--a
+flattering position opened to my enterprise. Before I set out, I was able
+to deliver Miss Dashwood's packet to Captain Hammersly, barely recovered
+from a sabre wound. His agitation and his manner in receiving it puzzled me
+greatly, though my own agitation was scarcely less.</p>
+
+<p>When I returned after a month with the Legion, during which my services
+were of no very distinguished character, I found a letter from Galway which
+saddened my thoughts greatly. A lawsuit had gone against my uncle, and what
+I had long foreseen was gradually accomplishing--the wreck of an old and
+honoured house. And I could only look on and watch the progress of our
+downfall without power to arrest it.</p>
+
+
+<h4><i>IV.--Shipwrecked Hopes</i></h4>
+
+
+<p>Having been sent to the rear with dispatches, I did not reach Talavera
+till two days' hard fighting had left the contending armies without decided
+advantage on either side.</p>
+
+<p>I had scarcely joined my regiment before the 14th were ordered to
+charge.</p>
+
+<p>We came on at a trot. The smoke of the cannonade obscured everything
+until we had advanced some distance, but suddenly the splendid panorama of
+the battlefield broke upon us.</p>
+
+<p>"Charge! Forward!" cried the hoarse voice of our colonel; and we were
+upon them. The French infantry, already broken by the withering musketry of
+our people, gave way before us, and, unable to form a square, retired
+fighting, but in confusion and with tremendous loss, to their position. One
+glorious cheer from left to right of our line proclaimed the victory, while
+a deafening discharge of artillery from the French replied to this
+defiance, and the battle was over.</p>
+
+<p>For several months after the battle of Talavera my life presented
+nothing which I feel worth recording. Our good fortune seemed to have
+deserted us when our hopes were highest; for from the day of that splendid
+victory we began our retrograde movement upon Portugal. Pressed hard by
+overwhelming masses of the enemy, we saw the fortresses of Ciudad Rodrigo
+and Almeida fall successively into their hands, and retired, mystified and
+disappointed, to Torres Vedras.</p>
+
+<p>Wounded in a somewhat scatter-brain night expedition to the lines of
+Ciudad Rodrigo, my campaigning--for some time, at least--was concluded; for
+my wound began to menace the loss of my arm, and I was ordered back to
+Lisbon. Fred Power was the first man I saw, and almost the first thing he
+told me was that Sir George Dashwood was in Lisbon, and that his daughter
+was with him. And then, with conflicting feelings, I found that all Lisbon
+mentioned my name in connection with the senhora, and Sir George himself,
+in appointing me an aide-de-camp, threw increased gloom over my thoughts by
+referring to the report Power had spoken of. My torment was completed by
+meeting Miss Dashwood in the Senhora Inez's house under circumstances which
+led to treat me with stiff, formal courtesy.</p>
+
+<p>The next night a letter from a Dublin friend reached me which told me
+that "Hammersly had got his <i>cong&eacute;</i>."</p>
+
+<p>Here, then, was the solution of the whole chaos of mystery; here the
+full explanation of what had puzzled my aching brain for many a night long.
+His own were the letters I had delivered into Hammersly's hands. A flood of
+light poured at once across all the dark passages of my history; and Lucy,
+too--dare I think of her? What if she had really cared for me! Oh, the
+bitter agony of that thought! To think that all my hopes were shipwrecked
+with the very land in sight.</p>
+
+<p>I sprang to my feet with some sudden impulse, but, as I did so, the
+blood rushed madly to my head, and I fell. My arm was again broken, and ere
+day I was delirious.</p>
+
+<p>Hours, days, weeks rolled over, and when I returned to consciousness and
+convalescence I found I had been removed to the senhora's villa, and to her
+I owed, in a large part, my recovery. I was deeper in my dilemma than ever.
+Nevertheless, before I returned to the front, I found an opportunity to
+vindicate to Lucy my unshaken faith, reconciling the conflicting evidences
+with the proofs I proffered of my attachment. We were interrupted before I
+could learn how my protestations were received. Power, I found soon after,
+was the one favoured by the fair Inez's affections.</p>
+
+
+<h4><i>V.--A Desolate Hearth</i></h4>
+
+
+<p>It is not my intention, were I even adequate to the task, to trace with
+anything like accuracy the events of the war at this period. In fact, to
+those who, like myself, were performing duties of a mere subaltern
+character, the daily movements of our own troops, not to speak of the
+continual changes of the enemy, were perfectly unknown, and an English
+newspaper was more ardently longed for in the Peninsula than by the most
+eager crowd of a London coffee-room.</p>
+
+<p>So I pass over the details of the retreat of the French, and the great
+battle of Fuentes D'O&ntilde;oro. In the storming of Ciudad Rodrigo, that death
+struggle of vengeance and despair, I gained some notoriety in leading a
+party of stormers through a broken embrasure, and found myself under Lord
+Wellington's displeasure for having left my duties as aide-de-camp.
+However, the exploit gained me leave to return to England, and the
+additional honour of carrying dispatches to the Prince Regent.</p>
+
+<p>When I arrived in London with the glorious news of the capture of Ciudad
+Rodrigo, the kind and gracious notice of the prince obtained me attentions
+on all sides. Indeed, so flattering was the reception I met with, and so
+overwhelming the civility showered on me, that it required no small effort
+on my part not to believe myself as much a hero as they would make me. An
+eternal round of dinners, balls, and entertainments filled up an entire
+week.</p>
+
+<p>At last I obtained the Prince Regent's permission to leave London, and a
+few mornings after landed in Cork. Hastening my journey, I was walking the
+last eight miles--my chaise having broken down--when suddenly my attention
+was caught by a sound which, faint from the distance, scarce struck upon my
+ear. Thinking it probably some delusion of my heated imagination, I rose to
+push forward; but at the moment a slight breeze stirred, and a low, moaning
+sound swelled upward, increasing each instant as it came. It grew louder as
+the wind bore it towards me, and now falling, now swelling, it burst forth
+into one loud, prolonged cry of agony and grief. O God, it was the
+death-wail!</p>
+
+<p>My suspense became too great to bear; I dashed madly forward. As I
+neared the house, the whole approach was crowded with carriages and
+horsemen. At the foot of the large flight of steps stood the black and
+mournful hearse, its plumes nodding in the breeze, and, as the sounds
+without sank into sobs of bitterness and woe, the black pall of a coffin,
+borne on men's shoulders, appeared at the door, and an old man, a life-long
+friend of my uncle, across whose features a struggle for self-mastery was
+playing, held out his hand to enforce silence. I sprang toward him, choked
+by agony. He threw his arms around me, and muttering the words, "Poor
+Godfrey!" pointed to the coffin.</p>
+
+<p>Mine was a desolate hearth. In respect to my uncle's last wishes, I sold
+out of the army and settled down to a quieter life than the clang of
+battle, the ardour of the march. Gradually new impressions and new duties
+succeeded; and, ere four months elapsed, the quiet monotony of my daily
+life healed up the wounds of my suffering, and a sense of content, if not
+of happiness, crept gently over me, and I ceased to long for the clash of
+arms and the loud blast of the trumpet.</p>
+
+<p>But three years later a regiment of infantry marching to Cork for
+embarkation for the Continent after Bonaparte's return from Elba, roused
+all the eagerness of my old desires, and I volunteered for service
+again.</p>
+
+<p>A few days after I was in Brussels, and attending that most memorable
+and most exciting entertainment, the Duchess of Richmond's ball, on the
+night of June 15, 1815. Lucy Dashwood was there, beautiful beyond anything
+I had ever seen her. When the word came of the advance of Napoleon I was
+sent off with the major-general's orders, and then joined the night march
+to Quatre Bras. There I fell into the hands of a French troop and missed
+the fighting, though I saw Napoleon himself, and had the good fortune to
+effect the escape of Sir George Dashwood, who lay a prisoner under sentence
+of death in the same place as myself. Early in the day of Waterloo I
+contrived my own escape, and was able to give Lord Wellington much
+information as to the French movements.</p>
+
+<p>After the battle I wandered back into Brussels and learned that we had
+gained the day. As I came into the city Sir George met me and took me into
+his hotel, where were Power and the senhora, about to be married. Wounded
+by the innocent raillery of my friends, I escaped into an empty room and
+buried my head in my hands. Oh, how often had the phantom of happiness
+passed within my reach, but glided from my grasp!</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, Lucy, Lucy!" I exclaimed aloud. "But for you, and a few words
+carelessly spoken, I had never trod the path of ambition whose end has been
+the wreck of all my happiness! But for you I had never loved so fondly! But
+for you, and I had never been--"</p>
+
+<p>"A soldier, you would say," whispered a soft voice as a light hand
+gently touched my shoulder. "No, Mr. O'Malley; deeply grateful as I am to
+you for the service you once rendered myself, bound as I am by every tie of
+thankfulness by the greater one to my father, yet do I feel that in the
+impulse I have given to your life I have done more to repay my debt to you
+than by all the friendship, all the esteem I owe you. If, indeed, by any
+means, you became a soldier, then I am indeed proud."</p>
+
+<p>"Alas! Lucy--Miss Dashwood, I would say--how has my career fulfilled the
+promise that gave it birth? For you, and you only, to gain your affection,
+I became a soldier. And now, and now----"</p>
+
+<p>"And now," said she, while her eyes beamed upon me with a very flood of
+tenderness, "is it nothing that I have glowed with pride at triumphs I
+could read of, but dared not share in? I have thought of you. I have
+dreamed, I have prayed for you."</p>
+
+<p>"Alas! Lucy, but not loved me."</p>
+
+<p>Her hand, which had fallen upon mine, trembled violently. I pressed my
+lips upon it, but she moved it not. I dared to look up; her head was turned
+away, but her heaving bosom betrayed emotion.</p>
+
+<p>Our eyes met--I cannot say what it was--but in a moment the whole
+current of my thoughts was changed. Her look was bent upon me, beaming with
+softness and affection; her hand gently pressed my own, and her lips
+murmured my name.</p>
+
+<p>The door burst open at this moment, and Sir George Dashwood appeared.
+Lucy turned one fleeting look upon her father, and fell fainting into my
+arms.</p>
+
+<p>"God bless you, my boy!" said the old general as he hurriedly wiped a
+tear from his eye. "I am now indeed a happy father."</p>
+
+<hr />
+
+
+
+
+<h3><a name="Tom_Burke_of_Ours"></a>Tom Burke of "Ours"</h3>
+
+
+<blockquote> In 1840 Charles Lever, on an invitation from Sir John
+Crompton, Secretary to the British Embassy in Belgium, forsook Ireland for
+Brussels, where for a time he followed his profession of medicine. Two
+years later an offer of the editorship of the "Dublin University Magazine"
+recalled him to Ireland, when he definitely abandoned a medical career and
+settled down to literature permanently. The first fruit of that appointment
+was "Tom Burke of Ours," published, after running serially in the magazine,
+in 1844. It is more serious in tone than any of his preceding works; in it
+the author utilises the rich colouring gained from his long residence in
+France, and the book is less remarkable for the complex, if vigorous, story
+it contains than for its graphic and exciting pictures of men and events in
+the campaigns of Napoleon Many of its episodes are conceived in the true
+spirit of romance. </blockquote>
+
+
+<h4><i>I.--The Boy Rebel</i></h4>
+
+
+<p>"Be advised by me," said De Meudon earnestly; "do not embark with these
+Irish rebels in their enterprise! They have none. Their only daring is some
+deed of rapine and murder. No; liberty is not to be achieved by such bands
+as these. France is your country--there liberty has been won; there lives
+one great man whose notice, were it but passingly bestowed, is fame."</p>
+
+<p>He sank back exhausted. The energy of his speech was too great for his
+weak and exhausted frame to bear. Captain de Meudon had come to Ireland in
+1798 to aid in the rebellion; he had seen its failure, but had remained in
+Ireland trying vainly to give to the disaffection some military
+organization. He had realized the hopelessness of his efforts. He was ill,
+and very near to death. Now I stood by his bedside in a little cottage in
+Glenmalure.</p>
+
+<p>Boy as I was, I had already seen enough to make me a rebel in feeling
+and in action. I had stood a short time before the death-bed of my father,
+who disliked me, and who had left nearly all his property to my elder
+brother, who was indifferent to me. My father had indentured me as
+apprentice to his lawyer, and sooner than submit to the rule of this
+man--the evil genius of our family--I had taken flight. The companion of my
+wanderings was Darby M'Keown, the piper, the cleverest and cunningest of
+the agents of rebellion. Then I had met De Meudon, who had turned my
+thoughts and ambitions into another channel.</p>
+
+<p>My companion grew steadily worse.</p>
+
+<p>"Take my pocket-book," he whispered; "there is a letter you'll give my
+sister Marie. There are some five or six thousand francs--they are yours;
+you must be a pupil at the Polytechnique at Paris. If it should be your
+fortune to speak with General Bonaparte, say to him that when Charles de
+Meudon was dying--in exile--with but one friend left--he held his portrait
+to his lips, and, with his last breath, he kissed it."</p>
+
+<p>A shivering ran through his limbs--a sigh--and all was still. He was
+dead.</p>
+
+<p>"Halloa, there!" said a voice. The door opened, and a sergeant entered.
+"I have a warrant to arrest Captain de Meudon, a French officer who is
+concealed here. Where is he?"</p>
+
+<p>I pointed to the bed.</p>
+
+<p>"I arrest you in the king's name!" said the sergeant, approaching.
+"What----" He started back in horror. "He is dead!"</p>
+
+<p>Then entered one I had seen before--Major Barton, the most pitiless of
+the government's agents in suppressing insurrection.</p>
+
+<p>The sergeant whispered to him, and his eye ranged the little chamber
+till it fell on me.</p>
+
+<p>"Ha!" he cried. "You here! Sergeant, here's one prisoner for you, at any
+rate."</p>
+
+<p>Two soldiers seized me, and I was marched away towards Dublin. About
+noon the party halted, and the soldiers lay down and chatted on a patch of
+grass, while my own thoughts turned sadly back to the friend I had
+known.</p>
+
+<p>Suddenly I heard a song sung by a voice I knew, and afterwards a loud
+clapping of hands. Darby M'Keown was there in the midst of the soldiers,
+and as I turned to look at him, my hand came in contact with a clasp-knife.
+I managed with it to free my arms from the ropes that fastened them, but
+what was to be done next?</p>
+
+<p>"I didn't think much of that song of yours," said one of the soldiers.
+"Give us 'The British Grenadiers.'"</p>
+
+<p>"I never heard them play but onst, sir," said Darby, meekly, "and they
+were in such a hurry I couldn't pick up the tune."</p>
+
+<p>"What d'you mean?"</p>
+
+<p>"'Twas the day but one after the French landed, and the British
+Grenadiers was running away."</p>
+
+<p>The party sprang to their legs, and a shower of curses fell upon the
+piper.</p>
+
+<p>"And sure," continued Darby, "'twasn't my fault av they took to their
+heels. Wouldn't anyone run for his life av he had the opportunity?"</p>
+
+<p>These words were uttered in a raised voice, and I took the hint. While
+Darby was scuffling with the soldiers, I slipped away.</p>
+
+<p>For miles I pressed forward without turning, and in the evening I found
+myself in Dublin. The union with England was being debated in the
+Parliament House; huge and angry crowds raged without. Remembering the
+tactics De Meudon had taught me, I sought to organize the crowd in a kind
+of military formation against the troops; but a knock on the head with a
+musket-butt ended my labours, and I knew nothing more until I came to
+myself in the quarters of an old chance acquaintance--Captain
+Bubbleton.</p>
+
+<p>Here, in the house of this officer--an eccentric and impecunious man,
+but a most loyal friend--I was discovered by Major Barton and dragged to
+prison. I was released by the intervention of my father's lawyer, who
+claimed me as his apprentice.</p>
+
+<p>For weeks I lived with Captain Bubbleton and his brother officers, and
+nothing could be more cordial than their treatment of me. "Tom Burke of
+'Ours,'" the captain used proudly to call me. Only one officer held aloof
+from me, and from all Irishmen--Montague Crofts--through whom it came about
+that I left Ireland.</p>
+
+<p>One day an uncouth and ragged woman entered the barracks, and addressed
+me. It was Darby M'Keown, and he brought me nothing less precious than De
+Meudon's pocket-book, which had been taken from me, and had been picked up
+by him on the road. A few minutes later Bubbleton lost a sum at cards to
+Crofts; knowing he could not pay, I passed a note quietly to him. When
+Bubbleton had gone, Crofts held up the note before me. It was a French note
+of De Meudon's! I demanded my property back. He refused, and threatened to
+inform against me. On my seeking to prevent him from leaving the room, he
+drew his sword, and wounded me; but in the nick of time a blow from a
+strong arm laid him senseless--dead, perhaps--on the floor.</p>
+
+<p>"We must be far from this by daybreak," whispered Darby.</p>
+
+<p>I walked out of the barracks as steadily as I could. For all I knew, I
+was implicated in murder--and Ireland was no place for me. In a few days I
+stood on the shores of France.</p>
+
+
+<h4><i>II.--A Blow for the Emperor</i></h4>
+
+
+<p>By means of a letter of introduction to the head of the Polytechnique,
+which De Meudon had placed for me in his pocket-book, I was able to enter
+that military college, and, after a spell of earnest study, I was appointed
+to a commission in the Eighth Hussars. Proud as I was to become a soldier
+of France, yet I could not but feel that I was a foreigner, and almost
+friendless--unlucky, indeed, in the choice of the few friends I possessed.
+Chief of them was the Marquis de Beauvais, concerning whom I soon made two
+discoveries--that he was in the thick of an intrigue against the republic I
+served, and its First Consul, and that he was in love with Marie de Meudon,
+my dead friend's sister.</p>
+
+<p>To her, as soon as an opportunity came, I gave the news of her brother's
+end, and his last message. She was terribly affected; and the love we bore
+in common to the dead, and her own wonderful beauty, aroused in me a
+passion that was not the less fervent because I felt it was almost
+hopeless. I did not dare to ask her love, but I had her friendship without
+asking. She it was who warned me of the dangerous intrigues of De Beauvais
+and his associates. She it was who, when I fell a victim to their
+intrigues, laboured with General d'Auvergne, who had befriended me while I
+was at college, to restore me to liberty.</p>
+
+<p>I had heard that De Beauvais and his fellow royalists were plotting in a
+ch&acirc;teau near Versailles, and that a scheme was afoot to capture them.
+In hot haste I rode to the ch&acirc;teau, hoping secretly to warn my
+friend. He did indeed escape, but it was my lot to be caught with the
+conspirators. For the second time in my short life I saw the inside of a
+prison; I was in danger of the guillotine; despair had almost overpowered
+me, when I learnt that my friends had prevailed--my sword was returned to
+me. I became again an officer of the army of him who was now emperor, and I
+set forth determined to wipe out on the battlefield the doubts that still
+clung to my loyalty. Marie de Meudon was wedded, by the emperor's wish, to
+the gallant and beloved soldier on whose staff I proudly served--General
+d'Auvergne.</p>
+
+<p>In four vast columns of march, the mighty army poured into the heart of
+Germany. But not until we reached Mannheim did we learn the object of the
+war. We were to destroy the Austro-Russian coalition, and the first blow
+was to be struck at Ulm. When Ulm had capitulated, General d'Auvergne and
+his staff returned to Elchingen, and on the night when we reached the place
+I was on the point of lying down supperless in the open air, when I met an
+old acquaintance, Corporal Pioche, a giant cuirassier of the Guard, who had
+fought in all Bonaparte's campaigns.</p>
+
+<p>"Ah, mon lieutenant," said he, "not supped yet, I'll wager. Come along
+with me; Mademoiselle Minette has opened her canteen!"</p>
+
+<p>Presently we entered a large room, at one end of which sat a very pretty
+Parisian brunette, who bade me a gracious welcome. The place was crowded
+with captains and corporals, lieutenants and sergeants, all hobnobbing,
+hand-shaking, and even kissing each other. "Each man brings what he can
+find, drinks what he is able, and leaves the rest," remarked Pioche, and
+invited me to take my share in the common stock.</p>
+
+<p>All went well until I absent-mindedly called out, as if to a waiter, for
+bread. There was a roar of laughter at my mistake, and a little
+dark-whiskered fellow stuck his sword into a loaf and handed it to me. As I
+took the loaf, he disengaged his point, and scratched the back of my hand
+with it. Obviously an insult was intended.</p>
+
+<p>"Ah, an accident, <i>morbleu</i>!" said he, with an impertinent
+shrug.</p>
+
+<p>"So is this!" said I, as I seized his sword and smashed it across my
+knee.</p>
+
+<p>"It's Fran&ccedil;ois, <i>maitre d'armes</i> of the Fourth," whispered
+Pioche; "one of the cleverest duellists of the army."</p>
+
+<p>I was hurried out to the court, one adviser counselling me to beware of
+Fran&ccedil;ois's lunge in tierce, another to close on him at once, and so
+on. For a long time after we had crossed swords, I remained purely on the
+defensive; at last, after a desperate rally, he made a lunge at my chest,
+which I received in the muscles of my back; and, wheeling round, I buried
+my blade in his body.</p>
+
+<p>Fran&ccedil;ois lingered for a long time between life and death, and for
+several days I was incapacitated, tenderly nursed by Minette.</p>
+
+<p>As soon as I was recovered the order came to advance.</p>
+
+<p>Not many days passed ere the chance came to me for which I had
+longed--the chance of striking a blow for the emperor. Hand-to-hand with
+the Russian dragoons on the field of Austerlitz, sweeping along afterwards
+with the imperial hosts in the full tide of victory, I learnt for the first
+time the exhilaration of military glory; and I had the good fortune to
+receive the emperor's favour--not only was I promoted, but I was appointed
+to the <i>compagnie d'&eacute;lite</i> that was to carry the spoils of
+victory to Paris.</p>
+
+<p>A few weeks after my return to Paris, the whole garrison was placed in
+review order to receive the wounded of Austerlitz.</p>
+
+<p>As the emperor rode forward bareheaded to greet his maimed veterans, I
+heard laughter among the staff that surrounded him. Stepping up, I saw my
+old friend Pioche, who had been dangerously wounded, with his hand in
+salute.</p>
+
+<p>"Thou wilt not have promotion, nor a pension," said Napoleon, smiling.
+"Hast any friend whom I could advance?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes," answered Pioche, scratching his forehead in confusion. "She is a
+brave girl, and had she been a man----"</p>
+
+<p>"Whom can he mean?"</p>
+
+<p>"I was talking of Minette, our <i>vivandi&egrave;re</i>."</p>
+
+<p>"Dost wish I should make her my aide-de-camp?" said Napoleon,
+laughing.</p>
+
+<p>"<i>Parbleu</i>! Thou hast more ill-favoured ones among them," said
+Pioche, with a glance at the grim faces of Rapp and Daru. "I've seen the
+time when thou'd have said, 'Is it Minette that was wounded at the Adige
+and stood in the square at Marengo? I'll give her the Cross of the
+Legion!'"</p>
+
+<p>"And she shall have it!" said Napoleon. Minette advanced, and as the
+emperor's own cross was attached to her buttonhole she sat pale as death,
+overcome by her pride.</p>
+
+<p>For two hours waggon after waggon rolled on, filled with the shattered
+remnants of an army. Every eye brightened as the emperor drew near, the
+feeblest gazed with parted lips when he spoke, and the faint cry of
+"<i>Vive l'Emp&eacute;reur</i>" passed along the line.</p>
+
+
+<h4><i>III.--Broken Dreams</i></h4>
+
+
+<p>Ere I had left Paris to join in the campaign against Prussia, I had
+made, and broken off, another dangerous friendship. In the <i>compagnie
+d'&eacute;lite</i> was an officer named Duchesne who took a liking to me--a
+royalist at heart, and a cynic who was unfailing in his sneers at all the
+doings of Napoleon. His attitude was detected, and he was forced to resign
+his commission; and his slights upon the uniform I wore grew so unbearable
+that I abandoned his company--little guessing the revenge he would take
+upon me.</p>
+
+<p>Once more the Grand Army was set in motion, and the hosts of France
+pressed upon Russia from the south and west. Napoleon turned the enemy's
+right flank, and compelled him to retire and concentrate his troops around
+Jena, which was plainly to be the scene of a great battle.</p>
+
+<p>My regiment was ordered on September 13, 1806, to proceed without delay
+to the emperor's headquarters at Jena, and I was sent ahead to make
+arrangements for quarters. In the darkness I lost my way, and came upon an
+artillery battery stuck fast in a ravine, unable to move back or forwards.
+The colonel was in despair, for the whole artillery of the division was
+following him, and would inevitably be involved in the same mishap. Wild
+shouting had been succeeded by a sullen silence, when a stern voice called
+out: "Cannoniers, dismount; bring the torches to the front!"</p>
+
+<p>When the order was obeyed, the light of the firewood fell upon the
+features of Napoleon himself. Instantly the work began afresh, directed by
+the emperor with a blazing torch in his hand. Gradually the gun-carriages
+were released, and began to move slowly along the ravine. Napoleon turned,
+and rode off at full speed in the darkness towards Jena. It was my
+destination, and I followed him.</p>
+
+<p>He preceded me by about fifty paces--the greatest monarch of the world,
+alone, his thoughts bent on the great events before him. On the top of an
+ascent the brilliant spectacle of a thousand watch-fires met the eye.
+Napoleon, lost in meditation, saw nothing, and rode straight into the
+lines. Twice the challenge "<i>Qui vive?"</i> rang out. Napoleon heard it
+not. There was a bang of a musket, then another, and another. Napoleon
+threw himself from his horse, and lay flat on the ground. I dashed up,
+shouting, "The emperor! The emperor!" My horse was killed, and I was
+wounded in the shoulder; but I repeated the cry until Napoleon stepped
+calmly forward.</p>
+
+<p>"Ye are well upon the alert, <i>mes enfants</i>," he said, smiling.
+Then, turning to me, he asked quickly, "Are you wounded?"</p>
+
+<p>"A mere scratch, sire."</p>
+
+<p>"Let the surgeon see to it, and do you come to headquarters when you are
+able."</p>
+
+<p>In the morning I went to headquarters, but the emperor was busy;
+seemingly I was forgotten. My regiment was out of reach, so, at the
+invitation of my old duelling antagonist, Fran&ccedil;ois, I joined the
+Voltigeurs. My friends could not understand why, after tasting the delights
+of infantry fighting, I should wish to rejoin the hussars; but I went back
+to my old regiment after the victory, and rode with it to Berlin.</p>
+
+<p>Soon after our arrival there I read my name in a general order among
+those on whom the Cross of the Legion was to be conferred. On the morning
+of the day when I was to receive the decoration, I was requested to attend
+the bureau of the adjutant-general. There I was confronted with Marshal
+Berthier, who held up a letter before me. I saw, by the handwriting, it was
+Duchesne's.</p>
+
+<p>"There, sir, that letter belongs to you," he said. "There is enough in
+it to make your conduct the matter of a court-martial; but I am satisfied
+that a warning will be sufficient. I need hardly say that you will not
+receive the Cross of the Legion."</p>
+
+<p>I glanced at the letter, and realised Duchesne's treachery. Knowing that
+all doubtful letters were opened and read by the authorities, he had sent
+me a letter bitterly attacking the emperor, and professing to regard me as
+a royalist conspirator.</p>
+
+<p>Exasperated, I drew my sword.</p>
+
+<p>"I resign, sir," I said. "The career I can no longer follow honourably
+and independently, I shall follow no more."</p>
+
+<p>With a half-broken heart and faltering step, I regained my quarters; the
+whole dream of life was over. Broken in spirit, I made my way slowly back
+through Germany to Paris, and back to Ireland.</p>
+
+
+<h4><i>IV.--The Call of the Sword</i></h4>
+
+
+<p>On reaching my native country I found that my brother had died, and that
+I had inherited an income of &pound;4,000 a year. I sought to forget the
+past. But a time came when I could resist the temptation no longer, and the
+first fact I read of was the burning of Moscow. As misfortune followed
+misfortune, an impulse came to me that it was useless to resist. My heart
+was among the glittering squadrons of France. I thought suddenly, was this
+madness? And the thought was followed by a resolve as sudden. I wrote some
+lines to my agent, saddled my horse, and rode away. At Verviers I offered
+my sword to the emperor as an old officer, and went forward in charge of a
+squadron to Brienne. This place was held by the Prussians, and Bl&uuml;cher
+and his Prussians were near at hand. Once more I beheld the terrific
+spectacle of an attack by the army of Napoleon. But alas! the attack was
+vain; I heard the trumpet sound a retreat. And as I turned, I saw the body
+of an aged general officer among a heap of slain. With a shriek of horror,
+I recognized the friend of my heart, General d'Auvergne. Round his neck he
+wore a locket with a portrait of his wife--Marie de Meudon. I detached the
+locket, and bade the dead a last adieu.</p>
+
+<p>Why should I dwell on a career of disaster? Retreat followed retreat,
+until the fate of Napoleon's empire depended on the capture of the bridge
+of Montereau. Regiment after regiment strove to cross, only to be shattered
+and mangled by the tremendous fire of the enemy. Four sappers at length
+laid a petard beneath the gate at the other side of the bridge. But the
+fuse went out.</p>
+
+<p>"This to the man who lights the fuse!" cried Napoleon, holding up his
+great Cross of the Legion.</p>
+
+<p>I snatched a burning match from a gunner beside me, and rushed across
+the bridge. Partly protected by the high projecting parapet, I lit the
+fuse, and then fell, shot in the chest. My senses reeled; for a time I knew
+nothing; then I felt a flask pressed to my lips. I looked up, and saw
+Minette. "Dear, dear girl, what a brave heart is thine!" said I, as she
+pressed her handkerchief to my wound.</p>
+
+<p>Her fingers became entangled in the ribbon of the general's locket that
+I had tied round my neck, and by accident the locket opened. She became
+deathly pale as she saw its contents; then, springing to her feet, she gave
+me one glance--fleeting, but how full of sorrow!--and ran to the middle of
+the bridge. The petard had done its work. She beckoned to the column to
+come on; they answered with a cheer. Presently four grenadiers fell to the
+rear, carrying between them the body of Minette.</p>
+
+<p>They gave her a military funeral; and I was told that a giant soldier, a
+corporal it was thought, kneeled down to kiss her before she was covered
+with the earth, then lay quietly down in the grass. When they sought to
+move him, he was stone dead.</p>
+
+<p>When I had recovered from my wound, it was nothing to me that Napoleon,
+besides giving me his Grand Cross, had made me general of brigade. For
+Napoleon was no longer emperor, and I would not serve the king who
+succeeded him. But ere I left France I saw Marie de Meudon, it might be, I
+thought, for the last time. At the sight of her my old passion returned,
+and I dared to utter it. I know not how incoherently the tale was told; I
+can but remember the bursting feeling of my bosom, as she placed her hand
+in mine, and said, "It is yours."</p>
+
+<hr />
+
+
+
+
+<h2><a name="MG_LEWIS"></a>M.G. LEWIS</h2>
+
+
+<h3><a name="Ambrosio_or_the_Monk"></a>Ambrosio, or the Monk</h3>
+
+
+<blockquote> There was a time--of no great duration--when Lewis' "Monk" was
+the most popular book in England. At the end of the eighteenth century the
+vogue of the "Gothic" romance of ghosts and mysteries was at its height;
+and this work, written in ten weeks by a young man of nineteen, caught the
+public fancy tremendously, and Matthew Gregory Lewis was straightway
+accepted as an adept at making the flesh creep. Taste changes in horrors,
+as in other things, and "Ambrosio, or The Monk," would give nightmares to
+few modern readers. Its author, who was born in London on July 9, 1775, and
+published "The Monk" in 1795, wrote many supernatural tales and poems, and
+also several plays--one of which, "The Castle Spectre," caused the hair of
+Drury Lane audiences to stand on end for sixty successive nights, a long
+run in those days. Lewis, who was a wealthy man, sat for some years in
+Parliament; he had many distinguished friends among men of letters--Scott
+and Southey contributed largely to the first volume of his "Tales of
+Wonder." He died on May 13, 1818. </blockquote>
+
+
+<h4><i>I.--The Recluse</i></h4>
+
+
+<p>The Church of the Capuchins in Madrid had never witnessed a more
+numerous assembly than that which gathered to hear the sermon of Ambrosio,
+the abbot. All Madrid rang with his praises. Brought mysteriously to the
+abbey door while yet an infant, he had remained for all the thirty years of
+his life within its precincts. All his days had been spent in seclusion,
+study, and mortification of the flesh; his knowledge was profound, his
+eloquence most persuasive; his only fault was an excess of severity in
+judging the human feelings from which he himself was exempted.</p>
+
+<p>Among the crowd that pressed into the church were two women--one
+elderly, the other young--who had seats offered them by two richly habited
+cavaliers. The younger cavalier, Don Lorenzo, discovered such exquisite
+beauty and sweetness in the maiden to whom he had given his seat--her name
+was Antonia--that when she left the church he was desperately in love with
+her.</p>
+
+<p>He had promised to see his sister Agnes, a nun in the Convent of St.
+Clare; so he remained in the church, whither the nuns were presently to
+come to confess to the Abbot Ambrosio. As he waited he observed a man
+wrapped up in a cloak hurriedly place a letter beneath a statue of St.
+Francis, and then retire.</p>
+
+<p>The nuns entered, and removed their veils out of respect to the saint to
+whom the building was dedicated. One of the nuns dropped her rosary beside
+the statue, and, as she stooped to pick it up, she dexterously removed the
+letter and placed it in her bosom. As she did so, the light flashed full in
+her face.</p>
+
+<p>"Agnes, by Heaven!" cried Lorenzo.</p>
+
+<p>He hastened after the cloaked stranger, and overtook him with drawn
+sword. Suddenly the cloaked man turned and exclaimed, "Is it possible?
+Lorenzo, have you forgotten Raymond de las Cisternas?"</p>
+
+<p>"You here, marquis?" said the astonished Lorenzo. "You engaged in a
+clandestine correspondence with my sister?"</p>
+
+<p>"Her affections have ever been mine, and not the Church's. She entered
+the convent tricked into a belief that I had been false to her; but I have
+proved to her that it is otherwise. She had agreed to fly with me, and my
+uncle, the cardinal, is securing for her a dispensation from her vows."</p>
+
+<p>Raymond told at length the story of his love, and at the end Lorenzo
+said, "Raymond, there is no one on whom I would bestow Agnes more willingly
+than on yourself. Pursue your design, and I will accompany you."</p>
+
+<p>Meanwhile, Agnes tremblingly advanced toward the abbot, and in her
+nervousness let fall the precious letter. She turned to pick it up. The
+abbot claimed and read it; it was the proposal of Agnes's escape with her
+lover that very night.</p>
+
+<p>"This letter must to the prioress!" said he sternly.</p>
+
+<p>"Hold father, hold!" cried Agnes, flinging herself at his feet. "Be
+merciful! Do not doom me to destruction!"</p>
+
+<p>"Hence, unworthy wretch! Where is the prioress?"</p>
+
+<p>The prioress, when she came, gazed upon Agnes with fury. "Away with her
+to the convent!" she exclaimed.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, Raymond, save me, save me!" shrieked the distracted Agnes. Then,
+casting upon the abbot a frantic look, "Hear me," she continued, "man of a
+hard heart! Insolent in your yet unshaken virtue, your day of trial will
+arrive. Think then upon your cruelty; and despair of pardon!"</p>
+
+
+<h4><i>II.--The Abbot's Infatuation</i></h4>
+
+
+<p>Leaving the church, Ambrosio bent his steps towards a grotto in the
+abbey garden, formed in imitation of a hermitage. On reaching the grotto,
+he found it already occupied. Extended upon one of the seats, lay a man in
+a melancholy posture, lost in meditation. Ambrosio recognised him; it was
+Rosario, his favourite novice, a youth of whose origin none knew anything,
+save that his bearing, and such of his features as accident had
+discovered--for he seemed fearful of being recognised, and was continually
+muffled up in his cowl--proved him to be of noble birth.</p>
+
+<p>"You must not indulge this disposition to melancholy, Rosario," said
+Ambrosio tenderly.</p>
+
+<p>The youth flung himself at Ambrosio's feet.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, pity me!" he cried. "How willingly would I unveil to you my heart!
+But I fear------"</p>
+
+<p>"How shall I reassure you? Reveal to me what afflicts you, and I swear
+that your secret shall be safe in my keeping."</p>
+
+<p>"Father," said Rosario, in faltering accents, "I am a woman!"</p>
+
+<p>The abbot stood still for a moment in astonishment, then turned hastily
+to go. But the suppliant clasped his knees.</p>
+
+<p>"Do not fly me!" she cried. "You are my beloved; but far is it from
+Matilda's wish to draw you from the paths of virtue. All I ask is to see
+you, to converse with you, to adore you!"</p>
+
+<p>Confusion and resentment mingled in Ambrosio's mind with secret pleasure
+that a young and lovely woman had thus for his sake abandoned the world.
+But he recognised the need for austerity.</p>
+
+<p>"Matilda," he said, "you must leave the abbey to-morrow."</p>
+
+<p>"Cruel, cruel!" she exclaimed, wringing her hands in agony. "Farewell,
+my friend! And yet, methinks, I would fain bear with me some token of your
+regard."</p>
+
+<p>"What shall I give you?"</p>
+
+<p>"Anything--one of those flowers will be sufficient."</p>
+
+<p>Ambrosio approached a bush, and stooped to pick one of the flowers. He
+uttered a piercing cry, and Matilda rushed towards him.</p>
+
+<p>"A serpent," he said in a faint voice, "concealed among the roses."</p>
+
+<p>With loud shrieks the distressed Matilda summoned assistance. Ambrosio
+was carried to the abbey, his wound was examined, and the surgeon
+pronounced that there was no hope. He had been stung by a centipedoro, and
+would not live three days.</p>
+
+<p>Mournfully the monks left the bedside, and Ambrosio was entrusted to the
+care of the despairing Matilda. Next morning the surgeon was astonished to
+find that the inflammation had subsided, and when he probed the wound no
+traces of the venom were perceptible.</p>
+
+<p>"A miracle! A miracle!" cried the monks. Joyfully they proclaimed that
+St. Francis had saved the life of their sainted abbot.</p>
+
+<p>But Ambrosio was still weak and languid, and again the monks left him in
+Matilda's care. As he listened to an old ballad sung by her sweet voice, he
+found renewed pleasure in her society, and was conscious of the influence
+upon him of her beauty. For three days she nursed him, while he watched her
+with increasing fondness. But on the next day she came not. A lay-brother
+entered instead.</p>
+
+<p>"Hasten, reverend father," said he. "Young Rosario lies at the point of
+death, and he earnestly requests to see you."</p>
+
+<p>In deep agitation he followed the lay-brother to Matilda's apartment.
+Her face glowed at the sight of him. "Leave me, my brethren," she said to
+the monks; much have I to tell this holy man in private."</p>
+
+<p>"Father, I am poisoned," she said, when they had gone, "but the poison
+once circulated in your veins."</p>
+
+<p>"Matilda!"</p>
+
+<p>"I loosened the bandage from your arm; I drew out the poison with my
+lips. I feel death at my heart."</p>
+
+<p>"And you have sacrificed yourself for me! Is there, indeed, no
+hope?"</p>
+
+<p>"There is but one means of life in my power--a dangerous and dreadful
+means; life would be purchased at too dear a rate--unless it were permitted
+me to live for you."</p>
+
+<p>"Then live for me," cried the infatuated monk, clasping her in his arms.
+"Live for me!"</p>
+
+<p>"Then," she cried joyfully, "no dangers shall appall me. Swear that you
+will never inquire by what means I shall preserve myself, and procure for
+me the key of the burying-ground common to us and the sisterhood of St.
+Clare."</p>
+
+<p>When Ambrosio had obtained the key, Matilda left him. She returned
+radiant with joy.</p>
+
+<p>"I have succeeded!" she cried. "I shall live, Ambrosio--shall live for
+you!"</p>
+
+
+<h4><i>III.--Unavailing Remorse</i></h4>
+
+
+<p>Raymond and Lorenzo had gone to the rendezvous appointed in the letter,
+and had waited to be joined by Agnes and to enable her to escape from the
+convent.</p>
+
+<p>But Agnes had not come, and the two friends withdrew in deep
+mortification. Presently arrived a message from Raymond's uncle, the
+cardinal, enclosing the Pope's bull ordering that Agnes should be released
+from her vows, and restored to her relatives. Lorenzo at once conveyed the
+bull to the prioress.</p>
+
+<p>"It is out of my power to obey this order," said she, in a voice of
+anger which she strove in vain to disguise. "Agnes is dead!"</p>
+
+<p>Lorenzo hastened with the fatal news to Raymond, whose terrible
+affliction led to a dangerous illness.</p>
+
+<p>One morning, as Ambrosio was leaving the chapel after listening to many
+penitents--he was the favourite confessor in Madrid--Antonia stepped
+timidly up to him and begged him to visit her mother, who was stretched on
+a bed of sickness. Charmed with her beauty and innocence, he consented.</p>
+
+<p>The monk retired to his cell, whither he was pursued by Antonia's image.
+"What would be too dear a price," he meditated, "for this lovely girl's
+affections?"</p>
+
+<p>Not once but often did Ambrosio visit Antonia and her mother; and each
+time he saw the innocent girl his love increased. Matilda, who had first
+opened his heart to love, saw the change, and penetrated his secret.</p>
+
+<p>"Since your love can no longer be mine," she said to him sadly, "I
+request the next best gift--your confidence and friendship. You love
+Antonia, but you love her despairingly. I come to point out the road to
+success."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, impossible!"</p>
+
+<p>"To those who dare, nothing is impossible. Listen! My guardian was a man
+of uncommon knowledge, and from him I had training in the arts of magic.
+One terrible power he gave me--the power of raising a demon. I shuddered at
+the thought of employing it, until it became my only means of saving my
+life--a life that you prized. For your sake I performed the mystic rites in
+the sepulchre of St. Clare. For your sake I will perform them again."</p>
+
+<p>"No, no, Matilda!" cried the monk, "I will not ally myself with God's
+enemy."</p>
+
+<p>"Look!" Matilda held before him a mirror of polished steel, its borders
+marked with various strange characters. A mist spread over the surface; it
+cleared, and Ambrosio gazed upon the countenance of Antonia in all its
+beauty.</p>
+
+<p>"I yield!" he cried passionately. "Matilda, I follow you!"</p>
+
+<p>They passed into the churchyard; they reached the entry to the vaults;
+Ambrosio tremblingly followed Matilda down the staircase. They went through
+narrow passages strewn with skulls and bones, and reached a spacious
+cavern. Matilda drew a circle around herself, and another around him;
+bending low, she muttered a few indistinct sentences, and a thin, blue,
+sulphurous flame arose from the ground.</p>
+
+<p>Suddenly she uttered a piercing shriek, and plunged a poniard into her
+left arm; the blood poured down, a dark cloud arose, and a clap of thunder
+was heard. Then a full strain of melodious music sounded and the demon
+stood before them.</p>
+
+<p>He was a youth of perfect face and form. Crimson wings extended from his
+shoulders; many-coloured fires played about his locks; but there was a
+wildness in his eyes, a mysterious melancholy in his features, that
+betrayed the fallen angel.</p>
+
+<p>Matilda conversed with him in unintelligible language; he bowed
+submissively, and gave to her a silver branch, imitating myrtle, that he
+bore in his right hand. The music was heard again, and ceased; the cloud
+spread itself afresh; the demon vanished.</p>
+
+<p>"With this branch," said Matilda, "every door will open before you. You
+may gain access to Antonia; a touch of the branch will send her into a deep
+sleep, and you may carry her away whither you will."</p>
+
+<p>Ashamed and fearful, yet borne away by his love, the monk set forth. The
+bolts of Antonia's house flew back, and the doors opened before the silver
+myrtle.</p>
+
+<p>But as he passed stealthily through the house a woman confronted him. It
+was Antonia's mother, roused by a fearful dream.</p>
+
+<p>"Monster of hypocrisy!" she cried in fury. "I had already suspected you,
+but I kept silence. Now I will unmask you, villain!"</p>
+
+<p>"Forgive me, lady!" begged the terrified monk. "I swear by all that is
+holy------"</p>
+
+<p>"No! All Madrid shall shudder at your perfidy."</p>
+
+<p>He turned to fly. She seized him and screamed for help. He grasped
+her by the throat with all his strength, strangled her, and flung her to
+the ground, where she lay motionless. After a minute of horror-struck
+shuddering, the murderer fled. He entered the abbey unobserved, and having
+shut himself into his cell, he abandoned his soul to the tortures of
+unavailing remorse.</p>
+
+
+<h4><i>IV.--A Living Death</i></h4>
+
+
+<p>"Do not despair," counselled Matilda, when the monk revealed his
+failure. "Your crime is unsuspected. Antonia may still be yours. The
+prioress of St. Clare has a mysterious liquor, the effect of which is to
+give those who drink it the appearance of death for three days. Procure
+some of this liquor, visit Antonia, and cause her to drink it; have her
+body conveyed to a sepulchre in the vaults of St. Clare."</p>
+
+<p>Ambrosio hastened to secure a phial of the mysterious potion. He went to
+comfort Antonia in her distress, and contrived to pour a few drops from the
+phial into a draught that she was taking. In a few hours he heard that she
+was dead, and her body was conveyed to the vaults.</p>
+
+<p>Meanwhile, Lorenzo had learned, not indeed that his sister was alive,
+but that she had been the victim of terrible cruelty. A nun, who had been
+Agnes's friend, hinted at atrocious vengeance taken by the prioress for
+Agnes's attempt to escape. She suggested that Lorenzo should bring the
+officers of the Inquisition with him and arrest the prioress during a
+public procession of the nuns in honour of St Clare.</p>
+
+<p>Accordingly, as the prioress passed along the street among her nuns with
+a devout and sanctified air, the officers advanced and arrested her.</p>
+
+<p>"Ah!" she cried frantically, "I am betrayed!"</p>
+
+<p>"Betrayed!" replied the nun who had revealed the secret to Lorenzo. "I
+charge the prioress with murder!"</p>
+
+<p>She told how Agnes had been secretly poisoned by the prioress. The mob,
+mad with indignation, rushed to the convent determined to destroy it.
+Lorenzo and the officers hastened to endeavour to do what they could to
+save the convent and the terrified nuns who had taken refuge there.</p>
+
+<p>Antonia's heart throbbed, her eyes opened; she raised herself and cast a
+wild look around her. Her clothing was a shroud; she lay in a coffin among
+other coffins in a damp and hideous vault. Confronting her with a lantern
+in his hand, and eyeing her greedily, stood Ambrosio.</p>
+
+<p>"Where am I?" she said abruptly. "How came I here? Let me go!"</p>
+
+<p>"Why these terrors, Antonia?" replied the abbot. "What fear you from
+me--from one who adores you? You are imagined dead; society is for ever
+lost to you. You are absolutely in my power!"</p>
+
+<p>She screamed, and strove to escape; he clutched at her and struggled to
+detain her. Suddenly Matilda entered in haste.</p>
+
+<p>"The mob has set fire to the convent," she said to Ambrosio, "and the
+abbey is in danger. Don Lorenzo and the officers are searching the vaults.
+You cannot escape; you must remain here. They may not, perhaps, enter this
+vault."</p>
+
+<p>Antonia heard that rescue was at hand.</p>
+
+<p>"Help! help!" she screamed, and ran out of the vault. The abbot pursued
+her in desperation; he caught her; he could not stifle her cries. Frantic
+in his desire to escape, he grasped Matilda's dagger, plunged it twice in
+the bosom of Antonia, and fled back to the vault. It was too late he had
+been seen, the glare of torches filled the vault, and Ambrosio and Matilda
+were seized and bound by the officers of the Inquisition.</p>
+
+<p>Meanwhile, Lorenzo, running to and fro, had flashed his lantern upon a
+creature so wretched, so emaciated, that he doubted to think her woman. He
+stopped petrified with horror.</p>
+
+<p>"Two days, and yet no food!" she moaned. "No hope, no comfort!" Suddenly
+she looked up and addressed him.</p>
+
+<p>"Do you bring me food, or do you bring me death?"</p>
+
+<p>"I come," he replied, "to relieve your sorrows."</p>
+
+<p>"God, is it possible? Oh, yes! Yes, it is!"--she fainted. Lorenzo
+carried her in his arms to the nuns above.</p>
+
+<p>Loud shrieks summoned him below again. Hastening after the officers, he
+saw a woman bleeding on the ground. He went to her; it was his beloved
+Antonia. She was dying; with a few sweet words of farewell, her spirit
+passed away.</p>
+
+<p>Broken-hearted, he returned. He had lost Antonia, but he was to learn
+that Agnes was restored to him. The woman he had rescued was indeed his
+sister, saved from a living death and brought back to life and love.</p>
+
+
+<h4><i>V.--Lucifer</i></h4>
+
+
+<p>Ambrosio was tortured into confession, and condemned to be burned at the
+stake. Matilda, terrified at the sight of her fellow-criminal's torments,
+confessed without torture, and was sentenced to be burned at his side.</p>
+
+<p>They were to perish at midnight, and as the monk, in panic-stricken
+despair, awaited the awful hour, suddenly Matilda stood before him,
+beautifully attired, with a look of wild pleasure in her eyes.</p>
+
+<p>"Matilda!" he cried, "how have you gained entrance?"</p>
+
+<p>"Ambrosio," she replied, "I am free. For life and liberty I have sold my
+soul to Lucifer. Dare you do the same?"</p>
+
+<p>The monk shuddered.</p>
+
+<p>"I cannot renounce my God," he said.</p>
+
+<p>"Fool! What hope have you of God's mercy?" She handed him a book. "If
+you repent of your folly, read the first four lines in the seventh page
+backwards." She vanished.</p>
+
+<p>A fearful struggle raged in the monk's spirit. What hope had he in any
+case of escaping eternal torment? And yet--was not the Almighty's mercy
+infinite? Then the thought of the stake and the flames entered his mind and
+appalled him.</p>
+
+<p>At last the fatal hour came. The steps of his gaolers were heard in the
+passage. In uttermost terror he opened the book and ran over the lines, and
+straightway the fiend appeared--not seraph-like as when he appeared
+formerly, but dark, hideous, and gigantic, with hissing snakes coiling
+around his brows.</p>
+
+<p>He placed a parchment before Ambrosio.</p>
+
+<p>"Bear me hence!" cried the monk.</p>
+
+<p>"Will you be mine, body and soul?" said the demon. "Resolve while there
+is time!"</p>
+
+<p>"I must!"</p>
+
+<p>"Sign, then!" Lucifer thrust a pen into the flesh of Ambrosio's arm, and
+the monk signed. A moment later he was carried through the roof of the
+dungeon into mid-air.</p>
+
+<p>The demon bore him with arrow-like speed to the brink of a precipice in
+the Sierra Morena.</p>
+
+<p>"Carry me to Matilda!" gasped the monk.</p>
+
+<p>"Wretch!" answered Lucifer. "For what did you stipulate but rescue from
+the Inquisition? Learn that when you signed, the steps in the corridor were
+the steps of those who were bringing you a pardon. But now you are mine
+beyond reprieve, to all eternity, and alive you quit not these
+mountains."</p>
+
+<p>Darting his talons into the monk's shaven crown, he sprang with him from
+the rock. From a dreadful height he flung him headlong, and the torrent
+bore away with it the shattered corpse of Ambrosio.</p>
+
+<hr />
+
+
+
+
+<h2><a name="ELIZA_LYNN_LINTON"></a>ELIZA LYNN LINTON</h2>
+
+
+<h3><a name="Joshua_Davidson"></a>Joshua Davidson</h3>
+
+
+<blockquote> Mrs. Lynn Linton, daughter of a vicar of Crosthwaite, was born
+at Keswick, England, Feb. 10, 1822. At the age of three-and-twenty she
+embarked on a literary career, and as a journalist, magazine contributor,
+and novelist wrote vigorously for over fifty years. Before her marriage, in
+1858, to W.J. Linton, the eminent wood-engraver, who was also a poet, she
+had served on the staff of the "Morning Chronicle," as Paris correspondent.
+Later, she contributed to "All the Year Round," and to the "Saturday
+Review." After nine years of married life, the Lintons parted amicably. In
+1872 Mrs. Lynn Linton published "The True History of Joshua Davidson," a
+powerfully simple story that has had much influence on working-class
+thought. "Christopher Kirkland," a later story, is largely
+autobiographical. Mrs. Linton died in London on July 14, 1898. She was a
+trenchant critic of what she regarded as tendencies towards degeneration in
+modern women. </blockquote>
+
+
+<h4><i>I.--A Cornish Christ</i></h4>
+
+
+<p>Joshua Davidson was the only son of a village carpenter, born in the
+small hamlet of Trevalga, on the North Cornwall coast, in the year 1835.
+There was nothing very remarkable about Joshua's childhood. He was always a
+quiet, thoughtful boy, and from his earliest years noticeably pious. He had
+a habit of asking why, and of reasoning out a principle, from quite a
+little lad, which displeased people, so that he did not get all the credit
+from the schoolmaster and the clergyman to which his diligence and good
+conduct entitled him.</p>
+
+<p>He was never well looked on by the vicar since a famous scene that took
+place in the church one Sunday. After catechism was over, Joshua stood out
+before the rest, just in his rough country clothes as he was, and said very
+respectfully to the vicar, "Mr. Grand, if you please I would like to ask
+you a few questions."</p>
+
+<p>"Certainly, my lad. What have you to say?" said Mr. Grand rather
+shortly.</p>
+
+<p>"If we say, sir, that Jesus Christ was God," said Joshua, "surely all
+that He said and did must be real right? There cannot be a better way than
+His?"</p>
+
+<p>"Surely not, my lad," Mr. Grand made answer.</p>
+
+<p>"And His apostles and disciples, they showed the way, too?" said
+Joshua.</p>
+
+<p>"And they showed the way, too, as you say; and if you come up to half
+they taught you'll do well, Joshua."</p>
+
+<p>The vicar laughed a little laugh as he said this, but it was a laugh,
+Joshua's mother said, that seemed to mean the same thing as a "scat"--our
+Cornish word for a blow--only the boy didn't seem to see it.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes; but, sir, if we are Christians, why don't we live as Christians?"
+said Joshua.</p>
+
+<p>"Ah, indeed, why don't we?" said Mr. Grand. "Because of the wickedness
+of the human heart; because of the world, the flesh, and the devil."</p>
+
+<p>"Then, sir, if you feel this, why don't you and all the clergy live like
+the apostles, and give what you have to the poor?" cried Joshua, clasping
+his hands and making a step forward, the tears in his eyes.</p>
+
+<p>"Why do you live in a fine house, and have grand dinners, and let Peggy
+Bray nearly starve in that old mud hut of hers, and Widow Tregellis there,
+with her six children, and no fire or clothing for them? I can't make it
+out, sir!"</p>
+
+<p>"Who has been putting these bad thoughts into your head?" said Mr. Grand
+sternly.</p>
+
+<p>"No one, sir. I have been thinking for myself. Michael, out by Lion's
+Den, is called an infidel--he calls himself one. And you preached last
+Sunday that no infidel can be saved. But Michael helped Peggy and her child
+when the orphan fund people took away her pension; and he worked early and
+late for Widow Tregellis and her children, and shared with them all he had,
+going short for them many a time. And I can't help thinking, sir, that
+Christ would have helped Peggy, and that Michael, being an infidel and such
+a good man, is something like that second son in the parable who said he
+would not do his Lord's will when he was ordered, but who went all the
+same------"</p>
+
+<p>"And that your vicar is like the first?" interrupted Mr. Grand
+angrily.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, yes, sir, if you please," said Joshua quite modestly, but very
+fervently.</p>
+
+<p>There was a stir among the ladies and gentlemen when Joshua said this;
+and some laughed a little, under their breath, and others lifted up their
+eyebrows and said, "What an extraordinary boy!" But Mr. Grand was very
+angry, and said, in a severe tone, "These things are beyond the knowledge
+of an ignorant lad like you, Joshua. I consider you have done a very
+impertinent thing to-day, and I shall mark you for it!"</p>
+
+<p>"I meant no harm. I meant only the truth and to hear the things of God,"
+repeated Joshua sadly, as he took his seat among his companions, who
+tittered.</p>
+
+<p>And so Joshua was not well looked on by the clergyman, who was his
+enemy, as one may say, ever after.</p>
+
+<p>"Mother," said Joshua, "I mean, when I grow up, to live as our Lord and
+Saviour lived when He was on the earth."</p>
+
+<p>"He is our example, lad," said his mother. "But I doubt lest you fall by
+over-boldness."</p>
+
+
+<h4><i>II.--Faith That Moveth Mountains</i></h4>
+
+
+<p>Joshua did not leave home early. He wrought at his father's bench, and
+was content to bide with his people. But his spirit was not dead if his
+life was uneventful. He gathered about him a few youths of his own age, and
+held with them prayer-meetings and Bible readings, either at home in his
+father's house, or in the fields when the throng was too great for the
+cottage.</p>
+
+<p>No one ever knew Joshua tell the shadow of a lie, or go back from his
+word, or play at pretence. And he had such an odd way of coming right home
+to us. He seemed to have felt all that we felt, and to have thought all our
+thoughts.</p>
+
+<p>The youths that Joshua got together as his friends were as
+well-conditioned a set of lads as you would wish to see--sober,
+industrious, chaste. Their aim was to be thorough and like Christ. Joshua's
+great hope was to bring back the world to the simplicity and broad humanity
+of Christ's acted life, and he could not understand how it had been let
+drop.</p>
+
+<p>He was but a young man at this time, remember--enthusiastic, with little
+or no scientific knowledge, and putting the direct interposition of God
+above the natural law. Wherefore, he accepted the text about faith removing
+mountains as literally true. And one evening he went down into the Rocky
+Valley, earnest to try conclusions with God's promise, and sure of proving
+it true.</p>
+
+<p>He prayed to God to grant us this manifestation--to redeem His promise.
+Not a shadow of doubt chilled or slacked him. As he stood there in the
+softening twilight, with his arms raised above his head and his face turned
+up to the sky, his countenance glowed as Moses' of old. He seemed inspired,
+transported beyond himself, beyond humanity.</p>
+
+<p>He commanded the stone to move in God's name, and because Christ had
+promised. But the rock stood still, and a stonechat went and perched on
+it.</p>
+
+<p>Another time he took up a viper in his hand, quoting the passage, "They
+shall take up serpents." But the beast stung him, and he was ill for days
+after.</p>
+
+<p>"Take my advice," said the doctor. "Put all these thoughts out of your
+head. Get some work to do in a new part of the country, fall in love with
+some nice girl, and marry as soon as you can make a home for her. That's
+the only life for you, depend upon it."</p>
+
+<p>"God has given me other thoughts," said Joshua, "and I must obey
+them."</p>
+
+<p>The doctor said afterwards that he was quite touched at the lad's
+sweetness and wrong-headedness combined.</p>
+
+<p>The failure of these trials of faith perplexed us all, and profoundly
+afflicted Joshua. "Friends," he said at last, "it seems to me--indeed, I
+think we must all see it now--that His Word is not to be accepted
+literally. The laws of nature are supreme, and even faith cannot change
+them. Can it be," he then said solemnly, "that much of the Word is a
+parable--that Christ was truly, as He says of Himself, the corner-stone,
+but not the whole building--and that we have to carry on the work in His
+spirit, but in our own way, and not merely to try and repeat His acts?"</p>
+
+<p>It was after this that we noticed a certain restlessness in Joshua. But
+in time he had an offer to go up to London to follow his trade at a large
+house in the City, and got me a job as well, that I might be alongside of
+him. For we were like brothers. A few days before he went, Joshua happened
+to be coming out of his father's workshop just as Mr. Grand was passing,
+driving the neat pair-horse phaeton he had lately bought.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, Joshua, and how are you doing? And why have you not been to
+church lately?" said the parson, pulling up.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, sir," said Joshua, "I don't go to church, you know."</p>
+
+<p>"A new light on your own account, hey?" and he laughed as if he mocked
+him.</p>
+
+<p>"No, sir; only a seeker."</p>
+
+<p>"The old path's not good enough for you?"</p>
+
+<p>"I must answer for my conscience to God, sir," said Joshua.</p>
+
+<p>"And your clergyman, appointed by God and the state to be your guide,
+what of him? Has he no authority in his own parish?"</p>
+
+<p>"Look here, sir," said Joshua, quite respectfully; "I deny your
+appointment as a God-given leader of souls. The Church is but the old
+priesthood as it existed in the days of our Lord. I see no sacrifice of the
+world, no brotherhood with the poor----"</p>
+
+<p>"The poor!" interrupted Mr. Grand disdainfully. "What would you have,
+you young fool? The poor have the laws of their country to protect them,
+and the Gospel preached to them for their salvation."</p>
+
+<p>"Why, sir, the poor of our day are the lepers of Christ's, and who among
+you Christian priests consorts with them? Who ranks the man above his
+station, or the soul above the man?"</p>
+
+<p>"Now we have come to it!" cried Mr. Grand. "I thought I should touch the
+secret spring at last! And you would like us to associate with you as
+equals--is that it, Joshua? Gentlemen and common men hob-and-nob together,
+and no distinctions made? You to ride in our carriages, and perhaps marry
+our daughters?"</p>
+
+<p>"That's just it, sir. You are gentlemen, as you say, but not the
+followers of Christ. If you were, you would have no carriages to ride in,
+and your daughters would be what Martha and Mary and Lydia and Dorcas were,
+and their title to ladyhood founded on their degrees of goodness."</p>
+
+<p>"Shall I tell you what would be the very thing for you," said Mr. Grand,
+quite quietly.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, sir; what?" asked Joshua eagerly.</p>
+
+<p>"This whip across your shoulders! And, by George, if I were not a
+clergyman, I would lay it there with a will!" cried the parson.</p>
+
+<p>No one had ever seen Joshua angry since he had grown up. His temper was
+proverbially sweet, and his self-control was a marvel. But this time he
+lost both.</p>
+
+<p>"God shall smite thee, thou white wall!" he cried with vehemence. "You
+are the gentleman, sir, and I am only a poor carpenter's son; but I spurn
+you with a deeper and more solemn scorn than you have spurned me!"</p>
+
+<p>He lifted his hand as he said this, with a strange and passionate
+gesture, then turned himself about and went in, and Mr. Grand drove off
+more his ill-wisher than before. He also made old Davidson, Joshua's
+father, suffer for his son, for he took away his custom from him, and did
+him what harm in the neighbourhood a gentleman's ill word can do a working
+man.</p>
+
+
+<h4><i>III.--Is Christ's Way Livable?</i></h4>
+
+
+<p>In London a new view of life opened to Joshua. The first thing that
+struck him in our workshop was the avowed infidelity of the workmen.
+Distrust had penetrated to their inmost souls. Christianity represents to
+the poor, not Christ tender to the sinful, visiting the leprous, the
+brother of publicans, at Whose feet sat the harlots and were comforted, but
+the gentleman taking sides with God against the poor and oppressed, an
+elder brother in the courts of heaven kicking the younger out of doors.</p>
+
+<p>At this time Joshua's mind was like an unpiloted vessel. He was beset
+with doubts, in which the only thing that kept its shape or place was the
+character of Christ. For the rest, everything had failed him. During this
+time he did not neglect what I suppose may be called the secular life. He
+attended all such science classes as he had time for, and being naturally
+quick in study, he picked up a vast deal of knowledge in a very short time;
+he interested himself in politics, in current social questions, specially
+those relating to labour and capital, and in the condition of the poor.</p>
+
+<p>So his time passed, till at last one evening, "Friends," he said, "I
+have at last cleared my mind and come to a belief. I have proved to myself
+the sole meaning of Christ: it is humanity. The modern Christ would be a
+politician. His aim would be to raise the whole platform of society. He
+would work at the destruction of caste, which is the vice at the root of
+all our creeds and institutions. He would accept the truths of science, and
+He would teach that a man saves his own soul best by helping his neighbour.
+Friends, the doctrine I have chosen for myself is Christian Communism, and
+my aim will be, the life after Christ in the service of humanity."</p>
+
+<p>It was this which made him begin his "night school," where he got
+together all who would come, and tried to interest them in a few homely
+truths in the way of cleanliness, health, good cooking, and the like, with
+interludes, so to speak, of lessons in morality.</p>
+
+<p>We lodged in a stifling court, Church Court, where every room was filled
+as if cubic inches were gold, as indeed they are to London house-owners, if
+human life is but dross. Opposite us lived Mary Prinsep, who was what the
+world calls lost--a bad girl--a castaway--but I have reason to speak well
+of her, for to her we owe the life of Joshua. Joshua fell ill in our
+wretched lodgings, where we lived and did for ourselves, and I was obliged
+to leave him for twelve hours and more at a stretch; but Mary Prinsep came
+over and nursed him, and kept him alive. We helped her all we could, and
+she helped us. This got us the name of associating with bad women.</p>
+
+<p>Among the rest of the doubtful characters with which our court abounded
+was one Joe Traill, who had been in prison many a time for petty larceny
+and the like. He was one of those who stink in the nostrils of cleanly,
+civilised society, and who are its shame and secret sore. There was no
+place for Joe in this great world of ours. He said to Joshua one night in
+his blithe way that there was nothing for him but to make a running fight
+for it, now up, now down, as his luck went.</p>
+
+<p>"Burglary's a bad trade," said Joshua.</p>
+
+<p>"Only one I've got at my fingers' ends, governor," laughed the thief;
+"and starvation is a worse go than quod."</p>
+
+<p>"Well, till you've learned a better, share with us," said Joshua. So now
+we had a reformed burglar and a reformed prostitute in our little
+circle.</p>
+
+<p>"It is what Christ would have done," said Joshua, when he was
+remonstrated with.</p>
+
+<p>But the police did not see it. Wherefore, "from information received,"
+Joshua and I were called up before the master, and had our dismissal from
+the shop, and we found ourselves penniless in the wilds of London. But
+Joshua was undisturbed. He told both Joe and Mary that he would not forsake
+them, come what might.</p>
+
+<p>It was a hard time, and, bit by bit, everything we possessed passed over
+the pawnbroker's counter, even to our tools. But when we were at the worst
+Joshua received a letter enclosing a five-pound note, "from a friend." We
+never knew where it came from, and there was no clue by which we could
+guess. Immediately after both Joshua and I got a job, and Joe and Mary
+still bided with us.</p>
+
+<p>Joshua's life of work and endeavour brought with it no reward of praise
+or popularity. It suffered the fate of all unsectarianism, and made him to
+be as one man in the midst of foes. He soon began to see that the utmost he
+could do was only palliative and temporary. So he turned to class
+organisation as something more hopeful than private charity. When the
+International Workingmen's Association was formed, he joined it as one of
+its first members; indeed, he mainly helped to establish it. And though he
+never got the ear of the International, because he was so truly liberal, he
+had some little influence, and what influence he had ennobled their
+councils as they have never been ennobled since.</p>
+
+<p>One evening Joe Traill, who had been given a situation, came into the
+night school staggering drunk, and made a commotion, and though Joshua
+quieted him, after being struck by him, the police, attracted by the
+tumult, came up into the room and marched Joshua and myself off to the
+police station, where we were locked up for the night. As we had to be
+punished, reason or none, we were both sent to prison for a couple of weeks
+next morning.</p>
+
+<p>Well, Christ was the criminal of his day!</p>
+
+<p>Such backslidings and failures at that of Joe Traill were among the
+greatest difficulties of Joshua's work. Men and women whom he had thought
+he had cleansed and set on a wholesome way of living, turned back again to
+the drink and the deviltry of their lives, and the various sectarians who
+came along all agreed that the cause of his failures was--Joshua was not a
+Christian!</p>
+
+<p>Next a spasmodic philanthropist, Lord X., struck up a friendship with
+Joshua, who, he said, wanted, as a background, a man of position. This led
+to Joshua's first introduction into a wealthy house of the upper classes,
+and the luxury and lavishness almost stupefied him. Lady X. liked Joshua,
+and felt he was a master-spirit, but when she came to Church Court, and
+found out what Mary had been, she went away offended, and we saw her no
+more.</p>
+
+
+<h4><i>IV.--The Pathway of Martyrdom</i></h4>
+
+
+<p>Sometimes Joshua went as a lecturer to various towns, for his political
+associates were willing to use his political zeal, though they did not go
+in for his religious views. He insisted on the need of the working classes
+raising themselves to a higher level in mind and circumstance, and on the
+right of each man to a fair share of the primary essentials for good
+living. His discourses roused immense antagonism, and he was sometimes set
+upon and severely handled by the men to whom he spoke. I have known
+swindlers and murderers more gently entreated. When, after the war between
+France and Prussia the Commune declared itself in Paris, Joshua went over
+to help, as far as he could, in the cause of humanity. I went with him, and
+poor, loving, faithful Mary followed us. But there, notwithstanding all
+that we and others of like mind could do, blood was shed which covered
+liberty with shame, and in the confusion that followed Mary was shot as a
+p&eacute;troleuse while she was succouring the wounded. We buried her
+tenderly, and I laid part of my life in her grave.</p>
+
+<p>On our return Joshua was regarded as the representative of social
+destruction and godless licence, for the very name of the Commune was a red
+rag to English thought.</p>
+
+<p>At last we came to a place called Lowbridge, where Joshua was announced
+to lecture on Communism in the town hall. Grave as he always was, that
+night he was grave to sadness, like a martyr going to his death. He shook
+hands with me before going on the platform, and said, "God bless you, John;
+you have been a true friend to me."</p>
+
+<p>In the first row in front of him was the former clergyman of Trevalga,
+Mr. Grand, who had lately been given the rich living of Lowbridge and one
+or two stately cathedral appointments. At the first word Joshua spoke there
+broke out such a tumult as I had never heard in any public meeting. The
+yells, hisses, cat-calls, whoopings, were indescribable. It only ceased
+when Mr. Grand rose, and standing on a chair, appealed to the audience to
+"Give him your minds, my men, and let him understand that Lowbridge is no
+place for a godless rascal like him."</p>
+
+<p>I will do Mr. Grand the justice to say I do not think he intended his
+words to have the effect they did have. A dozen men leaped on the platform,
+and in a moment I saw Joshua under their feet. They had it all their own
+way, and while he lay on the ground, pale and senseless, one, with a
+fearful oath, kicked him twice on the head. Suddenly a whisper went round,
+they all drew a little, way off, the gas was turned down, and the place
+cleared as if by magic. When the lights were up again, I went to lift
+him--and he was dead.</p>
+
+<p>The man who had lived the life after Christ more exactly than any human
+being ever known to me was killed by the Christian party of order. So the
+world has ever disowned its best when they came.</p>
+
+<p>The death of my friend has left me not only desolate but uncertain. Like
+Joshua in earlier days, my mind is unpiloted and unanchored. Everywhere I
+see the sifting of competition, and nowhere Christian protection of
+weakness; everywhere dogma adored, and nowhere Christ realised. And again I
+ask, Which is true--modern society in its class strife and consequent
+elimination of its weaker elements, or the brotherhood and communism taught
+by the Jewish Carpenter of Nazareth? Who will answer me? Who will make the
+dark thing clear?</p>
+
+<hr />
+
+
+
+
+<h2><a name="SAMUEL_LOVER"></a>SAMUEL LOVER</h2>
+
+
+<h3><a name="Handy_Andy"></a>Handy Andy</h3>
+
+
+<blockquote> Samuel Lover, born at Dublin on February 24, 1797, was the
+most versatile man of his age. He was a song-writer, a novelist, a painter,
+a dramatist, and an entertainer; and in each of these parts he was
+remarkably successful. In 1835 he came to London, and set up as a miniature
+painter; then he turned to literature, and in "Rory O'More," published in
+1837, and "Handy Andy, a Tale of Irish Life," which appeared in 1842, he
+took the town. Lover was a typical Irishman of the old
+school--high-spirited, witty, and jovially humorous; and his work is
+informed with a genuine Irish raciness that gives it a perennial freshness.
+He is a man gaily in love with life, and with a quick eye for all the
+varied humours of it. "Handy Andy" is one of the most amusing books ever
+written; a roaring farce, written by a man who combined the liveliest sense
+of fun with a painter's gift of portraying real character in a few vivid
+touches. Samuel Lover died on July 6, 1868. </blockquote>
+
+
+<h4><i>I.--The Squire Gets a Surprise</i></h4>
+
+
+<p>Andy Rooney was a fellow with a most ingenious knack of doing everything
+the wrong way. "Handy" Andy was the nickname the neighbours stuck on him,
+and the poor simple-minded lad liked the jeering jingle. Even Mrs. Rooney,
+who thought that her boy was "the sweetest craythur the cun shines on,"
+preferred to hear him called "Handy Andy" rather than "Suds."</p>
+
+<p>For sad memories attached to the latter nickname. Knowing what a hard
+life Mrs. Rooney had had--she had married a stranger, who disappeared a
+month after marriage, so Andy came into the world with no father to beat a
+little sense into him--Squire Egan of Merryvale engaged the boy as a
+servant. One of the first things that Andy was called upon to do was to
+wait at table during an important political dinner given by the squire.
+Andy was told to ice the champagne, and the wine and a tub of ice were
+given to him.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, this is the quarest thing I ever heered of," said Andy. "Musha!
+What outlandish inventions the quality has among them! They're not content
+with wine, but they must have ice along with it--and in a tub, too, like
+pigs! Troth, its a' dirty thrick, I think. But here goes!" said he; and
+opening a bottle of champagne, he poured it into the tub with the ice.</p>
+
+<p>Andy distinguished himself right at the beginning of the dinner. One of
+the guests asked him for soda-water.</p>
+
+<p>"Would you like it hot or cold, sir?" he said.</p>
+
+<p>"Never mind," replied the guest, with a laugh. But Andy was anxious to
+please, and the squire's butler met him hurrying to the kitchen,
+bewildered, but still resolute.</p>
+
+<p>"One of the gintlemen wants some soap and wather with his wine,"
+exclaimed Andy. "Shall I give it hot or cold?"</p>
+
+<p>The distracted and irate butler took Andy to the sideboard and pushed a
+small soda into his hand, saying, "Cut the cord, you fool!" Andy took it
+gingerly, and holding it over the table, carried out the order. Bang I went
+the bottle, and the cork, after knocking out two of the lights, struck the
+squire in the eye, while the hostess had a cold bath down her back. Poor
+Andy, frightened by the soda-water jumping out of the bottle, kept holding
+it out at arm's-length, exclaiming at every fizz, "Ow, ow, ow!"</p>
+
+<p>"Send that fellow out of the room," said the squire to the butler, "and
+bring in the champagne."</p>
+
+<p>In staggered Andy with the tub.</p>
+
+<p>"Hand it round the table," said the squire.</p>
+
+<p>Andy tried to lift up the tub "to hand it round the table," but finding
+he could not, he whispered, "I can't get it up, sir!"</p>
+
+<p>"Draw it then," murmured his master, thinking that Andy meant he had got
+a bottle which was not effervescent enough to expel its own cork.</p>
+
+<p>"Here it is," said Andy, pulling the tub up to the squire's chair.</p>
+
+<p>"What do you mean, you stupid rascal?" exclaimed the squire, staring at
+the strange stuff before him. "There's not a single bottle there!"</p>
+
+<p>"To be sure there's no bottle there, sir," said Andy. "I've poured every
+dhrop of wine in the ice, as you towld me, sir. If you put your hand down
+into it, you'll feel it."</p>
+
+<p>A wild roar of laughter uprose from the listening guests. Happily they
+were now too merry to be upset by the mishap, and it was generally voted
+that the joke was worth twice as much as the wine. Handy Andy was, however,
+expelled from the dining-room in disgrace, and for days kept out of his
+master's way, and the servants for months would call him by no other name
+but "Suds."</p>
+
+
+<h4><i>II.--O'Grady Gets a Blister</i></h4>
+
+
+<p>Mr. Egan was a kind-hearted man, and, instead of dismissing Andy, he
+kept him on for out-door work. Our hero at once distinguished himself in
+his new walk of life.</p>
+
+<p>"Ride into the town and see if there is a letter for me," said the
+squire.</p>
+
+<p>"I want a letther, if you plaze!" shouted Andy, rushing into the
+post-office.</p>
+
+<p>"Who do you want it for?" asked the postmaster.</p>
+
+<p>"What consarn is that o' yours?" exclaimed Andy.</p>
+
+<p>Happily, a man who knew Andy looked in for a letter, paid the postage of
+fourpence on it, and then settled the dispute between Andy and the
+postmaster by mentioning Mr. Egan's name.</p>
+
+<p>"Why didn't you tell me you came from the squire?" said the postmaster.
+"Here's a letter for him. Elevenpence postage."</p>
+
+<p>"Elevenpence postage!" Andy cried. "Didn't I see you give that man a
+letther for fourpence, and a bigger letther than this? Do you think I'm a
+fool?"</p>
+
+<p>"No," said the postmaster; "I'm sure of it."</p>
+
+<p>He walked off to serve another customer, and Andy meditated. His master
+wanted the letter badly, so he would have to pay the exorbitant price. He
+snatched two other letters from the heap on the counter while the
+postmaster's back was turned, paid the elevenpence, received the epistle to
+which he was entitled, and rode home triumphant.</p>
+
+<p>"Look at that!" he exclaimed, slapping the three letters down under his
+broad fist on the table before the astonished squire. "He made me pay
+elevenpence, by gor! But I've brought your honour the worth of your money,
+anyhow."</p>
+
+<p>"Well, by the powers!" said the squire, as Andy stalked out of the room
+with an air of supreme triumph. "That's the most extraordinary genius I
+ever came across!"</p>
+
+<p>He read the letter for which he had been anxiously waiting. It was from
+his lawyer about the forthcoming election. In it he was warned to beware of
+his friend O'Grady, who was selling his interest to the government
+candidate.</p>
+
+<p>"So that's the work O'Grady's at!" exclaimed the squire angrily. "Foul,
+foul! And after all the money I lent him, too!"</p>
+
+<p>He threw down the letter, and his eye caught the other two that Andy had
+stolen.</p>
+
+<p>"More of that mad fool's work! Robbing the mail now. That's a hanging
+job. I'd better send them to the parties to whom they're addressed."</p>
+
+<p>Picking up one of the epistles, he found it was a government letter
+directed to his new enemy, O'Grady. "All's fair in war," thought the
+squire, and pinching the letter until it gaped, he peeped in and read: "As
+you very properly remark, poor Egan is a spoon--a mere spoon." "Am I a
+spoon, your villain!" roared the squire, tearing the letter and throwing it
+into the fire. "I'm a spoon you'll sup sorrow with yet!"</p>
+
+<p>"Get out a writ on O'Grady for all the money he owes me," he wrote to
+his lawyer. "Send me the blister, and I'll slap it on him."</p>
+
+<p>Unfortunately, he sent Andy with this letter; still more unfortunately,
+Mrs. Egan also gave the simple fellow a prescription to be made up at the
+chemist's. Andy surpassed himself on this occasion. He called at the
+chemist's on his way back from the lawyer's, and carefully laid the sealed
+envelope containing the writ on the counter, while he was getting the
+medicine. On leaving, he took up a different envelope.</p>
+
+<p>"My dear Squire," ran the letter Andy brought back, "I send you the
+blister for O'Grady, as you insist on it; but I don't think you will find
+it easy to serve him with it.--Your obedient, MURTOUGH MURPHY."</p>
+
+<p>When the squire opened the accompanying envelope, and found within a
+real instead of a figurative blister, he grew crimson with rage. But he was
+consoled when he went to horsewhip his attorney, and met the chemist
+pelting down the street with O'Grady tearing after him with a cudgel. For
+some years O'Grady had successfully kept out of his door every
+process-server sent by his innumerable creditors; but now, having got a
+cold, he had dispatched his man to the chemist for a blister, and owing to
+Handy Andy, he obtained Squire Egan's writ against him.</p>
+
+<p>"You've made a mistake this time, you rascal," said the squire to Andy,
+"for which I'll forgive you."</p>
+
+<p>And this was only fair, for through it he was able to carry the
+election, and become Edward Egan, Esq., M.P.</p>
+
+
+<h4><i>III.--Andy Gets Married</i></h4>
+
+
+<p>Andy was among the guests invited to the wedding feast of pretty Matty
+Dwyer and handsome young James Casey; like everybody else he came to the
+marriage full of curiosity. Matty's father, John Dwyer, was a hard,
+close-fisted fellow, and, as all the neighbours knew, there had been many
+fierce disputes between him and Casey over the question of a farm belonging
+to Dwyer going into the marriage settlement.</p>
+
+<p>A grand dinner was laid in the large barn, but it was kept waiting owing
+to the absence of the bridegroom. Father Phil, the kindly, jovial parish
+priest, who had come to help James and Matty "tie with their tongues the
+knot they couldn't undo with their teeth," had not broken his fast that
+day, and wanted the feast to go on. To the great surprise of the company,
+Matty backed him, and full of life and spirits, began to lay the dinner.
+For some time the hungry guests were busy with the good cheer provided for
+them, but the women at last asked in loud whispers, "Where in the world is
+James Casey?" Still the bride kept up her smiles, but old Jack Dwyer's face
+grew blacker and blacker. Unable to bear the strain any longer, he stood up
+and addressed the expectant crowd.</p>
+
+<p>"You see the disgrace that's put on me!"</p>
+
+<p>"He'll come yet, sir," said Andy.</p>
+
+<p>"No, he won't!" cried Dwyer, "I see he won't. He wanted to get
+everything his own way, and he thinks to disgrace me in doing what he
+likes, but he shan't;" and he struck the table fiercely. "He goes back of
+his bargain now, thinkin' I'll give in to him; but I won't. Friends and
+neighbours, here's the lease of the three-cornered field below there and a
+snug little cottage, and it's ready for my girl to walk in with the man
+that will have her! If there's a man among you here that's willing, let him
+say the word, and I'll give her to him!"</p>
+
+<p>Matty tried to protest, but her father silenced her with a terrible
+look. When old Dwyer's blood was up, he was capable of murder. No guest
+dared to speak.</p>
+
+<p>"Are yiz all dumb?" shouted Dwyer. "It's not every day a farm and a fine
+girl falls in a man's way."</p>
+
+<p>Still no one spoke, and Andy thought they were using Dwyer and his
+daughter badly.</p>
+
+<p>"Would I do, sir?" he timidly said.</p>
+
+<p>Andy was just the last man Dwyer would have chosen, but he was
+determined that someone should marry the girl, and show Casey "the disgrace
+should not be put on him." He called up Andy and Matty, and asked the
+priest to marry them.</p>
+
+<p>"I can't, if your daughter objects," said Father Phil.</p>
+
+<p>Dwyer turned on the girl, and there was the devil in his eye.</p>
+
+<p>"I'll marry him," said Matty.</p>
+
+<p>So the rites and blessings of the Church were dispensed between two
+persons who an hour before had never given a thought to each other. Yet it
+was wonderful with what lightness of heart Matty went through the honours
+consequent on a peasant bridal in Ireland. She gaily led off the dance with
+Andy, and the night was far spent before the bride and bridegroom were
+escorted to the cottage which was to be their home.</p>
+
+<p>Matty sat quiet, looking at the fire, while Andy bolted the door; but
+when he tried to kiss her she leaped up furiously.</p>
+
+<p>"I'll crack your silly head if you don't behave yourself," she cried,
+seizing a stool and brandishing it above him.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, wirra, wirra!" said Andy. "Aren't you my wife? Why did you marry
+me?"</p>
+
+<p>"Did I want owld Jack Dwyer to murther me as soon as the people's backs
+was turned?" said Matty. "But though I'm afraid of him, I'm not afraid of
+you!"</p>
+
+<p>"Och!" cried poor Andy, "what'll be the end of it?"</p>
+
+<p>There was a tap at the door as he spoke, and Matty ran and opened
+it.</p>
+
+<p>In came James Casey and half a dozen strong young fellows. Behind them
+crept a reprobate, degraded priest who got his living and his name of
+"Couple-Beggar" by performing irregular marriages. The end of it was that
+Matty was married over again to Casey, whom she had sent for while the
+dancing was going on. Poor Andy, bound hand and foot, was carried out of
+the cottage to a lonely by-way, and there he passed his wedding-night roped
+to the stump of an old tree.</p>
+
+
+<h4><i>IV.--Andy Gets Married Again</i></h4>
+
+
+<p>Misfortunes now accumulated on Andy's head. At break of day he was
+released from the tree-stump by Squire Egan, who was riding by with some
+bad news for the man he thought was now a happy bridegroom. Owing to an
+indiscreet word dropped by our simple-minded hero, a gang of smugglers, who
+ran an illicit still on the moors, had gathered something about Andy
+stealing the letters from the post-office and Squire Egan burning them.
+They had already begun to blackmail the squire, and in order to defeat them
+it was necessary to get Andy out of the country for some time. So nothing
+could be done against Casey.</p>
+
+<p>And, on going home to prepare for a journey to England with a friend of
+the squire's, Andy found his mother in a sad state of anxiety. His pretty
+cousin, Oonah, was crying in a corner of the room, and Ragged Nance, an
+unkempt beggar-woman, to whom the Rooneys had done many a good turn, was
+screaming, "I tell you Shan More means to carry off Oonah to-night. I heard
+them laying the plan for it."</p>
+
+<p>"We'll go to the squire," sobbed Mrs. Rooney. "The villain durst
+not!"</p>
+
+<p>"He's got the squire under his thumb, I tell you," replied Ragged Nance.
+"You must look after yourselves. I've got it," she said, turning to Andy.
+"We'll dress him as a girl, and let the smugglers take him."</p>
+
+<p>Andy roared with laughter at the notion of being made a girl of. Though
+Shan More was the blackguardly leader of the smugglers who were giving the
+squire trouble, Andy was too taken up with the fun of being transformed
+into the very rough likeness of a pleasing young woman to think of the
+danger. It was difficult to give his angular form the necessary roundness
+of outline; but Ragged Nance at last padded him out with straw, and tied a
+bonnet on his head to shade his face, saying, "That'll deceive them. Shan
+More won't come himself. He'll send some of his men, and they're all dhrunk
+already."</p>
+
+<p>"But they'll murdher my boy when they find out the chate," said Mrs.
+Rooney.</p>
+
+<p>"Suppose they did," exclaimed Andy stoutly; "I'd rather die, sure, than
+the disgrace should fall upon Oonah there."</p>
+
+<p>"God bless you, Andy dear!" said Oonah.</p>
+
+<p>The tramp of approaching horses rang through the stillness of the night,
+and Oonah and Nance ran out and crouched in the potato tops in the garden.
+Four drunken vagabonds broke into the cottage, and, seeing Andy in the dim
+light clinging to his mother, they dragged him away and lifted him on a
+horse, and galloped off with him.</p>
+
+<p>As it happened, luck favoured Andy. When he came to the smugglers' den,
+Shan More was lying on the ground stunned, and his sister, Red Bridget, was
+tending him; in going up the ladder from the underground whisky-still, he
+had fallen backward. The upshot was that Andy was left in charge of Red
+Bridget. But, alas! just as he was hoping to escape, she penetrated through
+his disguise. More unfortunately still, Andy was, with all his faults, a
+rather good-looking young fellow, and Red Bridget took a fancy to him, and
+the "Couple-Beggar" was waiting for a job.</p>
+
+<p>Smugglers' whisky is very strong, and Bridget artfully plied him with
+it. Andy was still rather dazed when he reached home next morning.</p>
+
+<p>"I've married again," he said to his mother.</p>
+
+<p>"Married?" interrupted Oonah, growing pale. "Who to?"</p>
+
+<p>"Shan More's sister," said Andy.</p>
+
+<p>"Wirasthru!" screamed Mrs. Rooney, tearing her cap off her head. "You
+got the worst woman in Ireland."</p>
+
+<p>"Then I'll go and 'list for a sojer," said he.</p>
+
+
+<h4><i>V.--Andy Gets Married a Third Time</i></h4>
+
+
+<p>It was Father Phil that brought the extraordinary news to Squire
+Egan.</p>
+
+<p>"Do you remember those two letters that Andy stole from the post-office,
+and that someone burnt?" he asked, with a smile.</p>
+
+<p>"I've been meaning to tell you, father, that one was for you," said the
+squire, looking very uncomfortable.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, Andy let it out long ago," said the kindly old priest. "But the
+joke is that by stealing my letter Andy nearly lost a title and a great
+fortune. Ever heard of Lord Scatterbrain? He died a little time ago,
+confessing in his will that it was he that married Mrs. Rooney, and
+deserted her."</p>
+
+<p>"So Handy Andy is now a lord!" exclaimed the squire, rocking with
+laughter.</p>
+
+<p>Andy took it like a true son of the wildest and most eccentric of Irish
+peers. On getting over the first shock of astonishment, he broke out into
+short peals of laughter, exclaiming at intervals, that "it was mighty
+quare." When, after much questioning, his wishes in regard to his new life
+were made clear, it was found that they all centred on one object, which
+was "to have a goold watch."</p>
+
+<p>The squire was perplexed what to do with a great nobleman of this sort,
+and at last he got a kinsman, Dick Dawson, who loved fun, to take Andy
+under his especial care to London. When they arrived there it was wonderful
+how many persons were eager to show civility to his new lordship, and he
+who as Handy Andy had been cried down all his life as a "stupid rascal," "a
+blundering thief," "a thick-headed brute," suddenly acquired, under the
+title of Lord Scatterbrain, a reputation for being "vastly amusing, a
+little eccentric, perhaps, but so droll."</p>
+
+<p>All this was very delightful for Andy--so delightful that he quite
+forgot Red Bridget. But Red Bridget did not forget him.</p>
+
+<p>"Lady Scatterbrain!" announced the servant one day; and in came Bridget
+and Shan More and an attorney.</p>
+
+<p>The attorney brought out a settlement in which an exorbitant sum was to
+be settled on Bridget, and Shan More, with a threatening air, ordered Andy
+to sign the deed.</p>
+
+<p>"I can't," cried Andy, retreating to the fire-place, "and I won't!"</p>
+
+<p>"You must sign your name!" roared Shan More.</p>
+
+<p>"I can't, I tell you!" yelled Andy, seizing the poker. "I've never
+larned to write."</p>
+
+<p>"Your lordship can make your mark," said the attorney.</p>
+
+<p>"I'll make my mark with this poker," cried Andy, "if you don't all clear
+out!"</p>
+
+<p>The noise of a frightful row brought Dick Dawson into the room, and he
+managed to get rid of the intruders by inducing the attorney to conduct the
+negotiations through Lord Scatterbrain's solicitors.</p>
+
+<p>But while the negotiations were going on, a fact came to light that
+altered the whole complexion of the matter, and Andy went post-haste over
+to Ireland to the fine house in which his mother and his cousin were
+living.</p>
+
+<p>Bursting into the drawing-room, he made a rush upon Oonah, whom he
+hugged and kissed most outrageously, with exclamations of the wildest
+affection.</p>
+
+<p>When Oonah freed herself from his embraces, and asked him what he was
+about, Andy turned over the chairs, threw the mantelpiece ornaments into
+the fire, and banged the poker and tongs together, shouting! "Hurroo! I'm
+not married at all!"</p>
+
+<p>It had been discovered that Red Bridget had a husband living when she
+forced Andy to marry her, and as soon as it was legally proved that Lord
+Scatterbrain was a free man, Father Phil was called in, and Oonah, who had
+all along loved her wild cousin, was made Lady Scatterbrain.</p>
+
+<hr />
+
+
+
+
+<h2><a name="EDWARD_BULWER_LYTTON"></a>EDWARD BULWER LYTTON</h2>
+
+
+<h3><a name="Eugene_Aram"></a>Eugene Aram</h3>
+
+
+<blockquote> Novelist, poet, essayist, and politician, Edward Bulwer Lytton
+was born in London on May 25, 1805. His father was General Earle Bulwer. He
+assumed his mother's family name on her death in 1843, and was elevated to
+the peerage as Baron Lytton in 1866. At seventeen Lytton published a volume
+entitled, "Ismael, and Other Poems." An unhappy marriage in 1827 was
+followed by extraordinary literary activity, and during the next ten years
+he produced twelve novels, two poems, a play, "England and the English,"
+and "Athens: Its Rise and Fall," besides an enormous number of shorter
+stories, essays, and articles for contemporary periodicals. Altogether his
+output is represented by nearly sixty volumes. Few books on their
+publication have created a greater furore than Lord Lytton's "Eugene Aram,"
+which was published in 1832. One section of the novel-reading public hailed
+its moving, dramatic story with manifest delight, while the other severely
+condemned it on the plea of its false morality. The story takes its title
+from that remarkable scholar and criminal, Eugene Aram, at one time a tutor
+in the Lytton family, who was executed at York in 1759, for a murder
+committed fourteen years before. The crime caused much consternation at the
+time, Aram's refined and mild disposition being apparently in direct
+contradiction to his real nature. The novel is an unusually successful,
+though perhaps one-sided psychological study. In a revised edition Lytton
+made the narrative agree with his own conclusion that, though an accomplice
+in robbery, Aram was not guilty of premeditated or actual murder. Edward
+Bulwer Lytton died on January 18, 1873. </blockquote>
+
+
+<h4><i>I.--At the Sign of the Spotted Dog</i></h4>
+
+
+<p>In the county of ---- was a sequestered hamlet, to which I shall give
+the name of Grassdale. It lay in a fruitful valley between gentle and
+fertile hills. Its single hostelry, the Spotted Dog, was owned by one Peter
+Dealtry, a small farmer, who was also clerk of the parish. On summer
+evenings Peter was frequently to be seen outside his inn discussing
+psalmody and other matters with Jacob Bunting, late a corporal in his
+majesty's army, a man who prided himself on his knowledge of the world, and
+found Peter's too easy fund of merriment occasionally irritating.</p>
+
+<p>On one such evening their discussion was interrupted by an
+unprepossessing and travel-stained stranger, who, when his wants, none too
+amiably expressed, had been attended to, exhibited a marked curiosity
+concerning the people of the locality. As the stranger paid for his welcome
+with a liberal hand, Peter became more than usually communicative.</p>
+
+<p>He described the lord of the manor, a distinguished nobleman who lived
+at the castle some six miles away. He talked of the squire and his
+household. "But," he continued, "the most noticeable man is a great
+scholar. There, yonder," said he, "you may just catch a glimpse of the tall
+what-d'ye-call-it he has built on the top of his house that he may get
+nearer to the stars."</p>
+
+<p>"The scholar, I suppose," observed the stranger, "is not very rich.
+Learning does not clothe men nowadays, eh, corporal?"</p>
+
+<p>"And why should it?" asked Bunting. "Zounds! can it teach a man how to
+defend his country? Old England wants soldiers. But the man's well enough,
+I must own--civil, modest----"</p>
+
+<p>"And by no means a beggar," added Peter. "He gave as much to the poor
+last winter as the squire himself. But if he were as rich as Lord----he
+could not be more respected. The greatest folk in the country come in their
+carriages-and-four to see him. There is not a man more talked on in the
+whole county than Eugene Aram----"</p>
+
+<p>"What!" cried the traveller, his countenance changing as he sprang from
+his seat. "What! Aram! Did you say <i>Aram</i>? Great heavens! How
+strange!"</p>
+
+<p>"What! You know him?" gasped the astonished landlord.</p>
+
+<p>Instead of replying, the stranger muttered inaudible words between his
+teeth. Now he strode two steps forward, clenching his hands. Now smiled
+grimly. Then he threw himself upon his seat, still in silence.</p>
+
+<p>"Rum tantrums!" ejaculated the corporal. "What the devil! Did the man
+eat your grandmother?"</p>
+
+<p>The stranger lifted his head, and addressing Peter, said, with a forced
+smile, "You have done me a great kindness, my friend. Eugene Aram was an
+early acquaintance of mine. We have not met for many years. I never guessed
+that he lived in these parts."</p>
+
+<p>And then, directed, in answer to his inquiries, to Aram's dwelling, a
+lonely grey house in the middle of a broad plain, the traveller went his
+way.</p>
+
+
+<h4><i>II.--The Squire's Guest</i></h4>
+
+
+<p>The man the stranger went to seek was one who perhaps might have
+numbered some five-and-thirty years, but at a hasty glance would have
+seemed considerably younger. His frame was tall, slender, but well-knit and
+fair proportioned; his cheek was pale, but with thought; his hair was long,
+and of a rich, deep brown; his brow was unfurrowed; his face was one that a
+physiognomist would have loved to look upon, so much did it speak of both
+the refinement and the dignity of intellect.</p>
+
+<p>Eugene Aram had been now about two years settled in his present retreat,
+with an elderly dame as housekeeper. From almost every college in Europe
+came visitors to his humble dwelling, and willingly he imparted to others
+any benefit derived from his lonely researches. But he proffered no
+hospitality, and shrank from all offers of friendship. Yet, unsocial as he
+was, everyone loved him. The peasant threw kindly pity into his respectful
+greeting. Even that terror of the village, Mother Darkmans, saved her
+bitterest gibes for others; and the village maiden, as she curtseyed by
+him, stole a glance at his handsome but melancholy countenance, and told
+her sweetheart she was certain the poor scholar had been crossed in
+love.</p>
+
+<p>At the manor house he was often the subject of remark, but only on the
+day of the stranger's appearance at the Spotted Dog had the squire found an
+opportunity of breaking through the scholar's habitual reserve, and so
+persuaded him to dine with him and his family on the day following.</p>
+
+<p>The squire, Rowland Lester, a man of cultivated tastes, was a widower,
+with two daughters and a nephew. Walter, the only son of Rowland's brother
+Geoffrey, who had absconded, leaving his wife and child to shift for
+themselves, was in his twenty-first year, tall and strong, with a striking
+if not strictly handsome face; high-spirited, jealous of the affections of
+those he loved; cheerful outwardly, but given to moody reflections on his
+orphaned and dependent lot, for his mother had not long survived her
+desertion.</p>
+
+<p>Madeline Lester, at the age of eighteen, was the beauty and toast of the
+whole country; with a mind no less beautiful than her form was graceful,
+and a desire for study equalled only by her regard for those who possessed
+it, a regard which had extended secretly, if all but unacknowledged to
+herself, to the solitary scholar of whom I have been speaking. Ellinor, her
+junior by two years, was of a character equally gentle, but less elevated,
+and a beauty akin to her sister's.</p>
+
+<p>When Eugene Aram arrived at the manor house in keeping with his promise,
+something appeared to rest upon his mind, from which, however, by the
+excitement lent by wine and occasional bursts of eloquence, he seemed
+striving to escape, and at length he apparently succeeded.</p>
+
+<p>When the ladies had retired, Lester and his guest resumed their talk in
+the open, Walter declining to join them.</p>
+
+<p>Aram was advancing the view that it is impossible for a man who leads
+the life of the world ever to experience content.</p>
+
+<p>"For me," observed the squire, "I have my objects of interest in my
+children."</p>
+
+<p>"And I mine in my books," said Aram.</p>
+
+<p>As they passed over the village green, the gaunt form of Corporal
+Bunting arrested their progress.</p>
+
+<p>"Beg pardon, your honour," said he to the scholar, "but strange-looking
+dog here last evening--asked after you--said you were old friend of
+his--trotted off in your direction--hope all was right, master--augh!"</p>
+
+<p>"All right," repeated Aram, fixing his eyes on the corporal, who had
+concluded his speech with a significant wink. Then, as if satisfied with
+his survey, he added, "Ay, ay; I know whom you mean. He had become
+acquainted with me some years ago. I don't know--I know very little of
+him." And the student was turning away, but stopped to add, "The man called
+on me last night for assistance. I gave what I could afford, and he has now
+proceeded on his journey. Good evening!"</p>
+
+<p>Lester and his companion passed on, the former somewhat surprised, a
+feeling increased when shortly afterwards Aram abruptly bade him farewell.
+But, recalling the peculiar habits of the scholar, he saw that the only way
+to hope for a continuance of that society which had so pleased him was to
+indulge Aram at first in his unsocial inclinations; and so, without further
+discourse, he shook hands with him, and they parted.</p>
+
+
+<h4><i>III.--The Old Riding-Whip</i></h4>
+
+
+<p>When Lester regained the little parlour in his home he found his nephew
+sitting, silent and discontented, by the window. Madeline had taken up a
+book, and Ellinor, in an opposite corner, was plying her needle with an
+earnestness that contrasted with her customary cheerful vivacity.</p>
+
+<p>The squire thought he had cause to complain of his nephew's conduct to
+their guest. "You eyed the poor student," he said, "as if you wished him
+amongst the books of Alexandria."</p>
+
+<p>"I would he were burnt with them!" exclaimed Walter sharply. "He seems
+to have bewitched my fair cousins here into a forgetfulness of all but
+himself."</p>
+
+<p>"Not me!" said Ellinor eagerly.</p>
+
+<p>"No, not you; you are too just. It is a pity Madeline is not more like
+you."</p>
+
+<p>Thus was disturbance first introduced into a peaceful family. Walter was
+jealous; he could not control his feelings. An open breach followed, not
+only between him and Aram, but a quarrel between him and Madeline. The
+position came as a revelation to his uncle, who, seeing no other way out of
+the difficulty, yielded to Walter's request that he should be allowed to
+travel.</p>
+
+<p>Meanwhile, Aram, drawn out of his habitual solitude by the sweet
+influence of Madeline, became a frequent visitor to the manor house and the
+acknowledged suitor for Madeline's hand. As for Walter, when he set out for
+London, with Corporal Bunting as his servant, he had found consolation in
+the discovery that Ellinor's regard for him had gone beyond mere cousinly
+affection. His uncle gave him several letters of introduction to old
+friends; among them one to Sir Peter Hales, and another to a Mr.
+Courtland.</p>
+
+<p>An incident that befell him on the London road revived to an
+extraordinary degree Walter's desire to ascertain the whereabouts of his
+long-lost father. At the request of Sir Peter Hales he had alighted at a
+saddler's for the purpose of leaving a parcel committed to him, when his
+attention was attracted by an old-fashioned riding-whip. Taking it up, he
+found it bore his own crest, and his father's initials, "G.L." Much
+agitated, he made quick inquiries, and learned that the whip had been left
+for repair about twelve years previously by a gentleman who was visiting
+Mr. Courtland, and had not been heard of since.</p>
+
+<p>Eagerly he sought out Mr. Courtland, and gleaned news which induced him,
+much to Corporal Bunting's disgust, to set his back on London, and make his
+way with all speed in the direction of Knaresborough. It appeared that at
+the time the whip was left at the saddler's, Geoffrey Lester had just
+returned from India, and when he called on his old acquaintance, Mr.
+Courtland, he was travelling to the historic town in the West Riding to
+claim a legacy his old colonel--he had been in the army--had left him for
+saving his life. The name Geoffrey Lester had assumed on entering the army
+was Clarke.</p>
+
+
+<h4><i>IV.--Hush-Money</i></h4>
+
+
+<p>While Walter Lester and Corporal Bunting were passing northward, the
+squire of Grassdale saw, with evident complacency, the passion growing up
+between his friend and his daughter. He looked upon it as a tie that would
+permanently reconcile Aram to the hearth of social and domestic life; a tie
+that would constitute the happiness of his daughter and secure to himself a
+relation in the man he felt most inclined of all he knew to honour and
+esteem. Aram seemed another man; and happy indeed was Madeline in the
+change. But one evening, while the two were walking together, and Aram was
+discoursing on their future, Madeline uttered a faint shriek, and clung
+trembling to her lover's arm.</p>
+
+<p>Amazed and roused from his enthusiasm, Aram looked up, and, on seeing
+the cause of her alarm, seemed himself transfixed, as by a sudden terror to
+the earth.</p>
+
+<p>But a few paces distant, standing amidst the long and rank fern that
+grew on each side of their path, quite motionless, and looking on the pair
+with a sarcastic smile, stood the ominous stranger whom we first met at the
+sign of the Spotted Dog.</p>
+
+<p>"Pardon me, dear Madeline," said Aram, softly disengaging himself from
+her, "but for one moment."</p>
+
+<p>He then advanced to the stranger, and after a conversation that lasted
+but a minute, the latter bowed, and, turning away, soon vanished among the
+shrubs.</p>
+
+<p>Aram, regaining the side of Madeline, explained, in answer to her
+startled inquiries, that the man, whom he had known well some fourteen
+years ago, had again come to ask for his help, and he supposed that he
+would again have to aid him.</p>
+
+<p>"And is that indeed <i>all</i>?" said Madeline, breathing more freely.
+"Well, poor man, if he be your friend, he must be inoffensive. Here,
+Eugene." And the simple-hearted girl put her purse into Aram's hand.</p>
+
+<p>"No, dearest," said he, shrinking back. "I can easily spare him enough.
+But let us turn back. It grows chill."</p>
+
+<p>"And why did he leave us, Eugene?"</p>
+
+<p>"Because," was the reply, "I desired him to visit me at home an hour
+hence."</p>
+
+<p>There was a past shared by these two men, and Houseman--for that was the
+stranger's name--had come for the price of his silence. The next day, on
+the plea of an old debt that suddenly had to be met, Aram approached his
+prospective father-in-law for the loan of &pound;300. This sum was readily
+placed at his disposal. Indeed, he was offered double the amount. His next
+action was to travel to London, where, with all the money at his command,
+he purchased an annuity for Houseman, falling back, for his own needs, upon
+the influence of Lord ---- to secure for him a small state allowance which
+it was in that nobleman's power to grant to him as a needy man of
+letters.</p>
+
+<p>Houseman was surprised at the scholar's generosity when the paper
+ensuring the annuity was placed in his hands. "Before daybreak to-morrow,"
+he said, "I will be on the road. You may now rest assured that you are free
+of me for life. Go home--marry--enjoy your existence. Within four days, if
+the wind set fair, I shall be in France."</p>
+
+<p>The pale face of Eugene Aram brightened. He had resolved, had Houseman's
+attitude been different, to surrender Madeline at once.</p>
+
+
+<h4><i>V.--Human Bones</i></h4>
+
+
+<p>The unexpected change in her lover's demeanour, on his return to
+Grassdale, brought unspeakable joy to the heart of Madeline Lester. But
+hardly had Aram left Houseman's squalid haunt in Lambeth when a letter was
+put into the ruffian's hand telling of his daughter's serious illness. For
+this daughter Houseman, villain as he was, would willingly have given his
+life. Now, casting all other thoughts aside, he set forth, not for France,
+but for Knaresborough, where his daughter was lying, and whither, guided by
+his inquiries concerning his father, Walter Lester was also on his way.</p>
+
+<p>It was not long ere Walter found that a certain Colonel Elmore had died
+in 17--, leaving &pound;1,000 and a house to one Daniel Clarke, and that an
+executor of the colonel's will survived in the person of a Mr. Jonas
+Elmore. From Mr. Elmore, Walter learned that Clarke had disappeared
+suddenly, after receiving the legacy, taking with him a number of jewels
+with which Mr. Elmore had entrusted him. His disappearance had caused a
+sensation at the time, and a man named Houseman had assigned as a cause of
+Clarke's disappearance a loan which he did not mean to repay. It was true
+that Houseman and a young scholar named Eugene Aram had been interrogated
+by the authorities, but nothing could be proved against them, and certainly
+nothing was suspected where Aram was concerned. He left Knaresborough soon
+after Clarke had disappeared, having received a legacy from a relative at
+York.</p>
+
+<p>This story of a legacy Walter was not inclined to believe, but proof of
+it was forthcoming. Another circumstance in Aram's favour was that his
+memory was still honoured in the town, by the curate, Mr. Summers, as well
+as by others.</p>
+
+<p>Accompanied by Mr. Summers, Walter visited the house where Daniel Clarke
+had stayed and also the woman at whose house Aram had lived. It was a
+lonely, desolate-looking house; its solitary occupant a woman who evidently
+had been drinking. When the name of Eugene Aram was mentioned, the woman
+assumed a mysterious air, and eventually disclosed the fact that she had
+seen Mr. Clarke, Houseman and Aram enter Aram's room early one morning.
+They went away together. A little later Aram and Houseman returned. She
+found out afterwards that they had been burning some clothes. She also
+discovered a handkerchief belonging to Houseman with blood upon it. She had
+shown this to Houseman, who had threatened to shoot her should she say a
+word to anyone regarding himself or his companions.</p>
+
+<p>Armed with this narrative, extracted by the promise of pecuniary reward,
+Walter and Mr. Summers were making their way to a magistrate's when their
+attention was attracted by a crowd. A workman, digging for limestone, had
+unearthed a big wooden chest. The chest contained a skeleton!</p>
+
+<p>In the midst of the commotion caused by this discovery a voice broke out
+abruptly. It was that of Richard Houseman. His journey had been in vain.
+His daughter was dead. His appearance revealed all too plainly to what
+source he had flown for consolation.</p>
+
+<p>"What do ye here, fools?" he cried, reeling forward. "Ha! Human bones!
+And whose may they be, think ye?"</p>
+
+<p>There were in the crowd those who remembered the disappearance which had
+so surprised them years before, and more than one repeated the name of
+"Daniel Clarke."</p>
+
+<p>"Clarke's bones!" exclaimed Houseman. "Ha, ha! They are no more Clarke's
+than mine!"</p>
+
+<p>At this moment Walter stepped forward.</p>
+
+<p>"Behold!" he cried, in a ringing voice, vibrant with emotion--"behold
+the murderer!"</p>
+
+<p>Pale, confused, conscience-stricken, the bewilderment of intoxication
+mingling with that of fear, Houseman gasped out that if they wanted the
+bones of Clarke they should search St. Robert's Cave. And in the place he
+named they found at last the unhallowed burial-place of the murdered
+dead.</p>
+
+<p>But Houseman, now roused by a sense of personal danger, denied that he
+was the guilty man. Drawing his breath hard, and setting his teeth as with
+steeled determination, he cried, "The murderer is Eugene Aram!"</p>
+
+
+<h4><i>VI.--"I Murdered my Own Life"</i></h4>
+
+
+<p>It was a chill morning in November. But at Grassdale all was bustle and
+excitement. The church bells were ringing merry peals. It wanted but an
+hour or so to the wedding of Eugene Aram and Madeline Lester. In this
+interval the scholar was alone with his thoughts. His reverie was rudely
+disturbed by a loud knocking, the noise of which penetrated into his study.
+The outer door was opened. Voices were heard.</p>
+
+<p>"Great God!" he exclaimed. "'Murderer!' Was that the word I heard
+shouted forth? The voice, too, is Walter Lester's. Can he have
+learned----"</p>
+
+<p>Calm succeeded to the agitation of the moment. He met the newcomers with
+a courageous front. But, followed by his bride who was to be, by her sister
+Ellinor, and by their father, all confident that Walter had made some
+horrible mistake, Eugene Aram was taken away to be committed to York on the
+capital charge.</p>
+
+<p>The law's delays were numerous. Winter passed into spring, and spring
+into summer before the trial came on. Eugene Aram's friends were numerous.
+Lord ---- firmly believed in his innocence, and proffered help. But the
+prisoner refused legal aid, and conducted his own defence--how ably history
+records. Madeline was present at the closing scene, in her wedding dress.
+Her father was all but broken in his grief for daughter and friend. Walter
+was distraught by the havoc he had caused, and in doubt whether, after all,
+his action had not been too impetuous. The court was deeply impressed by
+the prisoner's defence. But the judge's summing-up was all against the
+accused, and the verdict was "Guilty!" Madeline lived but a few hours after
+hearing it.</p>
+
+<p>The following evening Walter obtained admittance to the condemned
+cell.</p>
+
+<p>"Eugene Aram," he said, in tones of agony, "if at this moment you can
+lay your hand on your heart, and say, 'Before God, and at peril of my soul,
+I am innocent of this deed,' I will depart; I will believe you, and bear as
+I may the reflection that I have been one of the unconscious agents in
+condemning to a fearful death an innocent man. But if you cannot at so dark
+a crisis take that oath, then, oh then, be generous, even in guilt, and let
+me not be haunted through life by the spectre of a ghastly and restless
+doubt!"</p>
+
+<p>On the eve of the day destined to be his last on earth Eugene Aram
+placed in Walter's hands a paper which that young man pledged himself not
+to read till Rowland Lester's grey hairs had gone to the grave. This
+document set forth at length the story of Aram's early life, how he sought
+knowledge amidst grinding poverty, and how, when a gigantic discovery in
+science gleamed across his mind, a discovery which only lack of means
+prevented him from realising to the vast benefit of truth and man, the
+tempter came to him. This tempter took the form of a distant relative,
+Richard Houseman, with his doctrine that "Laws order me to starve, but
+self-preservation is an instinct more sacred than society," and his demand
+for co-operation in an act of robbery from one Daniel Clarke, whose crimes
+were many, who was, moreover, on the point of disappearing with a number of
+jewels he had borrowed on false pretences.</p>
+
+<p>"Houseman lied," wrote the condemned man. "I did not strike the blow. I
+never designed a murder. But the deed was done, and Houseman divided the
+booty. My share he buried in the earth, leaving me to withdraw it when I
+chose. There, perhaps, it lies still. I never touched what I had murdered
+my <i>own</i> life to gain. Three days after that deed a relative, who had
+neglected me in life, died and left me wealth--wealth, at least, to me!
+Wealth greater than that for which I had----My ambition died in
+remorse!"</p>
+
+<p>Houseman passed away in his own bed. But he had to be buried secretly in
+the dead of night, for, ten years after Eugene Aram had died on the
+scaffold, the hatred of the world survived for his accomplice. Rowland
+Lester did not live long after Madeline's death. But when Walter returned
+from a period of honourable service with the great Frederick of Prussia, it
+was with no merely cousinly welcome that Ellinor received him.</p>
+
+<hr />
+
+
+
+
+<h3><a name="The_Last_Days_of_Pompeii"></a>The Last Days of Pompeii</h3>
+
+
+<blockquote> "The Last Days of Pompeii," the most popular of Lytton's
+historical romances, was begun and almost completed at Naples in the winter
+of 1832-3, and was first published in 1834. The period dealt with is that
+of 79 A.D., during the short reign of Titus, when Rome was at its zenith
+and the picturesque Campanian city a kind of Rome-by-the-Sea. Lytton wrote
+the novel some thirty years before the excavations of Pompeii had been
+systematically begun; but his pictures of the life, the luxuries, the
+pastimes and the gaiety of the half-Grecian colony, its worship of Isis,
+its trade with Alexandria, and the early struggles of Christianity with
+heathen superstition are exceptionally vivid. The creation of Nydia, the
+blind flower-girl, was suggested by the casual remark of an acquaintance
+that at the time of the destruction of Pompeii the sightless would have
+found the easiest deliverance. </blockquote>
+
+
+<h4><i>I.--The Athenian's Love Story</i></h4>
+
+
+<p>Within the narrow compass of the walls of Pompeii was contained a
+specimen of every gift which luxury offered to power. In its minute but
+glittering shops, its tiny palaces, its baths, its forum, its theatre, its
+circus--in the energy yet corruption, in the refinement yet the vice, of
+its people, you beheld a model of the whole Roman Empire. It was a toy, a
+plaything, a show-box, in which the gods seemed pleased to keep the
+representation of the great monarchy of earth, and which they afterwards
+hid from time, to give to the wonder of posterity--the moral of the maxim,
+that under the sun there is nothing new.</p>
+
+<p>Crowded in the glassy bay were vessels of commerce and gilded galleys
+for the pleasures of the rich citizens. The boats of the fishermen glided
+to and fro, and afar off you saw the tall masts of the fleet under the
+command of Pliny.</p>
+
+<p>Drawing a comrade from the crowded streets, Glaucus the Greek, newly
+returned to Pompeii after a journey to Naples, bent his steps towards a
+solitary part of the beach; and the two, seated on a small crag which rose
+amidst the smooth pebbles, inhaled the voluptuous and cooling breeze which,
+dancing over the waters, kept music with its invisible feet. There was
+something in the scene which invited them to silence and reverie.</p>
+
+<p>Clodius, the aedile, who sought the wherewithal for his pleasures at the
+gaming table, shaded his eyes from the burning sky, and calculated the
+gains of the past week. He was one of the many who found it easy to enrich
+themselves at the expense of his companion. The Greek, leaning upon his
+hand, and shrinking not from that sun, his nation's tutelary deity, with
+whose fluent light of poesy and joy and love his own veins were filled,
+gazed upon the broad expanse, and envied, perhaps, every wind that bent its
+pinions toward the shores of Greece.</p>
+
+<p>Glaucus obeyed no more vicious dictates when he wandered into the
+dissipations of his time that the exhilarating voices of youth and health.
+His heart never was corrupted. Of far more penetration than Clodius and
+others of his gay companions deemed, he saw their design to prey upon his
+riches and his youth; but he despised wealth save as the means of
+enjoyment, and youth was the great sympathy that united him to them. To him
+the world was one vast prison to which the sovereign of Rome was the
+imperial gaoler, and the very virtues which, in the free days of Athens,
+would have made him ambitious, in the slavery of earth made him inactive
+and supine.</p>
+
+<p>"Tell me, Clodius," said the Athenian at last, "hast thou ever been in
+love?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, very often."</p>
+
+<p>"He who has loved often," answered Glaucus, "has loved never."</p>
+
+<p>"Art thou, then, soberly and earnestly in love? Hast thou that feeling
+which the poets describe--a feeling which makes us neglect our suppers,
+forswear the theatre, and write elegies? I should never have thought it.
+You dissemble well."</p>
+
+<p>"I am not far gone enough for that," returned Glaucus, smiling. "In
+fact, I am not in love; but I could be if there but be occasion to see the
+object."</p>
+
+<p>"Shall I guess the object? Is it not Diomed's daughter? She adores you,
+and does not affect to conceal it. She is both handsome and rich. She will
+bind the door-post of her husband with golden fillets."</p>
+
+<p>"No, I do not desire to sell myself. Diomed's daughter is handsome, I
+grant; and at one time, had she not been the grandchild of a freedman, I
+might have--yet, no--she carries all her beauty in her face; her manners
+are not maiden-like, and her mind knows no culture save that of
+pleasure."</p>
+
+<p>"You are ungrateful. Tell me, then, who is the fortunate virgin."</p>
+
+<p>"You shall hear, my Clodius. Several months ago I was sojourning at
+Naples, a city utterly to my own heart. One day I entered the temple of
+Minerva to offer up my prayers, not for myself more than for the city on
+which Pallas smiles no longer. The temple was empty and deserted. The
+recollections of Athens crowded fast and meltingly upon me. Imagining
+myself still alone, my prayer gushed from my heart to my lips, and I wept
+as I prayed. I was startled in the midst of my devotions, however, by a
+deep sigh. I turned suddenly, and just behind me was a female. She had
+raised her veil also in prayer, and when our eyes met, methought a
+celestial ray shot from those dark and smiling orbs at once into my
+soul.</p>
+
+<p>"Never, my Clodius, have I seen mortal face more exquisitely moulded. A
+certain melancholy softened, and yet elevated, its expression. Tears were
+rolling down her eyes. I guessed at once that she was of Athenian lineage.
+I spoke to her, though with a faltering voice. 'Art thou not, too,
+Athenian?' said I. At the sound of my voice she blushed, and half drew her
+veil across her face. 'My forefathers' ashes,' she said, 'repose by the
+waters of Ilyssus; my birth is of Naples; but my heart, as my lineage, is
+Athenian.'</p>
+
+<p>"'Let us, then,' said I, 'make our offerings together!' And as the
+priest now appeared, we stood side by side, and so followed the ceremonial
+prayer. Together we touched the knees of the goddess; together we laid our
+olive garlands on the altar. Silently we left the temple, and I was about
+to ask her where she dwelt, when a youth, whose features resembled hers,
+took her by the hand. She turned and bade me farewell, the crowd parted us,
+and I saw her no more; nor when I returned to Naples after a brief absence
+at Athens, was I able to discover any clue to my lost country-woman. So,
+hoping to lose in gaiety all remembrance of that beautiful apparition, I
+hastened to plunge myself amidst the luxuries of Pompeii. This is all my
+history, I do not love but I remember and regret."</p>
+
+<p>So said Glaucus. But that very night, in a house at Pompeii, whither she
+had come from Naples during his absence, Glaucus came face to face once
+more with the beautiful lone, the object of his dreams. And no longer was
+he able to say, "I do not love."</p>
+
+
+<h4><i>II.--Arbaces, the Egyptian</i></h4>
+
+
+<p>Amongst the wealthy dwellers in Pompeii was one who lived apart, and was
+at once an object of suspicion and fear. The riches of this man, who was
+known as Arbaces, the Egyptian, enabled him to gratify to the utmost the
+passions which governed him--the passion of sensual indulgence and the
+blind force which impelled him to seek relief from physical satiety in the
+pursuit of that occult knowledge which he regarded as the heritage of his
+race.</p>
+
+<p>In Naples, Arbaces had known the parents of Ione and her brother
+Apaecides, and it was under his guardianship that they had come to Pompeii.
+The confidence which, before their death, their parents had reposed in the
+Egyptian was in turn fully given to him by lone and her brother. For
+Apaecides the Egyptian felt nothing but contempt; the youth was to him but
+an instrument that might be used by him in bending lone to his will. But
+the mind of Ione, no less than the beauty of her form, appealed to Arbaces.
+With her by his side, his willing slave, he saw no limit to the heights his
+ambition might soar to. He sought primarily to impress her with his store
+of unfamiliar knowledge. She, in turn, admired him for his learning, and
+felt grateful to him for his guardianship. Apaecides, docile and mild, with
+a soul peculiarly alive to religious fervour, Arbaces placed amongst the
+priests of Isis, and under the special care of a creature of his own, named
+Calenus. It pleased his purpose best, where Ione was concerned, to leave
+her awhile surrounded by the vain youth of Pompeii, so that he might gain
+by comparison.</p>
+
+<p>It fell not within Arbaces' plans to show himself too often to his ward.
+Consequently it was some time before he became aware of the warmth of the
+friendship that was growing up between Ione and the handsome Greek. He knew
+not of their evening excursions on the placid sea, of their nightly
+meetings at Ione's dwelling, till these had become regular happenings in
+their daily lives. But one day he surprised them together, and his eyes
+were suddenly opened. No sooner had the Greek departed than the Egyptian
+sought to poison Ione's mind against him by exaggerating his love of
+pleasure and by unscrupulously describing him as making light of Ione's
+love.</p>
+
+<p>Following up the advantage he gained by this appeal to her pride,
+Arbaces reminded Ione that she had never seen the interior of his home. It
+might, he said, amuse her. "Devote then," he went on, "to the austere
+friend of your youth one of these bright summer evenings, and let me boast
+that my gloomy mansion has been honoured with the presence of the admired
+Ione."</p>
+
+<p>Unconscious of the pollutions of the mansion, of the danger that awaited
+her, Ione readily assented to the proposal. But there was one who, by
+accident, had become aware of the nature of the spells cast by Arbaces upon
+his visitors, and who was to be the humble means of saving lone from his
+toils. This was the blind flower-girl Nydia.</p>
+
+<p>Of Thessalian extraction, and gentle nurture, Nydia had been stolen and
+sold into the slavery of an ex-gladiator named Burbo, a relative of the
+false priest Calenus. To save her from the cruelty of Burbo, Glaucus had
+purchased her, and, in return, the blind girl had become devoted to him--so
+devoted that her gentle heart was torn when he made it plain to her that
+his action was prompted by mere natural kindness of heart, and that it was
+his purpose to send her to Ione.</p>
+
+<p>But she cast all feeling of jealousy aside when she heard of Ione's
+visit to the Egyptian, and quickly apprised Glaucus and Apaecides of the
+fair Athenian's peril.</p>
+
+<p>On her arrival, Arbaces greeted Ione with deep respect. But he found it
+harder than he thought to resist the charm of her presence in his house,
+and in a moment of forgetful passion he declared his love for her.
+"Arbaces," he declared, "shall have no ambition save the pride of obeying
+thee--Ione. Ione, do not reject my love!" And as he spoke he knelt before
+her.</p>
+
+<p>Alone, and in the grip of this singular and powerful man, Ione was not
+yet terrified; the respect of his language, the softness of his voice,
+reassured her; and in her own purity she felt protection. But she was
+confused, astonished. It was some moments before she could recover the
+power of reply.</p>
+
+<p>"Rise, Arbaces," said she at length. "Rise! and if thou art serious, if
+thy language be in earnest----"</p>
+
+<p>"<i>If</i>----" said he tenderly.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, then, listen. You have been my guardian, my friend, my monitor.
+For this new character I was not prepared. Think not," she added quickly,
+as she saw his dark eyes glitter with the fierceness of his passion, "think
+not that I scorn; that I am untouched; that I am not honoured by this
+homage; but, say, canst thou hear me calmly?"</p>
+
+<p>"Ay, though the words were lightning and could blast me!"</p>
+
+<p>"<i>I love another</i>!" said Ione blushingly, but in a firm voice.</p>
+
+<p>"By the gods," shouted Arbaces, rising to his fullest height, "dare not
+tell me that! Dare not mock me! It is impossible! Whom hast thou seen? Whom
+known? Oh, Ione, it is thy woman's invention, thy woman's art that speaks;
+thou wouldst gain time. I have surprised--I have terrified thee."</p>
+
+<p>"Alas!" began Ione; and then, appalled before his sudden and unlooked
+for violence, she burst into tears.</p>
+
+<p>Arbaces came nearer to her, his breath glowed fiercely on her cheek. He
+wound his arms round her; she sprang from his embrace. In the struggle a
+tablet fell from her bosom. Arbaces perceived, and seized it; it was a
+letter she had received that morning from Glaucus.</p>
+
+<p>Ione sank upon the couch, half-dead with terror.</p>
+
+<p>Rapidly the eyes of Arbaces ran over the writing. He read it to the end,
+and then, as the letter fell from his hand, he said, in a voice of
+deceitful calmness, "Is the writer of this the man thou lovest?"</p>
+
+<p>Ione sobbed, but answered not.</p>
+
+<p>"Speak!" he demanded.</p>
+
+<p>"It is--it is!"</p>
+
+<p>"Then hear me," said Arbaces, sinking his voice into a whisper. "<i>Thou
+shalt go to thy tomb rather than to his arms</i>."</p>
+
+<p>At this instant a curtain was rudely torn aside, and Glaucus and
+Apsecides appeared. There was a severe struggle, which might have had a
+more sinister ending had not the marble head of a goddess, shaken from its
+column, fallen upon Arbaces as he was about to stab the Greek, and struck
+the Egyptian senseless to the ground. As it was, Ione was saved, and she
+and her lover were then and for ever reconciled to one another.</p>
+
+
+<h4><i>III.--The Love Philtre</i></h4>
+
+
+<p>Clodius had not spoken without warrant when he had said that Julia, the
+daughter of the rich merchant Diomed, thought herself in love with Glaucus.
+But since Glaucus was denied to her, her thoughts were concentrated on
+revenge. In this mood she sought out Arbaces, presenting herself as one
+loving unrequitedly, and seeking in sorrow the aid of wisdom.</p>
+
+<p>"It is a love charm," admitted Julia, "that I would seek from thy skill.
+I know not if I love him who loves me not, but I know that I would see
+myself triumph over a rival. I would see him who has rejected me my suitor.
+I would see her whom he has preferred in her turn despised."</p>
+
+<p>Very quickly Arbaces discerned Julia's secret, and when he heard that
+Glaucus and Ione were shortly to be wedded, he gladly availed himself of
+this opportunity to rid himself of his hated rival. But he dealt not in
+love potions, he said; he would, however, take Diomed's daughter to one who
+did--the witch who dwelt on the slopes of Vesuvius.</p>
+
+<p>He kept his promise; but the entire philtre given to Julia was one which
+went direct to the brain, and the effects of which--for neither Arbaces nor
+his creature, the witch, wished to place themselves within the power of the
+law--were such as caused those who witnessed them to attribute them to some
+supernatural agency.</p>
+
+<p>But once again, though less happily than on the former occasion, Nydia
+was destined to be the means of thwarting the schemes of the Egyptian. The
+devotion of the blind flower-girl had deepened into love for her deliverer.
+She was jealous of Ione. Now, for Julia had taken her into confidence, and
+both believed in the love charm, she was confronted with another rival. By
+a simple ruse Nydia obtained the poisoned draught and in its place
+substituted a phial of simple water.</p>
+
+<p>At the close of a banquet given by Diomed, to which the Greek was
+invited, Julia duly administered that which she imagined to be the secret
+love potion. She was disappointed when she found Glaucus coldly replace the
+cup, and converse with her in the same unmoved tone as before.</p>
+
+<p>"But to-morrow," thought she, "to-morrow, alas for Glaucus!"</p>
+
+<p>Alas for him, indeed!</p>
+
+<p>When Glaucus arrived at his own house that evening, Nydia was waiting
+for him. She had, as usual, been tending the flowers and had lingered
+awhile to rest herself.</p>
+
+<p>"It has been warm," said Glaucus. "Wilt thou summon Davus? The wine I
+have drunk heats me, and I long for some cooling drink."</p>
+
+<p>Here at once, suddenly and unexpectedly, the very opportunity that Nydia
+awaited presented itself. She breathed quickly. "I will prepare for you
+myself," said she, "the summer draught that Ione loves--of honey and weak
+wine cooled in snow."</p>
+
+<p>"Thanks," said the unconscious Glaucus. "If Ione loves it, enough; it
+would be grateful were it poison."</p>
+
+<p>Nydia frowned, and then smiled. She withdrew for a few moments, and
+returned with the cup containing the beverage. Glaucus took it from her
+hand.</p>
+
+<p>What would not Nydia have given then to have seen the first dawn of the
+imagined love! Far different, as she stood then and there, were the
+thoughts and emotions of the blind girl from those of the vain Pompeian
+under a similar suspense!</p>
+
+<p>Glaucus had raised the cup to his lips. He had already drained about a
+fourth of its contents, when, suddenly glancing upon the face of Nydia, he
+was so forcibly struck by its alteration, by its intense, and painful, and
+strange expression, that he paused abruptly, and still holding the cup near
+his lips, exclaimed. "Why, Nydia--Nydia, art thou ill or in pain? What ails
+thee, my poor child?"</p>
+
+<p>As he spoke, he put down the cup--happily for him, unfinished--and rose
+from his seat to approach her, when a sudden pang shot coldly to his heart,
+and was followed by a wild, confused, dizzy sensation at the brain.</p>
+
+<p>The floor seemed to glide from under him, his feet seemed to move on
+air, a mighty and unearthly gladness rushed upon his spirit. He felt too
+buoyant for the earth; he longed for wings--nay, it seemed as if he
+possessed them. He burst involuntarily into a loud and thrilling laugh. He
+clapped his hands, he bounced aloft. Suddenly this perpetual transport
+passed, though only partially, away. He now felt his blood rushing loudly
+and rapidly through his veins.</p>
+
+<p>Then a kind of darkness fell over his eyes. Now a torrent of broken,
+incoherent, insane words gushed from his lips, and, to Nydia's horror, he
+passed the portico with a bound, and rushed down the starlit streets,
+striking fear into the hearts of all who saw him.</p>
+
+
+<h4><i>IV.--The Day of Ghastly Night</i></h4>
+
+
+<p>Anxious to learn if the drug had taken effect, Arbaces set out for
+Julia's house on the morrow. On his way he encountered Apaecides. Hot words
+passed between them, and stung by the scorn of the youth, he stabbed him
+into the heart with his stylus. At this moment Glaucus came along. Quick as
+thought the Egyptian struck the already half-senseless Greek to the ground,
+and steeping his stylus in the blood of Apaecides, and recovering his own,
+called loudly for help. The next moment he was accusing Glaucus of the
+crime.</p>
+
+<p>For a time fortune favoured the Egyptian. Glaucus, his strong frame
+still under the influence of the poison, was sentenced to encounter a lion
+in the amphitheatre, with no weapon beyond the incriminating stylus. Nydia,
+in her terror, confessed to the Egyptian the exchange of the love philtre.
+She he imprisoned in his own house. Calenus, who had witnessed the deed,
+sought Arbaces with the intention of using his knowledge to his own profit.
+He, by a stratagem, was incarcerated in one of the dungeons of the
+Egyptian's dwelling. The law gave Ione into the guardianship of Arbaces.
+But, for a third time, Nydia was the means of frustrating the plans of
+Arbaces.</p>
+
+<p>The blind girl, when vainly endeavouring to escape from the toils of the
+Egyptian, overheard, in his garden, the conversation of Arbaces and
+Calenus; and she heard the cries of Calenus from behind the door of the
+chamber in which he was imprisoned. She herself was caught again by
+Arbaces' servant, but she contrived to bribe her keeper to take a message
+to Glaucus's friend, Sallust; and he, taking his servants to Arbaces' house
+released the two captives, and reached the arena with them, to accuse
+Arbaces before the multitude at the very moment when the lion was being
+goaded to attack the Greek, and Arbaces' victory seemed within his
+grasp.</p>
+
+<p>Even now the nerve of the Egyptian did not desert him. He met the charge
+with his accustomed coolness. But the frenzied accusation of the priest of
+Isis turned the huge assembly against him. With loud cries they rose from
+their seats and poured down toward the Egyptian.</p>
+
+<p>Lifting his eyes at this terrible moment, Arbaces beheld a strange and
+awful apparition. He beheld, and his craft restored his courage. He
+stretched his hand on high; over his lofty brow and royal features there
+came an expression of unutterable solemnity and command.</p>
+
+<p>"Behold," he shouted, with a voice of thunder, which stilled the roar of
+the crowd, "behold how the gods protect the guiltless! The fires of the
+avenging Orcus burst forth against the false witness of my accusers!"</p>
+
+<p>The eyes of the crowd followed the gesture of the Egyptian, and beheld,
+with ineffable dismay, a vast vapour shooting from the summit of Vesuvius
+in the form of a gigantic pine-tree; the trunk blackness, the branches
+fire--a fire that shifted and wavered in its hues with every moment, now
+fiercely luminous, now of a dull and dying red, that again blazed
+terrifically forth with intolerable glare. The earth shook. The walls of
+the theatre trembled. In the distance was heard the crash of falling roofs.
+The cloud seemed to roll towards the assembly, casting forth from its bosom
+showers of ashes mixed with fragments of burning stone. Then the burning
+mountain cast up columns of boiling water.</p>
+
+<p>In the ghastly night thus rushing upon the realm of noon, all thought of
+justice and of Arbaces left the minds of the terrified people. There ensued
+a mad flight for the sea. Through the darkness Nydia guided Glaucus, now
+partly recovered from the effects of the poisoned draught, and Ione to the
+shore. Her blindness rendered the scene familiar to her alone.</p>
+
+<p>While Arbaces perished with the majority, these three eventually gained
+the sea, and joined a group, who, bolder than the rest, resolved to hazard
+any peril rather than continue on the stricken land.</p>
+
+<p>Utterly exhausted, Ione slept on the breast of Glaucus, and Nydia lay at
+his feet. Meanwhile, showers of dust and ashes fell into the waves,
+scattered their snows over the deck of the vessel they had boarded, and,
+borne by the winds, descended upon the remotest climes, startling even the
+swarthy African, and whirling along the antique soil of Syria and of
+Egypt.</p>
+
+<p>Meekly, softly, beautifully dawned at last the light over the trembling
+deep! The winds were sinking into rest, the foam died from the azure of
+that delicious sea. Around the east thin mists caught gradually the rosy
+hues that heralded the morning. Light was about to resume her reign. There
+was no shout from the mariners at the dawning light--it had come too
+gradually, and they were too wearied for such sudden bursts of joy--but
+there was a low, deep murmur of thankfulness amidst those watchers of the
+long night. They looked at each other, and smiled; they took heart. They
+felt once more that there was a world around and a God above them!</p>
+
+<p>In the silence of the general sleep Nydia had risen gently. Bending over
+the face of Glaucus, she softly kissed him. She felt for his hand; it was
+locked in that of Ione. She sighed deeply, and her face darkened. Again she
+kissed his brow, and with her hair wiped from it the damps of night.</p>
+
+<p>"May the gods bless you, Athenian!" she murmured "May you be happy with
+your beloved one! May you sometimes remember Nydia! Alas! she is of no
+further use on earth."</p>
+
+<p>With these words she turned away. A sailor, half-dozing on the deck,
+heard a slight splash on the waters. Drowsily he looked up, and behind, as
+the vessel bounded merrily on, he fancied he saw something white above the
+waves; but it vanished in an instant. He turned round again and dreamed of
+his home and children.</p>
+
+<p>When the lovers awoke, their first thought was of each other, their next
+of Nydia. Every crevice of the vessel was searched--there was no trace of
+her! Mysterious from first to last, the blind Thessalian had vanished from
+the living world! They guessed her fate in silence, and Glaucus and Ione,
+while they drew nearer to each other, feeling each other the world itself,
+forgot their deliverance, and wept as for a departed sister.</p>
+
+<hr />
+
+
+
+
+<h3><a name="The_Last_of_the_Barons"></a>The Last of the Barons</h3>
+
+
+<blockquote> A romance of York and Lancaster's "long wars," "The Last of
+the Barons" was published in 1843, shortly before the death of Bulwer's
+mother, when, on inheriting the Knebworth estates, he assumed the surname
+of Lytton. The story is an admirably chosen historical subject, and in many
+respects is worked out with even more than Lytton's usual power and effect.
+Incident is crowded upon incident; revolutions, rebellions, dethronements
+follow one another with amazing rapidity--all duly authenticated and
+elaborated by powerful dialogue. It is thronged with historical material,
+sufficient, according to one critic, to make at least three novels. The
+period dealt with, 1467-1471, witnessed the rise of the trading class and
+the beginning of religious freedom in England. Lytton leans to the
+Lancastrian cause, with which the fortunes of one of his ancestors were
+identified, and his view of Warwick is more favourable to the redoubtable
+"king-maker" than that of the historians. </blockquote>
+
+
+<h4><i>I.--Warwick's Mission to France</i></h4>
+
+
+<p>Lacking sympathy with the monastic virtues of the deposed Henry VI., and
+happy in the exile of Margaret of Anjou, the citizens of London had taken
+kindly to the regime of Edward IV. In 1467 Edward still owed to Warwick the
+support of the more powerful barons, as well as the favour of that portion
+of the rural population which was more or less dependent upon them. But he
+encouraged, to his own financial advantage, the enterprises of the
+burgesses, and his marriage with Elizabeth Woodville and his favours to her
+kinsfolk indicated his purpose to reign in fact as well as in name. The
+barons were restless, but the rising middle-class, jealous of the old power
+of the nobles, viewed with misgiving the projected marriage, at Warwick's
+suggestion, of the king's sister Margaret and the brother of Louis XI. of
+France.</p>
+
+<p>This was the position of affairs when young Marmaduke Nevile came to
+London to enter the service of his relative the Earl of Warwick; and some
+points of it were explained to the young man by the earl himself when he
+had introduced the youth to his daughters, Isabel and Anne.</p>
+
+<p>"God hath given me no son," he said. "Isabel of Warwick had been a
+mate for William the Norman; and my grandson, if heir to his grandsire's
+soul, should have ruled from the throne of England over the realms of
+Charlemagne! But it hath pleased Him Whom the Christian knight alone bows
+to without shame, to order otherwise. So be it. I forgot my just
+pretensions--forgot my blood--and counselled the king to strengthen his
+throne by an alliance with Louis XI. He rejected the Princess Bona of Savoy
+to marry widow Elizabeth Grey. I sorrowed for his sake, and forgave the
+slight to my counsels. At his prayer I followed the train of the queen, and
+hushed the proud hearts of the barons to obeisance. But since then this
+Dame Woodville, whom I queened, if her husband mismated, must dispute this
+royaulme with mine and me! A Neville, nowadays, must vail his plume to a
+Woodville! And not the great barons whom it will suit Edward's policy to
+win from the Lancastrians, not the Exeters and the Somersets, but the
+craven varlets, and lackeys, and dross of the camp--false alike to Henry
+and to Edward--are to be fondled into lordships and dandled into power.
+Young man, I am speaking hotly. Richard Neville never lies nor conceals;
+but I am speaking to a kinsman, am I not? Thou hearest--thou wilt not
+repeat?"</p>
+
+<p>"Sooner would I pluck forth my tongue by the roots!" was Marmaduke's
+reply.</p>
+
+<p>"Enough!" returned the earl, with a pleased smile. "When I come from
+France I will speak more to thee. Meanwhile, be courteous to all men,
+servile to none. Now to the king."</p>
+
+<p>Warwick sought his royal cousin at the Tower, where the court exhibited
+a laxity of morals and a faculty for intrigue that were little to the stout
+earl's taste.</p>
+
+<p>It was with manifest reluctance that Edward addressed himself to the
+object of Warwick's visit.</p>
+
+<p>"Knowst thou not," said he, "that this French alliance, to which thou
+hast induced us, displeases sorely our good traders of London?"</p>
+
+<p>"<i>Mort Dieu</i>!" returned Warwick bluntly. "And what business have
+the flat-caps with the marriage of a king's sister? You have spoiled them,
+good my lord king. Henry IV. staled not his majesty to consultation with
+the mayor of his city. Henry V. gave the knighthood of the Bath to the
+heroes of Agincourt, not to the vendors of cloth and spices."</p>
+
+<p>"Thou forgettest, man," said the king carelessly, "the occasion of those
+honours--the eve before Elizabeth was crowned. As to the rest," pursued the
+king, earnestly and with dignity, "I and my house have owed much to London.
+Thou seest not, my poor Warwick, that these burgesses are growing up into
+power. And if the sword is the monarch's appeal for his right, he must look
+to contented and honest industry for his buckler in peace. This is policy,
+policy, Warwick; and Louis XI. will tell thee the same truths, harsh though
+they grate in a warrior's ear."</p>
+
+<p>The earl bowed his head.</p>
+
+<p>"If thou doubtest the wisdom of this alliance," he said, "it is not too
+late yet. Let me dismiss my following, and cross not the seas. Unless thy
+heart is with the marriage, the ties I would form are but threads and
+cobwebs."</p>
+
+<p>"Nay," returned Edward irresolutely. "In these great state matters thy
+wit is older than mine. But men do say the Count of Charolois is a mighty
+lord, and the alliance with Burgundy will be more profitable to staple and
+mart."</p>
+
+<p>"Then, in God's name so conclude it!" said the earl hastily. "Give thy
+sister to the heir of Burgundy, and forgive me if I depart to the castle of
+Middleham. Yet think well. Henry of Windsor is thy prisoner, but his cause
+lives in Margaret and his son. There is but one power in Europe that can
+threaten thee with aid to the Lancastrians. That power is France. Make
+Louis thy friend and ally, and thou givest peace to thy life and thy
+lineage. Make Louis thy foe, and count on plots and stratagems and treason.
+Edward, my loved, my honoured liege, forgive Richard Nevile for his
+bluntness, and let not his faults stand in bar of his counsels."</p>
+
+<p>"You are right, as you are ever, safeguard of England and pillar of my
+state," said the king frankly; and pressing Warwick's arm, he added, "go to
+France, and settle all as thou wilt."</p>
+
+<p>When Warwick had departed, Edward's eye followed him, musingly. The
+frank expression of his face vanished, and with the deep breath of a man
+who is throwing a weight from his heart, he muttered, "He loves me--yes;
+but will suffer no one else to love me! This must end some day. I am weary
+of the bondage."</p>
+
+
+<h4><i>II.--A Dishonoured Embassy</i></h4>
+
+
+<p>One morning, some time after Warwick's departure for France, the Lord
+Hastings was summoned to the king's presence. There was news from France,
+in a letter to Lord Rivers, from a gentleman in Warwick's train. The letter
+was dated from Rouen, and gave a glowing account of the honours accorded to
+the earl by Louis XI. Edward directed Hastings' attention to a passage in
+which the writer suggested that there were those who thought that so much
+intercourse between an English ambassador and the kinsman of Margaret of
+Anjou boded small profit to the English king.</p>
+
+<p>"Read and judge, Hastings," said the king.</p>
+
+<p>"I observe," said Hastings, "that this letter is addressed to my Lord
+Rivers. Can he avouch the fidelity of his correspondent?"</p>
+
+<p>"Surely, yes," answered Rivers. "It is a gentleman of my own blood."</p>
+
+<p>"Were he not so accredited," returned Hastings, "I should question the
+truth of a man who can thus consent to play the spy upon his lord and
+superior."</p>
+
+<p>"The public weal justifies all things," said Lord Worcester, who, with
+Lord Rivers, viewed with jealous scorn the power of the Earl of
+Warwick.</p>
+
+<p>"And what is to become of my merchant-ships," said the king, "if
+Burgundy take umbrage and close its ports?"</p>
+
+<p>Hastings had no cause to take up the quarrel on Warwick's behalf. The
+proud earl had stepped in to prevent his marriage with his sister. But
+Hastings, if a foe, could be a noble one.</p>
+
+<p>"Beau sire," said he, "thou knowest how little cause I have to love the
+Earl of Warwick. But in this council I must be all and only the king's
+servant. I say first, then, that Warwick's faith to the House of York is
+too well proven to become suspected because of the courtesies of King
+Louis. Moreover, we may be sure that Warwick cannot be false if he achieve
+the object of his embassy and detach Louis from the side of Margaret and
+Lancaster by close alliance with Edward and York. Secondly, sire, with
+regard to that alliance, which it seems you would repent, I hold now, as I
+have held ever, that it is a master-stroke in policy, and the earl in this
+proves his sharp brain worthy his strong arm; for, as his highness the Duke
+of Gloucester has discovered that Margaret of Anjou has been of late in
+London, and that treasonable designs were meditated, though now frustrated,
+so we may ask why the friends of Lancaster really stood aloof--why all
+conspiracy was, and is, in vain? Because the gold and subsidies of Louis
+are not forthcoming, because the Lancastrians see that if once Lord Warwick
+wins France from the Red Rose nothing short of such a miracle as their
+gaining Warwick instead can give a hope to their treason."</p>
+
+<p>"Your pardon, my Lord Hastings," said Lord Rivers, "there is another
+letter I have not yet laid before the king." He drew forth a scroll and
+read from it as follows.</p>
+
+<p>"Yesterday the earl feasted the king, and as, in discharge of mine
+office, I carved for my lord, I heard King Louis say, '<i>Pasque Dieu</i>,
+my Lord Warwick, our couriers bring us word that Count de Charolais
+declares he shall yet wed the Lady Margaret, and that he laughs at your
+embassage. What if our brother King Edward fall back from the treaty?' 'He
+durst not,' said the earl."</p>
+
+<p>"'Durst not!'" exclaimed Edward, starting to his feet, and striking the
+table with his clenched hand. "'Durst not!' Hastings, heard you that?"</p>
+
+<p>Hastings bowed his head in assent.</p>
+
+<p>"Is that all, Lord Rivers?"</p>
+
+<p>"All! And, methinks, enough!"</p>
+
+<p>"Enough, by my halidame!" said Edward, laughing bitterly. "He shall see
+what a king dares when a subject threatens."</p>
+
+<p>Lord Rivers had not read the whole of the letter. The sentence read: "He
+durst not, because what a noble heart dares least is to belie the plighted
+word, and what the kind heart shuns most is to wrong the confiding
+friend."</p>
+
+<p>When Warwick returned, with the object of his mission achieved, it was
+to find Margaret of England the betrothed of the Count de Charolais, and
+his embassy dishonoured. He retired in anger and grief to his castle of
+Middleham, and though the king declared that "Edward IV. reigns alone,"
+most of the great barons forsook him to rally round their leader in his
+retirement.</p>
+
+
+<h4><i>III.--The Scholar and his Daughter</i></h4>
+
+
+<p>Sybill Warner had been at court in the train of Margaret of Anjou. Her
+father, Adam Warner, was a poor scholar, with his heart set upon the
+completion of an invention which should inaugurate the age of steam. They
+lived together in an old house, with but one aged serving-woman. Even
+necessaries were sacrificed that the model of the invention might be fed.
+Then one day there came to Adam Warner an old schoolfellow, Robert Hilyard,
+who had thrown in his lot with the Lancastrians, and become an agent of the
+vengeful Margaret. Hilyard told so moving a tale of his wrongs at the hands
+of Edward that the old man consented to aid him in a scheme for
+communicating with the imprisoned Henry.</p>
+
+<p>Henry was still permitted to see visitors, and Hilyard's proposal was
+that Warner should seek permission to exhibit his model, in the mechanism
+of which were to be hidden certain treasonable papers for Henry to
+sign.</p>
+
+<p>As we have seen, from Hastings' remark to the king, the plot failed.
+Hilyard escaped, to stir up the peasantry, who knew him as Robin of
+Redesdale. Warner's fate was inclusion in the number of astrologers and
+alchemists retained by the Duchess of Bedford, who also gave a place
+amongst her maidens to Sybill, to whom Hastings had proffered his devoted
+attachment, though he was already bound by ties of policy and early love to
+Margaret de Bonville.</p>
+
+<p>Meanwhile, it became the interest of the king's brothers to act as
+mediators between Edward and his powerful subject. The Duke of Clarence was
+anxious to wed the proud earl's equally proud elder daughter Isabel; the
+hand of the gentle Anne was sought more secretly by Richard of Gloucester.
+At last the peacemakers effected their object.</p>
+
+<p>But the peace was only partial, the final rupture not far off. The king
+restored to Warwick the governorship of Calais--outwardly as a token of
+honour; really as a means of ridding himself of one whose presence came
+between the sun and his sovereignty. Moreover, he forbade the marriage
+between Clarence and Isabel, to the mortification of his brother, the
+bitter disappointment of Isabel herself, and the chagrin of the earl.</p>
+
+<p>However, Edward had once more to experience indebtedness at the hands of
+the man whom he treated so badly, but whose devotion to him it seemed that
+nothing could destroy. There arose the Popular Rebellion, and Warwick only
+arrived at Olney, where the king was sorely pressed, in time to save him
+and to secure, on specific terms, a treaty of peace.</p>
+
+<p>Again Edward's relief was but momentary. Proceeding to Middleham as
+Warwick's guest, when he beheld the extent of the earl's retinue his
+jealous passions were roused more than ever before; and he formed a plan
+not only for attaching to himself the allegiance of the barons, but of
+presenting the earl to the peasants in the light of one who had betrayed
+them.</p>
+
+<p>Smitten, too, by the charms of the Lady Anne, he meditated a still more
+unworthy scheme. Dismissing the unsuspecting Warwick to the double task of
+settling with the rebels and calling upon his followers to range themselves
+under the royal banner, he commanded Anne's attendance at court.</p>
+
+<p>Events leading to the final breach between king and king-maker followed
+rapidly. One night the Lady Anne fled in terror from the Tower--fled from
+the dishonouring addresses of her sovereign, now grown gross in his cups,
+however brave in battle. The news reached Warwick too late for him to
+countermand the messages he had sent to his friends on the king's behalf.
+And, so rapid were Edward's movements that Warwick, his eyes at length
+opened to Edward's true character, was compelled to flee to the court of
+King Louis at Amboise, there to plan his revenge, hampered in doing so by
+his daughter Isabel's devotion to Clarence, who followed him to France, and
+by the fact that, in regard to his own honour, he could communicate to none
+save his own kin the secret cause of his open disaffection.</p>
+
+
+<h4><i>IV.--The Return of the King-Maker</i></h4>
+
+
+<p>There was no love between Warwick and Margaret of Anjou. But his one
+means of exacting penance from Edward was alliance with the unlucky cause
+of Lancaster. And this alliance was brought about by the suave diplomacy of
+Louis, and the discovery of the long-existing attachment between the Lady
+Anne and her old play-fellow, Edward, the only son of Henry and Margaret,
+and the hope of the Red Rose.</p>
+
+<p>Coincidently with the marriage of Clarence and Isabel on French soil,
+the young Edward and Isabel's sister were betrothed. Richard of Gloucester
+was thus definitely estranged from Warwick's cause. And secret agencies
+were set afoot to undermine the loyalty of the weak Clarence to the cause
+which he had espoused.</p>
+
+<p>At first, however, Warwick's plans prospered. He returned to England,
+forced Edward to fly the country in his turn, and restored Henry VI. to the
+throne. So far, Clarence and Isabel accompanied him; while Margaret and her
+son, with Lady Warwick and the Lady Anne, remained at Amboise.</p>
+
+<p>Then the very elements seemed to war against the Lancastrians. The
+restoration came about in October 1470. Margaret was due in London in
+November, but for nearly six months the state of the Channel was such that
+she was unable to cross it.</p>
+
+<p>Warwick sickened of his self-imposed task. The whole burden of
+government rested upon the shoulders of the great earl, great where deeds
+of valour were to be done, but weak in the niceties of administration.</p>
+
+<p>The nobles, no less than the people, had expected miracles. The
+king-maker, on his return, gave them but justice. Such was the earl's
+position when Edward, with a small following, landed at Ravenspur. A
+treacherous message, sent to Warwick's brother Montagu by Clarence, caused
+Montagu to allow the invader to march southwards unmolested. This had so
+great an effect on public feeling that when Edward reached the Midlands, he
+had not a mere handful of supporters at his back, but an army of large
+dimensions. Then the wavering Clarence went over to his brother, and it
+fell to the lot of the earl sorrowfully to dispatch Isabel to the camp of
+his enemy.</p>
+
+<p>But Warwick's cup of bitterness was not yet full. The Tower was
+surrendered to Edward's friends, and on the following day Edward himself
+entered the capital, to be received by the traders with tumultuous
+cheers.</p>
+
+<p>Raw, cold, and dismal dawned the morning of the fateful 14th of March,
+1471, when Margaret at last reached English soil, and Edward's forces met
+those of Warwick on the memorable field of Barnet. All was not yet lost to
+the cause of the Red Rose. But a fog settled down over the land to
+complete, as it were, the disadvantages caused by the prolonged storms at
+sea. At a critical period of the battle the silver stars on the banners of
+one of the Lancastrians, the Earl of Oxford, being mistaken for the silver
+suns of Edward's cognisance, two important sections of Warwick's army fell
+upon one another. Friend was slaughtering friend ere the error was
+detected. While all was yet in doubt, confusion, and dismay, rushed full
+into the centre Edward himself, with his knights and riders; and his
+tossing banners added to the general incertitude and panic.</p>
+
+<p>Warwick and his brother gained the shelter of a neighbouring wood, where
+a trusty band of the earl's northern archers had been stationed. Here they
+made their last stand, Warwick destroying his charger to signify to his men
+that to them and to them alone he entrusted his fortunes and his life.</p>
+
+<p>A breach was made in the defence, and Warwick and his brother fell side
+by side, choosing death before surrender. And by them fell Hilyard,
+shattered by a bombard. Young Marmaduke Nevile was among the few notable
+survivors.</p>
+
+<p>The cries of "Victory!" reached a little band of watchers gathered in
+the churchyard on the hill of Hadley. Here Henry the Peaceful had been
+conveyed. And here, also, were Adam Warner and his daughter. The soldiers,
+hearing from one of the Duchess of Bedford's creatures whose chicanery had
+been the object of his scorn, that Warner was a wizard, had desired that
+his services should be utilised. Till the issue was clear, he had been kept
+a prisoner. When it was beyond doubt, he was hanged. Sybill was found lying
+dead at her father's feet. Her heart was already broken, for the husband of
+Margaret de Bonville having died, Lord Hastings had been recalled to the
+side of his old love, his thought of marriage with Sybill being abandoned
+for ever.</p>
+
+<p>King Edward and his brothers went to render thanksgiving at St. Paul's;
+thence to Baynard's Castle to escort the queen and her children once more
+to the Tower.</p>
+
+<p>At the sight of the victorious king, of the lovely queen, and, above
+all, of the young male heir, the crowd burst forth with a hearty cry: "Long
+live the king and the king's son!"</p>
+
+<p>Mechanically, Elizabeth turned her moistened eyes from Edward to
+Edward's brother, and suddenly clasped her infant closer to her bosom when
+she caught the glittering and fatal eye of Richard, Duke of
+Gloucester--Warwick's grim avenger in the future--fixed upon that harmless
+life, destined to interpose a feeble obstacle between the ambition of a
+ruthless intellect and the heritage of the English throne!</p>
+
+<hr />
+
+
+
+
+<h2><a name="HENRY_MACKENZIE"></a>HENRY MACKENZIE</h2>
+
+
+<h3><a name="The_Man_of_Feeling"></a>The Man of Feeling</h3>
+
+
+<blockquote> Henry Mackenzie, the son of an Edinburgh physician, was born
+in that city on August 26, 1745. He was educated for the law, and at the
+age of twenty became attorney for the crown in Scotland. It was about this
+time that he began to devote his attention to literature. His first story,
+"The Man of Feeling," was published anonymously in 1771, and such was its
+popularity that its authorship was claimed in many quarters. Considered as
+a novel, "The Man of Feeling" is frankly sentimental. Its fragmentary form
+was doubtlessly suggested by Sterne's "Sentimental Journey," and the
+adventures of the hero himself are reminiscent of those of Moses in "The
+Vicar of Wakefield." But of these two masterpieces Mackenzie's work falls
+short: it has none of Sterne's humour, nor has it any of Goldsmith's subtle
+characterisation. "The Man of Feeling" was followed in 1773 by "The Man of
+the World," and later by a number of miscellaneous articles and stories.
+Mackenzie died on January 14, 1831. </blockquote>
+
+
+<h4><i>I.--A Whimsical History</i></h4>
+
+
+<p>I was out shooting with the curate on a burning First of September, and
+we had stopped for a minute by an old hedge.</p>
+
+<p>Looking round, I discovered for the first time a venerable pile, to
+which the enclosure before us belonged. An air of melancholy hung about it,
+and just at that instant I saw pass between the trees a young lady with a
+book in her hand. The curate sat him down on the grass and told me that was
+the daughter of a neighbouring gentleman of the name of Walton, whom he had
+seen walking there more than once.</p>
+
+<p>"Some time ago," he said, "one Harley lived there, a whimsical sort of
+man, I am told. The greatest part of his history is still in my possession.
+I once began to read it, but I soon grew weary of the task; for, besides
+that the hand is intolerably bad, I never could find the author in one
+strain for two chapters together. The way I came by it was this. Some time
+ago a grave, oddish kind of a man boarded at a farmer's in this parish. He
+left soon after I was made curate, and went nobody knows whither; and in
+his room was found a bundle of papers, which was brought to me by his
+landlord."</p>
+
+<p>"I should be glad to see this medley," said I.</p>
+
+<p>"You shall see it now," answered the curate, "for I always take it along
+with me a-shooting. 'Tis excellent wadding."</p>
+
+<p>When I returned to town I had leisure to peruse the acquisition I had
+made, and found it a little bundle of episodes, put together without art,
+yet with something of nature.</p>
+
+<p>The curate must answer for the omissions.</p>
+
+
+<h4><i>II.--The Man of Feeling in Love</i></h4>
+
+
+<p>Harley lost his father, the last surviving of his parents, when he was a
+boy. His education, therefore, had been but indifferently attended to; and
+after being taken from a country school, the young gentleman was suffered
+to be his own master in the subsequent branches of literature, with some
+assistance from the pastor of the parish in languages and philosophy, and
+from the exciseman in arithmetic and book-keeping.</p>
+
+<p>There were two ways of increasing his fortune. One of these was the
+prospect of succeeding to an old lady, a distant relation, who was known to
+be possessed of a very large sum in the stocks. But the young man was so
+untoward in his disposition, and accommodated himself so ill to her humour,
+that she died and did not leave him a farthing.</p>
+
+<p>The other method pointed out to him was an endeavour to get a lease of
+some crown lands which lay contiguous to his little paternal estate. As the
+crown did not draw so much rent as Harley could afford to give, with very
+considerable profit to himself, it was imagined this lease might be easily
+procured. However, this needed some interest with the great, which neither
+Harley nor his father ever possessed.</p>
+
+<p>His neighbour, Mr. Walton, having heard of this affair, generously
+offered his assistance to accomplish it, and said he would furnish him with
+a letter of introduction to a baronet of his acquaintance who had a great
+deal to say with the first lord of the treasury.</p>
+
+<p>Harley, though he had no great relish for the attempt, could not resist
+the torrent of motives that assaulted him, and a day was fixed for his
+departure.</p>
+
+<p>The day before he set out he went to take leave of Mr. Walton--there was
+another person of the family to whom also the visit was intended. For Mr.
+Walton had a daughter; and such a daughter!</p>
+
+<p>As her father had some years retired to the country, Harley had frequent
+opportunities of seeing her. He looked on her for some time merely with
+that respect and admiration which her appearance seemed to demand; he heard
+her sentiments with peculiar attention, but seldom declared his opinions on
+the subject. It would be trite to observe the easy gradation from esteem to
+love; in the bosom of Harley there scarce needed a transition.</p>
+
+<p>Harley's first effort to interview the baronet met with no success, but
+he resolved to make another attempt, fortified with higher notions of his
+own dignity, and with less apprehensions of repulse. By the time he had
+reached Grosvenor Square and was walking along the pavement which led to
+the baronet's he had brought his reasoning to the point that by every rule
+of logic his conclusions should have led him to a thorough indifference in
+approaching a fellow-mortal, whether that fellow-mortal was possessed of
+six or six thousand pounds a year. Nevertheless, it is certain that when he
+approached the great man's door he felt his heart agitated by an unusual
+pulsation.</p>
+
+<p>He observed a young gentleman coming out, dressed in a white frock and a
+red laced waistcoat; who, as he passed, very politely made him a bow, which
+Harley returned, though he could not remember ever having seen him before.
+The stranger asked Harley civilly if he was going to wait on his friend the
+baronet. "For I was just calling," said he, "and am sorry to find that he
+is gone some days into the country."</p>
+
+<p>Harley thanked him for his information, and turned from the door, when
+the other observed that it would be proper to leave his name, and very
+obligingly knocked for that purpose.</p>
+
+<p>"Here is a gentleman, Tom, who meant to have waited on your master."</p>
+
+<p>"Your name, if you please, sir?"</p>
+
+<p>"Harley."</p>
+
+<p>"You'll remember, Tom, Harley."</p>
+
+<p>The door was shut.</p>
+
+<p>"Since we are here," said the stranger, "we shall not lose our walk if
+we add a little to it by a turn or two in Hyde Park."</p>
+
+<p>The conversation as they walked was brilliant on the side of his
+companion.</p>
+
+<p>When they had finished their walk and were returning by the corner of
+the park they observed a board hung out of a window signifying, "An
+excellent ordinary on Saturdays and Sundays." It happened to be Saturday,
+and the table was covered for the purpose.</p>
+
+<p>"What if we should go in and dine, sir?" said the young gentleman.
+Harley made no objection, and the stranger showed him the way into the
+parlour.</p>
+
+<p>Over against the fire-place was seated a man of a grave aspect, who wore
+a pretty large wig, which had once been white, but was now of a brownish
+yellow; his coat was a modest coloured drab; and two jack-boots concealed
+in part the well-mended knees of an old pair of buckskin breeches. Next him
+sat another man, with a tankard in his hand and a quid of tobacco in his
+cheek, whose dress was something smarter.</p>
+
+<p>The door was soon opened for the admission of dinner. "I don't know how
+it is with you, gentlemen," said Harley's new acquaintance, "but I am
+afraid I shall not be able to get down a morsel at this horrid mechanical
+hour of dining." He sat down, however, and did not show any want of
+appetite by his eating. He took upon him the carving of the meat, and
+criticised the goodness of the pudding, and when the tablecloth was removed
+proposed calling for some punch, which was readily agreed to.</p>
+
+<p>While the punch lasted the conversation was wholly engrossed by this
+young gentleman, who told a great many "immensely comical stories" and
+"confounded smart things," as he termed them. At last the man in the
+jack-boots, who turned out to be a grazier, pulling out a watch of very
+unusual size, said that he had an appointment. And the young gentleman
+discovered that he was already late for an appointment.</p>
+
+<p>When the grazier and he were gone, Harley turned to the remaining
+personage, and asked him if he knew that young gentleman. "A gentleman!"
+said he. "I knew him, some years ago, in the quality of a footman. But some
+of the great folks to whom he has been serviceable had him made a ganger.
+And he has the assurance to pretend an acquaintance with men of quality.
+The impudent dog! With a few shillings in his pocket, he will talk three
+times as much as my friend Mundy, the grazier there, who is worth nine
+thousand if he's worth a farthing. But I know the rascal, and despise him
+as he deserves!"</p>
+
+<p>Harley began to despise him, too, but he corrected himself by reflecting
+that he was perhaps as well entertained, and instructed, too, by this same
+ganger, as he should have been by such a man of fashion as he had thought
+proper to personate.</p>
+
+
+<h4><i>III.--Harley's Success with the Baronet</i></h4>
+
+
+<p>The card he received was in the politest style in which disappointment
+could be communicated. The baronet "was under a necessity of giving up his
+application for Mr. Harley, as he was informed that the lease was engaged
+for a gentleman who had long served his majesty in another capacity, and
+whose merit had entitled him to the first lucrative thing that should be
+vacant." Even Harley could not murmur at such a disposal. "Perhaps," said
+he to himself, "some war-worn officer, who had been neglected from reasons
+which merited the highest advancement; whose honour could not stoop to
+solicit the preferment he deserved; perhaps, with a family taught the
+principles of delicacy without the means of supporting it; a wife and
+children--gracious heaven!--whom my wishes would have deprived of
+bread--!"</p>
+
+<p>He was interrupted in his reverie by someone tapping him on the
+shoulder, and on turning round, he discovered it to be the very man who had
+recently explained to him the condition of his gay companion.</p>
+
+<p>"I believe we are fellows in disappointment," said he. Harley started,
+and said that he was at a loss to understand him.</p>
+
+<p>"Pooh! you need not be so shy," answered the other; "everyone for
+himself is but fair, and I had much rather you had got it than the rascally
+ganger. I was making interest for it myself, and I think I had some title.
+I voted for this same baronet at the last election, and made some of my
+friends do so, too; though I would not have you imagine that I sold my
+vote. No, I scorn it--let me tell you I scorn it; but I thought as how this
+man was staunch and true, and I find he's but a double-faced fellow after
+all, and speechifies in the House for any side he hopes to make most by. A
+murrain on the smooth-tongued knave, and after all to get it for this
+rascal of a ganger."</p>
+
+<p>"The ganger! There must be some mistake," said Harley. "He writes me
+that it was engaged for one whose long services--"</p>
+
+<p>"Services!" interrupted the other; "some paltry convenience to the
+baronet. A plague on all rogues! I shall but just drink destruction to them
+to-night and leave London to-morrow by sunrise."</p>
+
+<p>"I shall leave it, too," said Harley; and so he accordingly did.</p>
+
+<p>In passing through Piccadilly, he had observed on the window of an inn a
+notification of the departure of a stage-coach for a place on his road
+homewards; on the way back to his lodgings, he took a seat in it.</p>
+
+
+<h4><i>IV.--He Meets an Old Acquaintance</i></h4>
+
+
+<p>When the stage-coach arrived at the place of its destination, Harley,
+who did things frequently in a way different from what other people call
+natural, set out immediately afoot, having first put a spare shirt in his
+pocket and given directions for the forwarding of his portmanteau. It was a
+method of travelling which he was accustomed to take.</p>
+
+<p>On the road, about four miles from his destination, Harley overtook an
+old man, who from his dress had been a soldier, and walked with him.</p>
+
+<p>"Sir," said the stranger, looking earnestly at him, "is not your name
+Harley? You may well have forgotten my face, 'tis a long time since you saw
+it; but possibly you may remember something of old Edwards? When you were
+at school in the neighbourhood, you remember me at South Hill?"</p>
+
+<p>"Edwards!" cried Harley, "O, heavens! let me clasp those knees on which
+I have sat so often. Edwards! I shall never forget that fireside, round
+which I have been so happy! But where have you been? Where is Jack? Where
+is your daughter?"</p>
+
+<p>"'Tis a long tale," replied Edwards, "but I will try to tell it you as
+we walk."</p>
+
+<p>Edwards had been a tenant farmer where his father, grandfather, and
+great-grandfather had lived before him. The rapacity of a land steward,
+heavy agricultural losses, and finally the arrival of a press-gang had
+reduced him to misery. By paying a certain sum of money he had been
+accepted by the press-gang instead of his son, and now old Edwards was
+returning home invalided from the army.</p>
+
+<p>When they had arrived within a little way of the village they journeyed
+to, Harley stopped short and looked steadfastly on the mouldering walls of
+a ruined house that stood by the roadside.</p>
+
+<p>"What do I see?" he cried. "Silent, unroofed, and desolate! That was the
+very school where I was boarded when you were at South Hill; 'tis but a
+twelve-month since I saw it standing and its benches filled with cherubs.
+That opposite side of the road was the green on which they sported; see, it
+is now ploughed up!"</p>
+
+<p>Just then a woman passed them on the road, who, in reply to Harley, told
+them the squire had pulled the school-house down because it stood in the
+way of his prospects.</p>
+
+<p>"If you want anything with the school-mistress, sir," said the woman. "I
+can show you the way to her house."</p>
+
+<p>They followed her to the door of a snug habitation, where sat an elderly
+woman with a boy and a girl before her, each of whom held a supper of bread
+and milk in their hands.</p>
+
+<p>"They are poor orphans," the school-mistress said, when Harley addressed
+her, "put under my care by the parish, and more promising children I never
+saw. Their father, sir, was a farmer here in the neighbourhood, and a
+sober, industrious man he was; but nobody can help misfortunes. What with
+bad crops and bad debts, his affairs went to wreck, and both he and his
+wife died of broken hearts. And a sweet couple they were, sir. There was
+not a properer man to look on in the county than John Edwards, and so,
+indeed, were all the Edwardses of South Hill."</p>
+
+<p>"Edwards! South Hill!" said the old soldier, in a languid voice, and
+fell back in the arms of the astonished Harley.</p>
+
+<p>He soon recovered, and folding his orphan grandchildren in his arms,
+cried, "My poor Jack, art thou gone--"</p>
+
+<p>"My dear old man," said Harley, "Providence has sent you to relieve
+them. It will bless me if I can be the means of assisting you."</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, indeed, sir," answered the boy. "Father, when he was a-dying, bade
+God bless us, and prayed that if grandfather lived he might send him to
+support us. I have told sister," said he, "that she should not take it so
+to heart. She can knit already, and I shall soon be able to dig. We shall
+not starve, sister, indeed we shall not, nor shall grandfather
+neither."</p>
+
+<p>The little girl cried afresh. Harley kissed off her tears, and wept
+between every kiss.</p>
+
+
+<h4><i>V.--The Man of Feeling is Jealous</i></h4>
+
+
+<p>Shortly after Harley's return home his servant Peter came into his room
+one morning with a piece of news on his tongue.</p>
+
+<p>"The morning is main cold, sir," began Peter.</p>
+
+<p>"Is it?" said Harley.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, sir. I have been as far as Tom Dowson's to fetch some barberries.
+There was a rare junketting at Tom's last night among Sir Harry Benson's
+servants. And I hear as how Sir Harry is going to be married to Miss
+Walton. Tom's wife told it me, and, to be sure, the servants told her; but,
+of course, it mayn't be true, for all that."</p>
+
+<p>"Have done with your idle information," said Harley. "Is my aunt come
+down into the parlour to breakfast?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, sir."</p>
+
+<p>"Tell her I'll be with her immediately."</p>
+
+<p>His aunt, too, had been informed of the intended match between Sir Harry
+Benson and Miss Walton, Harley learnt.</p>
+
+<p>"I have been thinking," said she, "that they are distant relations, for
+the great-grandfather of this Sir Harry, who was knight of the shire in the
+reign of Charles I., married a daughter of the Walton family."</p>
+
+<p>Harley answered drily that it might be so, but that he never troubled
+himself about those matters.</p>
+
+<p>"Indeed," said she, "you are to blame, nephew, for not knowing a little
+more of them; but nowadays it is money, not birth, that makes people
+respected--the more shame for the times."</p>
+
+<p>Left alone, Harley went out and sat down on a little seat in the
+garden.</p>
+
+<p>"Miss Walton married!" said he. "But what is that to me? May she be
+happy! Her virtues deserve it. I had romantic dreams. They are fled."</p>
+
+<p>That night the curate dined with him, though his visits, indeed, were
+more properly to the aunt than the nephew. He had hardly said grace after
+dinner when he said he was very well informed that Sir Harry Benson was
+just going to be married to Miss Walton. Harley spilt the wine he was
+carrying to his mouth; he had time, however, to recollect himself before
+the curate had finished the particulars of his intelligence, and, summing
+up all the heroism he was master of, filled a bumper, and drank to Miss
+Walton.</p>
+
+<p>"With all my heart," said the curate; "the bride that is to be!" Harley
+would have said "bride," too, but it stuck in his throat, and his confusion
+was manifest.</p>
+
+
+<h4><i>VI.--He Sees Miss Walton and is Happy</i></h4>
+
+
+<p>Miss Walton was not married to Sir Harry Benson, but Harley made no
+declaration of his own passion after that of the other had been
+unsuccessful. The state of his health appears to have been such as to
+forbid any thoughts of that kind. He had been seized with a very dangerous
+fever caught by attending old Edwards in one of an infectious kind. From
+this he had recovered but imperfectly, and though he had no formed
+complaint, his health was manifestly on the decline.</p>
+
+<p>It appears that some friend had at length pointed out to his aunt a
+cause from which this decline of health might be supposed to proceed, to
+wit, his hopeless love for Miss Walton--for, according to the conceptions
+of the world, the love of a man of Harley's modest fortune for the heiress
+of &pound;4,000 a year is indeed desperate.</p>
+
+<p>Be that as it may, I was sitting with him one morning when the door
+opened and his aunt appeared, leading in Miss Walton. I could observe a
+transient glow upon his face as he rose from his seat. She begged him to
+resume his seat, and placed herself on the sofa beside him. I took my
+leave, and his aunt accompanied me to the door. Harley was left with Miss
+Walton alone. She inquired anxiously about his health.</p>
+
+<p>"I believe," said he, "from the accounts which my physicians unwillingly
+give me, that they have no great hopes of my recovery."</p>
+
+<p>She started as he spoke, and then endeavoured to flatter him into a
+belief that his apprehensions were groundless.</p>
+
+<p>"I do not wish to be deceived," said he. "To meet death as becomes a man
+is a privilege bestowed on few. I would endeavour to make it mine. Nor do I
+think that I can ever be better prepared for it than now." He paused some
+moments. "I am in such a state as calls for sincerity. Let that also excuse
+it. It is perhaps the last time we shall ever meet." He paused again. "Let
+it not offend you to know your power over one so unworthy. To love Miss
+Walton could not be a crime; if to declare it is one, the expiation will be
+made."</p>
+
+<p>Her tears were now flowing without control.</p>
+
+<p>"Let me entreat you," said she, "to have better hopes. Let not life be
+so indifferent to you, if my wishes can put any value on it. I know your
+worth--I have known it long. I have esteemed it. What would you have me
+say? I have loved it as it deserved."</p>
+
+<p>He seized her hand, a languid colour reddened her cheek; a smile
+brightened faintly in his eye. As he gazed on her it grew dim, it fixed, it
+closed. He sighed, and fell back on his seat. Miss Walton screamed at the
+sight.</p>
+
+<p>His aunt and the servants rushed into the room. They found them lying
+motionless together.</p>
+
+<p>His physician happened to call at that instant. Every art was tried to
+recover them. With Miss Walton they succeeded, but Harley was gone for
+ever.</p>
+
+<hr />
+
+
+
+
+<h2><a name="XAVIER_DE_MAISTRE"></a>XAVIER DE MAISTRE</h2>
+
+
+<h3><a name="A_Journey_Round_My_Room"></a>A Journey Round My Room</h3>
+
+
+<blockquote> Count Xavier de Maistre was born in October 1763 at
+Chamb&eacute;ry, in Savoy. When, in the war and the upheaval that followed
+on the French Revolution, his country was annexed to France, he emigrated
+to Russia, and being a landscape painter of fine talent, he managed to live
+on the pictures which he sold. He died at St. Petersburg on June 12, 1852.
+His famous "Journey Round My Room" ("Voyage autour de ma chambre") was
+written in 1794 at Turin, where he was imprisoned for forty-two days over
+some affair of honour. The style of his work is clearly modelled on that of
+Sterne, but the ideas, which he pours out with a delightful interplay of
+wit and fancy, are marked with the stamp of a fine, original mind. The work
+is one of the most brilliant <i>tours de force</i> in a literature
+remarkable for its lightness, grace, and charm. Being a born writer, de
+Maistre whiled away his time by producing a sparkling little masterpiece,
+which will be cherished long after the heavy, philosophical works written
+by his elder brother, Joseph de Maistre, have mouldered into the dust. In
+the lifetime of the two brothers, Joseph was regarded throughout Europe as
+a man of high genius, while Xavier was looked down on as a trifler.
+</blockquote>
+
+
+<h4><i>I.--My Great Discovery</i></h4>
+
+
+<p>How glorious it is to open a new career, and to appear suddenly in the
+world of science with a book of discoveries in one's hand like an
+unexpected comet sparkling in space! Here is the book, gentleman. I have
+undertaken and carried out a journey of forty-two days in my room. The
+interesting observations I have made, and the continual pleasure I have
+felt during this long expedition, excited in me the wish to publish it; the
+certitude of the usefulness of my work decided me. My heart is filled with
+an inexpressible satisfaction when I think of the infinite number of
+unhappy persons to whom I am now able to offer an assured resource against
+the tediousness and vexations of life. The delight one finds in travelling
+in one's own room is a pure joy, exempt from the unquiet jealousies of men
+and independent of ill-fortune.</p>
+
+<p>In the immense family of men that swarm on the surface of the earth,
+there is not one--no, not one (I am speaking, of course, of those who have
+a room to live in)--who can, after having read this book, refuse his
+approbation to the new way of travelling which I have invented. It costs
+nothing, that is the great thing! Thus it is certain of being adopted by
+very rich people! Thousands of persons who have never thought of travelling
+will now resolve to follow my example.</p>
+
+<p>Come, then, let us go forth! Follow me, all ye hermits who through some
+mortification in love, some negligence in friendship, have withdrawn into
+your rooms far from the pettiness and infidelity of mankind! But quit your
+dismal thoughts, I pray you. Every minute you lose some pleasure without
+gaining any wisdom in place of it. Deign to accompany me on my travels. We
+shall go by easy stages, laughing all along the road at every tourist who
+has gone to Rome or Paris. No obstacle shall stop us, and, surrendering
+ourselves to our imagination, we will follow it wherever it may lead
+us.</p>
+
+<p>But persons are so curious. I am sure you would like to know why my
+journey round my room lasted forty-two days instead of forty-three, or some
+other space of time. But how can I tell you when I do not know myself? All
+I can say is that if you find my work too long, it was not my fault. In
+spite of the vanity natural in a traveller, I should have been very glad if
+it had only run a single chapter. The fact is, that though I was allowed in
+my room all the pleasures and comfort possible, I was not permitted to
+leave it when I wished.</p>
+
+<p>Is there anything more natural and just than to fight to the death with
+a man who has inadvertently trodden on your foot, or let fall some sharp
+words in a moment of vexation of which your imprudence was the cause?
+Nothing, you will admit, is more logical; and yet there are some people who
+disapprove of this admirable custom.</p>
+
+<p>But, what is still more natural and logical, the very people who
+disapprove it and regard it as a grave crime treat with greater rigour any
+man who refuses to commit it. Many an unhappy fellow has lost his
+reputation and position through conforming with their views, so that if you
+have the misfortune to be engaged in what is called "an affair of honour,"
+it is best to toss up to see if you should follow the law or the custom;
+and as the law and the custom in regard to duelling are contradictory, the
+magistrates would also do well to frame their sentence on the throw of the
+dice. Probably, it was in this way that they determined that my journey
+should last exactly forty-two days.</p>
+
+
+<h4><i>II.--My Armchair and my Bed</i></h4>
+
+
+<p>My chamber forms a square, round which I can take thirty-six steps, if I
+keep very close to the wall. But I seldom travel in a straight line. I
+dislike persons who are such masters of their feet and of their ideas that
+they can say: "To-day I shall make three calls, I shall write four letters,
+I shall finish this work that I have begun." So rare are the pleasures
+scattered along our difficult path in life, that we must be mad not to turn
+out of our way and gather anything of joy which is within our reach.</p>
+
+<p>To my mind, there is nothing more attractive than to follow the trail of
+one's ideas, like a hunter tracking down game, without holding to any road.
+I like to zigzag about. I set out from my table to the picture in the
+corner. From there I journey obliquely towards the door; but if I come upon
+my armchair I stand on no ceremonies, but settle myself in it at once. 'Tis
+an excellent piece of furniture, an armchair, and especially useful to a
+meditative man. In long winter evenings it is sometimes delightful and
+always wise to stretch oneself in it easily, far from the din of the
+numerous assemblies.</p>
+
+<p>After my armchair, in walking towards the north I discover my bed, which
+is placed at the end of my room, and there forms a most agreeable
+perspective. So happily is it arranged that the earliest rays of sunlight
+come and play on the curtains. I can see them, on fine summer mornings,
+advancing along the white wall with the rising sun; some elms, growing
+before my window, divide them in a thousand ways, and make them dance on my
+bed, which, by their reflection, spread all round the room the tint of its
+own charming white and rose pattern. I hear the twittering of the swallows
+that nest in the roof, and of other birds in the elms; a stream of charming
+thoughts flows into my mind, and in the whole world nobody has an awakening
+as pleasant and as peaceful as mine.</p>
+
+
+<h4><i>III.--The Beast</i></h4>
+
+
+<p>Only metaphysicians must read this chapter. It throws a great light on
+the nature of man. I cannot explain how and why I burnt my fingers at the
+first steps I made in setting out on my journey around my room, until I
+expose my system of the soul and the beast. In the course of diverse
+observations I have found out that man is composed of a soul and a
+beast.</p>
+
+<p>It is often said that man is made up of a soul and a body, and this body
+is accused of doing all sorts of wrong things. In my opinion, there is no
+ground for such accusations, for the body is as incapable of feeling as it
+is of thinking. The beast is the creature on whom the blame should be laid.
+It is a sensible being, perfectly distinct from the soul, a veritable
+individual, with its separate existence, tastes, inclinations, and will; it
+is superior to other animals only because it has been better brought up,
+and endowed with finer organs. The great art of a man of genius consists in
+knowing how to train his beast so well that it can run alone, while the
+soul, delivered from its painful company, rises up into the heavens. I must
+make this clear by an example.</p>
+
+<p>One day last summer I was walking along on my way to the court. I had
+been painting all the morning, and my soul, delighted with her meditation
+on painting, left to the beast the care of transporting me to the king's
+palace.</p>
+
+<p>"What a sublime art painting is!" thought my soul. "Happy is the man who
+has been touched by the spectacle of nature, who is not compelled to paint
+pictures for a living, and still less just to pass the time away; but who,
+struck by the majesty of a fine physiognomy and by the admirable play of
+light that blends in a thousand tints on a human face, tries to approach in
+his works the sublime effects of nature!"</p>
+
+<p>While my soul was making these reflections, the beast was running its
+own way. Instead of going to court, as it had been ordered to, it swerved
+so much to the left that at the moment when my soul caught it up, it was at
+the door of Mme. de Hautcastel's house, half a mile from the palace.</p>
+
+<hr />
+
+<p>If it is useful and pleasant to have a soul so disengaged from the
+material world that one can let her travel all alone when one wishes to,
+this faculty is not without its inconveniences. It was through it, for
+instance, that I burnt my fingers. I usually leave to my beast the duty of
+preparing my breakfast. It toasts my bread and cuts it in slices. Above
+all, it makes coffee beautifully, and it drinks it very often without my
+soul taking part in the matter, except when she amuses herself with
+watching the beast at work. This, however, is rare, and a very difficult
+thing to do.</p>
+
+<p>It is easy, during some mechanical act, to think of something else; but
+it is extremely difficult to study oneself in action, so to speak; or, to
+explain myself according to my own system, to employ one's soul in
+examining the conduct of one's beast, to see it work without taking any
+part. This is really the most astonishing metaphysical feat that man can
+execute.</p>
+
+<p>I had laid my tongs on the charcoal to toast my bread, and some time
+after, while my soul was on her travels, a flaming stump rolled on the
+grate; my poor beast went to take up the tongs, and I burnt my fingers.</p>
+
+
+<h4><i>IV.--A Great Picture</i></h4>
+
+
+<p>The first stage of my journey round my room is accomplished. While my
+soul has been explaining my new system of metaphysic, I have been sitting
+in my armchair in my favourite attitude, with the two front feet raised a
+couple of inches off the floor. By swaying my body to and fro, I have
+insensibly gained ground, and I find myself with a start close to the wall.
+This is the way in which I travel when I am not in a hurry.</p>
+
+<p>My chamber is hung with prints and paintings which embellish it in an
+admirable manner. I should like the reader to examine them one after the
+other, and to entertain himself during the long journey that we must make
+in order to arrive at my desk. Look, here is a portrait of Raphael. Beside
+it is a likeness of the adorable lady whom he loved.</p>
+
+<p>But I have something still finer than these, and I always reserve it for
+the last. I find that both connoisseurs and ignoramuses, both women of the
+world and little children, yes, and even animals, are pleased and
+astonished by the way in which this sublime work renders every effect in
+nature. What picture can I present to you, gentlemen; what scene can I put
+beneath your lovely eyes, ladies, more certain of winning your favour than
+the faithful image of yourselves? The work of which I speak is a
+looking-glass, and nobody up to the present has taken it into his head to
+criticise it; it is, for all those who study it, a perfect picture in which
+there is nothing to blame. It is thus the gem of my collection.</p>
+
+<p>You see this withered rose? It is a flower of the Turin carnival of last
+year. I gathered it myself at Valentin's, and in the evening, an hour
+before the ball, I went full of hope and joy to present it to Mme. de
+Hautcastel. She took it, and placed it on her dressing-table without
+looking at it, and without looking at me. But how could she take any notice
+of me? Standing in an ectasy before a great mirror, she was putting the
+last touches to her finery. So totally was she absorbed in the ribbons, the
+gauzes, the ornaments heaped up before her, that I could not obtain a
+glance, a sign. I finished my losing patience, and being unable to resist
+the feeling of anger that swept over me, I took up the rose and walked out
+without taking leave of my sweetheart.</p>
+
+<p>"Are you going?" she said, turning round to see her figure in
+profile.</p>
+
+<p>I did not answer, but I listened at the door to learn if my brusque
+departure produced any effect.</p>
+
+<p>"Do you not see," exclaimed Mme. de Hautcastel to her maid, after a
+short silence, "that this pelisse is much too full at the bottom? Get some
+pins and make a tuck in it."</p>
+
+<p>That is how I come to have a withered rose on my desk. I shall make no
+reflections on the affair. I shall not even draw any conclusions from it
+concerning the force and duration of a woman's love.</p>
+
+<p>My forty-two days are coming to an end, and an equal space of time would
+not suffice to describe the rich country in which I am now travelling, for
+I have at last reached my bookshelf. It contains nothing but novels--yes, I
+shall be candid--nothing but novels and a few choice poets. As though I had
+not enough troubles of my own, I willingly share in those of a thousand
+imaginary persons, and I feel them as keenly as if they were mine. What
+tears have I shed over the unhappiness of Clarissa!</p>
+
+<p>But if I thus seek for feigned afflictions, I find, in compensation, in
+this imaginary world, the virtue, the goodness, the disinterestedness which
+I have been unable to discover together in the real world in which I exist.
+It is there that I find the wife that I desire, without temper, without
+lightness, without subterfuge; I say nothing about beauty--you can depend
+on my imagination for that! Then, closing the book which no longer answers
+to my ideas, I take her by the hand, and we wander together through a land
+a thousand times more delicious than that of Eden. What painter can depict
+the scene of enchantment in which I have placed the divinity of my heart?
+But when I am tired of love-making I take up some poet, and set out again
+for another world.</p>
+
+
+<h4><i>V.--In Prison Again</i></h4>
+
+
+<p>O charming land of imagination which has been given to men to console
+them for the realities of life, it is time for me to leave thee! This is
+the day when certain persons pretend to give me back my freedom, as though
+they had deprived me of it! As though it were in their power to take it
+away from me for a single instant, and to hinder me from scouring as I
+please the vast space always open before me! They have prevented me from
+going out into a single town--Turin, a mere point on the earth--but they
+have left to me the entire universe; immensity and eternity have been at my
+service.</p>
+
+<p>To-day, then, I am free, or rather I am going to be put back into irons.
+The yoke of business is again going to weigh me down; I shall not be able
+to take a step which is not measured by custom or duty. I shall be
+fortunate if some capricious goddess does not make me forget one and the
+other, and if I escape from this new and dangerous captivity.</p>
+
+<p>Oh, why did they not let me complete my journey! Was it really to punish
+me that they confined me in my room? In this country of delight which
+contains all the good things, all the riches of the world? They might as
+well have tried to chastise a mouse by shutting him up in a granary.</p>
+
+<p>Yet never have I perceived more clearly that I have a double nature. All
+the time that I am regretting my pleasures of the imagination, I feel
+myself consoled by force. A secret power draws me away. It tells me that I
+have need of the fresh air and the open sky, and that solitude resembles
+death. So here am I dressed and ready. My door opens; I am rambling under
+the spacious porticoes of the street of Po; a thousand charming phantoms
+dance before my eyes. Yes, this is her mansion, this is the door; I tremble
+with anticipation.</p>
+
+<hr />
+
+
+
+
+<h2><a name="SIR_THOMAS_MALORY"></a>SIR THOMAS MALORY</h2>
+
+
+<h3><a name="Morte_dArthur"></a>Morte d'Arthur</h3>
+
+
+<blockquote> Little is known of Sir Thomas Malory, who, according to
+Caxton, "did take out of certain French books a copy of the noble histories
+of King Arthur and reduced it to English." We learn from the text that
+"this book was finished in the ninth year of the reign of King Edward the
+Fourth, by Sir Thomas Malory, Knight." That would be in the year 1469.
+Malory is said to have been a Welshman. The origin of the Arthurian romance
+was probably Welsh. Its first literary form was in Geoffrey of Monmouth's
+prose, in 1147. Translated into French verse, and brightened in the
+process, these legends appear to have come back to us, and to have received
+notable additions from Walter Map (1137-1209), another Welshman. A second
+time they were worked on and embellished by the French romanticists, and
+from these later versions Malory appears to have collated the materials for
+his immortal translation. The story of Arthur and Launcelot is the thread
+of interest followed in this epitome. </blockquote>
+
+
+<h4><i>I.--The Coming of Arthur</i></h4>
+
+
+<p>It befell in the days of the noble Utherpendragon, when he was King of
+England, there was a mighty and noble duke in Cornwall, named the Duke of
+Tintagil, that held long war against him. And the duke's wife was called a
+right fair lady, and a passing wise, and Igraine was her name. And the
+duke, issuing out of the castle at a postern to distress the king's host,
+was slain. Then all the barons, by one assent, prayed the king of accord
+between the Lady Igraine and himself. And the king gave them leave, for
+fain would he have accorded with her; and they were married in a morning
+with great mirth and joy.</p>
+
+<p>When the Queen Igraine grew daily nearer the time when the child Arthur
+should be born, Merlin, by whose counsel the king had taken her to wife,
+came to the king and said: "Sir, you must provide for the nourishing of
+your child. I know a lord of yours that is a passing true man, and
+faithful, and he shall have the nourishing of your child. His name is Sir
+Ector, and he is a lord of fair livelihood." "As thou wilt," said the king,
+"be it." So the child was delivered unto Merlin, and he bare it forth unto
+Sir Ector, and made a holy man to christen him, and named him Arthur.</p>
+
+<p>But, within two years, King Uther fell sick of a great malady, and
+therewith yielded up the ghost, and was interred as belonged unto a king;
+wherefore Igraine the queen made great sorrow, and all the barons.</p>
+
+<p>Then stood the realm in great jeopardy a long while, for many weened to
+have been king. And Merlin went to the Archbishop of Canterbury, and
+counselled him to send for all the lords of the realm, and all the
+gentlemen of arms, to London before Christmas, upon pain of cursing, that
+Jesus, of His great mercy, should show some miracle who should be rightwise
+king. So in the greatest church of London there was seen against the high
+altar a great stone and in the midst thereof there was an anvil of steel,
+and therein stuck a fair sword, naked by the point, and letters of gold
+were written about the sword that said, "Whoso pulleth out this sword of
+this stone and anvil is rightwise king born of England."</p>
+
+<p>And many essayed, but none might stir the sword.</p>
+
+<p>And on New Year's Day the barons made a joust, and Sir Ector rode to the
+jousts; and with him rode Sir Kaye, his son, and young Arthur, that was his
+nourished brother.</p>
+
+<p>And Sir Kaye, who was made knight at Allhallowmas afore, had left his
+sword at his father's lodging, and so prayed young Arthur to ride for it.
+Then Arthur said to himself, "I will ride to the churchyard and take the
+sword that sticketh in the stone for my brother Kaye." And so, lightly and
+fiercely, he pulled it out of the stone, and took horse and delivered to
+Sir Kaye the sword. "How got you this sword?" said Sir Ector to Arthur.
+"Sir, I will tell you," said Arthur; "I pulled it out of the stone without
+any pain." "Now," said Sir Ector, "I understand you must be king of this
+land." "Wherefore I?" said Arthur. "And for what cause?" "Sir," said Sir
+Ector, "for God will have it so." And therewithal Sir Ector kneeled down to
+the earth, and Sir Kaye also.</p>
+
+<p>Then Sir Ector told him all how he had betaken him to nourish him; and
+Arthur made great moan when he understood that Sir Ector was not his
+father.</p>
+
+<p>And at the Feast of Pentecost all manner of men essayed to pull out the
+sword, and none might prevail but Arthur, who pulled it out before all the
+lords and commons. And the commons cried, "We will have Arthur unto our
+king." And so anon was the coronation made.</p>
+
+<p>And Merlin said to King Arthur, "Fight not with the sword that you had
+by miracle till you see that you go to the worst, then draw it out and do
+your best." And the sword, Excalibur, was so bright that it gave light like
+thirty torches.</p>
+
+
+<h4><i>II.--The Marriage of Arthur</i></h4>
+
+
+<p>In the beginning of King Arthur, after that he was chosen king by
+adventure and by grace, for the most part the barons knew not that he was
+Utherpendragon's son but as Merlin made it openly known. And many kings and
+lords made great war against him for that cause, but King Arthur full well
+overcame them all; for the most part of the days of his life he was much
+ruled by the counsel of Merlin. So it befell on a time that he said unto
+Merlin, "My barons will let me have no rest, but needs they will have that
+I take a wife, and I will none take but by thy advice."</p>
+
+<p>"It is well done," said Merlin, "for a man of your bounty and nobleness
+should not be without a wife. Now, is there any fair lady that ye love
+better than another?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yea," said Arthur; "I love Guinever, the king's daughter, of the land
+of Cameliard. This damsel is the gentlest and fairest lady I ever could
+find."</p>
+
+<p>"Sir," said Merlin, "she is one of the fairest that live, and as a man's
+heart is set he will be loth to return."</p>
+
+<p>But Merlin warned the king privily that Guinever was not wholesome for
+him to take to wife, for he warned him that Launcelot should love her, and
+she him again. And Merlin went forth to King Leodegraunce, of Cameliard,
+and told him of the desire of the king that he would have to his wife
+Guinever, his daughter. "That is to me," said King Leodegraunce, "the best
+tidings that ever I heard; and I shall send him a gift that shall please
+him, for I shall give him the Table Round, the which Utherpendragon gave
+me; and when it is full complete there is a place for a hundred and fifty
+knights; and a hundred good knights I have myself, but I lack fifty, for so
+many have been slain in my days."</p>
+
+<p>And so King Leodegraunce delivered his daughter, Guinever, to Merlin,
+and the Table Round, with the hundred knights, and they rode freshly and
+with great royalty, what by water and what by land.</p>
+
+<p>And when Arthur heard of the coming of Guinever and the hundred knights
+of the Round Table he made great joy; and in all haste did ordain for the
+marriage and coronation in the most honourable wise that could be devised.
+And Merlin found twenty-eight good knights of prowess and worship, but no
+more could he find. And the Archbishop of Canterbury was sent for, and
+blessed the seats of the Round Table with great devotion.</p>
+
+<p>Then was the high feast made ready, and the king was wedded at Camelot
+unto Dame Guinever, in the Church of St. Steven's, with great
+solemnity.</p>
+
+
+<h4><i>III.--Sir Launcelot and the King</i></h4>
+
+
+<p>And here I leave off this tale, and overskip great books of Merlin, and
+Morgan le Fay, and Sir Balin le Savage, and Sir Launcelot du Lake, and Sir
+Galahad, and the Book of the Holy Grail, and the Book of Elaine, and come
+to the tale of Sir Launcelot, and the breaking up of the Round Table.</p>
+
+<p>In the merry month of May, when every heart flourisheth and rejoiceth,
+it happened there befel a great misfortune, the which stinted not till the
+flower of the chivalry of all the world was destroyed and slain.</p>
+
+<p>And all was along of two unhappy knights named Sir Agravaine and Sir
+Mordred, that were brethren unto Sir Gawaine. For these two knights had
+ever privy hate unto the queen, and unto Sir Launcelot. And Sir Agravaine
+said openly, and not in counsel, "I marvel that we all be not ashamed to
+see and know how Sir Launcelot cometh daily and nightly to the queen, and
+it is shameful that we suffer so noble a king to be ashamed." Then spake
+Sir Gawaine, "I pray you have no such matter any way before me, for I will
+not be of your counsel." And so said his brothers, Sir Gaheris and Sir
+Gareth. "Then will I," said Sir Mordred. And with these words they came to
+King Arthur, and told him they could suffer it no longer, but must tell
+him, and prove to him that Sir Launcelot was a traitor to his person.</p>
+
+<p>"I would be loth to begin such a thing," said King Arthur, "for I tell
+you Sir Launcelot is the best knight among you all." For Sir Launcelot had
+done much for him and for his queen many times, and King Arthur loved him
+passing well.</p>
+
+<p>Then Sir Agravaine advised that the king go hunting, and send word that
+he should be out all that night, and he and Sir Mordred, with twelve
+knights of the Round Table should watch the queen. So on the morrow King
+Arthur rode out hunting.</p>
+
+<p>And Sir Launcelot told Sir Bors that night he would speak with the
+queen. "You shall not go this night by my counsel," said Sir Bors.</p>
+
+<p>"Fair nephew," said Sir Launcelot, "I marvel me much why ye say this,
+sithence the queen hath sent for me." And he departed, and when he had
+passed to the queen's chamber, Sir Agravaine and Sir Mordred, with twelve
+knights, cried aloud without, "Traitor knight, now art thou taken!"</p>
+
+<p>But Sir Launcelot after he had armed himself, set the chamber door wide
+open, and mightily and knightly strode among them, and slew Sir Agravaine
+and twelve of his fellows, and wounded Sir Mordred, who fled with all his
+might, and came straight to King Arthur, wounded and beaten, and all
+be-bled.</p>
+
+<p>"Alas!" said the king, "now am I sure the noble fellowship of the Round
+Table is broken for ever, for with Launcelot will hold many a noble
+knight."</p>
+
+<p>And the queen was adjudged to death by fire, for there was none other
+remedy but death for treason in those days. Then was Queen Guinever led
+forth without Carlisle, and despoiled unto her smock, and her ghostly
+father was brought to her to shrive her of her misdeeds; and there was
+weeping and wailing and wringing of hands.</p>
+
+<p>But anon there was spurring and plucking up of horses, for Sir Launcelot
+and many a noble knight rode up to the fire, and none might withstand him.
+And a kirtle and gown were cast upon the queen, and Sir Launcelot rode his
+way with her to Joyous Gard, and kept her as a noble knight should.</p>
+
+<p>Then came King Arthur and Sir Gawaine, whose brothers, Sir Gaheris and
+Sir Gareth, had been slain by Sir Launcelot unawares, and laid a siege to
+Joyous Gard. And Launcelot had no heart to fight against his lord, King
+Arthur; and Arthur would have taken his queen again, and would have
+accorded with Sir Launcelot, but Sir Gawaine would not suffer him. Then the
+Pope called unto him a noble clerk, the Bishop of Rochester, and gave him
+bulls, under lead, unto King Arthur, charging him that he take his queen,
+Dame Guinever, to him again, and accord with Sir Launcelot. And as for the
+queen, she assented. And the bishop had of the king assurance that Sir
+Launcelot should come and go safe. So Sir Launcelot delivered the queen to
+the king, who assented that Sir Launcelot should not abide in the land past
+fifteen days.</p>
+
+<p>Then Sir Launcelot sighed, and said these words, "Truly me repenteth
+that ever I came into this realm, that I should be thus shamefully
+banished, undeserved, and causeless." And unto Queen Guinever he said,
+"Madam, now I must depart from you and this noble fellowship for ever; and
+since it is so, I beseech you pray for me, and send me word if ye be noised
+with any false tongues." And therewith Launcelot kissed the queen, and said
+openly, "Now let me see what he be that dare say the queen is not true to
+King Arthur--let who will speak, and he dare!" And he took his leave and
+departed, and all the people wept.</p>
+
+
+<h4><i>IV.--The Passing of Arthur</i></h4>
+
+
+<p>Now, to say the truth, Sir Launcelot and his nephews were lords of the
+realm of France, and King Arthur and Sir Gawaine made a great host ready
+and shipped at Cardiff, and made great destruction and waste on his lands.
+And Arthur left the governance of all England to Sir Mordred. And Sir
+Mordred caused letters to be made that specified that King Arthur was slain
+in battle with Sir Launcelot; wherefore Sir Mordred made a parliament, and
+they chose him king, and he was crowned at Canterbury. But Queen Guinever
+came to London, and stuffed it with victuals, and garnished it with men,
+and kept it.</p>
+
+<p>Then King Arthur raised the siege on Sir Launcelot, and came homeward
+with a great host to be avenged on Sir Mordred. And Sir Mordred drew
+towards Dover to meet him, and most of England held with Sir Mordred, the
+people were so new-fangled.</p>
+
+<p>Then was there launching of great boats and small, and all were full of
+noble men of arms, and there was much slaughter of gentle knights; but King
+Arthur was so courageous none might let him to land; and his knights
+fiercely followed him, and put back Sir Mordred, and he fled.</p>
+
+<p>But Sir Gawaine was laid low with a blow smitten on an old wound given
+him by Sir Launcelot. Then Sir Gawaine, after he had been shriven, wrote
+with his own hand to Sir Launcelot, flower of all noble knights: "I beseech
+thee, Sir Launcelot, return again to this realm, and see my tomb, and pray
+some prayer more or less for my soul. Make no tarrying but come with thy
+noble knights and rescue that noble king that made thee knight, for he is
+straitly bestood with a false traitor." And so Sir Gawaine betook his soul
+into the hands of our Lord God.</p>
+
+<p>And many a knight drew unto Sir Mordred and many unto King Arthur, and
+never was there seen a dolefuller battle in a Christian land. And they
+fought till it was nigh night, and there were a hundred thousand laid dead
+upon the down.</p>
+
+<p>"Alas! that ever I should see this doleful day," said King Arthur, "for
+now I come unto mine end. But would to God that I wist where that traitor
+Sir Mordred is, which hath caused all this mischief."</p>
+
+<p>Then was King Arthur aware where Sir Mordred leaned upon his sword, and
+there King Arthur smote Sir Mordred throughout the body more than a fathom,
+and Sir Mordred smote King Arthur with his sword held in both hands on the
+side of the head, that the sword pierced the helmet and the brain-pan. And
+Sir Mordred fell dead; and the noble King Arthur fell in a swoon, and Sir
+Lucan and Sir Bedivere laid him in a little chapel not far from the
+sea-side.</p>
+
+<p>And when he came to himself again, he said unto Sir Bedivere, "Take thou
+Excalibur, my good sword, and throw it into that water." And when Sir
+Bedivere (at the third essay) threw the sword into the water, as far as he
+might, there came an arm and a hand above the water, and met and caught it,
+and so shook and brandished it thrice; and then the hand vanished away with
+the sword in the water.</p>
+
+<p>Then Sir Bedivere bore King Arthur to the water's edge, and fast by the
+bank hovered a little barge, and there received him three queens with great
+mourning. And Arthur said, "I will unto the vale of Avillon for to heal me
+of my grievous wound, and if thou never hear more of me, pray for my soul."
+And evermore the ladies wept.</p>
+
+<p>And in the morning Sir Bedivere was aware between two hills of a chapel
+and a hermitage; and he saw there a hermit fast by a tomb newly graven. And
+the hermit said, "My son, here came ladies which brought this corpse and
+prayed me to bury him."</p>
+
+<p>"Alas," said Sir Bedivere, "that was my lord, King Arthur."</p>
+
+<p>And when Queen Guinever understood that her lord, King Arthur, was
+slain, she stole away and went to Almesbury, and made herself a nun, and
+was abbess and ruler as reason would.</p>
+
+<p>And Sir Launcelot passed over into England, and prayed full heartily at
+the tomb of Sir Gawaine, and then rode alone to find Queen Guinever. And
+when Sir Launcelot was brought unto her, she said: "Through this knight and
+me all the wars were wrought, and through our love is my noble lord slain;
+therefore, Sir Launcelot, I require thee that thou never look me more in
+the visage."</p>
+
+<p>And Sir Launcelot said: "The same destiny ye have taken you unto I will
+take me unto." And he besought the bishop that he might be his brother;
+then he put a habit on Sir Launcelot, and there he served God day and
+night, with prayers and fastings.</p>
+
+<p>And when Queen Guinever died Sir Launcelot buried her beside her lord,
+King Arthur. Then mourned he continually until he was dead, so within six
+weeks after they found him stark dead, and he lay as he had smiled. Then
+there was weeping and dolor out of measure. And they buried Sir Launcelot
+with great devotion.</p>
+
+<hr />
+
+
+
+
+<h2><a name="ANNE_MANNING"></a>ANNE MANNING</h2>
+
+
+<h3><a name="The_Household_of_Sir_Thomas_More"></a>The Household of Sir
+Thomas More</h3>
+
+
+<blockquote> Anne Manning, one of the most active women novelists of Queen
+Victoria's reign, was born in London on February 17, 1807. Her first book,
+"A Sister's Gift: Conversations on Sacred Subjects," was written in the
+form of lessons for her brothers and sisters, and published at her own
+expense in 1826. It was followed in 1831 by "Stories from the History of
+Italy," and in 1838 her first work of fiction, "Village Belles," made its
+appearance. In their day Miss Manning's novels had a great vogue, only
+equalled by her amazing output. Altogether some fifty-one stories appeared
+under her name, of which the best remembered is "The Household of Sir
+Thomas More," an imaginary diary written by More's daughter, Margaret.
+After appearing in "Sharpe's Magazine," it was published in book form in
+1860. It is wonderfully vivid, and is written with due regard to historical
+facts. It is interesting to compare it with the "Life of Sir Thomas More,"
+written by William Roper, Margaret More's husband, with which it is now
+frequently reprinted. Miss Manning died on September 14, 1879.
+</blockquote>
+
+
+<h4><i>I.--Of the Writing of My Libellus</i></h4>
+
+
+<p class="date"><i>Chelsea, June</i> 18.</p>
+
+<p>On asking Mr. Gunnel to what use I should put this fayr <i>Libellus</i>,
+he did suggest my making it a kinde of family register, wherein to note the
+more important of our domestic passages, whether of joy or griefe--my
+father's journies and absences--the visits of learned men, theire notable
+sayings, etc. "You are ready at the pen, Mistress Margaret," he was pleased
+to say, "and I woulde humblie advise your journaling in the same fearless
+manner in the which you framed that letter which so well pleased the Bishop
+of Exeter that he sent you a Portugal piece. 'Twill be well to write it in
+English, which 'tis expedient for you not altogether to negleckt, even for
+the more honourable Latin."</p>
+
+<p>Methinks I am close upon womanhood. My master Gonellus doth now "humblie
+advise" her he hath so often chid. 'Tis well to make trial of his "humble"
+advice.</p>
+
+<p>...As I traced the last word methoughte I heard the well-known tones of
+Erasmus, his pleasant voyce, and indeede here is the deare little man
+coming up from the riverside with my father, who, because of the heat, had
+given his cloak to a tall stripling behind him to bear, I flew upstairs, to
+advertise mother, and we found 'em alreadie in the hall.</p>
+
+<p>So soon as I had obtayned their blessings, the tall lad stept forth, and
+who should he be but William Roper, returned from my father's errand
+overseas! His manners are worsened, for he twice made to kiss me and drew
+back. I could have boxed his ears, 'speciallie as father, laughing, cried,
+"The third time's lucky!"</p>
+
+<p>After supper, we took deare Erasmus entirely over the house, in a kind
+of family procession. In our own deare Academia, with its glimpse of the
+cleare-shining Thames, Erasmus noted and admired our cut flowers, and
+glanced, too, at the books on our desks--Bessy's being Livy; Daisy's,
+Sallust; and mine, St. Augustine, with father's marks where I was to read,
+and where desist. He tolde Erasmus, laying hand fondlie on my head, "Here
+is one who knows what is implied in the word 'trust.'" Dear father, well I
+may! Thence we visitted the chapel, and gallery, and all the dumb kinde.
+Erasmus doubted whether Duns Scotus and the Venerable Bede had been
+complimented in being made name-fathers to a couple of owls; but he said
+Argus and Juno were good cognomens for peacocks.</p>
+
+<p>Anon, we rest and talk in the pavilion. Sayth Erasmus to my father, "I
+marvel you have never entered into the king's service in some publick
+capacitie."</p>
+
+<p>Father smiled. "I am better and happier as I am. To put myself forward
+would be like printing a book at request of friends, that the publick may
+be charmed with what, in fact, it values at a doit. When the cardinall
+offered me a pension, as retaining fee to the king, I told him I did not
+care to be a mathematical point, to have position without magnitude."</p>
+
+<p>"We shall see you at court yet," says Erasmus.</p>
+
+<p>Sayth father, "With a fool's cap and bells!"</p>
+
+<p class="date"><i>Tuesday</i>.</p>
+
+<p>This morn I surprised father and Erasmus in the pavillion. Erasmus sayd,
+the revival of learning seemed appoynted by Heaven for some greate
+purpose.</p>
+
+<p>In the evening, Will and Rupert, spruce enow with nosegays and ribbons,
+rowed us up to Putney. We had a brave ramble through Fulham meadows, father
+discoursing of the virtues of plants, and how many a poor knave's pottage
+would be improved if he were skilled in the properties of burdock and old
+man's pepper.</p>
+
+<p class="date"><i>June 20</i>.</p>
+
+<p>Grievous work overnighte with the churning. Gillian sayd that Gammer
+Gurney, dissatisfyde last Friday with her dole, had bewitched the creame.
+Mother insisted on Bess and me, Daisy and Mercy Giggs, churning until the
+butter came. We sang "Chevy Chase" from end to end, and then chaunted the
+119th Psalme; and by the time we had attained to <i>Lucerna Pedibus</i>, I
+heard the buttermilk separating and splashing in righte earnest. 'Twas
+neare midnighte, however. Gillian thinketh our Latin brake the spell.</p>
+
+<p class="date"><i>June 21</i>.</p>
+
+<p>Erasmus to Richmond with <i>Polus</i> (for soe he Latinises Reginald
+Pole), and some other of his friends.</p>
+
+<p>I walked with William <i>juxta fluvium</i>, and he talked not badlie of
+his travels. There is really more in him than one would think.</p>
+
+<p>To-day I gave this book to Mr. Gunnel in mistake for my Latin exercise!
+Was ever anything so downright disagreeable?</p>
+
+<p class="date"><i>June 24</i>.</p>
+
+<p>Yesternighte, St. John's Eve, we went into town to see the mustering of
+the watch. The streets were like unto a continuation of fayr bowers or
+arbours, which being lit up, looked like an enchanted land. To the sound of
+trumpets, came marching up Cheapside two thousand of the watch and seven
+hundred cressett bearers, and the Lord Mayor and sheriffs, with morris
+dancers, waits, giants, and pageants, very fine. The streets uproarious on
+our way back to the barge, but the homeward passage under the stars
+delicious.</p>
+
+<p class="date"><i>June 25</i>.</p>
+
+<p>Poor Erasmus caughte colde on the water last nighte, and keeps house. He
+spent the best part of the morning in our Academia, discussing the
+pronunciation of Latin and Greek with Mr. Gunnel, and speaking of his
+labours on his Greek and Latin Testament, which he prays may be a blessing
+to all Christendom. He talked of a possible <i>Index Bibliorum</i>, saying
+'twas onlie the work of patience and Industrie. Methoughte, if none else
+would undertake it, why not I?</p>
+
+<p class="date"><i>June 29</i>.</p>
+
+<p>Dr. Linacre at dinner. At table discourse flowed soe thicke and faste
+that I might aim in vain to chronicle it, and why should I, dwelling as I
+doe at the fountayn head?</p>
+
+<p>In the hay-field alle the evening. Swathed father in a hay-rope. Father
+reclining on the hay with his head in my lap. Said he was dreaming "of a
+far-off future day, when thou and I shall looke back on this hour, and this
+hay-field, and my head on thy lap."</p>
+
+<p>"Nay, but what a stupid dream, Mr. More," says mother. "If I dreamed at
+all, it shoulde be of being Lord Chancellor at the leaste."</p>
+
+<p>"Well, wife," sayd father, "I forgive thee for not saying at the
+most."</p>
+
+<p class="date"><i>July 2</i>.</p>
+
+<p>Erasmus is gone. His last saying to father was, "They will have you at
+court yet;" and father's answer, "When Plato's year comes round."</p>
+
+<p>To me he gave a copy--how precious!--of his Greek Testament.</p>
+
+<p class="date"><i>July 11</i>.</p>
+
+<p>A forayn mission hath been proposed to father and he did accept. Lengthe
+of his stay uncertain, which caste a gloom on alle.</p>
+
+
+<h4><i>II.--Father Goeth to the Court</i></h4>
+
+
+<p class="date"><i>May 27, 1523</i>.</p>
+
+<p>'Tis so manie months agone since I made an entry in my <i>Libellus</i>,
+as that my motto, <i>Nulla dies sine linea</i>, hath somewhat of sarcasm in
+it. In father's prolonged absence I have toiled at my <i>Opus</i> (the
+<i>Index Bibliorum</i>), but 'twas not to purpose, and then came that payn
+in my head. Father discovered my <i>Opus</i>, and with alle swete
+gentlenesse told me firmly that there are some things a woman cannot, and
+some she had better not do. Yet if I would persist, I shoulde have leisure
+and quiet and the help of his books.</p>
+
+<p>Hearing Mercy propound the conditions of an hospital for aged and sick
+folk, father hath devised and given me the conduct of a house of refuge,
+and oh, what pleasure have I derived from it! "Have I cured the payn in thy
+head, miss?" said he. Then he gave me the key of the hospital, saying,
+"'Tis yours now, my joy, by livery and seisin."</p>
+
+<p class="date"><i>August 6</i>.</p>
+
+<p>I wish William would give me back my Testament.</p>
+
+<p class="date"><i>August 7</i>.</p>
+
+<p>Yesterday, father, taking me unawares, asked, "Come, tell me, Meg, why
+canst not affect Will Roper?"</p>
+
+<p>I was a good while silent, at length made answer, "He is so unlike alle
+I have been taught to esteem and admire by you."</p>
+
+<p>"Have at you," he returned laughing, "I wist not I had been sharpening
+weapons against myself."</p>
+
+<p>Then did he plead Will's cause and bid me take him for what he is.</p>
+
+<p class="date"><i>August 30</i>.</p>
+
+<p>Will is in sore doubte and distresse, and I fear it is my Testament that
+hath unsettled him. I have bidden him fast, pray, and use such discipline
+as our church recommends.</p>
+
+<p class="date"><i>September 2</i>.</p>
+
+<p>I have it from Barbara through her brother, one of the men-servants,
+that Mr. Roper hath of late lien on the ground and used a knotted cord. I
+have made him an abstract from the Fathers for his soul's comfort.</p>
+
+<p class="date"><i>1524, October</i>.</p>
+
+<p>The king took us by surprise this morning. Mother had scarce time to
+slip on her scarlet gown and coif ere he was in the house. His grace was
+mighty pleasant to all, and at going, saluted all round, which Bessy took
+humourously, Daisy immoveablie, Mercy humblie, I distastefullie, and mother
+delightedlie. She calls him a fine man; he is indeed big enough, and like
+to become too big; with long slits of eyes that gaze freelie on all. His
+eyebrows are supercilious, and his cheeks puffy. A rolling, straddling gait
+and abrupt speech.</p>
+
+<p class="date"><i>Tuesday, October 25</i>.</p>
+
+<p>Will troubleth me noe longer with his lovefitt, nor with his religious
+disquietations. Hard studdy of the law hath filled his head with other
+matters, and made him infinitely more rationall and more agreeable. I shall
+ne'er remind him.</p>
+
+<p>T'other evening, as father and I were strolling down the lane, there
+accosts us a poor, shabby fellow, who begged to be father's fool. Father
+said he had a fancy to be prime fooler in his own establishment, but liking
+the poor knave's wit, civilitie, and good sense, he agreed to halve the
+businesse, he continuing the fooling, and Patteson--for that is the simple
+good fellow's name--receiving the salary. Father delighteth in sparring
+with Patteson far more than in jesting with the king, whom he alwaies looks
+on as a lion that may, any minute, rend him.</p>
+
+<p class="date"><i>1525, July 2</i>.</p>
+
+<p>Soe my fate is settled. Who knoweth at sunrise what will chance before
+sunsett? No; the Greeks and Romans mighte speak of chance and fate, but we
+must not. Ruth's hap was to light on the field of Boaz, but what she
+thought casual, the Lord had contrived.</p>
+
+<p>'Twas no use hanging back for ever and ever, soe now there's an end, and
+I pray God to give Will and me a quiet life.</p>
+
+<p class="date"><i>1528, September</i>.</p>
+
+<p>Father hath had some words with the cardinall touching the draught of
+some foreign treaty. "By the Mass," exclaimed his grace, nettled, "thou art
+the verist fool in all the council."</p>
+
+<p>Father, smiling, rejoined, "God be thanked that the king, our master,
+hath but one fool therein."</p>
+
+<p>The cardinall's rage cannot rob father of the royal favour. Howbeit,
+father says he has no cause to be proud thereof. "If my head," said he to
+Will, "could win the king a castle in France, it shoulde not fail to fly
+off."</p>
+
+<p>...I was senseless enow to undervalue Will. Yes, I am a happy wife, a
+happy mother. When my little Bill stroaked dear father's face just now, and
+murmured "Pretty!" he burst out a-laughing, and cried, "You are like the
+young Cyrus, who exclaimed, 'Oh, mother, how pretty is my
+grandfather!'"</p>
+
+<p>I often sitt for an hour or more, watching Hans Holbein at his brush. He
+hath a rare gift of limning; but in our likeness, which he hath painted for
+deare Erasmus, I think he has made us very ugly.</p>
+
+
+<h4><i>III.--The Great Seal is Resigned</i></h4>
+
+
+<p class="date"><i>June, 1530</i>.</p>
+
+<p>Events have followed too quick and thick for me to note 'em. Father's
+embassade to Cambray, and then his summons to Woodstock. Then the fire in
+the men's quarter, the outhouses and barns. Then, more unlookt for, the
+fall of my lord cardinall and father's elevation to the chancellorship.</p>
+
+<p>On the day succeeding his being sworn in, Patteson marched hither and
+thither, in mourning and paper weepers, bearing a huge placard, inscribed,
+"Partnership dissolved," and crying, "My brother is dead; for now they've
+made him Lord Chancellor, we shall ne'er see Sir Thomas more."</p>
+
+<p>Father's dispatch of business is such that one day before the end of
+term he was told there was no cause or petition to be sett before him, a
+thing unparalleled, which he desired might be formally recorded.</p>
+
+<p class="date"><i>July 28</i>.</p>
+
+<p>Here's father at issue with half the learned heads in Christendom
+concerning the king's marriage. And yet for alle that, I think father is in
+the right.</p>
+
+<p>He taketh matters soe to heart that e'en his appetite fails.</p>
+
+<p class="date"><i>August</i>.</p>
+
+<p>He hath resigned the Great Seal! And none of us knew it until after
+morning prayer to-day, when, instead of one of his gentlemen stepping up to
+my mother in her pew, with the words, "Madam, my lord is gone," he cometh
+up to her himself, smiling, and with these selfsame words. She takes it at
+first for one of his manie jests whereof she misses the point.</p>
+
+<p>Our was but a short sorrow, for we have got father to ourselves again.
+Patteson skipped across the garden, crying, "Let a fatted calf be killed,
+for this my brother who was dead is alive again!"</p>
+
+<p>How shall we contract the charges of Sir Thomas More? Certain servants
+must go; poor Patteson, alas! can be easier spared than some.</p>
+
+<p class="date"><i>September 22</i>.</p>
+
+<p>A tearfull morning. Poor Patteson has gone, but father had obtained him
+good quarters with my Lord Mayor, and he is even to retain his office with
+the Lord Mayor, for the time being.</p>
+
+<p class="date"><i>1533, April 1</i>.</p>
+
+<p>The poor fool to see me, saying it is his holiday, and having told the
+Lord Mayor overnight that if he lookt for a fool this morning, he must look
+in the glass.</p>
+
+<p>Patteson brought news of the coronation of Lady Anne this coming Easter,
+and he begs father to take a fool's advice and eat humble pie; for, says
+he, this proud madam is as vindictive as Herodias, and will have father's
+head on a charger.</p>
+
+<p class="date"><i>April 4</i>.</p>
+
+<p>Father bidden to the coronation by three bishops. He hath, with
+curtesie, declined to be present. I have misgivings of the issue.</p>
+
+<p class="date"><i>April 15</i>.</p>
+
+<p>Father summoned forth to the Council to take the oathe of supremacie.
+Having declared his inabilitie to take the oathe as it stoode, they bade
+him take a turn in the garden to reconsider. When called in agayn, he was
+as firm as ever, and was given in ward to the Abbot of Westminster until
+the king's grace was informed of the matter. And now the fool's wise saying
+of vindictive Herodians came true, for 'twas the king's mind to have mercy
+on his old servant, and tender him a qualified oathe, but Queen Anne, by
+her importunate clamours, did overrule his proper will, and at four days'
+end father was committed to the Tower. Oh, wicked woman, how could you!...
+Sure you never loved a father.</p>
+
+<p class="date"><i>May 22</i>.</p>
+
+<p>Mother hath at length obtaynd access to dear father. He is stedfaste and
+cheerfulle as ever. He hath writ us a few lines with a coal, ending with
+"<i>Sursum corda</i>, dear children! Up with your hearts."</p>
+
+<p class="date"><i>August 16</i>.</p>
+
+<p>The Lord begins to cut us short. We are now on very meagre commons, dear
+mother being obliged to pay fifteen shillings a week for the board, meagre
+as it is, of father and his servant. She hath parted with her velvet
+gown.</p>
+
+<p class="date"><i>August 20</i>.</p>
+
+<p>I have seen him, and heard his precious words. He hath kist me for us
+alle.</p>
+
+<p class="date"><i>November. Midnight</i>.</p>
+
+<p>Dear little Bill hath ta'en a feverish attack. Early in the night his
+mind wandered, and he says fearfullie, "Mother, why hangs yon hatchet in
+the air with its sharp edge turned towards us?"</p>
+
+<p>I rise, to move the lamp, and say, "Do you see it now?"</p>
+
+<p>He sayth, "No, not now," and closes his eyes.</p>
+
+<p class="date"><i>November 17</i>.</p>
+
+<p>He's gone, my pretty! ... Slipt through my fingers like a bird upfled to
+his native skies. My Billy-bird! His mother's own heart! They are alle
+wondrous kind to me....</p>
+
+<p class="date"><i>March, 1535</i>.</p>
+
+<p>Spring comes, that brings rejuvenescence to the land and joy to the
+heart, but none to me, for where hope dieth joy dieth. But patience, soul;
+God's yet in the aumry!</p>
+
+
+<h4><i>IV.--The Worst is Done</i></h4>
+
+
+<p class="date"><i>May 7</i>.</p>
+
+<p>Father arraigned.</p>
+
+<p class="date"><i>July 1</i>.</p>
+
+<p>By reason of Willie minding to be present at the triall, which, for the
+concourse of spectators, demanded his earlie attendance, he committed the
+care of me, with Bess, to Dancey, Bess's husband, who got us places to see
+father on his way from the Tower to Westminster Hall. We coulde not come at
+him for the crowd, but clambered on a bench to gaze our very hearts away
+after him as he went by, sallow, thin, grey-haired, yet in mien not a whit
+cast down. His face was calm but grave, but just as he passed he caught the
+eye of some one in the crowd, and smiled in his old frank way; then glanced
+up towards the windows with the bright look he hath so oft caste up to me
+at my casement, but saw us not; perchance soe 'twas best.</p>
+
+<p>...Will telleth me the indictment was the longest ever heard: on four
+counts. First, his opinion concerning the king's marriage. Second, his
+writing sundrie letters to the Bishop of Rochester, counselling him to hold
+out. Third, refusing to acknowledge his grace's supremacy. Fourth, his
+positive deniall of it, and thereby willing to deprive the king of his
+dignity and title.</p>
+
+<p>They could not make good their accusation. 'Twas onlie on the last count
+he could be made out a traitor, and proof of't had they none. He shoulde
+have been acquitted out of hand, but his bitter enemy, my Lord Chancellor,
+called on him for his defence, whereat a general murmur ran through the
+court.</p>
+
+<p>He began, but a moment's weakness of the body overcame him and he was
+accorded a seat. He then proceeded to avow his having always opposed the
+king's marriage to his grace himself, deeming it rather treachery to have
+withholden his opinion when solicited. Touching the supremacy he held there
+could be no treachery in holding his peace, God only being cognizant of our
+thoughts.</p>
+
+<p>"Nay," interposeth the attorney generall, "your silence was the token of
+a malicious mind."</p>
+
+<p>"I had always understood," answers father, "that silence stoode for
+consent," which made sundrie smile.</p>
+
+<p>The issue of the black day was aforehand fixed. The jury retired and
+presentlie returned with a verdict of guilty; for they knew what the king's
+grace would have 'em doe in that case....</p>
+
+<p>And then came the frightful sentence....</p>
+
+<p>They brought him back by water ... The first thing I saw was the axe,
+<i>turned with its edge towards him.</i></p>
+
+<p>Some one laid a cold hand on mine arm; 'twas poor Patteson. He sayth,
+"Bide your time, Mistress Meg; when he comes past, I'll make a passage for
+ye." ...</p>
+
+<p>O, brother, brother, what ailed thee to refuse the oath? I've taken it!
+... "Now, Mistress, now!" and flinging his arms right and left, made a
+breach, through which I darted, fearless of bills and halberds, and did
+cast mine arms about father's neck. He cries, "My Meg!" and hugs me to him
+as though our very souls shoulde grow together. He sayth, "Bless thee,
+bless thee! Kiss them alle for me thus and thus." ... Soe gave me back into
+Dancey's arms, the guards about him alle weeping.</p>
+
+<p>I did make a second rush, and agayn they had pitie on me and made pause
+while I hung upon his neck. He whispered, "Meg, for Christ's sake don't
+unman me. God's blessing be with you," he sayth with a last kiss, then
+adding, with a passionate upward regard, "The chariot of Israel and the
+horsemen thereof!"</p>
+
+<p>I look up, almost expecting a beautific vision, and when I turn about,
+he's gone.</p>
+
+<p class="date"><i>July 5,6</i>.</p>
+
+<p>Alle's over now.... They've done theire worst, and yet I live. Dr.
+Clement sayth he went up as blythe as a bridegroom, to be clothed upon with
+immortality.</p>
+
+<p class="date"><i>July 19</i>.</p>
+
+<p>They have let us bury his poor mangled trunk; but as sure as there's a
+sun in heaven, I'll have his head!--before another sun has risen, too. If
+wise men won't speed me, I'll e'en content me with a fool.</p>
+
+<p class="date"><i>July 20</i>.</p>
+
+<p>Quoth Patteson: "Fool and fayr lady will cheat 'em yet."</p>
+
+<p>At the stairs lay a wherry with a couple of boatmen. We went down the
+river quietlie enow--nor lookt I up till aneath the bridge gate, when,
+casting up one fearsome look, I beheld the dark outline of the ghastly yet
+precious relic; and falling into a tremour, did wring my hands and exclaim,
+"Alas, alas! That head hath lain full manie a time in my lap, woulde God it
+lay there now!" When o' suddain, I saw the pole tremble and sway towardes
+me; and stretching forth my apron I did, in an extasy of gladness, pity,
+and horror, catch its burthen as it fell.</p>
+
+<p>Patteson, shuddering, yet grinning, cries under his breath, "Managed I
+not well, mistress? Let's speed away with our theft, but I think not
+they'll follow hard after us, for there are well-wishers on the bridge.
+I'll put ye into the boat and then say, 'God sped ye, lady, with your
+burthen.'"</p>
+
+<p class="date"><i>July 23</i>.</p>
+
+<p>I've heard Bonvisi tell of a poor Italian girl who buried her murdered
+lover's heart in a pot of basil, which she watered day and night with her
+tears, just as I do my coffer. Will hath promised it shall be buried with
+me; layd upon my heart, and since then I've been easier.</p>
+
+<p>He thinks he shall write father's life, when we are settled in a new
+home. We are to be cleared out o' this in alle haste; for the king grutches
+at our lingering over father's footsteps, and yet when the news of the
+bloody deed was taken to him, he scowled at Queen Anne, saying, "Thou art
+the cause of this man's death!"</p>
+
+<p>Flow on, bright shining Thames. A good, brave man hath walked aforetime
+on your margent, himself as bright, and usefull, and delightsome as you,
+sweet river. There's a river whose streams make glad the city of our God.
+He now rests beside it. Good Christian folks, as they hereafter pass this
+spot, will, maybe, point this way and say, "There dwelt Sir Thomas More,"
+but whether they doe or not, <i>Vox Populi</i> is no very considerable
+matter. Theire favourite of to-day may, for what they care, goe hang
+himself to-morrow in his surcingle. Thus it must be while the world lasts;
+and the very racks and scrues wherewith they aim to overcome the nobler
+spiritt onlie lift and reveal its power of exaltation above the heaviest
+gloom of circumstance.</p>
+
+<p><i>Interfecistis, interfecistis hominem omnium anglorum optimum.</i></p>
+
+<hr />
+
+
+
+
+<h2><a name="ALESSANDRO_MANZONI"></a>ALESSANDRO MANZONI</h2>
+
+
+<h3><a name="The_Betrothed"></a>The Betrothed</h3>
+
+
+<blockquote> Poet, dramatist, and novelist, Alessandro Francesco Tommaso
+Manzoni was born at Milan on March 7, 1785. In early manhood he became an
+ardent disciple of Voltairianism, but after marriage embraced the faith of
+the Church of Rome; and it was in reparation of his early lapse that he
+composed his first important literary work, which took the form of a
+treatise on Catholic morality, and a number of sacred lyrics. Although
+Manzoni was perhaps surpassed as a poet by several of his own countrymen,
+his supreme position as novelist of the romantic school in Italy is
+indisputable. His famous work, "The Betrothed" ("I Promessi Sposi"),
+completed in 1822 and published at the rate of a volume a year during
+1825-27, was declared by Scott to be the finest novel ever written. Manzoni
+died on May 22, 1873. </blockquote>
+
+
+<h4><i>I.--The Schemes of Don Rodrigo</i></h4>
+
+
+<p>Don Abbondio, cur&eacute; of a little town near Como, was no hero. It
+was, therefore, the less difficult for two armed bravos whom he encountered
+one evening in the year 1628 to convince him that the wedding of Renzo
+Tramaglino and Lucia Mondella must not take place, as it did not suit the
+designs of their master, Don Rodrigo. Renzo, however, was by no means
+disposed to take this view of the matter, and was like to have taken some
+desperate steps to express his disapproval. From this course he was
+dissuaded by Fra Cristoforo, a Capuchin, renowned for his wisdom and
+sanctity, who undertook to attempt to soften the heart of Don Rodrigo.</p>
+
+<p>The friar was held in affectionate esteem by all, even by Rodrigo's
+bravos, and on his arrival at the castle he was at once shown into the
+presence of its master.</p>
+
+<p>"I come," said he, "to propose to you an act of justice. Some men of bad
+character have made use of the name of your illustrious lordship to alarm a
+poor cur&eacute;, and dissuade him from performing his duty, and to oppress
+two innocent persons--"</p>
+
+<p>"In short, father," said Rodrigo, "I suppose there is some young girl
+you are concerned about. Since you seem to think that I am so powerful,
+advise her to come and put herself under my protection; she shall be well
+looked after. Cowled rascal!" he shouted. "Vile upstart! Thank the cassock
+that covers your cowardly shoulders for saving them from the caresses that
+such scoundrels should receive. Depart, or--"</p>
+
+<p>In the meantime, plans were being discussed in Lucia's cottage.</p>
+
+<p>"Listen, my children," said Agnese, her mother; "if you were married,
+that would be the great difficulty out of the way."</p>
+
+<p>"Is there any doubt," said Renzo; "<i>if</i> we were married--At
+Bergamo, not far from here, a silk-weaver would be received with open arms.
+You know my cousin Bartolo has wanted me to go there and make my fortune,
+as he has done. Once married, we could all go thither together, and live in
+blessed peace, out of this villain's reach."</p>
+
+<p>"Listen, then," said Agnese. "There must be two witnesses; all four must
+go to the priest and take him by surprise, that he mayn't have time to
+escape. The man says, 'Signor Cur&eacute;, this is my wife'; the woman
+says, 'Signor Cur&eacute;, this is my husband.' It is necessary that the
+cur&eacute; and the witnesses hear it, and the marriage is then as valid
+and sacred as if the Pope himself had blessed it."</p>
+
+<p>"But why, then," said Lucia, "didn't this plan come into Fra
+Cristoforo's mind?"</p>
+
+<p>"Do you think it didn't?" replied she. "But--if you must know--the
+friars disapprove of that sort of thing."</p>
+
+<p>"If it isn't right, we ought not to do it."</p>
+
+<p>"What! Would I give you advice contrary to the fear of God; if it were
+against the will of your parents? But when I am satisfied, and he who makes
+all this disturbance is a villain---- Once it is done, what do you think
+the father will say? 'Ah! daughter; it was a sad error, but it is done.' In
+his heart he will be very well satisfied."</p>
+
+<p>On the following night Don Abbondio was disturbed at a late hour by a
+certain Tonio, who came with his cousin Gervase to pay a small debt. While
+he was giving him a receipt for it, Renzo and Lucia slipped in unperceived.
+The cur&eacute; was startled on suddenly hearing the words, "Signor
+Cur&eacute;, in the presence of these witnesses, this is my wife."
+Instantly grasping the situation, and before Lucia's lips could form a
+reply, Don Abbondio seized the tablecloth, and at a bound wrapped her head
+in it, so that she could not complete the formula. "Perpetua!" he shouted
+to his housekeeper. "Help!"</p>
+
+<p>Dashing to an inner room, he locked himself in, flung open the window,
+and shouted for help. Hearing the uproar, the sexton, who lived next door,
+shouted out, "What is it?"</p>
+
+<p>"Help!" repeated the cur&eacute;. Not being over desirous of thrusting
+himself blindly in upon unknown dangers, the sexton hastened to the belfry
+and vigorously rang the great bell. This ringing the bell had more
+far-reaching consequences than he anticipated. Enraged by the friar's
+visit, Rodrigo had determined to abduct Lucia, and sent his bravos to
+effect his purpose that very night. At the very moment that the bell began
+to ring they had just broken into Agnese's house, and were searching for
+the occupants. Convinced that their action was the cause of commotion, they
+beat a hasty retreat.</p>
+
+<p>The discomfited betrothed--still only betrothed--hastily rejoined
+Agnese, who was waiting for them in the street. As they hurriedly turned
+their steps homeward a child threw himself into their way.</p>
+
+<p>"Back! Back!" he breathlessly exclaimed. "This way to the
+monastery!"</p>
+
+<p>"What is it?" asked Renzo.</p>
+
+<p>"There are devils in your house," said the boy, panting. "I saw them;
+Fra Cristoforo said so; he sent me to warn you. He had news from someone at
+the castle; you must go to him at the monastery at once."</p>
+
+<p>"My children," said Fra Cristoforo on their arrival, "the village is no
+longer safe for you; for a time, at least, you must take refuge elsewhere.
+I will arrange for you, Lucia, to be taken care of in a convent at Monza.
+You, Renzo, must put yourself in safety from the anger of others, and your
+own. Carry this letter to Father Bonaventura, in our monastery at Milan. He
+will find you work."</p>
+
+
+<h4><i>II.--The Riot of the Hungry</i></h4>
+
+
+<p>Fra Bonaventura was out when Renzo arrived to present his letter.</p>
+
+<p>"Go and wait in the church, where you may employ yourself profitably,"
+was the porter's advice, which Renzo was about to follow, when a tumultuous
+crowd came in sight. Here, apparently, was matter of greater interest, so
+he turned aside to see the cause of the uproar.</p>
+
+<p>The cause, though Renzo did not at the time discover it, was the
+shortage of the bread supply. Owing to the ravages of war and the disturbed
+state of the country, much land lay uncultivated and deserted;
+insupportable taxes were levied; and no sooner had the deficient harvest
+been gathered in than the provisions for the army, and the waste which
+always accompanies them, made a fearful void in it. What had attracted
+Renzo's attention was but the sudden exacerbation of a chronic disease.</p>
+
+<p>Mingling with the hurrying mob, Renzo soon discovered that they had been
+engaged in sacking a bakery, and were filled with fury to find large
+quantities of flour, the existence of which the authorities had denied.
+"The superintendent! The tyrant! We'll have him, dead or alive!"</p>
+
+<p>Renzo found himself borne along in the thickest of the throng to the
+house of the superintendent, where a tremendous crowd was endeavouring to
+break in the doors. The tumult being allayed by the arrival of Ferrer, the
+chancellor, a popular favourite, Renzo became involved in conversation with
+some of the rioters. He asked to be directed to an inn where he could pass
+the night.</p>
+
+<p>"I know an inn that will suit you," said one who had listened to all the
+speeches without himself saying a word. "The landlord is a friend of mine,
+a very worthy man."</p>
+
+<p>So saying, he took Renzo off to an inn at some little distance, taking
+pains to ascertain who he was and whence he came. Arrived at the inn, the
+new companions shared a bottle of wine which, in Renzo's excited condition,
+soon mounted to his head. Another bottle was called for; and the landlord,
+being asked if he had a bed, produced pen, ink, and paper, and demanded his
+name, surname and country.</p>
+
+<p>"What has all this to do with my bed?"</p>
+
+<p>"I do my duty. We are obliged to report everyone that sleeps in the
+house."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, so I'm to tell my business, am I? This is something new. Supposing
+I had come to Milan to confess, I should go to a Capuchin father, not to an
+innkeeper."</p>
+
+<p>"Well, if you won't, you won't!" said the landlord, with a glance at
+Renzo's companion. "I've done my duty."</p>
+
+<p>So saying, he withdrew, and shortly afterwards the new-found friend
+insisted on taking his departure. At daybreak Renzo was awakened by a shake
+and a voice calling, "Lorenzo Tramaglino."</p>
+
+<p>"Eh, what does this mean? What do you want? Who told you my name?" said
+Renzo, starting up, amazed to find three men, two of them fully armed,
+standing at his bedside.</p>
+
+<p>"You must come with us. The high sheriff wants to have some words with
+you."</p>
+
+<p>Renzo now found himself being led through the streets, that were still
+filled with a considerable number of last night's rioters, by no means yet
+pacified. When they had gone a little way some of the crowd, noticing them,
+began to form around the party.</p>
+
+<p>"If I don't help myself now," thought Renzo, "it's my own fault. My
+friends," he shouted, "they're carrying me off because yesterday I shouted
+'Bread and Justice!' Don't abandon me, my friends!"</p>
+
+<p>The crowd at once began to press forward, and the bailiffs, fearing
+danger, let go of his hands and tried to disappear into the crowd. Renzo
+was carried off safely.</p>
+
+<p>His only hope of safety now lay in getting entirely clear of Milan and
+hiding himself in some other town out of the jurisdiction of the duchy. He
+decided to go to Bergamo, which was under Venetian government, where he
+could live safely with his cousin until such time as Milan had forgotten
+him.</p>
+
+
+<h4><i>III.--The Unnamed's Penitence</i></h4>
+
+
+<p>Don Rodrigo was now more determined than ever to accomplish his
+praiseworthy undertaking, and to this end he sought the help of a very
+formidable character, a powerful noble, whose bravos had long been the
+terror of the countryside, and who was always referred to as "The
+Unnamed."</p>
+
+<p>Lucia, having been sent one day with a note from the convent where she
+had found refuge to a monastery at some little distance, found herself
+suddenly seized from behind, and, regardless of her screams, bundled into a
+carriage, which drove off at a great pace.</p>
+
+<p>When the carriage stopped, after a long drive, Lucia was hurried into a
+litter, which bore her up a steep hill to a castle, where she was shut up
+in a room with an old crone. After a while a resounding knock was heard on
+the door, and the Unnamed strode in.</p>
+
+<p>Casting a glance around, he discovered Lucia crouched down on the floor
+in a corner.</p>
+
+<p>"Come, get up!" he said to her.</p>
+
+<p>The unhappy girl raised herself on her knees, and raised her hands to
+him.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, what have I done to you? Where am I? Why do you make me suffer the
+agonies of hell? In the name of God--"</p>
+
+<p>"God!" interrupted he; "always God! They who cannot defend themselves
+must always bring forward this God. What do you expect by this word? To
+make me--"</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, signor, what can a poor girl like me expect, except that you should
+have mercy upon me? God pardons so many sins for one deed of mercy. For
+charity's sake, let me go! I will pray for you all my life. Oh, see, you
+are moved to pity! Say one word; oh, say it! God pardons so many sins for
+one deed of mercy!"</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, why isn't she the daughter of one of the dogs who outlawed me?"
+thought the Unnamed. "Then I should enjoy her sufferings; but
+instead--"</p>
+
+<p>"Don't drive away a good inspiration!" continued Lucia earnestly, seeing
+a certain hesitation in his face.</p>
+
+<p>"Perhaps some day even you--But no--no, I will always pray the Lord to
+keep you from every evil."</p>
+
+<p>"Come, take courage," said the Unnamed, with unusual gentleness. "Have I
+done you any harm? To-morrow morning--"</p>
+
+<p>"Oh set me free now!"</p>
+
+<p>"To-morrow I will see you again."</p>
+
+<p>When he left her, the unhappy girl flung herself on her knees. "O most
+holy Virgin," she prayed, "thou to whom I have so often recommended myself,
+and who hast so often comforted me! Bring me out of this danger, bring me
+safely to my mother, and I vow unto thee to continue a virgin! I renounce
+for ever my unfortunate betrothed, that I may belong only to thee!"</p>
+
+<p>The Unnamed retired for the night, but not to sleep. "God pardons so
+many sins for one deed of mercy!" kept ringing in his ears. Suppose there
+was a God, after all? He had so many sins in need of pardon.</p>
+
+<p>About daybreak a confused murmur reached his ear from the valley below;
+a distant chiming of bells began to make itself heard; nearer bells took up
+the peal, until the whole air rang with the sound. He demanded the cause of
+all this rejoicing, and was informed that Cardinal Boromeo had arrived, and
+that the festival was in his honour.</p>
+
+<p>He went to Lucia's apartment, and found her still huddled up in a
+corner, but sleeping. The hag explained that she could not be prevailed
+upon to go to bed.</p>
+
+<p>"Then let her sleep. When she wakes, tell her that I will do all she
+wishes."</p>
+
+<p>Leaving the castle with rapid steps, the Unnamed hastened to the village
+where the cardinal had rested the previous night.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh," cried Federigo Boromeo, "what a welcome visit is this. You have
+good news for me, I am sure."</p>
+
+<p>"Good news! What good news can you expect from such as I?"</p>
+
+<p>"That God has touched your heart, and would make you His own."</p>
+
+<p>"God! God! If I could but see Him! If He be such as they say, what do
+you suppose that He can do with me?"</p>
+
+<p>"The world has long cried out against you," replied Federigo in a solemn
+voice. "He can acquire through you a glory such as others cannot give Him.
+How must He love you, Who has bid and enabled me to regard you with a
+charity that consumes me!" So saying, he extended his hand.</p>
+
+<p>"No!" cried the penitent. "Defile not your hand! You know not all that
+the one you would grasp has committed."</p>
+
+<p>"Suffer me to press the hand which will repair so many wrongs, comfort
+so many afflicted, be extended peacefully and humbly to so many
+enemies."</p>
+
+<p>"Unhappy man that I am," exclaimed the signor, "one thing, at least, I
+can quickly arrest and repair."</p>
+
+<p>Federigo listened attentively to the relation of Lucia's abduction. "Ah,
+let us lose no time!" he exclaimed breathlessly. "This is an earnest of
+God's forgiveness, to make you an instrument of safety to one whom you
+would have ruined."</p>
+
+
+<h4><i>IV.--In a Lazzeretto</i></h4>
+
+
+<p>Thanks to his cousin, Renzo was enabled to earn very good wages, and
+would have been quite content to remain had it not been for his desire to
+rejoin Lucia. A terrible outbreak of plague in Milan spread to Bergamo, and
+our friend was among the first to be stricken down, his recovery being due
+more to his excellent constitution than to any medical skill. Thereafter,
+he lost no more time, and after many inquiries he succeeded in tracing
+Lucia to an address in Milan.</p>
+
+<p>Secure in an <i>alias</i>, he set out to the plague-stricken city, which
+he found in the most deplorable condition. Having found the house of which
+he was in search, he knocked loudly at the door and inquired if Lucia still
+lived there. To his horror, he found that she had been taken to the
+Lazzeretto!</p>
+
+<p>Let the reader imagine the enclosure of the Lazzeretto, peopled with
+16,000 persons ill of the plague; the whole area encumbered, here with
+tents and cabins, there with carts, and elsewhere with people; crowded with
+dead or dying, stretched on mattresses, or on bare straw; and throughout
+the whole a commotion like the swell of the sea.</p>
+
+<p>"Lucia, I've found you! You're living!" exclaimed Renzo, all in a
+tremble.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, blessed Lord!" cried she, trembling far more violently. "You?"</p>
+
+<p>"How pale you are! You've recovered, though?"</p>
+
+<p>"The Lord has pleased to leave me here a little longer. Ah, Renzo, why
+are you here?"</p>
+
+<p>"Why? Need I say why? Am I no longer Renzo? Are you no longer
+Lucia?"</p>
+
+<p>"Ah, what are you saying? Didn't my mother write to you?"</p>
+
+<p>"Ay, that indeed she did. Fine things to offer to an unfortunate,
+afflicted, fugitive wretch who had never done you wrong."</p>
+
+<p>"But, Renzo, Renzo, you don't think what you're saying! A promise to the
+Madonna--a vow!"</p>
+
+<p>"And I think better of the Madonna than you do, for I believe she
+doesn't wish for promises that injure one's fellow-creatures. Promise her
+that our first daughter shall be called Maria, for that I'm willing to
+promise, too. That is a devotion that may have some use, and does no harm
+to anyone."</p>
+
+<p>"You don't know what it is to make a vow. Leave me, for heaven's sake,
+and think no more about me--except in your prayers!"</p>
+
+<p>"Listen, Lucia! Fra Cristoforo is here. I spoke with him but a short
+while ago, while I was searching for you, and he told me that I did right
+to come and look for you; and that the Lord would approve my acting so, and
+would surely help me to find you, which has come to pass."</p>
+
+<p>"But if he said so, he didn't know------"</p>
+
+<p>"How should he know of things you've done out of your own head, and
+without the advice of a priest? A good man, as he is, would never think of
+things of this kind. And he spoke, too, like a saint. He said that perhaps
+God designed to show mercy to that poor fellow, for so I must now call him,
+Don Rodrigo, who is now in this place, and waits to take him at the right
+moment, but wishes that we should pray for him together. Together! You
+hear? He told me to go back and tell him whether I'd found you. I'm going.
+We'll hear what he says."</p>
+
+<p>After a while, Renzo returned with Fra Cristoforo. "My daughter," said
+the father, "did you recollect, when you made that vow, that you were bound
+by another promise?"</p>
+
+<p>"When it related to the Madonna?"</p>
+
+<p>"My daughter, the Lord approves of offerings when we make them of our
+own. It is the heart, the will that He desires. But you could not offer Him
+the will of another, to Whom you had pledged yourself."</p>
+
+<p>"Have I done wrong?"</p>
+
+<p>"No, my poor child. But tell me, have you no other motive that hinders
+you from fulfilling your promise to Renzo?"</p>
+
+<p>Lucia blushed crimson. "Nothing else," she whispered.</p>
+
+<p>"Then, my child, you know that the Church has power to absolve you from
+your vow?"</p>
+
+<p>"But, father, is it not a sin to turn back and repent of a promise made
+to the Madonna? I made it at the time with my whole heart----" said Lucia,
+violently agitated by so unexpected a hope.</p>
+
+<p>"A sin? A sin to have recourse to the Church, and to ask her minister to
+make use of the authority which he has received, through her, from God? And
+if you request me to declare you absolved from this vow, I shall not
+hesitate to do it; nay, I wish that you may request me."</p>
+
+<p>"Then--then--I do request it!"</p>
+
+<p>In an explicit voice the father then said, "By the authority I have
+received from the Church, I declare you absolved from the vow of virginity,
+and free you from every obligation you may thereby have contracted. Beseech
+the Lord again for those graces you once besought to make you a holy wife;
+and rely on it, He will bestow them upon you after so many sorrows."</p>
+
+<p>"Has Renzo told you," Fra Cristoforo continued, "whom he has seen
+here?"</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, yes, father, he has!"</p>
+
+<p>"You will pray for him. Don't be weary of doing so. And pray also for
+me."</p>
+
+<p>Some weeks later, Don Abbondio received a visit, as unexpected as it was
+gratifying, from the marquis who, on Rodrigo's death from the plague,
+succeeded to his estates.</p>
+
+<p>"I come," said he, "to bring you the compliments of the cardinal
+archbishop. He wishes to have news of the young betrothed persons of this
+parish, who had to suffer on account of the unfortunate Don Rodrigo."</p>
+
+<p>"Everything is settled, and they will be man and wife as soon as
+possible."</p>
+
+<p>"And I request that you be good enough to tell me if I can be of any
+service to them."</p>
+
+<hr />
+
+<p>And here we may safely leave Renzo and Lucia. Their powerful protector
+easily secured Renzo's pardon, and shortly afterwards they were happily
+married and settled in Bergamo, where abundant prosperity came to them;
+and, furthermore, they were blessed with a large family, of whom the first,
+being a girl, was named Maria.</p>
+
+<hr />
+
+
+
+
+<h2><a name="FREDERICK_MARRYAT"></a>FREDERICK MARRYAT</h2>
+
+
+<h3><a name="Mr_Midshipman_Easy"></a>Mr. Midshipman Easy</h3>
+
+
+<blockquote> Frederick Marryat, novelist and captain in the navy, was born
+in London on July 10, 1792. As a boy he chiefly distinguished himself by
+repeatedly running away from school with the intention of going to sea. His
+first experience of naval service was under Lord Cochrane, whom he
+afterwards reproduced as Captain Savage of the Diomede in "Peter Simple."
+Honourable though Marryat's life at sea was, it is as a graphic depictor of
+naval scenes, customs, and character that he is known to the present
+generation. His first story, "Frank Mildmay" (1829), took the reading
+public by storm, and from that time onward he produced tale after tale with
+startling rapidity. "Peter Simple" is the best of Captain Marryat's novels,
+and "Mr. Midshipman Easy" is the most humorous. Published in volume form in
+1836, after appearing serially in the pages of the "Metropolitan Magazine,"
+of which Marryat was then editor, the latter story immediately caught the
+fancy of the public, and considerably widened his already large circle of
+readers. "Mr. Midshipman Easy" is frankly farcical; it shows its author not
+only as a graphic writer, but as one gifted with an abundance of whimsical
+humour and a keen sense of characterisation. Opinions may differ as to the
+actual merits of "Mr. Midshipman Easy," but it has more than served its
+author's purpose--it has held the public for over seventy years. Captain
+Marryat died on August 9, 1848. </blockquote>
+
+
+<h4><i>I.--Mr. Easy Joins His Majesty's Service</i></h4>
+
+
+<p>Mr. Nicodemus Easy was a gentleman who lived down in Hampshire. He was a
+married man, and in very easy circumstances, and having decided to be a
+philosopher, he had fixed upon the rights of man, equality, and all
+that--how every person was born to inherit his share of the earth--for his
+philosophy.</p>
+
+<p>At the age of fourteen his only son, Jack, decided to go to sea.</p>
+
+<p>"It has occurred to me, father," he said, "that although the whole earth
+has been so nefariously divided among the few, the waters at least are the
+property of all. No man claims his share of the sea; everyone may there
+plough as he pleases without being taken up for a trespasser. It is, then,
+only upon the ocean that I am likely to find that equality and rights of
+man which we are so anxious to establish on shore; and therefore I have
+resolved not to go to school again, which I detest, but to go to sea."</p>
+
+<p>"I cannot listen to that, Jack. You must return to school."</p>
+
+<p>"All I have to say is, father, that I swear by the rights of man I will
+not go back to school, and that I will go to sea. Was I not born my own
+master? Has anyone a right to dictate to me as if I were not his
+equal?"</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Easy had nothing to reply.</p>
+
+<p>"I will write to Captain Wilson," he said mournfully.</p>
+
+<p>Captain Wilson, who was under considerable obligations to Mr. Easy,
+wrote in reply promising that he would treat Jack as his own son, and our
+hero very soon found his way down to Portsmouth.</p>
+
+<p>As Jack had plenty of money, and was very much pleased at finding
+himself his own master, he was in no hurry to join his ship, and five or
+six companions whom he had picked up strongly advised him to put it off
+until the very last moment. So he was three weeks at Portsmouth before
+anyone knew of his arrival.</p>
+
+<p>At last, Captain Wilson, receiving a note from Mr. Easy, desired Mr.
+Sawbridge, the first lieutenant, to make inquiries; and Mr. Sawbridge,
+going on shore, and being informed by the waiter at the Fountain Inn that
+Mr. Easy had been there three weeks, was justly indignant.</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Sawbridge was a good officer, who had really worked his way up to
+the present rank--that is, he had served seven-and-twenty years, and had
+nothing but his pay. He was a good-hearted man; but when he entered Jack's
+room, and saw the dinner-table laid out in the best style for eight, his
+bile was raised by the display.</p>
+
+<p>"May I beg to ask," said Jack, who was always remarkably polite in his
+address, "in what manner I may be of service to you?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes sir, you may--by joining your ship immediately."</p>
+
+<p>Hereupon, Jack, who did not admire the peremptory tone of Mr. Sawbridge,
+very coolly replied. "And, pray, who are you?"</p>
+
+<p>"Who am I, sir? My name is Sawbridge, sir, and I am the first lieutenant
+of the Harpy. Now, sir, you have your answer."</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Sawbridge was not in uniform, but he imagined the name of the first
+lieutenant would strike terror to a culprit midshipman.</p>
+
+<p>"Really, sir," replied Jack. "What may be your exact situation on board?
+My ignorance of the service will not allow me to guess; but if I may judge
+from your behaviour, you have no small opinion of yourself."</p>
+
+<p>"Look ye, young man, you may not know what a first lieutenant is; but,
+depend upon it, I'll let you know very soon! In the meantime, sir, I insist
+that you go immediately on board."</p>
+
+<p>"I'm sorry that I cannot comply with your very moderate request,"
+replied Jack coolly. "I shall go on board when it suits my convenience, and
+I beg that you will give yourself no further trouble on my account." He
+then rang the bell. "Waiter, show this gentleman downstairs."</p>
+
+<p>"By the god of wars!" exclaimed the first lieutenant. "But I'll soon
+show you down to the boat, my young bantam! I shall now go and report your
+conduct to Captain Wilson, and if you are not on board this evening,
+to-morrow morning I shall send a sergeant and a file of marines to fetch
+you."</p>
+
+<p>"You may depend upon it," replied Jack, "that I also shall not fail to
+mention to Captain Wilson that I consider you a very quarrelsome,
+impertinent fellow, and recommend him not to allow you to remain on board.
+It will be quite uncomfortable to be in the same ship with such an
+ungentlemanly bear."</p>
+
+<p>"He must be mad--quite mad!" exclaimed Sawbridge, whose astonishment
+even mastered his indignation. "Mad as a March hare!"</p>
+
+<p>"No, sir," replied Jack, "I am not mad, but I am a philosopher."</p>
+
+<p>"A <i>what</i>? Well, my joker, all the better for you. I shall put your
+philosophy to the proof."</p>
+
+<p>"It is for that very reason, sir, that I have decided upon going to sea;
+and if you do remain on board, I hope to argue the point with you, and make
+you a convert to the truth of equality and the rights of man. We are all
+born equal. I trust you'll allow that?"</p>
+
+<p>"Twenty-seven years have I been in the service!" roared Sawbridge. "But
+he's mad--downright, stark, staring mad!" And the first lieutenant bounced
+out of the room.</p>
+
+<p>"He calls me mad," thought Jack. "I shall tell Captain Wilson what is my
+opinion about his lieutenant." Shortly afterwards the company arrived, and
+Jack soon forgot all about it.</p>
+
+<p>In the meantime, Sawbridge called at the captain's lodgings, and made a
+faithful report of all that had happened.</p>
+
+<p>Sawbridge and Wilson were old friends and messmates, and the captain put
+it to the first lieutenant that Mr. Easy, senior, having come to his
+assistance and released him from heavy difficulties with a most generous
+cheque, what could he do but be a father to his son?</p>
+
+<p>"I can only say," replied Sawbridge, "that, not only to please you, but
+also from respect to a man who has shown such goodwill towards one of our
+cloth, I shall most cheerfully forgive all that has passed between the lad
+and me."</p>
+
+<p>Captain Wilson then dispatched a note to our hero, requesting the
+pleasure of his company to breakfast on the ensuing morning, and Jack
+answered in the affirmative.</p>
+
+<p>Captain Wilson, who knew all about Mr. Easy's philosophy, explained to
+Jack the details and rank of every person on board, and that everyone was
+equally obliged to obey orders. Lieutenant Sawbridge's demeanour was due
+entirely to his zeal for his country.</p>
+
+<p>That evening Mr. Jack Easy was safe on board his majesty's sloop
+Harpy.</p>
+
+
+<h4><i>II.--On Board the Harpy</i></h4>
+
+
+<p>Jack remained in his hammock during the first few days at sea. He was
+very sick, bewildered, and confused, every minute knocking his head against
+the beams with the pitching and tossing of the sloop.</p>
+
+<p>"And this is going to sea," thought Jack. "No wonder that no one
+interferes with another here, or talks about a trespass; for I am sure
+anyone is welcome to my share of the ocean."</p>
+
+<p>When he was well enough he was told to go to the midshipman's berth, and
+Jack, who now felt excessively hungry, crawled over and between chests
+until he found himself in a hole infinitely inferior to the dog-kennels
+which received his father's pointers.</p>
+
+<p>"I'd not only give up the ocean," thought Jack, "and my share of it, but
+also my share of the Harpy, unto anyone who fancies it. Equality enough
+here, for everyone appears equally miserably off."</p>
+
+<p>But when he had gained the deck, the scene of cheerfulness, activity,
+and order lightened his heart after the four days of suffering, close air,
+and confinement from which he had just emerged.</p>
+
+<p>Jack dined with the captain that night, and was very much pleased to
+find that everyone drank wine with him, and that everybody at the captain's
+table appeared to be on an equality. Before the dessert had been on the
+table five minutes, Jack became loquacious on his favourite topic. All the
+company stared with surprise at such an unheard-of doctrine being broached
+on board of a man-of-war.</p>
+
+<p>This day may be considered as the first in which Jack really made his
+appearance on board, and it also was on this first day that Jack made
+known, at the captain's table, his very peculiar notions. If the company at
+the captain's table were astonished at such heterodox opinions being
+started, they were equally astonished at the cool, good-humoured ridicule
+with which they were received by Captain Wilson. The report of Jack's
+boldness, and every word and opinion that he had uttered--of course, much
+magnified--were circulated that evening through the whole ship; the matter
+was canvassed in the gun-room by the officers, and descanted upon by the
+midshipmen as they walked the deck. The boatswain talked it over with the
+other warrant officers, till the grog was all gone, and then dismissed it
+as too dry a subject.</p>
+
+<p>The bully of the midshipman's berth--a young man about seventeen, named
+Vigors--at once attacked our hero.</p>
+
+<p>"So, my chap, you are come on board to raise a mutiny here with your
+equality? You came off scot free at the captain's table, but it won't do, I
+can tell you; someone must knock under in the midshipman's berth, and you
+are one of them."</p>
+
+<p>"I can assure you that you are mistaken," replied Easy.</p>
+
+<p>At school Jack had fought and fought again, until he was a very good
+bruiser, and although not so tall as Vigors, he was much better built for
+fighting.</p>
+
+<p>"I've thrashed bigger fellows than he," he said to himself.</p>
+
+<p>"You impudent blackguard!" exclaimed Vigors. "If you say another word,
+I'll give you a good thrashing, and knock some of your equality out of
+you!"</p>
+
+<p>"Indeed!" replied Jack, who almost fancied himself back at school.
+"We'll try that!"</p>
+
+<p>Vigors had gained his assumed authority more by bullying than fighting;
+others had submitted to him without a sufficient trial. Jack, on the
+contrary, had won his way up in school by hard and scientific combat. The
+result, therefore, may easily be imagined. In less than a quarter of an
+hour Vigors, beaten dead, with his eyes closed and three teeth out, gave
+in; while Jack, after a basin of water, looked as fresh as ever.</p>
+
+<p>After that, Jack declared that as might was right in a midshipman's
+berth, he would so far restore equality that, let who would come, they must
+be his master before they should tyrannise over those weaker than he.</p>
+
+
+<h4><i>III.--The Triangular Duel</i></h4>
+
+
+<p>Jack, although generally popular on board, had made enemies of Mr.
+Biggs, the boatswain, and Mr. Easthupp, the purser's steward. The latter--a
+cockney and a thief--had even been kicked down the hatchway by our
+hero.</p>
+
+<p>When the Harpy was at Malta, Jack, wroth at the way the two men talked
+at him, declared he would give them satisfaction.</p>
+
+<p>"Mr. Biggs, let you and this fellow put on plain clothes, and I will
+meet you both."</p>
+
+<p>"One at a time?" said the boatswain.</p>
+
+<p>"No, sir; not one at a time, but both at the same time. I will fight
+both or none. If you are my superior officer, you must <i>descend</i> to
+meet me, or I will not descend to meet that fellow, whom I believe to have
+been little better than a pickpocket!"</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Biggs having declared that he would fight, of course, had to look
+out for a second, and he fixed upon Mr. Tallboys, the gunner, and requested
+him to be his friend. Mr. Tallboys consented, but he was very much puzzled
+how to arrange that <i>three</i> were to fight at the same time, for he had
+no idea of there being two duels. Jack had no one to confide in but
+Gascoigne, a fellow-midshipman; and although Gascoigne thought it was
+excessively <i>infra dig.</i> of Jack to meet even the boatswain, as the
+challenge had been given there was no retracting, and he therefore
+consented and went to meet Mr. Tallboys.</p>
+
+<p>"Mr. Gascoigne," said the gunner, "you see that there are three parties
+to fight. Had there been two or four there would have been no difficulty,
+as the straight line or square might guide us in that instance; but we must
+arrange it upon the triangle in this."</p>
+
+<p>Gascoigne stared. He could not imagine what was coming.</p>
+
+<p>"The duel between three can only be fought upon the principle of the
+triangle," the gunner went on. "You observe," he said, taking a piece of
+chalk and making a triangle on the table, "in this figure we have three
+points, each equidistant from each other; and we have three combatants, so
+that, placing one at each point, it is all fair play for the three. Mr.
+Easy, for instance, stands here, the boatswain here, and the purser's
+steward at the third corner. Now, if the distance is fairly measured it
+will be all right."</p>
+
+<p>"But then," replied Gascoigne, delighted at the idea, "how are they to
+fire?"</p>
+
+<p>"It certainly is not of much consequence," replied the gunner; "but
+still, as sailors, it appears to me that they should fire with the
+sun--that is, Mr. Easy fires at Mr. Biggs, Mr. Biggs fires at Mr. Easthupp,
+and Mr. Easthupp fires at Mr. Easy, so that you perceive that each party
+has his shot at one, and at the same time receives the fire of
+another."</p>
+
+<p>Gascoigne was in ecstasies at the novelty of the proceeding.</p>
+
+<p>"Upon my word, Mr. Tallboys, I give you great credit. You have a
+profound mathematical head, and I am delighted with your arrangement. I
+shall insist upon Mr. Easy consenting to your excellent and scientific
+proposal."</p>
+
+<p>Gascoigne went out and told Jack what the gunner had proposed, at which
+Jack laughed heartily. The gunner also explained it to the boatswain, who
+did not very well comprehend, but replied, "I daresay it's all right. Shot
+for shot, and d---- all favours!"</p>
+
+<p>The parties then repaired to the spot with two pairs of ship's pistols,
+which Mr. Tallboys had smuggled on shore; and as soon as they were on the
+ground, the gunner called Mr. Easthupp. In the meantime, Gascoigne had been
+measuring an equilaterial triangle of twelve paces, and marked it out. Mr.
+Tallboys, on his return with the purser's steward, went over the ground,
+and finding that it was "equal angles subtended by equal sides," declared
+that it was all right. Easy took his station, the boatswain was put into
+his, and Mr. Easthupp, who was quite in a mystery, was led by the gunner to
+the third position.</p>
+
+<p>"But, Mr. Tallboys," said the purser's steward, "I don't understand
+this. Mr. Easy will first fight Mr. Biggs, will he not?"</p>
+
+<p>"No," replied the gunner; "this is a duel of three. You will fire at Mr.
+Easy, Mr. Easy will fire at Mr. Biggs, and Mr. Biggs will fire at you. It
+is all arranged, Mr. Easthupp."</p>
+
+<p>"But," said Mr. Easthupp, "I do not understand it. Why is Mr. Biggs to
+fire at me? I have no quarrel with Mr. Biggs."</p>
+
+<p>"Because Mr. Easy fires at Mr. Biggs, and Mr. Biggs must have his shot
+as well."</p>
+
+<p>"But still, I've no quarrel with Mr. Biggs, and therefore, Mr. Biggs, of
+course you will not aim at me."</p>
+
+<p>"Why, you don't think that I'm going to be fired at for nothing?"
+replied the boatswain. "No, no; I'll have my shot, anyhow!"</p>
+
+<p>"But at your friend, Mr. Biggs?"</p>
+
+<p>"All the same, I shall fire at somebody, shot for shot, and hit the
+luckiest."</p>
+
+<p>"Vel, gentlemen, I purtest against these proceedings," remarked Mr.
+Easthupp. "I came here to have satisfaction from Mr. Easy, and not to be
+fired at by Mr. Biggs."</p>
+
+<p>"So you would have a shot without receiving one?" cried Gascoigne. "The
+fact is that this fellow's a confounded coward."</p>
+
+<p>At this affront, Mr. Easthupp rallied, and accepted the pistol offered
+by the gunner.</p>
+
+<p>"You 'ear those words, Mr. Biggs? Pretty language to use to a gentleman!
+I purtest no longer, Mr. Tallboys. Death before dishonour--I'm a
+gentleman!"</p>
+
+<p>The gunner gave the word as if he were exercising the great guns on
+board ship.</p>
+
+<p>"Cock your locks! Take good aim at the object! Fire!"</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Easthupp clapped his hand to his trousers, gave a loud yell, and
+then dropped down, having presented his broadside as a target to the
+boatswain. Jack's shot had also taken effect, having passed through both
+the boatswain's cheeks, without further mischief than extracting two of his
+best upper double teeth, and forcing through the hole of the farther cheek
+the boatswain's own quid of tobacco. As for Mr. Easthupp's ball, as he was
+very unsettled and shut his eyes before he fired, it had gone heaven knows
+where.</p>
+
+<p>The purser's steward lay on the ground and screamed; the boatswain threw
+down his pistol in a rage. The former was then walked off to the hospital,
+attended by the gunner, and also the boatswain, who thought he might as
+well have a little medical advice before going on board.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, Easy," said Gascoigne, collecting the pistols and tying them up
+in his handkerchief, "I'll be shot, but we're in a pretty scrape; there's
+no hushing this up. I'll be hanged if I care; it's the best piece of fun I
+ever met with."</p>
+
+<p>"I'm afraid that our leave will be stopped for the future," replied
+Jack.</p>
+
+<p>"Confound it, and they say that the ship is to be here six weeks at
+least. I won't go on board. Look ye, Jack, we'll pretend to be so much
+alarmed at the result of this duel, that we dare not show ourselves lest we
+should be hung. I will write a note and tell all the particulars to the
+master's mate, and refer to the gunner for the truth of it, and beg him to
+intercede with the captain and first lieutenant. I know that although we
+should be punished, they will only laugh; but I will pretend that Easthupp
+is killed, and we are frightened out of our lives. That will be it; and
+then let's get on board one of the fruit boats, sail in the night for
+Palermo, and then we'll have a cruise for a fortnight, and when the money
+is all gone we'll come back."</p>
+
+<p>"That's a capital idea, Ned, and the sooner we do it the better."</p>
+
+<p>They were two very nice lads.</p>
+
+
+<h4><i>IV.--Jack Leaves the Service</i></h4>
+
+
+<p>At the end of four years at sea, Jack had been cured of his philosophy
+of equality. The death of his mother, and a letter from the old family
+doctor that his father was not in his senses, decided him to return
+home.</p>
+
+<p>"It is fortunate for you that the estate is entailed," wrote Dr.
+Middleton, "or you might soon be a beggar, for there is no saying what
+debts your father might, in his madness, be guilty of. He has turned away
+his keepers, and allowed poachers to go all over the manor. I consider that
+it is absolutely necessary that you should immediately return home and look
+after what will one day be your property. You have no occasion to follow
+the profession with your income of &pound;8,000 per annum. You have
+distinguished yourself, now make room for those who require it for their
+subsistence."</p>
+
+<p>Captain Wilson approved of the decision, and Jack left the service. At
+his request, his devoted admirer Mesty--an abbreviation of
+Mephistopheles--an African, once a prince in Ashantee and now the cook of
+the midshipmen's mess, was allowed to leave the service and accompany our
+hero to England as his servant.</p>
+
+<p>From the first utterances of Jack on the subject of liberty and
+equality, he had won Mesty's heart, and in a hundred ways the black had
+proved his fidelity and attachment. His delight at going home with his
+patron was indescribable.</p>
+
+<p>Jack had not written to his father to announce his arrival, and when he
+reached home he found things worse than he expected.</p>
+
+<p>His father was at the mercy of his servants, who, insolent and
+insubordinate, robbed, laughed at, and neglected him. The waste and expense
+were enormous. Our hero, who found how matters stood, soon resolved what to
+do.</p>
+
+<p>He rose early; Mesty was in the room, with warm water, as soon as he
+rang.</p>
+
+<p>"By de power, Massa Easy, your fader very silly old man!"</p>
+
+<p>"I'm afraid so," replied Jack. "How are they getting on in the servants'
+hall?"</p>
+
+<p>"Regular mutiny, sar--ab swear dat dey no stand our nonsense, and dat we
+both leave the house to-morrow."</p>
+
+<p>Jack went to his father.</p>
+
+<p>"Do you hear, sir, your servants declare that I shall leave your house
+to-morrow."</p>
+
+<p>"You leave my house, Jack, after four years' absence! No, no, I'll
+reason with them--I'll make them a speech. You don't know how I can speak,
+Jack."</p>
+
+<p>"Look you, father, I cannot stand this. Either give me <i>carte
+blanche</i> to arrange this household as I please, or I shall quit it
+myself to-morrow morning."</p>
+
+<p>"Quit my house, Jack! No, no--shake hands and make friends with them; be
+civil, and they will serve you."</p>
+
+<p>"Do you consent, sir, or am I to leave the house?"</p>
+
+<p>"Leave the house! Oh, no; not leave the house, Jack. I have no son but
+you. Then do as you please--but you will not send away my butler--he
+escaped hanging last assizes on an undoubted charge of murder? I selected
+him on purpose, and must have him cured, and shown as a proof of a
+wonderful machine I have invented."</p>
+
+<p>"Mesty," said Jack, "get my pistols ready for to-morrow morning, and
+your own too--do you hear? It is possible, father, that you may not have
+yet quite cured your murderer, and therefore it is as well to be
+prepared."</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Easy did not long survive his son's return, and under Jack's
+management, in which Mesty rendered invaluable assistance, the household
+was reformed, and the estate once more conducted on reasonable lines.</p>
+
+<p>A year later Jack was married, and Mesty, as major domo, held his post
+with dignity, and proved himself trustworthy.</p>
+
+<hr />
+
+
+
+
+<h3><a name="Peter_Simple"></a>Peter Simple</h3>
+
+
+<blockquote> "Peter Simple," published in 1833, is in many respects the
+best of all Marryat's novels. Largely drawn from Marryat's own professional
+experiences, the story, with its vivid portraiture and richness of
+incident, is told with rare atmosphere and style. Hogg placed the character
+of "Peter Simple" on a level with Fielding's "Parson Adams;" Edgar Allan
+Poe, on the other hand, found Marryat's works "essentially mediocre."
+</blockquote>
+
+
+<h4><i>I.--I am Sacrificed to the Navy</i></h4>
+
+
+<p>I think that had I been permitted to select my own profession in
+childhood, I should in all probability have bound myself apprentice to a
+tailor, for I always envied the comfortable seat which they appeared to
+enjoy upon the shopboard. But my father, who was a clergyman of the Church
+of England and the youngest brother of a noble family, had a lucrative
+living, and a "soul above buttons," if his son had not. It has been from
+time immemorial the custom to sacrifice the greatest fool of the family to
+the prosperity and naval superiority of the country, and at the age of
+fourteen, I was selected as the victim.</p>
+
+<p>My father, who lived in the North of England, forwarded me by coach to
+London, and from London I set out by coach for Portsmouth.</p>
+
+<p>A gentleman in a plaid cloak sat by me, and at the Elephant and Castle a
+drunken sailor climbed up by the wheel of the coach and sat down on the
+other side.</p>
+
+<p>I commenced a conversation with the gentleman in the plaid cloak
+relative to my profession, and asked him whether it was not very difficult
+to learn.</p>
+
+<p>"Larn," cried the sailor, interrupting us, "no; it may be difficult for
+such chaps as me before the mast to larn; but you, I presume, is a reefer,
+and they ain't not much to larn, 'cause why, they pipe-clays their weekly
+accounts, and walks up and down with their hands in their pockets. You must
+larn to chaw baccy and drink grog, and then you knows all a midshipman's
+expected to know nowadays. Ar'n't I right, sir?" said the sailor, appealing
+to the gentleman in a plaid cloak. "I axes you, because I see you're a
+sailor by the cut of your jib. Beg pardon, sir," continued he, touching his
+hat; "hope no offence."</p>
+
+<p>"I am afraid that you have nearly hit the mark, my good fellow," replied
+the gentleman.</p>
+
+<p>At the bottom of Portsdown Hill I inquired how soon we should be at
+Portsmouth. He answered that we were passing the lines; but I saw no lines,
+and I was ashamed to show my ignorance. The gentleman in a plaid cloak
+asked me what ship I was going to join, and whether I had a letter of
+introduction to the captain.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, I have," replied I. And I pulled out my pocket-book, in which the
+letter was. "Captain Savage, H.M. ship Diomede," I read.</p>
+
+<p>To my surprise, he very coolly took the letter and proceeded to open it,
+which occasioned me immediately to snatch the letter from him, stating my
+opinion at the same time that it was a breach of honour, and that in my
+opinion he was no gentleman.</p>
+
+<p>"Just as you please, youngster," replied he. "Recollect, you have told
+me I am no gentleman."</p>
+
+<p>He wrapped his plaid around him and said no more, and I was not a little
+pleased at having silenced him by my resolute behaviour.</p>
+
+<p>I stayed at the Blue Posts, where all the midshipmen put up, that night,
+and next morning presented myself at the George Inn with my letter of
+introduction to Captain Savage.</p>
+
+<p>"Mr. Simple, I am glad to see you," said a voice. And there sat, with
+his uniform and epaulets, and his sword by his side, the passenger in the
+plaid cloak who wanted to open my letter and whom I had told to his face
+that he was "no gentleman!"</p>
+
+<p>I thought I should have died, and was just sinking down upon my knees to
+beg for mercy, when the captain, perceiving my confusion, burst out into a
+laugh, and said, "So you know me again, Mr. Simple? Well, don't be alarmed.
+You did your duty in not permitting me to open the letter, supposing me, as
+you did, to be some other person, and you were perfectly right, under that
+supposition, to tell me that I was not a gentleman. I give you credit for
+your conduct. Now, I think the sooner you go on board the better."</p>
+
+<p>On my arrival on board, the first lieutenant, after looking at me
+closely, said, "Now, Mr. Simple, I have looked attentively at your face,
+and I see at once that you are very clever, and if you do not prove so in a
+<i>very</i> short time, why--you had better jump overboard, that's
+all."</p>
+
+<p>I was very much terrified at this speech, but at the same time I was
+pleased to hear that he thought me clever. My unexpected reputation was
+shortly afterwards strengthened, when, noticing the first lieutenant in
+consultation with the gunner, the former, on my approaching, said,
+"Youngster hand me that <i>monkey's tail</i>."</p>
+
+<p>I saw nothing like a monkey's tail, but I was so frightened that I
+snatched up the first thing that I saw, which was a short bar of iron, and
+it so happened that it was the very article which he wanted.</p>
+
+<p>"So you know what a monkey's tail is already, do you?" said the first
+lieutenant. "Now don't you ever sham stupid after that."</p>
+
+<p>A fortnight later, at daylight, a signal from the flagship in harbour
+was made for us to unmoor; our orders had come to cruise in the Bay of
+Biscay. The captain came on board, the anchor weighed, and we ran through
+the Needles with a fine breeze. Presently I felt so very ill that I went
+down below. What occurred for the next six days I cannot tell. I thought I
+should die every moment, and lay in my hammock, incapable of eating,
+drinking, or walking about.</p>
+
+<p>O'Brien, the senior midshipman and master's mate, who had been very kind
+to me, came to me on the seventh, morning and said that if I did not exert
+myself I never should get well; that he had taken me under his protection,
+and to prove his regard would give me a good basting, which was a sovereign
+remedy for sea-sickness. He suited the action to the word, and drubbed me
+on the ribs without mercy until I thought the breath was out of my body;
+but I obeyed his orders to go on deck immediately, and somehow or other did
+contrive to crawl up the ladder to the main deck, where I sat down and
+cried bitterly. What would I have given to have been at home again! It was
+not my fault that I was the greatest fool of the family, yet how was I
+punished for it! But, by degrees, I recovered myself, and certainly that
+night I slept very soundly.</p>
+
+<p>The next morning O'Brien came to me again.</p>
+
+<p>"It's a nasty slow fever, that sea-sickness, my Peter, and we must drive
+it out of you."</p>
+
+<p>And then he commenced a repetition of yesterday's remedy until I was
+almost a jelly. Whether the fear of being thrashed drove away my sickness,
+I do not know, but this is certain, that I felt no more of it after the
+second beating, and the next morning when I awoke I was very hungry.</p>
+
+
+<h4><i>II.--I am Taken Prisoner</i></h4>
+
+
+<p>One morning at daybreak we found ourselves about four miles from the
+town of Cette, and a large convoy of vessels coming round a point. We made
+all sail in chase, and they anchored close in shore under a battery, which
+we did not discover until it opened fire upon us. The captain tacked the
+ship, and stood out again, until the boats were hoisted out, and all ready
+to pull on shore and storm the battery. O'Brien, who was the officer
+commanding the first cutter on service, was in his boat, and I obtained
+permission from him to smuggle myself into it.</p>
+
+<p>We ran ashore, amidst the fire of the gunboats which protected the
+convoy, by which we lost three men, and made for the battery, which we took
+without opposition, the French artillerymen running out as we ran in. The
+directions of the captain were very positive not to remain in the battery a
+minute after it was taken, but to board the gunboats, leaving only one of
+the small boats, with the armourer, to spike the guns, for the captain was
+aware that there were troops stationed along the coast who might come down
+upon us and beat us off.</p>
+
+<p>The first lieutenant, who commanded, desired O'Brien to remain with the
+first cutter, and after the armourer had spiked the guns, as officer of the
+boat he was to shove off immediately. O'Brien and I remained in the battery
+with the armourer, the boat's crew being ordered down to the boat to keep
+her afloat and ready to shove off at a moment's warning. We had spiked all
+the guns but one, when all of a sudden a volley of musketry was poured upon
+us, which killed the armourer, and wounded me in the leg above the knee. I
+fell down by O'Brien, who cried out, "By the powers, here they are, and one
+gun not spiked!" He jumped down, wrenched the hammer from the armourer's
+hand, and seizing a nail from the bag, in a few moments he had spiked the
+gun.</p>
+
+<p>At this time I heard the tramping of the French soldiers advancing, when
+O'Brien threw away the hammer and lifting me upon his shoulders cried,
+"Come along, Peter, my boy," and made for the boat as fast as he could. But
+he was too late; he had not got half-way to the boat before he was collared
+by two French soldiers and dragged back into the battery. The French troops
+then advanced and kept up a smart fire; our cutter escaped and joined the
+other boat, who had captured the gunboats and convoy with little
+opposition.</p>
+
+<p>In the meantime, O'Brien had been taken into the battery with me on his
+back; but as soon as he was there he laid me gently down, saying, "Peter,
+my boy, as long as you were under my charge, I'd carry you through thick
+and thin; but now that you are under the charge of these French beggars,
+why, let them carry you."</p>
+
+<p>When the troops ceased firing (and if O'Brien had left one gun unspiked
+they must have done a great deal of mischief to our boats), the commanding
+officer came up to O'Brien, and looking at him, said, "Officer?" to which
+O'Brien nodded his head. He then pointed to me--"Officer?" O'Brien nodded
+his head again, at which the French troops laughed, and called me an
+<i>enfant</i>.</p>
+
+<p>Then, as I was very faint and could not walk, I was carried on three
+muskets, O'Brien walking by my side, till we reached the town of Cette;
+there we were taken to the commanding officer's house. It turned out that
+this officer's name was also O'Brien, and that he was of Irish descent. He
+and his daughter Celeste, a little girl of twelve, treated us both with
+every kindness. Celeste was my little nurse, and we became very intimate,
+as might be expected. Our chief employment was teaching each other French
+and English.</p>
+
+<p>Before two months were over, I was quite recovered, and soon the time
+came when we were to leave our comfortable quarters for a French prison.
+Captain Savage had sent our clothes and two hundred dollars to us under a
+flag of truce, and I had taken advantage of this to send a letter off which
+I dictated to Colonel O'Brien, containing my statement of the affair, in
+which I mentioned O'Brien's bravery in spiking the gun and in looking after
+me. I knew that he would never tell if I didn't.</p>
+
+<p>At last the day came for us to leave, and my parting with Celeste was
+very painful. I promised to write to her, and she promised to answer my
+letters if it were permitted. We shook hands with Colonel O'Brien, thanking
+him for his kindness, and much to his regret we were taken in charge by two
+French cuirassiers, and so set off, on parole, on horseback for Toulon.</p>
+
+<p>From Toulon we were moved to Montpelier, and from Montpelier to Givet, a
+fortified town in the department of Ardennes, where we arrived exactly four
+months after our capture.</p>
+
+
+<h4><i>III.--We Make Our Escape</i></h4>
+
+
+<p>O'Brien had decided at once that we should make our escape from the
+prison at Givet.</p>
+
+<p>First he procured a plan of the fortress from a gendarme, and then, when
+we were shown into the room allotted to us, and our baggage was examined,
+the false bottom of his trunk was not noticed, and by this means various
+instruments he had bought on the road escaped detection. Round his body
+O'Brien had also wound a rope of silk, sixty feet long, with knots at every
+two feet.</p>
+
+<p>The practicability of escape from Givet seemed to me impossible. The
+yard of the fortress was surrounded by a high wall; the buildings
+appropriated for the prisoners were built with lean-to roofs on one side,
+and at each side of the square was a sentry looking down upon us. We had no
+parole, and but little communication with the towns-people.</p>
+
+<p>But O'Brien, who often examined the map he had procured from the
+gendarme, said to me one day, "Peter, can you swim?"</p>
+
+<p>"No," replied I; "but never mind that."</p>
+
+<p>"But I must mind it, Peter; for observe we shall have to cross the River
+Meuse, and boats are not always to be had. This fortress is washed by the
+river on one side; and as it is the strongest side it is the least
+guarded--we must escape by it. I can see my way clear enough till we get to
+the second rampart on the river, but when we drop into the river, if you
+cannot swim, I must contrive to hold you up somehow or other. But first
+tell me, do you intend to try your luck with me?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes," replied I, "most certainly, if you have sufficient confidence in
+me to take me as your companion."</p>
+
+<p>"To tell you the truth, Peter, I would not give a farthing to escape
+without you. We were taken together, and, please God, we'll take ourselves
+off together, directly we get the dark nights and foul weather."</p>
+
+<p>We had been about two months in Givet when letters arrived. My father
+wrote requesting me to draw for whatever money I might require, and also
+informing me that as my Uncle William was dead, there was now only one
+between him and the title, but that my grandfather, Lord Privilege, was in
+good health. O'Brien's letter was from Captain Savage; the frigate had been
+sent home with despatches, and O'Brien's conduct represented to the
+Admiralty, which had, in consequence, promoted him to the rank of
+lieutenant. We read each other's letters, and O'Brien said, "I see your
+uncle is dead. How many more uncles have you?"</p>
+
+<p>"My Uncle John, who is married, and has already two daughters."</p>
+
+<p>"Blessings on him! Peter, my boy, you shall be a lord before you
+die."</p>
+
+<p>"Nonsense, O'Brien; I have no chance."</p>
+
+<p>"What chance had I of being lieutenant, and am I not one? And now, my
+boy, prepare yourself to quit this cursed hole in a week, wind and weather
+permitting. But, Peter, do me one favour. As I am really a lieutenant, just
+touch your hat to me, only once, that's all; but I wish the compliment,
+just to see how it looks."</p>
+
+<p>"Lieutenant O'Brien," said I, touching my hat, "have you any further
+orders?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, sir," replied he; "that you never presume to touch your hat to me
+again, unless we sail together, and then that's a different sort of
+thing."</p>
+
+<p>A week later, O'Brien's preparations were complete. I had bought a new
+umbrella on his advice, and this he had painted with a preparation of oil
+and beeswax. He had also managed to procure a considerable amount of twine,
+which he had turned into a sort of strong cord, or square plait.</p>
+
+<p>At twelve o'clock on a dark November night we left our room and went
+down into the yard. By means of pieces of iron, which he drove into the
+interstices of the stone, we scaled a high wall, and dropped down on the
+other side by a drawbridge. Here the sentry was asleep, but O'Brien gagged
+him, and I threw open the pan of his musket to prevent him from firing.</p>
+
+<p>Then I followed O'Brien into the river. The umbrella was opened and
+turned upwards, and I had only to hold on to it at arm's-length. O'Brien
+had a tow line, and taking this in his teeth, he towed me down with the
+stream to about a hundred yards clear of the fortress, where we landed.
+O'Brien was so exhausted that for a few minutes he remained quite
+motionless. I also was benumbed with the cold.</p>
+
+<p>"Peter," said he, "thank God we have succeeded so far. Now we must push
+on as far as we can, for we shall have daylight in two hours."</p>
+
+<p>It was not till some months later that, after many adventures, we
+reached Flushing, and procured the services of a pilot. With a strong tide
+and a fair wind we were soon clear of the Scheldt, and next morning a
+cutter hove in sight, and in a few minutes we found ourselves once more
+under the British pennant.</p>
+
+
+<h4><i>IV.--In Bedlam</i></h4>
+
+
+<p>Once, in the West Indies, O'Brien and I had again come across our good
+friend Colonel O'Brien and his daughter Celeste. He was now General
+O'Brien, Governor of Martinique; and Celeste was nineteen, and I
+one-and-twenty. And though France and England were still at war, before we
+parted Celeste and I were lovers, engaged to be married; and the general
+raised no objection to our attachment.</p>
+
+<p>On our return from that voyage a series of troubles overtook me. My
+grandfather, Lord Privilege, had begun to take some interest in me; but
+before he died my uncle went to live with him, and so poisoned his mind
+against me that when the old lord's will was read it was found that
+&pound;10,000 bequeathed to me had been cancelled by a codicil. As both my
+brothers and my other uncle were dead, my uncle was enraged at the
+possibility of my succeeding to the title.</p>
+
+<p>The loss of &pound;10,000 was too much for my father's reason, and from
+lunacy he went quietly to his grave, leaving my only sister, Ellen, to find
+a home among strangers.</p>
+
+<p>In the meantime, O'Brien had been made a captain, and had sailed for the
+East Indies. I was to have accompanied him, but my uncle, who had now
+succeeded to the title, had sufficient influence at the Admiralty to
+prevent this, and I was appointed first lieutenant to a ship whose captain,
+an illegitimate son of Lord Privilege, was determined to ruin me. Captain
+Hawkins was a cowardly, mean, tyrannical man, and, although I kept my
+temper under all his petty persecutions, he managed at last to string
+together a number of accusations and, on our return, send me to a
+court-martial.</p>
+
+<p>The verdict of the court-martial was that "the charges of
+insubordination had been partly proved, and therefore that Lieutenant Peter
+Simple was dismissed his ship; but in consideration of his good character
+and services his case was strongly recommended to the consideration of the
+Lords Commissioners of the Admiralty."</p>
+
+<p>I hardly knew whether I felt glad or sorry at this sentence. On the one
+hand, in spite of the fourteen years I had served, it was almost a
+death-blow to my future advancement or employment in the service; on the
+other, the recommendation very much softened down the sentence, and I was
+quite happy to be quit of Captain Hawkins and free to hasten to my poor
+sister.</p>
+
+<p>I hurried on shore, but on my journey north fell ill with fever, and for
+three weeks was in a state of alternate stupor and delirium, lying in a
+cottage by the roadside.</p>
+
+<p>My uncle, learning of my condition, thought this too favourable an
+opportunity, provided I should live, not to have me in his power. He sent
+to have me removed, and some days afterwards--for I recollect nothing about
+the journey--I found myself in bed in a dark room, and my arms confined.
+Where was I? Presently the door opened, and a man entered who took down a
+shutter, and the light streamed in. The walls were bare and whitewashed. I
+looked at the window; it was closed up with two iron bars.</p>
+
+<p>"Why, where am I?" I inquired, with alarm.</p>
+
+<p>"Where are you?" replied he. "Why, in Bedlam!"</p>
+
+<p>As I afterwards discovered, my uncle had had me confined upon the plea
+that I was a young man who was deranged with an idea that his name was
+Simple, and that he was the heir to the title and estates, and that it was
+more from the fear of my coming to some harm than from any ill-will toward
+the poor young man that he wished me to remain in the hospital and be taken
+care of. Under these circumstances, I remained in Bedlam for one year and
+eight months.</p>
+
+<p>A chance visit from General O'Brien, a prisoner on parole, who was
+accompanied by his friend, Lord Belmore, secured my release; and shortly
+afterwards I commenced an action for false imprisonment against Lord
+Privilege. But the sudden death of my uncle stopped the action, and gave me
+the title and estates. The return of my old messmate, Captain O'Brien, who
+had just been made Sir Terence O'Brien, in consequence of his successes in
+the East Indies, added to my happiness.</p>
+
+<p>I found that Sir Terence had been in love with my sister Ellen from the
+day I had first taken him home, and that Ellen was equally in love with
+him; so when Celeste consented to my entreaties that our wedding should
+take place six weeks after my assuming the title, O'Brien took the hint and
+spoke.</p>
+
+<p>Both unions have been attended with as much happiness as this world can
+afford. O'Brien and I are blessed with children, until we can now muster a
+large Christmas party in the two families.</p>
+
+<p>Such is the history of Peter Simple, Viscount Privilege, no longer the
+fool, but the head, of the family.</p>
+
+<hr />
+
+
+
+
+<h2><a name="CHARLES_MATURIN"></a>CHARLES MATURIN</h2>
+
+
+<h3><a name="Melmoth_the_Wanderer"></a>Melmoth the Wanderer</h3>
+
+
+<blockquote> The romances of Charles Robert Maturin mark the transition
+stage between the old crude "Gothic" tales of terror and the subtler and
+weirder treatment of the supernatural that had its greatest master in Edgar
+Allan Poe. Maturin was born at Dublin in 1782, and died there on October
+30, 1824. He became a clergyman of the Church of Ireland; but his leanings
+were literary rather than clerical, and his first story, "Montorio" (1807),
+was followed by others that brought him increasing popularity.
+Over-zealousness on a friend's behalf caused him heavy financial losses,
+for which he strove to atone by an effort to write for the stage. Thanks to
+the good offices of Scott and Byron, his tragedy, "Bertram," was acted at
+Drury Lane in 1816, and proved successful. But his other dramatic essays
+were failures, and he returned to romance. In 1820 was published his
+masterpiece, "Melmoth the Wanderer," the central figure of which is
+acknowledged to be one of the great Satanic creations of literature. The
+book has been more appreciated in France than in England; one of its most
+enthusiastic admirers was Balzac, who paid it the compliment of writing a
+kind of sequel to it. </blockquote>
+
+
+<h4><i>I.--The Portrait</i></h4>
+
+
+<p>"I want a glass of wine," groaned the old man; "it would keep me alive a
+little longer."</p>
+
+<p>John Melmoth offered to get some for him. The dying man clutched the
+blankets around him, and looked strangely at his nephew.</p>
+
+<p>"Take this key," he said. "There is wine in that closet."</p>
+
+<p>John knew that no one but his uncle had entered the closet for sixty
+years--his uncle who had spent his life in greedily heaping treasure upon
+treasure, and who, now, on his miserable death-bed, grudged the clergyman's
+fee for the last sacrament.</p>
+
+<p>When John stepped into the closet, his eyes were instantly riveted by a
+portrait that hung on the wall. There was nothing remarkable about costume
+or countenance, but the eyes, John felt, were such as one feels they wish
+they had never seen. In the words of Southey, "they gleamed with demon
+light." John held the candle to the portrait, and could distinguish the
+words on the border: "Jno. Melmoth, anno 1646." He gazed in stupid horror
+until recalled by his uncle's cough.</p>
+
+<p>"You have seen the portrait?" whispered old Melmoth.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes."</p>
+
+<p>"Well, you will see him again--he is still alive."</p>
+
+<p>Later in the night, when the miser was at the point of death, John saw a
+figure enter the room, deliberately look round, and retire. The face of the
+figure was the face of the portrait! After a moment of terror, John sprang
+up to pursue, but the shrieks of his uncle recalled him. The agony was
+nearly ended; in a few minutes old Melmoth was dead.</p>
+
+<p>In the will, which made John a wealthy man, there was an instruction to
+him to destroy the portrait in the closet, and also to destroy a manuscript
+that he would find in the mahogany chest under the portrait; he was to read
+the manuscript if he pleased.</p>
+
+<p>On a cold and gloomy evening John entered the closet, found the
+manuscript, and with a feeling of superstitious awe, began to read it. The
+task was a hard one, for the manuscript was discoloured and mutilated, and
+much was quite indecipherable.</p>
+
+<p>John was able to gather, however, that it was the narrative of an
+Englishman, named Stanton, who had travelled in Spain in the seventeenth
+century. On one night of storm, Stanton had seen carried past him the
+bodies of two lovers who had been killed by lightning. As he watched, a man
+had stepped forward, had looked calmly at the bodies, and had burst into a
+horrible demoniac laugh. Stanton saw the man several times, always in
+circumstances of horror; he learnt that his name was Melmoth. This being
+exercised a kind of fascination over Stanton, who searched for him far and
+wide. Ultimately, Stanton was confined in a madhouse by relatives who
+wanted to secure his property; and from the madhouse he was offered, but
+refused, release by Melmoth as a result of some bargain, the nature of
+which was not revealed.</p>
+
+<p>After reading this story, John Melmoth raised his eyes, and he started
+involuntarily as they encountered those of the portrait. With a shudder, he
+tore the portrait from its frame, and rushed into his room, where he flung
+its fragments on the fire.</p>
+
+<p>The mansion was close by the iron-bound coast of Wicklow, in Ireland,
+and on the next night John was summoned forth by the news that a vessel was
+in distress. He saw immediately that the ship was doomed. She lay beating
+upon a rock, against which the tempest hurled breakers that dashed their
+foam to a height of thirty feet.</p>
+
+<p>In the midst of the tumult John descried, standing a little above him on
+the rock, a figure that showed neither sympathy nor terror, uttered no
+sound, offered no help. A few minutes afterwards he distinctly heard the
+words, "Let them perish!"</p>
+
+<p>Just then a tremendous wave dashing over the vessel extorted a cry of
+horror from the spectators. When the cry had ceased, Melmoth heard a laugh
+that chilled his blood. It was from the figure that stood above him. He
+recalled Stanton's narrative. In a blind fury of eagerness, he began to
+climb the rock; but a stone gave way in his grasp, and he was hurled into
+the roaring deep below.</p>
+
+<p>It was several days before he recovered his senses, and he then learned
+that he had been rescued by the one survivor of the wreck, a Spaniard, who
+had clutched at John and dragged him ashore with him. As soon as John had
+recovered somewhat, he hastened to thank his deliverer, who was lodged in
+the mansion. Having expressed his gratitude, Melmoth was about to retire,
+when the Spaniard detained him.</p>
+
+<p>"Se&ntilde;or," he said, "I understand your name is"--he gasped--"Melmoth?"</p>
+
+<p>"It is."</p>
+
+<p>"Had you," said the Spaniard rapidly, "a relative who was, about one
+hundred and forty years ago, said to be in Spain?"</p>
+
+<p>"I believe--I fear--I had."</p>
+
+<p>"Are you his descendant? Are you the repository of that terrible secret
+which--?" He gave way to uncontrollable agitation. Gradually he recovered
+himself, and went on. "It is singular that accident should have placed me
+within the reach of the only being from whom I could expect either sympathy
+or relief in the extraordinary circumstances in which I am
+placed--circumstances which I did not believe I should ever disclose to
+mortal man, but which I shall disclose to you."</p>
+
+
+<h4><i>II.--The Spaniard's Story</i></h4>
+
+
+<p>I am, as you know, a native of Spain; but you are yet to learn that I am
+a descendant of one of its noblest houses--the house of Mon&ccedil;ada.
+While I was yet unborn, my mother vowed that I should be devoted to
+religion. As the time drew near when I was to forsake the world and retire
+to a monastery, I revolted in horror at the career before me, and refused
+to take the vows. But my family were completely under the influence of a
+cunning and arrogant priest, who threatened God's curse upon me if I
+disobeyed; and ultimately, with a despairing heart, I consented.</p>
+
+<p>"The horror with which I had anticipated monastic life was nothing to my
+disgust and misery at the realisation of its evils. The narrowness and
+littleness of it, the hypocrisies, all filled me with revolt; and it was
+only by brooding over possibilities of escape that I could avoid utter
+despair. At length a ray of hope came to me. My younger brother, a lad of
+spirit, who had quarrelled with the priest who dominated our family,
+succeeded with great difficulty in communicating with me, and promised that
+a civil process should be undertaken for the reclamation of my vows.</p>
+
+<p>"But presently my hopes were destroyed by the news that my civil process
+had failed. Of the desolation of mind into which this failure plunged me, I
+can give no account--despair has no diary. I remember that I used to walk
+for hours in the garden, where alone I could avoid the neighbourhood of the
+other monks. It happened that the fountain of the garden was out of repair,
+and the workmen engaged upon it had had to excavate a passage under the
+garden wall. But as this was guarded by day and securely locked by night,
+it offered but a tantalising image of escape and freedom.</p>
+
+<p>"One evening, as I sat gloomily by the door of the passage, I heard my
+name whispered. I answered eagerly, and a paper was thrust under the door.
+I knew the handwriting--it was that of my brother Juan. From it I learned
+that Juan was still planning my escape, and had found a confederate within
+the monastery--a parricide who had turned monk to evade his punishment.</p>
+
+<p>"Juan had bribed him heavily, yet I feared to trust him until he
+confided to me that he himself also intended to escape. At length our plans
+were completed; my companion had secured the key of a door in the chapel
+that led through the vaults to a trap-door opening into the garden. A rope
+ladder flung by Juan over the wall would give us liberty.</p>
+
+<p>"At the darkest hour of the night we passed through the door, and
+crawled through the dreadful passages beneath the monastery. I reached the
+top of the ladder-a lantern flashed in my eyes. I dropped down into my
+brother's arms.</p>
+
+<p>"We hurried away to where a carriage was waiting. I sprang into it.</p>
+
+<p>"'He is safe,' cried Juan, following me.</p>
+
+<p>"'But are you?' answered a voice behind him. He staggered and fell back.
+I leapt down beside him. I was bathed in his blood. He was dead. One moment
+of wild, fearful agony, and I lost consciousness.</p>
+
+<p>"When I came to myself, I was lying in an apartment not unlike my cell,
+but without a crucifix. Beside me stood my companion in flight.</p>
+
+<p>"'Where am I?' I asked.</p>
+
+<p>"'You are in the prison of the Inquisition,' he replied, with a mocking
+laugh.</p>
+
+<p>"He had betrayed me! He had been all the while in league with the
+superior.</p>
+
+<p>"I was tried again and again by the Inquisition--, charged not only with
+the crime of escaping from the convent and breaking my religious vows, but
+with the murder of my brother. My spirits sank with each appearance before
+the judges. I foresaw myself doomed to die at the stake.</p>
+
+<p>"One night, and for several nights afterwards, a visitor presented
+himself to me. He came and went apparently without help or hindrance--as if
+he had had a master-key to all the recesses of the prison. And yet he
+seemed no agent of the Inquisition--indeed, he denounced it with caustic
+satire and withering severity. But what struck me most of all was the
+preternatural glare of his eyes. I felt that I had never beheld such eyes
+blazing in a mortal face. It was strange, too, that he constantly referred
+to events that must have happened long before his birth as if he had
+actually witnessed them.</p>
+
+<p>"On the night before my final trial, I awoke from a hideous dream of
+burning alive to behold the stranger standing beside me. With an impulse I
+could not resist, I flung myself before him and begged him to save me. He
+promised to do so--on one awful and incommunicable condition. My horror
+brought me courage; I refused, and he left me.</p>
+
+<p>"Next day I was sentenced to death at the stake. But before my fearful
+doom could be accomplished, I was free--and by that very agency of fire
+that was to have destroyed me. The prison of the Inquisition was burned to
+the ground, and in the confusion I escaped.</p>
+
+<p>"When my strength was exhausted by running through the deserted streets,
+I leaned against a door; it gave way, and I found myself within the house.
+Concealed, I heard two voices--an old man's and a young man's. The old man
+was confessing to the young one--his son--that he was a Jew, and entreating
+the son to adopt the faith of Israel.</p>
+
+<p>"I knew I was in the presence of a pretended convert--one of those Jews
+who profess to become Catholics through fear of the Inquisition. I had
+become possessed of a valuable secret, and instantly acted upon it. I burst
+out upon them, and threatened that unless the old man gave me hiding I
+should betray him. At first he was panic-stricken, then, hastily promising
+me protection, he conducted me within the house. In an inner room he raised
+a portion of the floor; we descended and went along a dark passage, at the
+end of which my guide opened a door, through which I passed. He closed it
+behind me, and withdrew.</p>
+
+<p>"I was in an underground chamber, the walls of which were lined with
+skeletons, bottles containing strange misshapen creatures, and other
+hideous objects. I shuddered as I looked round.</p>
+
+<p>"'Why fearest thou these?' asked a voice.' Surely the implements of the
+healing art should cause no terror.'</p>
+
+<p>"I turned and beheld a man immensely old seated at a table. His eyes,
+although faded with years, looked keenly at me.</p>
+
+<p>"'Thou hast escaped from the clutches of the Inquisition?' he asked
+me.</p>
+
+<p>"'Yes,' I answered.</p>
+
+<p>"'And when in its prison,' he continued, leaning forward eagerly, 'didst
+thou face a tempter who offered thee deliverance at a dreadful price?'</p>
+
+<p>"'It was so,' I answered, wondering.</p>
+
+<p>"'My prayer, then, is granted,' he said. 'Christian youth, thou art safe
+here. None save mine own Jewish people know of my existence. And I have
+employment for thee.'</p>
+
+<p>"He showed me a huge manuscript.</p>
+
+<p>"'This,' he said, 'is written in characters that the officers of the
+Inquisition understand not. But the time has come for transcribing it, and
+my own eyes, old with age, are unequal to the labour. Yet it was necessary
+that the work should be done by one who has learnt the dread secret.'</p>
+
+<p>"A glance at the manuscript showed me that the language was Spanish, but
+the characters Greek. I began to read it, nor did I raise my eyes until the
+reading was ended."</p>
+
+
+<h4><i>III.--The Romance of Immalee</i></h4>
+
+
+<p>"The manuscript told how a Spanish merchant had set forth for the East
+Indies, taking his wife and son with him, and leaving an infant daughter
+behind. He prospered, and decided to settle in the East; he sent for his
+daughter, who came with her nurse. But their ship was wrecked; the child
+and the nurse alone escaped, and were stranded on an uninhabited island
+near the mouth of the Hooghly. The nurse died; but the child survived, and
+grew up a wild and beautiful daughter of nature, dwelling in lonely
+innocence, and revered as a goddess by the natives who watched her from
+afar.</p>
+
+<p>"To the Island, when Immalee (so she called herself) was growing into
+pure and lovely womanhood, there came a stranger--pale-faced, wholly
+different from the dark-skinned people she had seen from the shores of the
+island. She welcomed him with innocent joy. He came often; he told her of
+the outer world, of its wickedness and its miseries. She, too untutored to
+realise the sinister bitterness of his tone, listened with rapt attention
+and sympathy. She loved him. She told him that he was her all, that she
+would cling to him wheresoever he went. He looked at her with stern sorrow;
+he left her abruptly, nor did he ever visit the island again.</p>
+
+<p>"Immalee was rescued, her origin was discovered, and she became Isidora
+de Aliaga, the carefully nurtured daughter of prosperous and devout Spanish
+parents. The island and the stranger were memories of the past. Yet one
+day, in the streets of Madrid, she beheld once more the well-remembered
+eyes. Soon afterwards she was visited by the stranger. How he entered and
+left her home when he came to her--and again he came often--she could not
+tell. She feared him, and yet she loved him.</p>
+
+<p>"At length her father, who had been on another voyage, announced that he
+was returning, and bringing with him a suitable husband for his newly-found
+daughter. Isidora, in panic, besought the stranger to save her. He was
+unwilling. At last, in response to her tears, he consented. They were
+wedded, so Isidora believed, by a hermit in a ruined monastery. She
+returned home, and he renewed his visits, promising to reveal their
+marriage in the fullness of time.</p>
+
+<p>"Meanwhile, tales had reached her father's ears of a malignant being who
+was permitted to wander over the earth and tempt men in dire extremity with
+release from their troubles as the result of their concluding an
+unspeakable bargain. This being himself appeared to the father, and warned
+him that his daughter was in danger.</p>
+
+<p>"He returned, and pressed on with preparations for the bridal ceremony.
+Isidora entreated her husband to rescue her. He promised, and went away. A
+masked ball was given in celebration of the nuptials. At the hour of twelve
+Isidora felt a touch upon her shoulder. It was her husband. They hastened
+away, but not unperceived. Her brother called on the pair to stop, and drew
+his sword. In an instant he lay bleeding and lifeless. The family and the
+guests crowded round in horror. The stranger waved them back with his arm.
+They stood motionless, as if rooted to the ground.</p>
+
+<p>"'Isidora, fly with me!' he said. She looked at him, looked at the body
+of her brother, and sank in a swoon. The stranger passed out amid the
+powerless onlookers.</p>
+
+<p>"Isidora, the confessed bride of an unhallowed being, was taken before
+the Inquisition, and sentenced to life-long imprisonment. But she did not
+survive long; and ere she died, her husband appeared to her, and offered
+her freedom, happiness, and love--at a dreadful price she would not pay.
+Such was the history of the ill-fated love of Immalee for a being to whom
+mortal love was a boon forbidden."</p>
+
+
+<h4><i>IV.--The Fate of Melmoth</i></h4>
+
+
+<p>When Mon&ccedil;ada had completed the tale of Immalee, he announced his
+intention of describing how he had left the house of the Jewish doctor, and
+what was his purpose in coming to Ireland. A time was fixed for the
+continuation of the recital.</p>
+
+<p>The night when Mon&ccedil;ada prepared to resume his story was a dark
+and stormy one. The two men drew close to the fire.</p>
+
+<p>"Hush!" suddenly said Mon&ccedil;ada.</p>
+
+<p>John Melmoth listened, and half rose from his chair.</p>
+
+<p>"We are watched!" he exclaimed.</p>
+
+<p>At that moment the door opened, and a figure appeared at it. The figure
+advanced slowly to the centre of the room. Mon&ccedil;ada crossed himself,
+and attempted to pray. John Melmoth, nailed to his chair, gazed upon the
+form that stood before him--it was indeed Melmoth the Wanderer. But the
+eyes were dim; those beacons lit by an infernal fire were no longer
+visible.</p>
+
+<p>"Mortals," said the Wanderer, in strange and solemn accents, "you are
+here to talk of my destiny. That distiny is accomplished. Your ancestor has
+come home," he continued, turning to John Melmoth. "If my crimes have
+exceeded those of mortality, so will my punishment. And the time for that
+punishment is come.</p>
+
+<p>"It is a hundred and fifty years since I first probed forbidden secrets.
+I have now to pay the penalty. None can participate in my destiny but with
+his own consent. <i>None has consented.</i> It has been reported of me, as
+you know, that I obtained from the enemy of souls a range of existence
+beyond the period of mortality--a power to pass over space with the
+swiftness of thought--to encounter perils unharmed, to penetrate into
+dungeons, whose bolts were as flax and tow at my touch. It has been said
+that this power was accorded to me that I might be enabled to tempt
+wretches at their fearful hour of extremity with the promise of deliverance
+and immunity on condition of their exchanging situations with me.</p>
+
+<p>"No one has ever changed destinies with Melmoth the Wanderer. <i>I have
+traversed the world in search, and no one to gain that world would lose his
+own soul!</i>" He paused. "Let me, if possible, obtain an hour's repose.
+Ay, repose--sleep!" he repeated, answering the astonishment of his hearers'
+looks. "My existence is still human!"</p>
+
+<p>And a ghastly and derisive smile wandered over his features as he spoke.
+John Melmoth and Mon&ccedil;ada quitted the apartment, and the Wanderer,
+sinking back in his chair slept profoundly.</p>
+
+<p>The two men did not dare to approach the door until noon next day. The
+Wanderer started up, and they saw with horror the change that had come over
+him. The lines of extreme age were visible in every feature.</p>
+
+<p>"My hour is come," he said. "Leave me alone. Whatever noises you may
+hear in the course of the awful night that is approaching, come not near,
+at peril of your lives. Be warned! Retire!"</p>
+
+<p>They passed that day in intense anxiety, and at night had no thought of
+repose. At midnight sounds of indescribable horror began to issue from the
+Wanderer's apartment, shrieks of supplication, yells of blasphemy--they
+could not tell which. The sounds suddenly ceased. The two men hastened into
+the room. It was empty.</p>
+
+<p>A small door leading to a back staircase was open, and near it they
+discovered the trace of footsteps of a person who had been walking in damp
+sand or clay. They traced the footsteps down the stairs, through the
+garden, and across a field to a rock that overlooked the sea.</p>
+
+<p>Through the furze that clothed this rock, there was a kind of track as
+if a person had dragged his way, or been dragged, through it. The two men
+gained the summit of the rock; the wide, waste, engulfing ocean was
+beneath. On a crag below, something hung as floating to the blast. Melmoth
+clambered down and caught it. It was the handkerchief which the Wanderer
+had worn about his neck the preceding night. That was the last trace of the
+Wanderer.</p>
+
+<p>Melmoth and Mon&ccedil;ada exchanged looks of silent horror, and
+returned slowly home.</p>
+
+<hr />
+
+
+
+
+<h2><a name="DIEGO_DE_MENDOZA"></a>DIEGO DE MENDOZA</h2>
+
+
+<h3><a name="Lazarillo_de_Tormes"></a>Lazarillo de Tormes</h3>
+
+
+<blockquote> Don Diego Hurtado de Mendoza's career was hardly of a kind
+that would be ordinarily associated with a lively romance of vagabondage. A
+grandee of high birth, an ambassador of the Emperor Charles V., an
+accomplished soldier and a learned historian--such was the creator of the
+hungry rogue Lazarillo, and the founder of the "picaresque" school of
+fiction, or the romance of roguery, which is not yet extinct. Don Diego de
+Mendoza, born early in 1503, was educated at the University of Salamanca,
+and spent most of the rest of his days in courts and camps. He died at
+Madrid in April 1575. Although written during Mendoza's college days,
+"Lazarillo de Tormes" did not appear until 1533, when it was published
+anonymously at Antwerp. During the following year it was reprinted at
+Bruges, but it fell under the ban of the Inquisition, and subsequent
+editions were considerably expurgated. Such was its popularity that it was
+continued by inferior authors after Mendoza's death. </blockquote>
+
+
+<h4><i>I.--The Blind Man</i></h4>
+
+
+<p>You must know, in the first place, that my name is Lazarillo de Tormes,
+and that I am the son of Thomas Gonzalez and Antonia Perez, natives of
+Tejares, a village of Salamanca. My father was employed to superintend the
+operations of a water-mill on the river Tormes, from which I took my
+surname; and I had only reached my ninth year, when he was taken into
+custody for administering certain copious, but injudicious, bleedings to
+the sacks of customers. Being thrown out of employment by this disaster, he
+joined an armament then preparing against the Moors in the quality of
+mule-driver to a gentleman; and in that expedition he, along with his
+master, finished his life and services together.</p>
+
+<p>My widowed mother hired a small place in the city of Salamanca, and
+opened an eating-house for the accommodation of students. It happened some
+time afterwards that a blind man came to lodge at the house, and thinking
+that I should do very well to lead him about, asked my mother to part with
+me. He promised to receive me not as a servant, but as a son; and thus I
+left Salamanca with my blind and aged master. He was as keen as an eagle in
+his own calling. He knew prayers suitable for all occasions, and could
+repeat them with a devout and humble countenance; he could prognosticate;
+and with respect to the medicinal art, he would tell you that Galen was an
+ignoramus compared with him. By these means his profits were very
+considerable.</p>
+
+<p>With all this, however, I am sorry to say that I never met with so
+avaricious and so wicked an old curmudgeon; he allowed me almost daily to
+die of hunger, without troubling himself about my necessities; and, to say
+the truth, if I had not helped myself by means of a ready wit I should have
+closed my account from sheer starvation.</p>
+
+<p>The old man was accustomed to carry his food in a sort of linen
+knapsack, secured at the mouth by a padlock; and in adding to or taking
+from his store he used such vigilance that it was almost impossible to
+cheat him of a single morsel. By means of a small rent, however, which I
+slyly effected in one of the seams of the bag, I helped myself to the
+choicest pieces.</p>
+
+<p>Whenever we ate, he kept a jar of wine near him; and I adopted the
+practice of bestowing on it sundry loving though stolen embraces. The
+fervency of my attachment was soon discovered in the deficiency of the
+wine, and the old man tied the jar to himself by the handle. I now procured
+a large straw, which I dipped into the mouth of the jar; but the old
+traitor must have heard me drink with it, for he placed the jar between his
+knees, keeping the mouth closed with his hand.</p>
+
+<p>I then bored a small hole in the bottom of the jar, and closed it very
+delicately with wax. As the poor old man sat over the fire, with the jar
+between his knees, the heat melted the wax, and I, placing my mouth
+underneath, received the whole contents of the jar. The old boy was so
+enraged and surprised that he thought the devil himself had been at work.
+But he discovered the hole; and when next day I placed myself under the
+jar, he brought the jar down with full force on my mouth. Nearly all my
+teeth were broken, and my face was horribly cut with the fragments of the
+broken vessel.</p>
+
+<p>After this, he continually ill-treated me; on the slightest occasion he
+would flog me without mercy. If any humane person interfered, he
+immediately recounted the history of the jar; they would laugh, and say,
+"Thrash him well, good man; he deserves it richly!" I determined to revenge
+myself on the old tyrant, and seized an opportunity on a rainy day when a
+stream was flowing down the street. I took him to a point where the stream
+passed a stone pillar, told him that the water was narrowest there, and
+invited him to jump. He jumped accordingly, and gave his poor old pate such
+a smash against the pillar that he fell senseless. I took to my heels as
+swiftly as possible; nor did I even trouble to inquire what became of
+him.</p>
+
+
+<h4><i>II.--The Priest</i></h4>
+
+
+<p>The next day I went to a place called Maqueda, where, as it were in
+punishment for my evil deeds, I fell in with a certain priest. I accosted
+him for alms, when he inquired whether I knew how to assist at mass. I
+answered that I did, which was true, for the blind man had taught me. The
+priest, therefore, engaged me on the spot.</p>
+
+<p>There is an old proverb which speaks of getting out of the frying-pan
+into the fire, which was indeed my unhappy case in this change of masters.
+This priest was, without exception, the most niggardly of all miserable
+devils I have ever met with. He had a large old chest, the key of which he
+always carried about him; and when the charity bread came from the church,
+he would with his own hands deposit it in the chest and turn the key. The
+only other eatable we had was a string of onions, of which every fourth day
+I was allowed <i>one</i>. Five farthings' worth of meat was his allowance
+for dinner and supper. It is true he divided the broth with me; but my
+share of the meat I might have put in my eye instead of my mouth, and have
+been none the worse for it; but sometimes, by good luck, I got a little
+morsel of bread.</p>
+
+<p>At the end of three weeks I was so exhausted with sheer hunger that I
+could hardly stand on my legs. One day, when my miserable, covetous thief
+of a master had gone out, an angel, in the likeness of a tinker, knocked at
+the door, and inquired whether I had anything to mend. Suddenly a light
+flashed upon me. "I have lost the key of this chest," said I, "can you fit
+it?" He drew forth a bunch of keys, fitted it, and lo! the lid of the chest
+arose. "I have no money," I said to my preserver, "but give me the key and
+help yourself." He helped himself, and so, when he had gone, did I.</p>
+
+<p>But it was not predestined for me that such good luck should continue
+long; for on the third day I beheld the priest turning and counting the
+loaves over and over again. At last he said, "If I were not assured of the
+security of this chest, I should say that somebody had stolen my bread; but
+from this day I shall count the loaves; there remain now exactly nine and a
+piece."</p>
+
+<p>"May nine curses light upon you, you miserable beggar!" said I to
+myself. The utmost I dared do, for some days, was to nibble here and there
+a morsel of the crust. At last it occurred to me that the chest was old and
+in parts broken. Might it not be supposed that rats had made an entrance? I
+therefore picked one loaf after another until I made up a tolerable supply
+of crumbs, which I ate like so many sugar-plums.</p>
+
+<p>The priest, when he returned, beheld the havoc with dismay.</p>
+
+<p>"Confound the rats!" quoth he. "There is no keeping anything from them."
+I fared well at dinner, for he pared off all the places which he supposed
+the rats had nibbled at, and gave them to me, saying, "There, eat that;
+rats are very clean animals." But I received another shock when I beheld my
+tormentor nailing pieces of wood over all the holes in the chest. All I
+could do was to scrape other holes with an old knife; and so it went on
+until the priest set a trap for the rats, baiting it with bits of cheese
+that he begged from his neighbours. I did not nibble my bread with less
+relish because I added thereto the bait from the rat-trap. The priest,
+almost beside himself with astonishment at finding the bread nibbled, the
+bait gone, and no rat in the trap, consulted his neighbours, who suggested,
+to his great alarm, that the thief must be a snake.</p>
+
+<p>For security, I kept my precious key in my mouth--which I could do
+without inconvenience, as I had been in the habit of carrying in my mouth
+the coins I had stolen from my former blind master. But one night, when I
+was fast asleep, it was decreed by an evil destiny that the key should be
+placed in such a position in my mouth that my breath caused a loud
+whistling noise. My master concluded that this must be the hissing of the
+snake; he arose and stole with a club in his hand towards the place whence
+the sound proceeded; then, lifting the club, he discharged with all his
+force a blow on my unfortunate head. When he had fetched a light, he found
+me moaning, with the tell-tale key protruding from my mouth.</p>
+
+<p>"Thank God," he exclaimed, "that the rats and snakes which have so long
+devoured my substance are at last discovered!"</p>
+
+<p>As soon as my wounds were healed, he turned me out of his door as if I
+had been in league with the evil one.</p>
+
+
+<h4><i>III.--The Poor Gentleman</i></h4>
+
+
+<p>By the assistance of some kind people I made my way to Toledo, where I
+sought my living by begging from door to door. But one day I encountered a
+certain esquire; he was well dressed, and walked with an air of ease and
+consequence. "Are you seeking a master, my boy?" he said. I replied that I
+was, and he bade me follow him.</p>
+
+<p>He led me through a dark and dismal entry to a house absolutely bare of
+furniture; and the hopes I had formed when he engaged me were further
+depressed when he told me that he had already breakfasted, and that it was
+not his custom to eat again till the evening. Disconsolately I began to eat
+some crusts that I had about me.</p>
+
+<p>"Come here, boy," said my master. "What are you eating?" I showed him
+the bread. "Upon my life, but this seems exceedingly nice bread," he
+exclaimed; and seizing the largest piece, he attacked it fiercely.</p>
+
+<p>When night came on, and I was expecting supper, my master said, "The
+market is distant, and the city abounds with rogues; we had better pass the
+night as we can, and to-morrow we will fare better. Nothing will ensure
+length of life so much as eating little."</p>
+
+<p>"Then truly," said I to myself in despair, "I shall never die."</p>
+
+<p>I spent the night miserably on a hard cane bedstead without a mattress.
+In the morning my master arose, washed his hands and face, dried them on
+his garments for want of a towel, and then carefully dressed himself, with
+my assistance. Having girded on his sword, he went forth to hear mass,
+without saying a word about breakfast. "Who would believe," I said,
+observing his erect bearing and air of gentility as he walked up the
+street, "that such a fine gentleman had passed the whole of yesterday
+without any other food than a morsel of bread? How many are there in this
+world who voluntarily suffer more for their false idea of honour, than they
+would undergo for their hopes of an hereafter!"</p>
+
+<p>The day advanced, and my master did not return; my hopes of dinner
+disappeared like those of breakfast. In desperation, I went out begging,
+and such was the talent I had acquired in this art that I came back with
+four pounds of bread, a piece of cow-heel, and some tripe. I found my
+master at home, and he did not disapprove of what I had done.</p>
+
+<p>"It is much better," said he, "to ask, for the love of God, than to
+steal. I only charge you on no account to say you live with me."</p>
+
+<p>When I sat down to supper, my poor master eyed me so longingly that I
+resolved to invite him to partake of my repast; yet I wondered whether he
+would take it amiss if I did so. But my wishes towards him were soon
+gratified.</p>
+
+<p>"Ah!" said he; "cow-heel is delicious. There is nothing I am more fond
+of."</p>
+
+<p>"Then taste it, sir," said I, "and try whether this is as good as you
+have eaten." Presently he was grinding the food as ravenously as a
+greyhound.</p>
+
+<p>In this manner we passed eight or ten days, my master taking the air
+every day with the most perfect ease of a man of fashion, and returning
+home to feast on the contributions of the charitable, levied by poor
+Lazaro. Whereas my former masters declined to feed me, this one expected
+that I should maintain him. But I was much more sorry for him than angry at
+him, and with all his poverty I found greater satisfaction in serving him
+than either of the others.</p>
+
+<p>At length a man came to demand the rent, which of course my master could
+not pay. He answered the man very courteously that he was going out to
+change a piece of gold. But this time he made his exit for good. Next
+morning the man came to seize my master's effects, and on finding there
+were none, he had me arrested. But I was soon found to be innocent, and
+released. Thus did I lose my third and poorest master.</p>
+
+
+<h4><i>IV.--The Dealer in Indulgences</i></h4>
+
+
+<p>My fourth master was a holy friar, eager in the pursuit of every kind of
+secular business and amusement. He kept me so incessantly on the trot that
+I could not endure it, so I took my leave of him without asking it.</p>
+
+<p>The next master that fortune threw in my way was a bulero, or dealer in
+papal indulgences, one of the cleverest and most impudent rogues that I
+have ever seen. He practised all manner of deceit, and resorted to the most
+subtle inventions to gain his end. A regular account of his artifices would
+fill a volume; but I will only recount a little manoeuvre which will give
+you some idea of his genius and invention.</p>
+
+<p>He had preached two or three days at a place near Toledo, but found his
+indulgences go off but slowly. Being at his wits' end what to do, he
+invited the people to the church next morning to take his farewell. After
+supper at the inn that evening, he and the alguazil quarrelled and began to
+revile each other, my master calling the alguazil a thief, the alguazil
+declaring that the bulero was an impostor, and that his indulgences were
+forged. Peace was not restored until the alguazil had been taken away to
+another inn.</p>
+
+<p>Next morning, during my master's farewell sermon, the alguazil entered
+the church and publicly repeated his charge, that the indulgences were
+forged. Whereupon my devout master threw himself on his knees in the
+pulpit, and exclaimed: "O Lord, Thou knowest how cruelly I am calumniated!
+I pray Thee, therefore, to show by a miracle the whole truth as to this
+matter. If I deal in iniquity may this pulpit sink with me seven fathoms
+below the earth, but if what is said be false let the author of the calumny
+be punished, so that all present may be convinced of his malice."</p>
+
+<p>Hardly had he finished his prayer when the alguazil fell down, foaming
+at the mouth, and rolled about in the utmost apparent agony. At this
+wonderful interposition of Providence, there was a general clamour in the
+church, and some terrified people implored my sainted master, who was
+kneeling in the pulpit, with his eyes towards heaven, to intercede for the
+poor wretch. He replied that no favour should be sought for one whom God
+had chastised, but that as we were bidden to return good for evil, he would
+try to obtain pardon for the unhappy man. Desiring the congregation to pray
+for the sinner, he commanded the holy bull to be placed on the alguazil's
+head. Gradually the sufferer was restored, and fell at the holy
+commissary's feet, imploring his pardon, which was granted with benevolent
+words of comfort.</p>
+
+<p>Great now was the demand for indulgences; people came flocking from all
+parts, so that no sermons were necessary in the church to convince them of
+the benefits likely to result to the purchasers. I must confess that I was
+deceived at the time, but hearing the merriment which it afforded to the
+holy commissary and the alguazil, I began to suspect that it originated in
+the fertile brain of my master, and from that time I ceased to be a child
+of grace. For, I argued, "If I, being an eye-witness to such an imposition,
+could almost believe it, how many more, amongst this poor innocent people,
+must be imposed on by these robbers?"</p>
+
+<p>On leaving the bulero I entered the service of a chaplain, which was the
+first step I had yet made towards attaining an easy life, for I had here a
+mouthful at will. Having bidden the chaplain farewell, I attached myself to
+an alguazil. But I did not long continue in the train of justice; it
+pleased Heaven to enlighten and put me into a much better way, for certain
+gentlemen procured me an office under government. This I yet keep, and
+flourish in it, with the permission of God and every good customer. In
+fact, my charge is that of making public proclamation of the wine which is
+sold at auctions, etc.; of bearing those company who suffer persecution for
+justice's sake, and publishing to the world, with a loud voice, their
+faults.</p>
+
+<p>About this time the arch-priest of Salvador, to whom I was introduced,
+and who was under obligations to me for crying his wine, showed his sense
+of it by uniting me with one of his own domestics. About this time I was at
+the top of the ladder, and enjoyed all kinds of good fortune. This happy
+state I conceived would continue; but fortune soon began to show another
+aspect, and a fresh series of miseries and difficulties followed her
+altered looks--troubles which it would be too cruel a task for me to have
+to recount.</p>
+
+<hr />
+
+
+
+
+<h2><a name="DMITRI_MEREJKOWSKI"></a>DMITRI MEREJKOWSKI</h2>
+
+
+<h3><a name="The_Death_of_the_Gods"></a>The Death of the Gods</h3>
+
+
+<blockquote> Among Russian writers whose works have achieved European
+reputation, prominence must be given to Dmitri Merejkowski. The son of a
+court official, Merejkowski was born in 1866, and began to write verses at
+the age of fifteen, his first volume of poems appearing in 1888. Then, nine
+years later, came the first of his great trilogy, "The Death of the Gods,"
+which is continued in "The Resurrection of the Gods," and completed by
+"Anti-Christ," the last-named having for its central character the figure
+of Peter the Great, the creator of modern Russia. "The Death of the Gods,"
+by many considered the finest of the three, is a vivid picture of the times
+of the Roman Emperor Julian, setting forth the doctrine that the pagan and
+the Christian elements in human nature are equally legitimate and sacred, a
+doctrine which, in its various guises, runs through the trilogy.
+</blockquote>
+
+
+<h4><i>I.--Julian's Boyhood</i></h4>
+
+
+<p>All was dark in the great palace at Macellum, an ancient residence of
+Cappadocian princes. Here dwelt Julian and Gallus, the youthful cousins of
+the reigning Emperor Constantius, and the nephews of Constantine the Great.
+They were the last representatives of the hapless house of the Flavii.
+Their father, Julian Constantius, brother of Constantine, was murdered by
+the orders of Constantius on his accession to the throne, and the two
+orphans lived in constant fear of death.</p>
+
+<p>Julian was not asleep. He listened to the regular breathing of his
+brother, who slept near him on a more comfortable bed, and to the heavy
+snore of his tutor Mardonius in the next room. Suddenly the door of the
+secret staircase opened softly, and a bright light dazzled Julian. Labda,
+an old slave, entered, carrying a metal lamp in her hand.</p>
+
+<p>The old woman, who loved Julian, and held him to be the true successor
+of Constantine the Great, placed the lamp in a stone niche above his head,
+and produced honey cakes for him to eat. Then she blessed him with the sign
+of the cross and disappeared.</p>
+
+<p>A heavy slumber fell on Julian, and then he awoke full of fears. He sat
+up on his bed, and listened in the silence to the beatings of his own
+heart. Suddenly, voices and steps resounded from room to room. Then the
+steps approached, the voices became distinct.</p>
+
+<p>The boy called out, "Gallus, wake up! Mardonius, can't you hear
+something?"</p>
+
+<p>Gallus awoke, and at the same moment old Mardonius, with his grey hair
+all dishevelled, entered and rushed towards the secret door.</p>
+
+<p>"The soldiers of the Prefect! ... Dress! ... We must fly! ..." he
+exclaimed.</p>
+
+<p>Mardonius was too late; all he could do was to draw an old sword and
+stand in warlike attitude before the door, brandishing his weapon. The
+centurion, who was drunk, promptly seized him by the throat and threw him
+out of the way, and the Roman legionaries entered.</p>
+
+<p>"In the name of the most orthodox and blessed Augustus Constantius
+Imperator! I, Marcus Scuda, Tribune of the Fretensian Legion, take under my
+safeguard Julian and Gallus, sons of the Patrician Julius Flavius."</p>
+
+<p>It was Scuda's plan to gain favour with his superiors by boldly carrying
+off the lads and sending them down to his barracks at Caesarea. There were
+rumours from time to time of their escaping from Macellum, and Scuda knew,
+the emperor's fear lest these possible claimants for the throne should gain
+a following among the soldiers of the people. At Caesarea they would be in
+safe custody.</p>
+
+<p>For the first time he gazed upon Gallus and Julian. The former, with his
+indolent and listless blue eyes and flaxen hair, trembled and blinked, his
+eyelids heavy with sleep, and crossed himself. The latter, thin, sickly,
+and pale, with large shining eyes, stared at Scuda fixedly, and shook with
+bridled rage. In his right hand, hidden by the panther skin of his bed,
+which he had flung over his shoulder, he gripped the handle of a Persian
+dagger given him by Labda; it was tipped with the keenest of poisons.</p>
+
+<p>A wild chance of safety suddenly occurred to Mardonius. Throwing aside
+his sword, he caught hold of the tribune's mantle, and shrieked out, "Do
+you know what you're doing, rascals? How dare you insult an envoy of
+Constantius? It is I who am charged to conduct these two princes to court.
+The august emperor has restored them to his favour. Here is the order from
+Constantinople!"</p>
+
+<p>"What is he saying? What order is it?" Scuda waited in perplexity while
+Mardonius, after hunting in a drawer, pulled out a roll of parchment, and
+presented it to the tribune. Scuda saw the name of the emperor, and read
+the first lines, without remarking the date of the document. At the sight
+of the great imperial seal of dark green wax he became frightened.</p>
+
+<p>"Pardon, there is some mistake," said the tribune humbly. "Don't ruin
+us! We are all brothers and fellow-sinners! I beseech you in the name of
+Christ!"</p>
+
+<p>"I know what acts you commit in the name of Christ. Away with you!
+Begone at once!" screamed Mardonius. The tribune gave the order to retire,
+and only when the sound of the steps dying away assured Mardonius that all
+peril was over did the old man forget his tutorial dignity. A wild fit of
+laughter seized him, and he began to dance.</p>
+
+<p>"Children, children!" he cried gleefully. "Glory to Hermes! We've done
+them cleverly! That edict was annulled three years ago! Ah, the idiots, the
+idiots!"</p>
+
+<p>At daybreak Julian fell into a deep sleep.</p>
+
+
+<h4><i>II.--Julian the Emperor</i></h4>
+
+
+<p>Gallus had fallen at the hands of the imperial executioner, and Julian
+had been banished to the army in Gaul. Constantius hoped to get news of the
+defeat and death of Julian, and was horribly disappointed when nothing was
+heard but tidings of victory.</p>
+
+<p>Julian, successful in arms and worshipped by his soldiers, became more
+and more convinced that the old Olympian gods were protecting him and
+advancing his cause, and only for prudential reasons did he continue to
+attend Christian churches. In his heart he abhorred the crucified Galilean
+God of the Christians, and longed for the restoration of the old worship of
+Apollo and the gods of Greece and Rome.</p>
+
+<p>More than two years after the victory of Argentoratum, when Julian had
+delivered all Gaul from the barbarians, he received an important letter
+from the Emperor Constantius.</p>
+
+<p>Each new victory in Gaul had maddened the soul of Constantius, and
+smitten his vanity to the quick. He writhed with jealousy, and grew thin
+and sleepless and sick. At the same time he sustained defeat after defeat
+in his own campaign in Asia against the Persians. Musing, during nights of
+insomnia, the emperor blamed himself for having let Julian live.</p>
+
+<p>Finally, Constantius decided to rob Julian of his best soldiers, and
+then, by gradually disarming him, to draw him into his toils and deal him
+the mortal blow.</p>
+
+<p>With this intention he sent a letter to Julian by the tribune Decensius,
+commanding him to select the most trusted legions, namely, the Heruli,
+Batavians, and Celts, and to dispatch them into Asia for the emperor's own
+use. Each remaining legion was also to be deflowered of its three hundred
+bravest warriors, and Julian's transport crippled of the pick of the
+porters and baggage carriers.</p>
+
+<p>Julian at once warned Decensius, and proved to him that rebellion was
+inevitable among the savage legions raised in Gaul, who would almost
+certainly prefer to die rather than quit their native soil. But Decensius
+took no account of these warnings.</p>
+
+<p>On the departure of the first cohorts, the soldiers, hitherto only
+restrained by Julian's stern and wise discipline, became excited and
+tumultuous. Savage murmurs ran through the crowd. The cries came nearer;
+wild agitation seized the garrison.</p>
+
+<p>"What has happened?" asked a veteran.</p>
+
+<p>"Twenty soldiers have been beaten to death!"</p>
+
+<p>"Twenty! No; a hundred!"</p>
+
+<p>A legionary, with torn clothes and terrified appearance, rushed into the
+crowd, shouting, "Comrades, quick to the palace! Quick! Julian's just been
+beheaded!"</p>
+
+<p>These words kindled the long-smouldering flame. Everyone began to shout,
+"Where is the envoy from the Emperor Constantius?"</p>
+
+<p>"Down with the envoy!"</p>
+
+<p>"Down with the emperor!"</p>
+
+<p>Another mob swept by the barracks, calling out, "Glory to the Emperor
+Julian! Glory to Augustus Julian!"</p>
+
+<p>Then the cohorts, who had marched out the night before, mutinied, and
+were soon seen returning. The crowd grew thicker and thicker, like a raging
+flood.</p>
+
+<p>"To the palace! To the palace!" the cry was raised. "Let us make Julian
+emperor! Let us crown him with the diadem!"</p>
+
+<p>Foreseeing the revolt, Julian had not left his quarters nor shown
+himself to the soldiers, but for two days and two nights had waited for a
+sign.</p>
+
+<p>The indistinct cries of the mutineers came to him, borne faintly upon
+the wind.</p>
+
+<p>A servant entered, and announced that an old man from Athens desired to
+see the Caesar on urgent business. Julian ran to meet the newcomer; it was
+the high-priest of the mysteries of Eleusis, whom he had impatiently
+expected.</p>
+
+<p>"Caesar," said the old man, "be not hasty. Decide nothing to-night; wait
+for the morrow, the gods are silent."</p>
+
+<p>Outside could be heard the noise of soldiers pouring into the courtyard,
+and thrilling the old palace with their cries. The die was cast, Julian put
+on his armour, warcloak, and helmet, buckled on his sword, and ran down the
+principal staircase to the main entrance. In a moment the crowd felt his
+supremacy; in action his will never vacillated; at his first gesture the
+mob was silenced.</p>
+
+<p>Julian spoke to the soldiers, asked them to restore order, and declared
+that he would neither abandon them nor permit them to be taken from
+Gaul.</p>
+
+<p>"Down with Constantius!" cried the legionaries. "Thou art our emperor!
+Glory to Augustus Julian the Invincible!"</p>
+
+<p>Admirably did Julian affect surprise, lowering his eyes, and turning
+aside his head with a deprecating gesture of his lifted palms.</p>
+
+<p>The shouts redoubled. "Silence!" exclaimed Julian, striding towards the
+crowd. "Do you think that I can betray my sovereign? Are we not sworn?"</p>
+
+<p>The soldiers seized his hands, and many, falling at his feet, kissed
+them, weeping and crying, "We are willing to die for you! Have pity on us;
+be our emperor!"</p>
+
+<p>With an effort that might well have been thought sincere, Julian
+answered, "My children, my dear comrades, I am yours in life and in death!
+I can refuse you nothing!"</p>
+
+<p>A standard-bearer pulled from his neck the metal chain denoting his
+rank, and Julian wound it twice around his own neck. This chain made him
+Emperor of Rome.</p>
+
+<p>"Hoist him on a shield," shouted the soldiery. A round buckler was
+tendered. Hundreds of arms heaved the emperor. He saw a sea of helmeted
+heads, and heard, like the rolling of thunder, the exultant cry, "Glory to
+Julian, the divine Augustus!"</p>
+
+<p>It seemed the will of destiny.</p>
+
+
+<h4><i>III.--The Worship of Apollo</i></h4>
+
+
+<p>Constantius was dead, and Julian sole emperor of Rome.</p>
+
+<p>Before all the army the golden cross had been wrenched from the imperial
+standard, and a little silver statue of the sun-god, Mithra-Helios, had
+been soldered to the staff of the Labarum.</p>
+
+<p>One of the men in the front rank uttered a single word so distinctly
+that Julian heard it, "Anti-Christ!"</p>
+
+<p>Toleration was promised to the Christians, but Julian organised
+processions in honour of the Olympian gods, and encouraged in every way the
+return of the old and dying worship.</p>
+
+<hr />
+
+<p>Five miles from Antioch stood the celebrated wood of Daphne, consecrated
+to Apollo. A temple had been built there, where every year the praises of
+the sun-god were celebrated.</p>
+
+<p>Julian, without telling anyone of his intention, quitted Antioch at
+daybreak. He wished to find out for himself whether the inhabitants
+remembered the ancient sacred feast. All along the road he mused on the
+solemnity, hoping to see lads and maidens going up the steps of the temple,
+the crowd of the faithful, the choirs, and the smoke of incense.</p>
+
+<p>Presently the columns and pediments of the temple shone through the
+wood, but not a worshipper yet had Julian encountered. At last he saw a boy
+of twelve years old, on a path overgrown with wild hyacinth.</p>
+
+<p>"Do you know, child, where are the sacrificers and the people?" Julian
+asked.</p>
+
+<p>The child made no answer.</p>
+
+<p>"Listen, little one. Can you not lead me to the priest of Apollo?"</p>
+
+<p>The boy put a finger to his lips and then to both his ears, and shook
+his head gravely. Suddenly he pointed out to Julian an old man, clothed in
+a patched and tattered tunic, and Julian recognised a temple priest. The
+weak and broken old man stumbled along in drunken fashion, carrying a large
+basket and laughing and mumbling to himself as he went. He was red-nosed,
+and his watery and short-sighted eyes had an expression of childlike
+benevolence.</p>
+
+<p>"The priest of Apollo?" asked Julian.</p>
+
+<p>"I am he. I am called Gorgius. What do you want, good man?"</p>
+
+<p>He smelt strongly of wine. Julian thought his behaviour indecent.</p>
+
+<p>"You seem to be drunk, old man!"</p>
+
+<p>Gorgius, in no wise dismayed, put down his basket and rubbed his bald
+head.</p>
+
+<p>"Drunk? I don't think so. But I may have had four or five cups in honour
+of the celebration; and, as to that, I drink more through sorrow than
+mirth. May the Olympians have you in their keeping!"</p>
+
+<p>"Where are the victims?" asked Julian. "Have many people been sent from
+Antioch? Are the choirs ready?"</p>
+
+<p>"Victims! Small thanks for victims! Many's the long year, my brother,
+since we saw that kind of thing. Not since the time of Constantine. It is
+all over--done for! Men have forgotten the gods. We don't even get a
+handful of wheat to make a cake; not a grain of incense, not a drop of oil
+for the lamps. There's nothing for it but to go to bed and die.... The
+monks have taken everything.... Our tale is told.... And you say 'don't
+drink.' But it's hard not to drink when one suffers. If I didn't drink I
+should have hanged myself long ago."</p>
+
+<p>"And no one has come from Antioch for this great feast day?" asked
+Julian.</p>
+
+<p>"None but you, my son. I am the priest, you are the people! Together we
+will offer the victim to the god. It is my own offering. We've eaten little
+for three days, this lad and I, to save the necessary money. Look; it is a
+sacred bird!"</p>
+
+<p>He raised the lid of the basket. A tethered goose slid out its head,
+cackling and trying to escape.</p>
+
+<p>"Have you dwelt long in this temple; and is this lad your son?"
+questioned Julian.</p>
+
+<p>"For forty years, and perhaps longer; but I have neither relatives nor
+friends. This child helps me at the hour of sacrifice. His mother was the
+great sibyl Diotima, who lived here, and it is said that he is the son of a
+god," said Gorgius.</p>
+
+<p>"A deaf mute the son of a god?" murmured the emperor, surprised.</p>
+
+<p>"In times like ours if the son of a god and a sibyl were not a deaf mute
+he would die of grief," said Gorgius.</p>
+
+<p>"One thing more I want to ask you," said Julian. "Have you ever heard
+that the Emperor Julian desired to restore the worship of the old
+gods?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, but ... what can he do, poor man? He will not succeed. I tell
+you--all's over. Once I sailed in a ship near Thessalonica, and saw Mount
+Olympus. I mused and was full of emotion at beholding the dwellings of the
+gods; and a scoffing old man told me that travellers had climbed Olympus,
+and seen that it was an ordinary mountain, with only snow and ice and
+stones on it. I have remembered those words all my life. My son, all is
+over; Olympus is deserted. The gods have grown weary and have departed. But
+the sun is up, the sacrifice must be performed. Come!"</p>
+
+<p>They passed into the temple alone.</p>
+
+<p>From behind the trees came the sound of voices, a procession of monks
+chanting psalms. In the very neighbourhood of Apollo's temple a tomb had
+been built in honour of a Christian martyr.</p>
+
+
+<h4><i>IV.--"Thou Hast Conquered, Galilean!"</i></h4>
+
+
+<p>At the beginning of spring Julian quitted Antioch for a Persian campaign
+with an army of sixty-five thousand men.</p>
+
+<p>"Warriors, my bravest of the brave," said Julian, addressing his troops
+at the outset, "remember the destiny of the world is in our hands. We are
+going to restore the old greatness of Rome! Steel your hearts, be ready for
+any fate. There is to be no turning back, I shall be at your head, on
+horseback or on foot, taking all dangers and toils with the humblest among
+you; because, henceforth, you are no longer my servants, but my children
+and my friends. Courage then, my comrades; and remember that the strong are
+always conquerors!"</p>
+
+<p>He stretched his sword, with a smile, toward the distant horizon. The
+soldiers, in unison, held up their bucklers, shouting in rapture, "Glory,
+glory to conquering Caesar!"</p>
+
+<p>But the campaign so bravely begun ended in treachery and disaster.</p>
+
+<p>At the end of July, when the Roman army was in steady retreat, came the
+last battle with the Persians. The emperor looked for a miracle in this
+battle, the victory which would give him such renown and power that the
+Galileans could no longer resist; but it was not till the close of the day
+that the ranks of the enemy were broken. Then a cry of triumph came from
+Julian's lips. He galloped ahead, pursuing the fugitives, not perceiving
+that he was far in advance of his main body. A few bodyguards surrounded
+the Caesar, among them old General Victor. This old man, though wounded,
+was unconscious of his hurt, not quitting the emperor's side, and shielding
+him time after time from mortal blows. He knew that it was as dangerous to
+approach a fleeing enemy as to enter a falling building.</p>
+
+<p>"Take heed, Caesar!" he shouted. "Put on this mail of mine!" But Julian
+heard him not, and still rode on, as if he, unsupported, unarmed, and
+terrible, were hunting his countless enemies by glance and gesture only
+from the field.</p>
+
+<p>Suddenly a lance, aimed by a flying Saracen who had wheeled round,
+hissed, and grazing the skin of the emperor's right hand, glanced over the
+ribs, and buried itself in his body. Julian thought the wound a slight one,
+and seizing the double-edged barb to withdraw it, cut his fingers. Blood
+gushed out, Julian uttered a cry, flung his head back, and slid from his
+horse into the arms of the guard.</p>
+
+<p>They carried the emperor into his tent, and laid him on his camp-bed.
+Still in a swoon, he groaned from time to time. Oribazius, the physician,
+drew out the iron lance-head, and washed and bound up the deep wound. By a
+look Victor asked if any hope remained, and Oribazius sadly shook his head.
+After the dressing of the wound Julian sighed and opened his eyes.</p>
+
+<p>Hearing the distant noise of battle, he remembered all, and with an
+effort, rose upon his bed. His soul was struggling against death. Slowly he
+tottered to his feet.</p>
+
+<p>"I must be with them to the end.... You see, I am able-bodied still....
+Quick, give me my sword, buckler, horse!"</p>
+
+<p>Victor gave him the shield and sword. Julian took them, and made a few
+unsteady steps, like a child learning to walk. The wound re-opened; he let
+fall his sword and shield, sank into the arms of Oribazius and Victor, and
+looking up, cried contemptuously, "All is over! Thou hast conquered,
+Galilean!" And making no further resistance, he gave himself up to his
+friends, and was laid on the bed.</p>
+
+<p>At night he was in delirium.</p>
+
+<p>"One must conquer ... reason must.... Socrates died like a god.... I
+will not believe!... What do you want from me?... Thy love is more terrible
+than death.... I want sunlight, the golden sun!"</p>
+
+<p>At dawn the sick man lay calm, and the delirium had left him.</p>
+
+<p>"Call the generals--I must speak."</p>
+
+<p>The generals came in, and the curtain of the tent was raised so that the
+fresh air of the morning might blow on the face of the dying. The entrance
+faced east, and the view to the horizon was unbroken.</p>
+
+<p>"Listen, friends," Julian began, and his voice was low, but clear. "My
+hour is come, and like an honest debtor, I am not sorry to give back my
+life to nature, and in my soul is neither pain nor fear. I have tried to
+keep my soul stainless; I have aspired to ends not ignoble. Most of our
+earthly affairs are in the hands of destiny. We must not resist her. Let
+the Galileans triumph. We shall conquer later on!"</p>
+
+<p>The morning clouds were growing red, and the first beam of the sun
+washed over the rim of the horizon. The dying man held his face towards the
+light, with closed eyes.</p>
+
+<p>Then his head fell back, and the last murmur came from his half-open
+lips, "Helios! Receive me unto thyself!"</p>
+
+<hr />
+
+
+
+
+<h2><a name="PROSPER_MERIMEE"></a>PROSPER M&Eacute;RIM&Eacute;E</h2>
+
+
+<h3><a name="Carmen"></a>Carmen</h3>
+
+
+<blockquote> Novelist, archaeologist, essayist, and in all three
+departments one of the greatest masters of French style of his century,
+Prosper M&eacute;rim&eacute;e was born in Paris on September 23, 1803. The
+son of a painter, M&eacute;rim&eacute;e was intended for the law, but at
+the age of twenty-two achieved fame as the author of a number of plays
+purporting to be translations from the Spanish. From that time until his
+death at Cannes on September 23, 1870, a brilliant series of plays, essays,
+novels, and historical and archaeological works poured from his fertile
+pen. Altogether he wrote about a score of tales, and it is on these and on
+his "Letters to an Unknown" that M&eacute;rim&eacute;e's fame depends. His
+first story to win universal recognition was "Colombo," in 1830. Seventeen
+years later appeared his "Carmen, the Power of Love," of which Taine, in
+his celebrated essay on the work, says, "Many dissertations on our
+primitive savage methods, many knowing treatises like Schopenhauer's on the
+metaphysics of love and death, cannot compare to the hundred pages of
+'Carmen.'" </blockquote>
+
+
+<h4><i>I.--I Meet Don Jos&eacute;</i></h4>
+
+
+<p>One day, wandering in the higher part of the plain of Cachena, near
+Cordova, harassed with fatigue, dying of thirst, burned by an overhead sun,
+I perceived, at some distance from the path I was following, a little green
+lawn dotted with rushes and reeds. It proclaimed to me the neighbourhood of
+a spring, and I saw that a brook issued from a narrow gorge between two
+lofty spurs of the Sierra de Cabra.</p>
+
+<p>At the mouth of the gorge my horse neighed, and another horse that I did
+not see answered immediately. A hundred steps farther, and the gorge,
+suddenly widening, revealed a sort of natural circus, shaded by the cliffs
+which surrounded it. It was impossible to light upon a place which promised
+a pleasanter halt to the traveller.</p>
+
+<p>But the honour of discovering this beautiful spot did not belong to me.
+A man was resting there already, and it my entrance, he had risen and
+approached his horse. He was a young fellow of medium height, but robust
+appearance, with a gloomy and haughty air. In one hand he held his horse's
+halter, in the other a brass blunderbuss. The fierce air of the man
+somewhat surprised me, but not having seen any robbers I no longer believed
+in them. My guide Antonio, however, who came up behind me, showed evident
+signs of terror, and drew near very much against his will.</p>
+
+<p>I stretched myself on the grass, drew out my cigar-case, and asked the
+man with the blunderbuss if he had a tinder-box on him. The unknown,
+without speaking, produced his tinder-box, and hastened to strike a light
+for me. In return I gave him one of my best Havanas, for which he thanked
+me with an inclination of the head.</p>
+
+<p>In Spain a cigar given and received establishes relations of
+hospitality, like the sharing of bread and salt in the East. My unknown now
+proved more talkative than I had expected. He seemed half famished, and
+devoured some slices of excellent ham, which I had put in my guide's
+knapsack, wolfishly. When I mentioned I was going to the Venta del Cuervo
+for the night he offered to accompany me, and I accepted willingly.</p>
+
+<p>As we rode along Antonio endeavoured to attract my attention by
+mysterious signs, but I took no notice. Doubtless my companion was a
+smuggler, or a robber. What did it matter to me? I knew I had nothing to
+fear from a man who had eaten and smoked with me.</p>
+
+<p>We arrived at the venta, which was one of the most wretched I had yet
+come across. An old woman opened the door, and on seeing my companion,
+exclaimed, "Ah, Se&ntilde;or Don Jos&eacute;!"</p>
+
+<p>Don Jos&eacute; frowned and raised his hand, and the old woman was
+silent at once.</p>
+
+<p>The supper was better than I expected, and after supper Don Jos&eacute;
+played the mandoline and sang some melancholy songs. My guide decided to
+pass the night in the stable, but Don Jos&eacute; and I stretched ourselves
+on mule cloths on the floor.</p>
+
+<p>Very disagreeable itchings snatched me from my first nap, and drove me
+to a wooden bench outside the door. I was about to close my eyes for the
+second time, when, to my surprise, I saw Antonio leading a horse. He
+stopped on seeing me, and said anxiously, "Where is he?"</p>
+
+<p>"In the venta; he is sleeping. He is not afraid of the fleas. Why are
+you taking away my horse?"</p>
+
+<p>I then observed that, in order to prevent any noise, Antonio had
+carefully wrapped the animal's feet in the remains of an old sack.</p>
+
+<p>"Hush!" said Antonio. "That man there is Jos&eacute; Navarro, the most
+famous bandit of Andalusia. There are two hundred ducats for whoever gives
+him up. I know a post of lancers a league and a half from here, and before
+it is day I will bring some of them here."</p>
+
+<p>"What harm has the poor man done you that you denounce him?" said I.</p>
+
+<p>"I am a poor wretch, sir!" was all Antonio could say. "Two hundred
+ducats are not to be lost, especially when it is a matter of delivering the
+country from such vermin."</p>
+
+<p>My threats and requests were alike unavailing. Antonio was in the
+saddle, he set spurs to his horse after freeing its feet from the rags, and
+was soon lost to sight in the darkness.</p>
+
+<p>I was very much annoyed with my guide, and somewhat uneasy; but quickly
+making up my mind, returned to the inn, and shook Don Jos&eacute; to awaken
+him.</p>
+
+<p>"Would you be very pleased to see half a dozen lancers arrive here?" I
+said.</p>
+
+<p>He leapt to his feet.</p>
+
+<p>"Ah, your guide has betrayed me! Your guide! I had suspected him. Adieu,
+sir. God repay you the service I am in your debt for. I am not quite as bad
+as you think. Yes, there is still something in me deserving the pity of a
+gentleman. Adieu!"</p>
+
+<p>He ran to the stable, and some minutes later I heard him galloping into
+the fields.</p>
+
+<p>As for me, I asked myself if I had been right in saving a robber,
+perhaps a murderer, from the gallows only because I had eaten ham and rice
+and smoked with him.</p>
+
+<p>I think Antonio cherished a grudge against me; but, nevertheless, we
+parted good friends at Cordova.</p>
+
+
+<h4><i>II.--My Experience with Carmen</i></h4>
+
+
+<p>I passed some days at Cordova searching for a certain manuscript in the
+Dominican's library.</p>
+
+<p>One evening I was leaning on the parapet of the quay, smoking, when a
+woman came up the flight of stairs leading to the river and sat down beside
+me. She was simply dressed, all in black, and we fell into
+conversation.</p>
+
+<p>On my taking out my repeater watch she was greatly astonished.</p>
+
+<p>"What inventions they have among you foreigners!"</p>
+
+<p>Then she told me she was a gipsy, and proposed to tell my fortune.</p>
+
+<p>"Have you heard people speak of La Carmencita?" she added. "That is
+me!"</p>
+
+<p>"Good!" I said to myself. "Last week I supped with a highway robber; now
+to-day I will eat ices with a gipsy. When travelling one must see
+everything."</p>
+
+<p>With that I escorted the Se&ntilde;orita Carmen to a caf&eacute;, and we had
+ices.</p>
+
+<p>My gipsy had a strange and wild beauty, a face which astonished at
+first, but which one could not forget. Her eyes, in particular, had an
+expression, at once loving and fierce, that I have found in no human face
+since.</p>
+
+<p>It would have been ridiculous to have had my fortune told in a public
+caf&eacute; and I begged the fair sorceress to allow me to accompany her to
+her domicile. She at once consented, but insisted on seeing my watch
+again.</p>
+
+<p>"Is it really of gold?" she said, examining it with great attention.</p>
+
+<p>Night had set in, and most of the shops were closed and the streets
+almost deserted as we crossed the Guadalquiver bridge, and went on to the
+outskirts of the town.</p>
+
+<p>The house we entered was by no means a palace. A child opened the door,
+and disappeared when the gipsy said some words to it in the Romany
+tongue.</p>
+
+<p>Then the gipsy produced some cards, a magnet, a dried chameleon, and
+other things necessary for her art. She told me to cross my left hand with
+a piece of money, and the magic ceremonies began. It was evident to me that
+she was no half-sorceress.</p>
+
+<p>Unfortunately, we were soon disturbed. Of a sudden the door opened
+violently, and a man entered, who denounced the gipsy in a manner far from
+polite.</p>
+
+<p>I at once recognised my friend Don Jos&eacute;, and greeted him
+cheerfully.</p>
+
+<p>"The same as ever! This will have an end," he said turning fiercely to
+the gipsy, who now started talking to him in her own language. She grew
+animated as she spoke, and her eyes became terrible. It appeared to me she
+was urging him warmly to do something at which he hesitated. I think I
+understood what it was only too well from seeing her quickly pass and
+repass her little hand under her chin. There was some question of a throat
+to cut, and I had a suspicion that the throat was mine.</p>
+
+<p>Don Jos&eacute; only answered with two or three words in a sharp tone,
+and the gipsy, casting a look of deep contempt at him, retired to a corner
+of the room, and taking an orange, peeled it and began to eat it.</p>
+
+<p>Don Jos&eacute; took my arm, opened the door, and led me into the
+street. We walked some way together in the profoundest silence. Then,
+stretching out his hand, "Keep straight on," he Said, "and you will find
+the bridge."</p>
+
+<p>With that he turned his back on me, and walked rapidly away. I returned
+to my inn a little crestfallen and depressed. Worst of all was that, as I
+was undressing, I discovered my watch was missing.</p>
+
+<p>I departed for Seville next day, and after several months of rambling in
+Andalusia, was once more back in Cordova, on my way to Madrid.</p>
+
+<p>The good fathers at the Dominican convent received me with open
+arms.</p>
+
+<p>"Your watch has been found again, and will be returned to you," one of
+them told me. "The rascal is in gaol, and is to be executed the day after
+to-morrow. He is known in the country under the name of Jos&eacute;
+Navarro, and he is a man to be seen."</p>
+
+<p>I went to see the prisoner, and took him some cigars. At first he
+shrugged his shoulders and received me coldly, but I saw him again on the
+morrow, and passed a part of the day with him. It was from his mouth I
+learnt the sad adventures of his life.</p>
+
+
+<h4><i>III.--Don Jos&eacute;'s Story</i></h4>
+
+
+<p>"I was born," he said, "at Elizondo, and my name--Don Jos&eacute;
+Lizzarrabengoa--will tell you that I am Basque, and an old Christian. If I
+take the <i>don</i>, it is because I have the right to do so. One day when
+I had been playing tennis with a lad from Alava I won, and he picked a
+quarrel with me. We took our iron-tipped sticks, and fought, and again I
+had the advantage; but it forced me to quit the country. I met some
+dragoons, and enlisted in the Almanza regiment of cavalry. Soon I became a
+corporal, and they were under promise to make me sergeant when, to my
+misfortune, I was put on guard at the tobacco factory at Seville.</p>
+
+<p>"I was young then, and I was always thinking of my native country, and
+was afraid of the Andalusian young women and their jesting ways. But one
+Friday--I shall never forget it--when I was on duty, I heard people saying,
+'Here's the gipsy.' And, looking up, I saw her for the first time. I saw
+that Carmen whom you know, in whose house I met you some months ago.</p>
+
+<p>"She made some joke at me as she passed into the factory, and flipped a
+cassia flower just between my eyes. When she had gone, I picked it up and
+put it carefully in my pocket. First piece of folly!</p>
+
+<p>"A few hours afterwards I was ordered to take two of my men into the
+factory. There had been a quarrel, and Carmen had slashed another woman
+with two terrible cuts of her knife across the face. The case was clear. I
+took Carmen by the arm, and bade her follow me. At the guard-house the
+sergeant said it was serious, and that she must be taken to prison. I
+placed her between two dragoons, and, walking behind, we set out for the
+town.</p>
+
+<p>"At first the gipsy kept silence, but presently she turned to me, and
+said softly, 'You are taking me to prison! Alas! what will become of me?
+Have pity on me, Mr. Officer! You are so young, so good-looking! Let me
+escape, and I will give you a piece of the loadstone which will make all
+women love you.'</p>
+
+<p>"I answered her as seriously as I could that the order was to take her
+to prison, and that there was no help for it.</p>
+
+<p>"My accent told her I was from the Basque province, and she began to
+speak to me in my native tongue. Gipsies, you know, sir, speak all
+languages. She told me she had been carried off by gipsies from Navarro,
+and was working at the factory in order to earn enough to return home to
+her poor mother. Would I do nothing for a country-woman? The Spanish women
+at the factory had slandered her native place.</p>
+
+<p>"It was all lies, sir. She always lied. But I believed her at the
+time.</p>
+
+<p>"'If I pushed you and you fell,' she resumed, in Basque, 'it would not
+be these two conscripts who would hold me.'</p>
+
+<p>"I forgot my order and everything, and said, "'Very well, my
+country-woman; and may our Lady of the Mountain be your aid!'</p>
+
+<p>"Suddenly Carmen turned round and dealt me a blow on the chest with her
+fist. I let myself fall backwards on purpose, and, with one bound, she
+leapt over me, and started to run. There was no risk of overtaking her with
+our spurs, our sabres, and our lances. The prisoner disappeared in no time,
+and all the women-folk in the quarter favoured her escape, and made fun of
+us, pointing out the wrong road on purpose. We had to return at last to the
+guard-house without a receipt from the governor of the prison.</p>
+
+<p>"The result of this was I was degraded and sent to prison for a month.
+Farewell to the sergeant's stripes, I thought.</p>
+
+<p>"One day in prison the jailor entered, and gave me a special loaf of
+bread.</p>
+
+<p>"'Here,' he said, 'see what your cousin has sent you.'</p>
+
+<p>"I was astonished, for I had no cousin in Seville, and when I broke the
+loaf I found a small file and a gold piece inside it. No doubt then, it was
+a present from Carmen, for a gipsy would set fire to a town to escape a
+day's imprisonment, and I was touched by this mark of remembrance.</p>
+
+<p>"But I served my sentence, and, on coming out, was put on sentry outside
+the colonel's door, like a common soldier. It was a terrible
+humiliation.</p>
+
+<p>"While I was on duty I saw Carmen again. She was dressed out like a
+shrine, all gold and ribbons, and was going in one evening with a party of
+gipsies to amuse the colonel's guests. She recognised me, and named a place
+where I could meet her next day. When I gave her back the gold piece she
+burst into laughter, but kept it all the same. Do you know, my son,' she
+said to me when we parted, 'I believe I love you a little. But that cannot
+last. Dog and wolf do not keep house together long. Perhaps, if you adopted
+the gipsy law, I would like to become your wife. But it is nonsense; it is
+impossible. Think no more of Carmencita, or she will bring you to the
+gallows.'</p>
+
+<p>"She spoke the truth. I would have been wise to think no more of her;
+but after that day I could think of nothing else, and walked about always
+hoping to meet her, but she had left the town.</p>
+
+<p>"It was some weeks later, when I had been placed as a night sentinel at
+one of the town gates that I saw Carmen. I was put there to prevent
+smuggling; but Carmen persuaded me to let five of her friends pass in, and
+they were all well laden with English goods. She told me I might come and
+see her next day at the same house I had visited before.</p>
+
+<p>"Carmen had moods, like the weather in our country. She would make
+appointments and not keep them, and at another time, would be full of
+affection.</p>
+
+<p>"One evening when I had called on a friend of Carmen's the gipsy entered
+the room, followed by a young man, a lieutenant in our regiment.</p>
+
+<p>"He told me to decamp, and I said something sharp to him. We soon drew
+our swords, and presently the point of mine entered his body. Then Carmen
+extinguished the lamp, and, wounded though I was, we started running down
+the street. 'Great fool,' she said. 'You can do nothing but foolish things.
+Besides, I told you I would bring you bad luck.' She made me take off my
+uniform and put on a striped cloak, and this with a handkerchief over my
+head, enabled me to pass fairly well for a peasant. Then she took me to a
+house at the end of a little lane, and she and another gipsy washed and
+dressed my wounds. Next day Carmen pointed out to me the new career she
+destined me for. I was to go to the coast and become a smuggler. In truth
+it was the only one left me, now that I had incurred the punishment of
+death. Besides, I believed I could make sure of her love. Carmen introduced
+me to her people, and at first the freedom of the smuggler's life pleased
+me better than the soldier's life. I saw Carmen often, and she showed more
+liking for me than ever; but, she would not admit that she was willing to
+be my wife.</p>
+
+
+<h4><i>IV.--The End of Don Jos&eacute;'s Story</i></h4>
+
+
+<p>"One becomes a rogue without thinking, sir. A pretty girl makes one lose
+one's head, one fights for her, a misfortune happens, one is driven to the
+mountains, from smuggler one becomes robber before reflecting.</p>
+
+<p>"Carmen often made me jealous, especially after she accepted me as her
+husband, and she warned me not to interfere with her freedom. On my part I
+wanted to change my way of life, but when I spoke to her about quitting
+Spain and trying to live honestly in America, she laughed at me.</p>
+
+<p>"'We are not made for planting cabbages,' she said; '<i>our</i> destiny
+is to live at the expense of others.' Then she told me of a fresh piece of
+smuggling on hand, and I let myself be persuaded to resume the wretched
+traffic.</p>
+
+<p>"While I was in hiding at Granada, there were bullfights to which Carmen
+went. When she returned, she spoke much of a very skilful picador, named
+Lucas. She knew the name of his horse, and how much his embroidered jacket
+cost him. I paid no heed to this, but began to grow alarmed when I heard
+that Carmen had been seen about with Lucas. I asked her how and why she had
+made his acquaintance.</p>
+
+<p>"'He is a man,' she said, 'with whom business can be done. He has won
+twelve hundred pounds at the bullfights. One of two things: we must either
+have the money, or, as he is a good horseman, we can enroll him in our
+band.'</p>
+
+<p>"'I wish,' I replied, 'neither his money nor his person, and I forbid
+you to speak to him.'</p>
+
+<p>"'Take care,' she said; 'when anyone dares me to do a thing it is soon
+done.'</p>
+
+<p>"Luckily the picador left for Malaga, and I set about my smuggling. I
+had a great deal to do in this expedition, and it was about that time I
+first met you. Carmen robbed you of your watch at our last interview, and
+she wanted your money as well. We had a violent dispute about that, and I
+struck her. She turned pale and wept. It was the first time I saw her weep,
+and it had a terrible effect on me. I begged her pardon, but it was not
+till three days later that she would kiss me.</p>
+
+<p>"'There is a f&ecirc;te at Cordova,' she said, when we were friends
+again. 'I am going to see it, then I shall find out the people who carry
+money with them and tell you.'</p>
+
+<p>"I let her go, but when a peasant told me there was a bull-fight at
+Cordova, I set off like a madman to the spot. Lucas was pointed out to me,
+and on the bench close to the barrier I recognised Carmen. It was enough
+for me to see her to be certain how things stood. Lucas, at the first bull,
+did the gallant, as I had foreseen. He tore the bunch of ribbons from the
+bull and carried it to Carmen, who put it in her hair on the spot. The bull
+took upon itself the task of avenging me. Lucas was thrown down with his
+horse on his chest, and the bull on the top of both. I looked at Carmen,
+she had already left her seat, but I was so wedged in I was obliged to wait
+for the end of the fights.</p>
+
+<p>"I got home first, however, and Carmen only arrived at two o'clock in
+the morning.</p>
+
+<p>"'Come with me,' I said.</p>
+
+<p>"'Very well, let us go,' she answered.</p>
+
+<p>"I went and fetched my horse; I put her behind me, and we travelled all
+the rest of the night without speaking. At daybreak we were in a solitary
+gorge.</p>
+
+<p>"'Listen,' I said to Carmen, 'I forget everything. Only swear to me one
+thing, that you will follow me to America, and live there quietly with
+me.'</p>
+
+<p>"'No,' she said, in a sulky tone, 'I do not want to go to America. I am
+quite comfortable here.'</p>
+
+<p>"I implored her to let us change our way of life and Carmen answered, 'I
+will follow you to death, but I will not live with you any longer. I always
+thought you meant to kill me, and now I see that is what you are going to
+do. It is destiny, but you will not make me yield.'</p>
+
+<p>"'Listen to me!' I said, 'for the last time. You know that it is for you
+I have become a robber and a murderer. Carmen! my Carmen, there is still
+time for us to save ourselves,' I promised anything and everything if she
+would love me again.</p>
+
+<p>"'Jos&eacute;,' she replied, 'you ask me for the impossible. I do not
+love you any more. All is over between us. You have the right to kill me.
+But Carmen must always be free. To love you is impossible, and I do not
+wish to live with you.'</p>
+
+<p>"Fury took possession of me, and I killed her with my knife. An hour
+later I laid her in a grave in the wood. Then I mounted my horse, galloped
+to Cordova, and gave myself up at the first guard-house.... Poor Carmen! it
+is the gipsies who are to blame for having brought her up like that."</p>
+
+<hr />
+
+
+
+
+<h2><a name="MARY_RUSSELL_MITFORD"></a>MARY RUSSELL MITFORD</h2>
+
+
+<h3><a name="Our_Village"></a>Our Village</h3>
+
+
+<blockquote> Mary Russell Mitford was known first as a dramatist, with
+tragedy as her forte, and in later years as a novelist, but by posterity
+she will be remembered as a portrayer of country life, in simply worded
+sketches, with a quiet colouring of humour. These sketches were collected,
+as "Our Village," into five volumes, between 1824 and 1832. Miss Mitford
+was born Dec. 16, 1787, at Alresford, Hampshire, England, the daughter of a
+foolish spendthrift father, to whom she was pathetically devoted, and lived
+in her native county almost throughout her life. In her later years she
+received a Civil List pension. She died on January 10, 1855. The quietness
+of the country is in all Miss Mitford's writing, but it is a cheerful
+country, pervaded by a rosy-cheeked optimism. Her letters, too, scribbled
+on small scraps of paper, are as attractive as her books. </blockquote>
+
+
+<h4><i>I.--Some of the Inhabitants</i></h4>
+
+
+<p>Will you walk with me through our village, courteous reader? The journey
+is not long. We will begin at the lower end, and proceed up the hill.</p>
+
+<p>The tidy, square, red cottage on the right hand, with the long,
+well-stocked garden by the side of the road, belongs to a retired publican
+from a neighbouring town; a substantial person with a comely wife--one who
+piques himself on independence and idleness, talks politics, reads the
+newspapers, hates the minister, and cries out for reform. He hangs over his
+gate, and tries to entice passengers to stop and chat. Poor man! He is a
+very respectable person, and would be a very happy one if he would add a
+little employment to his dignity. It would be the salt of life to him.</p>
+
+<p>Next to his house, though parted from it by another long garden with a
+yew arbour at the end, is the pretty dwelling of the shoemaker, a pale,
+sickly-looking, black-haired man, the very model of sober industry. There
+he sits in his little shop from early morning till late at night. An
+earthquake would hardly stir him. There is at least as much vanity in his
+industry as in the strenuous idleness of the retired publican. The
+shoemaker has only one pretty daughter, a light, delicate, fair-haired girl
+of fourteen, the champion, protectress, and play-fellow of every brat under
+three years old, whom she jumps, dances, dandles, and feeds all day long. A
+very attractive person is that child-loving girl. She likes flowers, and
+has a profusion of white stocks under her window, as pure and delicate as
+herself.</p>
+
+<p>The first house on the opposite side of the way is the blacksmith's--a
+gloomy dwelling, where the sun never seems to shine; dark and smoky within
+and without, like a forge. The blacksmith is a high officer in our little
+state, nothing less than a constable; but alas, alas! when tumults arise,
+and the constable is called for, he will commonly be found in the thickest
+of the fray. Lucky would it be for his wife and her eight children if there
+were no public-house in the land.</p>
+
+<p>Then comes the village shop, like other village shops, multifarious as a
+bazaar--a repository for bread, shoes, tea, cheese, tape, ribbons, and
+bacon; for everything, in short, except the one particular thing which you
+happen to want at the moment, and will be sure not to find.</p>
+
+<p>Divided from the shop by a narrow yard is a habitation of whose inmates
+I shall say nothing. A cottage--no, a miniature house, all angles, and of a
+charming in-and-outness; the walls, old and weather-stained, covered with
+hollyhocks, roses, honeysuckles, and a great apricot-tree; the casements
+full of geraniums (oh, there is our superb white cat peeping out from among
+them!); the closets (our landlord has the assurance to call them rooms)
+full of contrivances and corner-cupboards; and the little garden behind
+full of common flowers. That house was built on purpose to show in what an
+exceeding small compass comfort may be packed.</p>
+
+<p>The next tenement is a place of importance, the Rose Inn--a whitewashed
+building, retired from the road behind its fine swinging sign, with a
+little bow-window room coming out on one side, and forming, with our stable
+on the other, a sort of open square, which is the constant resort of carts,
+waggons, and return chaises.</p>
+
+<p>Next door lives a carpenter, "famed ten miles around, and worthy all his
+fame," with his excellent wife and their little daughter Lizzy, the
+plaything and queen of the village--a child three years old according to
+the register, but six in size and strength and intellect, in power and
+self-will. She manages everybody in the place; makes the lazy carry her,
+the silent talk to her, and the grave to romp with her. Her chief
+attraction lies in her exceeding power of loving, and her firm reliance on
+the love and the indulgence of others.</p>
+
+<p>How pleasantly the road winds up the hill, with its broad, green borders
+and hedgerows so thickly timbered! How finely the evening sun falls on that
+sandy, excavated bank, and touches the farmhouse on the top of the
+eminence!</p>
+
+
+<h4><i>II.--Hannah Bint</i></h4>
+
+
+<p>The shaw leading to Hannah Bint's habitation is a very pretty mixture of
+wood and coppice. A sudden turn brings us to the boundary of the shaw, and
+there, across the open space, the white cottage of the keeper peeps from
+the opposite coppice; and the vine-covered dwelling of Hannah Bint rises
+from amidst the pretty garden, which lies bathed in the sunshine around
+it.</p>
+
+<p>My friend Hannah Bint is by no means an ordinary person. Her father,
+Jack Bint (for in all his life he never arrived at the dignity of being
+called John), was a drover of high repute in his profession. No man between
+Salisbury Plain and Smithfield was thought to conduct a flock of sheep so
+skilfully through all the difficulties of lanes and commons, streets and
+high-roads, as Jack Bint, aided by Jack Bint's famous dog, Watch.</p>
+
+<p>No man had a more thorough knowledge of the proper night stations, where
+good feed might be procured for his charge, and good liquor for Watch and
+himself; Watch, like other sheepdogs, being accustomed to live chiefly on
+bread and beer, while his master preferred gin.</p>
+
+<p>But when a rheumatic fever came one hard winter, and finally settled in
+Jack Bint's limbs, reducing the most active and handy man in the parish to
+the state of a confirmed cripple, poor Jack, a thoughtless but kind
+creature, looked at his three motherless children with acute misery. Then
+it was that he found help where he least expected it--in the sense and
+spirit of his young daughter, a girl of twelve years old.</p>
+
+<p>Hannah was a quick, clever lass of a high spirit, a firm temper, some
+pride, and a horror of accepting parochial relief--that surest safeguard to
+the sturdy independence of the English character. So when her father talked
+of giving up their comfortable cottage and removing to the workhouse, while
+she and her brothers must move to service, Hannah formed a bold resolution,
+and proceeded to act at once on her own plans and designs.</p>
+
+<p>She knew that the employer in whose service her father's health had
+suffered so severely was a rich and liberal cattle-dealer in the
+neighbourhood, who would willingly aid an old and faithful servant. Of
+Farmer Oakley, accordingly, she asked, not money, but something much more
+in his own way--a cow! And, amused and interested by the child's
+earnestness, the wealthy yeoman gave her a very fine young Alderney.</p>
+
+<p>She then went to the lord of the manor, and, with equal knowledge of
+character, begged his permission to keep her cow on the shaw common. He,
+too, half from real good nature, and half not to be outdone in liberality
+by his tenant, not only granted the requested permission, but reduced the
+rent so much that the produce of the vine seldom failed to satisfy their
+kind landlord.</p>
+
+<p>Now Hannah showed great judgment in setting up as a dairy-woman. One of
+the most provoking of the petty difficulties which beset a small
+establishment in this neighbourhood is the trouble, almost the
+impossibility, of procuring the pastoral luxuries of milk, eggs, and
+butter. Hannah's Alderney restored us to our rural privilege. Speedily she
+established a regular and gainful trade in milk, eggs, butter, honey, and
+poultry--for poultry they had always kept.</p>
+
+<p>In short, during the five years she has ruled at the shaw cottage the
+world has gone well with Hannah Bint. She has even taught Watch to like the
+buttermilk as well as strong beer, and has nearly persuaded her father to
+accept milk as a substitute for gin. Not but that Hannah hath had her
+enemies as well as her betters. The old woman at the lodge, who always
+piqued herself on being spiteful, and crying down new ways, foretold that
+she would come to no good; nay, even Ned Miles, the keeper, her next
+neighbour, who had whilom held entire sway over the shaw common, as well as
+its coppices, grumbled as much as so good-natured and genial a person could
+grumble when he found a little girl sharing his dominion, a cow grazing
+beside his pony, and vulgar cocks and hens hovering around the buckwheat
+destined to feed his noble pheasants.</p>
+
+<p>Yes! Hannah hath had her enemies, but they are passing away. The old
+woman at the lodge is dead, poor creature; and the keeper?--why, he is not
+dead, or like to die, but the change that has taken place there is the most
+astonishing of all--except perhaps the change in Hannah herself.</p>
+
+<p>Few damsels of twelve years old, generally a very pretty age, were less
+pretty than Hannah Bint. Short and stunted in her figure, thin in face,
+sharp in feature, with a muddied complexion, wild, sunburnt hair, and eyes
+whose very brightness had in them something startling, over-informed, too
+clever for her age; at twelve years old she had quite the air of a little
+old fairy.</p>
+
+<p>Now, at seventeen, matters are mended. Her complexion has cleared; her
+countenance has developed itself; her figure has shot up into height and
+lightness, and a sort of rustic grace; her bright, acute eye is softened
+and sweetened by a womanly wish to please; her hair is trimmed and curled
+and brushed with exquisite neatness; and her whole dress arranged with that
+nice attention to the becoming which would be called the highest degree of
+coquetry if it did not deserve the better name of propriety. The lass is
+really pretty, and Ned Miles has discovered that she is so. There he
+stands, the rogue, close at her side (for he hath joined her whilst we have
+been telling her little story, and the milking is over); there he stands
+holding her milk-pail in one hand, and stroking Watch with the other. There
+they stand, as much like lovers as may be; he smiling and she blushing; he
+never looking so handsome, nor she so pretty, in their lives.</p>
+
+<p>There they stand, and one would not disturb them for all the milk and
+the butter in Christendom. I should not wonder if they were fixing the
+wedding-day.</p>
+
+
+<h4><i>III.--A Country Cricket Match</i></h4>
+
+
+<p>I doubt if there be any scene in the world more animating or delightful
+than a cricket match. I do not mean a set match at Lord's Ground--no! the
+cricket I mean is a real solid, old-fashioned match between neighbouring
+parishes, where each attacks the other for honour and a supper.</p>
+
+<p>For the last three weeks our village has been in a state of great
+excitement, occasioned by a challenge from our north-western neighbours,
+the men of B----, to contend with us at cricket. Now, we have not been much
+in the habit of playing matches. The sport had languished until the present
+season, when the spirit began to revive. Half a dozen fine, active lads, of
+influence among their comrades, grew into men and yearned for cricket. In
+short, the practice recommenced, and the hill was again alive with men and
+boys and innocent merriment. Still, we were modest and doubted our own
+strength.</p>
+
+<p>The B---- people, on the other hand, must have been braggers born. Never
+was such boasting! Such ostentatious display of practice! It was a wonder
+they did not challenge all England. Yet we firmly resolved not to decline
+the combat; and one of the most spirited of the new growth, William Grey by
+name, and a farmer's son by station, took up the glove in a style of manly
+courtesy that would have done honour to a knight in the days of
+chivalry.</p>
+
+<p>William Grey then set forth to muster his men, remembering with great
+complacency that Samuel Long, the very man who had bowled us out at a fatal
+return match some years ago at S--, our neighbours south-by-east, had
+luckily, in a remove of a quarter of a mile last Lady Day, crossed the
+boundaries of his old parish and actually belonged to us. Here was a stroke
+of good fortune! Our captain applied to him instantly, and he agreed at a
+word. We felt we had half gained the match when we had secured him. Then
+James Brown, a journeyman blacksmith and a native, who, being of a rambling
+disposition, had roamed from place to place for half a dozen years, had
+just returned to our village with a prodigious reputation in cricket and
+gallantry. To him also went the indefatigable William Grey, and he also
+consented to play. Having thus secured two powerful auxiliaries, we began
+to reckon the regular forces.</p>
+
+<p>Thus ran our list. William Grey, 1; Samuel Long, 2; James Brown, 3;
+George and John Simmons, one capital, the other so-so--an uncertain hitter,
+but a good fieldsman, 5; Joel Brent, excellent, 6; Ben Appleton--here was a
+little pause, for Ben's abilities at cricket were not completely
+ascertained, but then he was a good fellow, so full of fun and waggery! No
+doing without Ben. So he figured in the list as 7. George Harris--a short
+halt there too--slowish, but sure, 8; Tom Coper--oh, beyond the world Tom
+Coper, the red-headed gardening lad, whose left-handed strokes send
+<i>her</i> (a cricket-ball is always of the feminine gender) send her
+spinning a mile, 9; Harry Willis, another blacksmith, 10.</p>
+
+<p>We had now ten of our eleven, but the choice of the last occasioned some
+demur. John Strong, a nice youth--everybody likes John Strong--was the next
+candidate, but he is so tall and limp that we were all afraid his strength,
+in spite of his name, would never hold out. So the eve of the match arrived
+and the post was still vacant, when a little boy of fifteen, David Willis,
+brother to Harry, admitted by accident to the last practice, saw eight of
+them out, and was voted in by acclamation.</p>
+
+<p>Morning dawned. On calling over our roll, Brown was missing; and it
+transpired that he had set off at four o'clock in the morning to play in a
+cricket match at M----, a little town twelve miles off, which had been his
+last residence. Here was desertion! Here was treachery! How we cried him
+down! We were well rid of him, for he was no batter compared with William
+Grey; not fit to wipe the shoes of Samuel Long as a bowler; the boy David
+Willis was worth fifty of him. So we took tall John Strong. I never saw any
+one prouder than the good-humoured lad was at this not very flattering
+piece of preferment.</p>
+
+<p><i>They</i> began the warfare--these boastful men of B----! And what
+think you was the amount of their innings? These challengers--the famous
+eleven--how many did they get? Think! Imagine! Guess! You cannot. Well,
+they got twenty-two, or, rather, they got twenty, for two of theirs were
+short notches, and would never have been allowed, only that, seeing what
+they were made of, we and our umpires were not particular. Oh, how well we
+fielded.</p>
+
+<p>Then we went in. And what of our innings? Guess! A hundred and
+sixty-nine! We headed them by a hundred and forty-seven; and then they gave
+in, as well they might. William Grey pressed them much to try another
+innings, but they were beaten sulky and would not move.</p>
+
+<p>The only drawback in my enjoyment was the failure of the pretty boy
+David Willis, who, injudiciously put in first, and playing for the first
+time in a match amongst men and strangers, was seized with such a fit of
+shamefaced shyness that he could scarcely hold his bat, and was bowled out
+without a stroke, from actual nervousness. Our other modest lad, John
+Strong, did very well; his length told in the field, and he got good fame.
+William Grey made a hit which actually lost the cricket-ball. We think she
+lodged in a hedge a quarter of a mile off, but nobody could find her. And
+so we parted; the players retired to their supper and we to our homes, all
+good-humoured and all happy--except the losers.</p>
+
+
+<h4><i>IV.--Love, the Leveller</i></h4>
+
+
+<p>The prettiest cottage on our village green is the little dwelling of
+Dame Wilson. The dame was a respected servant in a most respectable family,
+which she quitted only on her marriage with a man of character and
+industry, and of that peculiar universality of genius which forms what is
+called, in country phrase, a handy fellow. His death, which happened about
+ten years ago, made quite a gap in our village commonwealth.</p>
+
+<p>Without assistance Mrs. Wilson contrived to maintain herself and her
+children in their old, comfortable home. The house had still, within and
+without, the same sunshiny cleanliness, and the garden was still famous
+over all other gardens. But the sweetest flower of the garden, and the joy
+and pride of her mother's heart, was her daughter Hannah. Well might she be
+proud of her! At sixteen, Hannah Wilson was, beyond a doubt, the prettiest
+girl in the village, and the best. Her chief characteristic was modesty.
+Her mind was like her person: modest, graceful, gentle and generous above
+all.</p>
+
+<p>Our village beauty had fairly reached her twentieth year without a
+sweetheart; without the slightest suspicion of her having ever written a
+love-letter on her own account, when, all of a sudden, appearances changed.
+A trim, elastic figure, not unaccompanied, was descried walking down the
+shady lane. Hannah had gotten a lover!</p>
+
+<p>Since the new marriage act, we, who belong to the country magistrates,
+have gained a priority over the rest of the parish in matrimonial news. We
+(the privileged) see on a work-day the names which the Sabbath announces to
+the generality. One Saturday, walking through our little hall, I saw a fine
+athletic young man, the very image of health and vigour, mental and bodily,
+holding the hand of a young woman, who was turning bashfully away,
+listening, and yet not seeming to listen, to his tender whispers. Hannah!
+And she went aside with me, and a rapid series of questions and answers
+conveyed the story of the courtship. "William was," said Hannah, "a
+journeyman hatter, in B----. He had walked over to see the cricketing, and
+then he came again. Her mother liked him. Everybody liked him--and she had
+promised. Was it wrong?"</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, no! And where are you to live?" "William had got a room in B----.
+He works for Mr. Smith, the rich hatter in the market-place, and Mr. Smith
+speaks of him, oh, so well! But William will not tell me where our room is.
+I suppose in some narrow street or lane, which he is afraid I shall not
+like, as our common is so pleasant. He little thinks--anywhere--" She
+stopped suddenly. "Anywhere with him!"</p>
+
+<p>The wedding-day was a glorious morning.</p>
+
+<p>"What a beautiful day for Hannah!" was the first exclamation at the
+breakfast-table. "Did she tell you where they should dine?"</p>
+
+<p>"No, ma'am; I forgot to ask."</p>
+
+<p>"I can tell you," said the master of the house, with the look of a man
+who, having kept a secret as long as it was necessary, is not sorry to get
+rid of the burthen. "I can tell you--in London."</p>
+
+<p>"In London?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes. Your little favourite has been in high luck. She has married the
+only son of one of the best and richest men in B----, Mr. Smith, the great
+hatter. It is quite a romance. William Smith walked over to see a match,
+saw our pretty Hannah, and forgot to look at the cricketers. He came again
+and again, and at last contrived to tame this wild dove, and even to get
+the <i>entr&eacute;e</i> of the cottage. Hearing Hannah talk is not the way
+to fall out of love with her. So William, finding his case serious, laid
+the matter before his father, and requested his consent to the marriage.
+Mr. Smith was at first a little startled. But William is an only son, and
+an excellent son; and after talking with me, and looking at Hannah, the
+father relented. But, having a spice of his son's romance, and finding that
+he had not mentioned his station in life, he made a point of its being kept
+secret till the wedding-day. I hope the shock will not kill Hannah."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, no! Hannah loves her husband too well."</p>
+
+<p>And I was right. Hannah has survived the shock. She is returned to
+B----, and I have been to call on her. She is still the same Hannah, and
+has lost none of her old habits of kindness and gratitude. She did indeed
+just hint at her trouble with visitors and servants; seemed distressed at
+ringing the bell, and visibly shrank from the sound of a double knock. But
+in spite of these calamities Hannah is a happy woman. The double rap was
+her husband's, and the glow on her cheek, and the smile of her lips and
+eyes when he appeared spoke more plainly than ever: "Anywhere with
+him!"</p>
+
+<hr />
+
+
+
+
+<h2><a name="DAVID_MOIR"></a>DAVID MOIR</h2>
+
+
+<h3><a name="Autobiography_of_Mansie_Wauch"></a>Autobiography of Mansie
+Wauch</h3>
+
+
+<blockquote> David Macbeth Moir was born at Musselburgh, Scotland, Jan. 5,
+1798, and educated at the grammar school of the Royal Burgh and at
+Edinburgh University, from which he received the diploma of surgeon in
+1816. He practised as a physician in his native town from 1817 until 1843,
+when, health failing, he practically withdrew from the active duties of his
+profession. Moir began to write in both prose and verse for various
+periodicals when quite a youth, but his long connection with "Blackwood's
+Magazine" under the pen name of "Delta" (&Delta;), began in 1820, and
+he became associated with Christopher North, the Ettrick Shepherd, and
+others of the Edinburgh coterie distinguished in "Noctes Ambrosianae." He
+contributed to "Blackwood," histories, biographies, essays, and poems, to
+the number of about 400. His poems were esteemed beyond their merits by his
+generation, and his reputation now rests almost solely on the caustic
+humour of his "Autobiography of Mansie Wauch," published in 1828, a series
+of sketches of the manner of life in the shop-keeping and small-trading
+class of a Scottish provincial town at the beginning of the nineteenth
+century. Moir died at Dumfries on July 6, 1851. </blockquote>
+
+
+<h4><i>I.--Mansie's Forebears and Early Life</i></h4>
+
+
+<p>Some of the rich houses and great folk pretend to have histories of the
+ancientness of their families, which they can count back on their fingers
+almost to the days of Noah's Ark, and King Fergus the First, but it is not
+in my power to come further back than auld grand-faither, who died when I
+was a growing callant. I mind him full well. To look at him was just as if
+one of the ancient patriarchs had been left on the earth, to let succeeding
+survivors witness a picture of hoary and venerable eld.</p>
+
+<p>My own father, auld Mansie Wauch, was, at the age of thirteen, bound a
+'prentice to the weaver trade, which he prosecuted till a mortal fever cut
+through the thread of his existence. Alas, as Job says, "How time flies
+like a weaver's shuttle!" He was a decent, industrious, hard-working man,
+doing everything for the good of his family, and winning the respect of all
+who knew the value of his worth. On the five-and-twentieth year of his age
+he fell in love with, and married, my mother, Marion Laverock.</p>
+
+<p>I have no distinct recollection of the thing myself, but there is every
+reason to believe that I was born on October 13, 1765, in a little house in
+the Flesh-Market Gate, Dalkeith, and the first thing I have any clear
+memory of was being carried on my auntie's shoulders to see the Fair Race.
+Oh! but it was a grand sight! I have read since the story of Aladdin's
+Wonderful Lamp, but that fair and the race, which was won by a young birkie
+who had neither hat nor shoon, riding a philandering beast of a horse
+thirteen or fourteen years auld, beat it all to sticks.</p>
+
+<p>In time, I was sent to school, where I learned to read and spell, making
+great progress in the Single and Mother's Carritch. What is more, few could
+fickle me in the Bible, being mostly able to spell it all over, save the
+second of Ezra and the seventh of Nehemiah, which the Dominie himself could
+never read through twice in the same way, or without variation.</p>
+
+<p>Being of a delicate make--nature never intended me for the naval or
+military line, or for any robustious profession--I was apprenticed to the
+tailoring trade. Just afterwards I had a terrible stound of calf-love, my
+first flame being the minister's lassie, Jess, a buxom and forward queen,
+two or three years older than myself. I used to sit looking at her in the
+kirk, and felt a droll confusion when our eyes met. It dirled through my
+heart like a dart. Fain would I have spoken to her, but aye my courage
+failed me, though whiles she gave me a smile when she passed. She used to
+go to the well every night with her two stoups to draw water, so I thought
+of watching to give her two apples which I had carried in my pocket for
+more than a week for that purpose. How she started when I stappit them into
+her hand, and brushed by without speaking!</p>
+
+<p>Jamie Coom, the blacksmith, who I aye jealoused was my rival, came up
+and asked Jess, with a loud guffaw, "Where is the tailor?" When I heard
+that, I took to my heels till I found myself on the little stool by the
+fireside with the hamely sound of my mother's wheel bum-bumming in my lug,
+like a gentle lullaby.</p>
+
+<p>The days of the years of my 'prenticeship having glided cannily over, I
+girt myself round about with a proud determination of at once cutting my
+mother's apron-string. So I set out for Edinburgh in search of a
+journeyman's place, which I got the very first day in the Grassmarket. My
+lodging was up six pairs of stairs, in a room which I rented for
+half-a-crown a week, coals included; but my heart was sea-sick of Edinburgh
+folk and town manners, for which I had no stomach. I could form no friendly
+acquaintanceship with a living soul. Syne I abode by myself, like St. John
+in the Isle of Patmos, on spare allowance, making a sheep-head serve me for
+three days' kitchen.</p>
+
+<p>Everything around me seemed to smell of sin and pollution, and often did
+I commune with my own heart, that I would rather be a sober, poor, honest
+man in the country, able to clear my day and way by the help of Providence,
+than the provost himself, my lord though he be, or even the mayor of
+London, with his velvet gown trailing for yards in the glaur behind him, or
+riding about the streets in a coach made of clear crystal and wheels of
+beaten gold.</p>
+
+<p>But when my heart was sickening unto death, I fell in with the greatest
+blessing of my life, Nanse Cromie, a bit wench of a lassie frae the Lauder
+direction, who had come to be a servant in the flat below our workshop, and
+whom I often met on the stairs.</p>
+
+<p>If ever a man loved, and loved like mad, it was me; and I take no shame
+in the confession. Let them laugh who like; honest folk, I pity them; such
+know not the pleasures of virtuous affection. Matters were by and bye
+settled full tosh between us; and though the means of both parties were
+small, we were young, and able and willing to help one another. Nanse and
+me laid our heads together towards the taking a bit house in the
+fore-street of Dalkeith, and at our leisure bought the plenishing.</p>
+
+<p>Two or three days after Maister Wiggie, the minister, had gone through
+the ceremony of tying us together, my sign was nailed up, painted in black
+letters on a blue ground, with a picture of a jacket on one side and a pair
+of shears on the other; and I hung up a wheen ready-made waistcoats, caps,
+and Kilmarnock cowls in the window. Business in fact, flowed in upon us in
+a perfect torrent.</p>
+
+<p>Both Nanse and I found ourselves so proud of our new situation that we
+slipped out in the dark and had a prime look with a lantern at the sign,
+which was the prettiest ye ever saw, although some sandblind creatures had
+taken the neatly painted jacket for a goose.</p>
+
+
+<h4><i>II.--The Resurrection Men</i></h4>
+
+
+<p>A year or two after the birth and christening of wee Benjie, my son, I
+was cheated by a swindling black-aviced Englishman out of some weeks'
+lodgings and keep, and a pair of new velveteen knee-breeches.</p>
+
+<p>Then there arose a great surmise that some loons were playing false with
+the kirkyard; and, on investigation, it was found that four graves had been
+opened, and the bodies harled away to the college. Words cannot describe
+the fear, the dool, and the misery it caused, and the righteous indignation
+that burst through the parish.</p>
+
+<p>But what remead? It was to watch in the session-house with loaded guns,
+night about, three at a time. It was in November when my turn came. I never
+liked to go into the kirkyard after darkening, let-a-be sit through a long
+winter night with none but the dead around us. I felt a kind of qualm of
+faintness and downsinking about my heart and stomach, to the dispelling of
+which I took a thimbleful of spirits, and, tying my red comforter about my
+neck, I marched briskly to the session-house.</p>
+
+<p>Andrew Goldie, the pensioner, lent me his piece and loaded it to me. Not
+being well acquaint with guns, I kept the muzzle aye away from me, as it is
+every man's duty not to throw his precious life into jeopardy. A bench was
+set before the sessions-house fire, which bleezed brightly. My spirits
+rose, and I wondered, in my bravery, that a man like me should be afraid of
+anything. Nobody was there but a towzy, carroty-haired callant.</p>
+
+<p>The night was now pitmirk. The wind soughed amid the headstones and
+railings of the gentry (for we must all die), and the black corbies in the
+steeple-holes cackled and crawed in a fearsome manner. Oh, but it was
+lonesome and dreary; and in about an hour the laddie wanted to rin awa
+hame; but, trying to look brave, though half-frightened out of my seven
+senses, I said, "Sit down, sit down; I've baith whiskey and porter wi' me.
+Hae, man, there's a cawker to keep your heart warm; and set down that
+bottle of Deacon Jaffrey's best brown stout to get a toast."</p>
+
+<p>The wind blew like a hurricane; the rain began to fall in perfect
+spouts. Just in the heart of the brattle the grating of the yett turning on
+its rusty hinges was but too plainly heard.</p>
+
+<p>"The're coming; cock the piece, ye sumph!" cried the laddie, while his
+red hair rose, from his pow like feathers. "I hear them tramping on the
+gravel," and he turned the key in the lock and brizzed his back against the
+door like mad, shouting out, "For the Lord's sake, prime the gun, or our
+throats will be cut before you can cry Jack Robinson."</p>
+
+<p>I did the best I could, but the gun waggled to and fro like a cock's
+tail on a rainy day. I trust I was resigned to die, but od' it was a
+frightful thing to be out of one's bed to be murdered in an old
+session-house at the dead hour of the night by devils incarnate of
+ressurrection men with blacked faces, pistols, big sticks, and other deadly
+weapons.</p>
+
+<p>After all, it was only Isaac, the bethrel, who, when we let him in, said
+that he had just keppit four ressurrectioners louping over the wall. But
+that was a joke. I gave Isaac a dram to kep his heart up, and he sung and
+leuch as if he had been boozing with some of his drucken cronies; for feint
+a hair cared he about auld kirkyards, or vouts, or dead folk in their
+winding-sheets, with the wet grass growing over them. Then, although I
+tried to stop him, he began to tell stories of Eirish ressurrectioners, and
+ghaists, seen in the kirkyard at midnight.</p>
+
+<p>Suddenly a clap like thunder was heard, and the laddie, who had fallen
+asleep on the bench, jumped up and roared "Help!" "Murder!" "Thieves!"
+while Isaac bellowed out, "I'm dead! I'm killed!--shot through the head!
+Oh, oh, oh!" Surely, I had fainted away, for, when I came to myself, I
+found my red comforter loosed, my face all wet, Isaac rubbing down his
+waistcoat with his sleeve--the laddie swigging ale out of a bicker--and the
+brisk brown stout, which, by casting its cork, had caused all the alarm,
+whizz-whizz, whizzing in the chimney lug.</p>
+
+
+<h4><i>III.--The Friends of the People</i></h4>
+
+
+<p>The sough of war and invasion flew over the land at this time, like a
+great whirlwind; and the hearts of men died within their persons with fear
+and trembling. Abroad the heads of crowned kings were cut off, and great
+dukes and lords were thrown into dark dungeons, or obligated to flee for
+their lives to foreign countries.</p>
+
+<p>But worst of all the trouble seemed a smittal one, and even our own land
+began to show symptoms of the plague spot. Agents of the Spirit of
+Darkness, calling themselves the Friends of the People, held secret
+meetings, and hatched plots to blow up our blessed king and constitution.
+Yet the business, though fearsome in the main, was in some parts almost
+laughable. Everything was to be divided, and everyone made alike. Houses
+and lands were to be distributed by lots, and the mighty man and the
+beggar--the old man and the hobble-de-hoy--the industrious man and the
+spendthrift, the maimed, the cripple, and the blind, the clever man of
+business, and the haveril simpleton, made all just brethern, and alike.
+Save us! but to think of such nonsense! At one of their meetings, held at
+the sign of the Tappet Hen and the Tankard, there was a prime fight of five
+rounds between Tammy Bowsie, the snab, and auld Thrashem, the dominie,
+about their drawing cuts which was to get Dalkeith Palace, and which
+Newbottle Abbey! Oh, sic riff-raff!</p>
+
+<p>It was a brave notion of the king to put the loyalty of the land to the
+test, that the daft folk might be dismayed, and that the clanjamphrey might
+be tumbled down before their betters, like the windle-straes in a
+hurricane. And so they were. Such crowds came forward when the names of the
+volunteers were taken down. I will never forget the first day that I got my
+regimentals on, and when I looked myself in the glass, just to think I was
+a sodger who never in my life could thole the smell of powder! Oh, but it
+was grand! I sometimes fancied myself a general, and giving the word of
+command. Big Sam, who was a sergeant in the fencibles, and enough to have
+put five Frenchmen to flight any day of the year, whiles came to train us;
+but as nature never intended me for the soldiering trade, I never got out
+of the awkward squad, though I had two or three neighbours to keep me in
+countenance.</p>
+
+<p>We all cracked very crouse about fighting; but one dark night we got a
+fleg in sober earnest. Jow went the town bell, and row-de-dow gaed the
+drums, and all in a minute was confusion and uproar in ilka street. I was
+seized with a severe shaking of the knees and a flapping at the heart,
+when, through the garret window, I saw the signal posts were in a bleeze,
+and that the French had landed. This was in reality to be a soldier! I
+never got such a fright since the day I was cleckit. There was such a noise
+and hullabaloo in the streets, as if the Day of Judgment had come to find
+us all unprepared.</p>
+
+<p>Notwithstanding, we behaved ourselves like true-blue Scotsmen, called
+forth to fight the battles of our country, and if the French had come, as
+they did not come, they would have found that to their cost, as sure as my
+name is Mansie. However, it turned out that it was a false alarm, and that
+the thief Buonaparte had not landed at Dunbar, as it was jealoused; so,
+after standing under arms for half the night, we were sent home to our
+beds.</p>
+
+<p>But next day we were taken out to be taught the art of firing. We went
+through our motions bravely--to load, ram down the cartridge, made ready,
+present, fire. But so flustered and confused was I that I never had mind to
+pull the tricker, though I rammed down a fresh cartridge at the word of
+command. At the end of the firing the sergeant of the company ordered all
+that had loaded pieces to come to the front, and six of us stepped out in a
+little line in face of the regiment. Our pieces were cocked, and at the
+word "Fire!" off they went. It was an act of desperation on my part to draw
+the tricker, and I had hardly well shut my blinkers when I got such a thump
+on the shoulder as knocked me backwards, head over heels, on the grass.
+When I came to my senses and found myself not killed outright, and my gun
+two or three ells away, I began to rise up. Then I saw one of the men going
+forward to lift the fatal piece, but my care for the safety of others
+overcame the sense of my own peril. "Let alane, let alane!" cried I to him,
+"and take care of yoursell, for it has to gang off five times yet." I
+thought in my innocence that we should hear as many reports as I had
+crammed cartridges down her muzzle. This was a sore joke against me for a
+length of time; but I tholed it patiently, considering cannily within
+myself, that even Johnny Cope himself had not learned the art of war in a
+single morning.</p>
+
+
+<h4><i>IV.--My First and Last Play</i></h4>
+
+
+<p>Maister Glen, a farmer from the howes of the Lammermoor, Hills, a
+far-awa cousin of our neighbour Widow Grassie, came to Dalkeith to buy a
+horse at our fair. He put up free of expense at the widow's, who asked me
+to join him and her at a bit warm dinner, as may be, being a stranger, he
+would not like to use the freedom of drinking by himself--a custom which is
+at the best an unsocial one--especially with none but women-folk near
+him.</p>
+
+<p>When we got our joy filled for the second time, and began to be better
+acquainted, we became merry, and cracked away just like two pen-guns. I
+asked him, ye see, about sheep and cows, and ploughing and thrashing, and
+horses and carts, and fallow land and lambing-time, and such like; and he,
+in his turn, made inquiries regarding broad and narrow cloth, Shetland
+hose, and mittens, thread, and patent shears, measuring, and all other
+particulars belonging to our trade, which he said, at long and last, after
+we had joked together, was a power better one than the farming line; and he
+promised to bind his auldest callant 'prentice to me to the tailoring
+trade.</p>
+
+<p>On the head of this auld Glen and I had another jug, three being cannie,
+after which we were both a wee tozymozy. Mistress Grassie saw plainly that
+we were getting into a state where we could not easily make a halt, and
+brought in the tea-things and told us that a company of strolling players
+had come to the town and were to give an exhibition in Laird Wheatley's
+barn. Many a time I had heard of play-acting, and I determined to run the
+risk of Maister Wiggie, our minister's rebuke, for the transgression. Auld
+Glen, being as full of nonsense and as fain to gratify his curiosity as
+myself, volunteered to pay the ransom of a shilling for admission, so we
+went to the barn, which had been browley set out for the occasion by Johnny
+Hammer, the joiner.</p>
+
+<p>The place was choke-full, just to excess, and when the curtain was
+hauled up in came a decent old gentleman in great distress, and implored
+all the powers of heaven and earth to help him find his runaway daughter
+that had decamped with some ne'er-do-weel loon of a half-pay captain. Out
+he went stumping on the other side, determined, he said, to find them,
+though he should follow them to Johnny Groat's house, or something to that
+effect. Hardly was his back turned than in came the birkie and the very
+young lady the old gentleman described, arm-and-arm together, laughing like
+daft Dog on it! It was a shameless piece of business. As true as death,
+before all the crowd of folk, he put his arm round her waist and called her
+his sweetheart, and love, and dearie, and darling, and everything that is
+fine.</p>
+
+<p>In the middle of their goings on, the sound of a coming foot was heard,
+and the lassie, taking guilt to her, cried out, "Hide me, hide me, for the
+sake of goodness, for yonder comes my old father!" No sooner said than
+done. In he stappit her into a closit, and, after shutting the door on her,
+he sat down upon a chair, pretending to be asleep in the twinkling of a
+walking-stick. The old father came bounsing in, shook him up, and gripping
+him by the cuff of the neck, aske him, in a fierce tone, what he had made
+of his daughter. Never since I was born did I ever see such brazen-faced
+impudence! The rascal had the face to say at once that he had not seen the
+lassie for a month. As a man, as a father, as an elder of our kirk, my
+corruption was raised, for I aye hated lying as a poor cowardly sin, so I
+called out, "Dinna believe him, auld gentleman; he's telling a parcel of
+lees. Never saw her for a month! Just open that press-door, and ye'll see
+whether I am speaking truth or not!" The old man stared and looked
+dumfounded; and the young one, instead of running forward with his double
+nieves to strike me, began a-laughing, as if I had done him a good
+turn.</p>
+
+<p>But never since I had a being did I ever witness such an uproar and
+noise as immediately took place. The whole house was so glad that the
+scoundrel had been exposed that they set up siccan a roar of laughter, and
+thumped away at siccan a rate with their feet that down fell the place they
+called the gallery, all the folk in't being hurl'd topsy-turvy among the
+sawdust on the floor below.</p>
+
+<p>Then followed cries of "Murder," "Hold off me," "My ribs are in," "I'm
+killed," "I'm speechless." There was a rush to the door, the lights were
+knocked out, and such tearing, swearing, tumbling, and squealing was never
+witnessed in the memory of man since the building of Babel. I was carried
+off my feet, my wind was fairly gone, and a sick qualm came over me, which
+entirely deprived me of my senses. On opening my eyes in the dark, I found
+myself leaning with my broadside against the wall on the opposite side of
+the close, with the tail of my Sunday coat docked by the hainch buttons. So
+much for plays and play-actors--the first and the last I trust in grace
+that I shall ever see.</p>
+
+<p>Next morning I had to take my breakfast in bed, a thing very uncommon to
+me, except on Sunday mornings whiles, when each one according to the
+bidding of the Fourth Commandment, has a licence to do as he likes. Having
+a desperate sore head, our wife, poor body, put a thimbleful of brandy into
+my first cup of tea which had a wonderful virtue in putting all things to
+rights.</p>
+
+<p>In the afternoon Thomas Burlings, the ruling elder in the kirk, popped
+into the shop, and, in our two-handed crack, after asking me in a dry,
+curious way if I had come by no skaith in the business of the play, he said
+the thing had now spread far and wide, and was making a great noise in the
+world. I thought the body a wee sharp in his observe, so I pretended to
+take it quite lightly. Then he began to tell me a wheen stories, each one
+having to do with drinking.</p>
+
+<p>"It's a wearyfu' thing that whisky," said Thomas. "I wish it could be
+banished to Botany Bay."</p>
+
+<p>"It is that," said I. "Muckle and nae little sin does it breed and
+produce in this world."</p>
+
+<p>"I'm glad," quoth Thomas, stroking down his chin in a slee way, "I'm
+glad the guilty should see the folly o' their ain ways; it's the first
+step, ye ken, till amendment. And indeed I tell't Maister Wiggie, when he
+sent me here, that I could almost become guid for your being mair wary of
+your conduct for the future time to come."</p>
+
+<p>This was a thunder-clap to me, but I said briskly, "So ye're after some
+session business in this visit, are ye?"</p>
+
+<p>"Ye've just guessed it," answered Thomas, sleeking down his front hair
+with his fingers in a sober way. "We had a meeting this forenoon, and it
+was resolved ye should stand a public rebuke in the meeting house next
+Sunday."</p>
+
+<p>"Hang me if I do!" answered I. "Not for all the ministers and elders
+that were ever cleckit. I was born a free man, I live in a free country, I
+am the subject of a free king and constitution, and I'll be shot before I
+submit to such rank diabolical papistry."</p>
+
+<p>"Hooly and fairly, Mansie," quoth Thomas. "They'll maybe no be sae hard
+as they threaten. But ye ken, my friend, I'm speaking to you as a brither;
+it was an unco'-like business for an elder, not only to gang till a play,
+which is ane of the deevil's rendevouses, but to gan there in a state of
+liquor, making yourself a world's wonder, and you an elder of our kirk! I
+put the question to yourself soberly."</p>
+
+<p>His threatening I could despise; but ah, his calm, brotherly, flattering
+way I could not thole with. So I said till him, "Weel, weel, Thomas, I ken
+I have done wrong, and I am sorry for't; they'll never find me in siccan a
+scrape again."</p>
+
+<p>Thomas Burlings, in a friendly way, shook hands with me; telling that he
+would go back and plead with the session in my behalf. To do him justice he
+was not worse than his word, for I have aye attended the kirk as usual,
+standing, when it came to my rotation, at the plate, and nobody, gentle or
+simple, ever spoke to me on the subject of the playhouse, or minted the
+matter of the rebuke from that day to this.</p>
+
+
+<h4><i>V.--Benjie a Barber</i></h4>
+
+
+<p>When wee Benjie came to his thirteenth year, many and long were the
+debates between his fond mother and me what trade we would bring him up to.
+His mother thought that he had just the physog of an admiral, and when the
+matter was put to himsell, Benjie said quite briskly he would like to be a
+gentleman. At which I broke through my rule never to lift my fist to the
+bairn, and gave him such a yerk in the cheek with the loof of my hand, as
+made, I am sure, his lugs ring, and sent him dozing to the door like a
+peerie.</p>
+
+<p>We discussed, among other trades and professions, a lawyer's advocatt, a
+preaching minister, a doctor, a sweep, a rowley-powley man, a
+penny-pie-man, a man-cook, that easiest of all lives, a gentleman's
+gentleman; but in the end Nanse, when I suggested a barber, gave a mournful
+look and said in a state of Christian resignation, "Tak' your ain way,
+gudeman."</p>
+
+<p>And so Benjie was apprenticed to be a barber, for, as I made the
+observe, "Commend me to a safe employment, and a profitable. They may give
+others the nick, and draw blood, but catch them hurting themselves. The
+foundations of the hair-cutting and the shaving line are as sure as that of
+the everlasting rocks; beards being likely to roughen, and heads to require
+polling as long as wood grows and water runs."</p>
+
+<p>Benjie is now principal shop-man in a Wallflower Hair-Powder and Genuine
+Macassar Oil Warehouse, kept by three Frenchmen, called Moosies Peroukey,
+in the West End of London. But, though our natural enemies, he writes me
+that he has found them agreeable and shatty masters, full of good manners
+and pleasant discourse, and, except in their language, almost
+Christians.</p>
+
+<p>I aye thought Benjie was a genius, and he is beginning to show himself
+his father's son, being in thoughts of taking out a patent for making a
+hair-oil from rancid butter. If he succeeds it will make the callant's
+fortune. But he must not marry Madamoselle Peroukey without my special
+consent, as Nance says that her having a French woman for a daughter-in-law
+would be the death of her.</p>
+
+<p>As for myself, I have now retired from business with my guid wife Nanse
+to our ain cottage at Lugton, with a large garden and henhouse attached,
+there to spend the evening of our days. I have enjoyed a pleasant run of
+good health through life, reading my Bible more in hope than fear; our
+salvation, and not our destruction, being, I should suppose, its purpose.
+And I trust that the overflowing of a grateful heart will not be reckoned
+against me for unrighteousness.</p>
+
+<hr />
+
+
+
+
+<h2><a name="JAMES_MORIER"></a>JAMES MORIER</h2>
+
+
+<h3><a name="The_Adventures_of_Hajji_Baba_of_Ispahan"></a>The Adventures of
+Hajji Baba of Ispahan</h3>
+
+
+<blockquote> "Hajji Baba" stands by itself among the innumerable books
+written of the East by Europeans. For these inimitable concessions of a
+Persian rogue are intended to give a picture of Oriental life as seen by
+Oriental and not by Western eyes---to present the country and people of
+Persia from a strictly Persian standpoint. This daring attempt to look at
+the East from the inside, as it were, is acknowledged to be successful; all
+Europeans familiar with Persia testify to the truth, often very caustic
+truth, of James Morier's portraiture. The author of "The Adventures of
+Hajji Baba of Ispahan" was born about 1780, and spent most of his days as a
+diplomatic representative of Great Britain in the East. He first visited
+Persia in 1808-09, as private secretary to the mission mentioned in the
+closing pages of "Hajji Baba." He returned to Persia in 1811-12, and again
+in 1814, and wrote two books about the country. But the thoroughness and
+candour of his intimacy with the Persian character were not fully revealed
+until the publication of "Hajji Baba" in 1824. So popular was the work that
+Morier wrote an amusing sequel to it entitled "Hajji Baba in England." He
+died on March 23, 1849. </blockquote>
+
+
+<h4><i>I.--The Turcomans</i></h4>
+
+
+<p>My father, Kerbelai Hassan, was one of the most celebrated barbers of
+Ispahan. I was the son of his second wife, and as I was born when my father
+and mother were on a pilgrimage to the tomb of Hosein, in Kerbelah, I was
+called Hajji, or the pilgrim, a name which has procured for me a great deal
+of unmerited respect, because that honoured title is seldom conferred on
+any but those who have made the great pilgrimage to the tomb of the blessed
+Prophet of Mecca.</p>
+
+<p>I was taught to read and write by a mollah, or priest, who kept a school
+in a mosque near at hand; when not in school I attended the shop, and by
+the time I was sixteen it would be difficult to say whether I was most
+accomplished as a barber or a scholar. My father's shop, being situated
+near the largest caravanserai in the city, was the common resort of the
+foreign merchants; and one of them, Osman Aga, of Bagdad, took a great
+fancy to me, and so excited me by describing the different cities he had
+visited, that I soon felt a strong desire to travel. He was then in want of
+someone to keep his accounts, and as I associated the two qualifications of
+barber and scribe, he made me such advantageous offers that I agreed to
+follow him.</p>
+
+<p>His purpose was to journey to Meshed with the object of purchasing the
+lambskins of Bokhara. Our caravan proceeded without impediment to Tehran;
+but the dangerous part of the journey was yet to come, as a tribe of
+Turcomans were known to infest the road.</p>
+
+<p>We advanced by slow marches over a parched and dreary country, and our
+conversation chiefly turned upon the Turcomans. Everyone vaunted his own
+courage; my master above the rest, his teeth actually chattering with
+apprehension, boasted of what he would do in case we were attacked. But
+when we in reality perceived a body of Turcomans coming down upon us, the
+scene instantly changed. Some ran away; others, and among them my master,
+yielded to intense fear, and began to exclaim: "O Allah! O Imams! O
+Mohammed the Prophet, we are gone! We are dying! We are dead!" A shower of
+arrows, which the enemy discharged as they came in, achieved their
+conquest, and we soon became their prey. The Turcomans having completed
+their plunder, placed each of us behind a horseman, and we passed through
+wild tracts of mountainous country to a large plain, covered with the black
+tents and the flocks and herds of our enemies.</p>
+
+<p>My master was set to tend camels in the hills; but when the Turcomans
+discovered my abilities as a barber and a surgeon, I became a general
+favourite, and gained the confidence of the chief of the tribe himself.
+Finally, he determined to permit me to accompany him on a predatory
+excursion into Persia--a permission which I hoped would lead to my
+escaping. I was the more ready to do so, in that I secretly possessed fifty
+ducats. These had been concealed by my master, Osman Aga, in his turban at
+the outset of his journey. The turban had been taken from him and carried
+to the women's quarters, whence I had recovered it. I had some argument
+with myself as to whether I ought to restore the ducats to him; but I
+persuaded myself that the money was now mine rather than his. "Had it not
+been for me," I said, "the money was lost for ever; who, therefore, has a
+better claim to it than myself?"</p>
+
+<p>We carried off much property on the raid, but as our only prisoners were
+a court poet, a carpet-spreader, and a penniless cadi, we had little to
+hope for in the way of ransom. On our return journey we perceived a large
+body of men, too compact for a caravan--plainly some great personage and
+his escort. The Turcomans retired hastily, but I lagged behind, seeing in
+this eventuality a means of escape. I was soon overtaken and seized,
+plundered of my fifty ducats and everything else, and dragged before the
+chief personage of the party--a son of the Shah, on his way to become
+governor of Khorassan.</p>
+
+<p>Kissing the ground before him, I related my story, and petitioned for
+the return of my fifty ducats. The rogues who had taken the money were
+brought before the prince, who ordered them to be bastinadoed until they
+produced it. After a few blows they confessed, and gave up the ducats,
+which were carried to the prince. He counted the money, put it under the
+cushion on which he was reclining, and said loudly to me, "You are
+dismissed."</p>
+
+<p>"My money, where is it?" I exclaimed.</p>
+
+<p>"Give him the shoe," said the prince to his master of the ceremonies,
+who struck me over the mouth with the iron-shod heel of his slipper,
+saying: "Go in peace, or you'll have your ears cut off."</p>
+
+<p>"You might as well expect a mule to give up a mouthful of fresh grass,"
+said an old muleteer to whom I told my misfortune, "as a prince to give up
+money that has once been in his hands."</p>
+
+<p>Reaching Meshed in a destitute state, I practised for a time the trade
+of water-carrier, and then became an itinerant vendor of smoke. I was not
+very scrupulous about giving my tobacco pure; and when one day the
+<i>Mohtesib</i>, or inspector, came to me, disguised as an old woman, I
+gave him one of my worst mixtures. Instantly he summoned half a dozen stout
+fellows; my feet were noosed, and blow after blow was inflicted on them
+until they were a misshapen mass of flesh and gore. All that I possessed
+was taken from me, and I crawled home miserably on my hands and knees.</p>
+
+<p>I felt I had entered Meshed in an unlucky hour, and determined to leave
+it. Dressed as a dervish I joined a caravan for Tehran.</p>
+
+
+<h4><i>II.--The Fate of the Lovely</i></h4>
+
+
+<p>I at first resolved to follow the career of a dervish, tempted thereto
+by the confidences of my companion, Dervish Sefer, who befriended me after
+my unhappy encounter with the Mohtesib.</p>
+
+<p>"With one-fiftieth of your accomplishments, and a common share of
+effrontery," he told me, "you may command both the purses and the lives of
+your hearers. By impudence I have been a prophet, by impudence I have
+wrought miracles--by impudence, in short, I live a life of great ease."</p>
+
+<p>But a chance came to me of stealing a horse, the owner of which
+confessed he had himself stolen it; and by selling it I hoped to add to the
+money I had obtained as a dervish, and thereby get into some situation
+where I might gain my bread honestly. Unfortunately, when I had reached
+Tehran, the real owner of the horse appeared. I was compelled to refund to
+the dealer the money I had been paid for the horse, and had some
+difficulty, when we went before the magistrate at the bazaar, in proving
+that I was not a thief. I had heard that the court poet, with whom I had
+formed a friendship during his captivity among the Turcomans, had escaped
+and returned to Tehran. To him, therefore, I repaired, and through his good
+offices I secured a post as assistant to Mirza Ahmak, the king's chief
+physician.</p>
+
+<p>Although the physician was willing to have my services, he was too
+avaricious to pay me anything for them; and I would not have remained long
+with him had I not fallen in love. In the heat of summer I made any bed in
+the open air, in a corner of a terrace that overlooked an inner court where
+the women's apartments were situated. I came presently to exchanging
+glances with a beautiful Curdish slave. From glances we came to
+conversation. At length, when Zeenab--for that was her name--was alone in
+the women's apartments, she would invite me down from the terrace, and we
+would spend long hours feasting and singing together.</p>
+
+<p>But our felicity was destined to be interrupted. The Shah was about to
+depart for his usual summer campaign, and, according to his wont, paid a
+round of visits to noblemen, thereby reaping for himself a harvest of
+presents. The physician, being reputed rich, was marked out as prey fit for
+the royal grasp. The news of the honour to be paid him left him half-elated
+at the distinction, half-trembling at the ruin that awaited his finances.
+The Shah came with his full suite, dined gorgeously at my master's expense,
+and, as is customary, visited the women's apartments. Presently came the
+news that my master had presented the Shah with Zeenab! She was to be
+trained as a dancing-girl, and was to dance before the Shah on his return
+from the campaign.</p>
+
+<p>When Zeenab was thus removed out of my reach, I had no inducement to
+remain in the physician's service. I therefore sought and secured a post as
+<i>nasakchi</i>, or officer of the chief executioner. I was now a person of
+authority with the crowd, and used my stick so freely upon their heads and
+backs that I soon acquired a reputation for courage. Nor did I fail to note
+the advice given to me by my brother officers as to the making of money by
+extortion--how an officer inflicts the bastinado fiercely or gently
+according to the capacity of the sufferer to pay; how bribes may be
+obtained from villages anxious not to have troops quartered upon them, and
+so on. I lived in such an atmosphere of violence and cruelty--I heard of
+nothing but slitting noses, putting out eyes, and chopping men in two--that
+I am persuaded I could almost have impaled my own father.</p>
+
+<p>The chief executioner was a tall and bony man, extremely ferocious.
+"Give me good hard fighting," he was accustomed to declare; "let me have my
+thrust with the lance, and my cut with the sabre, and I want no more. We
+all have our weaknesses--these are mine." This terrible man accompanied the
+Shah in his campaign, and I and the others went along with him, in the army
+that was to expel the Muscovite infidels from Georgia. Having heard that
+the Muscovites were posted on the Pembaki river, the chief executioner,
+with a large body of cavalry and infantry, proceeded to advance upon
+them.</p>
+
+<p>On reaching the river, we found two Muscovite soldiers on the opposite
+bank. The chief put on a face of the greatest resolution. "Go, seize,
+strike, kill!" he exclaimed. "Bring me their heads!"</p>
+
+<p>Several men dashed into the river, but the Russians, firing steadily,
+killed two of them, whereupon the rest retreated; nor could all the chief's
+oaths, entreaties, and offers of money persuade anybody to go forward.</p>
+
+<p>While we were thus parleying, a shot hit the chief executioner's
+stirrup, which awoke his fears to such a degree that he recalled his
+troops, and himself rode hastily away, exclaiming, "Curses be on their
+beards! Whoever fought after this fashion? Killing, killing, as if we were
+so many hogs! They will not run away, do all you can to them. They are
+worse than brutes! O Allah, Allah, if there was no dying in the case, how
+the Persians would fight!"</p>
+
+<p>On our return to the camp, a proclamation was issued announcing that an
+army of 50,000 infidels had been vanquished by the all-victorious armies of
+the Shah, that 10,000 of the dogs had given up their souls, and that the
+prisoners were so many that the prices of slaves had diminished a hundred
+per cent.</p>
+
+<p>When we went back with the Shah to Tehran, a horrid event occurred which
+plunged me in the greatest misery. I heard that Zeenab was ill, and unable
+to dance before the Shah; and, knowing the royal methods of treating
+unsatisfactory slaves, I feared greatly for the consequences. My fears were
+warranted. I was ordered, with others, to wait below the tower of the royal
+harem at midnight and bear away a corpse. We saw a woman struggling with
+two men at the top of the tower. The woman was flung over. We rushed
+forward. At my feet, in the death-agony, lay my beloved Zeenab. I hung over
+her in the deepest despair; my feelings could not be concealed from the
+ruffians around me.</p>
+
+<p>I abandoned everything, and left Tehran next day determined to become a
+real dervish, and spend the rest of my life in penitence and
+privations.</p>
+
+
+<h4><i>III.--Among the Holy Men</i></h4>
+
+
+<p>As I was preparing next night to sleep on the bare ground outside a
+caravanserai--for I was almost destitute--I saw a horseman ride up whom I
+recognised. It was one of the nasakchis who had assisted in the burial of
+Zeenab. I had been betrayed, then; my love for the king's slave had been
+revealed, and they were pursuing me.</p>
+
+<p>I went into the caravanserai, sought out a friend--the dervish whom I
+had known at Meshed--and asked his advice. "I can expect no mercy from this
+man," I said, "particularly as I have not enough money to offer him, for I
+know his price. Where shall I go?"</p>
+
+<p>The dervish replied, "You must lose not a moment in getting within the
+sanctuary of the tomb of Fatimeh at Kom. You can reach it before morning,
+and then you will be safe even from the Shah's power."</p>
+
+<p>"But how shall I live when I am there?" I asked.</p>
+
+<p>"I shall soon overtake you, and then, Inshallah (please God), you will
+not fare so ill as you imagine."</p>
+
+<p>As the day broke, I could distinguish the gilt cupola of the tomb before
+me; and as I perceived the horseman at some distance behind, I made all
+possible speed until I had passed the gateway of the sanctuary. Kissing the
+threshold of the tomb, I said my prayers with all the fervency of one who
+has got safe from a tempest into port.</p>
+
+<p>My friend the dervish arrived soon afterwards, and immediately urged
+upon me the importance of saying my prayers, keeping fasts, and wearing a
+long and mortified countenance. As he assured me that unless I made a
+pretence of deep piety I should be starved or stoned to death, I assumed
+forthwith the character of a rigid Mussulman. I rose at the first call,
+made my ablutions at the cistern in the strictest forms, and then prayed in
+the most conspicuous spot I could find.</p>
+
+<p>By the intensity of my devotion I won the goodwill of Mirza Abdul
+Cossim, the first <i>mashtehed</i> (divine) of Persia, and by his influence
+I obtained a pardon from the Shah. Now that I was free from the sanctuary,
+I became anxious to gain some profit by my fame for piety; so I applied to
+Mirza Abdul Cossim, who straightway sent me to assist the mollah
+Nad&acirc;n, one of the principal men of the law in Tehran. My true path of
+advancement, I believed, was now open. I was on the way to become a
+mollah.</p>
+
+<p>Nad&acirc;n was an exemplary Mussulman in all outward matters; but I was
+not long in discovering that he had two ruling passions--jealousy of the
+chief priest of Tehran, and a hunger for money. My earliest duty was to
+gratify his second passion by negotiating temporary marriages for handsome
+fees. In these transactions we prospered fairly well; but unfortunately
+Nad&acirc;n's desire to supplant the chief priest led him to stir up the
+populace to attack the Christians of the city, and plunder their property.
+The Shah was then in a humour to protect the Christians; consequently,
+Nad&acirc;n had his beard plucked out by the roots, was mounted on an ass
+with his face to its tail, and was driven out of the city with blows and
+execrations.</p>
+
+<p>Once more homeless and almost penniless, not knowing what to do, I
+strolled in the dusk into a bath, and undressed. The bath was empty save
+for one man, whom I recognized as the chief priest. He was splashing about
+in a manner that struck me as remarkable for so sedate a character; then a
+most unusual floundering, attended with a gurgling of the throat, struck my
+ear. To my horror, I saw that he was drowned. Here was a predicament; it
+was inevitable that I should be charged with his murder.</p>
+
+<p>Suddenly it occurred to me that I bore a close resemblance to the dead
+man. For an hour or two, at any rate, I might act as an impostor. So, in
+the dim light, I dressed myself in the chief priest's clothes, and repaired
+to his house.</p>
+
+<p>I was there received by two young slaves, who paid me attentions that
+would at most times have delighted me; but just then they filled me with
+apprehension, and I was heartily glad when I got rid of the slaves and
+fastened the door. I then explored the chief priest's pockets, and found
+therein two letters. One was from the chief executioner--a notorious
+drunkard--begging permission to take unlimited wine for his health's sake.
+The other was from a priest at the mollah's village saying that he had
+extracted from the peasantry one hundred tomauns (&pound;80), which would
+be delivered to a properly qualified messenger.</p>
+
+<p>To the chief executioner I wrote cheerfully granting the permission he
+sought, and suggesting that the loan of a well-caparisoned horse would not
+be amiss. I wrote a note to the priest requesting that the money be
+delivered to the bearer, our confidential Hajji Baba. Next morning I rose
+early, and made certain alterations in the chief priest's clothes so as to
+avoid detection. I went to the chief executioner's house, presented the
+letter, and received the horse, upon which I rode hastily away to the
+village. Having obtained the hundred tomauns I escaped across the frontier
+to Bagdad.</p>
+
+
+<h4><i>IV.--Hajji and the Infidels</i></h4>
+
+
+<p>On reaching Bagdad, I sought the house of my old master, Osman Aga, long
+since returned from his captivity, and through his assistance, and with my
+hundred tomauns as capital, I was able to set up in business as a merchant
+in pipe-sticks, and, having made myself as like as possible to a native of
+Bagdad, I travelled in Osman Aga's company to Constantinople. Having a
+complaint to make, I went to Mirza Ferouz, Persian ambassador on a special
+mission to Constantinople.</p>
+
+<p>"Your wit and manner are agreeable," he said to me; "you have seen the
+world and its business; you are a man who can make play under another's
+beard. Such I am in want of."</p>
+
+<p>"I am your slave and your servant," I replied.</p>
+
+<p>"Lately an ambassador came from Europe to Tehran," said Mirza Ferouz,
+"saying he was sent, with power to make a treaty, by a certain Boonapoort,
+calling himself Emperor of the French. He promised, that Georgia should be
+reconquered for us from the Russians, and that the English should be driven
+from India. Soon afterwards the English infidels in India sent agents to
+impede the reception of the Frenchman. We soon discovered that much was to
+be got between the rival curs of uncleanness; and the true object of my
+mission here is to discover all that is to be known of these French and
+English. In this you can help me."</p>
+
+<p>This proposal I gladly accepted, and went forth to interview a scribe of
+the Reis Effendi with whom I had struck up a friendship. He told me that
+Boonapoort was indeed a rare and daring infidel, who, from a mere soldier,
+became the sultan of an immense nation, and gave the law to all the
+Europeans.</p>
+
+<p>"And is there not a tribe of infidels called Ingliz?" I asked.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, truly. They live in an island, are powerful in ships, and in
+watches and broad-cloth are unrivalled. They have a shah, but it is a farce
+to call him by that title. The power lies with certain houses full of
+madmen, who meet half the year round for the purposes of quarrelling.
+Nothing can be settled in the state, be it only whether a rebellious aga is
+to have his head cut off and his property confiscated, or some such trifle,
+until these people have wrangled. Let us bless Allah and our Prophet that
+we are not born to eat the miseries of the poor English infidels, but can
+smoke our pipes in quiet on the shores of our own peaceful Bosphorus!"</p>
+
+<p>I returned to my ambassador full of the information I had acquired;
+daily he sent me in search of fresh particulars, and before long I felt
+able to draw up the history of Europe that the Shah had ordered Mirza
+Ferouz to provide. So well pleased was the ambassador with my labours, that
+he announced his intention of taking me back to Persia and continuing me in
+Government employ. To this I readily agreed, knowing that, with the
+protection of men in office, I might show myself in my own country with
+perfect safety.</p>
+
+<p>On out return to Tehran we found an English ambassador negotiating a
+treaty, the French having gone away unsuccessful. Owing to the knowledge I
+had acquired of European affairs when at Constantinople, I was much
+employed in these transactions with the infidels, and when I gained the
+confidence of the grand vizier himself, destiny almost as much as whispered
+that the buffetings of the world had taken their departure from me.</p>
+
+<p>The negotiations reached a difficult point, and threatened to break
+down; neither the Persians nor the infidels would give way. I was sent by
+the grand vizier on a delicate mission to the English ambassador. I
+prevailed. I returned to the grand vizier with a sack of gold for him and
+the promise of a diamond ring, and the treaty was signed.</p>
+
+<p>It was decided to send an ambassador to England. Mirza Berouz was
+appointed, and I was chosen as his first mirza, or secretary. What pleased
+me most of all was that I was sent to Ispahan to raise part of the money
+for the presents to be taken to England. Hajji Baba, the barber's son,
+entered his native place as Mirza Hajji Baba, the Shah's deputy, with all
+the parade of a man of consequence, and on a mission that gave him
+unbounded opportunity of enriching himself. I found myself, after all my
+misfortunes, at the summit of what, in my Persian eyes, was perfect human
+bliss.</p>
+
+<hr />
+
+
+
+
+<h2><a name="DAVID_CHRISTIE_MURRAY"></a>DAVID CHRISTIE MURRAY</h2>
+
+
+<h3><a name="The_Way_of_the_World"></a>The Way of the World</h3>
+
+
+<blockquote> David Christie Murray was born at West Bromwich, England,
+April 13, 1847, and began his journalistic career at Birmingham. In 1873 he
+moved to London and joined the staff of the "Daily News" and in 1878 he was
+correspondent of the "Times" and the "Scotsman" in the Russo-Turkish war.
+He now began to transfer his abundant experience of life to the pages of
+fiction. His first novel, "A Life's Atonement," was published in 1880, and
+was followed a year later by "Joseph's Coat." In "The Way of the World,"
+published in 1884, his art as a story-teller and his keen observation of
+men and manners were displayed as strikingly as in any of his later
+works--several of which were written in collaboration with other authors.
+Altogether he produced over thirty volumes of short stories and novels
+single-handed. At the end of last century he emerged from his literary
+seclusion in Wales and became active in current affairs; he was one of the
+leading English champions of Dreyfus, and obtained the warm friendship of
+Emile Zola. He died on August 1, 1907. </blockquote>
+
+
+<h4><i>I.--The Upstart</i></h4>
+
+
+<p>Your sympathies are requested for Mr. Bolsover Kimberley, a gentleman
+embarrassed beyond measure.</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Kimberley was thirty-five years of age. He was meek, and had no
+features to speak of. His hair was unassuming, and his whiskers were too
+shy to curl. He was a clerk in a solicitor's office in the town of
+Gallowbay, and he seemed likely to live to the end of his days in the
+pursuit of labours no more profitable or pretentious.</p>
+
+<p>A cat may look at a king. A solicitor's clerk may love an earl's
+daughter. It was an undeniable madness in Kimberley even to dream of loving
+the Lady Ella Santerre. He knew perfectly well what a fool he was; but he
+was in love for all that.</p>
+
+<p>To Bolsover Kimberley, seated in a little room with a dingy red desk and
+cobwebbed skylight, there entered Mr. Ragshaw, senior clerk to Messrs.
+Begg, Batter, and Bagg, solicitors.</p>
+
+<p>"My dear Mr. Kimberley," said Mr. Ragshaw, "allow me the honour of
+shaking hands with you. I believe that I am the first bearer of good
+news."</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Kimberley turned pale.</p>
+
+<p>"My firm, sir," pursued Mr. Ragshaw, "represented the trustees of the
+late owner of the Gallowbay Estate, who died three months ago at the age of
+twenty, leaving no known relatives. We instituted a search, which resulted
+in the discovery of an indisputable title to the estate. Permit me to
+congratulate you, sir--the estate is yours."</p>
+
+<p>Bolsover Kimberley gasped, and his voice was harsh.</p>
+
+<p>"How much?"</p>
+
+<p>"The estate, sir, is now approximately valued at forty-seven thousand
+per annum."</p>
+
+<p>Kimberley lurched forward, and fell over in a dead faint. Mr. Ragshaw's
+attentions restored him to his senses, and he drank a little water, and
+sobbed hysterically.</p>
+
+<p>When he had recovered a little, he arose weakly from the one office
+chair, took off his office coat, rolled it up neatly, and put it in his
+desk. Then he put on his walking coat and his hat and went out.</p>
+
+<p>"Don't you think, Mr. Kimberley," asked Mr. Ragshaw, with profound
+respect, "that a little something----"</p>
+
+<p>They were outside the Windgall Arms, and Kimberley understood.</p>
+
+<p>"Why, yes, sir," he said; "but I never keep it in the 'ouse, and having
+had to pay a tailor's bill this week, I don't happen----"</p>
+
+<p>"My <i>dear</i> sir, allow me!" said Ragshaw, with genuine emotion.</p>
+
+<p>The champagne, the dinner that followed, the interviews with pressmen,
+the excitement and obsequiousness of everybody, conveyed to Kimberley's
+mind, in a dizzy sort of a way, that he was somebody in the world, and
+ought to be proud of it. But his long life of servitude, his shyness and
+want of nerve, all weighed heavily upon him, and he was far from being
+happy.</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Begg, senior partner of Messrs. Begg, Batter, and Bagg, was sitting
+in his office a day or two later when a clerk ushered in the Earl of
+Windgall.</p>
+
+<p>"What's this news about Gallowbay, Begg? Is it true?" asked the
+earl.</p>
+
+<p>"It is certainly true," answered Begg.</p>
+
+<p>"What sort of fellow is this Kimberley?"</p>
+
+<p>"Well, he seems to be a shy little man, <i>gauche</i>,
+and--and--underbred, even for his late position."</p>
+
+<p>"That's a pity. I should like to see him," added the grey little
+nobleman. "I suppose you will act for him as you did for poor young
+Edward?"</p>
+
+<p>Poor young Edward was the deceased minor whose early death had wrecked
+the finest chances the Windgall family craft had ever carried.</p>
+
+<p>"I suppose so," said Begg.</p>
+
+<p>"I presume," said the earl, "that even if he wanted to call in his money
+you could arrange elsewhere?"</p>
+
+<p>"With regard to the first mortgage?" asked Mr. Begg. "Certainly."</p>
+
+<p>"And what about the new arrangement?" asked the earl nervously.</p>
+
+<p>"Impossible, I regret to say."</p>
+
+<p>"Very well," returned the earl, with a sigh. "I suppose the timber must
+go. If poor Edward had lived, it would all have been very different."</p>
+
+<p>Next day, when Kimberley, preposterously overdressed and thoroughly
+ashamed of himself, was trying to talk business in Mr. Begg's office, the
+Earl of Windgall was announced. There was nothing in the world that could
+have terrified him more. And when the father of his ideal love, Lady Ella
+Santerre, shook him by the hand, he could only gasp and gurgle in response.
+But the earl's manner gradually reassured him, and in a little time he
+began to plume himself in harmless trembling vanity upon sitting in the
+same room with a nobleman and a great lawyer.</p>
+
+<p>"I am pleased to have met Mr. Kimberley," said the earl, in going; "and
+I trust we shall see more of each other."</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Kimberley flushed, and bowed in a violent flutter.</p>
+
+<p>As the earl was driven homeward he could not help feeling that he was
+engaged in a shameful enterprise. People would talk if he invited this
+gilded little snob to Shouldershott Castle, and would know very well why he
+was asked there. Let them talk.</p>
+
+<p>"A million and a quarter!" said the poor peer. "And if I don't catch
+him, somebody else will."</p>
+
+<p>Meanwhile, Captain Jack Clare, an extremely popular young officer of
+dragoons, was in the depths of despair. He was the younger brother of Lord
+Montacute, whose family was poor; he loved Lady Ella Santerre, whose family
+was still poorer. The heads of the families had forbidden the match for
+financial reasons. He had stolen an interview with Ella, and had found that
+she bowed to the decision of the seniors.</p>
+
+<p>"It is all quite hopeless and impossible," she had said. "Good-bye,
+Jack!"</p>
+
+<p>As he rode dispiritedly away, he could not see, for the intervening
+trees, that she was kneeling in the fern and crying.</p>
+
+
+<h4><i>II.--A Peer in Difficulties</i></h4>
+
+
+<p>The Lady Ella slipped an arm about her father's neck.</p>
+
+<p>"You are in trouble, dear," she said. "Can I help you?"</p>
+
+<p>"No," said the poor nobleman. "There's no help for it, Beggs says, and
+they'll have to cut down the timber in the park. Poverty, my dear,
+poverty."</p>
+
+<p>This was a blow, and a heavy one.</p>
+
+<p>"That isn't the worst of it," said Windgall, after a pause. "I am in the
+hands of the Jews. A wretched Hebrew fellow says he <i>will</i> have a
+thousand pounds by this day week. He might as well ask me for a
+million."</p>
+
+<p>"The diamonds are worth more than a thousand pounds, dear," she said
+gently.</p>
+
+<p>"No, no, my darling," he answered. "I have robbed you of everything
+already."</p>
+
+<p>"You must take them, papa," she said in tender decision. She left him,
+only to return in a few minutes' time with a dark shagreen case in her
+hands. The earl paced about the room for a minute or two.</p>
+
+<p>"I take these," he said at last, "in bitter unwillingness, because I
+can't help taking them, my dear. I had best get the business over, Ella. I
+will go up to town this afternoon."</p>
+
+<p>During the whole of his journey the overdressed figure of Kimberley
+seemed to stand before the embarrassed man, and a voice seemed to issue
+from it. "Catch me, flatter me, wheedle me, marry me to one of your
+daughters, and see the end of your woes." He despised himself heartily for
+permitting the idea to enter his mind, but he could not struggle against
+its intrusion.</p>
+
+<p>Next day Kimberley entered his jewellers to consult him concerning a
+scarf-pin. It was a bull-dog's head, carved in lava, and not quite
+life-size. The eyes were rubies, the collar was of gold and brilliants.
+This egregious jewel was of his own designing, and was of a piece with his
+general notions of how a millionaire should attire himself.</p>
+
+<p>As he passed through the door somebody leapt from a cab carrying
+something in his hands, and jostled against him. He turned round
+apologetically, and confronted the Earl of Windgall.</p>
+
+<p>His lordship looked like a man detected in a theft, and shook hands with
+a confused tremor.</p>
+
+<p>"Can you spare me half an hour?" he asked. Then he handed the package to
+the shop-man. "Take care of that," he stammered. "It is valuable. I will
+call to-morrow."</p>
+
+<p>That afternoon Kimberley accepted an invitation to stay at Shouldershott
+Castle.</p>
+
+<p>He was prodigiously flattered and fluttered. When he thought of being
+beneath the same roof with Lady Ella, he flushed and trembled as he had
+never done before.</p>
+
+<p>"I shall see her," he muttered wildly to himself. "I shall see her in
+the 'alls, the 'alls of dazzling light." It is something of a wonder that
+he did not lose his mental balance altogether.</p>
+
+<p>When he was daily in the presence of Ella, the little man's heart ached
+with sweet anguish and helpless worship and desire. Yet before her he was
+tongue-tied, incapable of uttering a consecutive sentence. With her
+sister, Lady Alice Santerre, who had been the intended bride of the
+deceased heir to the Gallowbay Estate, Kimberley felt on a different
+footing. He had hardly ever been so much at ease with anybody in his life
+as this young lady made him.</p>
+
+<p>Kimberley's own anxious efforts at self-improvement, Lady Alice's
+good-natured advice, and the bold policy of the earl, who persuaded him to
+undergo the terrors of an election, and get returned to Parliament as
+member for Gallowbay, gradually made the millionaire a more presentable
+person. He learned how to avoid dropping his h's; but two vices were
+incurable--the shyness and his appalling taste in dress.</p>
+
+<p>The world, meanwhile, had guessed at the earl's motives in extending his
+friendship to Kimberley, and the little man's name was knowingly linked
+with that of Lady Alice. Kimberley came to hear what the world was saying
+through meeting Mr. Blandy, his former employer. Mr. Blandy invited him to
+his house, honoured the occasion with champagne, drank freely of it, and
+became confidential.</p>
+
+<p>"The noble earl'll nail you f' one o' the girls, Kimbly. I'm a lill bit
+'fected when I think, seeing my dear Kimbly 'nited marriage noble family.
+That's what makes me talk like this. I b'leeve you're gone coon already,
+ole man. 'Gratulate you, allmy heart."</p>
+
+<p>Kimberley went away in a degradation of soul. Was it possible that this
+peer of the realm could be so coarsely and openly bent on securing him and
+his money that the whole world should know of it? What had Kimberley, he
+asked himself bitterly, to recommend him but his money? But then,
+triumphing over his miseries, came the fancy--he could have his dream of
+love; he had cried for the moon, and now he could have it.</p>
+
+
+<h4><i>III.--Ella's Martyrdom</i></h4>
+
+
+<p>The earl's liabilities amounted roughly to ninety thousand pounds. The
+principal mortgagee was insisting upon payment or foreclosure, and there
+was a general feeling abroad that the estate was involved beyond its
+capacity to pay.</p>
+
+<p>Kimberley learned these circumstances in an interview with Mr. Begg. A
+few days afterwards he drove up desperately to the castle and asked for a
+private interview with his lordship.</p>
+
+<p>"My lord," he said, when they were alone, "I want to ask your lordship's
+acceptance of these papers."</p>
+
+<p>The earl understood them at a glance. Kimberley had bought his
+debts.</p>
+
+<p>"I ask you to take them now," Kimberley went on, "before I say another
+word."</p>
+
+<p>He rose, walked to the fire, and dropped the papers on the smouldering
+coal. The earl seized the papers and rescued them, soiled but unsinged.</p>
+
+<p>"Kimberley," he said, "I dare not lay myself under such an obligation to
+any man alive."</p>
+
+<p>"They are yours, my lord," replied Kimberley. "I shall never touch them
+again. You're under no obligation to me, my lord. But"--he blushed and
+stammered--"I want to ask you for the hand of Lady Ella."</p>
+
+<p>It took Windgall a full minute to pull himself together. He had schooled
+himself to the trembling hope that Alice might be chosen; but Ella!
+"Forgive me," he began, "I was unprepared--I was not altogether
+unprepared--" Then he lapsed into silence.</p>
+
+<p>"I will submit your proposal to my daughter," he said after a time,
+"but--I am powerless--altogether powerless."</p>
+
+<p>Kimberley went home in a tremor of nervous anxiety, and Windgall sent
+for his daughter.</p>
+
+<p>"I want you to understand, my dear," he began nervously, "that you are
+free to act just as you will. Mr. Kimberley gave these into my hands this
+morning"--showing her the papers. "He gave them freely, as a gift. If I
+could accept them I should be free from the nightmare of debt. But in the
+same breath with that unconditional gift, he asked me for your hand in
+marriage."</p>
+
+<p>She kept silence.</p>
+
+<p>"You know our miserable necessities, Ella," he pleaded. "But I can't
+force your inclinations in a matter like this, my dear."</p>
+
+<p>She ran to him, and threw her arms about his neck.</p>
+
+<p>"If it depends upon me to end your troubles, my dear, they are ended
+already."</p>
+
+<p>"Shall I," he asked lamely, "make Kimberley happy?"</p>
+
+<p>She answered simply, "Yes."</p>
+
+<p>Kimberley came to luncheon next day. Lady Ella gave him a hand like
+marble, and he kissed it. Her father, anxious to preserve a seeming
+satisfaction, put his arm about her waist and kissed her. Her cheek was
+like ice and her whole figure trembled.</p>
+
+<p>It was a dull, dreadful meal to all three who sat at table, and the
+millionaire's heart was the heaviest and the sorest.</p>
+
+<p>If Ella suffered, she had the consolation, so dear to the nobler sort of
+women, that she was a sacrifice. If Windgall suffered, he had a solid
+compensation locked in the drawers of his library table. But Kimberley had
+no consolation, and knew only that he was expected somehow to be happy, and
+was, in spite of his prosperous wooing, more miserable than he had ever
+been before.</p>
+
+<p>As time went on, Kimberley grew no happier. The gulf between Lady Ella
+and himself had not been bridged by their betrothal. She was always
+courteous to him, but always cold. She had accepted him, and yet----</p>
+
+<p>The first inkling that something was wrong came through the altered
+demeanour of Alice. The girl was furious at her father for sacrificing her
+sister, and furious with her sister for consenting to the sacrifice; her
+former half-humourous comradeship for Kimberley was changed into chilly
+disdain.</p>
+
+<p>The suspicions that were thus suggested to him were confirmed by a
+meeting with Ella outside the castle lodge. As he approached, he caught
+sight of her face as she was nodding a smiling good-bye to the old
+gate-keeper. She saw Kimberley, and the smile fled from her face with so
+swift a change, and left for a mere second something so like terror there,
+that he could scarcely fail to notice it.</p>
+
+<p>He returned home possessed with remorse and shame. There was no doubt
+what the end should be. Ella must be released.</p>
+
+<p>"She never cared about the money," he said, pacing the room with
+tear-blotted face. "She wanted to save her father, and she was ready to
+break her heart to do it. But she shall never break her heart through me.
+No, no. What a fool I was to think she could ever be happy with a man like
+me!"</p>
+
+
+<h4><i>IV.--The Renunciation</i></h4>
+
+
+<p>Jack Clare, with a heart burning with rage at what he deemed Ella's
+treachery, had resigned his commission and bought an estate in New Zealand
+with a sum of money that had been left him. He became possessed of a desire
+to see Ella once more. He wrote to her that he was about to start for New
+Zealand, and wished to say good-bye to her. This letter he brought to the
+castle gate-keeper, and caused it to be taken to Ella. Then he paced up and
+down the avenue, impatiently awaiting her.</p>
+
+<p>Destiny ordained that Kimberley should come that way just then on his
+fateful errand of releasing Ella from her engagement. As he entered the
+park his resolve failed him; he wandered unhappily to and fro, until he
+became aware of a strange gentleman prowling about the avenue in a mighty
+hurry. The stranger caught sight of him.</p>
+
+<p>"Pardon me," said Kimberley nervously, "have you lost your way?"</p>
+
+<p>Jack eyed him from head to foot--the vulgar glories of his attire, the
+extraordinary bull-dog pin. This, he guessed, was Kimberley--the man to
+whom Ella had sold herself. He smiled bitterly, and turned on his heel.</p>
+
+<p>"I beg your pardon, sir," said Kimberley ruffled. "I did myself the
+honour to address you."</p>
+
+<p>"You pestilential little cad!" cried Jack, wheeling round and letting
+out his wrath; "go home!"</p>
+
+<p>"Cad, sir!" answered Kimberley in indignation.</p>
+
+<p>"I call any man a cad, sir," answered Jack, "who goes about dressed like
+that."</p>
+
+<p>Jack walked on and Kimberley stood rooted to the ground. He was crushed
+and overwhelmed beneath the sense of his own humiliation. His fineries had
+been the one thing on which he had relied to make himself look like a
+gentleman, and he knew now what they made him look like.</p>
+
+<p>He retreated to a little arboured seat, and a few minutes later would
+have given anything to escape from it. For he was a witness of the parting
+of Jack and Ella. He saw the tears streaming from her eyes; he heard Jack
+tell her that he had never loved another woman and never would. As they
+clasped each other's hands for the final good-bye, Jack seized her
+passionately and kissed her. Her head fell back from his shoulder; she had
+fainted. He laid her down upon the grass, and looked upon her in an agony
+of fear and self-reproach. Then his mood changed.</p>
+
+<p>"Curse the man that broke her heart and mine!" he cried wildly.
+"Darling, look up!"</p>
+
+<p>Presently she recovered, and he begged her forgiveness.</p>
+
+<p>"I am better," said Ella feebly. "Leave me now. Good-bye, dear!"</p>
+
+<p>Soon afterwards a little man, with a tear-stained face and enormous
+bull-dog scarf-pin, arrived at the castle, and asked in a breaking voice to
+see his lordship.</p>
+
+<p>"Did you know, my lord," he began, "that Lady Ella was breaking her
+heart because she was to marry me?"</p>
+
+<p>"Really--"</p>
+
+<p>"You didn't know it? I should be glad to think you didn't. Perhaps in
+spite of all I said, you thought I had bought those papers to have you in
+my grasp. I am not a gentleman, my lord, but I hope I am above that. I was
+a fool to think I could ever make Lady Ella happy, and I resign my claim
+upon her hand, my lord, and I must leave your roof for ever."</p>
+
+<p>"Stop, sir!" cried the earl, in a rage of embarrassment and despair. He
+seemed face to face with the wreck of all his hopes. "Do you know that this
+is an insult to my daughter and to me?"</p>
+
+<p>"My lord," returned Kimberley, "I am very sorry, but it was a shame to
+ask her to marry a man like me. I won't help to break her heart--I
+can't--not if I break my own a million times over."</p>
+
+<p>The earl beat his foot upon the carpet. It was true enough. It
+<i>had</i> been a shame; and yet the man was a gentleman when all was said
+and done.</p>
+
+<p>"By heaven, Kimberley," cried his lordship, in spite of himself, "you
+are a noble-hearted fellow!"</p>
+
+<p>"Excuse me the trouble I have caused you. Good-bye, my lord." Kimberley
+bowed and left.</p>
+
+<p>That night Kimberley received a package containing the papers and a note
+from the earl congratulating him on the magnanimous manner in which he had
+acted, but declaring that he felt compelled to return the documents. This
+added another drop to the bitterness of Kimberley's cup. He could well nigh
+have died for shame; he could well nigh have died for pity of himself.</p>
+
+
+<h4><i>V.--Kimberley's Wedding Gift</i></h4>
+
+
+<p>"My lord," said Kimberley, as he met the earl of Windgall outside the
+London hotel where the earl was staying, "can you give me a very few
+minutes?"</p>
+
+<p>"Certainly," said his lordship. "You are not well?" he added, with
+solicitude.</p>
+
+<p>He had brought a dispatch-box with him; he put it on the table and
+slowly unlocked it. The earl's heart beat violently as he looked once more
+upon the precious documents.</p>
+
+<p>"You sent these back to me," said Kimberley. "Will you take 'em now? My
+lord, my lord, marry lady Ella to the man she loves, and take these for a
+wedding gift. I helped to torture her. I have a right to help to make her
+happy."</p>
+
+<p>Windgall was as wildly agitated as Kimberley himself. He recoiled and
+waved his hands.</p>
+
+<p>"I--I do not think, Kimberley," he said with quivering lip, "that I have
+ever known so noble an act before."</p>
+
+<p>"If I die," said Kimberley in a loud voice which quavered suddenly down
+into a murmur, "everything is to go to Lady Ella, with my dearest love and
+worship."</p>
+
+<p>Windgall caught only the first three words; he tugged at the bell-pull,
+and sent for a doctor.</p>
+
+<p>An hour afterwards Kimberley was in bed with brain fever.</p>
+
+<p>On the following morning Jack Clare stood in the rain on the deck of the
+steamship Patagonia, a travelling-cap pulled moodily over his eyes,
+watching the bestowal of his belongings in the hold.</p>
+
+<p>"Honourable Captain Clare aboard?" cried a voice from the quay. A
+messenger came and handed Jack a letter. He saw with amazement that it bore
+the Windgall crest.</p>
+
+<p>It was a hastily written note from the earl stating that circumstances
+had occurred which enabled him to withdraw his opposition to the union of
+Clare with Lady Ella.</p>
+
+<hr />
+
+<p>Kimberley recovered. He can speak now to Clare's wife without
+embarrassment and without pain. Has he forgotten his love? No. He will
+never love again, never marry; but he is by no means unhappy or solitary or
+burdened with regrets. And he knows that those for whom he made his great
+sacrifice have given him their profoundest gratitude and sincerest
+friendship.</p>
+
+<p>The ways of the world are various and many. And along them travel all
+sorts of people. Very dark grey, indeed--almost black some of
+them--middling grey, light grey, and here and there a figure that shines
+with a pure white radiance.</p>
+
+<hr />
+
+
+
+
+<h2><a name="FRANK_NORRIS"></a>FRANK NORRIS</h2>
+
+
+<h3><a name="The_Pit"></a>The Pit</h3>
+
+
+<blockquote> Frank Norris, one of the most brilliant of contemporary
+American novelists, was born at Chicago in 1870. He was educated at the
+University of California and at Harvard, and also spent three years as an
+art student in Paris. Afterwards he adopted journalism, and served in the
+capacity of war correspondent for various newspapers. His first novel,
+"McTeague," a virile, realistic romance, brought him instant recognition.
+This was followed in 1900 by "Moran of the Lady Betty," a romantic
+narrative of adventures on the Californian Coast. In 1901 Norris conceived
+the idea of trilogy of novels dealing with wheat, the object being an
+arraignment of wheat operations at Chicago, and the consequent gambling
+with the world's food-supply. The first of the series, "The Octopus," deals
+with wheat raising and transportation; the second, "The Pit," a vigorous,
+human story covers wheat-exchange gambling, and appeared in 1903; the
+third, which was to have been entitled "The Wolf," was cut short by the
+author's death, which occurred on October 25, 1902. </blockquote>
+
+
+<h4><i>I.--Curtis Jadwin and His Wife</i></h4>
+
+
+<p>Laura Dearborn's native town was Barrington, in Massachusetts. Both she
+and her younger sister Page had lived there until the death of their
+father. The mother had died long before, and of all their relations, Aunt
+Wess, who lived at Chicago, alone remained. It was at the entreaties of
+Aunt Wess and of their dearest friends, the Cresslers, that the two girls
+decided to live with their aunt in Chicago. Both Laura and Page had
+inherited money, and when they faced the world they had the assurance that,
+at least, they were independent.</p>
+
+<p>Chicago, the great grey city, interested Laura at every instant and
+under every condition. The life was tremendous. All around, on every side,
+in every direction, the vast machinery of commonwealth clashed and
+thundered from dawn to dark, and from dark to dawn. For thousands of miles
+beyond its confines the influence of the city was felt. At times Laura felt
+a little frightened at the city's life, and of the men for whom all the
+crash of conflict and commerce had no terrors. Those who could subdue this
+life to their purposes, must they not be themselves terrible, pitiless,
+brutal? What could women ever know of the life of men, after all?</p>
+
+<p>Her friend, Mr. Cressler, who had been almost a second father to her,
+was in business, and had once lost a fortune by a gamble in wheat; and
+there was Mr. Curtis Jadwin, whom she had met at the opera with the
+Cresslers.</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Cressler had told Laura, very soon after her arrival in Chicago,
+that Mr. Jadwin wanted to marry her.</p>
+
+<p>"I've known Curtis Jadwin now for fifteen years--nobody better," said
+Mrs. Cressler. "He's as old a family friend as Charlie and I have. And I
+tell you the man is in love with you. He told me you had more sense and
+intelligence than any girl he had ever known, and that he never remembered
+to have seen a more beautiful woman. What do you think of him, Laura--of
+Mr. Jadwin?"</p>
+
+<p>"I don't know," Laura answered. "I thought he was a <i>strong</i>
+man--mentally, and that he would be kindly and generous. But I saw very
+little of him."</p>
+
+<p>"Jadwin struck you as being a kindly man, a generous man? He's just
+that, and charitable. You know, he has a Sunday-school over on the West
+side--a Sunday-school for mission children--and I do believe he's more
+interested in that than in his business. He wants to make it the biggest
+Sunday-school in Chicago. It's an ambition of his. Laura," she exclaimed,
+"he's a <i>fine man</i>. No one knows Curtis Jadwin better than Charlie and
+I, and we just <i>love</i> him. The kindliest, biggest-hearted fellow. Oh,
+well, you'll know him for yourself, and then you'll see!"</p>
+
+<p>"I don't know anything about him," Laura had remarked in answer to this.
+"I never heard of him before the theatre party."</p>
+
+<p>But Mrs. Cressler promptly supplied information. Curtis Jadwin was a man
+about thirty-five, who had begun life without a <i>sou</i> in his pockets.
+His people were farmers in Michigan, hardy, honest fellows, who ploughed
+and sowed for a living. Curtis had only a rudimentary schooling, and had
+gone into business with a livery-stable keeper. Someone in Chicago owed him
+money, and, in default of payment, had offered him a couple of lots of
+ground on Wabash Avenue. That was how he happened to come to Chicago.
+Naturally enough, as the city grew the Wabash Avenue property increased in
+value. He sold the lots, and bought other real estate; sold that, and
+bought somewhere else, and so on till he owned some of the best business
+sites in the city, and was now one of the largest real-estate owners in
+Chicago. But he no longer bought and sold. His property had grown so large,
+that just the management of it alone took up most of his time. As a rule,
+he deplored speculation. He had no fixed principles about it, and
+occasionally he hazarded small operations.</p>
+
+<p>It was after this that Laura's first aversion to the great grey city
+fast disappeared, and she saw it in a kindlier aspect.</p>
+
+<p>Soon it was impossible to deny that Curtis Jadwin--"J" as he was called
+in business--was in love with her. The business man, accustomed to deal
+with situations with unswerving directness, was not in the least afraid of
+Laura. He was aggressive, assertive, and his addresses had all the
+persistence and vehemence of veritable attack. He contrived to meet her
+everywhere, and even had the Cresslers and Laura over to his mission
+Sunday-school for the Easter festival, an occasion of which Laura carried
+away a confused recollection of enormous canvas mottoes, sheaves of lilies,
+imitation bells of tinfoil, revival hymns vociferated from seven hundred
+distended mouths, and through it all the smell of poverty, the odour of
+uncleanliness, that mingled strangely with the perfume of the lilies.</p>
+
+<p>Somehow Laura found that with Jadwin all the serious, all the sincere,
+earnest side of her character was apt to come to the front.</p>
+
+<p>Yet for a long time Laura could not make up her mind that she loved him,
+but "J" refused to be dismissed.</p>
+
+<p>"I told him I did not love him. Only last week I told him so," Laura
+explained to Mrs. Cressler.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, then, why did you promise to marry him?"</p>
+
+<p>"My goodness! You don't realise what it's been. Do you suppose you can
+say 'no' to that man?"</p>
+
+<p>"Of course not--of course not!" declared Mrs. Cressler joyfully. "That's
+'J' all over. I might have known he'd have you if he set out to do it."</p>
+
+<p>They were married on the last day of June of that summer in the
+Episcopalian church. Immediately after the wedding the couple took the
+train for Geneva Lake, where Jadwin had built a house for his bride.</p>
+
+
+<h4><i>II.--A Corner in Wheat</i></h4>
+
+
+<p>The months passed. Soon three years had gone by since the ceremony in
+St. James's Church, and all that time the price of wheat had been steadily
+going down. Heavy crops the world over had helped the decline.</p>
+
+<p>Jadwin had been drawn into the troubled waters of the Pit, and was by
+now "blooded to the game." It was in April that he decided that better
+times and higher prices were coming for wheat, and announced his intentions
+to Sam Gretry, his broker.</p>
+
+<p>"Sam," he said, "the time is come for a great big chance. We've been
+hammering wheat down and down and down till we've got it below the cost of
+production, and now she won't go any further with all the hammering in the
+world. The other fellows, the rest of the bear crowd, don't seem to see it;
+but I see it. Before fall we're going to have higher prices. Wheat is going
+up, and when it does I mean to be right there. I'm going to <i>buy</i>. I'm
+going to buy September wheat, and I'm going to buy it to-morrow--500,000
+bushels of it; and if the market goes as I think it will later on, I'm
+going to buy more. I'm going to boost this market right through till the
+last bell rings, and from now on Curtis Jadwin spells b-u-double
+l--bull."</p>
+
+<p>"They'll slaughter you," said Gretry; "slaughter you in cold blood.
+You're just one man against a gang--a gang of cut-throats. Those bears have
+got millions and millions back of them. 'J,' you are either Napoleonic,
+or--or a colossal idiot!"</p>
+
+<p>All through the three years that had passed Jadwin had grown continually
+richer. His real estate appreciated in value; rents went up. Every time he
+speculated in wheat it was upon a larger scale, and every time he won.
+Hitherto he had been a bear; now, after the talk with Gretry, he had
+secretly "turned bull" with the suddenness of a strategist.</p>
+
+<p>A marvellous golden luck followed Jadwin all that summer. The crops were
+poor, the yield moderate.</p>
+
+<p>Jadwin sold out in September, having made a fortune, and then, in a
+single vast clutch, bought 3,000,000 bushels of the December option.</p>
+
+<p>Never before had he ventured so deeply into the Pit.</p>
+
+<p>One morning in November, at breakfast, Laura said to her husband,
+"Curtis, dear, when is it all going to end--your speculating? You never
+used to be this way. It seems as though, nowadays, I never had you to
+myself. Even when you are not going over papers and reports, or talking by
+the hour to Mr. Gretry in the library, your mind seems to be away from me.
+I--I am lonesome, dearest, sometimes. And, Curtis, what is the use? We're
+so rich now we can't spend our money."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, it's not the money!" he answered. "It's the fun of the thing--the
+excitement."</p>
+
+<p>That very week Jadwin made 500,000 dollars.</p>
+
+<p>"I don't own a grain of wheat now," he assured his wife. "I've got to be
+out of it."</p>
+
+<p>But try as he would, the echoes of the rumbling of the Pit reached
+Jadwin at every hour of the day and night. He stayed at home over
+Christmas. Inactive, he sat there idle, while the clamour of the Pit
+swelled daily louder, and the price of wheat went up.</p>
+
+<p>Jadwin chafed and fretted at his inaction and his impatience harried him
+like a gadfly. Would no one step into the place of high command.</p>
+
+<p>Very soon the papers began to speak of an unknown "bull" clique who were
+rapidly coming into control of the market, and it was no longer a secret to
+Laura that her husband had gone back to the market, and that, too, with
+such an impetuosity that his rush had carried him to the very heart of the
+turmoil.</p>
+
+<p>He was now deeply involved; his influence began to be felt. Not an
+important move on the part of the "unknown bull," the nameless, mysterious
+stranger, that was not noted and discussed.</p>
+
+<p>It was very late in the afternoon of a lugubrious March day when Jadwin
+and Gretry, in the broker's private room, sat studying the latest
+Government reports as to the supply of wheat, and Jadwin observed, "Why,
+Sam, there's less than 100,000,000 bushels in the farmers' hands. That's
+awfully small."</p>
+
+<p>"It ain't, as you might say, colossal," admitted Gretry.</p>
+
+<p>"Sam," said Jadwin again, "the shipments have been about 5,000,000 a
+week; 20,000,000 a month, and it's four months before a new crop. Europe
+will take 80,000,000 out of the country. I own 10,000,000 now. Why, there
+ain't going to be any wheat left in Chicago by May! If I get in now, and
+buy a long line of cash wheat, where are all these fellows going to get it
+to deliver to me? Say, where are they going to get it? Come on, now, tell
+me, where are they going to get it?"</p>
+
+<p>Gretry laid down his pencil, and stared at Jadwin.</p>
+
+<p>"'J,'" he faltered, "'J,' I'm blest if I know."</p>
+
+<p>And then, all in the same moment, the two men were on their feet.</p>
+
+<p>Jadwin sprang forward, gripping the broker by the shoulder.</p>
+
+<p>"Sam," he shouted, "do you know----Great God! Do you know what this
+means? Sam, we can corner the market!"</p>
+
+
+<h4><i>III.--The Corner Breaks</i></h4>
+
+
+<p>The high prices meant a great increase of wheat acreage. In June the
+preliminary returns showed 4,000,000 more acres under wheat in the two
+states of Dakota alone, and in spite of all Gretry's remonstrances, Jadwin
+still held on, determined to keep up prices to July.</p>
+
+<p>But now it had become vitally necessary for Jadwin to sell out his
+holdings. His "long line" was a fearful expense; insurance and storage
+charges were eating rapidly into the profits. He <i>must</i> get rid of the
+load he was carrying little by little.</p>
+
+<p>A month ago, and the foreign demand was a thing almost insensate. There
+was no question as to the price. It was, "Give us the wheat, at whatever
+figure, at whatever expense."</p>
+
+<p>At home in Chicago Jadwin was completely master of the market. His
+wealth increased with such rapidity that at no time was he able even to
+approximate the gains that accrued to him because of his corner. It was
+more than twenty million, and less than fifty million. That was all he
+knew.</p>
+
+<p>It was then that he told Gretry he was going to buy in the July
+crops.</p>
+
+<p>"' J,' listen to me," said Gretry. "Wheat is worth a dollar and a half
+to-day, and not one cent more. If you run it up to two dollars--"</p>
+
+<p>"It will go there of itself, I tell you."</p>
+
+<p>"If you run it up to two dollars it will be that top-heavy that the
+littlest kick in the world will knock it over. Be satisfied now with what
+you've, got. Suppose the price does break a little, you'd still make your
+pile. But swing this deal over into July, and it's ruin. The farmers all
+over the country are planting wheat as they've never planted it before.
+Great Scott, 'J,' you're fighting against the earth itself."</p>
+
+<p>"Well, we'll fight it then."</p>
+
+<p>"Here's another point," went on Gretry. "You ought to be in bed this
+very minute. You haven't got any nerves left at all. You acknowledge you
+don't sleep. You ought to see a doctor."</p>
+
+<p>"Fiddlesticks!" exclaimed Jadwin. "I'm all right. Haven't time to see a
+doctor."</p>
+
+<p>So the month of May drew to its close, and as Jadwin beheld more and
+more the broken speculators, with their abject humility, a vast contempt
+for human nature grew within him. The business hardened his heart, and he
+took his profits as if by right of birth.</p>
+
+<p>His wife he saw but seldom. Occasionally they breakfasted together; more
+often they met at dinner. But that was all.</p>
+
+<p>And now by June 11 the position was critical.</p>
+
+<p>"The price broke to a dollar and twenty yesterday," said Gretry. "Just
+think, we were at a dollar and a half a little while ago."</p>
+
+<p>"And we'll be at two dollars in another ten days, I tell you."</p>
+
+<p>"Do you know how we stand, 'J'?" said the broker gravely. "Do you know
+how we stand financially? It's taken pretty nearly every cent of our ready
+money to support this July market. Oh, we can figure out our paper profits
+into the millions. We've got thirty, forty, fifty million bushels of wheat
+that's worth over a dollar a bushel; but if we can't sell it we're none the
+better off--and that wheat is costing us six thousand dollars a day.
+Where's the money going to come from, old man? You don't seem to realise
+that we are in a precarious condition. The moment we can't give our boys
+buying orders, the moment we admit that we can't buy all the wheat that's
+offered, there's the moment we bust."</p>
+
+<p>"Well, we'll buy it," cried Jadwin. "I'll show those brutes. I'll
+mortgage all my real estate, and I'll run up wheat so high before the next
+two days that the Bank of England can't pull it down; then I'll sell our
+long line, and with the profits of that I'll run it up again. Two dollars!
+Why, it will be two-fifty before you know how it happened."</p>
+
+<p>That day Jadwin placed as heavy a mortgage as the place would stand upon
+every piece of real estate that he owned. He floated a number of promissory
+notes, and taxed his credit to its farthest stretch. But sure as he was of
+winning, Jadwin could, not bring himself to involve his wife's money in the
+hazard, though his entire personal fortune swung in the balance.</p>
+
+<p>Jadwin knew the danger. The new harvest was coming in--the new harvest
+of wheat--huge beyond all possibility of control; so vast that no money
+could buy it. And from Liverpool and Paris cables had come in to Gretry
+declining to buy wheat, though he had offered it cheaper than he had ever
+done before.</p>
+
+<hr />
+
+<p>On the morning of June 13, Gretry gave his orders to young Landry Court
+and his other agents in the Pit, to do their best to keep the market up.
+"You can buy each of you up to half a million bushels apiece. If that don't
+keep the price up--well, I'll let you know what to do. Look here, keep your
+heads cool. I guess to-day will decide things."</p>
+
+<p>In the Pit roar succeeded roar. It seemed that a support long thought to
+be secure was giving way. Not a man knew what he or his neighbour was
+doing. The bids leaped to and fro, and the price of July wheat could not so
+much as be approximated.</p>
+
+<p>Landry caught one of the Gretry traders by the arm.</p>
+
+<p>"What shall we do?" he shouted. "I've bought up to my limit. No more
+orders have come in. What's to be done?"</p>
+
+<p>"I don't know," the other shouted back--"I don't know! Looks like a
+smash; something's gone wrong."</p>
+
+<p>In Gretry's office Jadwin stood hatless and pale. Around him were one of
+the heads of a great banking house and a couple of other men, confidential
+agents, who had helped to manipulate the great corner.</p>
+
+<p>"It's the end of the game," Gretry exclaimed, "you've got no more money!
+Not another order goes up to that floor."</p>
+
+<p>"It's a lie!" Jadwin cried, "keep on buying, I tell you! Take all
+they'll offer. I tell you we'll touch the two dollar mark before noon."</p>
+
+<p>"It's useless, Mr. Jadwin," said the banker quietly, "You were
+practically beaten two days ago."</p>
+
+<p>But Jadwin was beyond all appeal. He threw off Gretry's hand.</p>
+
+<p>"Get out of my way!" he shouted. "Do you hear? I'll play my hand alone
+from now on."</p>
+
+<p>"'J,' old man--why, see here!" Gretry implored, still holding him by the
+arm. "Here, where are you going?"</p>
+
+<p>Jadwin's voice rang like a trumpet-call:</p>
+
+<p>"<i>Into the Pit!</i> If you won't execute my orders I'll act myself.
+I'm going into the Pit, I tell you!"</p>
+
+<p>"'J,' you're mad, old fellow! You're ruined--don't you
+understand?--you're ruined!"</p>
+
+<p>"Then God curse you, Sam Gretry, for the man who failed me in a crisis!"
+And, as he spoke, Curtis Jadwin struck the broker full in the face.</p>
+
+<p>Gretry staggered back from the blow. His pale face flashed to crimson
+for an instant, his fists clenched; then his hands fell to his sides.</p>
+
+<p>"No," he said; "let him go--let him go. The man is merely mad!"</p>
+
+<p>Jadwin thrust the men who tried to hold him to one side, and rushed from
+the room.</p>
+
+<p>"It's the end," Gretry said simply. He wrote a couple of lines, and
+handed the note to the senior clerk. "Take that to the secretary of the
+board at once."</p>
+
+<p>Straight into the turmoil and confusion of the Pit, into the scene of so
+many of his victories, came the "Great Bull." The news went flashing and
+flying from lip to lip. The wheat Pit, torn and tossed and rent asunder,
+stood dismayed, so great had been his power. What was about to happen?
+Jadwin himself, the great man, in the Pit! Had his enemies been too
+premature in their hope of his defeat? For a second they hesitated, then
+moved by a common impulse, feeling the push of the wonderful new harvest
+behind them, gathered themselves together for the final assault, and again
+offered the wheat for sale--offered it by thousands upon thousands of
+bushels.</p>
+
+<p>Blind and insensate, Jadwin strove against the torrent of the wheat.
+Under the stress and violence of the hour, something snapped in his brain;
+but he stood erect there in the middle of the Pit, iron to the end,
+proclaiming over the din of his enemies, like a bugle sounding to the
+charge of a forlorn hope.</p>
+
+<p>"Give a dollar for July--give a dollar for July!"</p>
+
+<p>Then little by little the tumult of the Pit subsided. There were sudden
+lapses in the shouting, and again the clamour would break out.</p>
+
+<p>All at once the Pit, the entire floor of the Board of Trade, was struck
+dumb. In the midst of the profound silence the secretary announced. "All
+trades with Gretry &amp; Co. must be closed at once!"</p>
+
+<p>The words were greeted with a wild yell of exultation. Beaten--beaten at
+last, the Great Bull! Smashed! The great corner smashed! Jadwin busted!
+Cheer followed cheer, hats went into the air. Men danced and leaped in a
+frenzy of delight.</p>
+
+<p>Young Landry Court, who had stood by Jadwin in the Pit, led his defeated
+captain out. Jadwin was in a daze--he saw nothing, heard nothing, but
+submitted to Landry's guidance.</p>
+
+<p>From the Pit came the sound of dying cheers.</p>
+
+<p>"They can cheer now all they want. <i>They didn't do it,"</i> said a man
+at the door. "It was the wheat itself that beat him; no combination of men
+could have done it."</p>
+
+
+<h4><i>IV.--A Fresh Start</i></h4>
+
+
+<p>The evening had closed in wet and misty, and when Laura Jadwin came down
+to the dismantled library a heavy rain was falling.</p>
+
+<p>"There, dear," Laura said, "now sit down on the packing-box there. You
+had better put your hat on. It is full of draughts now that the furniture
+and curtains are out. You've had a pretty bad siege of it, you know, and
+this is only the first week you've been up."</p>
+
+<p>"I've had too good a nurse," he answered, stroking her hand, "not to be
+as fit as a fiddle by now. You must be tired yourself, Laura. Why, for
+whole days there--and nights, too, they tell me--you never left the
+room."</p>
+
+<p>Laura shook her head, and said:</p>
+
+<p>"I wonder what the West will be like. Do you know I think I am going to
+like it, Curtis?"</p>
+
+<p>"It will be starting in all over again, old girl. Pretty hard at first,
+I'm afraid."</p>
+
+<p>"Hard--now?" She took his hand and laid it to her cheek.</p>
+
+<p>"By all the rules you ought to hate me," he began. "What have I done for
+you but hurt you, and at last bring you to----"</p>
+
+<p>But she shut her gloved-hand over his mouth.</p>
+
+<p>"The world is all before us where to choose, now, isn't it?" she
+answered. "And this big house and all the life we have led in it was just
+an incident in our lives--an incident that is closed."</p>
+
+<p>"We're starting all over again, honey.... Well, there's the carriage, I
+guess."</p>
+
+<p>They rose, gathering up their valises.</p>
+
+<p>"Ho!" said Jadwin. "No servants now, Laura, to carry our things down for
+us and open the door; and it's a hack, old girl, instead of the
+victoria."</p>
+
+<p>"What if it is?" she cried. "What do servants, money, and all amount to
+now?"</p>
+
+<p>As Jadwin laid his hand upon the knob of the front door, he all at once
+put down his valise and put his arm about his wife. She caught him about
+the neck, and looked deep into his eyes a long moment, and then, without
+speaking, they kissed each other.</p>
+
+<hr />
+
+
+
+
+<h2><a name="GEORGES_OHNET"></a>GEORGES OHNET</h2>
+
+
+<h3><a name="The_Ironmaster"></a>The Ironmaster</h3>
+
+
+<blockquote> Georges Ohnet, one of the most prolific and popular of French
+novelists and playwrights, was born in Paris on April 3, 1848. His father
+was an architect, and, after a period devoted to the study of law, Georges
+Ohnet adopted a journalistic career. He first came into prominence as the
+part-author of the drama "Regina Sarpi," in 1875. "The Ironmaster, or Love
+and Pride," was originally conceived as a play, and as such was submitted
+in vain to the theatrical managers of Paris. It was entitled "Marrying for
+Money" ("Les Mariages d'Argent") and on its rejection he laid it aside and
+directed his attention to the novel, "Serge Panine." This was immediately
+successful, and was crowned with honour by the French Academy. Its author
+adapted it as a play, and then, in 1883, did the opposite with "Les Manages
+d'Argent," calling it "Le Maitre de Forges." As a novel, "The Ironmaster,"
+with its dramatic plot and strong, moving story, attracted universal
+attention, and has been translated into several European languages.
+</blockquote>
+
+
+<h4><i>I.--The Faithless Lover</i></h4>
+
+
+<p>The Ch&acirc;teau de Beaulieu, in the Louis XIII. style, is built of
+white stone with red brick dressings. A broad terrace more than five
+hundred yards long, with a balustrade in red granite, and decked with
+parterres of flowers, becomes a delightful walk in autumn. M. Derblay's
+ironworks may have somewhat spoilt the beauty of the landscape, but
+Beaulieu remains a highly covetable estate.</p>
+
+<p>Madame de Beaulieu sat in the drawing-room knitting woollen hoods for
+the children in the village, while her daughter Claire contemplated,
+without seeing it, the admirable horizon before her. At last, turning her
+beautiful, sad face to her mother, she asked, "How long is it since we have
+had any letters from St. Petersburg?"</p>
+
+<p>"Come," said the marchioness, taking hold of Claire's hands--"come, why
+do you always think about that, and torture your mind so?"</p>
+
+<p>"What can I think of," answered Claire bitterly, "but of my betrothed?
+And how can I avoid torturing my mind as you say, in trying to divine the
+reason of his silence?"</p>
+
+<p>"I own it is difficult to explain," rejoined the marchioness. "After
+spending a week with us last year, my nephew, the Duc de Bligny, started
+off promising to return to Paris during the winter. He next began by
+writing that political complications detained him at his post. Summer came,
+but not the duke. Here now is autumn, and Gaston no longer even favours us
+with pretences. He does not even trouble to write."</p>
+
+<p>"But supposing he were ill?" Claire ventured to say.</p>
+
+<p>"That is out of the question," replied the marchioness pitilessly. "The
+embassy would have informed us. You may be sure he is in perfect health,
+and that he led the cotillon all last winter in the ball-rooms of St.
+Petersburg."</p>
+
+<p>Claire, forcing herself to smile, said, "It must be confessed, mother,
+he is not jealous, and yet I have been courted wherever I have gone, and am
+scarcely allowed to remain in peace, even in this desert of Beaulieu. It
+would seem I have attracted the attention of our neighbour the
+ironmaster."</p>
+
+<p>"Monsieur Derblay?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, mother; but his homage is respectful, and I have no cause to
+complain of him. I only mentioned him as an example--as one of many. The
+duke stays away, and I remain here alone, patient and--"</p>
+
+<p>"And you act very wrongly!" exclaimed the marchioness.</p>
+
+<p>The opportunity of easing her mind was not to be lost, and she told
+Claire that if the marriage ever did take place she feared there would be
+cause for regret. But her daughter's violent emotion made her realise more
+forcibly than ever how deeply and firmly Claire was attached to the Due de
+Bligny. So she assured her she had heard nothing fresh about him, and hoped
+they might have news from the De Prefonts, who were to arrive that day from
+Paris.</p>
+
+<p>"Ah!" interrupted Mdlle. de Beaulieu, "here is Octave coming with
+Monsieur Bachelin, the notary." And she went to meet them, looking the
+living incarnation of youth in all its grace and vigour.</p>
+
+<p>"You have had good sport, it seems," she said, waylaying her brother,
+and feeling the weight of his game-bag.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, I'll be modest. This game was not killed by me," answered the
+marquis; and explained that he had lost his way on the Pont Avesnes land,
+and had been rather haughtily accosted by another sportsman, who, however,
+as soon as he heard his name, became very polite, and forced him to accept
+the contents of his own bag.</p>
+
+<p>Maitre Bachelin immediately informed them that this must have been the
+ironmaster himself, whom he had been to see that morning, and all questions
+at issue about the boundaries of the estates were as good as settled.</p>
+
+<p>"For," said he, "my worthy friend accepts whatever conditions you may
+lay down. The only point now is to sign the preliminaries, and with this
+object Monsieur Derblay proposes to call at Beaulieu with his sister, Mile.
+Suzanne; that is, if you are pleased to authorise him, Madame la
+Marquise."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, certainly. Let him come by all means. I shall be glad to see this
+Cyclops, who is blackening all the valley. But come, you have, no doubt,
+brought me some fresh documents in reference to our English lawsuit."</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, Madame la Marquise, yes," rejoined Bachelin, with an appealing
+look. "We will talk business if you desire it."</p>
+
+<p>Without asking any questions, Claire and the marquise gave their mother
+a smile, and left the drawing-room.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, Bachelin, have the English courts decided? Is the action
+lost?"</p>
+
+<p>The notary lacked courage to reply in words, but his gesture was
+sufficient. The marchioness bit her lips, and a tear glittered for a
+moment.</p>
+
+<p>"Ah!" said the notary. "It is a terrible blow for the house of
+Beaulieu."</p>
+
+<p>"Terrible indeed," said the marchioness; "for it implies my son's and my
+daughter's ruin. Misfortunes seldom come singly," she resumed. "I suppose
+you have some other bad news for me, Bachelin. Tell me everything. You have
+news of the Duc de Bligny?"</p>
+
+<p>"For the last six weeks M. le Duc de Bligny has been in Paris."</p>
+
+<p>"He is aware of the misfortune that has overtaken us?"</p>
+
+<p>"He knew of it one of the first, Madame la Marquise."</p>
+
+<p>The marchioness was grieved more cruelly by this than by the money loss;
+and the notary was thus emboldened to tell her that a gallant friend of
+his, M. Derblay, whose father had been kind enough to call Maitre Bachelin
+his friend, had fallen passionately in love with Mdlle. de Beaulieu, and
+would be the happiest man in the world if he were even allowed to hope. He
+advised the marchioness not to say anything at present to her daughter.
+Maybe the duke would return to more honourable feelings, and it would
+always be time enough for Mdlle. Claire to suffer."</p>
+
+<p>"You are right; but, at all events, I must inform my son of this blow
+that strikes him."</p>
+
+<p>Octave was not surprised, but affectionately taking his mother's hand,
+said, "My only concern was for my sister, whose dowry was at stake. You
+must leave her the part of your fortune you were reserving for me. Don't
+you think, mother, that our cousin De Bligny's silence has some connection
+with the loss of this lawsuit?"</p>
+
+<p>"You are mistaken, child," cried the marchioness eagerly. "For the
+duke----"</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, fear nothing, mother," said Octave. "If Gaston hesitates now that
+Mdlle. de Beaulieu no longer comes to him with a million in either hand, we
+are not, I fancy, the sort of folk to seize him by the collar and compel
+him to keep his promises."</p>
+
+<p>"Well said, my son," cried the marchioness.</p>
+
+<p>Bachelin took respectful leave of his noble clients, and hurried off to
+Pont Avesnes as fast as his legs could carry him.</p>
+
+
+<h4><i>II.--M. Derblay's Passion</i></h4>
+
+
+<p>It was really M. Derblay whom the Marquis de Beaulieu had met in the
+woods of Pont Avesnes. Letting Octave call after him as loud as he liked,
+he hurried on through the woods. Chance had brought him nearer to the woman
+he adored from afar, in a dream as it were, and his heart was full of joy.
+He, Philippe, might approach her--he would be able to speak to her. But at
+the thought of the Duc de Bligny, a feeling of deep sadness overcame him,
+and his strength waned.</p>
+
+<p>He recalled to mind all the exploits of his life, and asked himself if,
+in virtue of the task he had accomplished, he were not really deserving of
+happiness. After very brilliant studies, he had left the polytechnic school
+with first honours, and had chosen the state mining service when the
+Franco-German war had broken out. He was then two-and-twenty, and had just
+obtained an appointment, but at once enlisted as a volunteer. He served
+with distinction, and when at last he started for home he wore on his
+breast the ribbon of the Legion of Honour. He found the house in mourning.
+His mother had just died, and his little sister, Suzanne, just seven years
+old, clung to him with convulsive tenderness. Within six months his father
+also died, leaving his affairs in a most confused state.</p>
+
+<p>Philippe renounced the brilliant career as an engineer already chalked
+out before him, and that his sister might not be dowerless, became a
+manufacturer. In seven years he had liquidated the paternal inheritance;
+his property was really his own, and he felt capable of greatly extending
+his enterprises. Popular in the district, he might come forward at the
+elections to be returned as a deputy. Who knew? Hope revived in Philippe
+Derblay's heart.</p>
+
+<p>After a long talk with Maitre Bachelin, he, on considering the
+situation, felt it was not unfavourable to his hopes. When he presented
+himself at Beaulieu, the marchioness received him kindly, and, touching
+Suzanne's fair hair with her lips, "There is peace signed on this child's
+forehead," said she. "All your sins are forgiven you, neighbour. And now
+come and let me introduce you to the family."</p>
+
+<p>A burning flush suffused Philippe's face, and he bowed low before the
+girl he adored.</p>
+
+<p>"Why, he's a gentleman, dear!" whispered the baroness to Claire. "And
+think, I pictured him with a leather apron! Why, he's decorated, and the
+baron isn't! He's really very good-looking, and his eyes are superb!"</p>
+
+<p>Claire looked at him almost sternly. The contrast was complete between
+him and Bligny, far away. Philippe was relieved to find the Baron de
+Pr&eacute;font present; he had read a treatise of his, which delighted the
+baron, who at once became very friendly, and insisted on visiting the
+ironworks. Only Claire remained frigid and indifferent, and this on his
+second visit, instead of disconcerting the ironmaster, only irritated him;
+and the more she pretended to ignore him the more determined he became to
+compel her to notice him. They were all on the terrace when Monsieur and
+Mademoiselle Monlinet were announced.</p>
+
+<p>"What can these people want?" said Madame de Beaulieu.</p>
+
+<p>Monsieur Monlinet was a wealthy tradesman, who had just bought the
+Ch&acirc;teau de la Varenne, near by. His daughter had been at school with
+Claire and the Baroness de Pr&eacute;font, and a bitter warfare was waged
+incessantly between the juvenile aristocrats and the monied damsels without
+handles to their names. All recollections of Ath&eacute;nais had faded from
+Claire's mind, but hatred was still rife in Mlle. Monlinet's heart; and
+when her father, in view of her marriage, bought La Varenne for her, the
+ch&acirc;teau was a threatening fortress, whence she might pounce down on
+her enemy.</p>
+
+<p>Now she advanced towards Mlle, de Beaulieu when she entered the
+drawing-room at Beaulieu and threw her arms round her neck, and boldly
+exclaimed, "Ah, my beautiful Claire! How happy am I to see you!"</p>
+
+<p>This young person had wonderfully improved, had become very pretty, and
+now paralysed her adversaries by her audacity. She soon contrived to leave
+the others, and when alone with Claire informed her she had come to beg for
+advice respecting her marriage.</p>
+
+<p>Mlle, de Beaulieu instantly divined what her relatives had been hiding
+so carefully, and though she became very pale while Ath&eacute;nais looked
+at her in fiendish delight, she determined to die rather than own her love
+for Gaston, and exerted all her will to master herself. The noise of a
+furious gallop resounded, and the Duc de Bligny dashed into the courtyard
+on a horse white with foam. He would have entered the drawing-room, but the
+baron hindered him, while Ma&icirc;tre Bachelin went to ask if he might be
+received.</p>
+
+<p>Claire wore a frightful expression of anger.</p>
+
+<p>"Be kind enough"--she turned to Bachelin--"to ask the duke to go round
+to the terrace and wait a moment. Don't bring him in till I make you a sign
+from the window; but, in the meantime, send M. Derblay to me."</p>
+
+<p>The marchioness and the baroness immediately improvided a
+<i>mise-en-sc&eacute;ne,</i> so that when the duke entered, he perceived
+the marchioness seated as usual in her easy chair, the baroness standing
+near the chimney-piece, and Claire with her back to the light. He bowed low
+before the noble woman who had been his second mother.</p>
+
+<p>"Madame la Marquise," he said, "my dear aunt, you see my emotion--my
+grief! Claire, I cannot leave this room till you have forgiven me!"</p>
+
+<p>"But you owe me no explanation, duke," Claire said, with amazing
+serenity; "and you need no forgiveness. I have been told you intend to
+marry. You had the right to do so, it seems to me. Were you not as free as
+myself?"</p>
+
+<p>Thereupon, approaching the doorway, she made a sign to Philippe.
+Ath&eacute;nais boldly followed the ironmaster.</p>
+
+<p>"I must introduce you to one another, gentlemen. Monsieur le Duc de
+Bligny--my cousin." Then, turning towards her faithless lover, and defying
+him, as it were, with her proud gaze, she added, "Duke, Monsieur Derblay,
+my future husband."</p>
+
+
+<h4><i>III.--The Ironmaster's Disappointment</i></h4>
+
+
+<p>Touched by the disinterested delicacy of M. Derblay, the marchioness
+sanctioned her daughter's sudden determination without anxiety. In her
+mother's presence, Claire showed every outward sign of happiness, but her
+heart became bitter and her mind disturbed, and nought remained of the
+noble, tender-hearted Claire.</p>
+
+<p>Her only object now was to avenge herself on Ath&eacute;nais and
+humiliate the duke; and the preparations for the wedding were carried on
+with incredible speed. Left ignorant of the ironmaster's generous
+intentions, she attributed his ready deference to all her wishes to his
+ambition to become her husband, and even felt contempt for the readiness
+with which he had enacted his part in the humiliating comedy played before
+the duke, so thoroughly did she misjudge passionate, generous-hearted
+Philippe, whose only dream was to restore her happiness.</p>
+
+<p>Mlle, de Beaulieu arrived at two decisions which stupefied everybody.
+She wished the wedding to take place at midnight, without the least pomp,
+and only the members of the two families to be present. The marchioness
+raised her hands to heaven, and the marquis asked his sister if she were
+going mad, but Philippe declared these wishes seemed very proper to him,
+and so they were carried out.</p>
+
+<p>The marriage contract was signed on the eve of the great day. Claire
+remained ignorant of the fact that she was ruined, and signed quite
+unsuspectingly the act which endowed her with half M. Derblay's
+fortune.</p>
+
+<p>The service was performed with the same simplicity as would have been
+observed at a pauper's wedding. The dreary music troubled the duke, and
+reminded him of his father's funeral, when his aunt and cousins wept with
+him. He was now alone. Separated for ever from the dear ones who had been
+so kind to him, he compared Philippe's conduct with his own, and, turning
+his eyes to Claire, divined that she wept. A light broke on him; he
+realised the ironmaster's true position, and decided he might revenge
+himself very sweetly.</p>
+
+<p>"She weeps," he said to himself. "She hates that man, and still loves
+me."</p>
+
+<p>After the service he looked in vain for traces of tears. She was calm
+and smiling, and spoke in perfect self-possession.</p>
+
+<p>But when she was left alone, all on a sudden she found herself face to
+face with the cruel reality. She held herself and Philippe in horror. She
+must have been mad, and he had acted most unworthily in lending himself to
+her plans. When he at last ventured to come to her, her harsh expression
+astonished him. She managed to convey to him her wish to remain alone, and
+he showed himself so proud and magnanimous, she asked herself if it would
+be possible for her to live apart from him. How could she for ever repel
+such a loyal, generous man without showing herself unjust and cruel?</p>
+
+<p>Her husband approached her. His lips touched her forehead. "Till
+to-morrow," he said. But as he touched her he was seized with a mad,
+passionate longing. He caught her in his arms in an irresistible transport.
+"Oh, if you only knew how much I love you!"</p>
+
+<p>Surprised at first, Claire turned livid.</p>
+
+<p>"Leave me!" she cried in an angry voice.</p>
+
+<p>Philippe drew back. "What!" he said, in a troubled voice. "You repel me
+with horror! Do you hate me, then? And why? Ah, that man who forsook you so
+cowardly--that man, do you still happen to love him?"</p>
+
+<p>"Ah, have you not perceived that I have been mad?" cried Claire, ceasing
+to restrain herself. "I have deserved your anger and contempt, no doubt.
+Come, take everything belonging to me except myself! My fortune is yours. I
+give it you. Let it be the ransom of my liberty."</p>
+
+<p>Philippe was on the point of revealing the truth, which he had hitherto
+hidden with such delicacy and care, but he cast the idea aside. "Do you
+really take me for a man who sells himself?" he asked coldly. "I, who came
+here but a little while ago, palpitating and trembling to tell my love!
+Wasn't I more than mad, more than grotesque? For, after all, I have your
+fortune. I'm paid. I have no right to complain."</p>
+
+<p>Philippe burst into a bitter laugh, and falling on the sofa, hid his
+face in his hands.</p>
+
+<p>"Monsieur," said Claire haughtily, "let us finish this. Spare me useless
+raillery----"</p>
+
+<p>Philippe showed his face, down which tears were streaming. "I am not
+railing, madame; I am weeping--mourning my happiness, for ever lost. But
+this is enough weakness. You wished to purchase your liberty. I give it you
+for nothing. You will realise one day that you have been even more unjust
+than cruel, and you may then think of trying to undo what you have done.
+But it will be useless. If I saw you on your knees begging my forgiveness,
+I should not have a word of pity for you. Adieu, madame. We shall live as
+you have willed it."</p>
+
+<p>Claire simply bent her head in assent. Philippe gave her a last glance,
+hoping for some softening; but she remained inert and frigid. He slowly
+opened the door, and closed it, pausing again to listen if a cry or a sigh
+would give him--wounded as he was--a pretext for returning and offering to
+forgive. But all was silent.</p>
+
+<p>"Proud creature," said he. "You refuse to bend, but I will break
+you."</p>
+
+<p>The next morning Claire was found insensible, and for months she lay
+ill, nursed by Philippe with silent devotion. From that time forth his
+manner did not change. Gentle and most attentive to Claire in the presence
+of strangers, he was cold, grave, and strictly polite when they were
+alone.</p>
+
+
+<h4><i>IV.--The Lover's Reward</i></h4>
+
+
+<p>In the first expansion of her return to life she had decided she would
+be amiable, and frankly grant her friendship to Philippe, but saw, to her
+mortification, she was disposed to grant more than was asked of her. When
+he handed her "the income of her fortune, for six months," she became in a
+moment the proud Claire of other times, and refused to take it. Their eyes
+met; she relapsed, conquered. He it was she loved now. She constantly
+looked at him, and did whatever she thought would please him. She learnt
+with surprise that her husband was on the high road to becoming one of the
+princes of industry--that great power of the century. And when she learnt,
+accidentally from her brother, that she herself had had no dowry, she said,
+"I must win him back, or I shall die!"</p>
+
+<p>The Duc and Duchess de Bligny arrived at La Varenne. La Varenne became
+the scene of numerous fetes, but Claire excused herself from attending on
+the ground that she was not yet well enough to sit up late.
+Ath&eacute;nais' anticipated pleasure was all lost, since she could not
+crush her rival with her magnificence. In her jealous rage she began to
+devote particular attention to Monsieur Derblay. At last, Claire judged the
+cup was full, and on her f&ecirc;te day, encouraged for the first time by
+her husband's glances, called Ath&eacute;nais aside and entreated her to
+stay away from their home for a time, at least. Ath&eacute;nais, pale with
+rage, replied insultingly, and Claire summoned the duke to take his wife
+away if he did not wish her to be turned out in presence of everyone.</p>
+
+<p>With perfect composure Bligny asked Philippe if he approved of what
+Madame Derblay had done. In a grave voice, the ironmaster answered,
+"Monsieur le Duc, whatever Madame Derblay may do, whatever reason she may
+have for doing it, I consider everything she does as well done."</p>
+
+<hr />
+
+<p>Claire saw two pistols lowered. With a shriek, she bounded forward and
+clapped her hand on the muzzle of Bligny's pistol!</p>
+
+<hr />
+
+<p>An hour had elapsed without her regaining consciousness. The ironmaster
+was leaning over her. Suddenly her eyes opened, and she threw her arms
+round his neck. An acute pain passed through her hand, and she remembered
+everything--her despair, her anguish, and her sacrifice.</p>
+
+<p>"One word?" she asked. "Tell me, do you love me?"</p>
+
+<p>Philippe showed her a radiant face.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, I love you," he replied.</p>
+
+<p>A cry escaped Claire. She clung frantically to Philippe; their eyes met,
+and in inexpressible ecstasy they exchanged their first kiss of love.</p>
+
+<hr />
+
+
+
+
+<h2><a name="OUIDA_LOUISE_DE_LA_RAMEE"></a>OUIDA (LOUISE DE LA
+RAM&Eacute;E)</h2>
+
+
+<h3><a name="Under_Two_Flags"></a>Under Two Flags</h3>
+
+
+<blockquote> There are few women writers who have created more stir by
+their works than Louise de la Ram&eacute;e, the lady who wrote under the
+pen name of Ouida. Born of English and French parentage at Bury St. Edmund,
+England, in 1840, she began to turn to account her undoubted literary
+talents at the age of twenty, when she contributed to the "New Monthly" and
+"Bentley's Magazine." In the same year appeared her first long story,
+"Granville de Vigne," which was afterwards renamed and republished as "Held
+in Bondage." From that time an amazing output of romances fell in rapid
+succession from her pen, the most picturesque of them, perhaps, being
+"Under Two Flags" (1867) and "Moths." With respect to the former, although
+on occasions it exhibits a tendency towards inaccurate observation, the
+story is told with rare dramatic force and descriptive power. From 1874,
+Mlle. Ram&eacute;e made her home in Italy, where, at Lucca, in spite of her
+reputation as a novelist, she died in straightened circumstances Jan. 25,
+1908. </blockquote>
+
+
+<h4><i>I.--An Officer of the Guards</i></h4>
+
+
+<p>A Guardsman at home is always luxuriously accommodated, and the Hon.
+Bertie Cecil, second son of Viscount Royallieu, was never behind his
+fellows in anything; besides, he was one of the crack officers of the 1st
+Life Guards, and ladies sent him pretty things enough to fill the Palais
+Royal.</p>
+
+<p>Then Hon. Bertie was known generally in the brigade as "Beauty," and the
+appellative, gained at Eton, was in no way undeserved. His face, with as
+much delicacy and brilliancy as a woman's, was at once handsome,
+thoroughbred, languid, nonchalant with a certain latent recklessness, under
+the impassive calm of habit.</p>
+
+<p>Life petted him and pampered him; lodged him like a prince, dined him
+like a king, and had never let him feel the want of all that is bought by
+money. How could he understand that he was not as rich a man as his oldest
+and closest comrade, Lord Rockingham, a Colossus, known as "the Seraph,"
+the eldest son of the Duke of Lyonesse?</p>
+
+<p>A quarrel with his father (whom he always alluded to as "Royal")
+reminded him that he was ruined; that he would get no help from the old
+lord, or from his elder brother, the heir. He was hopelessly in debt;
+nothing but the will of his creditors stood between him and the fatal hour
+when he must "send in his papers to sell," and be "nowhere" in the great
+race of life.</p>
+
+<p>An appeal for money from his young brother, Berkeley, whom he really
+loved, forced Cecil to look, for the first time, blankly in the face of
+ruin that awaited him.</p>
+
+<p>Berkeley, a boy of twenty, had been gambling, and came to Cecil, as he
+had come often enough before, with his tale of needs. It was &pound;300
+Berkeley wanted, and he had already borrowed &pound;100 from a friend--a
+shameless piece of degradation in Cecil's code.</p>
+
+<p>"It is no use to give you false hopes, young one," said Cecil gently. "I
+can do nothing. If the money were mine it should be yours at a word. But I
+am all downhill, and my bills may be called in at any moment."</p>
+
+<p>"You are such chums with Rockingham, and he's as rich as all the Jews
+put together. What harm could there be if you asked him to lend you some
+money for me?"</p>
+
+<p>Cecil's face darkened.</p>
+
+<p>"You will bring some disgrace on us before you die, Berkeley," he said.
+"Have you no common knowledge of honour? If I did such a thing I should
+deserve to be hounded out of the Guards to-morrow. The only thing for you
+to do is to go down and tell Royal, he will sell every stick and stone for
+your sake."</p>
+
+<p>"I would rather cut my throat," said the boy. "I have had so much from
+him lately."</p>
+
+<p>But in the end he promised to go.</p>
+
+<p>It was hard for Bertie to get it into his brain that he really was at
+the end of his resources. There still seemed one chance open to him. He was
+a fearless rider, and his horse, Forest King, was famous for its powers. He
+entered him for a great race at Baden, and piled on all he could,
+determined to be sunk or saved by the race. If he won he might be able to
+set things right for a time, and then family influence ought to procure him
+an advance in the Guards.</p>
+
+<p>Forest King had never failed its master hitherto, and Bertie would have
+been saved by his faithful steed, but for the fact that a blackguardly turf
+welcher doctored the horse's mouth, and Forest King was beaten, and
+couldn't finish the course.</p>
+
+<p>"Something ails King," said Cecil calmly, "he is fairly knocked off his
+legs. Some vet must look to him; ridden a yard further he will fall."</p>
+
+
+<h4><i>II "A Mystery--An Error"</i></h4>
+
+
+<p>Cecil knew that with the failure of Forest King had gone the last plank
+that saved him from ruin, perhaps the last chance that stood between him
+and dishonour. He had never looked on it as within the possibilities of
+hazard that the horse could be defeated, and the blow fell with crushing
+force; the fiercer because his indolence had persisted in ignoring his
+danger, and his whole character was so accustomed to ease and to
+enjoyment.</p>
+
+<p>He got away from his companions, and wandered out alone into the gardens
+in the evening sunlight, throwing himself on a bench beneath a
+mountain-ash.</p>
+
+<p>Here the little Lady Venetia, the eight-year-old sister of the colossal
+Seraph, found him, and Cecil roused himself, and smiled at her.</p>
+
+<p>"They say you have lost all your money," said the child, "and I want you
+to take mine. It is my <i>very</i> own. Papa gives it to me to do just what
+I like with it. Please do take it."</p>
+
+<p>Twenty bright Napoleons fell in a glittering shower on the grass.</p>
+
+<p>"<i>Petite reine</i>," Cecil murmured gently, "how some man will love
+you one day. I cannot take your money, and you will understand why when you
+are older. But I will take this if you will give it me," and he picked up a
+little enamelled sweetmeat box, and slipped it into his waistcoat pocket.
+It was only a child's gift, but he kept it through many a dark day and wild
+night.</p>
+
+<p>At that moment as he stood there, with the child beside him, one of the
+men of the gardens brought him an English letter, marked "instant." Cecil
+took it wearily, broke the envelope, and read a scrawled, miserable letter,
+blotted with hot tears, and scored out in impulsive misery. The Lady
+Venetia went slowly away and when next they met it was under the burning
+sun of Africa.</p>
+
+<p>Alone, Cecil's head sank down upon his hands.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, God!" he thought. "If it were anything--anything except
+disgrace!"</p>
+
+<p>An hour later and the Seraph's servant brought him a message, asking him
+to come to Lord Rockingham's rooms immediately.</p>
+
+<p>Cecil went, and the Seraph crossed the room with his hand held out; not
+for his life in that moment would he have omitted that gesture of
+friendship. There was a third person in the room, a Jew, M. Baroni, who
+held a folded paper, with the forged signature of <i>Rockingham</i> on it,
+and another signature, the name of the forger in whose favour the bill was
+drawn; that other signature was--<i>Bertie Cecil</i>.</p>
+
+<p>"Cecil, my dear fellow," said the Seraph, "I'm ashamed to send for you
+on such a blackguard errand! Here, M. Baroni, make your statement. Later
+on, Mr. Cecil can avenge it."</p>
+
+<p>"My statement is easily made," said the Jew. "I simply charge the Hon.
+Bertie Cecil with having negotiated a bill with my firm for &pound;750
+month, drawn in his own favour, and accepted at two months' date by your
+lordship. Your signature you, my lord marquis, admit to be a forgery. With
+that forgery I charge your friend!"</p>
+
+<p>Cecil stood silent, with a strange anguish on his face.</p>
+
+<p>"I am not guilty," he said quietly.</p>
+
+<p>"Beauty--Beauty! Never say that to <i>me</i>!" said the Seraph. "Do you
+think <i>I</i> can ever doubt you?"</p>
+
+<p>"It is a matter of course," replied Baroni, "that Mr. Cecil denies the
+accusation. It is very wise. But I <i>must</i> arrest Mr. Cecil! Were you
+alone, my lord, you could prosecute or not, as you please; but ours is the
+money obtained by that forgery. If Mr. Cecil will accompany me
+unresistingly, I will not summon legal force."</p>
+
+<p>"Cecil, tell me what is to be done?" said the Seraph hoarsely. "I will
+send for the duke--"</p>
+
+<p>"Send for no one. I will go with this man. He is right as far as he
+knows. The whole is a--a mystery--an error."</p>
+
+<p>Cecil hesitated a moment; then he stretched out his hand. "Will you take
+it--still?"</p>
+
+<p>"Take it! Before all the world, always, come what will!"</p>
+
+<p>The Seraph's voice rang clear as the ring of silver. Another moment, and
+the door had closed. Cecil went slowly out beside his accuser, not blaming
+the Jew in anything.</p>
+
+<p>Once out in the air, the Hebrew laid his hand on his arm. Presently, in
+a side-street, three figures loomed in the shadow of the houses--a German
+official, the commissary of police, and an English detective. The Hebrew
+had betrayed him, and arrested him in the open street.</p>
+
+<p>In an instant all the pride and blood of his race was up. He wrenched
+his wrists free and with his left arm felled the detective to earth with a
+crushing blow. The German---a powerful and firmly-built man--was on him at
+once, but Cecil's science was the finer. For a second the two rocked in
+close embrace, and then the German fell heavily.</p>
+
+<p>The cries of Baroni drew a crowd at once, but Cecil dashed, with the
+swiftness of the deer, forward into the gathering night.</p>
+
+<p>Flight! The craven's refuge--the criminal's resource! Flight! He wished
+in the moment's agony that they would send a bullet through his brain.</p>
+
+<p>Soon the pursuers were far behind. But Cecil knew that he had but the
+few remaining hours of night left to save those for whom he had elected to
+sacrifice his life.</p>
+
+
+<h4><i>III.--Under Another Flag</i></h4>
+
+
+<p>Cigarette was the pet of the army of Africa, and was as lawless as most
+of her patrons. She was the Friend of the Flag. Soldiers had been about her
+from her cradle. They had been her books, her teachers, her guardians, and,
+later on, her lovers, all the days of her life. She had no sense of duty
+taught her, except to face fire boldly, never to betray a comrade, and to
+worship but two deities--"<i>la Gloire</i>" and "<i>la France</i>." Her own
+sex would have seen no good in her, but her comrades-in-arms could, and
+did. A certain chasseur d'Afrique in this army at Algiers puzzled her. He
+treated her with a grave courtesy, that made her wish, with impatient scorn
+for the wish, that she knew how to read, and had not her hair cut short
+like a boy's--a weakness the little vivandi&egrave;re had never been
+visited with before.</p>
+
+<p>"You are too fine for us, <i>mon brave</i>," she said pettishly once to
+this chasseur. "They say you are English, but I don't believe it. Say what
+you are, then?"</p>
+
+<p>"A soldier of France. Can you wish me more?"</p>
+
+<p>"True," she said simply. "But you were not always a soldier of France?
+You joined, they say, twelve years ago. What were you before then?"</p>
+
+<p>"Before?" he answered slowly. "Well--a fool"</p>
+
+<p>"You belonged to the majority, then!" said Cigarette. "But why did you
+come into the service? You were born in the noblesse--bah, I know an
+aristocrat at a glance! What ruined you, Monsieur l'Aristocrat?"</p>
+
+<p>"Aristocrat? I am none. I am Louis Victor, a corporal of the
+chasseurs."</p>
+
+<p>"You are dull, <i>mon brave</i>."</p>
+
+<p>Cigarette left him, and made her way to the officers' quarters. High or
+low, they were all the same to Cigarette, and she would have talked to the
+emperor himself as coolly as she did to any private.</p>
+
+<p>She praised the good looks of the corporal of chasseurs, and his
+colonel, M. le Marquis de Ch&acirc;teauroy, answered, with a curse, "I wish
+my corporal were shot! One can never hear the last of him!"</p>
+
+<p>Meanwhile, the corporal of chasseurs sat alone among the stones of a
+ruined mosque. He was a dashing cavalry soldier, who had a dozen wounds cut
+over his body by the Bedouin swords in many and hot skirmishes; who had
+waited through sultry African nights for the lion's tread; and who had
+served well in fierce, arduous work in trying campaigns and in close
+discipline.</p>
+
+<p>From the extremes of luxury and indolence Cecil came to the extremes of
+hardship and toil. He had borne the change mutely, and without a murmur,
+though the first years were years of intense misery. His comrades had grown
+to love him, seeing his courage and his willingness to help them, with a
+rough, dog-like love.</p>
+
+<p>Twelve years ago in England it was accepted that Bertie Cecil and his
+servant Rake had been killed in a railway accident in France.</p>
+
+<p>And the solitary corporal of chasseurs read in the "Galignani" of the
+death of his father, Viscount Royallieu, and of his elder brother. The
+title and estate that should have been his had gone to his younger
+brother.</p>
+
+
+<h4><i>IV.--From Death to Life</i></h4>
+
+
+<p>The Seraph, now Duke of Lyonesse, and his sister Venetia, Princess
+Corona, came on a visit to the French camp, and with them Berkeley,
+Viscount Royallieu. Corporal Louis Victor saw them, and, safe from
+recognition himself, knew them. But Cecil was not to go down to the grave
+unreleased. First, his brother Berkeley coming upon him alone in the
+solitude of a desert camp, made concealment impossible.</p>
+
+<p>"Have you lived stainlessly <i>since</i>?" were Cecil's only words,
+stern as the demand of a judge.</p>
+
+<p>"God is my witness, yes! But you--they said you were dead. That was my
+first disgrace, and my last; you bore the weight of my shame. What can I
+say? Such nobility, such sacrifice--"</p>
+
+<p>It was for himself that Berkeley trembled.</p>
+
+<p>"I have kept your secret twelve years; I will keep it still," said Cecil
+gravely. "Only leave Algeria at once."</p>
+
+<p>A slight incident revealed the corporal's identity to the Princess
+Corona. By his bearing he had attracted the attention of the visitors to
+the camp, and on being admitted to the villa of the princess to restore a
+gold chain dropped carelessly in the road, he disclosed the little
+enamelled box, marked "Venetia," the gift of the child in the garden at
+Baden.</p>
+
+<p>"That box is mine!" cried the princess. "I gave it! And you? You are my
+brother's friend? You are Bertie Cecil?"</p>
+
+<p>"<i>Petite reine</i>!" he murmured.</p>
+
+<p>Then he acknowledged who he was, not even for his brother's sake could
+he have lied to <i>her</i>; but he implored her to say nothing to the
+Seraph. "I was innocent, but in honour I can never give you or any living
+thing <i>proof</i> that this crime was not mine."</p>
+
+<p>"He is either a madman or a martyr," she mused, when Cecil had left her.
+That he loved her was plain, and the time was not far distant when she
+should love him, and be willing to share any sacrifice love and honour
+might demand.</p>
+
+<p>The hatred of Colonel Ch&acirc;teauroy for his corporal brought matters
+to a climax. Meeting Cecil returning from his visit to Venetia,
+Ch&acirc;teauroy could not refrain from saying insulting things concerning
+the princess.</p>
+
+<p>"<i>You lie</i>!" cried Cecil; "and you know that you lie! Breathe her
+name once more, and, as we are both living men, I will have your life for
+your outrage!"</p>
+
+<p>And as he spoke Cecil smote him on the lips.</p>
+
+<p>Ch&acirc;teauroy summoned the guard, the corporal was placed under
+arrest, and brought to court-martial.</p>
+
+<p>In three days' time Corporal Louis Victor would be shot by order of the
+court-martial.</p>
+
+<p>Cigarette, and Cigarette alone, prevented the sentence being carried
+out, and that at the cost of her life.</p>
+
+<p>She was away from the camp at the time in a Moorish town when the news
+came to her; and she stumbled on Berkeley Cecil, and, knowing him for an
+Englishman, worked on his feelings, and gave him no rest till he had
+acknowledged the condemned man for his elder brother and the lawful
+Viscount Royallieu, peer of England.</p>
+
+<p>With this document, signed and sealed by Berkeley, Cigarette galloped
+off to the fortress where the marshal of France, who was Viceroy of Africa,
+had arrived. The marshal knew Cigarette; he had decorated her with the
+cross for her valour in battle, and with the whole army of Africa he loved
+and admired her.</p>
+
+<p>Cigarette gave him the document, and told him all she knew of the
+corporal's heroism. And the marshal promised the sentence should be
+deferred until he had found out the whole truth of the matter.</p>
+
+<p>With the order of release in her bosom Cigarette once more vaulted into
+the saddle, to ride hard through the day and night--for at sunrise on the
+morrow will the sentence be executed.</p>
+
+<p>And now it is sunrise, and the prisoner has been brought out to the
+slope of earth out of sight of the camp.</p>
+
+<p>At the last the Seraph appeared, and found in the condemned man the
+friend of his youth. It was only with great difficulty that Rockingham was
+overpowered, for he swore Cecil should not be killed, and a dozen soldiers
+were required to get him away.</p>
+
+<p>Then Cecil raised his hand, and gave the signal for his own
+death-shot.</p>
+
+<p>The levelled carbines covered him; ere they could fire a shrill cry
+pierced the air: "Wait! In the name of France!"</p>
+
+<p>Dismounted and breathless, Cigarette was by the side of Cecil, and had
+flung herself on his breast.</p>
+
+<p>Her cry came too late; the volley was fired, and while the prisoner
+stood erect, grazed only by some of the balls, Cigarette fell, pierced and
+broken by the fire. She died in Cecil's arms, with the comrades she had
+loved around her.</p>
+
+<hr />
+
+<p>It is spring. Cecil is Lord of Royallieu, the Lady Venetia is his
+bride.</p>
+
+<p>"It was worth banishment to return," he murmured to her. "It was worth
+the trials that I bore to learn the love that I have known."</p>
+
+<p>And the memories of both went back to a place in a desert land where the
+folds of the tricolour drooped over one little grave--a grave where the
+troops saluted as they passed it, because on the white stone there was
+carved a name that spoke to every heart:</p>
+
+<blockquote>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;CIGARETTE<br />
+
+ENFANT DE L'ARM&Eacute;E, SOLDAT DE LA FRANCE.<br />
+</blockquote>
+
+<hr />
+
+
+
+
+<h2><a name="JAMES_PAYN"></a>JAMES PAYN</h2>
+
+
+<h3><a name="Lost_Sir_Massingberd"></a>Lost Sir Massingberd</h3>
+
+
+<blockquote> James Payn, one of the most prolific literary workers of the
+second half of the nineteenth century, was born at Cheltenham, England,
+Feb. 28, 1830, and died March 23, 1898. After a false start in education
+for the army, he went to Cambridge University, where he was president of
+the Union, and published some poems. The acceptance of his contributions by
+"Household Words" turned him to his true vocation. After writing some years
+for "Chambers's Journal" he became its editor from 1850 till 1874. His
+first work of fiction, "The Foster Brothers," a story founded on his
+college life, appeared in 1859, but it was not until five years later that
+Payn's name was established as a novelist. This was on the publication of
+"Lost Sir Massingberd, a Romance of Real Life." The story first appeared in
+"Chambers's Journal," and is marked by all his good qualities--ingenious
+construction, dramatic situations, and a skilful arrangement of incidents.
+Altogether, Payn wrote about sixty volumes of novels and short stories.
+</blockquote>
+
+
+<h4><i>I.--Neither Fearing God Nor Regarding Man</i></h4>
+
+
+<p>In a Midland county, not as yet scarred by factories, there stands a
+village called Fairburn, which at the time I knew it first had for its
+squire, its lord, its despot, one Sir Massingberd Heath. Its rector, at
+that date, was the Rev. Matthew Long, into whose wardship I, Peter
+Meredith, an Anglo-Indian lad, was placed by my parents. I loved Mr. Long,
+although he was my tutor; and oh, how I feared and hated Mr. Massingberd!
+It was not, however, my boyhood alone that caused me to hold this man as a
+monster of iniquity; it was the opinion which the whole county entertained
+of him, more or less. Like the unjust judge, he neither feared God nor
+regarded man.</p>
+
+<p>He had been a fast, very fast friend of the regent; but they were no
+longer on speaking terms. Sir Massingberd had left the gay, wicked world
+for good, and was obliged to live at his beautiful country seat in spite of
+himself. He was irretrievably ruined, and house and land being entailed
+upon his nephew Marmaduke, he had nothing but a life interest in
+anything.</p>
+
+<p>Marmaduke Heath was Mr. Long's pupil as well as myself, and he resided
+with his uncle at the Hall. He dreaded his relative beyond measure. All the
+pretended frankness with which the old man sometimes treated the lad was
+unable to hide the hate with which Sir Massingberd really regarded him; but
+for this heir-presumptive to the entail, the baronet might raise money to
+any extent, and once more take his rightful station in the world.</p>
+
+<p>Abject terror obscured the young existence of Marmaduke Heath. The
+shadow of Sir Massingberd cast itself over him alike when he went out from
+his hated presence and when he returned to it.</p>
+
+<p>Soon after my first meeting with Marmaduke, Sir Massingberd unexpectedly
+appeared before me. He was a man of Herculean proportions, dressed like an
+under-gamekeeper, but with the face of one who was used to command. On his
+forehead was a curious indented frown like the letter V, and his lips
+curled contemptuously upward in the same shape. These two together gave him
+a weird, demoniacal look, which his white beard, although long and flowing,
+had not enough of dignity to do away with. He ordered his nephew to go
+home, and the boy instantly obeyed, as though he almost dreaded a blow from
+his uncle. Then the baronet strode away, and his laugh echoed again and
+again, for it was joy to know that he was feared.</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Long determined to buy a horse for me, and upon my suggestion that I
+wished Marmaduke Heath to spend more time in my company, he and I went up
+to the Hall to ask Sir Massingberd if he were willing. The squire received
+us curtly, and upon hearing of my tutor's intention, declared that he
+himself would select a horse for Marmaduke. Then, since he wished to talk
+with Mr. Long concerning Mr. Chint, the family lawyer, he bade me go to his
+nephew's room, calling upon Grimjaw, a loathsome old dog, to act as my
+guide. This beast preceded me up the old oak staircase to a chamber door,
+before which it sat and whined. Marmaduke opened this and admitted me, and
+we sat talking together.</p>
+
+<p>My tutor found us together, and knowing the house better than the heir
+did, offered to play cicerone and show me over. In the state bed-room, a
+great room facing the north, he disclosed to us a secret stairway that
+opened behind a full-length portrait. Marmaduke, who had been unaware of
+its existence, grew ghastly pale.</p>
+
+<p>"The foot of the stairway is in the third bookcase on the left of the
+library door," said Mr. Long. "I dare say that nobody has moved the picture
+for twenty years."</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, yes!" said Marmaduke passionately. "My uncle has moved it. When I
+was ill, upon my coming to Fairburn, I slept here, and I had terrible
+visions. I see it all now. He wanted to frighten me to death, or to make me
+mad. He would come and stand by my bedside and stare at me. Cruel--cruel
+coward!"</p>
+
+<p>Then he begged us to go away. "My uncle will wonder at your long delay.
+He will suspect something," he said.</p>
+
+<p>"Peter," observed my tutor gravely, as we went homeward, "whatever you
+may think of what has passed to-day, say nothing. I am not so ignorant of
+the wrongs of that poor boy as I appear, but there is nothing for it but
+patience."</p>
+
+
+<h4><i>II.--A Gypsy's Curse</i></h4>
+
+
+<p>In a few days I was in possession of an excellent horse, and Marmaduke
+had the like fortune. My tutor examined the steed Sir Massingberd had
+bought with great attention, and after commenting on the tightness of the
+curb, declared that he would accompany us on our first ride. After we had
+left the village, he expressed a wish to change mounts with Marmaduke, and
+certainly if he had been a horsebreaker he could not have taken more pains
+with the animal. In the end he expressed himself highly satisfied. Some
+days afterwards, however, Panther, for so we called the horse, behaved in a
+strange and incomprehensible fashion, and at last became positively
+fiendish. Shying at a gypsy encampment, he rushed at headlong speed down a
+zigzagged chalk road, and at last pitched head-first over a declivity. When
+I found Marmaduke blood was at his mouth, blood at his ears, blood
+everywhere.</p>
+
+<p>"Marmaduke, Marmaduke!" I cried. "Speak! Speak, if it be but a single
+word! Great heaven, he is dead!"</p>
+
+<p>"Dead! No, not he," answered a hoarse, cracked voice at my ear. "The
+devil would never suffer a Heath of Fairburn to die at his age!"</p>
+
+<p>"Woman," cried I, for it was an old gypsy, who had somehow transported
+herself to the spot, "for God's sake go for help! There is a house yonder
+amongst the trees."</p>
+
+<p>"And why should I stir a foot," replied she fiercely, "for the child of
+a race that has ever treated me and mine as dogs?"</p>
+
+<p>Then she cursed Sir Massingberd as the oppressor of her kith and kin,
+concluding with the terrible words, "May he perish, inch by inch, within
+reach of the aid that shall never come, ere the God of the poor take him
+into His hand!"</p>
+
+<p>"If you hate Sir Massingberd Heath," said I despairingly, "and want to
+do him the worst service that lies in your power, flee, flee to that house,
+and bid them save this boy's life, which alone stands between his beggared
+uncle and unknown riches!"</p>
+
+<p>Revenge accomplished what pity had failed to work. She knelt at his
+side, from a pocket produced a spirit-flask in a leathern case, and applied
+it to his lips. After a painful attempt to swallow, he succeeded; his
+eyelids began tremulously to move, and the colour to return to his pallid
+cheeks. She disappeared; during her absence I noted that the tarnished
+silver top of the flask bore upon it a facsimile of one of the identical
+griffins which guarded each side of the broad steps that led to Fairburn
+Hall.</p>
+
+<p>After a short interval, a young and lovely girl appeared, accompanied by
+a groom and butler, who bore between them a small sofa, on which Marmaduke
+was lifted and gently carried to the house. The master came in soon,
+accompanied by the local doctor, who at last delivered the verdict that my
+friend "would live to be a baronet."</p>
+
+<p>He said, moreover, that the youth must be kept perfectly quiet, and not
+moved thence on any consideration--it might be for weeks. Harvey Gerard, a
+noble-looking gentleman, refused to admit Sir Massingberd under his
+roof.</p>
+
+<p>The baronet, however, did appear towards twilight, and forced his way
+into the house, where Harvey Gerard met him with great severity. Soon
+hatred took the place of all other expressions on the baronet's face, and
+he swore that he would see his nephew.</p>
+
+<p>"That you shall not do, Sir Massingberd," said the gentleman. "If you
+attempt to do so, my servants will put you out of the house by force."</p>
+
+<p>"Before night, then, I shall send for him, and he shall be carried back
+to Fairburn, to be nursed in his proper home."</p>
+
+<p>"Nursed!" repeated Harvey Gerard hoarsely. "Nursed by the
+gravedigger!"</p>
+
+<p>Sir Massingberd turned livid.</p>
+
+<p>"To hear you talk one would think that I had tried to murder the boy,"
+he said.</p>
+
+<p>"I <i>know</i> you did!" cried Harvey Gerard solemnly. "To-day you sent
+your nephew forth upon that devil with a snaffle-bridle instead of a curb!
+See, I track your thoughts like slime. Base ruffian, begone from beneath
+this roof, false coward!"</p>
+
+<p>Sir Massingberd started up like one stung by an adder.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, I say coward!" continued Harvey Gerard. "Heavens, that this
+creature should still feel touch of shame! Be off, be off; molest not
+anyone within this house at peril of your life! Murderer!"</p>
+
+<p>For once Sir Massingberd had met his match--and more. He seized his hat,
+and hurried from the room.</p>
+
+
+<h4><i>III.--A Wife Undesired</i></h4>
+
+
+<p>When Marmaduke recovered consciousness, twelve hours after his terrible
+fall, he told me that he had been given a sign of his approaching
+demise.</p>
+
+<p>"I have seen a vision in the night," he said, "far too sweet and fair
+not to have been sent from heaven itself. They say the Heaths have always
+ghastly warnings when their hour is come; but this was surely a gentle
+messenger."</p>
+
+<p>"Your angel is Lucy Gerard," replied I quietly, "and we are at this
+moment in her father's house."</p>
+
+<p>He was silent for a time, with features as pale as the pillow on which
+he lay; then he repeated her name as though it were a prayer.</p>
+
+<p>"It would indeed be bitter for me to die <i>now</i>," he said.</p>
+
+<p>I myself was stricken with love for Lucy Gerard, and would have laid
+down my life to kiss her finger-tips. Nearly half a century has passed over
+my head since the time of which I write, and yet, I swear to you, my old
+heart glows again, and on my withered cheeks there comes a blush as I call
+to mind the time when I first met that pure and lovely girl. But from the
+moment that Marmaduke Heath spoke to me as he did, upon his bed of
+sickness, of our host's daughter, I determined within myself not only to
+stand aside, and let him win if he could, but to help him by all the means
+within my power. And so it came about that later I told Lucy that his
+recovery depended upon her kindness, and won her to look upon him with
+compassion and with tenderness.</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Clint, the lawyer, came from London, and arrangements were made for
+Marmaduke to continue in Harvey Gerard's care, and when Marmaduke was
+convalescent the Gerards removed him to their residence in Harley street.
+After I had bidden them farewell, I rode slowly towards Fairburn, but was
+stopped at some distance by a young gypsy boy, who summoned me to the
+encampment to converse with the aged woman whom I had seen on the occasion
+of the accident. She bade me sit down beside her, and after a time produced
+the silver-mounted flask, concerning whose history I felt great curiosity.
+I asked her how it came into her possession, and she herself asked a
+question in turn.</p>
+
+<p>"Has it never struck you why Sir Massingberd has not long ago taken to
+himself a young wife, and begotten an heir for the lands of Fairburn, in
+despite of his nephew?"</p>
+
+<p>"If that be so," said I, "why does not Sir Massingberd marry?"</p>
+
+<p>Thereupon she told me that many years ago he had joined their company,
+and shared their wandering fortune. Her sister Sinnamenta, a beautiful girl
+beloved by the handsome Stanley Carew, had fascinated him, and he would
+have married her according to gypsy rites; but since her father did not
+believe that he meant to stay with the tribe longer than it suited him, he
+peremptorily refused his request. Sir Massingberd left them; they struck
+tent at once, and travelled to Kirk Yetholm, in Roxburghshire, a mile from
+the frontier of Northumberland. There the wretch followed her, and again
+proposed to go through the Cingari ceremony, and this time the father
+consented. It was on the wedding-day that he gave my informant the
+shooting-flask as a remembrance, just before he and his wife went away
+southward. Long months afterwards Sinnamenta returned heart-stricken,
+woebegone, about to become a mother, with nothing but wretchedness in the
+future, and even her happy past a dream dispelled.</p>
+
+<p>The gypsies were at Fairburn again, and Sinnamenta's father sent for Sir
+Massingberd, and he was told that the marriage was legal, Kirk Yetholm
+being over the border. An awful silence succeeded this disclosure. Sir
+Massingberd turned livid, and twice in vain essayed to speak; he was
+well-nigh strangled with passion. At last he caught Sinnamenta's Wrist with
+fingers of steel.</p>
+
+<p>"What man shall stop me from doing what I will with my own?" he cried.
+"Come along with me, my pretty one!"</p>
+
+<p>Stanley Carew flung himself upon him, knife in hand; but the others
+plucked him backward, and Sir Massingberd signed to his wife to followed
+him, and she obeyed. That night Stanley Carew was arrested on a false
+charge of horse-stealing, and lying witnesses soon afterwards brought him
+to the gallows.</p>
+
+<p>"I know not what she suffered immediately after she was taken from us,"
+concluded the old woman. "But this I have heard, that when he told her of
+the death of Stanley Carew, she fell down like one dead, and presently,
+being delivered of a son, the infant died after a few hours. Yonder," she
+looked menacingly towards Fairburn Hall, "the mother lives--a maniac. What
+else could keep me here in a place that tortures me with memories of my
+youth, and of loving faces that have crumbled into dust? What else but the
+hope of one day seeing my little sister yet, and the vengeance of Heaven
+upon him who has worked her ruin? If Massingberd Heath escape some awful
+end, there is no Avenger on high. I am old, but I shall see it yet, I shall
+see it before I die."</p>
+
+
+<h4><i>IV.--The Curse Fulfilled</i></h4>
+
+
+<p>I returned to Fairburn, and soon Sir Massingberd, finding that all
+correspondence with his nephew was interrupted by Harvey Gerard, began to
+pay small attentions to my tutor and myself. At last he appeared at the
+rectory, and desired me to forward a letter to Marmaduke. This--finding
+nothing objectionable in the contents--I agreed to do, and he departed,
+after inviting me to make use of his grounds whenever I pleased. On the
+morrow I yielded to curiosity, and after wandering to and fro in the park,
+came near a small stone house with unglazed, iron-grated windows. A short,
+sharp shriek clove the humid air, and approaching, I looked into a
+sitting-room, where an ancient female sat eating a chicken without knife or
+fork. Her hair was scanty and white as snow, but hung almost to the
+ground.</p>
+
+<p>"Permit me to introduce myself," she said. "I am Sinnamenta, Lady Heath.
+You are not Stanley Carew, are you? They told me that he was hung, but I
+know better than that. To be hung for nothing must be a terrible thing; but
+how much worse to be hung for love! It is not customary to watch a lady
+when she is partaking of refreshment."</p>
+
+<p>Then the poor mad creature turned her back, and I withdrew from the sad
+scene. A day or two afterwards the post carried misfortune from me to
+Harley Street. The wily baronet had fooled me, and had substituted a
+terrible letter for that which he had persuaded me to enclose to his
+nephew.</p>
+
+<p>"Return hither, sir, at once," he had written. "It is far worse than
+idle to attempt to cross my will. I give you twenty-four hours to arrive
+after the receipt of this letter. I shall consider your absence to be
+equivalent to a contumacious refusal. However well it may seem with you, it
+will not be well. Whenever you think yourself safest, you will be most in
+danger. There is, indeed, but one place of safety for you; come you
+home."</p>
+
+<p>Very soon afterwards, and before we knew of this villainy, word reached
+us that the baronet was lost, and could not be found. He had started on his
+usual nocturnal rounds in the preserves, and nobody had seen him since
+midnight. Old Grimjaw, the dog, had been found on the doorstep, nigh frozen
+to death.</p>
+
+<p>The news spread like wild-fire through Fairburn village. I myself joined
+the searchers, but soon separated from them, and passing the home spinney,
+near by which was the famous Wolsey oak, a tree of great age. I heard a
+sound that set my heart beating, and fluttering like the wings of a
+prisoned bird against its cage. Was it a strangled cry for "Help!" repeated
+once, twice, thrice, or was it the cold wind clanging and grinding the
+naked branches of the spinney? But nought living was to be seen; a bright
+wintry sun completely penetrated the leafless woodland. At last I came upon
+the warm but lifeless body of Grimjaw lying on the grass, and I hurried
+madly from the accursed place to where the men were dragging the lake.</p>
+
+<p>No clue was found, and my tutor began to fear that the gypsies had made
+away with their enemy. Word came that they had passed through the turnpike
+with a covered cart, and we rode out to interview them. The old woman met
+us, and conducted us to the vehicle, when we found Sinnamenta, Lady Heath,
+weaving rushes into crowns.</p>
+
+<p>"My little sister is not beaten now," said the beldam. "May God's curse
+have found Sir Massingberd! I would that I had his fleshless bones to show
+you. Where he may be we know not; we only hope that in some hateful spot he
+may be suffering unimagined pains!"</p>
+
+<p>By the next post I received bitter news from Harley Street. A copy of
+the menacing epistle reached me from Harvey Gerard. In a postscript Lucy
+added that Marmaduke was too ill to write. An hour later Mr. Long and I set
+off to town, where we found the lad in a less morbid state than we had
+expected. He had asked, and gained, Harvey Gerard's permission to marry his
+daughter, and the beautiful girl was supporting him with all her
+strength.</p>
+
+<p>The services of Townsend, the great Bow street runner, were called for;
+but in spite of his endeavours, no solution was discovered to the mystery
+of Sir Massingberd's disappearance. Fairburn Hall remained without a
+master, occupied only by the servants.</p>
+
+<p>At last Marmaduke came of age, and as he and Lucy were now man and wife,
+it was decreed that they must return to the old home. Art changed that
+sombre house into a comfortable and splendid mansion, and when Lucy brought
+forth a son, the place seemed under a blessing, and no longer under a
+curse. But it was not until the christening feast of the young heir was
+celebrated with due honour that the secret of Sir Massingberd's
+disappearance was discovered.</p>
+
+<p>Some young boys, playing at hide-and-seek, were using the Wolsey oak for
+"home," and, whilst waiting there, dug a hole with their knives, and came
+upon a life-preserver that the baronet had always carried. Then a keeper
+climbed the tree, and cried out that it was hollow, and there was a
+skeleton inside.</p>
+
+<p>"It's my belief," said the man, "that Sir Massingberd must have climbed
+up into the fork to look about him for poachers, and that the wood gave way
+beneath him, and let him down feet foremost into the trunk."</p>
+
+<p>Later, as I looked upon the ghastly relics of humanity, the old gypsy's
+curse recurred to my mind with dreadful distinctness. "May he perish, inch
+by inch, within reach of the aid that shall never come, ere the God of the
+poor take him into His hand."</p>
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+<pre>
+
+
+
+
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+
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+Project Gutenberg's The World's Greatest Books, Vol VI., by Various
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: The World's Greatest Books, Vol VI.
+
+Author: Various
+
+Release Date: February 20, 2004 [EBook #11180]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK WORLD'S GREATEST BOOKS ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by John Hagerson, Kevin Handy and PG Distributed Proofreaders
+
+
+
+
+THE WORLD'S GREATEST BOOKS
+
+JOINT EDITORS
+
+ARTHUR MEE Editor and Founder of the Book of Knowledge
+
+J.A. HAMMERTON Editor of Harmsworth's Universal Encyclopaedia
+
+VOL. VI FICTION
+
+
+MCMX
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+_Table of Contents_
+
+LE FANU, SHERIDAN
+  Uncle Silas
+
+LESAGE, RENE
+  Gil Blas
+
+LEVER, CHARLES
+  Charles O'Malley
+  Tom Burke of Ours
+
+LEWIS, M.G.
+  Ambrosio, or the Monk
+
+LINTON, MRS. LYNN
+  Joshua Davidson
+
+LOVER, SAMUEL
+  Handy Andy
+
+LYTTON, EDWARD BULWER
+  Eugene Aram
+  Last Days of Pompeii
+  The Last of the Barons
+
+MACKENZIE, HENRY
+  Man of Feeling
+
+MAISTRE, COUNT XAVIER DE
+  A Journey Round my Room
+
+MALORY, SIR THOMAS
+  Morte d'Arthur
+
+MANNING, ANNE
+  Household of Sir Thomas More
+
+MANZONI, ALESSANDRO
+  The Betrothed
+
+MARRYAT, CAPT
+  Mr. Midshipman Easy
+  Peter Simple
+
+MATURIN, CHARLES
+  Melmoth the Wanderer
+
+MENDOZA, DIEGO DE
+  Lazarillo de Tonnes
+
+MEREJOWSKI, DMITRI
+  Death of the Gods
+
+MERIMEE, PROSPER
+  Carmen
+
+MITFORD, MARY RUSSELL
+  Our Village
+
+MOIR, DAVID
+  Mansie Wauch
+
+MORIER, JAMES
+  Hajji Baba
+
+MURRAY, DAVID CHRISTIE
+  Way of the World
+
+NORRIS, FRANK
+  The Pit
+
+OHNET, GEORGES
+  The Ironmaster
+
+OUIDA
+  Under Two Flags
+
+PAYN, JAMES
+  Lost Sir Massingberd
+
+
+A Complete Index of THE WORLD'S GREATEST BOOKS will be found at the end
+of Volume XX.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+
+_Acknowledgment_
+
+Acknowledgment and thanks for permission to use the following selections
+are herewith tendered to G.P. Putnam's Sons, New York, for "The Death of
+the Gods," by Dmitri Merejkowski; and to Doubleday, Page & Company, New
+York, for "The Pit," by Frank Norris.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+
+
+SHERIDAN LE FANU
+
+
+Uncle Silas
+
+
+     Joseph Sheridan le Fanu, Irish novelist, poet, and journalist,
+     was born at Dublin on August 28, 1814. His grandmother was a
+     sister of Richard Brinsley Sheridan, his father a dean.
+     Educated at Trinity College, Dublin, Le Fanu became a
+     contributor to the "Dublin University Magazine," afterwards
+     its editor, and finally its proprietor. He also owned and
+     edited a Dublin evening paper. Le Fanu first came into
+     prominence in 1837 as the author of the two brilliant Irish
+     ballads, "Phaudhrig Croohore" and "Shamus O'Brien." His
+     novels, which number more than a dozen, were first published
+     in most cases in his magazine. His power of producing a
+     feeling of weird mystery ranks him with Edgar Allan Poe. It
+     may be questioned whether any Irish novelist has written with
+     more power. The most representative of his stories is "Uncle
+     Silas, a Tale of Bartram-Haugh," which appeared in 1864. Le
+     Fanu died on February 7, 1873.
+
+
+_I.--Death, the Intruder_
+
+
+It was winter, and great gusts were rattling at the windows; a very dark
+night, and a very cheerful fire, blazing in a genuine old fire-place in
+a sombre old room. A girl of a little more than seventeen, slight and
+rather tall, with a countenance rather sensitive and melancholy, was
+sitting at the tea-table in a reverie. I was that girl.
+
+The only other person in the room was my father, Mr. Ruthyn, of Knowl.
+Rather late in life he had married, and his beautiful young wife had
+died, leaving me to his care. This bereavement changed him--made him
+more odd and taciturn than ever. There was also some disgrace about his
+younger brother, my Uncle Silas, which he felt bitterly, and he had
+given himself up to the secluded life of a student.
+
+He was pacing the floor. I remember the start with which, not suspecting
+he was close by me, I lifted my eyes, and saw him stand looking fixedly
+on me from less than a yard away.
+
+"She won't understand," he whispered, "no, she won't. _Will_ she? They
+are easily frightened--ay, they are. I'd better do it another way, and
+she'll not suspect--she'll not suppose. See, child?" he said, after a
+second or two. "_Remember_ this key."
+
+It was oddly shaped, and unlike others.
+
+"It opens that." And he tapped sharply on the door of a cabinet. "You
+will tell nobody what I have said, under pain of my displeasure."
+
+"Oh, no, sir!"
+
+"Good child! _Except_ under one contingency. That is, in case I should
+be absent and Dr. Bryerly--you recollect the thin gentleman in
+spectacles and a black wig, who spent three days here last
+month?--should come and enquire for the key, you understand, in my
+absence."
+
+"But you will then be absent, sir," I said. "How am I to find the key?"
+
+"True, child. I am glad you are so wise. _That_, you will find, I have
+provided for. I have a very sure friend--a friend whom I once
+misunderstood, but now appreciate."
+
+I wondered silently whether it would be Uncle Silas.
+
+"He'll make me a call some day soon, and I must make a little journey
+with him. He's not to be denied; I have no choice. But on the whole I
+rather like it. Remember, I say, I rather like it."
+
+I think it was about a fortnight after this conversation that I was one
+night sitting in the great drawing-room window, when on a sudden, on the
+grass before me stood an odd figure--a very tall woman in grey
+draperies, courtesying rather fantastically, smiling very unpleasantly
+on me, and gabbling and cackling shrilly--I could not distinctly hear
+_what_--and gesticulating oddly with her long arms and hands. This was
+Madame de la Rougierre, my new governess.
+
+I think all the servants hated her. She was by no means a pleasant
+_gouvernante_ for a nervous girl of my years. She was always making
+excuses to consult my father about my contumacy and temper. She
+tormented me by ghost stories to cover her nocturnal ramblings, and she
+betrayed a terrifying curiosity about his health and his will. My cousin
+Monica, Lady Knollys, who visited us about this time, was shocked at her
+presence in the house; it was the cause of a rupture between my father
+and her. But not even a frustrated attempt to abduct me during one of
+our walks--which I am sure madame connived at--could shake my father's
+confidence in her, though he was perfectly transported with fury on
+hearing what had happened. It was not until I found her examining his
+cabinet by means of a false key that he dismissed her; but madame had
+contrived to leave her glamour over me, and now and then the memory of
+her parting menaces would return with an unexpected pang of fear.
+
+My father never alluded again to Madame de la Rougierre, but, whether
+connected with her exposure and dismissal or not, there appeared to be
+some new trouble at work in his mind.
+
+"I am anxious about you, Maud," he said. "_You_ are more interested than
+_I_ can be in vindicating his character."
+
+"Whose character, sir?" I ventured to inquire during the pause that
+followed.
+
+"Whose? Your Uncle Silas's. In course of nature he must survive me. He
+will then represent the family name. Would you make some sacrifice to
+clear that name, Maud?"
+
+I answered briefly; but my face, I believe, showed my enthusiasm.
+
+"I can tell you, Maud, if my life could have done it, it should not have
+been undone. But I had almost made up my mind to leave all to time to
+illuminate, or _consume_. But I think little Maud would like to
+contribute to the restitution of her family name. It may cost you
+something. Are you willing to buy it at a sacrifice? Your Uncle Silas,"
+he said, speaking suddenly in loud and fierce tones that sounded almost
+terrible, "lies under an intolerable slander. He troubles himself little
+about it; he is selfishly sunk in futurity--a feeble visionary. I am not
+so. The character and influence of an ancient family are a peculiar
+heritage--sacred, but destructible. You and I, we'll leave one proof on
+record which, fairly read, will go far to convince the world."
+
+That night my father bade me good-night early. I had fallen into a doze
+when I was roused by a dreadful crash and a piercing scream from Mrs.
+Rusk. Scream followed scream, pealing one after the other unabated,
+wilder and more terror-stricken. Then came a strange lull, and the dull
+sounds of some heavy body being moved.
+
+What was that dreadful sound? Who had entered my father's chamber? It
+was the visitor whom he had so long expected, with whom he was to make
+the unknown journey, leaving me alone. The intruder was Death!
+
+
+_II.--The Sorceries of Bartram-Haugh_
+
+
+One of those fearful aneurisms that lie close to the heart had given way
+in a moment. He had fallen, with the dreadful crash I had heard, dead
+upon the floor. He fell across the door, which caused a difficulty in
+opening it. Mrs. Rusk could not force it open. No wonder she had given
+way to terror. I think I should have lost my reason.
+
+I do not know how those awful days, and still more awful nights, passed
+over. Lady Knollys came, and was very kind. She was odd, but her
+eccentricity was leavened with strong commonsense; and I have often
+thought since with gratitude of the tact with which she managed my
+grief.
+
+I did not know where to write to Dr. Bryerly, to whom I had promised the
+key, but in accordance with my father's written directions, his death
+was forthwith published in the principal London papers. He came at
+midnight, accordingly, and on the morrow the will was read. Except for a
+legacy of L10,000 to his only brother, Silas Ruthyn, and a few minor
+legacies to relations and servants, my father had left his whole estate
+to me, appointing my Uncle Silas my sole guardian, with full parental
+authority over me until I should have reached the age of twenty-one, up
+to which time I was to reside under his care at Bartram-Haugh, with the
+sum of L2,000 paid yearly to him for my suitable maintenance and
+education.
+
+I was startled by the expression of cousin Monica's face. She looked
+ghastly and angry.
+
+"To whom," she asked, with an effort, "will the property belong in
+case--in case my cousin should die before she comes of age?"
+
+"To the next heir, her uncle, Mr. Silas Ruthyn. He's both heir-at-law
+and next-of-kin," replied the attorney.
+
+She was anxious to persuade my uncle to relinquish his guardianship to
+her; but the evening of the funeral a black-bordered letter came from
+him, bidding me remain at Knowl until he could arrange for my journey to
+him. There was a postscript, which made my cheek tingle.
+
+"Pray present my respects to Lady Knollys, who, I understand, is
+sojourning at Knowl. I would observe that a lady who cherishes, I have
+reason to fear, unfriendly feelings against your uncle is not the most
+desirable companion for his ward. But, upon the express condition that I
+am not made the subject of your discussions, I do not interpose to bring
+your intercourse to an immediate close."
+
+"Did I ever hear! Well, if this isn't impertinent!" exclaimed Lady
+Knollys. "I did not intend to talk about him, but now I _will_." And so
+it was that I heard the story of that enigmatical person--martyr, angel,
+demon--Uncle Silas, with whom my fate was now so strangely linked.
+
+It was twenty years ago. He was not a reformed rake, but a ruined one
+then. My father had helped him again and again, until his marriage with
+a barmaid. After that he allowed him five hundred a year, and the use of
+his estate of Bartram-Haugh. Then Mr. Charke, a gentleman of the turf,
+who was staying with my uncle for Doncaster Races, was found dead in his
+room--he had committed suicide by cutting his throat. And Uncle Silas
+was suspected of having killed him.
+
+This wretched Mr. Charke had won heavy wagers at the races from Uncle
+Silas, and at night they had played very deep at cards. Next morning his
+servant could not enter his room; it was locked on the inside, the
+window was fastened by a screw, and the chimney was barred with iron. It
+seemed that he had hermetically sealed himself in, and then killed
+himself. But he had been in boisterous spirits. Also, though his own
+razor was found near his right hand, the fingers of his left hand were
+cut to the bone. Then the memorandum-book in which his bets were noted
+was nowhere to be found. Besides, he had written two letters to a
+friend, saying how profitable he had found his visit to Bartram-Haugh,
+and that he held Uncle Silas's I O U's for a frightful sum; and although
+my uncle stoutly alleged he did not owe him a guinea, there had scarcely
+been time in one evening for him to win back so much money. In a moment
+the storm was up, and although my uncle met it bravely, he failed to
+overcome it, and became a social outcast, in spite of all my father's
+efforts.
+
+And now I was to rehabilitate him before the world, and accordingly all
+preparations were made for my departure from Knowl; and at last the
+morning came--a day of partings, a day of novelty, and regrets.
+
+I remember we passed a gypsy bivouac on our journey, with fires alight,
+on the edge of a great, heathy moor. I had my fortune told, and I am
+ashamed to confess I paid the gypsy a pound for a brass pin with a round
+bead for a head--a charmed pin, which would keep away rat, and cat, and
+snake, a malevolent spirit, or "a cove to cut my throat," from hurting
+me. The purchase was partly an indication of the trepidations of that
+period of my life. At all events, I had her pin and she my pound, and I
+venture to say I was the gladder of the two.
+
+It was moonlight when we reached Bartram-Haugh. It had a forlorn
+character of desertion and decay, contrasting almost awfully with the
+grandeur of its proportions and richness of its architecture. A shabby
+little old man, a young plump, but very pretty female figure in
+unusually short petticoats, and a dowdy old charwoman, all stood in the
+door among a riot of dogs. I sat shyly back, peeping at the picture
+before me.
+
+"Will you tell me--yes or no--is my cousin in the coach?" screamed the
+young lady. She received me with a hug and a hearty "buss," as she
+called that salutation, and was evidently glad to see me. Then, after
+leading me to my bed-room to make a hurried toilet, she conducted me to
+a handsome wainscotted room, where my Uncle Silas awaited me.
+
+A singular looking old man--a face like marble, with a fearful
+monumental look--an apparition, drawn, as it seemed, in black and white,
+venerable, bloodless, fiery-eyed, with its strange look of power and an
+expression so bewildering. Was it derision, or anguish, or cruelty, or
+patience?
+
+He said something in his clear, gentle, but cold voice, and, taking both
+my hands, led me affectionately to a chair near his own. He was a
+miserable invalid, he told me, after speaking a little eulogy of his
+brother and examining me closely, respecting his illness and its
+symptoms. At last, remarking that I must be fatigued, he rose and kissed
+me with a solemn tenderness, and, placing his hand on a large Bible,
+bade me "Remember that book; in it lives my only hope. Consult it, my
+beloved niece, day and night as the only oracle."
+
+"I'm awful afraid of the governor, I am," said Cousin Milly, when we had
+left him. "I was in a qualm. When he spies me a-napping maybe he don't
+fetch me a prod with his pencil-case over the head."
+
+But Milly was a pretty and a clever creature in spite of her uncouth
+dialect, and I liked her very much. We spent much time taking long
+country rambles and exploring the old house, many of whose rooms were
+closed and shuttered. Of my uncle we saw little. He was "queerish,"
+Milly said, and I learnt afterwards he took much laudanum.
+
+My other cousin, Dudley, I did not meet till later. To my horror, I
+beheld in him one of the party of ruffians who had terrified me so much
+the day of the attempted abduction at Knowl; but he stoutly denied ever
+having been there with an air so confident that I began to think I must
+be the dupe of a chance resemblance. My uncle viewed him with a strange,
+paternal affection. But dear Cousin Monica had written asking Milly and
+me to go to her, and we had some of the pleasantest and happiest days of
+our lives at her house of Elverston, for there Milly met her good little
+curate, the Rev. Sprigge Biddlepen, and Lord Ilbury.
+
+Uncle Silas was terribly ill when we returned to Bartram-Haugh, the
+result of an overdose of opium; but for the doctor's aid he would have
+died. Remembering how desperate Lady Knollys had told me his monetary
+position was, a new and dreadful suspicion began to haunt me.
+
+"Had he attempted to poison himself?"
+
+I remember I was left alone with him while his attendant fetched a fresh
+candle. A small thick Bible lay on the mantle-shelf. I turned over its
+leaves, and lighted on two or three odd-looking papers--promissory
+notes, I believe--when Uncle Silas, dressed in a long white
+morning-gown, slid over the end of the bed and stood behind me with a
+deathlike scowl and simper. Diving over my shoulder, with his long, thin
+hand he snatched the Bible from me, and whispered over my head, "The
+serpent beguiled her, and she did eat."
+
+It seemed an hour before Wyat came back. You may be sure I did not
+prolong my watch. I had a long, hysterical fit of weeping when I got to
+my room: the sorceries of Bartram-Haugh were enveloping.
+
+About this time Dudley began to persecute me with his odious attentions.
+I was obliged to complain of him to my uncle. He was disposed to think
+well of the match; but I could not consent, and it was arranged that my
+cousin should go abroad. And then that night I had the key to some of
+the mysterious doings at Bartram-Haugh--the comings and goings in the
+darkness which had so often startled me--the face of Madame de la
+Rougierre peeped into the room.
+
+
+_III.--A Night of Terror_
+
+
+Shortly afterwards I lost Milly, who was sent to a French school, where
+I was to follow her in three months. I bade her farewell at the end of
+Windmill Wood, and was sitting on the trunk of a tree when Meg Hawkes, a
+girl to whom I had once been kind, passed by.
+
+"Don't ye speak, nor look; fayther spies us," she said quickly. "Don't
+ye be alone wi' Master Dudley nowhere, for the world's sake!"
+
+The injunction was so startling that I had many an hour of anxious
+conjecture, and many a horrible vigil by night. But ten days later I was
+summoned to my uncle's room. He implored me once more to wed Dudley--to
+listen to the appeal of an old and broken-hearted man.
+
+"You see my suspense--my miserable and frightful suspense," he said.
+"I'm very miserable, nearly desperate. I stand before you in the
+attitude of a suppliant."
+
+"Oh, I must--I must--I _must_ say no!" I cried. "Don't question me,
+don't press me. I could not--I _could_ not do what you ask!"
+
+"I yield, Maud--I yield, my dear. I will _not_ press you. I have spoken
+to you frankly, perhaps too frankly; but agony and despair will speak
+out and plead, even with the most obdurate and cruel!"
+
+He shut the door, not violently, but with a resolute hand, and I thought
+I heard a cry.
+
+The discovery that Dudley was already married spared me further
+importunity. I was anxious to relieve my uncle's necessities, which, I
+knew were pressing; and the attorney from Feltram was up with him all
+night, trying in vain to devise some means by which I might do so. The
+morning after, I was told I must write to Lady Knollys to ask if I might
+go to her, as there was shortly to be an execution in the house.
+
+I met Dudley on my way through the hall. He spoke oddly about his
+father, and made a very strange proposal to me--that I should give him
+my written promise for twenty thousand pounds, and he would "take me
+cleverly out o' Bartram-Haugh and put me wi' my cousin Knollys!"
+
+I refused indignantly, but he caught me by the wrist.
+
+"Don't ye be a-flyin' out," he said peremptorily. "Take it or leave
+it--on or off! Can't ye speak wi' common sense for once? I'll take ye
+out o' all this, if you'll gi'e me what I say."
+
+He looked black when I refused again. I judged it best to tell my uncle
+of his offer. He was startled, but made what excuse he could, smiling
+askance, a pale, peaked smile that haunted me. And then, once more,
+entering an unfrequented room, I came upon the great bony figure of
+Madame de la Rougierre. She was to be my companion for a week or two, I
+was told, and shortly after her coming I found my walks curtailed. I
+wrote again to my Cousin Knollys, imploring her to take me away. This
+letter my uncle intercepted, and when she came in reply to my former
+letter, I had but the sight of her carriage driving swiftly away.
+
+The morning after I was informed madame was to take me to join Milly in
+France. As Uncle Silas had directed, I wrote to Cousin Monica from
+London. I know madame asked me what I would do for her if she took me to
+Lady Knollys. I was inwardly startled, but refused, seeing before me
+only a tempter and betrayer; and together we ended our journey, driving
+from the station through the dark and starless night to find ourselves
+at last in Mr. Charke's room at Bartram-Haugh.
+
+There were bailiffs in the house, I was told. I was locked in. I
+entreated madame wildly, piteously, to save me; but she mocked me in my
+agony. I escaped for a brief moment, and sought my uncle. I can never
+forget the look he fixed on me.
+
+"What is the meaning of this? Why is she here?" he asked, in a stern,
+icy tone. "You were always odd, niece. I begin to believe you are
+insane. There's no evil intended you, by--, there is none! Go to your
+room, and don't vex me, there's a good girl!"
+
+I went upstairs with madame, like a somnambulist. She was to leave me to
+sleep alone that night. I had lost the talismanic pin I always stuck in
+the bolster of my bed. Uncle Silas sent up spiced claret in a little
+silver flagon. Madame abstractedly drank it off, and threw herself on my
+bed. I believed she was feigning sleep only, and really watching me; but
+now I think the claret was drugged.
+
+About an hour afterwards I heard them digging in the courtyard. Like a
+thunder-bolt it smote my brain. "They are making my grave!"
+
+After the first dreadful stun, I grew wild, running up and down wringing
+my hands, and gasping prayers to heaven. Then a dreadful calm stole over
+me.
+
+
+_IV.--The Open Door_
+
+
+It was a very still night. A peculiar sound startled me and I saw a man
+descend by a rope, and take his stand on the windowsill. In a moment
+more, window, bars and all, swung noiselessly open, and Dudley Ruthyn
+stepped into the room.
+
+He stole, in a groping way, to the bed, and stooped over it. Nearly at
+the same moment there came a scrunching blow; an unnatural shriek,
+accompanied by a convulsive sound, as of the motion of running, and the
+arms drumming on the bed, and then another blow--and silence. The
+diabolical surgery was over. There came a little tapping at the door.
+
+"Who's that?" whispered Dudley hoarsely.
+
+"A friend," answered a sweet voice, and Uncle Silas entered.
+
+Coolness was given me in that dreadful moment. I knew that all depended
+on my being prompt and resolute. With a mental prayer for help, I glided
+from the room and descended the stairs. I tried the outer door. To my
+wild surprise it was open. In a moment I was in the free air--and as
+instantaneously was seized by Tom Brice, Meg's sweetheart, who was
+waiting to drive the guilty father and son away.
+
+"They shan't hurt ye, miss. Get ye in; I don't care a d----!" he said in
+a wild, fierce whisper. To me it was the voice of an angel. He drove
+over the grass so that our passage was noiseless; then, on reaching the
+highway, at a gallop. At length we entered Elverston. I think I was half
+wild. I could not speak, but ran, with a loud, long scream, into Cousin
+Monica's arms. I forget a great deal after that.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+It was not till two years afterwards that I learnt that Uncle Silas was
+found next morning dead of an overdose of laudanum, and that Dudley had
+disappeared.
+
+Milly married her good little clergyman. I am Lady Ilbury now, happy in
+the affection of a beloved and noble-hearted husband. A tiny voice is
+calling "Mamma;" the shy, useless girl you have known is now a mother,
+thinking, and trembling while she smiles, how strong is love, how frail
+is life.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+
+
+RENE LE SAGE
+
+
+Gil Blas
+
+
+     Except that he was born at Sarzeau, in Brittany, on May 8,
+     1668, and that he was the son of the novelist Claude le Sage,
+     little is known of the youth of Alain Rene le Sage. Until he
+     was eighteen he was educated with the Jesuits at Vannes, when,
+     it is conjectured he went to Paris to continue his studies for
+     the Bar. An early marriage drove him to seek a livelihood by
+     means of literature, and shortly afterwards he found a
+     valuable and sympathetic friend and patron in the Abbe de
+     Lyonne, who not only bestowed upon him a pension of about
+     L125, but also gave him the use of his library. The first
+     results of this favour were adaptations of two plays from
+     Rojas and Lope de Vega, which appeared some time during the
+     first two or three years of the eighteenth century. Le Sage's
+     reputation as a playwright and as a novelist rests, oddly
+     enough, in each case on one work. As the author of "Tuscaret,"
+     produced in 1709, he contributed to the stage one of the best
+     comedies in the French language; as author of "The Adventures
+     of Gil Blas of Santillana" he stands for all time in the front
+     rank of the world's novelists. Here he brought the art of
+     story-writing to the highest level of artistic truth. The
+     first and second parts of the work appeared in 1715, the third
+     in 1724, and the fourth in 1735. Le Sage died at Boulogne on
+     November 17, 1747.
+
+
+_I.--I Start on my Travels_
+
+
+My uncle, Canon Perez, was a worthy priest. To live well was, in his
+opinion, the chief duty of man. He lived very well. He kept the best
+table in the town of Oviedo. I was very glad of this, as I lived with
+him, my parents being too poor to keep me.
+
+My uncle gave me an excellent education. He even learned to read so as
+to be able to teach me himself. There were few ecclesiastics of his rank
+in Spain in the early part of the seventeenth century who could read a
+breviary as well as he could when I left him, at the age of seventeen,
+to continue my duties at the University of Salamanca.
+
+"Here are forty ducats, Gil Blas," he said to me when we parted. "And
+you can take my old mule and sell it when you reach Salamanca. Then you
+will be able to live comfortable until you obtain a good position."
+
+It is, I suppose, about two hundred miles from Oviedo to Salamanca. Not
+very far, you will say, but it took me two years to cover the distance.
+When one travels along a high road at the age of seventeen, master of
+one's actions, of an old mule, and forty ducats, one is bound to meet
+with adventures on the way. I was out to see the world, and I meant to
+see it; my self-confidence was equalled only by my utter inexperience.
+Out of my first misadventure came an extraordinary piece of good luck. I
+fell into the hands of some brigands, and lost my mule and my money.
+Among my fellow prisoners was a wealthy lady, Dona Mencia, of Burgos. I
+helped her to escape and got away myself, and when I came to Burgos she
+rewarded me very handsomely with a diamond ring and a thousand ducats.
+This changed my plan of life completely. Why should I go and study at
+Salamanca? Did I want to become a priest or a pedant? I was now sure
+that I didn't.
+
+"Gil Blas," I said, "you are a good-looking lad, clever, well-educated,
+and ambitious. Why not go to Madrid and try to get some place at the
+court of King Philip the Third?"
+
+I spent sixty ducats in dressing myself out gaily in the manner of a
+rich cavalier, and I engaged a man of about thirty years of age to come
+with me as my servant.
+
+Lamela, as he was called, was quite different from the other valets who
+applied for the position. He did not demand any sum as wages.
+
+"Only let me come with you, sir," he said. "I shall be content with
+whatever you give me."
+
+It seemed to me that I had got a very good servant We slept at Duengas
+the first night, and on the second day we arrived at Valladolid. As I
+was sitting in my inn, a charming lady entered and asked to see me.
+
+"My dear Gil Blas," she exclaimed "Lamela has just told me of your
+arrival. I am a cousin of Dona Mencia, and I received a letter from her
+this morning. How brave it was of you to rescue her from those wicked
+brigands! I can't leave you in this inn. You must come at once to my
+house. My brother, Don Raphael, will be delighted to see you when he
+returns in an hour or two from our country castle."
+
+Dona Camilla, as the lady was called, led me to a great house in the
+best part of the town, and at the door we met Don Raphael. "What a
+handsome young cavalier you are, my dear Gil Blas!" he said. "You must
+make up your mind to stay with us for some weeks."
+
+The supper was a pleasant affair. Dona Camilla and her brother found
+something to admire in everything I said, and I began to fancy myself as
+a wit. It was very late when Lamela led me to my bed-room and helped me
+to undress. And it was very late when I awoke next day. I called to
+Lamela, but he did not come, so I arose and dressed myself and went
+downstairs. To my surprise there was nobody in the house, and all my
+baggage had disappeared. I looked at my hand--the diamond ring had gone.
+Then I understood why Lamela had been willing to come with me without
+troubling about wages. I had fallen for a second time into the hands of
+thieves. They had hired the furnished house for a week, and had trapped
+me in it. It was clear that I had boasted too much at Burgos about the
+thousand ducats which Dona Mencia gave me. Now I found myself at
+Valladolid quite penniless.
+
+As I walked along the street in a very despondent mood, not knowing how
+to get a meal, someone tapped me on the shoulder, and said, "Good
+gracious, Gil Blas, I hardly knew you! What a princely dress you've got
+on. A fine sword, silk stockings, a velvet mantle and doublet with
+silver lacings! Have you come into a fortune?"
+
+I turned around, and found it was Fabrice, an old schoolfellow, the son
+of a barber at Oviedo. I told him of my adventure.
+
+"Pride comes before a fall, you see," he said with a laugh. "But I can
+get you a place if you care to take it. One of the principal physicians
+of the town, Dr. Sangrado, is looking for a secretary. I know you write
+a very good hand. Sell your fine raiment and buy some plain clothes, and
+I will take you to the doctor."
+
+I am glad to say that I obtained the post, but I wasn't altogether
+satisfied with it. Dr. Sangrado believed in vegetarianism, and he gave
+me only peas and beans and baked apples to eat, and not much of those.
+At the end of a fortnight I resolved to go as a servant in some house:
+where meat and wine were to be had.
+
+"Don't be foolish," said Sangrado. "Your fortune is made if you only
+stay with me. I am getting old and I require someone to help me in my
+practice. You can do it. You need not waste your time in studying all
+the nonsense written by other doctors. You have only to follow my
+method. Never give a patient medicine. Bleed him well, and tell him to
+drink a pint of hot water every half hour. If that doesn't cure
+him--well, it's time he died."
+
+So I donned one of Sangrado's gowns, which gave me a very original
+appearance, as it was much too long and ample for me, and then I began
+to attend his patients. A few of them, I believe, managed to recover.
+One day a woman stopped me and took me into her house to look at her
+niece. I recognised the girl as soon as I saw her. It was the pretty
+adventuress, Camilla, who had decoyed me and helped to rob me of my
+thousand ducats. When I took her hand to feel her pulse I perceived that
+she was wearing my diamond ring. Happily, she was too ill to know me.
+After ordering her to be bled and given a pint of warm water every half
+hour, I went out and talked the matter over with Fabrice. We resolved
+not to call in the police, as they would certainly keep whatever money
+of mine they recovered. The ways of the law in Spain in the seventeenth
+century are very strange and intricate.
+
+Nevertheless, I returned late at night to the house accompanied by a
+sergeant of the police and five of his men, all well armed. I then awoke
+Camilla, and told her to dress herself and attend before the magistrate.
+
+"Oh, Gil Blas," she cried, "have pity on me. Lamela and Raphael have run
+off with the money, and left me alone here on a bed of sickness."
+
+I knew this was true, as I had made inquiries; but I also knew that
+Camilla had had a share of the spoil, and had bought some valuable
+jewelry with it. So I said, "Very well, I won't be hard on you. But you
+must give me back the diamond ring which you are wearing, and you must
+satisfy these officers of the police."
+
+Poor Camilla understood what I meant. It is a costly matter to satisfy
+the Spanish police. She gave me the ring, and then, with a sigh, she
+opened a casket and handed the sergeant everything it contained--a
+necklace of beautiful pearls, a pair of fine earrings, and some other
+jewels.
+
+"Isn't this better than calling in the police?" said the sergeant when
+we had left the house. "There are the jewels. Two hundred ducats' worth,
+I'll be bound!"
+
+No doubt, dear reader, you have seen through this little plot. The
+supposed sergeant was my old friend, Fabrice, and his five men were five
+young barbers of his acquaintance. They quickly changed their clothes,
+and we all went to an inn and spent a merry evening together.
+
+
+_II.--In Male Attire_
+
+
+A few days afterwards I took up the plan which I had formed at Burgos,
+and bravely set out for Madrid in the hope of making my fortune there.
+But my money did not last long, for on reaching the capital I fell in
+with a wild company of fashionable actors and actresses.
+
+As my purse grew lighter my conscience became tenderer, and at length I
+humbly accepted the position of lackey in the house of a rich old
+nobleman, Don Vincent de Guzman. He was a widower, with an only child,
+Aurora--a lovely, gay, and accomplished girl of twenty-six years of age.
+
+I had hardly been with him a month when he died, leaving his daughter
+mistress of all his wealth, and free to do what she liked with it. To my
+surprise, Aurora then began to distinguish me from all the other
+servants. I could see by the way she looked at me that there was
+something about me that attracted her. Great ladies, I knew, sometimes
+fall in love with their lackeys, and one evening my hopes were raised to
+the highest pitch; for Aurora's maid then whispered to me that somebody
+would like to talk to me alone at midnight in the garden. Full of wild
+impatience, I arrived at the spot two hours before the time. Oh, those
+two hours! They seemed two eternities.
+
+At midnight Aurora appeared, and I threw myself at her feet, exclaiming,
+"Oh, my dear lady! Even in my wildest dreams of love I never thought of
+such happiness as this!"
+
+"Don't talk so loud!" said Aurora, stepping back and laughing. "You will
+rouse all the household. So you thought I was in love with you? My dear
+boy, I am in love with somebody else. Knowing how clever and ingenious
+you are, I want you to come at once with me to Salamanca and help me to
+win my love."
+
+Naturally, I was much disconcerted by this strange turn of affairs.
+However, I managed to recover myself and listen to my mistress. She had
+fallen in love with a gallant young nobleman, Don Luis Pacheco, who was
+unaware of the passion he inspired. He was going the next day to
+Salamanca to study at the university, and Aurora had resolved to go
+there also, dressed as a young nobleman, and make his acquaintance. She
+had fallen in love with him at sight, and had never found an opportunity
+to speak to him.
+
+"I shall get two sets of rooms in different parts of the town," she said
+to me. "In one I shall live as Aurora de Guzman, with my maid, who must
+play the part of an aunt. In the other, I shall be Don Felix de Mendoc,
+a gallant cavalier, and you must be my valet."
+
+We set off for Salamanca at daybreak, and arrived before Don Luis.
+Aurora took a furnished mansion in the fashionable quarter, and I called
+at the principal inns, and found the one where Don Luis had arranged to
+stay, Aurora then hid her pretty brown tresses under a wig, and put on a
+dashing cavalier's costume, and came and engaged a room at the place
+where her lover was.
+
+"So you have come to study at the university, sir?" said the innkeeper.
+"How lucky! Another gallant young nobleman has just taken a room here
+for the same purpose. You will be able to dine together and entertain
+one another."
+
+He introduced his two guests, and they quickly became fast friends.
+
+"Do you know, Don Felix, you're uncommonly good-looking," said Don Luis,
+as they sat talking over the wine. "Between us we shall set on fire the
+hearts of the pretty girls of Salamanca."
+
+"There's really a lovely girl staying in the town," said my mistress.
+"She's a cousin of mine, Aurora de Guzman. We are said to resemble each
+other in a remarkable way."
+
+"Then she must be a beautiful creature," said Don Luis, "for you have
+fine, regular features and an admirable colour. When can I see this
+paragon?"
+
+"This afternoon, if you like," said my mistress.
+
+They went together to the mansion, where the maid received them, dressed
+as an elderly noblewoman.
+
+"I'm very sorry, Don Felix," said the maid, "but my niece has a bad
+headache, and she has gone to lie down."
+
+"Very well," said the pretended cousin. "I will just introduce my
+friend, Don Luis, to you. Tell Aurora we will call to-morrow morning."
+
+Don Luis was much interested in the lovely girl whom he had not been
+able to see. He talked about her to his companion late into the night.
+The next day, as they were about to set out to visit her, I rushed in,
+as arranged, with a note for my mistress.
+
+"What a nuisance!" she said. "Here is some urgent business I must at
+once attend to. Don Luis, just run round and tell my cousin that I
+cannot come until this afternoon!"
+
+Don Luis retired to put some final touches to his dress, and my mistress
+hurried off with me to her mansion, and there, with the help of her
+maid, she quickly got into her proper clothes. She received Don Luis
+very kindly, and they talked together for quite two hours. Don Luis then
+went away, and Aurora slipped into her cavalier's costume and met him at
+the inn.
+
+"My dear Felix," said Don Luis, "your cousin is an adorable lady. I'm
+madly in love with her. If I can only win her, I'll marry and settle
+down on my estates."
+
+Aurora gazed at him very tenderly, and then, with a gay laugh, she shook
+off her wig and let her curls fall about her shoulders.
+
+Don Felix knelt at her feet and kissed her hands, crying, "Oh, my
+beautiful Aurora! Do you really care for me? How happy we shall be
+together!"
+
+The two lovers resolved to return at once to Madrid, and make
+preparations for the wedding. At the end of a fortnight my mistress was
+married, and I again set out on my travels with a well-lined purse.
+
+
+_III.--Old Acquaintances_
+
+
+I had always had a particular desire to see the famous town of Toledo. I
+arrived there in three days, and lodged at a good inn, where, by reason
+of my fine dress, I passed for a gentleman of importance. But I soon
+discovered that Toledo was one of those places in which it is easier to
+spend money than to gain it.
+
+So I set out for Aragon. On the road I fell in with a young cavalier
+going in the same direction. He was a man of a frank and pleasant
+disposition, and we soon got on a friendly footing. His name, I learned,
+was Don Alfonso; he was, like me, seeking for means of livelihood.
+
+It came on to rain very heavily as we were skirting the base of a
+mountain, and, in looking about for some place of shelter, we found a
+cave in which an aged, white-haired hermit was living. At first he was
+not pleased to see us, but something about me seemed to strike him
+favourably, and he then gave us a kind welcome. We tied our horses to a
+tree, and prepared to stay the night. The hermit began to talk to us in
+a very pious and edifying way, when another aged anchorite ran into the
+cave, and said, "It is all over; we're discovered. The police are after
+us!"
+
+The first hermit tore off his white beard and his hair, and took off his
+long robe, showing a doublet beneath; and his companion followed his
+example. In a few moments they were changed into a couple of young men
+whose faces I recognised.
+
+"Raphael! Lamela! What mischief are you working now? And where are my
+thousand ducats, you rascals?"
+
+"Ah, Gil Blas, I knew you at once!" said Raphael blandly. "One comes on
+old acquaintances when one least expects them. I know we treated you
+badly. But the money's gone, and can't be recovered. Come with us, and
+we will soon make up to you all that you have lost."
+
+It was certainly unwise to remain in a cave which the police were about
+to visit, and, as the rain had ceased and the night had fallen, we all
+set out in the darkness to find some better shelter. We took the road to
+Requena, and came to a forest, where we saw a light shining in the
+distance. Don Alfonso crept up to the spot, and saw four men sitting
+round a fire, eating and quarrelling. It was easy to see what they were
+quarrelling about. An old gentleman and a lovely young girl were bound
+to a tree close by, and by the tree stood a fine carriage.
+
+"They are brigands," said Alfonso, when he returned, "who have captured
+a nobleman and his daughter, I think. Let us attack them. In order, no
+doubt, to prevent their quarrelling turning into a deadly affray, they
+have piled all their arms in a heap some yards away from the fire. So
+they cannot make much of a fight."
+
+And they did not. We quietly surrounded them, and shot them down before
+they were able to move. Don Alfonso and I then set free the captives,
+while Raphael and Lamela rifled the pockets of the dead robbers.
+
+"I am the Count of Polan, and this is my daughter Seraphina," said the
+old gentleman. "If you will help me to get my carriage ready, I will
+drive back to an inn which we passed before entering the forest."
+
+When we came to the inn, the count begged us all to stay with him.
+Raphael and Lamela, however, were afraid that the police would track
+them out; Don Alfonso, who had been talking very earnestly to Seraphina,
+was, for some strange reason, also unwilling to remain; so I fell in
+with their views.
+
+"Why didn't you stay?" I said to Don Alfonso.
+
+"I was afraid the count would recognise me, as Seraphina has done," he
+said. "I killed his son in a duel, just when I was trying to win
+Seraphina's love. Heaven grant that the service I have now rendered will
+make him inclined to forgive me."
+
+The day was breaking when we reached the mountains around Requena. There
+we hid till nightfall, and then we made our way in the darkness to the
+town of Xeloa. We found a quiet, shady retreat beside a woodland stream,
+and there we stayed, while Lamela went into the town to buy provisions.
+He did not return until evening. He brought back some extraordinary
+things.
+
+He opened a great bundle containing a long black mantle and robe,
+another costume, a roll of parchment, a quill, and a great seal in green
+wax.
+
+"Do you remember the trick you played on Camilla?" he said to me. "I
+have a better scheme than that. Listen. As I was buying some provisions
+at a cook-shop, a man entered in a great rage and began abusing a
+certain Samuel Simon, a converted Jew and a cruel usurer. He had ruined
+many merchants at Xeloa, and all the towns-people would like to see him
+ruined in turn. Then, my dear Gil Blas, I remembered your clever trick,
+and brought these clothes so that we might visit this Jew dressed up as
+the officers of the Inquisition."
+
+After we had made a good meal, Lamela put on the robe and mantle of the
+Inquisitor, Raphael the costume of the registrar, and I took the part of
+a sergeant of the police. We walked very solemnly to the house of the
+usurer; Simon opened the door himself, and started back in affright.
+
+"Master Simon," said Lamela, in a grave imperative tone of voice, "I
+command you, on behalf of the Holy Inquisition, to deliver to these
+officers the key of your cabinet. I must have your private papers
+closely examined. Serious charges of heresy have been brought against
+you."
+
+The usurer grew pale with fear. Far from doubting any deceit on our
+part, he imagined that some of his enemies had informed the Holy Office
+against him. He obeyed without the least resistance, and opened his
+cabinet.
+
+"I am glad to see," said Lamela, "that you do not rebel against the
+orders of the Holy Inquisition. Retire now to another room, and let me
+carry out the examination without interference."
+
+Simon withdrew into a farther room, and Lamela and Raphael quickly
+searched in the cabinet for the strongbox. It was unlocked, being so
+full of money that it could not be closed. We filled all our pockets;
+then our hose; and then stuffed the coins in any place in our clothes
+that would hold them. After this, we closed the cabinet, and our
+pretended Inquisitor sealed it down with a great seal of green wax, and
+said very solemnly to the usurer, "Master Simon, I have sealed your
+cabinet with the seal of the Holy Office. Let me find it untouched when
+I return to-morrow morning to inform you of the decision arrived at in
+your case."
+
+The next morning we were a good many leagues from Xeloa. At breakfast,
+we counted over the money which we had taken from Simon. It came to
+three thousand ducats, of which we each took a fourth part. Raphael and
+Lamela then desired to carry out a similar plot against someone in the
+next town; but Don Alfonso and I would not agree to take any part in the
+affair, and set out for Toledo. There, Don Alfonso was reconciled to the
+Count of Polan, and soon afterwards he and Seraphina were happily
+married.
+
+I retired to Lirias, a pleasant estate that Don Alfonso gave me, and
+there I married happily, and grew old among my children. In the reign of
+Philip IV., I went to the court, and served under the great minister,
+Olivarez. But I have now returned to Lirias, and I do not intend to go
+to Madrid again.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+
+
+CHARLES LEVER
+
+
+Charles O'Malley
+
+
+     The author of "Charles O'Malley," perhaps the most typical of
+     Irish novelists, was of English descent on his father's side.
+     But Charles James Lever himself was Irish by birth, being born
+     at Dublin on August 31, 1806--Irish in sentiment and
+     distinctly Irish in temperament. In geniality and extravagance
+     he bore much resemblance to the gay, riotous spirits he has
+     immortalised in his books. "Of all the men I have ever
+     encountered," says Trollope, "he was the surest fund of
+     drollery." Lever was intended for medicine; but financial
+     difficulties forced him to return to literature. His first
+     story was "Harry Lorrequer," published in 1837. It was
+     followed in 1840 by "Charles O'Malley, the Irish Dragoon,"
+     which established his reputation as one of the first humorists
+     of his day. The story is the most popular of all Lever's
+     works, and in many respects the most characteristic. The
+     narrative is told with great vigour, and the delineation of
+     character is at once subtle and life-like. Lever died on June
+     1, 1872.
+
+
+_I.--O'Malley of O'Malley Castle_
+
+
+It was in O'Malley Castle, a very ruinous pile of incongruous masonry
+that stood in a wild and dreary part of Galway, that I passed my infancy
+and youth. When a mere child I was left an orphan to the care of my
+worthy uncle. My father, whose extravagance had well sustained the
+family reputation, had squandered a large and handsome property in
+contesting elections for his native county, and in keeping up that
+system of unlimited hospitality for which Ireland in general, and Galway
+more especially, was renowned. The result was, as might be expected,
+ruin and beggary. When he died the only legacy he left to his brother
+was a boy of four years of age, entreating him, with his last breath,
+"Be anything you like to him, Godfrey, but a father--or, at least, such
+a one as I have proved."
+
+Godfrey O'Malley sometime previous had lost his wife, and when this new
+trust was committed to him he resolved never to re-marry, but to rear me
+as his own child.
+
+From my earliest years his whole anxiety was to fit me for the part of a
+country gentleman, as he regarded that character--_viz._, I rode boldly
+with the fox-hounds; I was about the best shot within twenty miles; I
+could swim the Shannon at Holy Island; I drove four-in-hand better than
+the coachman himself; and from finding a hare to hooking a salmon my
+equal could not be found from Killaloe to Banagher. These were the
+staple of my endowments; besides which, the parish priest had taught me
+a little Latin, a little French, and a little geometry.
+
+When I add to this portraiture of my accomplishments that I was nearly
+six feet high, with more than a common share of activity and strength
+for my years, and no inconsiderable portion of good looks, I have
+finished my sketch, and stand before my reader.
+
+We were in the thick of canvassing the county for the parliamentary seat
+in my uncle's interest. O'Malley Castle was the centre of operations;
+while I, a mere stripling, and usually treated as a boy, was entrusted
+with an important mission, and sent off to canvass a distant relation,
+Mr. Matthew Blake, who might possibly be approachable by a younger
+branch of the family, with whom he had never any collision.
+
+I arrived at his house while the company were breakfasting. After the
+usual shaking of hands and hearty greetings were over, I was introduced
+to Sir George Dashwood, a tall and singularly handsome man of about
+fifty, and his daughter, Lucy Dashwood.
+
+If the sweetest blue eyes that ever beamed beneath a forehead of snowy
+whiteness, over which dark brown and waving hair fell, less in curls
+than masses of locky richness, could only have known what wild work they
+were making of my poor heart, Miss Dashwood, I trust, would have looked
+at her teacup or her muffin rather than at me, as she actually did, on
+that fatal morning.
+
+Beside her sat a tall, handsome man of about five-and-thirty, or perhaps
+forty, years of age, with a most soldierly air, who, as I was presented
+to him, scarcely turned his head, and gave me a half-nod of unequivocal
+coldness. As I turned from the lovely girl, who had received me with
+marked courtesy, to the cold air and repelling hauteur of the
+dark-browed captain, the blood rushed throbbing to my forehead; and as I
+walked to my place at the table, I eagerly sought his eye, to return him
+a look of defiance and disdain, proud and contemptuous as his own.
+
+Captain Hammersly, however, never took further notice of me, and I
+formed a bitter resolution, which I endeavoured to carry into effect
+during the next day's hunt. Mounted on my best horse, I deliberately led
+him across the worst and roughest country, river, and hills, and walls,
+and ditches, till I finished up with a broken head and he with a broken
+arm, and a horse that had to be slaughtered.
+
+On the fourth day after this adventure I was able to enter the
+drawing-room again. Sir George Dashwood made the kindest inquiries about
+my health.
+
+"They tell me you are to be a lawyer, Mr. O'Malley," said he; "and, if
+so, I must advise you to take better care of your headpiece."
+
+"A lawyer, papa? Oh, dear me!" said his daughter. "I should never have
+thought of his being anything so stupid."
+
+"Why, silly girl, what would you have a man to be?"
+
+"A dragoon, to be sure, papa," said the fond girl, as she pressed her
+arm around him, and looked up in his face with an expression of mingled
+pride and affection.
+
+That word sealed my destiny.
+
+
+_II.--I Join the Dragoons_
+
+
+I had been at Mr. Blake's house five days before I recollected my
+uncle's interests; but with one hole in my head and some half-dozen in
+my heart my memory was none of the best. But that night at dinner I
+discovered, to my savage amazement, that Mr. Blake and all the company
+were there in the interest of the opposition candidate, and that Sir
+George Dashwood was their candidate. In my excitement I hurled my
+wineglass at the head of one of the company who expressed himself in
+regard to my uncle in a manner insulting to a degree. In the duel which
+followed I shot my opponent.
+
+I had sprung into man's estate. In three short days I had fallen deeply,
+desperately, in love, and had wounded, if not killed, an antagonist in a
+duel. As I meditated on these things I was aroused by the noise of
+horses' feet. I opened the window, and beheld no less a person than
+Captain Hammersly. I begged of him to alight and come in.
+
+"I thank you very much," he said; "but, in fact, my hours are now
+numbered here. I have just received an order to join my regiment. I
+could not, however, leave the country without shaking hands with you. I
+owe you a lesson in horsemanship, and I'm only sorry that we are not to
+have another day together. I'm sorry you are not coming with us."
+
+"Would to heaven I were!" said I, with an earnestness that almost made
+my brain start.
+
+"Then why not?"
+
+"Unfortunately, my worthy uncle, who is all to me in this world, would
+be quite alone if I were to leave him; and, although he has never said
+so, I know he dreads the possibility of my suggesting such a thing."
+
+"Devilish hard; but I believe you are right. Something, however, may
+turn up yet to alter his mind. And so good-bye, O'Malley, good-bye."
+
+During the contest for the seat--which was frankly fought in pitched
+battles and scrimmages, and by corruption and perjury--I managed to save
+Miss Dashwood's life. When polling-time came, Sir George found the
+feeling against him was so strong, and we were so successful in beating
+his voters out of the town, in spite of police and soldiers, that he
+resigned his candidature.
+
+Afterwards I spent some time in Dublin, nominally in preparation for the
+law, at Trinity College. But my college career convinced my uncle that
+my forte did not lie in the classics, and Sir George succeeded in
+inducing him to yield to my wishes, and interested himself so strongly
+for me that I obtained a cornetcy in the 14th Light Dragoons a week
+before the regiment sailed for Portugal. On the morning of my last day
+in Dublin I met Miss Dashwood riding in the park. For some minutes I
+could scarcely speak. At last I plucked up courage a little, and said,
+"Miss Dashwood, I have wished most anxiously, before I parted for ever
+with those to whom I owe already so much, that I should, at least, speak
+my gratitude."
+
+"But when do you think of going?"
+
+"To-morrow. Captain Power, under whose command I am, has received orders
+to embark immediately for Portugal."
+
+I thought--perhaps it was but a thought--that her cheek grew somewhat
+paler as I spoke; but she remained silent.
+
+Fixing my eyes full upon her I spoke.
+
+"Lucy, I feel I must confess it, cost what it may--I love you. I know
+the fruitlessness, the utter despair, that awaits such a sentiment. My
+own heart tells me that I am not, cannot be, loved in return. I ask for
+nothing; I hope for nothing. I see that you at least pity me. Nay, one
+word more. Do not, when time and distance have separated us, think that
+the expressions I now use are prompted by a mere sudden ebullition of
+boyish feeling; for I swear to you that my love to you is the source and
+spring of every action in my life, and, when I cease to love you, I
+shall cease to feel. And now, farewell; farewell for ever."
+
+I pressed her hand to my lips, gave one long, last look, turned my horse
+rapidly away, and, ere a minute, was out of sight.
+
+
+_III.--I Smell Gunpowder_
+
+
+What a contrast to the dull monotony of our life at sea did the scene
+present which awaited us on landing at Lisbon! The whole quay was
+crowded with hundreds of people, eagerly watching the vessel which bore
+from her mast the broad ensign of Britain.
+
+The din and clamour of a mighty city mingled with the far-off sounds of
+military music; and, in the vistas of the opening streets, masses of
+troops might be seen, in marching order. All betokened the near approach
+of war.
+
+On the morning after we landed, Power rode off with dispatches to
+headquarters, leaving me to execute two commissions with which he had
+been entrusted--a packet for Hammersly from Miss Dashwood and an epistle
+from a love-sick midshipman who could not get on shore, to the Senhora
+Inez da Silviero. I took up the packet for Hammersly with a heavy heart.
+Alas! thought I, how fatally may my life be influenced by it!
+
+The loud call of a cavalry trumpet roused me, and I passed out into the
+street for the morning's inspection. The next day I delivered the packet
+to the Senhora Inez, by whom I was warmly received--rather more on my
+own account than on that of the little midshipman, I fancied. Certainly
+I never beheld a being more lovely, and I found myself paying her some
+attentions. Yet she was nothing to me. It is true, she had, as she most
+candidly informed me, a score of admirers, among whom I was not even
+reckoned; she was evidently a coquette. On May 7, 1809, we set off for
+Oporto. The 14th were detailed to guard the pass to the Douro until the
+reinforcements were up, and then I saw my first engagement. Never till
+now, as we rode to the charge, did I know how far the excitement reaches
+when, man to man, sabre to sabre, we ride forward to the battlefield. On
+we went, the loud shout of "Forward!" still ringing in our ears. One
+broken, irregular discharge from the French guns shook the head of our
+advancing column, but stayed us not as we galloped madly on.
+
+I remember no more. The din, the smoke, the crash--the cry for quarter,
+mingled with the shout of victory, the flying enemy--are all commingled
+in my mind, but leave no trace of clearness or connection between them;
+and it was only when the column wheeled to re-form that I awoke from my
+trance of maddening excitement, and perceived that we had carried the
+position and cut off the guns of the enemy.
+
+The scene was now beyond anything, maddening in its interest. From the
+walls of Oporto the English infantry poured forth in pursuit; while the
+whole river was covered with boats, as they still continued to cross
+over. The artillery thundered from the Sierra, to protect the landing,
+for it was even still contested in places; and the cavalry, charging in
+flank, swept the broken ranks and bore down their squares. Then a final
+impetuous charge carried the day.
+
+From that fight I got my lieutenancy, and then was sent off by Sir
+Arthur Wellesley on special duty to the Lusitanian Legion in
+Alcantara--a flattering position opened to my enterprise. Before I set
+out, I was able to deliver Miss Dashwood's packet to Captain Hammersly,
+barely recovered from a sabre wound. His agitation and his manner in
+receiving it puzzled me greatly, though my own agitation was scarcely
+less.
+
+When I returned after a month with the Legion, during which my services
+were of no very distinguished character, I found a letter from Galway
+which saddened my thoughts greatly. A lawsuit had gone against my uncle,
+and what I had long foreseen was gradually accomplishing--the wreck of
+an old and honoured house. And I could only look on and watch the
+progress of our downfall without power to arrest it.
+
+
+_IV.--Shipwrecked Hopes_
+
+
+Having been sent to the rear with dispatches, I did not reach Talavera
+till two days' hard fighting had left the contending armies without
+decided advantage on either side.
+
+I had scarcely joined my regiment before the 14th were ordered to
+charge.
+
+We came on at a trot. The smoke of the cannonade obscured everything
+until we had advanced some distance, but suddenly the splendid panorama
+of the battlefield broke upon us.
+
+"Charge! Forward!" cried the hoarse voice of our colonel; and we were
+upon them. The French infantry, already broken by the withering musketry
+of our people, gave way before us, and, unable to form a square, retired
+fighting, but in confusion and with tremendous loss, to their position.
+One glorious cheer from left to right of our line proclaimed the
+victory, while a deafening discharge of artillery from the French
+replied to this defiance, and the battle was over.
+
+For several months after the battle of Talavera my life presented
+nothing which I feel worth recording. Our good fortune seemed to have
+deserted us when our hopes were highest; for from the day of that
+splendid victory we began our retrograde movement upon Portugal. Pressed
+hard by overwhelming masses of the enemy, we saw the fortresses of
+Ciudad Rodrigo and Almeida fall successively into their hands, and
+retired, mystified and disappointed, to Torres Vedras.
+
+Wounded in a somewhat scatter-brain night expedition to the lines of
+Ciudad Rodrigo, my campaigning--for some time, at least--was concluded;
+for my wound began to menace the loss of my arm, and I was ordered back
+to Lisbon. Fred Power was the first man I saw, and almost the first
+thing he told me was that Sir George Dashwood was in Lisbon, and that
+his daughter was with him. And then, with conflicting feelings, I found
+that all Lisbon mentioned my name in connection with the senhora, and
+Sir George himself, in appointing me an aide-de-camp, threw increased
+gloom over my thoughts by referring to the report Power had spoken of.
+My torment was completed by meeting Miss Dashwood in the Senhora Inez's
+house under circumstances which led to treat me with stiff, formal
+courtesy.
+
+The next night a letter from a Dublin friend reached me which told me
+that "Hammersly had got his _conge_."
+
+Here, then, was the solution of the whole chaos of mystery; here the
+full explanation of what had puzzled my aching brain for many a night
+long. His own were the letters I had delivered into Hammersly's hands. A
+flood of light poured at once across all the dark passages of my
+history; and Lucy, too--dare I think of her? What if she had really
+cared for me! Oh, the bitter agony of that thought! To think that all my
+hopes were shipwrecked with the very land in sight.
+
+I sprang to my feet with some sudden impulse, but, as I did so, the
+blood rushed madly to my head, and I fell. My arm was again broken, and
+ere day I was delirious.
+
+Hours, days, weeks rolled over, and when I returned to consciousness and
+convalescence I found I had been removed to the senhora's villa, and to
+her I owed, in a large part, my recovery. I was deeper in my dilemma
+than ever. Nevertheless, before I returned to the front, I found an
+opportunity to vindicate to Lucy my unshaken faith, reconciling the
+conflicting evidences with the proofs I proffered of my attachment. We
+were interrupted before I could learn how my protestations were
+received. Power, I found soon after, was the one favoured by the fair
+Inez's affections.
+
+
+_V.--A Desolate Hearth_
+
+
+It is not my intention, were I even adequate to the task, to trace with
+anything like accuracy the events of the war at this period. In fact, to
+those who, like myself, were performing duties of a mere subaltern
+character, the daily movements of our own troops, not to speak of the
+continual changes of the enemy, were perfectly unknown, and an English
+newspaper was more ardently longed for in the Peninsula than by the most
+eager crowd of a London coffee-room.
+
+So I pass over the details of the retreat of the French, and the great
+battle of Fuentes D'Onoro. In the storming of Ciudad Rodrigo, that death
+struggle of vengeance and despair, I gained some notoriety in leading a
+party of stormers through a broken embrasure, and found myself under
+Lord Wellington's displeasure for having left my duties as aide-de-camp.
+However, the exploit gained me leave to return to England, and the
+additional honour of carrying dispatches to the Prince Regent.
+
+When I arrived in London with the glorious news of the capture of Ciudad
+Rodrigo, the kind and gracious notice of the prince obtained me
+attentions on all sides. Indeed, so flattering was the reception I met
+with, and so overwhelming the civility showered on me, that it required
+no small effort on my part not to believe myself as much a hero as they
+would make me. An eternal round of dinners, balls, and entertainments
+filled up an entire week.
+
+At last I obtained the Prince Regent's permission to leave London, and a
+few mornings after landed in Cork. Hastening my journey, I was walking
+the last eight miles--my chaise having broken down--when suddenly my
+attention was caught by a sound which, faint from the distance, scarce
+struck upon my ear. Thinking it probably some delusion of my heated
+imagination, I rose to push forward; but at the moment a slight breeze
+stirred, and a low, moaning sound swelled upward, increasing each
+instant as it came. It grew louder as the wind bore it towards me, and
+now falling, now swelling, it burst forth into one loud, prolonged cry
+of agony and grief. O God, it was the death-wail!
+
+My suspense became too great to bear; I dashed madly forward. As I
+neared the house, the whole approach was crowded with carriages and
+horsemen. At the foot of the large flight of steps stood the black and
+mournful hearse, its plumes nodding in the breeze, and, as the sounds
+without sank into sobs of bitterness and woe, the black pall of a
+coffin, borne on men's shoulders, appeared at the door, and an old man,
+a life-long friend of my uncle, across whose features a struggle for
+self-mastery was playing, held out his hand to enforce silence. I sprang
+toward him, choked by agony. He threw his arms around me, and muttering
+the words, "Poor Godfrey!" pointed to the coffin.
+
+Mine was a desolate hearth. In respect to my uncle's last wishes, I sold
+out of the army and settled down to a quieter life than the clang of
+battle, the ardour of the march. Gradually new impressions and new
+duties succeeded; and, ere four months elapsed, the quiet monotony of my
+daily life healed up the wounds of my suffering, and a sense of content,
+if not of happiness, crept gently over me, and I ceased to long for the
+clash of arms and the loud blast of the trumpet.
+
+But three years later a regiment of infantry marching to Cork for
+embarkation for the Continent after Bonaparte's return from Elba, roused
+all the eagerness of my old desires, and I volunteered for service
+again.
+
+A few days after I was in Brussels, and attending that most memorable
+and most exciting entertainment, the Duchess of Richmond's ball, on the
+night of June 15, 1815. Lucy Dashwood was there, beautiful beyond
+anything I had ever seen her. When the word came of the advance of
+Napoleon I was sent off with the major-general's orders, and then joined
+the night march to Quatre Bras. There I fell into the hands of a French
+troop and missed the fighting, though I saw Napoleon himself, and had
+the good fortune to effect the escape of Sir George Dashwood, who lay a
+prisoner under sentence of death in the same place as myself. Early in
+the day of Waterloo I contrived my own escape, and was able to give Lord
+Wellington much information as to the French movements.
+
+After the battle I wandered back into Brussels and learned that we had
+gained the day. As I came into the city Sir George met me and took me
+into his hotel, where were Power and the senhora, about to be married.
+Wounded by the innocent raillery of my friends, I escaped into an empty
+room and buried my head in my hands. Oh, how often had the phantom of
+happiness passed within my reach, but glided from my grasp!
+
+"Oh, Lucy, Lucy!" I exclaimed aloud. "But for you, and a few words
+carelessly spoken, I had never trod the path of ambition whose end has
+been the wreck of all my happiness! But for you I had never loved so
+fondly! But for you, and I had never been--"
+
+"A soldier, you would say," whispered a soft voice as a light hand
+gently touched my shoulder. "No, Mr. O'Malley; deeply grateful as I am
+to you for the service you once rendered myself, bound as I am by every
+tie of thankfulness by the greater one to my father, yet do I feel that
+in the impulse I have given to your life I have done more to repay my
+debt to you than by all the friendship, all the esteem I owe you. If,
+indeed, by any means, you became a soldier, then I am indeed proud."
+
+"Alas! Lucy--Miss Dashwood, I would say--how has my career fulfilled the
+promise that gave it birth? For you, and you only, to gain your
+affection, I became a soldier. And now, and now----"
+
+"And now," said she, while her eyes beamed upon me with a very flood of
+tenderness, "is it nothing that I have glowed with pride at triumphs I
+could read of, but dared not share in? I have thought of you. I have
+dreamed, I have prayed for you."
+
+"Alas! Lucy, but not loved me."
+
+Her hand, which had fallen upon mine, trembled violently. I pressed my
+lips upon it, but she moved it not. I dared to look up; her head was
+turned away, but her heaving bosom betrayed emotion.
+
+Our eyes met--I cannot say what it was--but in a moment the whole
+current of my thoughts was changed. Her look was bent upon me, beaming
+with softness and affection; her hand gently pressed my own, and her
+lips murmured my name.
+
+The door burst open at this moment, and Sir George Dashwood appeared.
+Lucy turned one fleeting look upon her father, and fell fainting into my
+arms.
+
+"God bless you, my boy!" said the old general as he hurriedly wiped a
+tear from his eye. "I am now indeed a happy father."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+
+
+Tom Burke of "Ours"
+
+
+     In 1840 Charles Lever, on an invitation from Sir John
+     Crompton, Secretary to the British Embassy in Belgium, forsook
+     Ireland for Brussels, where for a time he followed his
+     profession of medicine. Two years later an offer of the
+     editorship of the "Dublin University Magazine" recalled him to
+     Ireland, when he definitely abandoned a medical career and
+     settled down to literature permanently. The first fruit of
+     that appointment was "Tom Burke of Ours," published, after
+     running serially in the magazine, in 1844. It is more serious
+     in tone than any of his preceding works; in it the author
+     utilises the rich colouring gained from his long residence in
+     France, and the book is less remarkable for the complex, if
+     vigorous, story it contains than for its graphic and exciting
+     pictures of men and events in the campaigns of Napoleon Many
+     of its episodes are conceived in the true spirit of romance.
+
+
+_I.--The Boy Rebel_
+
+
+"Be advised by me," said De Meudon earnestly; "do not embark with these
+Irish rebels in their enterprise! They have none. Their only daring is
+some deed of rapine and murder. No; liberty is not to be achieved by
+such bands as these. France is your country--there liberty has been won;
+there lives one great man whose notice, were it but passingly bestowed,
+is fame."
+
+He sank back exhausted. The energy of his speech was too great for his
+weak and exhausted frame to bear. Captain de Meudon had come to Ireland
+in 1798 to aid in the rebellion; he had seen its failure, but had
+remained in Ireland trying vainly to give to the disaffection some
+military organization. He had realized the hopelessness of his efforts.
+He was ill, and very near to death. Now I stood by his bedside in a
+little cottage in Glenmalure.
+
+Boy as I was, I had already seen enough to make me a rebel in feeling
+and in action. I had stood a short time before the death-bed of my
+father, who disliked me, and who had left nearly all his property to my
+elder brother, who was indifferent to me. My father had indentured me as
+apprentice to his lawyer, and sooner than submit to the rule of this
+man--the evil genius of our family--I had taken flight. The companion of
+my wanderings was Darby M'Keown, the piper, the cleverest and cunningest
+of the agents of rebellion. Then I had met De Meudon, who had turned my
+thoughts and ambitions into another channel.
+
+My companion grew steadily worse.
+
+"Take my pocket-book," he whispered; "there is a letter you'll give my
+sister Marie. There are some five or six thousand francs--they are
+yours; you must be a pupil at the Polytechnique at Paris. If it should
+be your fortune to speak with General Bonaparte, say to him that when
+Charles de Meudon was dying--in exile--with but one friend left--he held
+his portrait to his lips, and, with his last breath, he kissed it."
+
+A shivering ran through his limbs--a sigh--and all was still. He was
+dead.
+
+"Halloa, there!" said a voice. The door opened, and a sergeant entered.
+"I have a warrant to arrest Captain de Meudon, a French officer who is
+concealed here. Where is he?"
+
+I pointed to the bed.
+
+"I arrest you in the king's name!" said the sergeant, approaching.
+"What----" He started back in horror. "He is dead!"
+
+Then entered one I had seen before--Major Barton, the most pitiless of
+the government's agents in suppressing insurrection.
+
+The sergeant whispered to him, and his eye ranged the little chamber
+till it fell on me.
+
+"Ha!" he cried. "You here! Sergeant, here's one prisoner for you, at any
+rate."
+
+Two soldiers seized me, and I was marched away towards Dublin. About
+noon the party halted, and the soldiers lay down and chatted on a patch
+of grass, while my own thoughts turned sadly back to the friend I had
+known.
+
+Suddenly I heard a song sung by a voice I knew, and afterwards a loud
+clapping of hands. Darby M'Keown was there in the midst of the soldiers,
+and as I turned to look at him, my hand came in contact with a
+clasp-knife. I managed with it to free my arms from the ropes that
+fastened them, but what was to be done next?
+
+"I didn't think much of that song of yours," said one of the soldiers.
+"Give us 'The British Grenadiers.'"
+
+"I never heard them play but onst, sir," said Darby, meekly, "and they
+were in such a hurry I couldn't pick up the tune."
+
+"What d'you mean?"
+
+"'Twas the day but one after the French landed, and the British
+Grenadiers was running away."
+
+The party sprang to their legs, and a shower of curses fell upon the
+piper.
+
+"And sure," continued Darby, "'twasn't my fault av they took to their
+heels. Wouldn't anyone run for his life av he had the opportunity?"
+
+These words were uttered in a raised voice, and I took the hint. While
+Darby was scuffling with the soldiers, I slipped away.
+
+For miles I pressed forward without turning, and in the evening I found
+myself in Dublin. The union with England was being debated in the
+Parliament House; huge and angry crowds raged without. Remembering the
+tactics De Meudon had taught me, I sought to organize the crowd in a
+kind of military formation against the troops; but a knock on the head
+with a musket-butt ended my labours, and I knew nothing more until I
+came to myself in the quarters of an old chance acquaintance--Captain
+Bubbleton.
+
+Here, in the house of this officer--an eccentric and impecunious man,
+but a most loyal friend--I was discovered by Major Barton and dragged to
+prison. I was released by the intervention of my father's lawyer, who
+claimed me as his apprentice.
+
+For weeks I lived with Captain Bubbleton and his brother officers, and
+nothing could be more cordial than their treatment of me. "Tom Burke of
+'Ours,'" the captain used proudly to call me. Only one officer held
+aloof from me, and from all Irishmen--Montague Crofts--through whom it
+came about that I left Ireland.
+
+One day an uncouth and ragged woman entered the barracks, and addressed
+me. It was Darby M'Keown, and he brought me nothing less precious than
+De Meudon's pocket-book, which had been taken from me, and had been
+picked up by him on the road. A few minutes later Bubbleton lost a sum
+at cards to Crofts; knowing he could not pay, I passed a note quietly to
+him. When Bubbleton had gone, Crofts held up the note before me. It was
+a French note of De Meudon's! I demanded my property back. He refused,
+and threatened to inform against me. On my seeking to prevent him from
+leaving the room, he drew his sword, and wounded me; but in the nick of
+time a blow from a strong arm laid him senseless--dead, perhaps--on the
+floor.
+
+"We must be far from this by daybreak," whispered Darby.
+
+I walked out of the barracks as steadily as I could. For all I knew, I
+was implicated in murder--and Ireland was no place for me. In a few days
+I stood on the shores of France.
+
+
+_II.--A Blow for the Emperor_
+
+
+By means of a letter of introduction to the head of the Polytechnique,
+which De Meudon had placed for me in his pocket-book, I was able to
+enter that military college, and, after a spell of earnest study, I was
+appointed to a commission in the Eighth Hussars. Proud as I was to
+become a soldier of France, yet I could not but feel that I was a
+foreigner, and almost friendless--unlucky, indeed, in the choice of the
+few friends I possessed. Chief of them was the Marquis de Beauvais,
+concerning whom I soon made two discoveries--that he was in the thick of
+an intrigue against the republic I served, and its First Consul, and
+that he was in love with Marie de Meudon, my dead friend's sister.
+
+To her, as soon as an opportunity came, I gave the news of her brother's
+end, and his last message. She was terribly affected; and the love we
+bore in common to the dead, and her own wonderful beauty, aroused in me
+a passion that was not the less fervent because I felt it was almost
+hopeless. I did not dare to ask her love, but I had her friendship
+without asking. She it was who warned me of the dangerous intrigues of
+De Beauvais and his associates. She it was who, when I fell a victim to
+their intrigues, laboured with General d'Auvergne, who had befriended me
+while I was at college, to restore me to liberty.
+
+I had heard that De Beauvais and his fellow royalists were plotting in a
+chateau near Versailles, and that a scheme was afoot to capture them. In
+hot haste I rode to the chateau, hoping secretly to warn my friend. He
+did indeed escape, but it was my lot to be caught with the conspirators.
+For the second time in my short life I saw the inside of a prison; I was
+in danger of the guillotine; despair had almost overpowered me, when I
+learnt that my friends had prevailed--my sword was returned to me. I
+became again an officer of the army of him who was now emperor, and I
+set forth determined to wipe out on the battlefield the doubts that
+still clung to my loyalty. Marie de Meudon was wedded, by the emperor's
+wish, to the gallant and beloved soldier on whose staff I proudly
+served--General d'Auvergne.
+
+In four vast columns of march, the mighty army poured into the heart of
+Germany. But not until we reached Mannheim did we learn the object of
+the war. We were to destroy the Austro-Russian coalition, and the first
+blow was to be struck at Ulm. When Ulm had capitulated, General
+d'Auvergne and his staff returned to Elchingen, and on the night when we
+reached the place I was on the point of lying down supperless in the
+open air, when I met an old acquaintance, Corporal Pioche, a giant
+cuirassier of the Guard, who had fought in all Bonaparte's campaigns.
+
+"Ah, mon lieutenant," said he, "not supped yet, I'll wager. Come along
+with me; Mademoiselle Minette has opened her canteen!"
+
+Presently we entered a large room, at one end of which sat a very pretty
+Parisian brunette, who bade me a gracious welcome. The place was crowded
+with captains and corporals, lieutenants and sergeants, all hobnobbing,
+hand-shaking, and even kissing each other. "Each man brings what he can
+find, drinks what he is able, and leaves the rest," remarked Pioche, and
+invited me to take my share in the common stock.
+
+All went well until I absent-mindedly called out, as if to a waiter, for
+bread. There was a roar of laughter at my mistake, and a little
+dark-whiskered fellow stuck his sword into a loaf and handed it to me.
+As I took the loaf, he disengaged his point, and scratched the back of
+my hand with it. Obviously an insult was intended.
+
+"Ah, an accident, _morbleu_!" said he, with an impertinent shrug.
+
+"So is this!" said I, as I seized his sword and smashed it across my
+knee.
+
+"It's Francois, _maitre d'armes_ of the Fourth," whispered Pioche; "one
+of the cleverest duellists of the army."
+
+I was hurried out to the court, one adviser counselling me to beware of
+Francois's lunge in tierce, another to close on him at once, and so on.
+For a long time after we had crossed swords, I remained purely on the
+defensive; at last, after a desperate rally, he made a lunge at my
+chest, which I received in the muscles of my back; and, wheeling round,
+I buried my blade in his body.
+
+Francois lingered for a long time between life and death, and for
+several days I was incapacitated, tenderly nursed by Minette.
+
+As soon as I was recovered the order came to advance.
+
+Not many days passed ere the chance came to me for which I had longed--
+the chance of striking a blow for the emperor. Hand-to-hand with the
+Russian dragoons on the field of Austerlitz, sweeping along afterwards
+with the imperial hosts in the full tide of victory, I learnt for the
+first time the exhilaration of military glory; and I had the good
+fortune to receive the emperor's favour--not only was I promoted, but I
+was appointed to the _compagnie d'elite_ that was to carry the spoils of
+victory to Paris.
+
+A few weeks after my return to Paris, the whole garrison was placed in
+review order to receive the wounded of Austerlitz.
+
+As the emperor rode forward bareheaded to greet his maimed veterans, I
+heard laughter among the staff that surrounded him. Stepping up, I saw
+my old friend Pioche, who had been dangerously wounded, with his hand in
+salute.
+
+"Thou wilt not have promotion, nor a pension," said Napoleon, smiling.
+"Hast any friend whom I could advance?"
+
+"Yes," answered Pioche, scratching his forehead in confusion. "She is a
+brave girl, and had she been a man----"
+
+"Whom can he mean?"
+
+"I was talking of Minette, our _vivandiere_."
+
+"Dost wish I should make her my aide-de-camp?" said Napoleon, laughing.
+
+"_Parbleu_! Thou hast more ill-favoured ones among them," said Pioche,
+with a glance at the grim faces of Rapp and Daru. "I've seen the time
+when thou'd have said, 'Is it Minette that was wounded at the Adige and
+stood in the square at Marengo? I'll give her the Cross of the Legion!'"
+
+"And she shall have it!" said Napoleon. Minette advanced, and as the
+emperor's own cross was attached to her buttonhole she sat pale as
+death, overcome by her pride.
+
+For two hours waggon after waggon rolled on, filled with the shattered
+remnants of an army. Every eye brightened as the emperor drew near, the
+feeblest gazed with parted lips when he spoke, and the faint cry of
+"_Vive l'Empereur_" passed along the line.
+
+
+_III.--Broken Dreams_
+
+
+Ere I had left Paris to join in the campaign against Prussia, I had
+made, and broken off, another dangerous friendship. In the _compagnie
+d'elite_ was an officer named Duchesne who took a liking to me--a
+royalist at heart, and a cynic who was unfailing in his sneers at all
+the doings of Napoleon. His attitude was detected, and he was forced to
+resign his commission; and his slights upon the uniform I wore grew so
+unbearable that I abandoned his company--little guessing the revenge he
+would take upon me.
+
+Once more the Grand Army was set in motion, and the hosts of France
+pressed upon Russia from the south and west. Napoleon turned the enemy's
+right flank, and compelled him to retire and concentrate his troops
+around Jena, which was plainly to be the scene of a great battle.
+
+My regiment was ordered on September 13, 1806, to proceed without delay
+to the emperor's headquarters at Jena, and I was sent ahead to make
+arrangements for quarters. In the darkness I lost my way, and came upon
+an artillery battery stuck fast in a ravine, unable to move back or
+forwards. The colonel was in despair, for the whole artillery of the
+division was following him, and would inevitably be involved in the same
+mishap. Wild shouting had been succeeded by a sullen silence, when a
+stern voice called out: "Cannoniers, dismount; bring the torches to the
+front!"
+
+When the order was obeyed, the light of the firewood fell upon the
+features of Napoleon himself. Instantly the work began afresh, directed
+by the emperor with a blazing torch in his hand. Gradually the
+gun-carriages were released, and began to move slowly along the ravine.
+Napoleon turned, and rode off at full speed in the darkness towards
+Jena. It was my destination, and I followed him.
+
+He preceded me by about fifty paces--the greatest monarch of the world,
+alone, his thoughts bent on the great events before him. On the top of
+an ascent the brilliant spectacle of a thousand watch-fires met the eye.
+Napoleon, lost in meditation, saw nothing, and rode straight into the
+lines. Twice the challenge "_Qui vive?"_ rang out. Napoleon heard it
+not. There was a bang of a musket, then another, and another. Napoleon
+threw himself from his horse, and lay flat on the ground. I dashed up,
+shouting, "The emperor! The emperor!" My horse was killed, and I was
+wounded in the shoulder; but I repeated the cry until Napoleon stepped
+calmly forward.
+
+"Ye are well upon the alert, _mes enfants_," he said, smiling. Then,
+turning to me, he asked quickly, "Are you wounded?"
+
+"A mere scratch, sire."
+
+"Let the surgeon see to it, and do you come to headquarters when you are
+able."
+
+In the morning I went to headquarters, but the emperor was busy;
+seemingly I was forgotten. My regiment was out of reach, so, at the
+invitation of my old duelling antagonist, Francois, I joined the
+Voltigeurs. My friends could not understand why, after tasting the
+delights of infantry fighting, I should wish to rejoin the hussars; but
+I went back to my old regiment after the victory, and rode with it to
+Berlin.
+
+Soon after our arrival there I read my name in a general order among
+those on whom the Cross of the Legion was to be conferred. On the
+morning of the day when I was to receive the decoration, I was requested
+to attend the bureau of the adjutant-general. There I was confronted
+with Marshal Berthier, who held up a letter before me. I saw, by the
+handwriting, it was Duchesne's.
+
+"There, sir, that letter belongs to you," he said. "There is enough in
+it to make your conduct the matter of a court-martial; but I am
+satisfied that a warning will be sufficient. I need hardly say that you
+will not receive the Cross of the Legion."
+
+I glanced at the letter, and realised Duchesne's treachery. Knowing that
+all doubtful letters were opened and read by the authorities, he had
+sent me a letter bitterly attacking the emperor, and professing to
+regard me as a royalist conspirator.
+
+Exasperated, I drew my sword.
+
+"I resign, sir," I said. "The career I can no longer follow honourably
+and independently, I shall follow no more."
+
+With a half-broken heart and faltering step, I regained my quarters; the
+whole dream of life was over. Broken in spirit, I made my way slowly
+back through Germany to Paris, and back to Ireland.
+
+
+_IV.--The Call of the Sword_
+
+
+On reaching my native country I found that my brother had died, and that
+I had inherited an income of L4,000 a year. I sought to forget the past.
+But a time came when I could resist the temptation no longer, and the
+first fact I read of was the burning of Moscow. As misfortune followed
+misfortune, an impulse came to me that it was useless to resist. My
+heart was among the glittering squadrons of France. I thought suddenly,
+was this madness? And the thought was followed by a resolve as sudden. I
+wrote some lines to my agent, saddled my horse, and rode away. At
+Verviers I offered my sword to the emperor as an old officer, and went
+forward in charge of a squadron to Brienne. This place was held by the
+Prussians, and Bluecher and his Prussians were near at hand. Once more I
+beheld the terrific spectacle of an attack by the army of Napoleon. But
+alas! the attack was vain; I heard the trumpet sound a retreat. And as I
+turned, I saw the body of an aged general officer among a heap of slain.
+With a shriek of horror, I recognized the friend of my heart, General
+d'Auvergne. Round his neck he wore a locket with a portrait of his
+wife--Marie de Meudon. I detached the locket, and bade the dead a last
+adieu.
+
+Why should I dwell on a career of disaster? Retreat followed retreat,
+until the fate of Napoleon's empire depended on the capture of the
+bridge of Montereau. Regiment after regiment strove to cross, only to be
+shattered and mangled by the tremendous fire of the enemy. Four sappers
+at length laid a petard beneath the gate at the other side of the
+bridge. But the fuse went out.
+
+"This to the man who lights the fuse!" cried Napoleon, holding up his
+great Cross of the Legion.
+
+I snatched a burning match from a gunner beside me, and rushed across
+the bridge. Partly protected by the high projecting parapet, I lit the
+fuse, and then fell, shot in the chest. My senses reeled; for a time I
+knew nothing; then I felt a flask pressed to my lips. I looked up, and
+saw Minette. "Dear, dear girl, what a brave heart is thine!" said I, as
+she pressed her handkerchief to my wound.
+
+Her fingers became entangled in the ribbon of the general's locket that
+I had tied round my neck, and by accident the locket opened. She became
+deathly pale as she saw its contents; then, springing to her feet, she
+gave me one glance--fleeting, but how full of sorrow!--and ran to the
+middle of the bridge. The petard had done its work. She beckoned to the
+column to come on; they answered with a cheer. Presently four grenadiers
+fell to the rear, carrying between them the body of Minette.
+
+They gave her a military funeral; and I was told that a giant soldier, a
+corporal it was thought, kneeled down to kiss her before she was covered
+with the earth, then lay quietly down in the grass. When they sought to
+move him, he was stone dead.
+
+When I had recovered from my wound, it was nothing to me that Napoleon,
+besides giving me his Grand Cross, had made me general of brigade. For
+Napoleon was no longer emperor, and I would not serve the king who
+succeeded him. But ere I left France I saw Marie de Meudon, it might be,
+I thought, for the last time. At the sight of her my old passion
+returned, and I dared to utter it. I know not how incoherently the tale
+was told; I can but remember the bursting feeling of my bosom, as she
+placed her hand in mine, and said, "It is yours."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+
+
+M.G. LEWIS
+
+
+Ambrosio, or the Monk
+
+
+     There was a time--of no great duration--when Lewis' "Monk" was
+     the most popular book in England. At the end of the eighteenth
+     century the vogue of the "Gothic" romance of ghosts and
+     mysteries was at its height; and this work, written in ten
+     weeks by a young man of nineteen, caught the public fancy
+     tremendously, and Matthew Gregory Lewis was straightway
+     accepted as an adept at making the flesh creep. Taste changes
+     in horrors, as in other things, and "Ambrosio, or The Monk,"
+     would give nightmares to few modern readers. Its author, who
+     was born in London on July 9, 1775, and published "The Monk"
+     in 1795, wrote many supernatural tales and poems, and also
+     several plays--one of which, "The Castle Spectre," caused the
+     hair of Drury Lane audiences to stand on end for sixty
+     successive nights, a long run in those days. Lewis, who was a
+     wealthy man, sat for some years in Parliament; he had many
+     distinguished friends among men of letters--Scott and Southey
+     contributed largely to the first volume of his "Tales of
+     Wonder." He died on May 13, 1818.
+
+
+_I.--The Recluse_
+
+
+The Church of the Capuchins in Madrid had never witnessed a more
+numerous assembly than that which gathered to hear the sermon of
+Ambrosio, the abbot. All Madrid rang with his praises. Brought
+mysteriously to the abbey door while yet an infant, he had remained for
+all the thirty years of his life within its precincts. All his days had
+been spent in seclusion, study, and mortification of the flesh; his
+knowledge was profound, his eloquence most persuasive; his only fault
+was an excess of severity in judging the human feelings from which he
+himself was exempted.
+
+Among the crowd that pressed into the church were two women--one
+elderly, the other young--who had seats offered them by two richly
+habited cavaliers. The younger cavalier, Don Lorenzo, discovered such
+exquisite beauty and sweetness in the maiden to whom he had given his
+seat--her name was Antonia--that when she left the church he was
+desperately in love with her.
+
+He had promised to see his sister Agnes, a nun in the Convent of St.
+Clare; so he remained in the church, whither the nuns were presently to
+come to confess to the Abbot Ambrosio. As he waited he observed a man
+wrapped up in a cloak hurriedly place a letter beneath a statue of St.
+Francis, and then retire.
+
+The nuns entered, and removed their veils out of respect to the saint to
+whom the building was dedicated. One of the nuns dropped her rosary
+beside the statue, and, as she stooped to pick it up, she dexterously
+removed the letter and placed it in her bosom. As she did so, the light
+flashed full in her face.
+
+"Agnes, by Heaven!" cried Lorenzo.
+
+He hastened after the cloaked stranger, and overtook him with drawn
+sword. Suddenly the cloaked man turned and exclaimed, "Is it possible?
+Lorenzo, have you forgotten Raymond de las Cisternas?"
+
+"You here, marquis?" said the astonished Lorenzo. "You engaged in a
+clandestine correspondence with my sister?"
+
+"Her affections have ever been mine, and not the Church's. She entered
+the convent tricked into a belief that I had been false to her; but I
+have proved to her that it is otherwise. She had agreed to fly with me,
+and my uncle, the cardinal, is securing for her a dispensation from her
+vows."
+
+Raymond told at length the story of his love, and at the end Lorenzo
+said, "Raymond, there is no one on whom I would bestow Agnes more
+willingly than on yourself. Pursue your design, and I will accompany
+you."
+
+Meanwhile, Agnes tremblingly advanced toward the abbot, and in her
+nervousness let fall the precious letter. She turned to pick it up. The
+abbot claimed and read it; it was the proposal of Agnes's escape with
+her lover that very night.
+
+"This letter must to the prioress!" said he sternly.
+
+"Hold father, hold!" cried Agnes, flinging herself at his feet. "Be
+merciful! Do not doom me to destruction!"
+
+"Hence, unworthy wretch! Where is the prioress?"
+
+The prioress, when she came, gazed upon Agnes with fury. "Away with her
+to the convent!" she exclaimed.
+
+"Oh, Raymond, save me, save me!" shrieked the distracted Agnes. Then,
+casting upon the abbot a frantic look, "Hear me," she continued, "man of
+a hard heart! Insolent in your yet unshaken virtue, your day of trial
+will arrive. Think then upon your cruelty; and despair of pardon!"
+
+
+_II.--The Abbot's Infatuation_
+
+
+Leaving the church, Ambrosio bent his steps towards a grotto in the
+abbey garden, formed in imitation of a hermitage. On reaching the
+grotto, he found it already occupied. Extended upon one of the seats,
+lay a man in a melancholy posture, lost in meditation. Ambrosio
+recognised him; it was Rosario, his favourite novice, a youth of whose
+origin none knew anything, save that his bearing, and such of his
+features as accident had discovered--for he seemed fearful of being
+recognised, and was continually muffled up in his cowl--proved him to be
+of noble birth.
+
+"You must not indulge this disposition to melancholy, Rosario," said
+Ambrosio tenderly.
+
+The youth flung himself at Ambrosio's feet.
+
+"Oh, pity me!" he cried. "How willingly would I unveil to you my heart!
+But I fear------"
+
+"How shall I reassure you? Reveal to me what afflicts you, and I swear
+that your secret shall be safe in my keeping."
+
+"Father," said Rosario, in faltering accents, "I am a woman!"
+
+The abbot stood still for a moment in astonishment, then turned hastily
+to go. But the suppliant clasped his knees.
+
+"Do not fly me!" she cried. "You are my beloved; but far is it from
+Matilda's wish to draw you from the paths of virtue. All I ask is to see
+you, to converse with you, to adore you!"
+
+Confusion and resentment mingled in Ambrosio's mind with secret pleasure
+that a young and lovely woman had thus for his sake abandoned the world.
+But he recognised the need for austerity.
+
+"Matilda," he said, "you must leave the abbey to-morrow."
+
+"Cruel, cruel!" she exclaimed, wringing her hands in agony. "Farewell,
+my friend! And yet, methinks, I would fain bear with me some token of
+your regard."
+
+"What shall I give you?"
+
+"Anything--one of those flowers will be sufficient."
+
+Ambrosio approached a bush, and stooped to pick one of the flowers. He
+uttered a piercing cry, and Matilda rushed towards him.
+
+"A serpent," he said in a faint voice, "concealed among the roses."
+
+With loud shrieks the distressed Matilda summoned assistance. Ambrosio
+was carried to the abbey, his wound was examined, and the surgeon
+pronounced that there was no hope. He had been stung by a centipedoro,
+and would not live three days.
+
+Mournfully the monks left the bedside, and Ambrosio was entrusted to the
+care of the despairing Matilda. Next morning the surgeon was astonished
+to find that the inflammation had subsided, and when he probed the wound
+no traces of the venom were perceptible.
+
+"A miracle! A miracle!" cried the monks. Joyfully they proclaimed that
+St. Francis had saved the life of their sainted abbot.
+
+But Ambrosio was still weak and languid, and again the monks left him in
+Matilda's care. As he listened to an old ballad sung by her sweet voice,
+he found renewed pleasure in her society, and was conscious of the
+influence upon him of her beauty. For three days she nursed him, while
+he watched her with increasing fondness. But on the next day she came
+not. A lay-brother entered instead.
+
+"Hasten, reverend father," said he. "Young Rosario lies at the point of
+death, and he earnestly requests to see you."
+
+In deep agitation he followed the lay-brother to Matilda's apartment.
+Her face glowed at the sight of him. "Leave me, my brethren," she said
+to the monks; much have I to tell this holy man in private."
+
+"Father, I am poisoned," she said, when they had gone, "but the poison
+once circulated in your veins."
+
+"Matilda!"
+
+"I loosened the bandage from your arm; I drew out the poison with my
+lips. I feel death at my heart."
+
+"And you have sacrificed yourself for me! Is there, indeed, no hope?"
+
+"There is but one means of life in my power--a dangerous and dreadful
+means; life would be purchased at too dear a rate--unless it were
+permitted me to live for you."
+
+"Then live for me," cried the infatuated monk, clasping her in his arms.
+"Live for me!"
+
+"Then," she cried joyfully, "no dangers shall appall me. Swear that you
+will never inquire by what means I shall preserve myself, and procure
+for me the key of the burying-ground common to us and the sisterhood of
+St. Clare."
+
+When Ambrosio had obtained the key, Matilda left him. She returned
+radiant with joy.
+
+"I have succeeded!" she cried. "I shall live, Ambrosio--shall live for
+you!"
+
+
+_III.--Unavailing Remorse_
+
+
+Raymond and Lorenzo had gone to the rendezvous appointed in the letter,
+and had waited to be joined by Agnes and to enable her to escape from
+the convent.
+
+But Agnes had not come, and the two friends withdrew in deep
+mortification. Presently arrived a message from Raymond's uncle, the
+cardinal, enclosing the Pope's bull ordering that Agnes should be
+released from her vows, and restored to her relatives. Lorenzo at once
+conveyed the bull to the prioress.
+
+"It is out of my power to obey this order," said she, in a voice of
+anger which she strove in vain to disguise. "Agnes is dead!"
+
+Lorenzo hastened with the fatal news to Raymond, whose terrible
+affliction led to a dangerous illness.
+
+One morning, as Ambrosio was leaving the chapel after listening to many
+penitents--he was the favourite confessor in Madrid--Antonia stepped
+timidly up to him and begged him to visit her mother, who was stretched
+on a bed of sickness. Charmed with her beauty and innocence, he
+consented.
+
+The monk retired to his cell, whither he was pursued by Antonia's image.
+"What would be too dear a price," he meditated, "for this lovely girl's
+affections?"
+
+Not once but often did Ambrosio visit Antonia and her mother; and each
+time he saw the innocent girl his love increased. Matilda, who had first
+opened his heart to love, saw the change, and penetrated his secret.
+
+"Since your love can no longer be mine," she said to him sadly, "I
+request the next best gift--your confidence and friendship. You love
+Antonia, but you love her despairingly. I come to point out the road to
+success."
+
+"Oh, impossible!"
+
+"To those who dare, nothing is impossible. Listen! My guardian was a man
+of uncommon knowledge, and from him I had training in the arts of magic.
+One terrible power he gave me--the power of raising a demon. I shuddered
+at the thought of employing it, until it became my only means of saving
+my life--a life that you prized. For your sake I performed the mystic
+rites in the sepulchre of St. Clare. For your sake I will perform them
+again."
+
+"No, no, Matilda!" cried the monk, "I will not ally myself with God's
+enemy."
+
+"Look!" Matilda held before him a mirror of polished steel, its borders
+marked with various strange characters. A mist spread over the surface;
+it cleared, and Ambrosio gazed upon the countenance of Antonia in all
+its beauty.
+
+"I yield!" he cried passionately. "Matilda, I follow you!"
+
+They passed into the churchyard; they reached the entry to the vaults;
+Ambrosio tremblingly followed Matilda down the staircase. They went
+through narrow passages strewn with skulls and bones, and reached a
+spacious cavern. Matilda drew a circle around herself, and another
+around him; bending low, she muttered a few indistinct sentences, and a
+thin, blue, sulphurous flame arose from the ground.
+
+Suddenly she uttered a piercing shriek, and plunged a poniard into her
+left arm; the blood poured down, a dark cloud arose, and a clap of
+thunder was heard. Then a full strain of melodious music sounded and the
+demon stood before them.
+
+He was a youth of perfect face and form. Crimson wings extended from his
+shoulders; many-coloured fires played about his locks; but there was a
+wildness in his eyes, a mysterious melancholy in his features, that
+betrayed the fallen angel.
+
+Matilda conversed with him in unintelligible language; he bowed
+submissively, and gave to her a silver branch, imitating myrtle, that he
+bore in his right hand. The music was heard again, and ceased; the cloud
+spread itself afresh; the demon vanished.
+
+"With this branch," said Matilda, "every door will open before you. You
+may gain access to Antonia; a touch of the branch will send her into a
+deep sleep, and you may carry her away whither you will."
+
+Ashamed and fearful, yet borne away by his love, the monk set forth. The
+bolts of Antonia's house flew back, and the doors opened before the
+silver myrtle.
+
+But as he passed stealthily through the house a woman confronted him. It
+was Antonia's mother, roused by a fearful dream.
+
+"Monster of hypocrisy!" she cried in fury. "I had already suspected you,
+but I kept silence. Now I will unmask you, villain!"
+
+"Forgive me, lady!" begged the terrified monk. "I swear by all that is
+holy------"
+
+"No! All Madrid shall shudder at your perfidy."
+
+He turned to fly. She seized him and screamed for help. He grasped
+her by the throat with all his strength, strangled her, and flung her to
+the ground, where she lay motionless. After a minute of horror-struck
+shuddering, the murderer fled. He entered the abbey unobserved, and
+having shut himself into his cell, he abandoned his soul to the tortures
+of unavailing remorse.
+
+
+_IV.--A Living Death_
+
+
+"Do not despair," counselled Matilda, when the monk revealed his
+failure. "Your crime is unsuspected. Antonia may still be yours. The
+prioress of St. Clare has a mysterious liquor, the effect of which is to
+give those who drink it the appearance of death for three days. Procure
+some of this liquor, visit Antonia, and cause her to drink it; have her
+body conveyed to a sepulchre in the vaults of St. Clare."
+
+Ambrosio hastened to secure a phial of the mysterious potion. He went to
+comfort Antonia in her distress, and contrived to pour a few drops from
+the phial into a draught that she was taking. In a few hours he heard
+that she was dead, and her body was conveyed to the vaults.
+
+Meanwhile, Lorenzo had learned, not indeed that his sister was alive,
+but that she had been the victim of terrible cruelty. A nun, who had
+been Agnes's friend, hinted at atrocious vengeance taken by the prioress
+for Agnes's attempt to escape. She suggested that Lorenzo should bring
+the officers of the Inquisition with him and arrest the prioress during
+a public procession of the nuns in honour of St Clare.
+
+Accordingly, as the prioress passed along the street among her nuns with
+a devout and sanctified air, the officers advanced and arrested her.
+
+"Ah!" she cried frantically, "I am betrayed!"
+
+"Betrayed!" replied the nun who had revealed the secret to Lorenzo. "I
+charge the prioress with murder!"
+
+She told how Agnes had been secretly poisoned by the prioress. The mob,
+mad with indignation, rushed to the convent determined to destroy it.
+Lorenzo and the officers hastened to endeavour to do what they could to
+save the convent and the terrified nuns who had taken refuge there.
+
+Antonia's heart throbbed, her eyes opened; she raised herself and cast a
+wild look around her. Her clothing was a shroud; she lay in a coffin
+among other coffins in a damp and hideous vault. Confronting her with a
+lantern in his hand, and eyeing her greedily, stood Ambrosio.
+
+"Where am I?" she said abruptly. "How came I here? Let me go!"
+
+"Why these terrors, Antonia?" replied the abbot. "What fear you from
+me--from one who adores you? You are imagined dead; society is for ever
+lost to you. You are absolutely in my power!"
+
+She screamed, and strove to escape; he clutched at her and struggled to
+detain her. Suddenly Matilda entered in haste.
+
+"The mob has set fire to the convent," she said to Ambrosio, "and the
+abbey is in danger. Don Lorenzo and the officers are searching the
+vaults. You cannot escape; you must remain here. They may not, perhaps,
+enter this vault."
+
+Antonia heard that rescue was at hand.
+
+"Help! help!" she screamed, and ran out of the vault. The abbot pursued
+her in desperation; he caught her; he could not stifle her cries.
+Frantic in his desire to escape, he grasped Matilda's dagger, plunged it
+twice in the bosom of Antonia, and fled back to the vault. It was too
+late he had been seen, the glare of torches filled the vault, and
+Ambrosio and Matilda were seized and bound by the officers of the
+Inquisition.
+
+Meanwhile, Lorenzo, running to and fro, had flashed his lantern upon a
+creature so wretched, so emaciated, that he doubted to think her woman.
+He stopped petrified with horror.
+
+"Two days, and yet no food!" she moaned. "No hope, no comfort!" Suddenly
+she looked up and addressed him.
+
+"Do you bring me food, or do you bring me death?"
+
+"I come," he replied, "to relieve your sorrows."
+
+"God, is it possible? Oh, yes! Yes, it is!"--she fainted. Lorenzo
+carried her in his arms to the nuns above.
+
+Loud shrieks summoned him below again. Hastening after the officers, he
+saw a woman bleeding on the ground. He went to her; it was his beloved
+Antonia. She was dying; with a few sweet words of farewell, her spirit
+passed away.
+
+Broken-hearted, he returned. He had lost Antonia, but he was to learn
+that Agnes was restored to him. The woman he had rescued was indeed his
+sister, saved from a living death and brought back to life and love.
+
+
+_V.--Lucifer_
+
+
+Ambrosio was tortured into confession, and condemned to be burned at the
+stake. Matilda, terrified at the sight of her fellow-criminal's
+torments, confessed without torture, and was sentenced to be burned at
+his side.
+
+They were to perish at midnight, and as the monk, in panic-stricken
+despair, awaited the awful hour, suddenly Matilda stood before him,
+beautifully attired, with a look of wild pleasure in her eyes.
+
+"Matilda!" he cried, "how have you gained entrance?"
+
+"Ambrosio," she replied, "I am free. For life and liberty I have sold my
+soul to Lucifer. Dare you do the same?"
+
+The monk shuddered.
+
+"I cannot renounce my God," he said.
+
+"Fool! What hope have you of God's mercy?" She handed him a book. "If
+you repent of your folly, read the first four lines in the seventh page
+backwards." She vanished.
+
+A fearful struggle raged in the monk's spirit. What hope had he in any
+case of escaping eternal torment? And yet--was not the Almighty's mercy
+infinite? Then the thought of the stake and the flames entered his mind
+and appalled him.
+
+At last the fatal hour came. The steps of his gaolers were heard in the
+passage. In uttermost terror he opened the book and ran over the lines,
+and straightway the fiend appeared--not seraph-like as when he appeared
+formerly, but dark, hideous, and gigantic, with hissing snakes coiling
+around his brows.
+
+He placed a parchment before Ambrosio.
+
+"Bear me hence!" cried the monk.
+
+"Will you be mine, body and soul?" said the demon. "Resolve while there
+is time!"
+
+"I must!"
+
+"Sign, then!" Lucifer thrust a pen into the flesh of Ambrosio's arm, and
+the monk signed. A moment later he was carried through the roof of the
+dungeon into mid-air.
+
+The demon bore him with arrow-like speed to the brink of a precipice in
+the Sierra Morena.
+
+"Carry me to Matilda!" gasped the monk.
+
+"Wretch!" answered Lucifer. "For what did you stipulate but rescue from
+the Inquisition? Learn that when you signed, the steps in the corridor
+were the steps of those who were bringing you a pardon. But now you are
+mine beyond reprieve, to all eternity, and alive you quit not these
+mountains."
+
+Darting his talons into the monk's shaven crown, he sprang with him from
+the rock. From a dreadful height he flung him headlong, and the torrent
+bore away with it the shattered corpse of Ambrosio.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+
+
+ELIZA LYNN LINTON
+
+
+Joshua Davidson
+
+
+     Mrs. Lynn Linton, daughter of a vicar of Crosthwaite, was born at
+     Keswick, England, Feb. 10, 1822. At the age of three-and-twenty
+     she embarked on a literary career, and as a journalist,
+     magazine contributor, and novelist wrote vigorously for over
+     fifty years. Before her marriage, in 1858, to W.J. Linton, the
+     eminent wood-engraver, who was also a poet, she had served on
+     the staff of the "Morning Chronicle," as Paris correspondent.
+     Later, she contributed to "All the Year Round," and to the
+     "Saturday Review." After nine years of married life, the
+     Lintons parted amicably. In 1872 Mrs. Lynn Linton published
+     "The True History of Joshua Davidson," a powerfully simple
+     story that has had much influence on working-class thought.
+     "Christopher Kirkland," a later story, is largely
+     autobiographical. Mrs. Linton died in London on July 14, 1898.
+     She was a trenchant critic of what she regarded as tendencies
+     towards degeneration in modern women.
+
+
+_I.--A Cornish Christ_
+
+
+Joshua Davidson was the only son of a village carpenter, born in the
+small hamlet of Trevalga, on the North Cornwall coast, in the year 1835.
+There was nothing very remarkable about Joshua's childhood. He was
+always a quiet, thoughtful boy, and from his earliest years noticeably
+pious. He had a habit of asking why, and of reasoning out a principle,
+from quite a little lad, which displeased people, so that he did not get
+all the credit from the schoolmaster and the clergyman to which his
+diligence and good conduct entitled him.
+
+He was never well looked on by the vicar since a famous scene that took
+place in the church one Sunday. After catechism was over, Joshua stood
+out before the rest, just in his rough country clothes as he was, and
+said very respectfully to the vicar, "Mr. Grand, if you please I would
+like to ask you a few questions."
+
+"Certainly, my lad. What have you to say?" said Mr. Grand rather
+shortly.
+
+"If we say, sir, that Jesus Christ was God," said Joshua, "surely all
+that He said and did must be real right? There cannot be a better way
+than His?"
+
+"Surely not, my lad," Mr. Grand made answer.
+
+"And His apostles and disciples, they showed the way, too?" said Joshua.
+
+"And they showed the way, too, as you say; and if you come up to half
+they taught you'll do well, Joshua."
+
+The vicar laughed a little laugh as he said this, but it was a laugh,
+Joshua's mother said, that seemed to mean the same thing as a "scat"--
+our Cornish word for a blow--only the boy didn't seem to see it.
+
+"Yes; but, sir, if we are Christians, why don't we live as Christians?"
+said Joshua.
+
+"Ah, indeed, why don't we?" said Mr. Grand. "Because of the wickedness
+of the human heart; because of the world, the flesh, and the devil."
+
+"Then, sir, if you feel this, why don't you and all the clergy live like
+the apostles, and give what you have to the poor?" cried Joshua,
+clasping his hands and making a step forward, the tears in his eyes.
+
+"Why do you live in a fine house, and have grand dinners, and let Peggy
+Bray nearly starve in that old mud hut of hers, and Widow Tregellis
+there, with her six children, and no fire or clothing for them? I can't
+make it out, sir!"
+
+"Who has been putting these bad thoughts into your head?" said Mr. Grand
+sternly.
+
+"No one, sir. I have been thinking for myself. Michael, out by Lion's
+Den, is called an infidel--he calls himself one. And you preached last
+Sunday that no infidel can be saved. But Michael helped Peggy and her
+child when the orphan fund people took away her pension; and he worked
+early and late for Widow Tregellis and her children, and shared with
+them all he had, going short for them many a time. And I can't help
+thinking, sir, that Christ would have helped Peggy, and that Michael,
+being an infidel and such a good man, is something like that second son
+in the parable who said he would not do his Lord's will when he was
+ordered, but who went all the same------"
+
+"And that your vicar is like the first?" interrupted Mr. Grand angrily.
+
+"Well, yes, sir, if you please," said Joshua quite modestly, but very
+fervently.
+
+There was a stir among the ladies and gentlemen when Joshua said this;
+and some laughed a little, under their breath, and others lifted up
+their eyebrows and said, "What an extraordinary boy!" But Mr. Grand was
+very angry, and said, in a severe tone, "These things are beyond the
+knowledge of an ignorant lad like you, Joshua. I consider you have done
+a very impertinent thing to-day, and I shall mark you for it!"
+
+"I meant no harm. I meant only the truth and to hear the things of God,"
+repeated Joshua sadly, as he took his seat among his companions, who
+tittered.
+
+And so Joshua was not well looked on by the clergyman, who was his
+enemy, as one may say, ever after.
+
+"Mother," said Joshua, "I mean, when I grow up, to live as our Lord and
+Saviour lived when He was on the earth."
+
+"He is our example, lad," said his mother. "But I doubt lest you fall by
+over-boldness."
+
+
+_II.--Faith That Moveth Mountains_
+
+
+Joshua did not leave home early. He wrought at his father's bench, and
+was content to bide with his people. But his spirit was not dead if his
+life was uneventful. He gathered about him a few youths of his own age,
+and held with them prayer-meetings and Bible readings, either at home in
+his father's house, or in the fields when the throng was too great for
+the cottage.
+
+No one ever knew Joshua tell the shadow of a lie, or go back from his
+word, or play at pretence. And he had such an odd way of coming right
+home to us. He seemed to have felt all that we felt, and to have thought
+all our thoughts.
+
+The youths that Joshua got together as his friends were as
+well-conditioned a set of lads as you would wish to see--sober,
+industrious, chaste. Their aim was to be thorough and like Christ.
+Joshua's great hope was to bring back the world to the simplicity and
+broad humanity of Christ's acted life, and he could not understand how
+it had been let drop.
+
+He was but a young man at this time, remember--enthusiastic, with little
+or no scientific knowledge, and putting the direct interposition of God
+above the natural law. Wherefore, he accepted the text about faith
+removing mountains as literally true. And one evening he went down into
+the Rocky Valley, earnest to try conclusions with God's promise, and
+sure of proving it true.
+
+He prayed to God to grant us this manifestation--to redeem His promise.
+Not a shadow of doubt chilled or slacked him. As he stood there in the
+softening twilight, with his arms raised above his head and his face
+turned up to the sky, his countenance glowed as Moses' of old. He seemed
+inspired, transported beyond himself, beyond humanity.
+
+He commanded the stone to move in God's name, and because Christ had
+promised. But the rock stood still, and a stonechat went and perched on
+it.
+
+Another time he took up a viper in his hand, quoting the passage, "They
+shall take up serpents." But the beast stung him, and he was ill for
+days after.
+
+"Take my advice," said the doctor. "Put all these thoughts out of your
+head. Get some work to do in a new part of the country, fall in love
+with some nice girl, and marry as soon as you can make a home for her.
+That's the only life for you, depend upon it."
+
+"God has given me other thoughts," said Joshua, "and I must obey them."
+
+The doctor said afterwards that he was quite touched at the lad's
+sweetness and wrong-headedness combined.
+
+The failure of these trials of faith perplexed us all, and profoundly
+afflicted Joshua. "Friends," he said at last, "it seems to me--indeed, I
+think we must all see it now--that His Word is not to be accepted
+literally. The laws of nature are supreme, and even faith cannot change
+them. Can it be," he then said solemnly, "that much of the Word is a
+parable--that Christ was truly, as He says of Himself, the corner-stone,
+but not the whole building--and that we have to carry on the work in His
+spirit, but in our own way, and not merely to try and repeat His acts?"
+
+It was after this that we noticed a certain restlessness in Joshua. But
+in time he had an offer to go up to London to follow his trade at a
+large house in the City, and got me a job as well, that I might be
+alongside of him. For we were like brothers. A few days before he went,
+Joshua happened to be coming out of his father's workshop just as Mr.
+Grand was passing, driving the neat pair-horse phaeton he had lately
+bought.
+
+"Well, Joshua, and how are you doing? And why have you not been to
+church lately?" said the parson, pulling up.
+
+"Well, sir," said Joshua, "I don't go to church, you know."
+
+"A new light on your own account, hey?" and he laughed as if he mocked
+him.
+
+"No, sir; only a seeker."
+
+"The old path's not good enough for you?"
+
+"I must answer for my conscience to God, sir," said Joshua.
+
+"And your clergyman, appointed by God and the state to be your guide,
+what of him? Has he no authority in his own parish?"
+
+"Look here, sir," said Joshua, quite respectfully; "I deny your
+appointment as a God-given leader of souls. The Church is but the old
+priesthood as it existed in the days of our Lord. I see no sacrifice of
+the world, no brotherhood with the poor----"
+
+"The poor!" interrupted Mr. Grand disdainfully. "What would you have,
+you young fool? The poor have the laws of their country to protect them,
+and the Gospel preached to them for their salvation."
+
+"Why, sir, the poor of our day are the lepers of Christ's, and who among
+you Christian priests consorts with them? Who ranks the man above his
+station, or the soul above the man?"
+
+"Now we have come to it!" cried Mr. Grand. "I thought I should touch the
+secret spring at last! And you would like us to associate with you as
+equals--is that it, Joshua? Gentlemen and common men hob-and-nob
+together, and no distinctions made? You to ride in our carriages, and
+perhaps marry our daughters?"
+
+"That's just it, sir. You are gentlemen, as you say, but not the
+followers of Christ. If you were, you would have no carriages to ride
+in, and your daughters would be what Martha and Mary and Lydia and
+Dorcas were, and their title to ladyhood founded on their degrees of
+goodness."
+
+"Shall I tell you what would be the very thing for you," said Mr. Grand,
+quite quietly.
+
+"Yes, sir; what?" asked Joshua eagerly.
+
+"This whip across your shoulders! And, by George, if I were not a
+clergyman, I would lay it there with a will!" cried the parson.
+
+No one had ever seen Joshua angry since he had grown up. His temper was
+proverbially sweet, and his self-control was a marvel. But this time he
+lost both.
+
+"God shall smite thee, thou white wall!" he cried with vehemence. "You
+are the gentleman, sir, and I am only a poor carpenter's son; but I
+spurn you with a deeper and more solemn scorn than you have spurned me!"
+
+He lifted his hand as he said this, with a strange and passionate
+gesture, then turned himself about and went in, and Mr. Grand drove off
+more his ill-wisher than before. He also made old Davidson, Joshua's
+father, suffer for his son, for he took away his custom from him, and
+did him what harm in the neighbourhood a gentleman's ill word can do a
+working man.
+
+
+_III.--Is Christ's Way Livable?_
+
+
+In London a new view of life opened to Joshua. The first thing that
+struck him in our workshop was the avowed infidelity of the workmen.
+Distrust had penetrated to their inmost souls. Christianity represents
+to the poor, not Christ tender to the sinful, visiting the leprous, the
+brother of publicans, at Whose feet sat the harlots and were comforted,
+but the gentleman taking sides with God against the poor and oppressed,
+an elder brother in the courts of heaven kicking the younger out of
+doors.
+
+At this time Joshua's mind was like an unpiloted vessel. He was beset
+with doubts, in which the only thing that kept its shape or place was
+the character of Christ. For the rest, everything had failed him. During
+this time he did not neglect what I suppose may be called the secular
+life. He attended all such science classes as he had time for, and being
+naturally quick in study, he picked up a vast deal of knowledge in a
+very short time; he interested himself in politics, in current social
+questions, specially those relating to labour and capital, and in the
+condition of the poor.
+
+So his time passed, till at last one evening, "Friends," he said, "I
+have at last cleared my mind and come to a belief. I have proved to
+myself the sole meaning of Christ: it is humanity. The modern Christ
+would be a politician. His aim would be to raise the whole platform of
+society. He would work at the destruction of caste, which is the vice at
+the root of all our creeds and institutions. He would accept the truths
+of science, and He would teach that a man saves his own soul best by
+helping his neighbour. Friends, the doctrine I have chosen for myself is
+Christian Communism, and my aim will be, the life after Christ in the
+service of humanity."
+
+It was this which made him begin his "night school," where he got
+together all who would come, and tried to interest them in a few homely
+truths in the way of cleanliness, health, good cooking, and the like,
+with interludes, so to speak, of lessons in morality.
+
+We lodged in a stifling court, Church Court, where every room was filled
+as if cubic inches were gold, as indeed they are to London house-owners,
+if human life is but dross. Opposite us lived Mary Prinsep, who was what
+the world calls lost--a bad girl--a castaway--but I have reason to speak
+well of her, for to her we owe the life of Joshua. Joshua fell ill in
+our wretched lodgings, where we lived and did for ourselves, and I was
+obliged to leave him for twelve hours and more at a stretch; but Mary
+Prinsep came over and nursed him, and kept him alive. We helped her all
+we could, and she helped us. This got us the name of associating with
+bad women.
+
+Among the rest of the doubtful characters with which our court abounded
+was one Joe Traill, who had been in prison many a time for petty larceny
+and the like. He was one of those who stink in the nostrils of cleanly,
+civilised society, and who are its shame and secret sore. There was no
+place for Joe in this great world of ours. He said to Joshua one night
+in his blithe way that there was nothing for him but to make a running
+fight for it, now up, now down, as his luck went.
+
+"Burglary's a bad trade," said Joshua.
+
+"Only one I've got at my fingers' ends, governor," laughed the thief;
+"and starvation is a worse go than quod."
+
+"Well, till you've learned a better, share with us," said Joshua. So now
+we had a reformed burglar and a reformed prostitute in our little
+circle.
+
+"It is what Christ would have done," said Joshua, when he was
+remonstrated with.
+
+But the police did not see it. Wherefore, "from information received,"
+Joshua and I were called up before the master, and had our dismissal
+from the shop, and we found ourselves penniless in the wilds of London.
+But Joshua was undisturbed. He told both Joe and Mary that he would not
+forsake them, come what might.
+
+It was a hard time, and, bit by bit, everything we possessed passed over
+the pawnbroker's counter, even to our tools. But when we were at the
+worst Joshua received a letter enclosing a five-pound note, "from a
+friend." We never knew where it came from, and there was no clue by
+which we could guess. Immediately after both Joshua and I got a job, and
+Joe and Mary still bided with us.
+
+Joshua's life of work and endeavour brought with it no reward of praise
+or popularity. It suffered the fate of all unsectarianism, and made him
+to be as one man in the midst of foes. He soon began to see that the
+utmost he could do was only palliative and temporary. So he turned to
+class organisation as something more hopeful than private charity. When
+the International Workingmen's Association was formed, he joined it as
+one of its first members; indeed, he mainly helped to establish it. And
+though he never got the ear of the International, because he was so
+truly liberal, he had some little influence, and what influence he had
+ennobled their councils as they have never been ennobled since.
+
+One evening Joe Traill, who had been given a situation, came into the
+night school staggering drunk, and made a commotion, and though Joshua
+quieted him, after being struck by him, the police, attracted by the
+tumult, came up into the room and marched Joshua and myself off to the
+police station, where we were locked up for the night. As we had to be
+punished, reason or none, we were both sent to prison for a couple of
+weeks next morning.
+
+Well, Christ was the criminal of his day!
+
+Such backslidings and failures at that of Joe Traill were among the
+greatest difficulties of Joshua's work. Men and women whom he had
+thought he had cleansed and set on a wholesome way of living, turned
+back again to the drink and the deviltry of their lives, and the various
+sectarians who came along all agreed that the cause of his failures
+was--Joshua was not a Christian!
+
+Next a spasmodic philanthropist, Lord X., struck up a friendship with
+Joshua, who, he said, wanted, as a background, a man of position. This
+led to Joshua's first introduction into a wealthy house of the upper
+classes, and the luxury and lavishness almost stupefied him. Lady X.
+liked Joshua, and felt he was a master-spirit, but when she came to
+Church Court, and found out what Mary had been, she went away offended,
+and we saw her no more.
+
+
+_IV.--The Pathway of Martyrdom_
+
+
+Sometimes Joshua went as a lecturer to various towns, for his political
+associates were willing to use his political zeal, though they did not
+go in for his religious views. He insisted on the need of the working
+classes raising themselves to a higher level in mind and circumstance,
+and on the right of each man to a fair share of the primary essentials
+for good living. His discourses roused immense antagonism, and he was
+sometimes set upon and severely handled by the men to whom he spoke. I
+have known swindlers and murderers more gently entreated. When, after
+the war between France and Prussia the Commune declared itself in Paris,
+Joshua went over to help, as far as he could, in the cause of humanity.
+I went with him, and poor, loving, faithful Mary followed us. But there,
+notwithstanding all that we and others of like mind could do, blood was
+shed which covered liberty with shame, and in the confusion that
+followed Mary was shot as a petroleuse while she was succouring the
+wounded. We buried her tenderly, and I laid part of my life in her
+grave.
+
+On our return Joshua was regarded as the representative of social
+destruction and godless licence, for the very name of the Commune was a
+red rag to English thought.
+
+At last we came to a place called Lowbridge, where Joshua was announced
+to lecture on Communism in the town hall. Grave as he always was, that
+night he was grave to sadness, like a martyr going to his death. He
+shook hands with me before going on the platform, and said, "God bless
+you, John; you have been a true friend to me."
+
+In the first row in front of him was the former clergyman of Trevalga,
+Mr. Grand, who had lately been given the rich living of Lowbridge and
+one or two stately cathedral appointments. At the first word Joshua
+spoke there broke out such a tumult as I had never heard in any public
+meeting. The yells, hisses, cat-calls, whoopings, were indescribable. It
+only ceased when Mr. Grand rose, and standing on a chair, appealed to
+the audience to "Give him your minds, my men, and let him understand
+that Lowbridge is no place for a godless rascal like him."
+
+I will do Mr. Grand the justice to say I do not think he intended his
+words to have the effect they did have. A dozen men leaped on the
+platform, and in a moment I saw Joshua under their feet. They had it all
+their own way, and while he lay on the ground, pale and senseless, one,
+with a fearful oath, kicked him twice on the head. Suddenly a whisper
+went round, they all drew a little, way off, the gas was turned down,
+and the place cleared as if by magic. When the lights were up again, I
+went to lift him--and he was dead.
+
+The man who had lived the life after Christ more exactly than any human
+being ever known to me was killed by the Christian party of order. So
+the world has ever disowned its best when they came.
+
+The death of my friend has left me not only desolate but uncertain. Like
+Joshua in earlier days, my mind is unpiloted and unanchored. Everywhere
+I see the sifting of competition, and nowhere Christian protection of
+weakness; everywhere dogma adored, and nowhere Christ realised. And
+again I ask, Which is true--modern society in its class strife and
+consequent elimination of its weaker elements, or the brotherhood and
+communism taught by the Jewish Carpenter of Nazareth? Who will answer
+me? Who will make the dark thing clear?
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+
+
+SAMUEL LOVER
+
+
+Handy Andy
+
+
+     Samuel Lover, born at Dublin on February 24, 1797, was the
+     most versatile man of his age. He was a song-writer, a
+     novelist, a painter, a dramatist, and an entertainer; and in
+     each of these parts he was remarkably successful. In 1835 he
+     came to London, and set up as a miniature painter; then he
+     turned to literature, and in "Rory O'More," published in 1837,
+     and "Handy Andy, a Tale of Irish Life," which appeared in
+     1842, he took the town. Lover was a typical Irishman of the
+     old school--high-spirited, witty, and jovially humorous; and
+     his work is informed with a genuine Irish raciness that gives
+     it a perennial freshness. He is a man gaily in love with life,
+     and with a quick eye for all the varied humours of it. "Handy
+     Andy" is one of the most amusing books ever written; a roaring
+     farce, written by a man who combined the liveliest sense of
+     fun with a painter's gift of portraying real character in a
+     few vivid touches. Samuel Lover died on July 6, 1868.
+
+
+_I.--The Squire Gets a Surprise_
+
+
+Andy Rooney was a fellow with a most ingenious knack of doing everything
+the wrong way. "Handy" Andy was the nickname the neighbours stuck on
+him, and the poor simple-minded lad liked the jeering jingle. Even Mrs.
+Rooney, who thought that her boy was "the sweetest craythur the cun
+shines on," preferred to hear him called "Handy Andy" rather than
+"Suds."
+
+For sad memories attached to the latter nickname. Knowing what a hard
+life Mrs. Rooney had had--she had married a stranger, who disappeared a
+month after marriage, so Andy came into the world with no father to beat
+a little sense into him--Squire Egan of Merryvale engaged the boy as a
+servant. One of the first things that Andy was called upon to do was to
+wait at table during an important political dinner given by the squire.
+Andy was told to ice the champagne, and the wine and a tub of ice were
+given to him.
+
+"Well, this is the quarest thing I ever heered of," said Andy. "Musha!
+What outlandish inventions the quality has among them! They're not
+content with wine, but they must have ice along with it--and in a tub,
+too, like pigs! Troth, its a' dirty thrick, I think. But here goes!"
+said he; and opening a bottle of champagne, he poured it into the tub
+with the ice.
+
+Andy distinguished himself right at the beginning of the dinner. One of
+the guests asked him for soda-water.
+
+"Would you like it hot or cold, sir?" he said.
+
+"Never mind," replied the guest, with a laugh. But Andy was anxious to
+please, and the squire's butler met him hurrying to the kitchen,
+bewildered, but still resolute.
+
+"One of the gintlemen wants some soap and wather with his wine,"
+exclaimed Andy. "Shall I give it hot or cold?"
+
+The distracted and irate butler took Andy to the sideboard and pushed a
+small soda into his hand, saying, "Cut the cord, you fool!" Andy took it
+gingerly, and holding it over the table, carried out the order. Bang I
+went the bottle, and the cork, after knocking out two of the lights,
+struck the squire in the eye, while the hostess had a cold bath down her
+back. Poor Andy, frightened by the soda-water jumping out of the bottle,
+kept holding it out at arm's-length, exclaiming at every fizz, "Ow, ow,
+ow!"
+
+"Send that fellow out of the room," said the squire to the butler, "and
+bring in the champagne."
+
+In staggered Andy with the tub.
+
+"Hand it round the table," said the squire.
+
+Andy tried to lift up the tub "to hand it round the table," but finding
+he could not, he whispered, "I can't get it up, sir!"
+
+"Draw it then," murmured his master, thinking that Andy meant he had got
+a bottle which was not effervescent enough to expel its own cork.
+
+"Here it is," said Andy, pulling the tub up to the squire's chair.
+
+"What do you mean, you stupid rascal?" exclaimed the squire, staring at
+the strange stuff before him. "There's not a single bottle there!"
+
+"To be sure there's no bottle there, sir," said Andy. "I've poured every
+dhrop of wine in the ice, as you towld me, sir. If you put your hand
+down into it, you'll feel it."
+
+A wild roar of laughter uprose from the listening guests. Happily they
+were now too merry to be upset by the mishap, and it was generally voted
+that the joke was worth twice as much as the wine. Handy Andy was,
+however, expelled from the dining-room in disgrace, and for days kept
+out of his master's way, and the servants for months would call him by
+no other name but "Suds."
+
+
+_II.--O'Grady Gets a Blister_
+
+
+Mr. Egan was a kind-hearted man, and, instead of dismissing Andy, he
+kept him on for out-door work. Our hero at once distinguished himself in
+his new walk of life.
+
+"Ride into the town and see if there is a letter for me," said the
+squire.
+
+"I want a letther, if you plaze!" shouted Andy, rushing into the
+post-office.
+
+"Who do you want it for?" asked the postmaster.
+
+"What consarn is that o' yours?" exclaimed Andy.
+
+Happily, a man who knew Andy looked in for a letter, paid the postage of
+fourpence on it, and then settled the dispute between Andy and the
+postmaster by mentioning Mr. Egan's name.
+
+"Why didn't you tell me you came from the squire?" said the postmaster.
+"Here's a letter for him. Elevenpence postage."
+
+"Elevenpence postage!" Andy cried. "Didn't I see you give that man a
+letther for fourpence, and a bigger letther than this? Do you think I'm
+a fool?"
+
+"No," said the postmaster; "I'm sure of it."
+
+He walked off to serve another customer, and Andy meditated. His master
+wanted the letter badly, so he would have to pay the exorbitant price.
+He snatched two other letters from the heap on the counter while the
+postmaster's back was turned, paid the elevenpence, received the epistle
+to which he was entitled, and rode home triumphant.
+
+"Look at that!" he exclaimed, slapping the three letters down under his
+broad fist on the table before the astonished squire. "He made me pay
+elevenpence, by gor! But I've brought your honour the worth of your
+money, anyhow."
+
+"Well, by the powers!" said the squire, as Andy stalked out of the room
+with an air of supreme triumph. "That's the most extraordinary genius I
+ever came across!"
+
+He read the letter for which he had been anxiously waiting. It was from
+his lawyer about the forthcoming election. In it he was warned to beware
+of his friend O'Grady, who was selling his interest to the government
+candidate.
+
+"So that's the work O'Grady's at!" exclaimed the squire angrily. "Foul,
+foul! And after all the money I lent him, too!"
+
+He threw down the letter, and his eye caught the other two that Andy had
+stolen.
+
+"More of that mad fool's work! Robbing the mail now. That's a hanging
+job. I'd better send them to the parties to whom they're addressed."
+
+Picking up one of the epistles, he found it was a government letter
+directed to his new enemy, O'Grady. "All's fair in war," thought the
+squire, and pinching the letter until it gaped, he peeped in and read:
+"As you very properly remark, poor Egan is a spoon--a mere spoon." "Am I
+a spoon, your villain!" roared the squire, tearing the letter and
+throwing it into the fire. "I'm a spoon you'll sup sorrow with yet!"
+
+"Get out a writ on O'Grady for all the money he owes me," he wrote to
+his lawyer. "Send me the blister, and I'll slap it on him."
+
+Unfortunately, he sent Andy with this letter; still more unfortunately,
+Mrs. Egan also gave the simple fellow a prescription to be made up at
+the chemist's. Andy surpassed himself on this occasion. He called at the
+chemist's on his way back from the lawyer's, and carefully laid the
+sealed envelope containing the writ on the counter, while he was getting
+the medicine. On leaving, he took up a different envelope.
+
+"My dear Squire," ran the letter Andy brought back, "I send you the
+blister for O'Grady, as you insist on it; but I don't think you will
+find it easy to serve him with it.--Your obedient, MURTOUGH MURPHY."
+
+When the squire opened the accompanying envelope, and found within a
+real instead of a figurative blister, he grew crimson with rage. But he
+was consoled when he went to horsewhip his attorney, and met the chemist
+pelting down the street with O'Grady tearing after him with a cudgel.
+For some years O'Grady had successfully kept out of his door every
+process-server sent by his innumerable creditors; but now, having got a
+cold, he had dispatched his man to the chemist for a blister, and owing
+to Handy Andy, he obtained Squire Egan's writ against him.
+
+"You've made a mistake this time, you rascal," said the squire to Andy,
+"for which I'll forgive you."
+
+And this was only fair, for through it he was able to carry the
+election, and become Edward Egan, Esq., M.P.
+
+
+_III.--Andy Gets Married_
+
+
+Andy was among the guests invited to the wedding feast of pretty Matty
+Dwyer and handsome young James Casey; like everybody else he came to the
+marriage full of curiosity. Matty's father, John Dwyer, was a hard,
+close-fisted fellow, and, as all the neighbours knew, there had been
+many fierce disputes between him and Casey over the question of a farm
+belonging to Dwyer going into the marriage settlement.
+
+A grand dinner was laid in the large barn, but it was kept waiting owing
+to the absence of the bridegroom. Father Phil, the kindly, jovial parish
+priest, who had come to help James and Matty "tie with their tongues the
+knot they couldn't undo with their teeth," had not broken his fast that
+day, and wanted the feast to go on. To the great surprise of the
+company, Matty backed him, and full of life and spirits, began to lay
+the dinner. For some time the hungry guests were busy with the good
+cheer provided for them, but the women at last asked in loud whispers,
+"Where in the world is James Casey?" Still the bride kept up her smiles,
+but old Jack Dwyer's face grew blacker and blacker. Unable to bear the
+strain any longer, he stood up and addressed the expectant crowd.
+
+"You see the disgrace that's put on me!"
+
+"He'll come yet, sir," said Andy.
+
+"No, he won't!" cried Dwyer, "I see he won't. He wanted to get
+everything his own way, and he thinks to disgrace me in doing what he
+likes, but he shan't;" and he struck the table fiercely. "He goes back
+of his bargain now, thinkin' I'll give in to him; but I won't. Friends
+and neighbours, here's the lease of the three-cornered field below there
+and a snug little cottage, and it's ready for my girl to walk in with
+the man that will have her! If there's a man among you here that's
+willing, let him say the word, and I'll give her to him!"
+
+Matty tried to protest, but her father silenced her with a terrible
+look. When old Dwyer's blood was up, he was capable of murder. No guest
+dared to speak.
+
+"Are yiz all dumb?" shouted Dwyer. "It's not every day a farm and a fine
+girl falls in a man's way."
+
+Still no one spoke, and Andy thought they were using Dwyer and his
+daughter badly.
+
+"Would I do, sir?" he timidly said.
+
+Andy was just the last man Dwyer would have chosen, but he was
+determined that someone should marry the girl, and show Casey "the
+disgrace should not be put on him." He called up Andy and Matty, and
+asked the priest to marry them.
+
+"I can't, if your daughter objects," said Father Phil.
+
+Dwyer turned on the girl, and there was the devil in his eye.
+
+"I'll marry him," said Matty.
+
+So the rites and blessings of the Church were dispensed between two
+persons who an hour before had never given a thought to each other. Yet
+it was wonderful with what lightness of heart Matty went through the
+honours consequent on a peasant bridal in Ireland. She gaily led off the
+dance with Andy, and the night was far spent before the bride and
+bridegroom were escorted to the cottage which was to be their home.
+
+Matty sat quiet, looking at the fire, while Andy bolted the door; but
+when he tried to kiss her she leaped up furiously.
+
+"I'll crack your silly head if you don't behave yourself," she cried,
+seizing a stool and brandishing it above him.
+
+"Oh, wirra, wirra!" said Andy. "Aren't you my wife? Why did you marry
+me?"
+
+"Did I want owld Jack Dwyer to murther me as soon as the people's backs
+was turned?" said Matty. "But though I'm afraid of him, I'm not afraid
+of you!"
+
+"Och!" cried poor Andy, "what'll be the end of it?"
+
+There was a tap at the door as he spoke, and Matty ran and opened it.
+
+In came James Casey and half a dozen strong young fellows. Behind them
+crept a reprobate, degraded priest who got his living and his name of
+"Couple-Beggar" by performing irregular marriages. The end of it was
+that Matty was married over again to Casey, whom she had sent for while
+the dancing was going on. Poor Andy, bound hand and foot, was carried
+out of the cottage to a lonely by-way, and there he passed his
+wedding-night roped to the stump of an old tree.
+
+
+_IV.--Andy Gets Married Again_
+
+
+Misfortunes now accumulated on Andy's head. At break of day he was
+released from the tree-stump by Squire Egan, who was riding by with some
+bad news for the man he thought was now a happy bridegroom. Owing to an
+indiscreet word dropped by our simple-minded hero, a gang of smugglers,
+who ran an illicit still on the moors, had gathered something about Andy
+stealing the letters from the post-office and Squire Egan burning them.
+They had already begun to blackmail the squire, and in order to defeat
+them it was necessary to get Andy out of the country for some time. So
+nothing could be done against Casey.
+
+And, on going home to prepare for a journey to England with a friend of
+the squire's, Andy found his mother in a sad state of anxiety. His
+pretty cousin, Oonah, was crying in a corner of the room, and Ragged
+Nance, an unkempt beggar-woman, to whom the Rooneys had done many a good
+turn, was screaming, "I tell you Shan More means to carry off Oonah
+to-night. I heard them laying the plan for it."
+
+"We'll go to the squire," sobbed Mrs. Rooney. "The villain durst not!"
+
+"He's got the squire under his thumb, I tell you," replied Ragged Nance.
+"You must look after yourselves. I've got it," she said, turning to
+Andy. "We'll dress him as a girl, and let the smugglers take him."
+
+Andy roared with laughter at the notion of being made a girl of. Though
+Shan More was the blackguardly leader of the smugglers who were giving
+the squire trouble, Andy was too taken up with the fun of being
+transformed into the very rough likeness of a pleasing young woman to
+think of the danger. It was difficult to give his angular form the
+necessary roundness of outline; but Ragged Nance at last padded him out
+with straw, and tied a bonnet on his head to shade his face, saying,
+"That'll deceive them. Shan More won't come himself. He'll send some of
+his men, and they're all dhrunk already."
+
+"But they'll murdher my boy when they find out the chate," said Mrs.
+Rooney.
+
+"Suppose they did," exclaimed Andy stoutly; "I'd rather die, sure, than
+the disgrace should fall upon Oonah there."
+
+"God bless you, Andy dear!" said Oonah.
+
+The tramp of approaching horses rang through the stillness of the night,
+and Oonah and Nance ran out and crouched in the potato tops in the
+garden. Four drunken vagabonds broke into the cottage, and, seeing Andy
+in the dim light clinging to his mother, they dragged him away and
+lifted him on a horse, and galloped off with him.
+
+As it happened, luck favoured Andy. When he came to the smugglers' den,
+Shan More was lying on the ground stunned, and his sister, Red Bridget,
+was tending him; in going up the ladder from the underground
+whisky-still, he had fallen backward. The upshot was that Andy was left
+in charge of Red Bridget. But, alas! just as he was hoping to escape,
+she penetrated through his disguise. More unfortunately still, Andy was,
+with all his faults, a rather good-looking young fellow, and Red Bridget
+took a fancy to him, and the "Couple-Beggar" was waiting for a job.
+
+Smugglers' whisky is very strong, and Bridget artfully plied him with
+it. Andy was still rather dazed when he reached home next morning.
+
+"I've married again," he said to his mother.
+
+"Married?" interrupted Oonah, growing pale. "Who to?"
+
+"Shan More's sister," said Andy.
+
+"Wirasthru!" screamed Mrs. Rooney, tearing her cap off her head. "You
+got the worst woman in Ireland."
+
+"Then I'll go and 'list for a sojer," said he.
+
+
+_V.--Andy Gets Married a Third Time_
+
+
+It was Father Phil that brought the extraordinary news to Squire Egan.
+
+"Do you remember those two letters that Andy stole from the post-office,
+and that someone burnt?" he asked, with a smile.
+
+"I've been meaning to tell you, father, that one was for you," said the
+squire, looking very uncomfortable.
+
+"Oh, Andy let it out long ago," said the kindly old priest. "But the
+joke is that by stealing my letter Andy nearly lost a title and a great
+fortune. Ever heard of Lord Scatterbrain? He died a little time ago,
+confessing in his will that it was he that married Mrs. Rooney, and
+deserted her."
+
+"So Handy Andy is now a lord!" exclaimed the squire, rocking with
+laughter.
+
+Andy took it like a true son of the wildest and most eccentric of Irish
+peers. On getting over the first shock of astonishment, he broke out
+into short peals of laughter, exclaiming at intervals, that "it was
+mighty quare." When, after much questioning, his wishes in regard to his
+new life were made clear, it was found that they all centred on one
+object, which was "to have a goold watch."
+
+The squire was perplexed what to do with a great nobleman of this sort,
+and at last he got a kinsman, Dick Dawson, who loved fun, to take Andy
+under his especial care to London. When they arrived there it was
+wonderful how many persons were eager to show civility to his new
+lordship, and he who as Handy Andy had been cried down all his life as a
+"stupid rascal," "a blundering thief," "a thick-headed brute," suddenly
+acquired, under the title of Lord Scatterbrain, a reputation for being
+"vastly amusing, a little eccentric, perhaps, but so droll."
+
+All this was very delightful for Andy--so delightful that he quite
+forgot Red Bridget. But Red Bridget did not forget him.
+
+"Lady Scatterbrain!" announced the servant one day; and in came Bridget
+and Shan More and an attorney.
+
+The attorney brought out a settlement in which an exorbitant sum was to
+be settled on Bridget, and Shan More, with a threatening air, ordered
+Andy to sign the deed.
+
+"I can't," cried Andy, retreating to the fire-place, "and I won't!"
+
+"You must sign your name!" roared Shan More.
+
+"I can't, I tell you!" yelled Andy, seizing the poker. "I've never
+larned to write."
+
+"Your lordship can make your mark," said the attorney.
+
+"I'll make my mark with this poker," cried Andy, "if you don't all clear
+out!"
+
+The noise of a frightful row brought Dick Dawson into the room, and he
+managed to get rid of the intruders by inducing the attorney to conduct
+the negotiations through Lord Scatterbrain's solicitors.
+
+But while the negotiations were going on, a fact came to light that
+altered the whole complexion of the matter, and Andy went post-haste
+over to Ireland to the fine house in which his mother and his cousin
+were living.
+
+Bursting into the drawing-room, he made a rush upon Oonah, whom he
+hugged and kissed most outrageously, with exclamations of the wildest
+affection.
+
+When Oonah freed herself from his embraces, and asked him what he was
+about, Andy turned over the chairs, threw the mantelpiece ornaments into
+the fire, and banged the poker and tongs together, shouting! "Hurroo!
+I'm not married at all!"
+
+It had been discovered that Red Bridget had a husband living when she
+forced Andy to marry her, and as soon as it was legally proved that Lord
+Scatterbrain was a free man, Father Phil was called in, and Oonah, who
+had all along loved her wild cousin, was made Lady Scatterbrain.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+
+
+EDWARD BULWER LYTTON
+
+
+Eugene Aram
+
+
+     Novelist, poet, essayist, and politician, Edward Bulwer Lytton
+     was born in London on May 25, 1805. His father was General
+     Earle Bulwer. He assumed his mother's family name on her death
+     in 1843, and was elevated to the peerage as Baron Lytton in
+     1866. At seventeen Lytton published a volume entitled,
+     "Ismael, and Other Poems." An unhappy marriage in 1827 was
+     followed by extraordinary literary activity, and during the
+     next ten years he produced twelve novels, two poems, a play,
+     "England and the English," and "Athens: Its Rise and Fall,"
+     besides an enormous number of shorter stories, essays, and
+     articles for contemporary periodicals. Altogether his output
+     is represented by nearly sixty volumes. Few books on their
+     publication have created a greater furore than Lord Lytton's
+     "Eugene Aram," which was published in 1832. One section of the
+     novel-reading public hailed its moving, dramatic story with
+     manifest delight, while the other severely condemned it on the
+     plea of its false morality. The story takes its title from
+     that remarkable scholar and criminal, Eugene Aram, at one time
+     a tutor in the Lytton family, who was executed at York in
+     1759, for a murder committed fourteen years before. The crime
+     caused much consternation at the time, Aram's refined and mild
+     disposition being apparently in direct contradiction to his
+     real nature. The novel is an unusually successful, though
+     perhaps one-sided psychological study. In a revised edition
+     Lytton made the narrative agree with his own conclusion that,
+     though an accomplice in robbery, Aram was not guilty of
+     premeditated or actual murder. Edward Bulwer Lytton died on
+     January 18, 1873.
+
+
+_I.--At the Sign of the Spotted Dog_
+
+
+In the county of ---- was a sequestered hamlet, to which I shall give
+the name of Grassdale. It lay in a fruitful valley between gentle and
+fertile hills. Its single hostelry, the Spotted Dog, was owned by one
+Peter Dealtry, a small farmer, who was also clerk of the parish. On
+summer evenings Peter was frequently to be seen outside his inn
+discussing psalmody and other matters with Jacob Bunting, late a
+corporal in his majesty's army, a man who prided himself on his
+knowledge of the world, and found Peter's too easy fund of merriment
+occasionally irritating.
+
+On one such evening their discussion was interrupted by an
+unprepossessing and travel-stained stranger, who, when his wants, none
+too amiably expressed, had been attended to, exhibited a marked
+curiosity concerning the people of the locality. As the stranger paid
+for his welcome with a liberal hand, Peter became more than usually
+communicative.
+
+He described the lord of the manor, a distinguished nobleman who lived
+at the castle some six miles away. He talked of the squire and his
+household. "But," he continued, "the most noticeable man is a great
+scholar. There, yonder," said he, "you may just catch a glimpse of the
+tall what-d'ye-call-it he has built on the top of his house that he may
+get nearer to the stars."
+
+"The scholar, I suppose," observed the stranger, "is not very rich.
+Learning does not clothe men nowadays, eh, corporal?"
+
+"And why should it?" asked Bunting. "Zounds! can it teach a man how to
+defend his country? Old England wants soldiers. But the man's well
+enough, I must own--civil, modest----"
+
+"And by no means a beggar," added Peter. "He gave as much to the poor
+last winter as the squire himself. But if he were as rich as Lord----he
+could not be more respected. The greatest folk in the country come in
+their carriages-and-four to see him. There is not a man more talked on
+in the whole county than Eugene Aram----"
+
+"What!" cried the traveller, his countenance changing as he sprang from
+his seat. "What! Aram! Did you say _Aram_? Great heavens! How strange!"
+
+"What! You know him?" gasped the astonished landlord.
+
+Instead of replying, the stranger muttered inaudible words between his
+teeth. Now he strode two steps forward, clenching his hands. Now smiled
+grimly. Then he threw himself upon his seat, still in silence.
+
+"Rum tantrums!" ejaculated the corporal. "What the devil! Did the man
+eat your grandmother?"
+
+The stranger lifted his head, and addressing Peter, said, with a forced
+smile, "You have done me a great kindness, my friend. Eugene Aram was an
+early acquaintance of mine. We have not met for many years. I never
+guessed that he lived in these parts."
+
+And then, directed, in answer to his inquiries, to Aram's dwelling, a
+lonely grey house in the middle of a broad plain, the traveller went his
+way.
+
+
+_II.--The Squire's Guest_
+
+
+The man the stranger went to seek was one who perhaps might have
+numbered some five-and-thirty years, but at a hasty glance would have
+seemed considerably younger. His frame was tall, slender, but well-knit
+and fair proportioned; his cheek was pale, but with thought; his hair
+was long, and of a rich, deep brown; his brow was unfurrowed; his face
+was one that a physiognomist would have loved to look upon, so much did
+it speak of both the refinement and the dignity of intellect.
+
+Eugene Aram had been now about two years settled in his present retreat,
+with an elderly dame as housekeeper. From almost every college in Europe
+came visitors to his humble dwelling, and willingly he imparted to
+others any benefit derived from his lonely researches. But he proffered
+no hospitality, and shrank from all offers of friendship. Yet, unsocial
+as he was, everyone loved him. The peasant threw kindly pity into his
+respectful greeting. Even that terror of the village, Mother Darkmans,
+saved her bitterest gibes for others; and the village maiden, as she
+curtseyed by him, stole a glance at his handsome but melancholy
+countenance, and told her sweetheart she was certain the poor scholar
+had been crossed in love.
+
+At the manor house he was often the subject of remark, but only on the
+day of the stranger's appearance at the Spotted Dog had the squire found
+an opportunity of breaking through the scholar's habitual reserve, and
+so persuaded him to dine with him and his family on the day following.
+
+The squire, Rowland Lester, a man of cultivated tastes, was a widower,
+with two daughters and a nephew. Walter, the only son of Rowland's
+brother Geoffrey, who had absconded, leaving his wife and child to shift
+for themselves, was in his twenty-first year, tall and strong, with a
+striking if not strictly handsome face; high-spirited, jealous of the
+affections of those he loved; cheerful outwardly, but given to moody
+reflections on his orphaned and dependent lot, for his mother had not
+long survived her desertion.
+
+Madeline Lester, at the age of eighteen, was the beauty and toast of the
+whole country; with a mind no less beautiful than her form was graceful,
+and a desire for study equalled only by her regard for those who
+possessed it, a regard which had extended secretly, if all but
+unacknowledged to herself, to the solitary scholar of whom I have been
+speaking. Ellinor, her junior by two years, was of a character equally
+gentle, but less elevated, and a beauty akin to her sister's.
+
+When Eugene Aram arrived at the manor house in keeping with his promise,
+something appeared to rest upon his mind, from which, however, by the
+excitement lent by wine and occasional bursts of eloquence, he seemed
+striving to escape, and at length he apparently succeeded.
+
+When the ladies had retired, Lester and his guest resumed their talk in
+the open, Walter declining to join them.
+
+Aram was advancing the view that it is impossible for a man who leads
+the life of the world ever to experience content.
+
+"For me," observed the squire, "I have my objects of interest in my
+children."
+
+"And I mine in my books," said Aram.
+
+As they passed over the village green, the gaunt form of Corporal
+Bunting arrested their progress.
+
+"Beg pardon, your honour," said he to the scholar, "but strange-looking
+dog here last evening--asked after you--said you were old friend of
+his--trotted off in your direction--hope all was right, master--augh!"
+
+"All right," repeated Aram, fixing his eyes on the corporal, who had
+concluded his speech with a significant wink. Then, as if satisfied with
+his survey, he added, "Ay, ay; I know whom you mean. He had become
+acquainted with me some years ago. I don't know--I know very little of
+him." And the student was turning away, but stopped to add, "The man
+called on me last night for assistance. I gave what I could afford, and
+he has now proceeded on his journey. Good evening!"
+
+Lester and his companion passed on, the former somewhat surprised, a
+feeling increased when shortly afterwards Aram abruptly bade him
+farewell. But, recalling the peculiar habits of the scholar, he saw that
+the only way to hope for a continuance of that society which had so
+pleased him was to indulge Aram at first in his unsocial inclinations;
+and so, without further discourse, he shook hands with him, and they
+parted.
+
+
+_III.--The Old Riding-Whip_
+
+
+When Lester regained the little parlour in his home he found his nephew
+sitting, silent and discontented, by the window. Madeline had taken up a
+book, and Ellinor, in an opposite corner, was plying her needle with an
+earnestness that contrasted with her customary cheerful vivacity.
+
+The squire thought he had cause to complain of his nephew's conduct to
+their guest. "You eyed the poor student," he said, "as if you wished him
+amongst the books of Alexandria."
+
+"I would he were burnt with them!" exclaimed Walter sharply. "He seems
+to have bewitched my fair cousins here into a forgetfulness of all but
+himself."
+
+"Not me!" said Ellinor eagerly.
+
+"No, not you; you are too just. It is a pity Madeline is not more like
+you."
+
+Thus was disturbance first introduced into a peaceful family. Walter was
+jealous; he could not control his feelings. An open breach followed, not
+only between him and Aram, but a quarrel between him and Madeline. The
+position came as a revelation to his uncle, who, seeing no other way out
+of the difficulty, yielded to Walter's request that he should be allowed
+to travel.
+
+Meanwhile, Aram, drawn out of his habitual solitude by the sweet
+influence of Madeline, became a frequent visitor to the manor house and
+the acknowledged suitor for Madeline's hand. As for Walter, when he set
+out for London, with Corporal Bunting as his servant, he had found
+consolation in the discovery that Ellinor's regard for him had gone
+beyond mere cousinly affection. His uncle gave him several letters of
+introduction to old friends; among them one to Sir Peter Hales, and
+another to a Mr. Courtland.
+
+An incident that befell him on the London road revived to an
+extraordinary degree Walter's desire to ascertain the whereabouts of his
+long-lost father. At the request of Sir Peter Hales he had alighted at a
+saddler's for the purpose of leaving a parcel committed to him, when his
+attention was attracted by an old-fashioned riding-whip. Taking it up,
+he found it bore his own crest, and his father's initials, "G.L." Much
+agitated, he made quick inquiries, and learned that the whip had been
+left for repair about twelve years previously by a gentleman who was
+visiting Mr. Courtland, and had not been heard of since.
+
+Eagerly he sought out Mr. Courtland, and gleaned news which induced him,
+much to Corporal Bunting's disgust, to set his back on London, and make
+his way with all speed in the direction of Knaresborough. It appeared
+that at the time the whip was left at the saddler's, Geoffrey Lester had
+just returned from India, and when he called on his old acquaintance,
+Mr. Courtland, he was travelling to the historic town in the West Riding
+to claim a legacy his old colonel--he had been in the army--had left him
+for saving his life. The name Geoffrey Lester had assumed on entering
+the army was Clarke.
+
+
+_IV.--Hush-Money_
+
+
+While Walter Lester and Corporal Bunting were passing northward, the
+squire of Grassdale saw, with evident complacency, the passion growing
+up between his friend and his daughter. He looked upon it as a tie that
+would permanently reconcile Aram to the hearth of social and domestic
+life; a tie that would constitute the happiness of his daughter and
+secure to himself a relation in the man he felt most inclined of all he
+knew to honour and esteem. Aram seemed another man; and happy indeed was
+Madeline in the change. But one evening, while the two were walking
+together, and Aram was discoursing on their future, Madeline uttered a
+faint shriek, and clung trembling to her lover's arm.
+
+Amazed and roused from his enthusiasm, Aram looked up, and, on seeing
+the cause of her alarm, seemed himself transfixed, as by a sudden terror
+to the earth.
+
+But a few paces distant, standing amidst the long and rank fern that
+grew on each side of their path, quite motionless, and looking on the
+pair with a sarcastic smile, stood the ominous stranger whom we first
+met at the sign of the Spotted Dog.
+
+"Pardon me, dear Madeline," said Aram, softly disengaging himself from
+her, "but for one moment."
+
+He then advanced to the stranger, and after a conversation that lasted
+but a minute, the latter bowed, and, turning away, soon vanished among
+the shrubs.
+
+Aram, regaining the side of Madeline, explained, in answer to her
+startled inquiries, that the man, whom he had known well some fourteen
+years ago, had again come to ask for his help, and he supposed that he
+would again have to aid him.
+
+"And is that indeed _all_?" said Madeline, breathing more freely. "Well,
+poor man, if he be your friend, he must be inoffensive. Here, Eugene."
+And the simple-hearted girl put her purse into Aram's hand.
+
+"No, dearest," said he, shrinking back. "I can easily spare him enough.
+But let us turn back. It grows chill."
+
+"And why did he leave us, Eugene?"
+
+"Because," was the reply, "I desired him to visit me at home an hour
+hence."
+
+There was a past shared by these two men, and Houseman--for that was the
+stranger's name--had come for the price of his silence. The next day, on
+the plea of an old debt that suddenly had to be met, Aram approached his
+prospective father-in-law for the loan of L300. This sum was readily
+placed at his disposal. Indeed, he was offered double the amount. His
+next action was to travel to London, where, with all the money at his
+command, he purchased an annuity for Houseman, falling back, for his own
+needs, upon the influence of Lord ---- to secure for him a small state
+allowance which it was in that nobleman's power to grant to him as a
+needy man of letters.
+
+Houseman was surprised at the scholar's generosity when the paper
+ensuring the annuity was placed in his hands. "Before daybreak
+to-morrow," he said, "I will be on the road. You may now rest assured
+that you are free of me for life. Go home--marry--enjoy your existence.
+Within four days, if the wind set fair, I shall be in France."
+
+The pale face of Eugene Aram brightened. He had resolved, had Houseman's
+attitude been different, to surrender Madeline at once.
+
+
+_V.--Human Bones_
+
+
+The unexpected change in her lover's demeanour, on his return to
+Grassdale, brought unspeakable joy to the heart of Madeline Lester. But
+hardly had Aram left Houseman's squalid haunt in Lambeth when a letter
+was put into the ruffian's hand telling of his daughter's serious
+illness. For this daughter Houseman, villain as he was, would willingly
+have given his life. Now, casting all other thoughts aside, he set
+forth, not for France, but for Knaresborough, where his daughter was
+lying, and whither, guided by his inquiries concerning his father,
+Walter Lester was also on his way.
+
+It was not long ere Walter found that a certain Colonel Elmore had died
+in 17--, leaving L1,000 and a house to one Daniel Clarke, and that an
+executor of the colonel's will survived in the person of a Mr. Jonas
+Elmore. From Mr. Elmore, Walter learned that Clarke had disappeared
+suddenly, after receiving the legacy, taking with him a number of jewels
+with which Mr. Elmore had entrusted him. His disappearance had caused a
+sensation at the time, and a man named Houseman had assigned as a cause
+of Clarke's disappearance a loan which he did not mean to repay. It was
+true that Houseman and a young scholar named Eugene Aram had been
+interrogated by the authorities, but nothing could be proved against
+them, and certainly nothing was suspected where Aram was concerned. He
+left Knaresborough soon after Clarke had disappeared, having received a
+legacy from a relative at York.
+
+This story of a legacy Walter was not inclined to believe, but proof of
+it was forthcoming. Another circumstance in Aram's favour was that his
+memory was still honoured in the town, by the curate, Mr. Summers, as
+well as by others.
+
+Accompanied by Mr. Summers, Walter visited the house where Daniel Clarke
+had stayed and also the woman at whose house Aram had lived. It was a
+lonely, desolate-looking house; its solitary occupant a woman who
+evidently had been drinking. When the name of Eugene Aram was mentioned,
+the woman assumed a mysterious air, and eventually disclosed the fact
+that she had seen Mr. Clarke, Houseman and Aram enter Aram's room early
+one morning. They went away together. A little later Aram and Houseman
+returned. She found out afterwards that they had been burning some
+clothes. She also discovered a handkerchief belonging to Houseman with
+blood upon it. She had shown this to Houseman, who had threatened to
+shoot her should she say a word to anyone regarding himself or his
+companions.
+
+Armed with this narrative, extracted by the promise of pecuniary reward,
+Walter and Mr. Summers were making their way to a magistrate's when
+their attention was attracted by a crowd. A workman, digging for
+limestone, had unearthed a big wooden chest. The chest contained a
+skeleton!
+
+In the midst of the commotion caused by this discovery a voice broke out
+abruptly. It was that of Richard Houseman. His journey had been in vain.
+His daughter was dead. His appearance revealed all too plainly to what
+source he had flown for consolation.
+
+"What do ye here, fools?" he cried, reeling forward. "Ha! Human bones!
+And whose may they be, think ye?"
+
+There were in the crowd those who remembered the disappearance which had
+so surprised them years before, and more than one repeated the name of
+"Daniel Clarke."
+
+"Clarke's bones!" exclaimed Houseman. "Ha, ha! They are no more Clarke's
+than mine!"
+
+At this moment Walter stepped forward.
+
+"Behold!" he cried, in a ringing voice, vibrant with emotion--"behold
+the murderer!"
+
+Pale, confused, conscience-stricken, the bewilderment of intoxication
+mingling with that of fear, Houseman gasped out that if they wanted the
+bones of Clarke they should search St. Robert's Cave. And in the place
+he named they found at last the unhallowed burial-place of the murdered
+dead.
+
+But Houseman, now roused by a sense of personal danger, denied that he
+was the guilty man. Drawing his breath hard, and setting his teeth as
+with steeled determination, he cried, "The murderer is Eugene Aram!"
+
+
+_VI.--"I Murdered my Own Life"_
+
+
+It was a chill morning in November. But at Grassdale all was bustle and
+excitement. The church bells were ringing merry peals. It wanted but an
+hour or so to the wedding of Eugene Aram and Madeline Lester. In this
+interval the scholar was alone with his thoughts. His reverie was rudely
+disturbed by a loud knocking, the noise of which penetrated into his
+study. The outer door was opened. Voices were heard.
+
+"Great God!" he exclaimed. "'Murderer!' Was that the word I heard
+shouted forth? The voice, too, is Walter Lester's. Can he have
+learned----"
+
+Calm succeeded to the agitation of the moment. He met the newcomers with
+a courageous front. But, followed by his bride who was to be, by her
+sister Ellinor, and by their father, all confident that Walter had made
+some horrible mistake, Eugene Aram was taken away to be committed to
+York on the capital charge.
+
+The law's delays were numerous. Winter passed into spring, and spring
+into summer before the trial came on. Eugene Aram's friends were
+numerous. Lord ---- firmly believed in his innocence, and proffered
+help. But the prisoner refused legal aid, and conducted his own
+defence--how ably history records. Madeline was present at the closing
+scene, in her wedding dress. Her father was all but broken in his grief
+for daughter and friend. Walter was distraught by the havoc he had
+caused, and in doubt whether, after all, his action had not been too
+impetuous. The court was deeply impressed by the prisoner's defence. But
+the judge's summing-up was all against the accused, and the verdict was
+"Guilty!" Madeline lived but a few hours after hearing it.
+
+The following evening Walter obtained admittance to the condemned cell.
+
+"Eugene Aram," he said, in tones of agony, "if at this moment you can
+lay your hand on your heart, and say, 'Before God, and at peril of my
+soul, I am innocent of this deed,' I will depart; I will believe you,
+and bear as I may the reflection that I have been one of the unconscious
+agents in condemning to a fearful death an innocent man. But if you
+cannot at so dark a crisis take that oath, then, oh then, be generous,
+even in guilt, and let me not be haunted through life by the spectre of
+a ghastly and restless doubt!"
+
+On the eve of the day destined to be his last on earth Eugene Aram
+placed in Walter's hands a paper which that young man pledged himself
+not to read till Rowland Lester's grey hairs had gone to the grave. This
+document set forth at length the story of Aram's early life, how he
+sought knowledge amidst grinding poverty, and how, when a gigantic
+discovery in science gleamed across his mind, a discovery which only
+lack of means prevented him from realising to the vast benefit of truth
+and man, the tempter came to him. This tempter took the form of a
+distant relative, Richard Houseman, with his doctrine that "Laws order
+me to starve, but self-preservation is an instinct more sacred than
+society," and his demand for co-operation in an act of robbery from one
+Daniel Clarke, whose crimes were many, who was, moreover, on the point
+of disappearing with a number of jewels he had borrowed on false
+pretences.
+
+"Houseman lied," wrote the condemned man. "I did not strike the blow. I
+never designed a murder. But the deed was done, and Houseman divided the
+booty. My share he buried in the earth, leaving me to withdraw it when I
+chose. There, perhaps, it lies still. I never touched what I had
+murdered my _own_ life to gain. Three days after that deed a relative,
+who had neglected me in life, died and left me wealth--wealth, at least,
+to me! Wealth greater than that for which I had----My ambition died in
+remorse!"
+
+Houseman passed away in his own bed. But he had to be buried secretly in
+the dead of night, for, ten years after Eugene Aram had died on the
+scaffold, the hatred of the world survived for his accomplice. Rowland
+Lester did not live long after Madeline's death. But when Walter
+returned from a period of honourable service with the great Frederick of
+Prussia, it was with no merely cousinly welcome that Ellinor received
+him.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+
+
+The Last Days of Pompeii
+
+
+     "The Last Days of Pompeii," the most popular of Lytton's
+     historical romances, was begun and almost completed at Naples
+     in the winter of 1832-3, and was first published in 1834. The
+     period dealt with is that of 79 A.D., during the short reign
+     of Titus, when Rome was at its zenith and the picturesque
+     Campanian city a kind of Rome-by-the-Sea. Lytton wrote the
+     novel some thirty years before the excavations of Pompeii had
+     been systematically begun; but his pictures of the life, the
+     luxuries, the pastimes and the gaiety of the half-Grecian
+     colony, its worship of Isis, its trade with Alexandria, and
+     the early struggles of Christianity with heathen superstition
+     are exceptionally vivid. The creation of Nydia, the blind
+     flower-girl, was suggested by the casual remark of an
+     acquaintance that at the time of the destruction of Pompeii
+     the sightless would have found the easiest deliverance.
+
+
+_I.--The Athenian's Love Story_
+
+
+Within the narrow compass of the walls of Pompeii was contained a
+specimen of every gift which luxury offered to power. In its minute but
+glittering shops, its tiny palaces, its baths, its forum, its theatre,
+its circus--in the energy yet corruption, in the refinement yet the
+vice, of its people, you beheld a model of the whole Roman Empire. It
+was a toy, a plaything, a show-box, in which the gods seemed pleased to
+keep the representation of the great monarchy of earth, and which they
+afterwards hid from time, to give to the wonder of posterity--the moral
+of the maxim, that under the sun there is nothing new.
+
+Crowded in the glassy bay were vessels of commerce and gilded galleys
+for the pleasures of the rich citizens. The boats of the fishermen
+glided to and fro, and afar off you saw the tall masts of the fleet
+under the command of Pliny.
+
+Drawing a comrade from the crowded streets, Glaucus the Greek, newly
+returned to Pompeii after a journey to Naples, bent his steps towards a
+solitary part of the beach; and the two, seated on a small crag which
+rose amidst the smooth pebbles, inhaled the voluptuous and cooling
+breeze which, dancing over the waters, kept music with its invisible
+feet. There was something in the scene which invited them to silence and
+reverie.
+
+Clodius, the aedile, who sought the wherewithal for his pleasures at the
+gaming table, shaded his eyes from the burning sky, and calculated the
+gains of the past week. He was one of the many who found it easy to
+enrich themselves at the expense of his companion. The Greek, leaning
+upon his hand, and shrinking not from that sun, his nation's tutelary
+deity, with whose fluent light of poesy and joy and love his own veins
+were filled, gazed upon the broad expanse, and envied, perhaps, every
+wind that bent its pinions toward the shores of Greece.
+
+Glaucus obeyed no more vicious dictates when he wandered into the
+dissipations of his time that the exhilarating voices of youth and
+health. His heart never was corrupted. Of far more penetration than
+Clodius and others of his gay companions deemed, he saw their design to
+prey upon his riches and his youth; but he despised wealth save as the
+means of enjoyment, and youth was the great sympathy that united him to
+them. To him the world was one vast prison to which the sovereign of
+Rome was the imperial gaoler, and the very virtues which, in the free
+days of Athens, would have made him ambitious, in the slavery of earth
+made him inactive and supine.
+
+"Tell me, Clodius," said the Athenian at last, "hast thou ever been in
+love?"
+
+"Yes, very often."
+
+"He who has loved often," answered Glaucus, "has loved never."
+
+"Art thou, then, soberly and earnestly in love? Hast thou that feeling
+which the poets describe--a feeling which makes us neglect our suppers,
+forswear the theatre, and write elegies? I should never have thought it.
+You dissemble well."
+
+"I am not far gone enough for that," returned Glaucus, smiling. "In
+fact, I am not in love; but I could be if there but be occasion to see
+the object."
+
+"Shall I guess the object? Is it not Diomed's daughter? She adores you,
+and does not affect to conceal it. She is both handsome and rich. She
+will bind the door-post of her husband with golden fillets."
+
+"No, I do not desire to sell myself. Diomed's daughter is handsome, I
+grant; and at one time, had she not been the grandchild of a freedman, I
+might have--yet, no--she carries all her beauty in her face; her manners
+are not maiden-like, and her mind knows no culture save that of
+pleasure."
+
+"You are ungrateful. Tell me, then, who is the fortunate virgin."
+
+"You shall hear, my Clodius. Several months ago I was sojourning at
+Naples, a city utterly to my own heart. One day I entered the temple of
+Minerva to offer up my prayers, not for myself more than for the city on
+which Pallas smiles no longer. The temple was empty and deserted. The
+recollections of Athens crowded fast and meltingly upon me. Imagining
+myself still alone, my prayer gushed from my heart to my lips, and I
+wept as I prayed. I was startled in the midst of my devotions, however,
+by a deep sigh. I turned suddenly, and just behind me was a female. She
+had raised her veil also in prayer, and when our eyes met, methought a
+celestial ray shot from those dark and smiling orbs at once into my
+soul.
+
+"Never, my Clodius, have I seen mortal face more exquisitely moulded. A
+certain melancholy softened, and yet elevated, its expression. Tears
+were rolling down her eyes. I guessed at once that she was of Athenian
+lineage. I spoke to her, though with a faltering voice. 'Art thou not,
+too, Athenian?' said I. At the sound of my voice she blushed, and half
+drew her veil across her face. 'My forefathers' ashes,' she said,
+'repose by the waters of Ilyssus; my birth is of Naples; but my heart,
+as my lineage, is Athenian.'
+
+"'Let us, then,' said I, 'make our offerings together!' And as the
+priest now appeared, we stood side by side, and so followed the
+ceremonial prayer. Together we touched the knees of the goddess;
+together we laid our olive garlands on the altar. Silently we left the
+temple, and I was about to ask her where she dwelt, when a youth, whose
+features resembled hers, took her by the hand. She turned and bade me
+farewell, the crowd parted us, and I saw her no more; nor when I
+returned to Naples after a brief absence at Athens, was I able to
+discover any clue to my lost country-woman. So, hoping to lose in gaiety
+all remembrance of that beautiful apparition, I hastened to plunge
+myself amidst the luxuries of Pompeii. This is all my history, I do not
+love but I remember and regret."
+
+So said Glaucus. But that very night, in a house at Pompeii, whither she
+had come from Naples during his absence, Glaucus came face to face once
+more with the beautiful lone, the object of his dreams. And no longer
+was he able to say, "I do not love."
+
+
+_II.--Arbaces, the Egyptian_
+
+
+Amongst the wealthy dwellers in Pompeii was one who lived apart, and was
+at once an object of suspicion and fear. The riches of this man, who was
+known as Arbaces, the Egyptian, enabled him to gratify to the utmost the
+passions which governed him--the passion of sensual indulgence and the
+blind force which impelled him to seek relief from physical satiety in
+the pursuit of that occult knowledge which he regarded as the heritage
+of his race.
+
+In Naples, Arbaces had known the parents of Ione and her brother
+Apaecides, and it was under his guardianship that they had come to
+Pompeii. The confidence which, before their death, their parents had
+reposed in the Egyptian was in turn fully given to him by lone and her
+brother. For Apaecides the Egyptian felt nothing but contempt; the youth
+was to him but an instrument that might be used by him in bending lone
+to his will. But the mind of Ione, no less than the beauty of her form,
+appealed to Arbaces. With her by his side, his willing slave, he saw no
+limit to the heights his ambition might soar to. He sought primarily to
+impress her with his store of unfamiliar knowledge. She, in turn,
+admired him for his learning, and felt grateful to him for his
+guardianship. Apaecides, docile and mild, with a soul peculiarly alive
+to religious fervour, Arbaces placed amongst the priests of Isis, and
+under the special care of a creature of his own, named Calenus. It
+pleased his purpose best, where Ione was concerned, to leave her awhile
+surrounded by the vain youth of Pompeii, so that he might gain by
+comparison.
+
+It fell not within Arbaces' plans to show himself too often to his ward.
+Consequently it was some time before he became aware of the warmth of
+the friendship that was growing up between Ione and the handsome Greek.
+He knew not of their evening excursions on the placid sea, of their
+nightly meetings at Ione's dwelling, till these had become regular
+happenings in their daily lives. But one day he surprised them together,
+and his eyes were suddenly opened. No sooner had the Greek departed than
+the Egyptian sought to poison Ione's mind against him by exaggerating
+his love of pleasure and by unscrupulously describing him as making
+light of Ione's love.
+
+Following up the advantage he gained by this appeal to her pride,
+Arbaces reminded Ione that she had never seen the interior of his home.
+It might, he said, amuse her. "Devote then," he went on, "to the austere
+friend of your youth one of these bright summer evenings, and let me
+boast that my gloomy mansion has been honoured with the presence of the
+admired Ione."
+
+Unconscious of the pollutions of the mansion, of the danger that awaited
+her, Ione readily assented to the proposal. But there was one who, by
+accident, had become aware of the nature of the spells cast by Arbaces
+upon his visitors, and who was to be the humble means of saving lone
+from his toils. This was the blind flower-girl Nydia.
+
+Of Thessalian extraction, and gentle nurture, Nydia had been stolen and
+sold into the slavery of an ex-gladiator named Burbo, a relative of the
+false priest Calenus. To save her from the cruelty of Burbo, Glaucus had
+purchased her, and, in return, the blind girl had become devoted to
+him--so devoted that her gentle heart was torn when he made it plain to
+her that his action was prompted by mere natural kindness of heart, and
+that it was his purpose to send her to Ione.
+
+But she cast all feeling of jealousy aside when she heard of Ione's
+visit to the Egyptian, and quickly apprised Glaucus and Apaecides of the
+fair Athenian's peril.
+
+On her arrival, Arbaces greeted Ione with deep respect. But he found it
+harder than he thought to resist the charm of her presence in his house,
+and in a moment of forgetful passion he declared his love for her.
+"Arbaces," he declared, "shall have no ambition save the pride of
+obeying thee--Ione. Ione, do not reject my love!" And as he spoke he
+knelt before her.
+
+Alone, and in the grip of this singular and powerful man, Ione was not
+yet terrified; the respect of his language, the softness of his voice,
+reassured her; and in her own purity she felt protection. But she was
+confused, astonished. It was some moments before she could recover the
+power of reply.
+
+"Rise, Arbaces," said she at length. "Rise! and if thou art serious, if
+thy language be in earnest----"
+
+"_If_----" said he tenderly.
+
+"Well, then, listen. You have been my guardian, my friend, my monitor.
+For this new character I was not prepared. Think not," she added
+quickly, as she saw his dark eyes glitter with the fierceness of his
+passion, "think not that I scorn; that I am untouched; that I am not
+honoured by this homage; but, say, canst thou hear me calmly?"
+
+"Ay, though the words were lightning and could blast me!"
+
+"_I love another_!" said Ione blushingly, but in a firm voice.
+
+"By the gods," shouted Arbaces, rising to his fullest height, "dare not
+tell me that! Dare not mock me! It is impossible! Whom hast thou seen?
+Whom known? Oh, Ione, it is thy woman's invention, thy woman's art that
+speaks; thou wouldst gain time. I have surprised--I have terrified
+thee."
+
+"Alas!" began Ione; and then, appalled before his sudden and unlooked
+for violence, she burst into tears.
+
+Arbaces came nearer to her, his breath glowed fiercely on her cheek. He
+wound his arms round her; she sprang from his embrace. In the struggle a
+tablet fell from her bosom. Arbaces perceived, and seized it; it was a
+letter she had received that morning from Glaucus.
+
+Ione sank upon the couch, half-dead with terror.
+
+Rapidly the eyes of Arbaces ran over the writing. He read it to the end,
+and then, as the letter fell from his hand, he said, in a voice of
+deceitful calmness, "Is the writer of this the man thou lovest?"
+
+Ione sobbed, but answered not.
+
+"Speak!" he demanded.
+
+"It is--it is!"
+
+"Then hear me," said Arbaces, sinking his voice into a whisper. "_Thou
+shalt go to thy tomb rather than to his arms_."
+
+At this instant a curtain was rudely torn aside, and Glaucus and
+Apsecides appeared. There was a severe struggle, which might have had a
+more sinister ending had not the marble head of a goddess, shaken from
+its column, fallen upon Arbaces as he was about to stab the Greek, and
+struck the Egyptian senseless to the ground. As it was, Ione was saved,
+and she and her lover were then and for ever reconciled to one another.
+
+
+_III.--The Love Philtre_
+
+
+Clodius had not spoken without warrant when he had said that Julia, the
+daughter of the rich merchant Diomed, thought herself in love with
+Glaucus. But since Glaucus was denied to her, her thoughts were
+concentrated on revenge. In this mood she sought out Arbaces, presenting
+herself as one loving unrequitedly, and seeking in sorrow the aid of
+wisdom.
+
+"It is a love charm," admitted Julia, "that I would seek from thy skill.
+I know not if I love him who loves me not, but I know that I would see
+myself triumph over a rival. I would see him who has rejected me my
+suitor. I would see her whom he has preferred in her turn despised."
+
+Very quickly Arbaces discerned Julia's secret, and when he heard that
+Glaucus and Ione were shortly to be wedded, he gladly availed himself of
+this opportunity to rid himself of his hated rival. But he dealt not in
+love potions, he said; he would, however, take Diomed's daughter to one
+who did--the witch who dwelt on the slopes of Vesuvius.
+
+He kept his promise; but the entire philtre given to Julia was one which
+went direct to the brain, and the effects of which--for neither Arbaces
+nor his creature, the witch, wished to place themselves within the power
+of the law--were such as caused those who witnessed them to attribute
+them to some supernatural agency.
+
+But once again, though less happily than on the former occasion, Nydia
+was destined to be the means of thwarting the schemes of the Egyptian.
+The devotion of the blind flower-girl had deepened into love for her
+deliverer. She was jealous of Ione. Now, for Julia had taken her into
+confidence, and both believed in the love charm, she was confronted with
+another rival. By a simple ruse Nydia obtained the poisoned draught and
+in its place substituted a phial of simple water.
+
+At the close of a banquet given by Diomed, to which the Greek was
+invited, Julia duly administered that which she imagined to be the
+secret love potion. She was disappointed when she found Glaucus coldly
+replace the cup, and converse with her in the same unmoved tone as
+before.
+
+"But to-morrow," thought she, "to-morrow, alas for Glaucus!"
+
+Alas for him, indeed!
+
+When Glaucus arrived at his own house that evening, Nydia was waiting
+for him. She had, as usual, been tending the flowers and had lingered
+awhile to rest herself.
+
+"It has been warm," said Glaucus. "Wilt thou summon Davus? The wine I
+have drunk heats me, and I long for some cooling drink."
+
+Here at once, suddenly and unexpectedly, the very opportunity that Nydia
+awaited presented itself. She breathed quickly. "I will prepare for you
+myself," said she, "the summer draught that Ione loves--of honey and
+weak wine cooled in snow."
+
+"Thanks," said the unconscious Glaucus. "If Ione loves it, enough; it
+would be grateful were it poison."
+
+Nydia frowned, and then smiled. She withdrew for a few moments, and
+returned with the cup containing the beverage. Glaucus took it from her
+hand.
+
+What would not Nydia have given then to have seen the first dawn of the
+imagined love! Far different, as she stood then and there, were the
+thoughts and emotions of the blind girl from those of the vain Pompeian
+under a similar suspense!
+
+Glaucus had raised the cup to his lips. He had already drained about a
+fourth of its contents, when, suddenly glancing upon the face of Nydia,
+he was so forcibly struck by its alteration, by its intense, and
+painful, and strange expression, that he paused abruptly, and still
+holding the cup near his lips, exclaimed. "Why, Nydia--Nydia, art thou
+ill or in pain? What ails thee, my poor child?"
+
+As he spoke, he put down the cup--happily for him, unfinished--and rose
+from his seat to approach her, when a sudden pang shot coldly to his
+heart, and was followed by a wild, confused, dizzy sensation at the
+brain.
+
+The floor seemed to glide from under him, his feet seemed to move on
+air, a mighty and unearthly gladness rushed upon his spirit. He felt too
+buoyant for the earth; he longed for wings--nay, it seemed as if he
+possessed them. He burst involuntarily into a loud and thrilling laugh.
+He clapped his hands, he bounced aloft. Suddenly this perpetual
+transport passed, though only partially, away. He now felt his blood
+rushing loudly and rapidly through his veins.
+
+Then a kind of darkness fell over his eyes. Now a torrent of broken,
+incoherent, insane words gushed from his lips, and, to Nydia's horror,
+he passed the portico with a bound, and rushed down the starlit streets,
+striking fear into the hearts of all who saw him.
+
+
+_IV.--The Day of Ghastly Night_
+
+
+Anxious to learn if the drug had taken effect, Arbaces set out for
+Julia's house on the morrow. On his way he encountered Apaecides. Hot
+words passed between them, and stung by the scorn of the youth, he
+stabbed him into the heart with his stylus. At this moment Glaucus came
+along. Quick as thought the Egyptian struck the already half-senseless
+Greek to the ground, and steeping his stylus in the blood of Apaecides,
+and recovering his own, called loudly for help. The next moment he was
+accusing Glaucus of the crime.
+
+For a time fortune favoured the Egyptian. Glaucus, his strong frame
+still under the influence of the poison, was sentenced to encounter a
+lion in the amphitheatre, with no weapon beyond the incriminating
+stylus. Nydia, in her terror, confessed to the Egyptian the exchange of
+the love philtre. She he imprisoned in his own house. Calenus, who had
+witnessed the deed, sought Arbaces with the intention of using his
+knowledge to his own profit. He, by a stratagem, was incarcerated in one
+of the dungeons of the Egyptian's dwelling. The law gave Ione into the
+guardianship of Arbaces. But, for a third time, Nydia was the means of
+frustrating the plans of Arbaces.
+
+The blind girl, when vainly endeavouring to escape from the toils of the
+Egyptian, overheard, in his garden, the conversation of Arbaces and
+Calenus; and she heard the cries of Calenus from behind the door of the
+chamber in which he was imprisoned. She herself was caught again by
+Arbaces' servant, but she contrived to bribe her keeper to take a
+message to Glaucus's friend, Sallust; and he, taking his servants to
+Arbaces' house released the two captives, and reached the arena with
+them, to accuse Arbaces before the multitude at the very moment when the
+lion was being goaded to attack the Greek, and Arbaces' victory seemed
+within his grasp.
+
+Even now the nerve of the Egyptian did not desert him. He met the charge
+with his accustomed coolness. But the frenzied accusation of the priest
+of Isis turned the huge assembly against him. With loud cries they rose
+from their seats and poured down toward the Egyptian.
+
+Lifting his eyes at this terrible moment, Arbaces beheld a strange and
+awful apparition. He beheld, and his craft restored his courage. He
+stretched his hand on high; over his lofty brow and royal features there
+came an expression of unutterable solemnity and command.
+
+"Behold," he shouted, with a voice of thunder, which stilled the roar of
+the crowd, "behold how the gods protect the guiltless! The fires of the
+avenging Orcus burst forth against the false witness of my accusers!"
+
+The eyes of the crowd followed the gesture of the Egyptian, and beheld,
+with ineffable dismay, a vast vapour shooting from the summit of
+Vesuvius in the form of a gigantic pine-tree; the trunk blackness, the
+branches fire--a fire that shifted and wavered in its hues with every
+moment, now fiercely luminous, now of a dull and dying red, that again
+blazed terrifically forth with intolerable glare. The earth shook. The
+walls of the theatre trembled. In the distance was heard the crash of
+falling roofs. The cloud seemed to roll towards the assembly, casting
+forth from its bosom showers of ashes mixed with fragments of burning
+stone. Then the burning mountain cast up columns of boiling water.
+
+In the ghastly night thus rushing upon the realm of noon, all thought of
+justice and of Arbaces left the minds of the terrified people. There
+ensued a mad flight for the sea. Through the darkness Nydia guided
+Glaucus, now partly recovered from the effects of the poisoned draught,
+and Ione to the shore. Her blindness rendered the scene familiar to her
+alone.
+
+While Arbaces perished with the majority, these three eventually gained
+the sea, and joined a group, who, bolder than the rest, resolved to
+hazard any peril rather than continue on the stricken land.
+
+Utterly exhausted, Ione slept on the breast of Glaucus, and Nydia lay at
+his feet. Meanwhile, showers of dust and ashes fell into the waves,
+scattered their snows over the deck of the vessel they had boarded, and,
+borne by the winds, descended upon the remotest climes, startling even
+the swarthy African, and whirling along the antique soil of Syria and of
+Egypt.
+
+Meekly, softly, beautifully dawned at last the light over the trembling
+deep! The winds were sinking into rest, the foam died from the azure of
+that delicious sea. Around the east thin mists caught gradually the rosy
+hues that heralded the morning. Light was about to resume her reign.
+There was no shout from the mariners at the dawning light--it had come
+too gradually, and they were too wearied for such sudden bursts of
+joy--but there was a low, deep murmur of thankfulness amidst those
+watchers of the long night. They looked at each other, and smiled; they
+took heart. They felt once more that there was a world around and a God
+above them!
+
+In the silence of the general sleep Nydia had risen gently. Bending over
+the face of Glaucus, she softly kissed him. She felt for his hand; it
+was locked in that of Ione. She sighed deeply, and her face darkened.
+Again she kissed his brow, and with her hair wiped from it the damps of
+night.
+
+"May the gods bless you, Athenian!" she murmured "May you be happy with
+your beloved one! May you sometimes remember Nydia! Alas! she is of no
+further use on earth."
+
+With these words she turned away. A sailor, half-dozing on the deck,
+heard a slight splash on the waters. Drowsily he looked up, and behind,
+as the vessel bounded merrily on, he fancied he saw something white
+above the waves; but it vanished in an instant. He turned round again
+and dreamed of his home and children.
+
+When the lovers awoke, their first thought was of each other, their next
+of Nydia. Every crevice of the vessel was searched--there was no trace
+of her! Mysterious from first to last, the blind Thessalian had vanished
+from the living world! They guessed her fate in silence, and Glaucus and
+Ione, while they drew nearer to each other, feeling each other the world
+itself, forgot their deliverance, and wept as for a departed sister.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+
+
+The Last of the Barons
+
+
+     A romance of York and Lancaster's "long wars," "The Last of
+     the Barons" was published in 1843, shortly before the death of
+     Bulwer's mother, when, on inheriting the Knebworth estates, he
+     assumed the surname of Lytton. The story is an admirably
+     chosen historical subject, and in many respects is worked out
+     with even more than Lytton's usual power and effect. Incident
+     is crowded upon incident; revolutions, rebellions,
+     dethronements follow one another with amazing rapidity--all
+     duly authenticated and elaborated by powerful dialogue. It is
+     thronged with historical material, sufficient, according to
+     one critic, to make at least three novels. The period dealt
+     with, 1467-1471, witnessed the rise of the trading class and
+     the beginning of religious freedom in England. Lytton leans to
+     the Lancastrian cause, with which the fortunes of one of his
+     ancestors were identified, and his view of Warwick is more
+     favourable to the redoubtable "king-maker" than that of the
+     historians.
+
+
+_I.--Warwick's Mission to France_
+
+
+Lacking sympathy with the monastic virtues of the deposed Henry VI., and
+happy in the exile of Margaret of Anjou, the citizens of London had
+taken kindly to the regime of Edward IV. In 1467 Edward still owed to
+Warwick the support of the more powerful barons, as well as the favour
+of that portion of the rural population which was more or less dependent
+upon them. But he encouraged, to his own financial advantage, the
+enterprises of the burgesses, and his marriage with Elizabeth Woodville
+and his favours to her kinsfolk indicated his purpose to reign in fact
+as well as in name. The barons were restless, but the rising
+middle-class, jealous of the old power of the nobles, viewed with
+misgiving the projected marriage, at Warwick's suggestion, of the king's
+sister Margaret and the brother of Louis XI. of France.
+
+This was the position of affairs when young Marmaduke Nevile came to
+London to enter the service of his relative the Earl of Warwick; and
+some points of it were explained to the young man by the earl himself
+when he had introduced the youth to his daughters, Isabel and Anne.
+
+"God hath given me no son," he said. "Isabel of Warwick had been a
+mate for William the Norman; and my grandson, if heir to his grandsire's
+soul, should have ruled from the throne of England over the realms of
+Charlemagne! But it hath pleased Him Whom the Christian knight alone
+bows to without shame, to order otherwise. So be it. I forgot my just
+pretensions--forgot my blood--and counselled the king to strengthen his
+throne by an alliance with Louis XI. He rejected the Princess Bona of
+Savoy to marry widow Elizabeth Grey. I sorrowed for his sake, and
+forgave the slight to my counsels. At his prayer I followed the train of
+the queen, and hushed the proud hearts of the barons to obeisance. But
+since then this Dame Woodville, whom I queened, if her husband mismated,
+must dispute this royaulme with mine and me! A Neville, nowadays, must
+vail his plume to a Woodville! And not the great barons whom it will
+suit Edward's policy to win from the Lancastrians, not the Exeters and
+the Somersets, but the craven varlets, and lackeys, and dross of the
+camp--false alike to Henry and to Edward--are to be fondled into
+lordships and dandled into power. Young man, I am speaking hotly.
+Richard Neville never lies nor conceals; but I am speaking to a kinsman,
+am I not? Thou hearest--thou wilt not repeat?"
+
+"Sooner would I pluck forth my tongue by the roots!" was Marmaduke's
+reply.
+
+"Enough!" returned the earl, with a pleased smile. "When I come from
+France I will speak more to thee. Meanwhile, be courteous to all men,
+servile to none. Now to the king."
+
+Warwick sought his royal cousin at the Tower, where the court exhibited
+a laxity of morals and a faculty for intrigue that were little to the
+stout earl's taste.
+
+It was with manifest reluctance that Edward addressed himself to the
+object of Warwick's visit.
+
+"Knowst thou not," said he, "that this French alliance, to which thou
+hast induced us, displeases sorely our good traders of London?"
+
+"_Mort Dieu_!" returned Warwick bluntly. "And what business have the
+flat-caps with the marriage of a king's sister? You have spoiled them,
+good my lord king. Henry IV. staled not his majesty to consultation with
+the mayor of his city. Henry V. gave the knighthood of the Bath to the
+heroes of Agincourt, not to the vendors of cloth and spices."
+
+"Thou forgettest, man," said the king carelessly, "the occasion of those
+honours--the eve before Elizabeth was crowned. As to the rest," pursued
+the king, earnestly and with dignity, "I and my house have owed much to
+London. Thou seest not, my poor Warwick, that these burgesses are
+growing up into power. And if the sword is the monarch's appeal for his
+right, he must look to contented and honest industry for his buckler in
+peace. This is policy, policy, Warwick; and Louis XI. will tell thee the
+same truths, harsh though they grate in a warrior's ear."
+
+The earl bowed his head.
+
+"If thou doubtest the wisdom of this alliance," he said, "it is not too
+late yet. Let me dismiss my following, and cross not the seas. Unless
+thy heart is with the marriage, the ties I would form are but threads
+and cobwebs."
+
+"Nay," returned Edward irresolutely. "In these great state matters thy
+wit is older than mine. But men do say the Count of Charolois is a
+mighty lord, and the alliance with Burgundy will be more profitable to
+staple and mart."
+
+"Then, in God's name so conclude it!" said the earl hastily. "Give thy
+sister to the heir of Burgundy, and forgive me if I depart to the castle
+of Middleham. Yet think well. Henry of Windsor is thy prisoner, but his
+cause lives in Margaret and his son. There is but one power in Europe
+that can threaten thee with aid to the Lancastrians. That power is
+France. Make Louis thy friend and ally, and thou givest peace to thy
+life and thy lineage. Make Louis thy foe, and count on plots and
+stratagems and treason. Edward, my loved, my honoured liege, forgive
+Richard Nevile for his bluntness, and let not his faults stand in bar of
+his counsels."
+
+"You are right, as you are ever, safeguard of England and pillar of my
+state," said the king frankly; and pressing Warwick's arm, he added, "go
+to France, and settle all as thou wilt."
+
+When Warwick had departed, Edward's eye followed him, musingly. The
+frank expression of his face vanished, and with the deep breath of a man
+who is throwing a weight from his heart, he muttered, "He loves me--yes;
+but will suffer no one else to love me! This must end some day. I am
+weary of the bondage."
+
+
+_II.--A Dishonoured Embassy_
+
+
+One morning, some time after Warwick's departure for France, the Lord
+Hastings was summoned to the king's presence. There was news from
+France, in a letter to Lord Rivers, from a gentleman in Warwick's train.
+The letter was dated from Rouen, and gave a glowing account of the
+honours accorded to the earl by Louis XI. Edward directed Hastings'
+attention to a passage in which the writer suggested that there were
+those who thought that so much intercourse between an English ambassador
+and the kinsman of Margaret of Anjou boded small profit to the English
+king.
+
+"Read and judge, Hastings," said the king.
+
+"I observe," said Hastings, "that this letter is addressed to my Lord
+Rivers. Can he avouch the fidelity of his correspondent?"
+
+"Surely, yes," answered Rivers. "It is a gentleman of my own blood."
+
+"Were he not so accredited," returned Hastings, "I should question the
+truth of a man who can thus consent to play the spy upon his lord and
+superior."
+
+"The public weal justifies all things," said Lord Worcester, who, with
+Lord Rivers, viewed with jealous scorn the power of the Earl of Warwick.
+
+"And what is to become of my merchant-ships," said the king, "if
+Burgundy take umbrage and close its ports?"
+
+Hastings had no cause to take up the quarrel on Warwick's behalf. The
+proud earl had stepped in to prevent his marriage with his sister. But
+Hastings, if a foe, could be a noble one.
+
+"Beau sire," said he, "thou knowest how little cause I have to love the
+Earl of Warwick. But in this council I must be all and only the king's
+servant. I say first, then, that Warwick's faith to the House of York is
+too well proven to become suspected because of the courtesies of King
+Louis. Moreover, we may be sure that Warwick cannot be false if he
+achieve the object of his embassy and detach Louis from the side of
+Margaret and Lancaster by close alliance with Edward and York. Secondly,
+sire, with regard to that alliance, which it seems you would repent, I
+hold now, as I have held ever, that it is a master-stroke in policy, and
+the earl in this proves his sharp brain worthy his strong arm; for, as
+his highness the Duke of Gloucester has discovered that Margaret of
+Anjou has been of late in London, and that treasonable designs were
+meditated, though now frustrated, so we may ask why the friends of
+Lancaster really stood aloof--why all conspiracy was, and is, in vain?
+Because the gold and subsidies of Louis are not forthcoming, because the
+Lancastrians see that if once Lord Warwick wins France from the Red Rose
+nothing short of such a miracle as their gaining Warwick instead can
+give a hope to their treason."
+
+"Your pardon, my Lord Hastings," said Lord Rivers, "there is another
+letter I have not yet laid before the king." He drew forth a scroll and
+read from it as follows.
+
+"Yesterday the earl feasted the king, and as, in discharge of mine
+office, I carved for my lord, I heard King Louis say, '_Pasque Dieu_, my
+Lord Warwick, our couriers bring us word that Count de Charolais
+declares he shall yet wed the Lady Margaret, and that he laughs at your
+embassage. What if our brother King Edward fall back from the treaty?'
+'He durst not,' said the earl."
+
+"'Durst not!'" exclaimed Edward, starting to his feet, and striking the
+table with his clenched hand. "'Durst not!' Hastings, heard you that?"
+
+Hastings bowed his head in assent.
+
+"Is that all, Lord Rivers?"
+
+"All! And, methinks, enough!"
+
+"Enough, by my halidame!" said Edward, laughing bitterly. "He shall see
+what a king dares when a subject threatens."
+
+Lord Rivers had not read the whole of the letter. The sentence read: "He
+durst not, because what a noble heart dares least is to belie the
+plighted word, and what the kind heart shuns most is to wrong the
+confiding friend."
+
+When Warwick returned, with the object of his mission achieved, it was
+to find Margaret of England the betrothed of the Count de Charolais, and
+his embassy dishonoured. He retired in anger and grief to his castle of
+Middleham, and though the king declared that "Edward IV. reigns alone,"
+most of the great barons forsook him to rally round their leader in his
+retirement.
+
+
+_III.--The Scholar and his Daughter_
+
+
+Sybill Warner had been at court in the train of Margaret of Anjou. Her
+father, Adam Warner, was a poor scholar, with his heart set upon the
+completion of an invention which should inaugurate the age of steam.
+They lived together in an old house, with but one aged serving-woman.
+Even necessaries were sacrificed that the model of the invention might
+be fed. Then one day there came to Adam Warner an old schoolfellow,
+Robert Hilyard, who had thrown in his lot with the Lancastrians, and
+become an agent of the vengeful Margaret. Hilyard told so moving a tale
+of his wrongs at the hands of Edward that the old man consented to aid
+him in a scheme for communicating with the imprisoned Henry.
+
+Henry was still permitted to see visitors, and Hilyard's proposal was
+that Warner should seek permission to exhibit his model, in the
+mechanism of which were to be hidden certain treasonable papers for
+Henry to sign.
+
+As we have seen, from Hastings' remark to the king, the plot failed.
+Hilyard escaped, to stir up the peasantry, who knew him as Robin of
+Redesdale. Warner's fate was inclusion in the number of astrologers and
+alchemists retained by the Duchess of Bedford, who also gave a place
+amongst her maidens to Sybill, to whom Hastings had proffered his
+devoted attachment, though he was already bound by ties of policy and
+early love to Margaret de Bonville.
+
+Meanwhile, it became the interest of the king's brothers to act as
+mediators between Edward and his powerful subject. The Duke of Clarence
+was anxious to wed the proud earl's equally proud elder daughter Isabel;
+the hand of the gentle Anne was sought more secretly by Richard of
+Gloucester. At last the peacemakers effected their object.
+
+But the peace was only partial, the final rupture not far off. The king
+restored to Warwick the governorship of Calais--outwardly as a token of
+honour; really as a means of ridding himself of one whose presence came
+between the sun and his sovereignty. Moreover, he forbade the marriage
+between Clarence and Isabel, to the mortification of his brother, the
+bitter disappointment of Isabel herself, and the chagrin of the earl.
+
+However, Edward had once more to experience indebtedness at the hands of
+the man whom he treated so badly, but whose devotion to him it seemed
+that nothing could destroy. There arose the Popular Rebellion, and
+Warwick only arrived at Olney, where the king was sorely pressed, in
+time to save him and to secure, on specific terms, a treaty of peace.
+
+Again Edward's relief was but momentary. Proceeding to Middleham as
+Warwick's guest, when he beheld the extent of the earl's retinue his
+jealous passions were roused more than ever before; and he formed a plan
+not only for attaching to himself the allegiance of the barons, but of
+presenting the earl to the peasants in the light of one who had betrayed
+them.
+
+Smitten, too, by the charms of the Lady Anne, he meditated a still more
+unworthy scheme. Dismissing the unsuspecting Warwick to the double task
+of settling with the rebels and calling upon his followers to range
+themselves under the royal banner, he commanded Anne's attendance at
+court.
+
+Events leading to the final breach between king and king-maker followed
+rapidly. One night the Lady Anne fled in terror from the Tower--fled
+from the dishonouring addresses of her sovereign, now grown gross in his
+cups, however brave in battle. The news reached Warwick too late for him
+to countermand the messages he had sent to his friends on the king's
+behalf. And, so rapid were Edward's movements that Warwick, his eyes at
+length opened to Edward's true character, was compelled to flee to the
+court of King Louis at Amboise, there to plan his revenge, hampered in
+doing so by his daughter Isabel's devotion to Clarence, who followed him
+to France, and by the fact that, in regard to his own honour, he could
+communicate to none save his own kin the secret cause of his open
+disaffection.
+
+
+_IV.--The Return of the King-Maker_
+
+
+There was no love between Warwick and Margaret of Anjou. But his one
+means of exacting penance from Edward was alliance with the unlucky
+cause of Lancaster. And this alliance was brought about by the suave
+diplomacy of Louis, and the discovery of the long-existing attachment
+between the Lady Anne and her old play-fellow, Edward, the only son of
+Henry and Margaret, and the hope of the Red Rose.
+
+Coincidently with the marriage of Clarence and Isabel on French soil,
+the young Edward and Isabel's sister were betrothed. Richard of
+Gloucester was thus definitely estranged from Warwick's cause. And
+secret agencies were set afoot to undermine the loyalty of the weak
+Clarence to the cause which he had espoused.
+
+At first, however, Warwick's plans prospered. He returned to England,
+forced Edward to fly the country in his turn, and restored Henry VI. to
+the throne. So far, Clarence and Isabel accompanied him; while Margaret
+and her son, with Lady Warwick and the Lady Anne, remained at Amboise.
+
+Then the very elements seemed to war against the Lancastrians. The
+restoration came about in October 1470. Margaret was due in London in
+November, but for nearly six months the state of the Channel was such
+that she was unable to cross it.
+
+Warwick sickened of his self-imposed task. The whole burden of
+government rested upon the shoulders of the great earl, great where
+deeds of valour were to be done, but weak in the niceties of
+administration.
+
+The nobles, no less than the people, had expected miracles. The
+king-maker, on his return, gave them but justice. Such was the earl's
+position when Edward, with a small following, landed at Ravenspur. A
+treacherous message, sent to Warwick's brother Montagu by Clarence,
+caused Montagu to allow the invader to march southwards unmolested. This
+had so great an effect on public feeling that when Edward reached the
+Midlands, he had not a mere handful of supporters at his back, but an
+army of large dimensions. Then the wavering Clarence went over to his
+brother, and it fell to the lot of the earl sorrowfully to dispatch
+Isabel to the camp of his enemy.
+
+But Warwick's cup of bitterness was not yet full. The Tower was
+surrendered to Edward's friends, and on the following day Edward himself
+entered the capital, to be received by the traders with tumultuous
+cheers.
+
+Raw, cold, and dismal dawned the morning of the fateful 14th of March,
+1471, when Margaret at last reached English soil, and Edward's forces
+met those of Warwick on the memorable field of Barnet. All was not yet
+lost to the cause of the Red Rose. But a fog settled down over the land
+to complete, as it were, the disadvantages caused by the prolonged
+storms at sea. At a critical period of the battle the silver stars on
+the banners of one of the Lancastrians, the Earl of Oxford, being
+mistaken for the silver suns of Edward's cognisance, two important
+sections of Warwick's army fell upon one another. Friend was
+slaughtering friend ere the error was detected. While all was yet in
+doubt, confusion, and dismay, rushed full into the centre Edward
+himself, with his knights and riders; and his tossing banners added to
+the general incertitude and panic.
+
+Warwick and his brother gained the shelter of a neighbouring wood, where
+a trusty band of the earl's northern archers had been stationed. Here
+they made their last stand, Warwick destroying his charger to signify to
+his men that to them and to them alone he entrusted his fortunes and his
+life.
+
+A breach was made in the defence, and Warwick and his brother fell side
+by side, choosing death before surrender. And by them fell Hilyard,
+shattered by a bombard. Young Marmaduke Nevile was among the few notable
+survivors.
+
+The cries of "Victory!" reached a little band of watchers gathered in
+the churchyard on the hill of Hadley. Here Henry the Peaceful had been
+conveyed. And here, also, were Adam Warner and his daughter. The
+soldiers, hearing from one of the Duchess of Bedford's creatures whose
+chicanery had been the object of his scorn, that Warner was a wizard,
+had desired that his services should be utilised. Till the issue was
+clear, he had been kept a prisoner. When it was beyond doubt, he was
+hanged. Sybill was found lying dead at her father's feet. Her heart was
+already broken, for the husband of Margaret de Bonville having died,
+Lord Hastings had been recalled to the side of his old love, his thought
+of marriage with Sybill being abandoned for ever.
+
+King Edward and his brothers went to render thanksgiving at St. Paul's;
+thence to Baynard's Castle to escort the queen and her children once
+more to the Tower.
+
+At the sight of the victorious king, of the lovely queen, and, above
+all, of the young male heir, the crowd burst forth with a hearty cry:
+"Long live the king and the king's son!"
+
+Mechanically, Elizabeth turned her moistened eyes from Edward to
+Edward's brother, and suddenly clasped her infant closer to her bosom
+when she caught the glittering and fatal eye of Richard, Duke of
+Gloucester--Warwick's grim avenger in the future--fixed upon that
+harmless life, destined to interpose a feeble obstacle between the
+ambition of a ruthless intellect and the heritage of the English throne!
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+
+
+HENRY MACKENZIE
+
+
+The Man of Feeling
+
+
+     Henry Mackenzie, the son of an Edinburgh physician, was born
+     in that city on August 26, 1745. He was educated for the law,
+     and at the age of twenty became attorney for the crown in
+     Scotland. It was about this time that he began to devote his
+     attention to literature. His first story, "The Man of
+     Feeling," was published anonymously in 1771, and such was its
+     popularity that its authorship was claimed in many quarters.
+     Considered as a novel, "The Man of Feeling" is frankly
+     sentimental. Its fragmentary form was doubtlessly suggested by
+     Sterne's "Sentimental Journey," and the adventures of the hero
+     himself are reminiscent of those of Moses in "The Vicar of
+     Wakefield." But of these two masterpieces Mackenzie's work
+     falls short: it has none of Sterne's humour, nor has it any of
+     Goldsmith's subtle characterisation. "The Man of Feeling" was
+     followed in 1773 by "The Man of the World," and later by a
+     number of miscellaneous articles and stories. Mackenzie died
+     on January 14, 1831.
+
+
+_I.--A Whimsical History_
+
+
+I was out shooting with the curate on a burning First of September, and
+we had stopped for a minute by an old hedge.
+
+Looking round, I discovered for the first time a venerable pile, to
+which the enclosure before us belonged. An air of melancholy hung about
+it, and just at that instant I saw pass between the trees a young lady
+with a book in her hand. The curate sat him down on the grass and told
+me that was the daughter of a neighbouring gentleman of the name of
+Walton, whom he had seen walking there more than once.
+
+"Some time ago," he said, "one Harley lived there, a whimsical sort of
+man, I am told. The greatest part of his history is still in my
+possession. I once began to read it, but I soon grew weary of the task;
+for, besides that the hand is intolerably bad, I never could find the
+author in one strain for two chapters together. The way I came by it was
+this. Some time ago a grave, oddish kind of a man boarded at a farmer's
+in this parish. He left soon after I was made curate, and went nobody
+knows whither; and in his room was found a bundle of papers, which was
+brought to me by his landlord."
+
+"I should be glad to see this medley," said I.
+
+"You shall see it now," answered the curate, "for I always take it along
+with me a-shooting. 'Tis excellent wadding."
+
+When I returned to town I had leisure to peruse the acquisition I had
+made, and found it a little bundle of episodes, put together without
+art, yet with something of nature.
+
+The curate must answer for the omissions.
+
+
+_II.--The Man of Feeling in Love_
+
+
+Harley lost his father, the last surviving of his parents, when he was a
+boy. His education, therefore, had been but indifferently attended to;
+and after being taken from a country school, the young gentleman was
+suffered to be his own master in the subsequent branches of literature,
+with some assistance from the pastor of the parish in languages and
+philosophy, and from the exciseman in arithmetic and book-keeping.
+
+There were two ways of increasing his fortune. One of these was the
+prospect of succeeding to an old lady, a distant relation, who was known
+to be possessed of a very large sum in the stocks. But the young man was
+so untoward in his disposition, and accommodated himself so ill to her
+humour, that she died and did not leave him a farthing.
+
+The other method pointed out to him was an endeavour to get a lease of
+some crown lands which lay contiguous to his little paternal estate. As
+the crown did not draw so much rent as Harley could afford to give, with
+very considerable profit to himself, it was imagined this lease might be
+easily procured. However, this needed some interest with the great,
+which neither Harley nor his father ever possessed.
+
+His neighbour, Mr. Walton, having heard of this affair, generously
+offered his assistance to accomplish it, and said he would furnish him
+with a letter of introduction to a baronet of his acquaintance who had a
+great deal to say with the first lord of the treasury.
+
+Harley, though he had no great relish for the attempt, could not resist
+the torrent of motives that assaulted him, and a day was fixed for his
+departure.
+
+The day before he set out he went to take leave of Mr. Walton--there was
+another person of the family to whom also the visit was intended. For
+Mr. Walton had a daughter; and such a daughter!
+
+As her father had some years retired to the country, Harley had frequent
+opportunities of seeing her. He looked on her for some time merely with
+that respect and admiration which her appearance seemed to demand; he
+heard her sentiments with peculiar attention, but seldom declared his
+opinions on the subject. It would be trite to observe the easy gradation
+from esteem to love; in the bosom of Harley there scarce needed a
+transition.
+
+Harley's first effort to interview the baronet met with no success, but
+he resolved to make another attempt, fortified with higher notions of
+his own dignity, and with less apprehensions of repulse. By the time he
+had reached Grosvenor Square and was walking along the pavement which
+led to the baronet's he had brought his reasoning to the point that by
+every rule of logic his conclusions should have led him to a thorough
+indifference in approaching a fellow-mortal, whether that fellow-mortal
+was possessed of six or six thousand pounds a year. Nevertheless, it is
+certain that when he approached the great man's door he felt his heart
+agitated by an unusual pulsation.
+
+He observed a young gentleman coming out, dressed in a white frock and a
+red laced waistcoat; who, as he passed, very politely made him a bow,
+which Harley returned, though he could not remember ever having seen him
+before. The stranger asked Harley civilly if he was going to wait on his
+friend the baronet. "For I was just calling," said he, "and am sorry to
+find that he is gone some days into the country."
+
+Harley thanked him for his information, and turned from the door, when
+the other observed that it would be proper to leave his name, and very
+obligingly knocked for that purpose.
+
+"Here is a gentleman, Tom, who meant to have waited on your master."
+
+"Your name, if you please, sir?"
+
+"Harley."
+
+"You'll remember, Tom, Harley."
+
+The door was shut.
+
+"Since we are here," said the stranger, "we shall not lose our walk if
+we add a little to it by a turn or two in Hyde Park."
+
+The conversation as they walked was brilliant on the side of his
+companion.
+
+When they had finished their walk and were returning by the corner of
+the park they observed a board hung out of a window signifying, "An
+excellent ordinary on Saturdays and Sundays." It happened to be
+Saturday, and the table was covered for the purpose.
+
+"What if we should go in and dine, sir?" said the young gentleman.
+Harley made no objection, and the stranger showed him the way into the
+parlour.
+
+Over against the fire-place was seated a man of a grave aspect, who wore
+a pretty large wig, which had once been white, but was now of a brownish
+yellow; his coat was a modest coloured drab; and two jack-boots
+concealed in part the well-mended knees of an old pair of buckskin
+breeches. Next him sat another man, with a tankard in his hand and a
+quid of tobacco in his cheek, whose dress was something smarter.
+
+The door was soon opened for the admission of dinner. "I don't know how
+it is with you, gentlemen," said Harley's new acquaintance, "but I am
+afraid I shall not be able to get down a morsel at this horrid
+mechanical hour of dining." He sat down, however, and did not show any
+want of appetite by his eating. He took upon him the carving of the
+meat, and criticised the goodness of the pudding, and when the
+tablecloth was removed proposed calling for some punch, which was
+readily agreed to.
+
+While the punch lasted the conversation was wholly engrossed by this
+young gentleman, who told a great many "immensely comical stories" and
+"confounded smart things," as he termed them. At last the man in the
+jack-boots, who turned out to be a grazier, pulling out a watch of very
+unusual size, said that he had an appointment. And the young gentleman
+discovered that he was already late for an appointment.
+
+When the grazier and he were gone, Harley turned to the remaining
+personage, and asked him if he knew that young gentleman. "A gentleman!"
+said he. "I knew him, some years ago, in the quality of a footman. But
+some of the great folks to whom he has been serviceable had him made a
+ganger. And he has the assurance to pretend an acquaintance with men of
+quality. The impudent dog! With a few shillings in his pocket, he will
+talk three times as much as my friend Mundy, the grazier there, who is
+worth nine thousand if he's worth a farthing. But I know the rascal, and
+despise him as he deserves!"
+
+Harley began to despise him, too, but he corrected himself by reflecting
+that he was perhaps as well entertained, and instructed, too, by this
+same ganger, as he should have been by such a man of fashion as he had
+thought proper to personate.
+
+
+_III.--Harley's Success with the Baronet_
+
+
+The card he received was in the politest style in which disappointment
+could be communicated. The baronet "was under a necessity of giving up
+his application for Mr. Harley, as he was informed that the lease was
+engaged for a gentleman who had long served his majesty in another
+capacity, and whose merit had entitled him to the first lucrative thing
+that should be vacant." Even Harley could not murmur at such a disposal.
+"Perhaps," said he to himself, "some war-worn officer, who had been
+neglected from reasons which merited the highest advancement; whose
+honour could not stoop to solicit the preferment he deserved; perhaps,
+with a family taught the principles of delicacy without the means of
+supporting it; a wife and children--gracious heaven!--whom my wishes
+would have deprived of bread--!"
+
+He was interrupted in his reverie by someone tapping him on the
+shoulder, and on turning round, he discovered it to be the very man who
+had recently explained to him the condition of his gay companion.
+
+"I believe we are fellows in disappointment," said he. Harley started,
+and said that he was at a loss to understand him.
+
+"Pooh! you need not be so shy," answered the other; "everyone for
+himself is but fair, and I had much rather you had got it than the
+rascally ganger. I was making interest for it myself, and I think I had
+some title. I voted for this same baronet at the last election, and made
+some of my friends do so, too; though I would not have you imagine that
+I sold my vote. No, I scorn it--let me tell you I scorn it; but I
+thought as how this man was staunch and true, and I find he's but a
+double-faced fellow after all, and speechifies in the House for any side
+he hopes to make most by. A murrain on the smooth-tongued knave, and
+after all to get it for this rascal of a ganger."
+
+"The ganger! There must be some mistake," said Harley. "He writes me
+that it was engaged for one whose long services--"
+
+"Services!" interrupted the other; "some paltry convenience to the
+baronet. A plague on all rogues! I shall but just drink destruction to
+them to-night and leave London to-morrow by sunrise."
+
+"I shall leave it, too," said Harley; and so he accordingly did.
+
+In passing through Piccadilly, he had observed on the window of an inn a
+notification of the departure of a stage-coach for a place on his road
+homewards; on the way back to his lodgings, he took a seat in it.
+
+
+_IV.--He Meets an Old Acquaintance_
+
+
+When the stage-coach arrived at the place of its destination, Harley,
+who did things frequently in a way different from what other people call
+natural, set out immediately afoot, having first put a spare shirt in
+his pocket and given directions for the forwarding of his portmanteau.
+It was a method of travelling which he was accustomed to take.
+
+On the road, about four miles from his destination, Harley overtook an
+old man, who from his dress had been a soldier, and walked with him.
+
+"Sir," said the stranger, looking earnestly at him, "is not your name
+Harley? You may well have forgotten my face, 'tis a long time since you
+saw it; but possibly you may remember something of old Edwards? When you
+were at school in the neighbourhood, you remember me at South Hill?"
+
+"Edwards!" cried Harley, "O, heavens! let me clasp those knees on which
+I have sat so often. Edwards! I shall never forget that fireside, round
+which I have been so happy! But where have you been? Where is Jack?
+Where is your daughter?"
+
+"'Tis a long tale," replied Edwards, "but I will try to tell it you as
+we walk."
+
+Edwards had been a tenant farmer where his father, grandfather, and
+great-grandfather had lived before him. The rapacity of a land steward,
+heavy agricultural losses, and finally the arrival of a press-gang had
+reduced him to misery. By paying a certain sum of money he had been
+accepted by the press-gang instead of his son, and now old Edwards was
+returning home invalided from the army.
+
+When they had arrived within a little way of the village they journeyed
+to, Harley stopped short and looked steadfastly on the mouldering walls
+of a ruined house that stood by the roadside.
+
+"What do I see?" he cried. "Silent, unroofed, and desolate! That was the
+very school where I was boarded when you were at South Hill; 'tis but a
+twelve-month since I saw it standing and its benches filled with
+cherubs. That opposite side of the road was the green on which they
+sported; see, it is now ploughed up!"
+
+Just then a woman passed them on the road, who, in reply to Harley, told
+them the squire had pulled the school-house down because it stood in the
+way of his prospects.
+
+"If you want anything with the school-mistress, sir," said the woman. "I
+can show you the way to her house."
+
+They followed her to the door of a snug habitation, where sat an elderly
+woman with a boy and a girl before her, each of whom held a supper of
+bread and milk in their hands.
+
+"They are poor orphans," the school-mistress said, when Harley addressed
+her, "put under my care by the parish, and more promising children I
+never saw. Their father, sir, was a farmer here in the neighbourhood,
+and a sober, industrious man he was; but nobody can help misfortunes.
+What with bad crops and bad debts, his affairs went to wreck, and both
+he and his wife died of broken hearts. And a sweet couple they were,
+sir. There was not a properer man to look on in the county than John
+Edwards, and so, indeed, were all the Edwardses of South Hill."
+
+"Edwards! South Hill!" said the old soldier, in a languid voice, and
+fell back in the arms of the astonished Harley.
+
+He soon recovered, and folding his orphan grandchildren in his arms,
+cried, "My poor Jack, art thou gone--"
+
+"My dear old man," said Harley, "Providence has sent you to relieve
+them. It will bless me if I can be the means of assisting you."
+
+"Yes, indeed, sir," answered the boy. "Father, when he was a-dying, bade
+God bless us, and prayed that if grandfather lived he might send him to
+support us. I have told sister," said he, "that she should not take it
+so to heart. She can knit already, and I shall soon be able to dig. We
+shall not starve, sister, indeed we shall not, nor shall grandfather
+neither."
+
+The little girl cried afresh. Harley kissed off her tears, and wept
+between every kiss.
+
+
+_V.--The Man of Feeling is Jealous_
+
+
+Shortly after Harley's return home his servant Peter came into his room
+one morning with a piece of news on his tongue.
+
+"The morning is main cold, sir," began Peter.
+
+"Is it?" said Harley.
+
+"Yes, sir. I have been as far as Tom Dowson's to fetch some barberries.
+There was a rare junketting at Tom's last night among Sir Harry Benson's
+servants. And I hear as how Sir Harry is going to be married to Miss
+Walton. Tom's wife told it me, and, to be sure, the servants told her;
+but, of course, it mayn't be true, for all that."
+
+"Have done with your idle information," said Harley. "Is my aunt come
+down into the parlour to breakfast?"
+
+"Yes, sir."
+
+"Tell her I'll be with her immediately."
+
+His aunt, too, had been informed of the intended match between Sir Harry
+Benson and Miss Walton, Harley learnt.
+
+"I have been thinking," said she, "that they are distant relations, for
+the great-grandfather of this Sir Harry, who was knight of the shire in
+the reign of Charles I., married a daughter of the Walton family."
+
+Harley answered drily that it might be so, but that he never troubled
+himself about those matters.
+
+"Indeed," said she, "you are to blame, nephew, for not knowing a little
+more of them; but nowadays it is money, not birth, that makes people
+respected--the more shame for the times."
+
+Left alone, Harley went out and sat down on a little seat in the garden.
+
+"Miss Walton married!" said he. "But what is that to me? May she be
+happy! Her virtues deserve it. I had romantic dreams. They are fled."
+
+That night the curate dined with him, though his visits, indeed, were
+more properly to the aunt than the nephew. He had hardly said grace
+after dinner when he said he was very well informed that Sir Harry
+Benson was just going to be married to Miss Walton. Harley spilt the
+wine he was carrying to his mouth; he had time, however, to recollect
+himself before the curate had finished the particulars of his
+intelligence, and, summing up all the heroism he was master of, filled a
+bumper, and drank to Miss Walton.
+
+"With all my heart," said the curate; "the bride that is to be!" Harley
+would have said "bride," too, but it stuck in his throat, and his
+confusion was manifest.
+
+
+_VI.--He Sees Miss Walton and is Happy_
+
+
+Miss Walton was not married to Sir Harry Benson, but Harley made no
+declaration of his own passion after that of the other had been
+unsuccessful. The state of his health appears to have been such as to
+forbid any thoughts of that kind. He had been seized with a very
+dangerous fever caught by attending old Edwards in one of an infectious
+kind. From this he had recovered but imperfectly, and though he had no
+formed complaint, his health was manifestly on the decline.
+
+It appears that some friend had at length pointed out to his aunt a
+cause from which this decline of health might be supposed to proceed, to
+wit, his hopeless love for Miss Walton--for, according to the
+conceptions of the world, the love of a man of Harley's modest fortune
+for the heiress of L4,000 a year is indeed desperate.
+
+Be that as it may, I was sitting with him one morning when the door
+opened and his aunt appeared, leading in Miss Walton. I could observe a
+transient glow upon his face as he rose from his seat. She begged him to
+resume his seat, and placed herself on the sofa beside him. I took my
+leave, and his aunt accompanied me to the door. Harley was left with
+Miss Walton alone. She inquired anxiously about his health.
+
+"I believe," said he, "from the accounts which my physicians unwillingly
+give me, that they have no great hopes of my recovery."
+
+She started as he spoke, and then endeavoured to flatter him into a
+belief that his apprehensions were groundless.
+
+"I do not wish to be deceived," said he. "To meet death as becomes a man
+is a privilege bestowed on few. I would endeavour to make it mine. Nor
+do I think that I can ever be better prepared for it than now." He
+paused some moments. "I am in such a state as calls for sincerity. Let
+that also excuse it. It is perhaps the last time we shall ever meet." He
+paused again. "Let it not offend you to know your power over one so
+unworthy. To love Miss Walton could not be a crime; if to declare it is
+one, the expiation will be made."
+
+Her tears were now flowing without control.
+
+"Let me entreat you," said she, "to have better hopes. Let not life be
+so indifferent to you, if my wishes can put any value on it. I know your
+worth--I have known it long. I have esteemed it. What would you have me
+say? I have loved it as it deserved."
+
+He seized her hand, a languid colour reddened her cheek; a smile
+brightened faintly in his eye. As he gazed on her it grew dim, it fixed,
+it closed. He sighed, and fell back on his seat. Miss Walton screamed at
+the sight.
+
+His aunt and the servants rushed into the room. They found them lying
+motionless together.
+
+His physician happened to call at that instant. Every art was tried to
+recover them. With Miss Walton they succeeded, but Harley was gone for
+ever.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+
+
+XAVIER DE MAISTRE
+
+
+A Journey Round My Room
+
+
+     Count Xavier de Maistre was born in October 1763 at Chambery,
+     in Savoy. When, in the war and the upheaval that followed on
+     the French Revolution, his country was annexed to France, he
+     emigrated to Russia, and being a landscape painter of fine
+     talent, he managed to live on the pictures which he sold. He
+     died at St. Petersburg on June 12, 1852. His famous "Journey
+     Round My Room" ("Voyage autour de ma chambre") was written in
+     1794 at Turin, where he was imprisoned for forty-two days over
+     some affair of honour. The style of his work is clearly
+     modelled on that of Sterne, but the ideas, which he pours out
+     with a delightful interplay of wit and fancy, are marked with
+     the stamp of a fine, original mind. The work is one of the
+     most brilliant _tours de force_ in a literature remarkable for
+     its lightness, grace, and charm. Being a born writer, de
+     Maistre whiled away his time by producing a sparkling little
+     masterpiece, which will be cherished long after the heavy,
+     philosophical works written by his elder brother, Joseph de
+     Maistre, have mouldered into the dust. In the lifetime of the
+     two brothers, Joseph was regarded throughout Europe as a man
+     of high genius, while Xavier was looked down on as a trifler.
+
+
+_I.--My Great Discovery_
+
+
+How glorious it is to open a new career, and to appear suddenly in the
+world of science with a book of discoveries in one's hand like an
+unexpected comet sparkling in space! Here is the book, gentleman. I have
+undertaken and carried out a journey of forty-two days in my room. The
+interesting observations I have made, and the continual pleasure I have
+felt during this long expedition, excited in me the wish to publish it;
+the certitude of the usefulness of my work decided me. My heart is
+filled with an inexpressible satisfaction when I think of the infinite
+number of unhappy persons to whom I am now able to offer an assured
+resource against the tediousness and vexations of life. The delight one
+finds in travelling in one's own room is a pure joy, exempt from the
+unquiet jealousies of men and independent of ill-fortune.
+
+In the immense family of men that swarm on the surface of the earth,
+there is not one--no, not one (I am speaking, of course, of those who
+have a room to live in)--who can, after having read this book, refuse
+his approbation to the new way of travelling which I have invented. It
+costs nothing, that is the great thing! Thus it is certain of being
+adopted by very rich people! Thousands of persons who have never thought
+of travelling will now resolve to follow my example.
+
+Come, then, let us go forth! Follow me, all ye hermits who through some
+mortification in love, some negligence in friendship, have withdrawn
+into your rooms far from the pettiness and infidelity of mankind! But
+quit your dismal thoughts, I pray you. Every minute you lose some
+pleasure without gaining any wisdom in place of it. Deign to accompany
+me on my travels. We shall go by easy stages, laughing all along the
+road at every tourist who has gone to Rome or Paris. No obstacle shall
+stop us, and, surrendering ourselves to our imagination, we will follow
+it wherever it may lead us.
+
+But persons are so curious. I am sure you would like to know why my
+journey round my room lasted forty-two days instead of forty-three, or
+some other space of time. But how can I tell you when I do not know
+myself? All I can say is that if you find my work too long, it was not
+my fault. In spite of the vanity natural in a traveller, I should have
+been very glad if it had only run a single chapter. The fact is, that
+though I was allowed in my room all the pleasures and comfort possible,
+I was not permitted to leave it when I wished.
+
+Is there anything more natural and just than to fight to the death with
+a man who has inadvertently trodden on your foot, or let fall some sharp
+words in a moment of vexation of which your imprudence was the cause?
+Nothing, you will admit, is more logical; and yet there are some people
+who disapprove of this admirable custom.
+
+But, what is still more natural and logical, the very people who
+disapprove it and regard it as a grave crime treat with greater rigour
+any man who refuses to commit it. Many an unhappy fellow has lost his
+reputation and position through conforming with their views, so that if
+you have the misfortune to be engaged in what is called "an affair of
+honour," it is best to toss up to see if you should follow the law or
+the custom; and as the law and the custom in regard to duelling are
+contradictory, the magistrates would also do well to frame their
+sentence on the throw of the dice. Probably, it was in this way that
+they determined that my journey should last exactly forty-two days.
+
+
+_II.--My Armchair and my Bed_
+
+
+My chamber forms a square, round which I can take thirty-six steps, if I
+keep very close to the wall. But I seldom travel in a straight line. I
+dislike persons who are such masters of their feet and of their ideas
+that they can say: "To-day I shall make three calls, I shall write four
+letters, I shall finish this work that I have begun." So rare are the
+pleasures scattered along our difficult path in life, that we must be
+mad not to turn out of our way and gather anything of joy which is
+within our reach.
+
+To my mind, there is nothing more attractive than to follow the trail of
+one's ideas, like a hunter tracking down game, without holding to any
+road. I like to zigzag about. I set out from my table to the picture in
+the corner. From there I journey obliquely towards the door; but if I
+come upon my armchair I stand on no ceremonies, but settle myself in it
+at once. 'Tis an excellent piece of furniture, an armchair, and
+especially useful to a meditative man. In long winter evenings it is
+sometimes delightful and always wise to stretch oneself in it easily,
+far from the din of the numerous assemblies.
+
+After my armchair, in walking towards the north I discover my bed, which
+is placed at the end of my room, and there forms a most agreeable
+perspective. So happily is it arranged that the earliest rays of
+sunlight come and play on the curtains. I can see them, on fine summer
+mornings, advancing along the white wall with the rising sun; some elms,
+growing before my window, divide them in a thousand ways, and make them
+dance on my bed, which, by their reflection, spread all round the room
+the tint of its own charming white and rose pattern. I hear the
+twittering of the swallows that nest in the roof, and of other birds in
+the elms; a stream of charming thoughts flows into my mind, and in the
+whole world nobody has an awakening as pleasant and as peaceful as mine.
+
+
+_III.--The Beast_
+
+
+Only metaphysicians must read this chapter. It throws a great light on
+the nature of man. I cannot explain how and why I burnt my fingers at
+the first steps I made in setting out on my journey around my room,
+until I expose my system of the soul and the beast. In the course of
+diverse observations I have found out that man is composed of a soul and
+a beast.
+
+It is often said that man is made up of a soul and a body, and this body
+is accused of doing all sorts of wrong things. In my opinion, there is
+no ground for such accusations, for the body is as incapable of feeling
+as it is of thinking. The beast is the creature on whom the blame should
+be laid. It is a sensible being, perfectly distinct from the soul, a
+veritable individual, with its separate existence, tastes, inclinations,
+and will; it is superior to other animals only because it has been
+better brought up, and endowed with finer organs. The great art of a man
+of genius consists in knowing how to train his beast so well that it can
+run alone, while the soul, delivered from its painful company, rises up
+into the heavens. I must make this clear by an example.
+
+One day last summer I was walking along on my way to the court. I had
+been painting all the morning, and my soul, delighted with her
+meditation on painting, left to the beast the care of transporting me to
+the king's palace.
+
+"What a sublime art painting is!" thought my soul. "Happy is the man who
+has been touched by the spectacle of nature, who is not compelled to
+paint pictures for a living, and still less just to pass the time away;
+but who, struck by the majesty of a fine physiognomy and by the
+admirable play of light that blends in a thousand tints on a human face,
+tries to approach in his works the sublime effects of nature!"
+
+While my soul was making these reflections, the beast was running its
+own way. Instead of going to court, as it had been ordered to, it
+swerved so much to the left that at the moment when my soul caught it
+up, it was at the door of Mme. de Hautcastel's house, half a mile from
+the palace.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+If it is useful and pleasant to have a soul so disengaged from the
+material world that one can let her travel all alone when one wishes to,
+this faculty is not without its inconveniences. It was through it, for
+instance, that I burnt my fingers. I usually leave to my beast the duty
+of preparing my breakfast. It toasts my bread and cuts it in slices.
+Above all, it makes coffee beautifully, and it drinks it very often
+without my soul taking part in the matter, except when she amuses
+herself with watching the beast at work. This, however, is rare, and a
+very difficult thing to do.
+
+It is easy, during some mechanical act, to think of something else; but
+it is extremely difficult to study oneself in action, so to speak; or,
+to explain myself according to my own system, to employ one's soul in
+examining the conduct of one's beast, to see it work without taking any
+part. This is really the most astonishing metaphysical feat that man can
+execute.
+
+I had laid my tongs on the charcoal to toast my bread, and some time
+after, while my soul was on her travels, a flaming stump rolled on the
+grate; my poor beast went to take up the tongs, and I burnt my fingers.
+
+
+_IV.--A Great Picture_
+
+
+The first stage of my journey round my room is accomplished. While my
+soul has been explaining my new system of metaphysic, I have been
+sitting in my armchair in my favourite attitude, with the two front feet
+raised a couple of inches off the floor. By swaying my body to and fro,
+I have insensibly gained ground, and I find myself with a start close to
+the wall. This is the way in which I travel when I am not in a hurry.
+
+My chamber is hung with prints and paintings which embellish it in an
+admirable manner. I should like the reader to examine them one after the
+other, and to entertain himself during the long journey that we must
+make in order to arrive at my desk. Look, here is a portrait of Raphael.
+Beside it is a likeness of the adorable lady whom he loved.
+
+But I have something still finer than these, and I always reserve it for
+the last. I find that both connoisseurs and ignoramuses, both women of
+the world and little children, yes, and even animals, are pleased and
+astonished by the way in which this sublime work renders every effect in
+nature. What picture can I present to you, gentlemen; what scene can I
+put beneath your lovely eyes, ladies, more certain of winning your
+favour than the faithful image of yourselves? The work of which I speak
+is a looking-glass, and nobody up to the present has taken it into his
+head to criticise it; it is, for all those who study it, a perfect
+picture in which there is nothing to blame. It is thus the gem of my
+collection.
+
+You see this withered rose? It is a flower of the Turin carnival of last
+year. I gathered it myself at Valentin's, and in the evening, an hour
+before the ball, I went full of hope and joy to present it to Mme. de
+Hautcastel. She took it, and placed it on her dressing-table without
+looking at it, and without looking at me. But how could she take any
+notice of me? Standing in an ectasy before a great mirror, she was
+putting the last touches to her finery. So totally was she absorbed in
+the ribbons, the gauzes, the ornaments heaped up before her, that I
+could not obtain a glance, a sign. I finished my losing patience, and
+being unable to resist the feeling of anger that swept over me, I took
+up the rose and walked out without taking leave of my sweetheart.
+
+"Are you going?" she said, turning round to see her figure in profile.
+
+I did not answer, but I listened at the door to learn if my brusque
+departure produced any effect.
+
+"Do you not see," exclaimed Mme. de Hautcastel to her maid, after a
+short silence, "that this pelisse is much too full at the bottom? Get
+some pins and make a tuck in it."
+
+That is how I come to have a withered rose on my desk. I shall make no
+reflections on the affair. I shall not even draw any conclusions from it
+concerning the force and duration of a woman's love.
+
+My forty-two days are coming to an end, and an equal space of time would
+not suffice to describe the rich country in which I am now travelling,
+for I have at last reached my bookshelf. It contains nothing but
+novels--yes, I shall be candid--nothing but novels and a few choice
+poets. As though I had not enough troubles of my own, I willingly share
+in those of a thousand imaginary persons, and I feel them as keenly as
+if they were mine. What tears have I shed over the unhappiness of
+Clarissa!
+
+But if I thus seek for feigned afflictions, I find, in compensation, in
+this imaginary world, the virtue, the goodness, the disinterestedness
+which I have been unable to discover together in the real world in which
+I exist. It is there that I find the wife that I desire, without temper,
+without lightness, without subterfuge; I say nothing about beauty--you
+can depend on my imagination for that! Then, closing the book which no
+longer answers to my ideas, I take her by the hand, and we wander
+together through a land a thousand times more delicious than that of
+Eden. What painter can depict the scene of enchantment in which I have
+placed the divinity of my heart? But when I am tired of love-making I
+take up some poet, and set out again for another world.
+
+
+_V.--In Prison Again_
+
+
+O charming land of imagination which has been given to men to console
+them for the realities of life, it is time for me to leave thee! This is
+the day when certain persons pretend to give me back my freedom, as
+though they had deprived me of it! As though it were in their power to
+take it away from me for a single instant, and to hinder me from
+scouring as I please the vast space always open before me! They have
+prevented me from going out into a single town--Turin, a mere point on
+the earth--but they have left to me the entire universe; immensity and
+eternity have been at my service.
+
+To-day, then, I am free, or rather I am going to be put back into irons.
+The yoke of business is again going to weigh me down; I shall not be
+able to take a step which is not measured by custom or duty. I shall be
+fortunate if some capricious goddess does not make me forget one and the
+other, and if I escape from this new and dangerous captivity.
+
+Oh, why did they not let me complete my journey! Was it really to punish
+me that they confined me in my room? In this country of delight which
+contains all the good things, all the riches of the world? They might as
+well have tried to chastise a mouse by shutting him up in a granary.
+
+Yet never have I perceived more clearly that I have a double nature. All
+the time that I am regretting my pleasures of the imagination, I feel
+myself consoled by force. A secret power draws me away. It tells me that
+I have need of the fresh air and the open sky, and that solitude
+resembles death. So here am I dressed and ready. My door opens; I am
+rambling under the spacious porticoes of the street of Po; a thousand
+charming phantoms dance before my eyes. Yes, this is her mansion, this
+is the door; I tremble with anticipation.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+
+
+SIR THOMAS MALORY
+
+
+Morte d'Arthur
+
+
+     Little is known of Sir Thomas Malory, who, according to
+     Caxton, "did take out of certain French books a copy of the
+     noble histories of King Arthur and reduced it to English." We
+     learn from the text that "this book was finished in the ninth
+     year of the reign of King Edward the Fourth, by Sir Thomas
+     Malory, Knight." That would be in the year 1469. Malory is
+     said to have been a Welshman. The origin of the Arthurian
+     romance was probably Welsh. Its first literary form was in
+     Geoffrey of Monmouth's prose, in 1147. Translated into French
+     verse, and brightened in the process, these legends appear to
+     have come back to us, and to have received notable additions
+     from Walter Map (1137-1209), another Welshman. A second time
+     they were worked on and embellished by the French
+     romanticists, and from these later versions Malory appears to
+     have collated the materials for his immortal translation. The
+     story of Arthur and Launcelot is the thread of interest
+     followed in this epitome.
+
+
+_I.--The Coming of Arthur_
+
+
+It befell in the days of the noble Utherpendragon, when he was King of
+England, there was a mighty and noble duke in Cornwall, named the Duke
+of Tintagil, that held long war against him. And the duke's wife was
+called a right fair lady, and a passing wise, and Igraine was her name.
+And the duke, issuing out of the castle at a postern to distress the
+king's host, was slain. Then all the barons, by one assent, prayed the
+king of accord between the Lady Igraine and himself. And the king gave
+them leave, for fain would he have accorded with her; and they were
+married in a morning with great mirth and joy.
+
+When the Queen Igraine grew daily nearer the time when the child Arthur
+should be born, Merlin, by whose counsel the king had taken her to wife,
+came to the king and said: "Sir, you must provide for the nourishing of
+your child. I know a lord of yours that is a passing true man, and
+faithful, and he shall have the nourishing of your child. His name is
+Sir Ector, and he is a lord of fair livelihood." "As thou wilt," said
+the king, "be it." So the child was delivered unto Merlin, and he bare
+it forth unto Sir Ector, and made a holy man to christen him, and named
+him Arthur.
+
+But, within two years, King Uther fell sick of a great malady, and
+therewith yielded up the ghost, and was interred as belonged unto a
+king; wherefore Igraine the queen made great sorrow, and all the barons.
+
+Then stood the realm in great jeopardy a long while, for many weened to
+have been king. And Merlin went to the Archbishop of Canterbury, and
+counselled him to send for all the lords of the realm, and all the
+gentlemen of arms, to London before Christmas, upon pain of cursing,
+that Jesus, of His great mercy, should show some miracle who should be
+rightwise king. So in the greatest church of London there was seen
+against the high altar a great stone and in the midst thereof there was
+an anvil of steel, and therein stuck a fair sword, naked by the point,
+and letters of gold were written about the sword that said, "Whoso
+pulleth out this sword of this stone and anvil is rightwise king born of
+England."
+
+And many essayed, but none might stir the sword.
+
+And on New Year's Day the barons made a joust, and Sir Ector rode to the
+jousts; and with him rode Sir Kaye, his son, and young Arthur, that was
+his nourished brother.
+
+And Sir Kaye, who was made knight at Allhallowmas afore, had left his
+sword at his father's lodging, and so prayed young Arthur to ride for
+it. Then Arthur said to himself, "I will ride to the churchyard and take
+the sword that sticketh in the stone for my brother Kaye." And so,
+lightly and fiercely, he pulled it out of the stone, and took horse and
+delivered to Sir Kaye the sword. "How got you this sword?" said Sir
+Ector to Arthur. "Sir, I will tell you," said Arthur; "I pulled it out
+of the stone without any pain." "Now," said Sir Ector, "I understand you
+must be king of this land." "Wherefore I?" said Arthur. "And for what
+cause?" "Sir," said Sir Ector, "for God will have it so." And
+therewithal Sir Ector kneeled down to the earth, and Sir Kaye also.
+
+Then Sir Ector told him all how he had betaken him to nourish him; and
+Arthur made great moan when he understood that Sir Ector was not his
+father.
+
+And at the Feast of Pentecost all manner of men essayed to pull out the
+sword, and none might prevail but Arthur, who pulled it out before all
+the lords and commons. And the commons cried, "We will have Arthur unto
+our king." And so anon was the coronation made.
+
+And Merlin said to King Arthur, "Fight not with the sword that you had
+by miracle till you see that you go to the worst, then draw it out and
+do your best." And the sword, Excalibur, was so bright that it gave
+light like thirty torches.
+
+
+_II.--The Marriage of Arthur_
+
+
+In the beginning of King Arthur, after that he was chosen king by
+adventure and by grace, for the most part the barons knew not that he
+was Utherpendragon's son but as Merlin made it openly known. And many
+kings and lords made great war against him for that cause, but King
+Arthur full well overcame them all; for the most part of the days of his
+life he was much ruled by the counsel of Merlin. So it befell on a time
+that he said unto Merlin, "My barons will let me have no rest, but needs
+they will have that I take a wife, and I will none take but by thy
+advice."
+
+"It is well done," said Merlin, "for a man of your bounty and nobleness
+should not be without a wife. Now, is there any fair lady that ye love
+better than another?"
+
+"Yea," said Arthur; "I love Guinever, the king's daughter, of the land
+of Cameliard. This damsel is the gentlest and fairest lady I ever could
+find."
+
+"Sir," said Merlin, "she is one of the fairest that live, and as a man's
+heart is set he will be loth to return."
+
+But Merlin warned the king privily that Guinever was not wholesome for
+him to take to wife, for he warned him that Launcelot should love her,
+and she him again. And Merlin went forth to King Leodegraunce, of
+Cameliard, and told him of the desire of the king that he would have to
+his wife Guinever, his daughter. "That is to me," said King
+Leodegraunce, "the best tidings that ever I heard; and I shall send him
+a gift that shall please him, for I shall give him the Table Round, the
+which Utherpendragon gave me; and when it is full complete there is a
+place for a hundred and fifty knights; and a hundred good knights I have
+myself, but I lack fifty, for so many have been slain in my days."
+
+And so King Leodegraunce delivered his daughter, Guinever, to Merlin,
+and the Table Round, with the hundred knights, and they rode freshly and
+with great royalty, what by water and what by land.
+
+And when Arthur heard of the coming of Guinever and the hundred knights
+of the Round Table he made great joy; and in all haste did ordain for
+the marriage and coronation in the most honourable wise that could be
+devised. And Merlin found twenty-eight good knights of prowess and
+worship, but no more could he find. And the Archbishop of Canterbury was
+sent for, and blessed the seats of the Round Table with great devotion.
+
+Then was the high feast made ready, and the king was wedded at Camelot
+unto Dame Guinever, in the Church of St. Steven's, with great solemnity.
+
+
+_III.--Sir Launcelot and the King_
+
+
+And here I leave off this tale, and overskip great books of Merlin, and
+Morgan le Fay, and Sir Balin le Savage, and Sir Launcelot du Lake, and
+Sir Galahad, and the Book of the Holy Grail, and the Book of Elaine, and
+come to the tale of Sir Launcelot, and the breaking up of the Round
+Table.
+
+In the merry month of May, when every heart flourisheth and rejoiceth,
+it happened there befel a great misfortune, the which stinted not till
+the flower of the chivalry of all the world was destroyed and slain.
+
+And all was along of two unhappy knights named Sir Agravaine and Sir
+Mordred, that were brethren unto Sir Gawaine. For these two knights had
+ever privy hate unto the queen, and unto Sir Launcelot. And Sir
+Agravaine said openly, and not in counsel, "I marvel that we all be not
+ashamed to see and know how Sir Launcelot cometh daily and nightly to
+the queen, and it is shameful that we suffer so noble a king to be
+ashamed." Then spake Sir Gawaine, "I pray you have no such matter any
+way before me, for I will not be of your counsel." And so said his
+brothers, Sir Gaheris and Sir Gareth. "Then will I," said Sir Mordred.
+And with these words they came to King Arthur, and told him they could
+suffer it no longer, but must tell him, and prove to him that Sir
+Launcelot was a traitor to his person.
+
+"I would be loth to begin such a thing," said King Arthur, "for I tell
+you Sir Launcelot is the best knight among you all." For Sir Launcelot
+had done much for him and for his queen many times, and King Arthur
+loved him passing well.
+
+Then Sir Agravaine advised that the king go hunting, and send word that
+he should be out all that night, and he and Sir Mordred, with twelve
+knights of the Round Table should watch the queen. So on the morrow King
+Arthur rode out hunting.
+
+And Sir Launcelot told Sir Bors that night he would speak with the
+queen. "You shall not go this night by my counsel," said Sir Bors.
+
+"Fair nephew," said Sir Launcelot, "I marvel me much why ye say this,
+sithence the queen hath sent for me." And he departed, and when he had
+passed to the queen's chamber, Sir Agravaine and Sir Mordred, with
+twelve knights, cried aloud without, "Traitor knight, now art thou
+taken!"
+
+But Sir Launcelot after he had armed himself, set the chamber door wide
+open, and mightily and knightly strode among them, and slew Sir
+Agravaine and twelve of his fellows, and wounded Sir Mordred, who fled
+with all his might, and came straight to King Arthur, wounded and
+beaten, and all be-bled.
+
+"Alas!" said the king, "now am I sure the noble fellowship of the Round
+Table is broken for ever, for with Launcelot will hold many a noble
+knight."
+
+And the queen was adjudged to death by fire, for there was none other
+remedy but death for treason in those days. Then was Queen Guinever led
+forth without Carlisle, and despoiled unto her smock, and her ghostly
+father was brought to her to shrive her of her misdeeds; and there was
+weeping and wailing and wringing of hands.
+
+But anon there was spurring and plucking up of horses, for Sir Launcelot
+and many a noble knight rode up to the fire, and none might withstand
+him. And a kirtle and gown were cast upon the queen, and Sir Launcelot
+rode his way with her to Joyous Gard, and kept her as a noble knight
+should.
+
+Then came King Arthur and Sir Gawaine, whose brothers, Sir Gaheris and
+Sir Gareth, had been slain by Sir Launcelot unawares, and laid a siege
+to Joyous Gard. And Launcelot had no heart to fight against his lord,
+King Arthur; and Arthur would have taken his queen again, and would have
+accorded with Sir Launcelot, but Sir Gawaine would not suffer him. Then
+the Pope called unto him a noble clerk, the Bishop of Rochester, and
+gave him bulls, under lead, unto King Arthur, charging him that he take
+his queen, Dame Guinever, to him again, and accord with Sir Launcelot.
+And as for the queen, she assented. And the bishop had of the king
+assurance that Sir Launcelot should come and go safe. So Sir Launcelot
+delivered the queen to the king, who assented that Sir Launcelot should
+not abide in the land past fifteen days.
+
+Then Sir Launcelot sighed, and said these words, "Truly me repenteth
+that ever I came into this realm, that I should be thus shamefully
+banished, undeserved, and causeless." And unto Queen Guinever he said,
+"Madam, now I must depart from you and this noble fellowship for ever;
+and since it is so, I beseech you pray for me, and send me word if ye be
+noised with any false tongues." And therewith Launcelot kissed the
+queen, and said openly, "Now let me see what he be that dare say the
+queen is not true to King Arthur--let who will speak, and he dare!" And
+he took his leave and departed, and all the people wept.
+
+
+_IV.--The Passing of Arthur_
+
+
+Now, to say the truth, Sir Launcelot and his nephews were lords of the
+realm of France, and King Arthur and Sir Gawaine made a great host ready
+and shipped at Cardiff, and made great destruction and waste on his
+lands. And Arthur left the governance of all England to Sir Mordred. And
+Sir Mordred caused letters to be made that specified that King Arthur
+was slain in battle with Sir Launcelot; wherefore Sir Mordred made a
+parliament, and they chose him king, and he was crowned at Canterbury.
+But Queen Guinever came to London, and stuffed it with victuals, and
+garnished it with men, and kept it.
+
+Then King Arthur raised the siege on Sir Launcelot, and came homeward
+with a great host to be avenged on Sir Mordred. And Sir Mordred drew
+towards Dover to meet him, and most of England held with Sir Mordred,
+the people were so new-fangled.
+
+Then was there launching of great boats and small, and all were full of
+noble men of arms, and there was much slaughter of gentle knights; but
+King Arthur was so courageous none might let him to land; and his
+knights fiercely followed him, and put back Sir Mordred, and he fled.
+
+But Sir Gawaine was laid low with a blow smitten on an old wound given
+him by Sir Launcelot. Then Sir Gawaine, after he had been shriven, wrote
+with his own hand to Sir Launcelot, flower of all noble knights: "I
+beseech thee, Sir Launcelot, return again to this realm, and see my
+tomb, and pray some prayer more or less for my soul. Make no tarrying
+but come with thy noble knights and rescue that noble king that made
+thee knight, for he is straitly bestood with a false traitor." And so
+Sir Gawaine betook his soul into the hands of our Lord God.
+
+And many a knight drew unto Sir Mordred and many unto King Arthur, and
+never was there seen a dolefuller battle in a Christian land. And they
+fought till it was nigh night, and there were a hundred thousand laid
+dead upon the down.
+
+"Alas! that ever I should see this doleful day," said King Arthur, "for
+now I come unto mine end. But would to God that I wist where that
+traitor Sir Mordred is, which hath caused all this mischief."
+
+Then was King Arthur aware where Sir Mordred leaned upon his sword, and
+there King Arthur smote Sir Mordred throughout the body more than a
+fathom, and Sir Mordred smote King Arthur with his sword held in both
+hands on the side of the head, that the sword pierced the helmet and the
+brain-pan. And Sir Mordred fell dead; and the noble King Arthur fell in
+a swoon, and Sir Lucan and Sir Bedivere laid him in a little chapel not
+far from the sea-side.
+
+And when he came to himself again, he said unto Sir Bedivere, "Take thou
+Excalibur, my good sword, and throw it into that water." And when Sir
+Bedivere (at the third essay) threw the sword into the water, as far as
+he might, there came an arm and a hand above the water, and met and
+caught it, and so shook and brandished it thrice; and then the hand
+vanished away with the sword in the water.
+
+Then Sir Bedivere bore King Arthur to the water's edge, and fast by the
+bank hovered a little barge, and there received him three queens with
+great mourning. And Arthur said, "I will unto the vale of Avillon for to
+heal me of my grievous wound, and if thou never hear more of me, pray
+for my soul." And evermore the ladies wept.
+
+And in the morning Sir Bedivere was aware between two hills of a chapel
+and a hermitage; and he saw there a hermit fast by a tomb newly graven.
+And the hermit said, "My son, here came ladies which brought this corpse
+and prayed me to bury him."
+
+"Alas," said Sir Bedivere, "that was my lord, King Arthur."
+
+And when Queen Guinever understood that her lord, King Arthur, was
+slain, she stole away and went to Almesbury, and made herself a nun, and
+was abbess and ruler as reason would.
+
+And Sir Launcelot passed over into England, and prayed full heartily at
+the tomb of Sir Gawaine, and then rode alone to find Queen Guinever. And
+when Sir Launcelot was brought unto her, she said: "Through this knight
+and me all the wars were wrought, and through our love is my noble lord
+slain; therefore, Sir Launcelot, I require thee that thou never look me
+more in the visage."
+
+And Sir Launcelot said: "The same destiny ye have taken you unto I will
+take me unto." And he besought the bishop that he might be his brother;
+then he put a habit on Sir Launcelot, and there he served God day and
+night, with prayers and fastings.
+
+And when Queen Guinever died Sir Launcelot buried her beside her lord,
+King Arthur. Then mourned he continually until he was dead, so within
+six weeks after they found him stark dead, and he lay as he had smiled.
+Then there was weeping and dolor out of measure. And they buried Sir
+Launcelot with great devotion.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+
+
+ANNE MANNING
+
+
+The Household of Sir Thomas More
+
+
+     Anne Manning, one of the most active women novelists of Queen
+     Victoria's reign, was born in London on February 17, 1807. Her
+     first book, "A Sister's Gift: Conversations on Sacred
+     Subjects," was written in the form of lessons for her brothers
+     and sisters, and published at her own expense in 1826. It was
+     followed in 1831 by "Stories from the History of Italy," and
+     in 1838 her first work of fiction, "Village Belles," made its
+     appearance. In their day Miss Manning's novels had a great
+     vogue, only equalled by her amazing output. Altogether some
+     fifty-one stories appeared under her name, of which the best
+     remembered is "The Household of Sir Thomas More," an imaginary
+     diary written by More's daughter, Margaret. After appearing in
+     "Sharpe's Magazine," it was published in book form in 1860. It
+     is wonderfully vivid, and is written with due regard to
+     historical facts. It is interesting to compare it with the
+     "Life of Sir Thomas More," written by William Roper, Margaret
+     More's husband, with which it is now frequently reprinted.
+     Miss Manning died on September 14, 1879.
+
+
+_I.--Of the Writing of My Libellus_
+
+
+                                                   _Chelsea, June_ 18.
+
+On asking Mr. Gunnel to what use I should put this fayr _Libellus_, he
+did suggest my making it a kinde of family register, wherein to note the
+more important of our domestic passages, whether of joy or griefe--my
+father's journies and absences--the visits of learned men, theire
+notable sayings, etc. "You are ready at the pen, Mistress Margaret," he
+was pleased to say, "and I woulde humblie advise your journaling in the
+same fearless manner in the which you framed that letter which so well
+pleased the Bishop of Exeter that he sent you a Portugal piece. 'Twill
+be well to write it in English, which 'tis expedient for you not
+altogether to negleckt, even for the more honourable Latin."
+
+Methinks I am close upon womanhood. My master Gonellus doth now "humblie
+advise" her he hath so often chid. 'Tis well to make trial of his
+"humble" advice.
+
+...As I traced the last word methoughte I heard the well-known tones of
+Erasmus, his pleasant voyce, and indeede here is the deare little man
+coming up from the riverside with my father, who, because of the heat,
+had given his cloak to a tall stripling behind him to bear, I flew
+upstairs, to advertise mother, and we found 'em alreadie in the hall.
+
+So soon as I had obtayned their blessings, the tall lad stept forth, and
+who should he be but William Roper, returned from my father's errand
+overseas! His manners are worsened, for he twice made to kiss me and
+drew back. I could have boxed his ears, 'speciallie as father, laughing,
+cried, "The third time's lucky!"
+
+After supper, we took deare Erasmus entirely over the house, in a kind
+of family procession. In our own deare Academia, with its glimpse of the
+cleare-shining Thames, Erasmus noted and admired our cut flowers, and
+glanced, too, at the books on our desks--Bessy's being Livy; Daisy's,
+Sallust; and mine, St. Augustine, with father's marks where I was to
+read, and where desist. He tolde Erasmus, laying hand fondlie on my
+head, "Here is one who knows what is implied in the word 'trust.'" Dear
+father, well I may! Thence we visitted the chapel, and gallery, and all
+the dumb kinde. Erasmus doubted whether Duns Scotus and the Venerable
+Bede had been complimented in being made name-fathers to a couple of
+owls; but he said Argus and Juno were good cognomens for peacocks.
+
+Anon, we rest and talk in the pavilion. Sayth Erasmus to my father, "I
+marvel you have never entered into the king's service in some publick
+capacitie."
+
+Father smiled. "I am better and happier as I am. To put myself forward
+would be like printing a book at request of friends, that the publick
+may be charmed with what, in fact, it values at a doit. When the
+cardinall offered me a pension, as retaining fee to the king, I told him
+I did not care to be a mathematical point, to have position without
+magnitude."
+
+"We shall see you at court yet," says Erasmus.
+
+Sayth father, "With a fool's cap and bells!"
+
+                                                            _Tuesday_.
+
+This morn I surprised father and Erasmus in the pavillion. Erasmus sayd,
+the revival of learning seemed appoynted by Heaven for some greate
+purpose.
+
+In the evening, Will and Rupert, spruce enow with nosegays and ribbons,
+rowed us up to Putney. We had a brave ramble through Fulham meadows,
+father discoursing of the virtues of plants, and how many a poor knave's
+pottage would be improved if he were skilled in the properties of
+burdock and old man's pepper.
+
+                                                            _June 20_.
+
+Grievous work overnighte with the churning. Gillian sayd that Gammer
+Gurney, dissatisfyde last Friday with her dole, had bewitched the
+creame. Mother insisted on Bess and me, Daisy and Mercy Giggs, churning
+until the butter came. We sang "Chevy Chase" from end to end, and then
+chaunted the 119th Psalme; and by the time we had attained to _Lucerna
+Pedibus_, I heard the buttermilk separating and splashing in righte
+earnest. 'Twas neare midnighte, however. Gillian thinketh our Latin
+brake the spell.
+
+                                                            _June 21_.
+
+Erasmus to Richmond with _Polus_ (for soe he Latinises Reginald Pole),
+and some other of his friends.
+
+I walked with William _juxta fluvium_, and he talked not badlie of his
+travels. There is really more in him than one would think.
+
+To-day I gave this book to Mr. Gunnel in mistake for my Latin exercise!
+Was ever anything so downright disagreeable?
+
+                                                            _June 24_.
+
+Yesternighte, St. John's Eve, we went into town to see the mustering of
+the watch. The streets were like unto a continuation of fayr bowers or
+arbours, which being lit up, looked like an enchanted land. To the sound
+of trumpets, came marching up Cheapside two thousand of the watch and
+seven hundred cressett bearers, and the Lord Mayor and sheriffs, with
+morris dancers, waits, giants, and pageants, very fine. The streets
+uproarious on our way back to the barge, but the homeward passage under
+the stars delicious.
+
+                                                            _June 25_.
+
+Poor Erasmus caughte colde on the water last nighte, and keeps house. He
+spent the best part of the morning in our Academia, discussing the
+pronunciation of Latin and Greek with Mr. Gunnel, and speaking of his
+labours on his Greek and Latin Testament, which he prays may be a
+blessing to all Christendom. He talked of a possible _Index Bibliorum_,
+saying 'twas onlie the work of patience and Industrie. Methoughte, if
+none else would undertake it, why not I?
+
+                                                            _June 29_.
+
+Dr. Linacre at dinner. At table discourse flowed soe thicke and faste
+that I might aim in vain to chronicle it, and why should I, dwelling as
+I doe at the fountayn head?
+
+In the hay-field alle the evening. Swathed father in a hay-rope. Father
+reclining on the hay with his head in my lap. Said he was dreaming "of a
+far-off future day, when thou and I shall looke back on this hour, and
+this hay-field, and my head on thy lap."
+
+"Nay, but what a stupid dream, Mr. More," says mother. "If I dreamed at
+all, it shoulde be of being Lord Chancellor at the leaste."
+
+"Well, wife," sayd father, "I forgive thee for not saying at the most."
+
+                                                             _July 2_.
+
+Erasmus is gone. His last saying to father was, "They will have you at
+court yet;" and father's answer, "When Plato's year comes round."
+
+To me he gave a copy--how precious!--of his Greek Testament.
+
+                                                            _July 11_.
+
+A forayn mission hath been proposed to father and he did accept. Lengthe
+of his stay uncertain, which caste a gloom on alle.
+
+
+_II.--Father Goeth to the Court_
+
+
+                                                       _May 27, 1523_.
+
+'Tis so manie months agone since I made an entry in my _Libellus_, as
+that my motto, _Nulla dies sine linea_, hath somewhat of sarcasm in it.
+In father's prolonged absence I have toiled at my _Opus_ (the _Index
+Bibliorum_), but 'twas not to purpose, and then came that payn in my
+head. Father discovered my _Opus_, and with alle swete gentlenesse told
+me firmly that there are some things a woman cannot, and some she had
+better not do. Yet if I would persist, I shoulde have leisure and quiet
+and the help of his books.
+
+Hearing Mercy propound the conditions of an hospital for aged and sick
+folk, father hath devised and given me the conduct of a house of refuge,
+and oh, what pleasure have I derived from it! "Have I cured the payn in
+thy head, miss?" said he. Then he gave me the key of the hospital,
+saying, "'Tis yours now, my joy, by livery and seisin."
+
+                                                           _August 6_.
+
+I wish William would give me back my Testament.
+
+                                                           _August 7_.
+
+Yesterday, father, taking me unawares, asked, "Come, tell me, Meg, why
+canst not affect Will Roper?"
+
+I was a good while silent, at length made answer, "He is so unlike alle
+I have been taught to esteem and admire by you."
+
+"Have at you," he returned laughing, "I wist not I had been sharpening
+weapons against myself."
+
+Then did he plead Will's cause and bid me take him for what he is.
+
+                                                          _August 30_.
+
+Will is in sore doubte and distresse, and I fear it is my Testament that
+hath unsettled him. I have bidden him fast, pray, and use such
+discipline as our church recommends.
+
+                                                        _September 2_.
+
+I have it from Barbara through her brother, one of the men-servants,
+that Mr. Roper hath of late lien on the ground and used a knotted cord.
+I have made him an abstract from the Fathers for his soul's comfort.
+
+                                                      _1524, October_.
+
+The king took us by surprise this morning. Mother had scarce time to
+slip on her scarlet gown and coif ere he was in the house. His grace was
+mighty pleasant to all, and at going, saluted all round, which Bessy
+took humourously, Daisy immoveablie, Mercy humblie, I distastefullie,
+and mother delightedlie. She calls him a fine man; he is indeed big
+enough, and like to become too big; with long slits of eyes that gaze
+freelie on all. His eyebrows are supercilious, and his cheeks puffy. A
+rolling, straddling gait and abrupt speech.
+
+                                                _Tuesday, October 25_.
+
+Will troubleth me noe longer with his lovefitt, nor with his religious
+disquietations. Hard studdy of the law hath filled his head with other
+matters, and made him infinitely more rationall and more agreeable. I
+shall ne'er remind him.
+
+T'other evening, as father and I were strolling down the lane, there
+accosts us a poor, shabby fellow, who begged to be father's fool. Father
+said he had a fancy to be prime fooler in his own establishment, but
+liking the poor knave's wit, civilitie, and good sense, he agreed to
+halve the businesse, he continuing the fooling, and Patteson--for that
+is the simple good fellow's name--receiving the salary. Father
+delighteth in sparring with Patteson far more than in jesting with the
+king, whom he alwaies looks on as a lion that may, any minute, rend him.
+
+                                                       _1525, July 2_.
+
+Soe my fate is settled. Who knoweth at sunrise what will chance before
+sunsett? No; the Greeks and Romans mighte speak of chance and fate, but
+we must not. Ruth's hap was to light on the field of Boaz, but what she
+thought casual, the Lord had contrived.
+
+'Twas no use hanging back for ever and ever, soe now there's an end, and
+I pray God to give Will and me a quiet life.
+
+                                                   _1528, September_.
+
+Father hath had some words with the cardinall touching the draught of
+some foreign treaty. "By the Mass," exclaimed his grace, nettled, "thou
+art the verist fool in all the council."
+
+Father, smiling, rejoined, "God be thanked that the king, our master,
+hath but one fool therein."
+
+The cardinall's rage cannot rob father of the royal favour. Howbeit,
+father says he has no cause to be proud thereof. "If my head," said he
+to Will, "could win the king a castle in France, it shoulde not fail to
+fly off."
+
+...I was senseless enow to undervalue Will. Yes, I am a happy wife, a
+happy mother. When my little Bill stroaked dear father's face just now,
+and murmured "Pretty!" he burst out a-laughing, and cried, "You are like
+the young Cyrus, who exclaimed, 'Oh, mother, how pretty is my
+grandfather!'"
+
+I often sitt for an hour or more, watching Hans Holbein at his brush. He
+hath a rare gift of limning; but in our likeness, which he hath painted
+for deare Erasmus, I think he has made us very ugly.
+
+
+_III.--The Great Seal is Resigned_
+
+
+                                                         _June, 1530_.
+
+Events have followed too quick and thick for me to note 'em. Father's
+embassade to Cambray, and then his summons to Woodstock. Then the fire
+in the men's quarter, the outhouses and barns. Then, more unlookt for,
+the fall of my lord cardinall and father's elevation to the
+chancellorship.
+
+On the day succeeding his being sworn in, Patteson marched hither and
+thither, in mourning and paper weepers, bearing a huge placard,
+inscribed, "Partnership dissolved," and crying, "My brother is dead; for
+now they've made him Lord Chancellor, we shall ne'er see Sir Thomas
+more."
+
+Father's dispatch of business is such that one day before the end of
+term he was told there was no cause or petition to be sett before him, a
+thing unparalleled, which he desired might be formally recorded.
+
+                                                            _July 28_.
+
+Here's father at issue with half the learned heads in Christendom
+concerning the king's marriage. And yet for alle that, I think father is
+in the right.
+
+He taketh matters soe to heart that e'en his appetite fails.
+
+                                                             _August_.
+
+He hath resigned the Great Seal! And none of us knew it until after
+morning prayer to-day, when, instead of one of his gentlemen stepping up
+to my mother in her pew, with the words, "Madam, my lord is gone," he
+cometh up to her himself, smiling, and with these selfsame words. She
+takes it at first for one of his manie jests whereof she misses the
+point.
+
+Our was but a short sorrow, for we have got father to ourselves again.
+Patteson skipped across the garden, crying, "Let a fatted calf be
+killed, for this my brother who was dead is alive again!"
+
+How shall we contract the charges of Sir Thomas More? Certain servants
+must go; poor Patteson, alas! can be easier spared than some.
+
+                                                       _September 22_.
+
+A tearfull morning. Poor Patteson has gone, but father had obtained him
+good quarters with my Lord Mayor, and he is even to retain his office
+with the Lord Mayor, for the time being.
+
+                                                      _1533, April 1_.
+
+The poor fool to see me, saying it is his holiday, and having told the
+Lord Mayor overnight that if he lookt for a fool this morning, he must
+look in the glass.
+
+Patteson brought news of the coronation of Lady Anne this coming Easter,
+and he begs father to take a fool's advice and eat humble pie; for, says
+he, this proud madam is as vindictive as Herodias, and will have
+father's head on a charger.
+
+                                                            _April 4_.
+
+Father bidden to the coronation by three bishops. He hath, with
+curtesie, declined to be present. I have misgivings of the issue.
+
+                                                           _April 15_.
+
+Father summoned forth to the Council to take the oathe of supremacie.
+Having declared his inabilitie to take the oathe as it stoode, they bade
+him take a turn in the garden to reconsider. When called in agayn, he
+was as firm as ever, and was given in ward to the Abbot of Westminster
+until the king's grace was informed of the matter. And now the fool's
+wise saying of vindictive Herodians came true, for 'twas the king's mind
+to have mercy on his old servant, and tender him a qualified oathe, but
+Queen Anne, by her importunate clamours, did overrule his proper will,
+and at four days' end father was committed to the Tower. Oh, wicked
+woman, how could you!... Sure you never loved a father.
+
+                                                             _May 22_.
+
+Mother hath at length obtaynd access to dear father. He is stedfaste and
+cheerfulle as ever. He hath writ us a few lines with a coal, ending with
+"_Sursum corda_, dear children! Up with your hearts."
+
+                                                          _August 16_.
+
+The Lord begins to cut us short. We are now on very meagre commons, dear
+mother being obliged to pay fifteen shillings a week for the board,
+meagre as it is, of father and his servant. She hath parted with her
+velvet gown.
+
+                                                          _August 20_.
+
+I have seen him, and heard his precious words. He hath kist me for us
+alle.
+
+                                                 _November. Midnight_.
+
+Dear little Bill hath ta'en a feverish attack. Early in the night his
+mind wandered, and he says fearfullie, "Mother, why hangs yon hatchet in
+the air with its sharp edge turned towards us?"
+
+I rise, to move the lamp, and say, "Do you see it now?"
+
+He sayth, "No, not now," and closes his eyes.
+
+                                                        _November 17_.
+
+He's gone, my pretty! ... Slipt through my fingers like a bird upfled to
+his native skies. My Billy-bird! His mother's own heart! They are alle
+wondrous kind to me....
+
+                                                        _March, 1535_.
+
+Spring comes, that brings rejuvenescence to the land and joy to the
+heart, but none to me, for where hope dieth joy dieth. But patience,
+soul; God's yet in the aumry!
+
+
+_IV.--The Worst is Done_
+
+
+                                                              _May 7_.
+
+Father arraigned.
+
+                                                             _July 1_.
+
+By reason of Willie minding to be present at the triall, which, for the
+concourse of spectators, demanded his earlie attendance, he committed
+the care of me, with Bess, to Dancey, Bess's husband, who got us places
+to see father on his way from the Tower to Westminster Hall. We coulde
+not come at him for the crowd, but clambered on a bench to gaze our very
+hearts away after him as he went by, sallow, thin, grey-haired, yet in
+mien not a whit cast down. His face was calm but grave, but just as he
+passed he caught the eye of some one in the crowd, and smiled in his old
+frank way; then glanced up towards the windows with the bright look he
+hath so oft caste up to me at my casement, but saw us not; perchance soe
+'twas best.
+
+...Will telleth me the indictment was the longest ever heard: on four
+counts. First, his opinion concerning the king's marriage. Second, his
+writing sundrie letters to the Bishop of Rochester, counselling him to
+hold out. Third, refusing to acknowledge his grace's supremacy. Fourth,
+his positive deniall of it, and thereby willing to deprive the king of
+his dignity and title.
+
+They could not make good their accusation. 'Twas onlie on the last count
+he could be made out a traitor, and proof of't had they none. He shoulde
+have been acquitted out of hand, but his bitter enemy, my Lord
+Chancellor, called on him for his defence, whereat a general murmur ran
+through the court.
+
+He began, but a moment's weakness of the body overcame him and he was
+accorded a seat. He then proceeded to avow his having always opposed the
+king's marriage to his grace himself, deeming it rather treachery to
+have withholden his opinion when solicited. Touching the supremacy he
+held there could be no treachery in holding his peace, God only being
+cognizant of our thoughts.
+
+"Nay," interposeth the attorney generall, "your silence was the token of
+a malicious mind."
+
+"I had always understood," answers father, "that silence stoode for
+consent," which made sundrie smile.
+
+The issue of the black day was aforehand fixed. The jury retired and
+presentlie returned with a verdict of guilty; for they knew what the
+king's grace would have 'em doe in that case....
+
+And then came the frightful sentence....
+
+They brought him back by water ... The first thing I saw was the axe,
+_turned with its edge towards him._
+
+Some one laid a cold hand on mine arm; 'twas poor Patteson. He sayth,
+"Bide your time, Mistress Meg; when he comes past, I'll make a passage
+for ye." ...
+
+O, brother, brother, what ailed thee to refuse the oath? I've taken it!
+... "Now, Mistress, now!" and flinging his arms right and left, made a
+breach, through which I darted, fearless of bills and halberds, and did
+cast mine arms about father's neck. He cries, "My Meg!" and hugs me to
+him as though our very souls shoulde grow together. He sayth, "Bless
+thee, bless thee! Kiss them alle for me thus and thus." ... Soe gave me
+back into Dancey's arms, the guards about him alle weeping.
+
+I did make a second rush, and agayn they had pitie on me and made pause
+while I hung upon his neck. He whispered, "Meg, for Christ's sake don't
+unman me. God's blessing be with you," he sayth with a last kiss, then
+adding, with a passionate upward regard, "The chariot of Israel and the
+horsemen thereof!"
+
+I look up, almost expecting a beautific vision, and when I turn about,
+he's gone.
+
+                                                           _July 5,6_.
+
+Alle's over now.... They've done theire worst, and yet I live. Dr.
+Clement sayth he went up as blythe as a bridegroom, to be clothed upon
+with immortality.
+
+                                                            _July 19_.
+
+They have let us bury his poor mangled trunk; but as sure as there's a
+sun in heaven, I'll have his head!--before another sun has risen, too.
+If wise men won't speed me, I'll e'en content me with a fool.
+
+                                                            _July 20_.
+
+Quoth Patteson: "Fool and fayr lady will cheat 'em yet."
+
+At the stairs lay a wherry with a couple of boatmen. We went down the
+river quietlie enow--nor lookt I up till aneath the bridge gate, when,
+casting up one fearsome look, I beheld the dark outline of the ghastly
+yet precious relic; and falling into a tremour, did wring my hands and
+exclaim, "Alas, alas! That head hath lain full manie a time in my lap,
+woulde God it lay there now!" When o' suddain, I saw the pole tremble
+and sway towardes me; and stretching forth my apron I did, in an extasy
+of gladness, pity, and horror, catch its burthen as it fell.
+
+Patteson, shuddering, yet grinning, cries under his breath, "Managed I
+not well, mistress? Let's speed away with our theft, but I think not
+they'll follow hard after us, for there are well-wishers on the bridge.
+I'll put ye into the boat and then say, 'God sped ye, lady, with your
+burthen.'"
+
+                                                            _July 23_.
+
+I've heard Bonvisi tell of a poor Italian girl who buried her murdered
+lover's heart in a pot of basil, which she watered day and night with
+her tears, just as I do my coffer. Will hath promised it shall be buried
+with me; layd upon my heart, and since then I've been easier.
+
+He thinks he shall write father's life, when we are settled in a new
+home. We are to be cleared out o' this in alle haste; for the king
+grutches at our lingering over father's footsteps, and yet when the news
+of the bloody deed was taken to him, he scowled at Queen Anne, saying,
+"Thou art the cause of this man's death!"
+
+Flow on, bright shining Thames. A good, brave man hath walked aforetime
+on your margent, himself as bright, and usefull, and delightsome as you,
+sweet river. There's a river whose streams make glad the city of our
+God. He now rests beside it. Good Christian folks, as they hereafter
+pass this spot, will, maybe, point this way and say, "There dwelt Sir
+Thomas More," but whether they doe or not, _Vox Populi_ is no very
+considerable matter. Theire favourite of to-day may, for what they care,
+goe hang himself to-morrow in his surcingle. Thus it must be while the
+world lasts; and the very racks and scrues wherewith they aim to
+overcome the nobler spiritt onlie lift and reveal its power of
+exaltation above the heaviest gloom of circumstance.
+
+_Interfecistis, interfecistis hominem omnium anglorum optimum._
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+
+
+ALESSANDRO MANZONI
+
+
+The Betrothed
+
+
+     Poet, dramatist, and novelist, Alessandro Francesco Tommaso
+     Manzoni was born at Milan on March 7, 1785. In early manhood
+     he became an ardent disciple of Voltairianism, but after
+     marriage embraced the faith of the Church of Rome; and it was
+     in reparation of his early lapse that he composed his first
+     important literary work, which took the form of a treatise on
+     Catholic morality, and a number of sacred lyrics. Although
+     Manzoni was perhaps surpassed as a poet by several of his own
+     countrymen, his supreme position as novelist of the romantic
+     school in Italy is indisputable. His famous work, "The
+     Betrothed" ("I Promessi Sposi"), completed in 1822 and
+     published at the rate of a volume a year during 1825-27, was
+     declared by Scott to be the finest novel ever written. Manzoni
+     died on May 22, 1873.
+
+
+_I.--The Schemes of Don Rodrigo_
+
+
+Don Abbondio, cure of a little town near Como, was no hero. It was,
+therefore, the less difficult for two armed bravos whom he encountered
+one evening in the year 1628 to convince him that the wedding of Renzo
+Tramaglino and Lucia Mondella must not take place, as it did not suit
+the designs of their master, Don Rodrigo. Renzo, however, was by no
+means disposed to take this view of the matter, and was like to have
+taken some desperate steps to express his disapproval. From this course
+he was dissuaded by Fra Cristoforo, a Capuchin, renowned for his wisdom
+and sanctity, who undertook to attempt to soften the heart of Don
+Rodrigo.
+
+The friar was held in affectionate esteem by all, even by Rodrigo's
+bravos, and on his arrival at the castle he was at once shown into the
+presence of its master.
+
+"I come," said he, "to propose to you an act of justice. Some men of bad
+character have made use of the name of your illustrious lordship to
+alarm a poor cure, and dissuade him from performing his duty, and to
+oppress two innocent persons--"
+
+"In short, father," said Rodrigo, "I suppose there is some young girl
+you are concerned about. Since you seem to think that I am so powerful,
+advise her to come and put herself under my protection; she shall be
+well looked after. Cowled rascal!" he shouted. "Vile upstart! Thank the
+cassock that covers your cowardly shoulders for saving them from the
+caresses that such scoundrels should receive. Depart, or--"
+
+In the meantime, plans were being discussed in Lucia's cottage.
+
+"Listen, my children," said Agnese, her mother; "if you were married,
+that would be the great difficulty out of the way."
+
+"Is there any doubt," said Renzo; "_if_ we were married--At Bergamo, not
+far from here, a silk-weaver would be received with open arms. You know
+my cousin Bartolo has wanted me to go there and make my fortune, as he
+has done. Once married, we could all go thither together, and live in
+blessed peace, out of this villain's reach."
+
+"Listen, then," said Agnese. "There must be two witnesses; all four must
+go to the priest and take him by surprise, that he mayn't have time to
+escape. The man says, 'Signor Cure, this is my wife'; the woman says,
+'Signor Cure, this is my husband.' It is necessary that the cure and the
+witnesses hear it, and the marriage is then as valid and sacred as if
+the Pope himself had blessed it."
+
+"But why, then," said Lucia, "didn't this plan come into Fra
+Cristoforo's mind?"
+
+"Do you think it didn't?" replied she. "But--if you must know--the
+friars disapprove of that sort of thing."
+
+"If it isn't right, we ought not to do it."
+
+"What! Would I give you advice contrary to the fear of God; if it were
+against the will of your parents? But when I am satisfied, and he who
+makes all this disturbance is a villain----Once it is done, what do you
+think the father will say? 'Ah! daughter; it was a sad error, but it is
+done.' In his heart he will be very well satisfied."
+
+On the following night Don Abbondio was disturbed at a late hour by a
+certain Tonio, who came with his cousin Gervase to pay a small debt.
+While he was giving him a receipt for it, Renzo and Lucia slipped in
+unperceived. The cure was startled on suddenly hearing the words,
+"Signor Cure, in the presence of these witnesses, this is my wife."
+Instantly grasping the situation, and before Lucia's lips could form a
+reply, Don Abbondio seized the tablecloth, and at a bound wrapped her
+head in it, so that she could not complete the formula. "Perpetua!" he
+shouted to his housekeeper. "Help!"
+
+Dashing to an inner room, he locked himself in, flung open the window,
+and shouted for help. Hearing the uproar, the sexton, who lived next
+door, shouted out, "What is it?"
+
+"Help!" repeated the cure. Not being over desirous of thrusting himself
+blindly in upon unknown dangers, the sexton hastened to the belfry and
+vigorously rang the great bell. This ringing the bell had more
+far-reaching consequences than he anticipated. Enraged by the friar's
+visit, Rodrigo had determined to abduct Lucia, and sent his bravos to
+effect his purpose that very night. At the very moment that the bell
+began to ring they had just broken into Agnese's house, and were
+searching for the occupants. Convinced that their action was the cause
+of commotion, they beat a hasty retreat.
+
+The discomfited betrothed--still only betrothed--hastily rejoined
+Agnese, who was waiting for them in the street. As they hurriedly turned
+their steps homeward a child threw himself into their way.
+
+"Back! Back!" he breathlessly exclaimed. "This way to the monastery!"
+
+"What is it?" asked Renzo.
+
+"There are devils in your house," said the boy, panting. "I saw them;
+Fra Cristoforo said so; he sent me to warn you. He had news from someone
+at the castle; you must go to him at the monastery at once."
+
+"My children," said Fra Cristoforo on their arrival, "the village is no
+longer safe for you; for a time, at least, you must take refuge
+elsewhere. I will arrange for you, Lucia, to be taken care of in a
+convent at Monza. You, Renzo, must put yourself in safety from the anger
+of others, and your own. Carry this letter to Father Bonaventura, in our
+monastery at Milan. He will find you work."
+
+
+_II.--The Riot of the Hungry_
+
+
+Fra Bonaventura was out when Renzo arrived to present his letter.
+
+"Go and wait in the church, where you may employ yourself profitably,"
+was the porter's advice, which Renzo was about to follow, when a
+tumultuous crowd came in sight. Here, apparently, was matter of greater
+interest, so he turned aside to see the cause of the uproar.
+
+The cause, though Renzo did not at the time discover it, was the
+shortage of the bread supply. Owing to the ravages of war and the
+disturbed state of the country, much land lay uncultivated and deserted;
+insupportable taxes were levied; and no sooner had the deficient harvest
+been gathered in than the provisions for the army, and the waste which
+always accompanies them, made a fearful void in it. What had attracted
+Renzo's attention was but the sudden exacerbation of a chronic disease.
+
+Mingling with the hurrying mob, Renzo soon discovered that they had been
+engaged in sacking a bakery, and were filled with fury to find large
+quantities of flour, the existence of which the authorities had denied.
+"The superintendent! The tyrant! We'll have him, dead or alive!"
+
+Renzo found himself borne along in the thickest of the throng to the
+house of the superintendent, where a tremendous crowd was endeavouring
+to break in the doors. The tumult being allayed by the arrival of
+Ferrer, the chancellor, a popular favourite, Renzo became involved in
+conversation with some of the rioters. He asked to be directed to an inn
+where he could pass the night.
+
+"I know an inn that will suit you," said one who had listened to all the
+speeches without himself saying a word. "The landlord is a friend of
+mine, a very worthy man."
+
+So saying, he took Renzo off to an inn at some little distance, taking
+pains to ascertain who he was and whence he came. Arrived at the inn,
+the new companions shared a bottle of wine which, in Renzo's excited
+condition, soon mounted to his head. Another bottle was called for; and
+the landlord, being asked if he had a bed, produced pen, ink, and paper,
+and demanded his name, surname and country.
+
+"What has all this to do with my bed?"
+
+"I do my duty. We are obliged to report everyone that sleeps in the
+house."
+
+"Oh, so I'm to tell my business, am I? This is something new. Supposing
+I had come to Milan to confess, I should go to a Capuchin father, not to
+an innkeeper."
+
+"Well, if you won't, you won't!" said the landlord, with a glance at
+Renzo's companion. "I've done my duty."
+
+So saying, he withdrew, and shortly afterwards the new-found friend
+insisted on taking his departure. At daybreak Renzo was awakened by a
+shake and a voice calling, "Lorenzo Tramaglino."
+
+"Eh, what does this mean? What do you want? Who told you my name?" said
+Renzo, starting up, amazed to find three men, two of them fully armed,
+standing at his bedside.
+
+"You must come with us. The high sheriff wants to have some words with
+you."
+
+Renzo now found himself being led through the streets, that were still
+filled with a considerable number of last night's rioters, by no means
+yet pacified. When they had gone a little way some of the crowd,
+noticing them, began to form around the party.
+
+"If I don't help myself now," thought Renzo, "it's my own fault. My
+friends," he shouted, "they're carrying me off because yesterday I
+shouted 'Bread and Justice!' Don't abandon me, my friends!"
+
+The crowd at once began to press forward, and the bailiffs, fearing
+danger, let go of his hands and tried to disappear into the crowd. Renzo
+was carried off safely.
+
+His only hope of safety now lay in getting entirely clear of Milan and
+hiding himself in some other town out of the jurisdiction of the duchy.
+He decided to go to Bergamo, which was under Venetian government, where
+he could live safely with his cousin until such time as Milan had
+forgotten him.
+
+
+_III.--The Unnamed's Penitence_
+
+
+Don Rodrigo was now more determined than ever to accomplish his
+praiseworthy undertaking, and to this end he sought the help of a very
+formidable character, a powerful noble, whose bravos had long been the
+terror of the countryside, and who was always referred to as "The
+Unnamed."
+
+Lucia, having been sent one day with a note from the convent where she
+had found refuge to a monastery at some little distance, found herself
+suddenly seized from behind, and, regardless of her screams, bundled
+into a carriage, which drove off at a great pace.
+
+When the carriage stopped, after a long drive, Lucia was hurried into a
+litter, which bore her up a steep hill to a castle, where she was shut
+up in a room with an old crone. After a while a resounding knock was
+heard on the door, and the Unnamed strode in.
+
+Casting a glance around, he discovered Lucia crouched down on the floor
+in a corner.
+
+"Come, get up!" he said to her.
+
+The unhappy girl raised herself on her knees, and raised her hands to
+him.
+
+"Oh, what have I done to you? Where am I? Why do you make me suffer the
+agonies of hell? In the name of God--"
+
+"God!" interrupted he; "always God! They who cannot defend themselves
+must always bring forward this God. What do you expect by this word? To
+make me--"
+
+"Oh, signor, what can a poor girl like me expect, except that you should
+have mercy upon me? God pardons so many sins for one deed of mercy. For
+charity's sake, let me go! I will pray for you all my life. Oh, see, you
+are moved to pity! Say one word; oh, say it! God pardons so many sins
+for one deed of mercy!"
+
+"Oh, why isn't she the daughter of one of the dogs who outlawed me?"
+thought the Unnamed. "Then I should enjoy her sufferings; but instead--"
+
+"Don't drive away a good inspiration!" continued Lucia earnestly, seeing
+a certain hesitation in his face.
+
+"Perhaps some day even you--But no--no, I will always pray the Lord to
+keep you from every evil."
+
+"Come, take courage," said the Unnamed, with unusual gentleness. "Have I
+done you any harm? To-morrow morning--"
+
+"Oh set me free now!"
+
+"To-morrow I will see you again."
+
+When he left her, the unhappy girl flung herself on her knees. "O most
+holy Virgin," she prayed, "thou to whom I have so often recommended
+myself, and who hast so often comforted me! Bring me out of this danger,
+bring me safely to my mother, and I vow unto thee to continue a virgin!
+I renounce for ever my unfortunate betrothed, that I may belong only to
+thee!"
+
+The Unnamed retired for the night, but not to sleep. "God pardons so
+many sins for one deed of mercy!" kept ringing in his ears. Suppose
+there was a God, after all? He had so many sins in need of pardon.
+
+About daybreak a confused murmur reached his ear from the valley below;
+a distant chiming of bells began to make itself heard; nearer bells took
+up the peal, until the whole air rang with the sound. He demanded the
+cause of all this rejoicing, and was informed that Cardinal Boromeo had
+arrived, and that the festival was in his honour.
+
+He went to Lucia's apartment, and found her still huddled up in a
+corner, but sleeping. The hag explained that she could not be prevailed
+upon to go to bed.
+
+"Then let her sleep. When she wakes, tell her that I will do all she
+wishes."
+
+Leaving the castle with rapid steps, the Unnamed hastened to the village
+where the cardinal had rested the previous night.
+
+"Oh," cried Federigo Boromeo, "what a welcome visit is this. You have
+good news for me, I am sure."
+
+"Good news! What good news can you expect from such as I?"
+
+"That God has touched your heart, and would make you His own."
+
+"God! God! If I could but see Him! If He be such as they say, what do
+you suppose that He can do with me?"
+
+"The world has long cried out against you," replied Federigo in a solemn
+voice. "He can acquire through you a glory such as others cannot give
+Him. How must He love you, Who has bid and enabled me to regard you with
+a charity that consumes me!" So saying, he extended his hand.
+
+"No!" cried the penitent. "Defile not your hand! You know not all that
+the one you would grasp has committed."
+
+"Suffer me to press the hand which will repair so many wrongs, comfort
+so many afflicted, be extended peacefully and humbly to so many
+enemies."
+
+"Unhappy man that I am," exclaimed the signor, "one thing, at least, I
+can quickly arrest and repair."
+
+Federigo listened attentively to the relation of Lucia's abduction. "Ah,
+let us lose no time!" he exclaimed breathlessly. "This is an earnest of
+God's forgiveness, to make you an instrument of safety to one whom you
+would have ruined."
+
+
+_IV.--In a Lazzeretto_
+
+
+Thanks to his cousin, Renzo was enabled to earn very good wages, and
+would have been quite content to remain had it not been for his desire
+to rejoin Lucia. A terrible outbreak of plague in Milan spread to
+Bergamo, and our friend was among the first to be stricken down, his
+recovery being due more to his excellent constitution than to any
+medical skill. Thereafter, he lost no more time, and after many
+inquiries he succeeded in tracing Lucia to an address in Milan.
+
+Secure in an _alias_, he set out to the plague-stricken city, which he
+found in the most deplorable condition. Having found the house of which
+he was in search, he knocked loudly at the door and inquired if Lucia
+still lived there. To his horror, he found that she had been taken to
+the Lazzeretto!
+
+Let the reader imagine the enclosure of the Lazzeretto, peopled with
+16,000 persons ill of the plague; the whole area encumbered, here with
+tents and cabins, there with carts, and elsewhere with people; crowded
+with dead or dying, stretched on mattresses, or on bare straw; and
+throughout the whole a commotion like the swell of the sea.
+
+"Lucia, I've found you! You're living!" exclaimed Renzo, all in a
+tremble.
+
+"Oh, blessed Lord!" cried she, trembling far more violently. "You?"
+
+"How pale you are! You've recovered, though?"
+
+"The Lord has pleased to leave me here a little longer. Ah, Renzo, why
+are you here?"
+
+"Why? Need I say why? Am I no longer Renzo? Are you no longer Lucia?"
+
+"Ah, what are you saying? Didn't my mother write to you?"
+
+"Ay, that indeed she did. Fine things to offer to an unfortunate,
+afflicted, fugitive wretch who had never done you wrong."
+
+"But, Renzo, Renzo, you don't think what you're saying! A promise to the
+Madonna--a vow!"
+
+"And I think better of the Madonna than you do, for I believe she
+doesn't wish for promises that injure one's fellow-creatures. Promise
+her that our first daughter shall be called Maria, for that I'm willing
+to promise, too. That is a devotion that may have some use, and does no
+harm to anyone."
+
+"You don't know what it is to make a vow. Leave me, for heaven's sake,
+and think no more about me--except in your prayers!"
+
+"Listen, Lucia! Fra Cristoforo is here. I spoke with him but a short
+while ago, while I was searching for you, and he told me that I did
+right to come and look for you; and that the Lord would approve my
+acting so, and would surely help me to find you, which has come to
+pass."
+
+"But if he said so, he didn't know------"
+
+"How should he know of things you've done out of your own head, and
+without the advice of a priest? A good man, as he is, would never think
+of things of this kind. And he spoke, too, like a saint. He said that
+perhaps God designed to show mercy to that poor fellow, for so I must
+now call him, Don Rodrigo, who is now in this place, and waits to take
+him at the right moment, but wishes that we should pray for him
+together. Together! You hear? He told me to go back and tell him whether
+I'd found you. I'm going. We'll hear what he says."
+
+After a while, Renzo returned with Fra Cristoforo. "My daughter," said
+the father, "did you recollect, when you made that vow, that you were
+bound by another promise?"
+
+"When it related to the Madonna?"
+
+"My daughter, the Lord approves of offerings when we make them of our
+own. It is the heart, the will that He desires. But you could not offer
+Him the will of another, to Whom you had pledged yourself."
+
+"Have I done wrong?"
+
+"No, my poor child. But tell me, have you no other motive that hinders
+you from fulfilling your promise to Renzo?"
+
+Lucia blushed crimson. "Nothing else," she whispered.
+
+"Then, my child, you know that the Church has power to absolve you from
+your vow?"
+
+"But, father, is it not a sin to turn back and repent of a promise made
+to the Madonna? I made it at the time with my whole heart----" said
+Lucia, violently agitated by so unexpected a hope.
+
+"A sin? A sin to have recourse to the Church, and to ask her minister to
+make use of the authority which he has received, through her, from God?
+And if you request me to declare you absolved from this vow, I shall not
+hesitate to do it; nay, I wish that you may request me."
+
+"Then--then--I do request it!"
+
+In an explicit voice the father then said, "By the authority I have
+received from the Church, I declare you absolved from the vow of
+virginity, and free you from every obligation you may thereby have
+contracted. Beseech the Lord again for those graces you once besought to
+make you a holy wife; and rely on it, He will bestow them upon you after
+so many sorrows."
+
+"Has Renzo told you," Fra Cristoforo continued, "whom he has seen here?"
+
+"Oh, yes, father, he has!"
+
+"You will pray for him. Don't be weary of doing so. And pray also for
+me."
+
+Some weeks later, Don Abbondio received a visit, as unexpected as it was
+gratifying, from the marquis who, on Rodrigo's death from the plague,
+succeeded to his estates.
+
+"I come," said he, "to bring you the compliments of the cardinal
+archbishop. He wishes to have news of the young betrothed persons of
+this parish, who had to suffer on account of the unfortunate Don
+Rodrigo."
+
+"Everything is settled, and they will be man and wife as soon as
+possible."
+
+"And I request that you be good enough to tell me if I can be of any
+service to them."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+And here we may safely leave Renzo and Lucia. Their powerful protector
+easily secured Renzo's pardon, and shortly afterwards they were happily
+married and settled in Bergamo, where abundant prosperity came to them;
+and, furthermore, they were blessed with a large family, of whom the
+first, being a girl, was named Maria.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+
+
+FREDERICK MARRYAT
+
+
+Mr. Midshipman Easy
+
+
+     Frederick Marryat, novelist and captain in the navy, was born
+     in London on July 10, 1792. As a boy he chiefly distinguished
+     himself by repeatedly running away from school with the
+     intention of going to sea. His first experience of naval
+     service was under Lord Cochrane, whom he afterwards reproduced
+     as Captain Savage of the Diomede in "Peter Simple." Honourable
+     though Marryat's life at sea was, it is as a graphic depictor
+     of naval scenes, customs, and character that he is known to
+     the present generation. His first story, "Frank Mildmay"
+     (1829), took the reading public by storm, and from that time
+     onward he produced tale after tale with startling rapidity.
+     "Peter Simple" is the best of Captain Marryat's novels, and
+     "Mr. Midshipman Easy" is the most humorous. Published in
+     volume form in 1836, after appearing serially in the pages of
+     the "Metropolitan Magazine," of which Marryat was then editor,
+     the latter story immediately caught the fancy of the public,
+     and considerably widened his already large circle of readers.
+     "Mr. Midshipman Easy" is frankly farcical; it shows its author
+     not only as a graphic writer, but as one gifted with an
+     abundance of whimsical humour and a keen sense of
+     characterisation. Opinions may differ as to the actual merits
+     of "Mr. Midshipman Easy," but it has more than served its
+     author's purpose--it has held the public for over seventy
+     years. Captain Marryat died on August 9, 1848.
+
+
+_I.--Mr. Easy Joins His Majesty's Service_
+
+
+Mr. Nicodemus Easy was a gentleman who lived down in Hampshire. He was a
+married man, and in very easy circumstances, and having decided to be a
+philosopher, he had fixed upon the rights of man, equality, and all
+that--how every person was born to inherit his share of the earth--for
+his philosophy.
+
+At the age of fourteen his only son, Jack, decided to go to sea.
+
+"It has occurred to me, father," he said, "that although the whole earth
+has been so nefariously divided among the few, the waters at least are
+the property of all. No man claims his share of the sea; everyone may
+there plough as he pleases without being taken up for a trespasser. It
+is, then, only upon the ocean that I am likely to find that equality and
+rights of man which we are so anxious to establish on shore; and
+therefore I have resolved not to go to school again, which I detest, but
+to go to sea."
+
+"I cannot listen to that, Jack. You must return to school."
+
+"All I have to say is, father, that I swear by the rights of man I will
+not go back to school, and that I will go to sea. Was I not born my own
+master? Has anyone a right to dictate to me as if I were not his equal?"
+
+Mr. Easy had nothing to reply.
+
+"I will write to Captain Wilson," he said mournfully.
+
+Captain Wilson, who was under considerable obligations to Mr. Easy,
+wrote in reply promising that he would treat Jack as his own son, and
+our hero very soon found his way down to Portsmouth.
+
+As Jack had plenty of money, and was very much pleased at finding
+himself his own master, he was in no hurry to join his ship, and five or
+six companions whom he had picked up strongly advised him to put it off
+until the very last moment. So he was three weeks at Portsmouth before
+anyone knew of his arrival.
+
+At last, Captain Wilson, receiving a note from Mr. Easy, desired Mr.
+Sawbridge, the first lieutenant, to make inquiries; and Mr. Sawbridge,
+going on shore, and being informed by the waiter at the Fountain Inn
+that Mr. Easy had been there three weeks, was justly indignant.
+
+Mr. Sawbridge was a good officer, who had really worked his way up to
+the present rank--that is, he had served seven-and-twenty years, and had
+nothing but his pay. He was a good-hearted man; but when he entered
+Jack's room, and saw the dinner-table laid out in the best style for
+eight, his bile was raised by the display.
+
+"May I beg to ask," said Jack, who was always remarkably polite in his
+address, "in what manner I may be of service to you?"
+
+"Yes sir, you may--by joining your ship immediately."
+
+Hereupon, Jack, who did not admire the peremptory tone of Mr. Sawbridge,
+very coolly replied. "And, pray, who are you?"
+
+"Who am I, sir? My name is Sawbridge, sir, and I am the first lieutenant
+of the Harpy. Now, sir, you have your answer."
+
+Mr. Sawbridge was not in uniform, but he imagined the name of the first
+lieutenant would strike terror to a culprit midshipman.
+
+"Really, sir," replied Jack. "What may be your exact situation on board?
+My ignorance of the service will not allow me to guess; but if I may
+judge from your behaviour, you have no small opinion of yourself."
+
+"Look ye, young man, you may not know what a first lieutenant is; but,
+depend upon it, I'll let you know very soon! In the meantime, sir, I
+insist that you go immediately on board."
+
+"I'm sorry that I cannot comply with your very moderate request,"
+replied Jack coolly. "I shall go on board when it suits my convenience,
+and I beg that you will give yourself no further trouble on my account."
+He then rang the bell. "Waiter, show this gentleman downstairs."
+
+"By the god of wars!" exclaimed the first lieutenant. "But I'll soon
+show you down to the boat, my young bantam! I shall now go and report
+your conduct to Captain Wilson, and if you are not on board this
+evening, to-morrow morning I shall send a sergeant and a file of marines
+to fetch you."
+
+"You may depend upon it," replied Jack, "that I also shall not fail to
+mention to Captain Wilson that I consider you a very quarrelsome,
+impertinent fellow, and recommend him not to allow you to remain on
+board. It will be quite uncomfortable to be in the same ship with such
+an ungentlemanly bear."
+
+"He must be mad--quite mad!" exclaimed Sawbridge, whose astonishment
+even mastered his indignation. "Mad as a March hare!"
+
+"No, sir," replied Jack, "I am not mad, but I am a philosopher."
+
+"A _what_? Well, my joker, all the better for you. I shall put your
+philosophy to the proof."
+
+"It is for that very reason, sir, that I have decided upon going to sea;
+and if you do remain on board, I hope to argue the point with you, and
+make you a convert to the truth of equality and the rights of man. We
+are all born equal. I trust you'll allow that?"
+
+"Twenty-seven years have I been in the service!" roared Sawbridge. "But
+he's mad--downright, stark, staring mad!" And the first lieutenant
+bounced out of the room.
+
+"He calls me mad," thought Jack. "I shall tell Captain Wilson what is my
+opinion about his lieutenant." Shortly afterwards the company arrived,
+and Jack soon forgot all about it.
+
+In the meantime, Sawbridge called at the captain's lodgings, and made a
+faithful report of all that had happened.
+
+Sawbridge and Wilson were old friends and messmates, and the captain put
+it to the first lieutenant that Mr. Easy, senior, having come to his
+assistance and released him from heavy difficulties with a most generous
+cheque, what could he do but be a father to his son?
+
+"I can only say," replied Sawbridge, "that, not only to please you, but
+also from respect to a man who has shown such goodwill towards one of
+our cloth, I shall most cheerfully forgive all that has passed between
+the lad and me."
+
+Captain Wilson then dispatched a note to our hero, requesting the
+pleasure of his company to breakfast on the ensuing morning, and Jack
+answered in the affirmative.
+
+Captain Wilson, who knew all about Mr. Easy's philosophy, explained to
+Jack the details and rank of every person on board, and that everyone
+was equally obliged to obey orders. Lieutenant Sawbridge's demeanour was
+due entirely to his zeal for his country.
+
+That evening Mr. Jack Easy was safe on board his majesty's sloop Harpy.
+
+
+_II.--On Board the Harpy_
+
+
+Jack remained in his hammock during the first few days at sea. He was
+very sick, bewildered, and confused, every minute knocking his head
+against the beams with the pitching and tossing of the sloop.
+
+"And this is going to sea," thought Jack. "No wonder that no one
+interferes with another here, or talks about a trespass; for I am sure
+anyone is welcome to my share of the ocean."
+
+When he was well enough he was told to go to the midshipman's berth, and
+Jack, who now felt excessively hungry, crawled over and between chests
+until he found himself in a hole infinitely inferior to the dog-kennels
+which received his father's pointers.
+
+"I'd not only give up the ocean," thought Jack, "and my share of it, but
+also my share of the Harpy, unto anyone who fancies it. Equality enough
+here, for everyone appears equally miserably off."
+
+But when he had gained the deck, the scene of cheerfulness, activity,
+and order lightened his heart after the four days of suffering, close
+air, and confinement from which he had just emerged.
+
+Jack dined with the captain that night, and was very much pleased to
+find that everyone drank wine with him, and that everybody at the
+captain's table appeared to be on an equality. Before the dessert had
+been on the table five minutes, Jack became loquacious on his favourite
+topic. All the company stared with surprise at such an unheard-of
+doctrine being broached on board of a man-of-war.
+
+This day may be considered as the first in which Jack really made his
+appearance on board, and it also was on this first day that Jack made
+known, at the captain's table, his very peculiar notions. If the company
+at the captain's table were astonished at such heterodox opinions being
+started, they were equally astonished at the cool, good-humoured
+ridicule with which they were received by Captain Wilson. The report of
+Jack's boldness, and every word and opinion that he had uttered--of
+course, much magnified--were circulated that evening through the whole
+ship; the matter was canvassed in the gun-room by the officers, and
+descanted upon by the midshipmen as they walked the deck. The boatswain
+talked it over with the other warrant officers, till the grog was all
+gone, and then dismissed it as too dry a subject.
+
+The bully of the midshipman's berth--a young man about seventeen, named
+Vigors--at once attacked our hero.
+
+"So, my chap, you are come on board to raise a mutiny here with your
+equality? You came off scot free at the captain's table, but it won't
+do, I can tell you; someone must knock under in the midshipman's berth,
+and you are one of them."
+
+"I can assure you that you are mistaken," replied Easy.
+
+At school Jack had fought and fought again, until he was a very good
+bruiser, and although not so tall as Vigors, he was much better built
+for fighting.
+
+"I've thrashed bigger fellows than he," he said to himself.
+
+"You impudent blackguard!" exclaimed Vigors. "If you say another word,
+I'll give you a good thrashing, and knock some of your equality out of
+you!"
+
+"Indeed!" replied Jack, who almost fancied himself back at school.
+"We'll try that!"
+
+Vigors had gained his assumed authority more by bullying than fighting;
+others had submitted to him without a sufficient trial. Jack, on the
+contrary, had won his way up in school by hard and scientific combat.
+The result, therefore, may easily be imagined. In less than a quarter of
+an hour Vigors, beaten dead, with his eyes closed and three teeth out,
+gave in; while Jack, after a basin of water, looked as fresh as ever.
+
+After that, Jack declared that as might was right in a midshipman's
+berth, he would so far restore equality that, let who would come, they
+must be his master before they should tyrannise over those weaker than
+he.
+
+
+_III.--The Triangular Duel_
+
+
+Jack, although generally popular on board, had made enemies of Mr.
+Biggs, the boatswain, and Mr. Easthupp, the purser's steward. The
+latter--a cockney and a thief--had even been kicked down the hatchway by
+our hero.
+
+When the Harpy was at Malta, Jack, wroth at the way the two men talked
+at him, declared he would give them satisfaction.
+
+"Mr. Biggs, let you and this fellow put on plain clothes, and I will
+meet you both."
+
+"One at a time?" said the boatswain.
+
+"No, sir; not one at a time, but both at the same time. I will fight
+both or none. If you are my superior officer, you must _descend_ to meet
+me, or I will not descend to meet that fellow, whom I believe to have
+been little better than a pickpocket!"
+
+Mr. Biggs having declared that he would fight, of course, had to look
+out for a second, and he fixed upon Mr. Tallboys, the gunner, and
+requested him to be his friend. Mr. Tallboys consented, but he was very
+much puzzled how to arrange that _three_ were to fight at the same time,
+for he had no idea of there being two duels. Jack had no one to confide
+in but Gascoigne, a fellow-midshipman; and although Gascoigne thought it
+was excessively _infra dig._ of Jack to meet even the boatswain, as the
+challenge had been given there was no retracting, and he therefore
+consented and went to meet Mr. Tallboys.
+
+"Mr. Gascoigne," said the gunner, "you see that there are three parties
+to fight. Had there been two or four there would have been no
+difficulty, as the straight line or square might guide us in that
+instance; but we must arrange it upon the triangle in this."
+
+Gascoigne stared. He could not imagine what was coming.
+
+"The duel between three can only be fought upon the principle of the
+triangle," the gunner went on. "You observe," he said, taking a piece of
+chalk and making a triangle on the table, "in this figure we have three
+points, each equidistant from each other; and we have three combatants,
+so that, placing one at each point, it is all fair play for the three.
+Mr. Easy, for instance, stands here, the boatswain here, and the
+purser's steward at the third corner. Now, if the distance is fairly
+measured it will be all right."
+
+"But then," replied Gascoigne, delighted at the idea, "how are they to
+fire?"
+
+"It certainly is not of much consequence," replied the gunner; "but
+still, as sailors, it appears to me that they should fire with the
+sun--that is, Mr. Easy fires at Mr. Biggs, Mr. Biggs fires at Mr.
+Easthupp, and Mr. Easthupp fires at Mr. Easy, so that you perceive that
+each party has his shot at one, and at the same time receives the fire
+of another."
+
+Gascoigne was in ecstasies at the novelty of the proceeding.
+
+"Upon my word, Mr. Tallboys, I give you great credit. You have a
+profound mathematical head, and I am delighted with your arrangement. I
+shall insist upon Mr. Easy consenting to your excellent and scientific
+proposal."
+
+Gascoigne went out and told Jack what the gunner had proposed, at which
+Jack laughed heartily. The gunner also explained it to the boatswain,
+who did not very well comprehend, but replied, "I daresay it's all
+right. Shot for shot, and d---- all favours!"
+
+The parties then repaired to the spot with two pairs of ship's pistols,
+which Mr. Tallboys had smuggled on shore; and as soon as they were on
+the ground, the gunner called Mr. Easthupp. In the meantime, Gascoigne
+had been measuring an equilaterial triangle of twelve paces, and marked
+it out. Mr. Tallboys, on his return with the purser's steward, went over
+the ground, and finding that it was "equal angles subtended by equal
+sides," declared that it was all right. Easy took his station, the
+boatswain was put into his, and Mr. Easthupp, who was quite in a
+mystery, was led by the gunner to the third position.
+
+"But, Mr. Tallboys," said the purser's steward, "I don't understand
+this. Mr. Easy will first fight Mr. Biggs, will he not?"
+
+"No," replied the gunner; "this is a duel of three. You will fire at Mr.
+Easy, Mr. Easy will fire at Mr. Biggs, and Mr. Biggs will fire at you.
+It is all arranged, Mr. Easthupp."
+
+"But," said Mr. Easthupp, "I do not understand it. Why is Mr. Biggs to
+fire at me? I have no quarrel with Mr. Biggs."
+
+"Because Mr. Easy fires at Mr. Biggs, and Mr. Biggs must have his shot
+as well."
+
+"But still, I've no quarrel with Mr. Biggs, and therefore, Mr. Biggs, of
+course you will not aim at me."
+
+"Why, you don't think that I'm going to be fired at for nothing?"
+replied the boatswain. "No, no; I'll have my shot, anyhow!"
+
+"But at your friend, Mr. Biggs?"
+
+"All the same, I shall fire at somebody, shot for shot, and hit the
+luckiest."
+
+"Vel, gentlemen, I purtest against these proceedings," remarked Mr.
+Easthupp. "I came here to have satisfaction from Mr. Easy, and not to be
+fired at by Mr. Biggs."
+
+"So you would have a shot without receiving one?" cried Gascoigne. "The
+fact is that this fellow's a confounded coward."
+
+At this affront, Mr. Easthupp rallied, and accepted the pistol offered
+by the gunner.
+
+"You 'ear those words, Mr. Biggs? Pretty language to use to a gentleman!
+I purtest no longer, Mr. Tallboys. Death before dishonour--I'm a
+gentleman!"
+
+The gunner gave the word as if he were exercising the great guns on
+board ship.
+
+"Cock your locks! Take good aim at the object! Fire!"
+
+Mr. Easthupp clapped his hand to his trousers, gave a loud yell, and
+then dropped down, having presented his broadside as a target to the
+boatswain. Jack's shot had also taken effect, having passed through both
+the boatswain's cheeks, without further mischief than extracting two of
+his best upper double teeth, and forcing through the hole of the farther
+cheek the boatswain's own quid of tobacco. As for Mr. Easthupp's ball,
+as he was very unsettled and shut his eyes before he fired, it had gone
+heaven knows where.
+
+The purser's steward lay on the ground and screamed; the boatswain threw
+down his pistol in a rage. The former was then walked off to the
+hospital, attended by the gunner, and also the boatswain, who thought he
+might as well have a little medical advice before going on board.
+
+"Well, Easy," said Gascoigne, collecting the pistols and tying them up
+in his handkerchief, "I'll be shot, but we're in a pretty scrape;
+there's no hushing this up. I'll be hanged if I care; it's the best
+piece of fun I ever met with."
+
+"I'm afraid that our leave will be stopped for the future," replied
+Jack.
+
+"Confound it, and they say that the ship is to be here six weeks at
+least. I won't go on board. Look ye, Jack, we'll pretend to be so much
+alarmed at the result of this duel, that we dare not show ourselves lest
+we should be hung. I will write a note and tell all the particulars to
+the master's mate, and refer to the gunner for the truth of it, and beg
+him to intercede with the captain and first lieutenant. I know that
+although we should be punished, they will only laugh; but I will pretend
+that Easthupp is killed, and we are frightened out of our lives. That
+will be it; and then let's get on board one of the fruit boats, sail in
+the night for Palermo, and then we'll have a cruise for a fortnight, and
+when the money is all gone we'll come back."
+
+"That's a capital idea, Ned, and the sooner we do it the better."
+
+They were two very nice lads.
+
+
+_IV.--Jack Leaves the Service_
+
+
+At the end of four years at sea, Jack had been cured of his philosophy
+of equality. The death of his mother, and a letter from the old family
+doctor that his father was not in his senses, decided him to return
+home.
+
+"It is fortunate for you that the estate is entailed," wrote Dr.
+Middleton, "or you might soon be a beggar, for there is no saying what
+debts your father might, in his madness, be guilty of. He has turned
+away his keepers, and allowed poachers to go all over the manor. I
+consider that it is absolutely necessary that you should immediately
+return home and look after what will one day be your property. You have
+no occasion to follow the profession with your income of L8,000 per
+annum. You have distinguished yourself, now make room for those who
+require it for their subsistence."
+
+Captain Wilson approved of the decision, and Jack left the service. At
+his request, his devoted admirer Mesty--an abbreviation of
+Mephistopheles--an African, once a prince in Ashantee and now the cook
+of the midshipmen's mess, was allowed to leave the service and accompany
+our hero to England as his servant.
+
+From the first utterances of Jack on the subject of liberty and
+equality, he had won Mesty's heart, and in a hundred ways the black had
+proved his fidelity and attachment. His delight at going home with his
+patron was indescribable.
+
+Jack had not written to his father to announce his arrival, and when he
+reached home he found things worse than he expected.
+
+His father was at the mercy of his servants, who, insolent and
+insubordinate, robbed, laughed at, and neglected him. The waste and
+expense were enormous. Our hero, who found how matters stood, soon
+resolved what to do.
+
+He rose early; Mesty was in the room, with warm water, as soon as he
+rang.
+
+"By de power, Massa Easy, your fader very silly old man!"
+
+"I'm afraid so," replied Jack. "How are they getting on in the servants'
+hall?"
+
+"Regular mutiny, sar--ab swear dat dey no stand our nonsense, and dat we
+both leave the house to-morrow."
+
+Jack went to his father.
+
+"Do you hear, sir, your servants declare that I shall leave your house
+to-morrow."
+
+"You leave my house, Jack, after four years' absence! No, no, I'll
+reason with them--I'll make them a speech. You don't know how I can
+speak, Jack."
+
+"Look you, father, I cannot stand this. Either give me _carte blanche_
+to arrange this household as I please, or I shall quit it myself
+to-morrow morning."
+
+"Quit my house, Jack! No, no--shake hands and make friends with them; be
+civil, and they will serve you."
+
+"Do you consent, sir, or am I to leave the house?"
+
+"Leave the house! Oh, no; not leave the house, Jack. I have no son but
+you. Then do as you please--but you will not send away my butler--he
+escaped hanging last assizes on an undoubted charge of murder? I
+selected him on purpose, and must have him cured, and shown as a proof
+of a wonderful machine I have invented."
+
+"Mesty," said Jack, "get my pistols ready for to-morrow morning, and
+your own too--do you hear? It is possible, father, that you may not have
+yet quite cured your murderer, and therefore it is as well to be
+prepared."
+
+Mr. Easy did not long survive his son's return, and under Jack's
+management, in which Mesty rendered invaluable assistance, the household
+was reformed, and the estate once more conducted on reasonable lines.
+
+A year later Jack was married, and Mesty, as major domo, held his post
+with dignity, and proved himself trustworthy.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+
+
+Peter Simple
+
+
+     "Peter Simple," published in 1833, is in many respects the
+     best of all Marryat's novels. Largely drawn from Marryat's own
+     professional experiences, the story, with its vivid
+     portraiture and richness of incident, is told with rare
+     atmosphere and style. Hogg placed the character of "Peter
+     Simple" on a level with Fielding's "Parson Adams;" Edgar Allan
+     Poe, on the other hand, found Marryat's works "essentially
+     mediocre."
+
+
+_I.--I am Sacrificed to the Navy_
+
+
+I think that had I been permitted to select my own profession in
+childhood, I should in all probability have bound myself apprentice to a
+tailor, for I always envied the comfortable seat which they appeared to
+enjoy upon the shopboard. But my father, who was a clergyman of the
+Church of England and the youngest brother of a noble family, had a
+lucrative living, and a "soul above buttons," if his son had not. It has
+been from time immemorial the custom to sacrifice the greatest fool of
+the family to the prosperity and naval superiority of the country, and
+at the age of fourteen, I was selected as the victim.
+
+My father, who lived in the North of England, forwarded me by coach to
+London, and from London I set out by coach for Portsmouth.
+
+A gentleman in a plaid cloak sat by me, and at the Elephant and Castle a
+drunken sailor climbed up by the wheel of the coach and sat down on the
+other side.
+
+I commenced a conversation with the gentleman in the plaid cloak
+relative to my profession, and asked him whether it was not very
+difficult to learn.
+
+"Larn," cried the sailor, interrupting us, "no; it may be difficult for
+such chaps as me before the mast to larn; but you, I presume, is a
+reefer, and they ain't not much to larn, 'cause why, they pipe-clays
+their weekly accounts, and walks up and down with their hands in their
+pockets. You must larn to chaw baccy and drink grog, and then you knows
+all a midshipman's expected to know nowadays. Ar'n't I right, sir?" said
+the sailor, appealing to the gentleman in a plaid cloak. "I axes you,
+because I see you're a sailor by the cut of your jib. Beg pardon, sir,"
+continued he, touching his hat; "hope no offence."
+
+"I am afraid that you have nearly hit the mark, my good fellow," replied
+the gentleman.
+
+At the bottom of Portsdown Hill I inquired how soon we should be at
+Portsmouth. He answered that we were passing the lines; but I saw no
+lines, and I was ashamed to show my ignorance. The gentleman in a plaid
+cloak asked me what ship I was going to join, and whether I had a letter
+of introduction to the captain.
+
+"Yes, I have," replied I. And I pulled out my pocket-book, in which the
+letter was. "Captain Savage, H.M. ship Diomede," I read.
+
+To my surprise, he very coolly took the letter and proceeded to open it,
+which occasioned me immediately to snatch the letter from him, stating
+my opinion at the same time that it was a breach of honour, and that in
+my opinion he was no gentleman.
+
+"Just as you please, youngster," replied he. "Recollect, you have told
+me I am no gentleman."
+
+He wrapped his plaid around him and said no more, and I was not a little
+pleased at having silenced him by my resolute behaviour.
+
+I stayed at the Blue Posts, where all the midshipmen put up, that night,
+and next morning presented myself at the George Inn with my letter of
+introduction to Captain Savage.
+
+"Mr. Simple, I am glad to see you," said a voice. And there sat, with
+his uniform and epaulets, and his sword by his side, the passenger in
+the plaid cloak who wanted to open my letter and whom I had told to his
+face that he was "no gentleman!"
+
+I thought I should have died, and was just sinking down upon my knees to
+beg for mercy, when the captain, perceiving my confusion, burst out into
+a laugh, and said, "So you know me again, Mr. Simple? Well, don't be
+alarmed. You did your duty in not permitting me to open the letter,
+supposing me, as you did, to be some other person, and you were
+perfectly right, under that supposition, to tell me that I was not a
+gentleman. I give you credit for your conduct. Now, I think the sooner
+you go on board the better."
+
+On my arrival on board, the first lieutenant, after looking at me
+closely, said, "Now, Mr. Simple, I have looked attentively at your face,
+and I see at once that you are very clever, and if you do not prove so
+in a _very_ short time, why--you had better jump overboard, that's all."
+
+I was very much terrified at this speech, but at the same time I was
+pleased to hear that he thought me clever. My unexpected reputation was
+shortly afterwards strengthened, when, noticing the first lieutenant in
+consultation with the gunner, the former, on my approaching, said,
+"Youngster hand me that _monkey's tail_."
+
+I saw nothing like a monkey's tail, but I was so frightened that I
+snatched up the first thing that I saw, which was a short bar of iron,
+and it so happened that it was the very article which he wanted.
+
+"So you know what a monkey's tail is already, do you?" said the first
+lieutenant. "Now don't you ever sham stupid after that."
+
+A fortnight later, at daylight, a signal from the flagship in harbour
+was made for us to unmoor; our orders had come to cruise in the Bay of
+Biscay. The captain came on board, the anchor weighed, and we ran
+through the Needles with a fine breeze. Presently I felt so very ill
+that I went down below. What occurred for the next six days I cannot
+tell. I thought I should die every moment, and lay in my hammock,
+incapable of eating, drinking, or walking about.
+
+O'Brien, the senior midshipman and master's mate, who had been very kind
+to me, came to me on the seventh, morning and said that if I did not
+exert myself I never should get well; that he had taken me under his
+protection, and to prove his regard would give me a good basting, which
+was a sovereign remedy for sea-sickness. He suited the action to the
+word, and drubbed me on the ribs without mercy until I thought the
+breath was out of my body; but I obeyed his orders to go on deck
+immediately, and somehow or other did contrive to crawl up the ladder to
+the main deck, where I sat down and cried bitterly. What would I have
+given to have been at home again! It was not my fault that I was the
+greatest fool of the family, yet how was I punished for it! But, by
+degrees, I recovered myself, and certainly that night I slept very
+soundly.
+
+The next morning O'Brien came to me again.
+
+"It's a nasty slow fever, that sea-sickness, my Peter, and we must drive
+it out of you."
+
+And then he commenced a repetition of yesterday's remedy until I was
+almost a jelly. Whether the fear of being thrashed drove away my
+sickness, I do not know, but this is certain, that I felt no more of it
+after the second beating, and the next morning when I awoke I was very
+hungry.
+
+
+_II.--I am Taken Prisoner_
+
+
+One morning at daybreak we found ourselves about four miles from the
+town of Cette, and a large convoy of vessels coming round a point. We
+made all sail in chase, and they anchored close in shore under a
+battery, which we did not discover until it opened fire upon us. The
+captain tacked the ship, and stood out again, until the boats were
+hoisted out, and all ready to pull on shore and storm the battery.
+O'Brien, who was the officer commanding the first cutter on service, was
+in his boat, and I obtained permission from him to smuggle myself into
+it.
+
+We ran ashore, amidst the fire of the gunboats which protected the
+convoy, by which we lost three men, and made for the battery, which we
+took without opposition, the French artillerymen running out as we ran
+in. The directions of the captain were very positive not to remain in
+the battery a minute after it was taken, but to board the gunboats,
+leaving only one of the small boats, with the armourer, to spike the
+guns, for the captain was aware that there were troops stationed along
+the coast who might come down upon us and beat us off.
+
+The first lieutenant, who commanded, desired O'Brien to remain with the
+first cutter, and after the armourer had spiked the guns, as officer of
+the boat he was to shove off immediately. O'Brien and I remained in the
+battery with the armourer, the boat's crew being ordered down to the
+boat to keep her afloat and ready to shove off at a moment's warning. We
+had spiked all the guns but one, when all of a sudden a volley of
+musketry was poured upon us, which killed the armourer, and wounded me
+in the leg above the knee. I fell down by O'Brien, who cried out, "By
+the powers, here they are, and one gun not spiked!" He jumped down,
+wrenched the hammer from the armourer's hand, and seizing a nail from
+the bag, in a few moments he had spiked the gun.
+
+At this time I heard the tramping of the French soldiers advancing, when
+O'Brien threw away the hammer and lifting me upon his shoulders cried,
+"Come along, Peter, my boy," and made for the boat as fast as he could.
+But he was too late; he had not got half-way to the boat before he was
+collared by two French soldiers and dragged back into the battery. The
+French troops then advanced and kept up a smart fire; our cutter escaped
+and joined the other boat, who had captured the gunboats and convoy with
+little opposition.
+
+In the meantime, O'Brien had been taken into the battery with me on his
+back; but as soon as he was there he laid me gently down, saying,
+"Peter, my boy, as long as you were under my charge, I'd carry you
+through thick and thin; but now that you are under the charge of these
+French beggars, why, let them carry you."
+
+When the troops ceased firing (and if O'Brien had left one gun unspiked
+they must have done a great deal of mischief to our boats), the
+commanding officer came up to O'Brien, and looking at him, said,
+"Officer?" to which O'Brien nodded his head. He then pointed to
+me--"Officer?" O'Brien nodded his head again, at which the French troops
+laughed, and called me an _enfant_.
+
+Then, as I was very faint and could not walk, I was carried on three
+muskets, O'Brien walking by my side, till we reached the town of Cette;
+there we were taken to the commanding officer's house. It turned out
+that this officer's name was also O'Brien, and that he was of Irish
+descent. He and his daughter Celeste, a little girl of twelve, treated
+us both with every kindness. Celeste was my little nurse, and we became
+very intimate, as might be expected. Our chief employment was teaching
+each other French and English.
+
+Before two months were over, I was quite recovered, and soon the time
+came when we were to leave our comfortable quarters for a French prison.
+Captain Savage had sent our clothes and two hundred dollars to us under
+a flag of truce, and I had taken advantage of this to send a letter off
+which I dictated to Colonel O'Brien, containing my statement of the
+affair, in which I mentioned O'Brien's bravery in spiking the gun and in
+looking after me. I knew that he would never tell if I didn't.
+
+At last the day came for us to leave, and my parting with Celeste was
+very painful. I promised to write to her, and she promised to answer my
+letters if it were permitted. We shook hands with Colonel O'Brien,
+thanking him for his kindness, and much to his regret we were taken in
+charge by two French cuirassiers, and so set off, on parole, on
+horseback for Toulon.
+
+From Toulon we were moved to Montpelier, and from Montpelier to Givet, a
+fortified town in the department of Ardennes, where we arrived exactly
+four months after our capture.
+
+
+_III.--We Make Our Escape_
+
+
+O'Brien had decided at once that we should make our escape from the
+prison at Givet.
+
+First he procured a plan of the fortress from a gendarme, and then, when
+we were shown into the room allotted to us, and our baggage was
+examined, the false bottom of his trunk was not noticed, and by this
+means various instruments he had bought on the road escaped detection.
+Round his body O'Brien had also wound a rope of silk, sixty feet long,
+with knots at every two feet.
+
+The practicability of escape from Givet seemed to me impossible. The
+yard of the fortress was surrounded by a high wall; the buildings
+appropriated for the prisoners were built with lean-to roofs on one
+side, and at each side of the square was a sentry looking down upon us.
+We had no parole, and but little communication with the towns-people.
+
+But O'Brien, who often examined the map he had procured from the
+gendarme, said to me one day, "Peter, can you swim?"
+
+"No," replied I; "but never mind that."
+
+"But I must mind it, Peter; for observe we shall have to cross the River
+Meuse, and boats are not always to be had. This fortress is washed by
+the river on one side; and as it is the strongest side it is the least
+guarded--we must escape by it. I can see my way clear enough till we get
+to the second rampart on the river, but when we drop into the river, if
+you cannot swim, I must contrive to hold you up somehow or other. But
+first tell me, do you intend to try your luck with me?"
+
+"Yes," replied I, "most certainly, if you have sufficient confidence in
+me to take me as your companion."
+
+"To tell you the truth, Peter, I would not give a farthing to escape
+without you. We were taken together, and, please God, we'll take
+ourselves off together, directly we get the dark nights and foul
+weather."
+
+We had been about two months in Givet when letters arrived. My father
+wrote requesting me to draw for whatever money I might require, and also
+informing me that as my Uncle William was dead, there was now only one
+between him and the title, but that my grandfather, Lord Privilege, was
+in good health. O'Brien's letter was from Captain Savage; the frigate
+had been sent home with despatches, and O'Brien's conduct represented to
+the Admiralty, which had, in consequence, promoted him to the rank of
+lieutenant. We read each other's letters, and O'Brien said, "I see your
+uncle is dead. How many more uncles have you?"
+
+"My Uncle John, who is married, and has already two daughters."
+
+"Blessings on him! Peter, my boy, you shall be a lord before you die."
+
+"Nonsense, O'Brien; I have no chance."
+
+"What chance had I of being lieutenant, and am I not one? And now, my
+boy, prepare yourself to quit this cursed hole in a week, wind and
+weather permitting. But, Peter, do me one favour. As I am really a
+lieutenant, just touch your hat to me, only once, that's all; but I wish
+the compliment, just to see how it looks."
+
+"Lieutenant O'Brien," said I, touching my hat, "have you any further
+orders?"
+
+"Yes, sir," replied he; "that you never presume to touch your hat to me
+again, unless we sail together, and then that's a different sort of
+thing."
+
+A week later, O'Brien's preparations were complete. I had bought a new
+umbrella on his advice, and this he had painted with a preparation of
+oil and beeswax. He had also managed to procure a considerable amount of
+twine, which he had turned into a sort of strong cord, or square plait.
+
+At twelve o'clock on a dark November night we left our room and went
+down into the yard. By means of pieces of iron, which he drove into the
+interstices of the stone, we scaled a high wall, and dropped down on the
+other side by a drawbridge. Here the sentry was asleep, but O'Brien
+gagged him, and I threw open the pan of his musket to prevent him from
+firing.
+
+Then I followed O'Brien into the river. The umbrella was opened and
+turned upwards, and I had only to hold on to it at arm's-length. O'Brien
+had a tow line, and taking this in his teeth, he towed me down with the
+stream to about a hundred yards clear of the fortress, where we landed.
+O'Brien was so exhausted that for a few minutes he remained quite
+motionless. I also was benumbed with the cold.
+
+"Peter," said he, "thank God we have succeeded so far. Now we must push
+on as far as we can, for we shall have daylight in two hours."
+
+It was not till some months later that, after many adventures, we
+reached Flushing, and procured the services of a pilot. With a strong
+tide and a fair wind we were soon clear of the Scheldt, and next morning
+a cutter hove in sight, and in a few minutes we found ourselves once
+more under the British pennant.
+
+
+_IV.--In Bedlam_
+
+
+Once, in the West Indies, O'Brien and I had again come across our good
+friend Colonel O'Brien and his daughter Celeste. He was now General
+O'Brien, Governor of Martinique; and Celeste was nineteen, and I
+one-and-twenty. And though France and England were still at war, before
+we parted Celeste and I were lovers, engaged to be married; and the
+general raised no objection to our attachment.
+
+On our return from that voyage a series of troubles overtook me. My
+grandfather, Lord Privilege, had begun to take some interest in me; but
+before he died my uncle went to live with him, and so poisoned his mind
+against me that when the old lord's will was read it was found that
+L10,000 bequeathed to me had been cancelled by a codicil. As both my
+brothers and my other uncle were dead, my uncle was enraged at the
+possibility of my succeeding to the title.
+
+The loss of L10,000 was too much for my father's reason, and from lunacy
+he went quietly to his grave, leaving my only sister, Ellen, to find a
+home among strangers.
+
+In the meantime, O'Brien had been made a captain, and had sailed for the
+East Indies. I was to have accompanied him, but my uncle, who had now
+succeeded to the title, had sufficient influence at the Admiralty to
+prevent this, and I was appointed first lieutenant to a ship whose
+captain, an illegitimate son of Lord Privilege, was determined to ruin
+me. Captain Hawkins was a cowardly, mean, tyrannical man, and, although
+I kept my temper under all his petty persecutions, he managed at last to
+string together a number of accusations and, on our return, send me to a
+court-martial.
+
+The verdict of the court-martial was that "the charges of
+insubordination had been partly proved, and therefore that Lieutenant
+Peter Simple was dismissed his ship; but in consideration of his good
+character and services his case was strongly recommended to the
+consideration of the Lords Commissioners of the Admiralty."
+
+I hardly knew whether I felt glad or sorry at this sentence. On the one
+hand, in spite of the fourteen years I had served, it was almost a
+death-blow to my future advancement or employment in the service; on the
+other, the recommendation very much softened down the sentence, and I
+was quite happy to be quit of Captain Hawkins and free to hasten to my
+poor sister.
+
+I hurried on shore, but on my journey north fell ill with fever, and for
+three weeks was in a state of alternate stupor and delirium, lying in a
+cottage by the roadside.
+
+My uncle, learning of my condition, thought this too favourable an
+opportunity, provided I should live, not to have me in his power. He
+sent to have me removed, and some days afterwards--for I recollect
+nothing about the journey--I found myself in bed in a dark room, and my
+arms confined. Where was I? Presently the door opened, and a man entered
+who took down a shutter, and the light streamed in. The walls were bare
+and whitewashed. I looked at the window; it was closed up with two iron
+bars.
+
+"Why, where am I?" I inquired, with alarm.
+
+"Where are you?" replied he. "Why, in Bedlam!"
+
+As I afterwards discovered, my uncle had had me confined upon the plea
+that I was a young man who was deranged with an idea that his name was
+Simple, and that he was the heir to the title and estates, and that it
+was more from the fear of my coming to some harm than from any ill-will
+toward the poor young man that he wished me to remain in the hospital
+and be taken care of. Under these circumstances, I remained in Bedlam
+for one year and eight months.
+
+A chance visit from General O'Brien, a prisoner on parole, who was
+accompanied by his friend, Lord Belmore, secured my release; and shortly
+afterwards I commenced an action for false imprisonment against Lord
+Privilege. But the sudden death of my uncle stopped the action, and gave
+me the title and estates. The return of my old messmate, Captain
+O'Brien, who had just been made Sir Terence O'Brien, in consequence of
+his successes in the East Indies, added to my happiness.
+
+I found that Sir Terence had been in love with my sister Ellen from the
+day I had first taken him home, and that Ellen was equally in love with
+him; so when Celeste consented to my entreaties that our wedding should
+take place six weeks after my assuming the title, O'Brien took the hint
+and spoke.
+
+Both unions have been attended with as much happiness as this world can
+afford. O'Brien and I are blessed with children, until we can now muster
+a large Christmas party in the two families.
+
+Such is the history of Peter Simple, Viscount Privilege, no longer the
+fool, but the head, of the family.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+
+
+CHARLES MATURIN
+
+
+Melmoth the Wanderer
+
+
+     The romances of Charles Robert Maturin mark the transition
+     stage between the old crude "Gothic" tales of terror and the
+     subtler and weirder treatment of the supernatural that had its
+     greatest master in Edgar Allan Poe. Maturin was born at Dublin
+     in 1782, and died there on October 30, 1824. He became a
+     clergyman of the Church of Ireland; but his leanings were
+     literary rather than clerical, and his first story, "Montorio"
+     (1807), was followed by others that brought him increasing
+     popularity. Over-zealousness on a friend's behalf caused him
+     heavy financial losses, for which he strove to atone by an
+     effort to write for the stage. Thanks to the good offices of
+     Scott and Byron, his tragedy, "Bertram," was acted at Drury
+     Lane in 1816, and proved successful. But his other dramatic
+     essays were failures, and he returned to romance. In 1820 was
+     published his masterpiece, "Melmoth the Wanderer," the central
+     figure of which is acknowledged to be one of the great Satanic
+     creations of literature. The book has been more appreciated in
+     France than in England; one of its most enthusiastic admirers
+     was Balzac, who paid it the compliment of writing a kind of
+     sequel to it.
+
+
+_I.--The Portrait_
+
+
+"I want a glass of wine," groaned the old man; "it would keep me alive a
+little longer."
+
+John Melmoth offered to get some for him. The dying man clutched the
+blankets around him, and looked strangely at his nephew.
+
+"Take this key," he said. "There is wine in that closet."
+
+John knew that no one but his uncle had entered the closet for sixty
+years--his uncle who had spent his life in greedily heaping treasure
+upon treasure, and who, now, on his miserable death-bed, grudged the
+clergyman's fee for the last sacrament.
+
+When John stepped into the closet, his eyes were instantly riveted by a
+portrait that hung on the wall. There was nothing remarkable about
+costume or countenance, but the eyes, John felt, were such as one feels
+they wish they had never seen. In the words of Southey, "they gleamed
+with demon light." John held the candle to the portrait, and could
+distinguish the words on the border: "Jno. Melmoth, anno 1646." He gazed
+in stupid horror until recalled by his uncle's cough.
+
+"You have seen the portrait?" whispered old Melmoth.
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Well, you will see him again--he is still alive."
+
+Later in the night, when the miser was at the point of death, John saw a
+figure enter the room, deliberately look round, and retire. The face of
+the figure was the face of the portrait! After a moment of terror, John
+sprang up to pursue, but the shrieks of his uncle recalled him. The
+agony was nearly ended; in a few minutes old Melmoth was dead.
+
+In the will, which made John a wealthy man, there was an instruction to
+him to destroy the portrait in the closet, and also to destroy a
+manuscript that he would find in the mahogany chest under the portrait;
+he was to read the manuscript if he pleased.
+
+On a cold and gloomy evening John entered the closet, found the
+manuscript, and with a feeling of superstitious awe, began to read it.
+The task was a hard one, for the manuscript was discoloured and
+mutilated, and much was quite indecipherable.
+
+John was able to gather, however, that it was the narrative of an
+Englishman, named Stanton, who had travelled in Spain in the seventeenth
+century. On one night of storm, Stanton had seen carried past him the
+bodies of two lovers who had been killed by lightning. As he watched, a
+man had stepped forward, had looked calmly at the bodies, and had burst
+into a horrible demoniac laugh. Stanton saw the man several times,
+always in circumstances of horror; he learnt that his name was Melmoth.
+This being exercised a kind of fascination over Stanton, who searched
+for him far and wide. Ultimately, Stanton was confined in a madhouse by
+relatives who wanted to secure his property; and from the madhouse he
+was offered, but refused, release by Melmoth as a result of some
+bargain, the nature of which was not revealed.
+
+After reading this story, John Melmoth raised his eyes, and he started
+involuntarily as they encountered those of the portrait. With a shudder,
+he tore the portrait from its frame, and rushed into his room, where he
+flung its fragments on the fire.
+
+The mansion was close by the iron-bound coast of Wicklow, in Ireland,
+and on the next night John was summoned forth by the news that a vessel
+was in distress. He saw immediately that the ship was doomed. She lay
+beating upon a rock, against which the tempest hurled breakers that
+dashed their foam to a height of thirty feet.
+
+In the midst of the tumult John descried, standing a little above him on
+the rock, a figure that showed neither sympathy nor terror, uttered no
+sound, offered no help. A few minutes afterwards he distinctly heard the
+words, "Let them perish!"
+
+Just then a tremendous wave dashing over the vessel extorted a cry of
+horror from the spectators. When the cry had ceased, Melmoth heard a
+laugh that chilled his blood. It was from the figure that stood above
+him. He recalled Stanton's narrative. In a blind fury of eagerness, he
+began to climb the rock; but a stone gave way in his grasp, and he was
+hurled into the roaring deep below.
+
+It was several days before he recovered his senses, and he then learned
+that he had been rescued by the one survivor of the wreck, a Spaniard,
+who had clutched at John and dragged him ashore with him. As soon as
+John had recovered somewhat, he hastened to thank his deliverer, who was
+lodged in the mansion. Having expressed his gratitude, Melmoth was about
+to retire, when the Spaniard detained him.
+
+"Senor," he said, "I understand your name is"--he gasped--"Melmoth?"
+
+"It is."
+
+"Had you," said the Spaniard rapidly, "a relative who was, about one
+hundred and forty years ago, said to be in Spain?"
+
+"I believe--I fear--I had."
+
+"Are you his descendant? Are you the repository of that terrible secret
+which--?" He gave way to uncontrollable agitation. Gradually he
+recovered himself, and went on. "It is singular that accident should
+have placed me within the reach of the only being from whom I could
+expect either sympathy or relief in the extraordinary circumstances in
+which I am placed--circumstances which I did not believe I should ever
+disclose to mortal man, but which I shall disclose to you."
+
+
+_II.--The Spaniard's Story_
+
+
+I am, as you know, a native of Spain; but you are yet to learn that I am
+a descendant of one of its noblest houses--the house of Moncada. While I
+was yet unborn, my mother vowed that I should be devoted to religion. As
+the time drew near when I was to forsake the world and retire to a
+monastery, I revolted in horror at the career before me, and refused to
+take the vows. But my family were completely under the influence of a
+cunning and arrogant priest, who threatened God's curse upon me if I
+disobeyed; and ultimately, with a despairing heart, I consented.
+
+"The horror with which I had anticipated monastic life was nothing to my
+disgust and misery at the realisation of its evils. The narrowness and
+littleness of it, the hypocrisies, all filled me with revolt; and it was
+only by brooding over possibilities of escape that I could avoid utter
+despair. At length a ray of hope came to me. My younger brother, a lad
+of spirit, who had quarrelled with the priest who dominated our family,
+succeeded with great difficulty in communicating with me, and promised
+that a civil process should be undertaken for the reclamation of my
+vows.
+
+"But presently my hopes were destroyed by the news that my civil process
+had failed. Of the desolation of mind into which this failure plunged
+me, I can give no account--despair has no diary. I remember that I used
+to walk for hours in the garden, where alone I could avoid the
+neighbourhood of the other monks. It happened that the fountain of the
+garden was out of repair, and the workmen engaged upon it had had to
+excavate a passage under the garden wall. But as this was guarded by day
+and securely locked by night, it offered but a tantalising image of
+escape and freedom.
+
+"One evening, as I sat gloomily by the door of the passage, I heard my
+name whispered. I answered eagerly, and a paper was thrust under the
+door. I knew the handwriting--it was that of my brother Juan. From it I
+learned that Juan was still planning my escape, and had found a
+confederate within the monastery--a parricide who had turned monk to
+evade his punishment.
+
+"Juan had bribed him heavily, yet I feared to trust him until he
+confided to me that he himself also intended to escape. At length our
+plans were completed; my companion had secured the key of a door in the
+chapel that led through the vaults to a trap-door opening into the
+garden. A rope ladder flung by Juan over the wall would give us liberty.
+
+"At the darkest hour of the night we passed through the door, and
+crawled through the dreadful passages beneath the monastery. I reached
+the top of the ladder-a lantern flashed in my eyes. I dropped down into
+my brother's arms.
+
+"We hurried away to where a carriage was waiting. I sprang into it.
+
+"'He is safe,' cried Juan, following me.
+
+"'But are you?' answered a voice behind him. He staggered and fell back.
+I leapt down beside him. I was bathed in his blood. He was dead. One
+moment of wild, fearful agony, and I lost consciousness.
+
+"When I came to myself, I was lying in an apartment not unlike my cell,
+but without a crucifix. Beside me stood my companion in flight.
+
+"'Where am I?' I asked.
+
+"'You are in the prison of the Inquisition,' he replied, with a mocking
+laugh.
+
+"He had betrayed me! He had been all the while in league with the
+superior.
+
+"I was tried again and again by the Inquisition--, charged not only with
+the crime of escaping from the convent and breaking my religious vows,
+but with the murder of my brother. My spirits sank with each appearance
+before the judges. I foresaw myself doomed to die at the stake.
+
+"One night, and for several nights afterwards, a visitor presented
+himself to me. He came and went apparently without help or hindrance--as
+if he had had a master-key to all the recesses of the prison. And yet he
+seemed no agent of the Inquisition--indeed, he denounced it with caustic
+satire and withering severity. But what struck me most of all was the
+preternatural glare of his eyes. I felt that I had never beheld such
+eyes blazing in a mortal face. It was strange, too, that he constantly
+referred to events that must have happened long before his birth as if
+he had actually witnessed them.
+
+"On the night before my final trial, I awoke from a hideous dream of
+burning alive to behold the stranger standing beside me. With an impulse
+I could not resist, I flung myself before him and begged him to save me.
+He promised to do so--on one awful and incommunicable condition. My
+horror brought me courage; I refused, and he left me.
+
+"Next day I was sentenced to death at the stake. But before my fearful
+doom could be accomplished, I was free--and by that very agency of fire
+that was to have destroyed me. The prison of the Inquisition was burned
+to the ground, and in the confusion I escaped.
+
+"When my strength was exhausted by running through the deserted streets,
+I leaned against a door; it gave way, and I found myself within the
+house. Concealed, I heard two voices--an old man's and a young man's.
+The old man was confessing to the young one--his son--that he was a Jew,
+and entreating the son to adopt the faith of Israel.
+
+"I knew I was in the presence of a pretended convert--one of those Jews
+who profess to become Catholics through fear of the Inquisition. I had
+become possessed of a valuable secret, and instantly acted upon it. I
+burst out upon them, and threatened that unless the old man gave me
+hiding I should betray him. At first he was panic-stricken, then,
+hastily promising me protection, he conducted me within the house. In an
+inner room he raised a portion of the floor; we descended and went along
+a dark passage, at the end of which my guide opened a door, through
+which I passed. He closed it behind me, and withdrew.
+
+"I was in an underground chamber, the walls of which were lined with
+skeletons, bottles containing strange misshapen creatures, and other
+hideous objects. I shuddered as I looked round.
+
+"'Why fearest thou these?' asked a voice.' Surely the implements of the
+healing art should cause no terror.'
+
+"I turned and beheld a man immensely old seated at a table. His eyes,
+although faded with years, looked keenly at me.
+
+"'Thou hast escaped from the clutches of the Inquisition?' he asked me.
+
+"'Yes,' I answered.
+
+"'And when in its prison,' he continued, leaning forward eagerly, 'didst
+thou face a tempter who offered thee deliverance at a dreadful price?'
+
+"'It was so,' I answered, wondering.
+
+"'My prayer, then, is granted,' he said. 'Christian youth, thou art safe
+here. None save mine own Jewish people know of my existence. And I have
+employment for thee.'
+
+"He showed me a huge manuscript.
+
+"'This,' he said, 'is written in characters that the officers of the
+Inquisition understand not. But the time has come for transcribing it,
+and my own eyes, old with age, are unequal to the labour. Yet it was
+necessary that the work should be done by one who has learnt the dread
+secret.'
+
+"A glance at the manuscript showed me that the language was Spanish, but
+the characters Greek. I began to read it, nor did I raise my eyes until
+the reading was ended."
+
+
+_III.--The Romance of Immalee_
+
+
+"The manuscript told how a Spanish merchant had set forth for the East
+Indies, taking his wife and son with him, and leaving an infant daughter
+behind. He prospered, and decided to settle in the East; he sent for his
+daughter, who came with her nurse. But their ship was wrecked; the child
+and the nurse alone escaped, and were stranded on an uninhabited island
+near the mouth of the Hooghly. The nurse died; but the child survived,
+and grew up a wild and beautiful daughter of nature, dwelling in lonely
+innocence, and revered as a goddess by the natives who watched her from
+afar.
+
+"To the Island, when Immalee (so she called herself) was growing into
+pure and lovely womanhood, there came a stranger--pale-faced, wholly
+different from the dark-skinned people she had seen from the shores of
+the island. She welcomed him with innocent joy. He came often; he told
+her of the outer world, of its wickedness and its miseries. She, too
+untutored to realise the sinister bitterness of his tone, listened with
+rapt attention and sympathy. She loved him. She told him that he was her
+all, that she would cling to him wheresoever he went. He looked at her
+with stern sorrow; he left her abruptly, nor did he ever visit the
+island again.
+
+"Immalee was rescued, her origin was discovered, and she became Isidora
+de Aliaga, the carefully nurtured daughter of prosperous and devout
+Spanish parents. The island and the stranger were memories of the past.
+Yet one day, in the streets of Madrid, she beheld once more the
+well-remembered eyes. Soon afterwards she was visited by the stranger.
+How he entered and left her home when he came to her--and again he came
+often--she could not tell. She feared him, and yet she loved him.
+
+"At length her father, who had been on another voyage, announced that he
+was returning, and bringing with him a suitable husband for his
+newly-found daughter. Isidora, in panic, besought the stranger to save
+her. He was unwilling. At last, in response to her tears, he consented.
+They were wedded, so Isidora believed, by a hermit in a ruined
+monastery. She returned home, and he renewed his visits, promising to
+reveal their marriage in the fullness of time.
+
+"Meanwhile, tales had reached her father's ears of a malignant being who
+was permitted to wander over the earth and tempt men in dire extremity
+with release from their troubles as the result of their concluding an
+unspeakable bargain. This being himself appeared to the father, and
+warned him that his daughter was in danger.
+
+"He returned, and pressed on with preparations for the bridal ceremony.
+Isidora entreated her husband to rescue her. He promised, and went away.
+A masked ball was given in celebration of the nuptials. At the hour of
+twelve Isidora felt a touch upon her shoulder. It was her husband. They
+hastened away, but not unperceived. Her brother called on the pair to
+stop, and drew his sword. In an instant he lay bleeding and lifeless.
+The family and the guests crowded round in horror. The stranger waved
+them back with his arm. They stood motionless, as if rooted to the
+ground.
+
+"'Isidora, fly with me!' he said. She looked at him, looked at the body
+of her brother, and sank in a swoon. The stranger passed out amid the
+powerless onlookers.
+
+"Isidora, the confessed bride of an unhallowed being, was taken before
+the Inquisition, and sentenced to life-long imprisonment. But she did
+not survive long; and ere she died, her husband appeared to her, and
+offered her freedom, happiness, and love--at a dreadful price she would
+not pay. Such was the history of the ill-fated love of Immalee for a
+being to whom mortal love was a boon forbidden."
+
+
+_IV.--The Fate of Melmoth_
+
+
+When Moncada had completed the tale of Immalee, he announced his
+intention of describing how he had left the house of the Jewish doctor,
+and what was his purpose in coming to Ireland. A time was fixed for the
+continuation of the recital.
+
+The night when Moncada prepared to resume his story was a dark and
+stormy one. The two men drew close to the fire.
+
+"Hush!" suddenly said Moncada.
+
+John Melmoth listened, and half rose from his chair.
+
+"We are watched!" he exclaimed.
+
+At that moment the door opened, and a figure appeared at it. The figure
+advanced slowly to the centre of the room. Moncada crossed himself, and
+attempted to pray. John Melmoth, nailed to his chair, gazed upon the
+form that stood before him--it was indeed Melmoth the Wanderer. But the
+eyes were dim; those beacons lit by an infernal fire were no longer
+visible.
+
+"Mortals," said the Wanderer, in strange and solemn accents, "you are
+here to talk of my destiny. That distiny is accomplished. Your ancestor
+has come home," he continued, turning to John Melmoth. "If my crimes
+have exceeded those of mortality, so will my punishment. And the time
+for that punishment is come.
+
+"It is a hundred and fifty years since I first probed forbidden secrets.
+I have now to pay the penalty. None can participate in my destiny but
+with his own consent. _None has consented._ It has been reported of me,
+as you know, that I obtained from the enemy of souls a range of
+existence beyond the period of mortality--a power to pass over space
+with the swiftness of thought--to encounter perils unharmed, to
+penetrate into dungeons, whose bolts were as flax and tow at my touch.
+It has been said that this power was accorded to me that I might be
+enabled to tempt wretches at their fearful hour of extremity with the
+promise of deliverance and immunity on condition of their exchanging
+situations with me.
+
+"No one has ever changed destinies with Melmoth the Wanderer. _I have
+traversed the world in search, and no one to gain that world would lose
+his own soul!_" He paused. "Let me, if possible, obtain an hour's
+repose. Ay, repose--sleep!" he repeated, answering the astonishment of
+his hearers' looks. "My existence is still human!"
+
+And a ghastly and derisive smile wandered over his features as he spoke.
+John Melmoth and Moncada quitted the apartment, and the Wanderer,
+sinking back in his chair slept profoundly.
+
+The two men did not dare to approach the door until noon next day. The
+Wanderer started up, and they saw with horror the change that had come
+over him. The lines of extreme age were visible in every feature.
+
+"My hour is come," he said. "Leave me alone. Whatever noises you may
+hear in the course of the awful night that is approaching, come not
+near, at peril of your lives. Be warned! Retire!"
+
+They passed that day in intense anxiety, and at night had no thought of
+repose. At midnight sounds of indescribable horror began to issue from
+the Wanderer's apartment, shrieks of supplication, yells of blasphemy--
+they could not tell which. The sounds suddenly ceased. The two men
+hastened into the room. It was empty.
+
+A small door leading to a back staircase was open, and near it they
+discovered the trace of footsteps of a person who had been walking in
+damp sand or clay. They traced the footsteps down the stairs, through
+the garden, and across a field to a rock that overlooked the sea.
+
+Through the furze that clothed this rock, there was a kind of track as
+if a person had dragged his way, or been dragged, through it. The two
+men gained the summit of the rock; the wide, waste, engulfing ocean was
+beneath. On a crag below, something hung as floating to the blast.
+Melmoth clambered down and caught it. It was the handkerchief which the
+Wanderer had worn about his neck the preceding night. That was the last
+trace of the Wanderer.
+
+Melmoth and Moncada exchanged looks of silent horror, and returned
+slowly home.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+
+
+DIEGO DE MENDOZA
+
+
+Lazarillo de Tormes
+
+
+     Don Diego Hurtado de Mendoza's career was hardly of a kind
+     that would be ordinarily associated with a lively romance of
+     vagabondage. A grandee of high birth, an ambassador of the
+     Emperor Charles V., an accomplished soldier and a learned
+     historian--such was the creator of the hungry rogue Lazarillo,
+     and the founder of the "picaresque" school of fiction, or the
+     romance of roguery, which is not yet extinct. Don Diego de
+     Mendoza, born early in 1503, was educated at the University of
+     Salamanca, and spent most of the rest of his days in courts
+     and camps. He died at Madrid in April 1575. Although written
+     during Mendoza's college days, "Lazarillo de Tormes" did not
+     appear until 1533, when it was published anonymously at
+     Antwerp. During the following year it was reprinted at Bruges,
+     but it fell under the ban of the Inquisition, and subsequent
+     editions were considerably expurgated. Such was its popularity
+     that it was continued by inferior authors after Mendoza's
+     death.
+
+
+_I.--The Blind Man_
+
+
+You must know, in the first place, that my name is Lazarillo de Tormes,
+and that I am the son of Thomas Gonzalez and Antonia Perez, natives of
+Tejares, a village of Salamanca. My father was employed to superintend
+the operations of a water-mill on the river Tormes, from which I took my
+surname; and I had only reached my ninth year, when he was taken into
+custody for administering certain copious, but injudicious, bleedings to
+the sacks of customers. Being thrown out of employment by this disaster,
+he joined an armament then preparing against the Moors in the quality of
+mule-driver to a gentleman; and in that expedition he, along with his
+master, finished his life and services together.
+
+My widowed mother hired a small place in the city of Salamanca, and
+opened an eating-house for the accommodation of students. It happened
+some time afterwards that a blind man came to lodge at the house, and
+thinking that I should do very well to lead him about, asked my mother
+to part with me. He promised to receive me not as a servant, but as a
+son; and thus I left Salamanca with my blind and aged master. He was as
+keen as an eagle in his own calling. He knew prayers suitable for all
+occasions, and could repeat them with a devout and humble countenance;
+he could prognosticate; and with respect to the medicinal art, he would
+tell you that Galen was an ignoramus compared with him. By these means
+his profits were very considerable.
+
+With all this, however, I am sorry to say that I never met with so
+avaricious and so wicked an old curmudgeon; he allowed me almost daily
+to die of hunger, without troubling himself about my necessities; and,
+to say the truth, if I had not helped myself by means of a ready wit I
+should have closed my account from sheer starvation.
+
+The old man was accustomed to carry his food in a sort of linen
+knapsack, secured at the mouth by a padlock; and in adding to or taking
+from his store he used such vigilance that it was almost impossible to
+cheat him of a single morsel. By means of a small rent, however, which I
+slyly effected in one of the seams of the bag, I helped myself to the
+choicest pieces.
+
+Whenever we ate, he kept a jar of wine near him; and I adopted the
+practice of bestowing on it sundry loving though stolen embraces. The
+fervency of my attachment was soon discovered in the deficiency of the
+wine, and the old man tied the jar to himself by the handle. I now
+procured a large straw, which I dipped into the mouth of the jar; but
+the old traitor must have heard me drink with it, for he placed the jar
+between his knees, keeping the mouth closed with his hand.
+
+I then bored a small hole in the bottom of the jar, and closed it very
+delicately with wax. As the poor old man sat over the fire, with the jar
+between his knees, the heat melted the wax, and I, placing my mouth
+underneath, received the whole contents of the jar. The old boy was so
+enraged and surprised that he thought the devil himself had been at
+work. But he discovered the hole; and when next day I placed myself
+under the jar, he brought the jar down with full force on my mouth.
+Nearly all my teeth were broken, and my face was horribly cut with the
+fragments of the broken vessel.
+
+After this, he continually ill-treated me; on the slightest occasion he
+would flog me without mercy. If any humane person interfered, he
+immediately recounted the history of the jar; they would laugh, and say,
+"Thrash him well, good man; he deserves it richly!" I determined to
+revenge myself on the old tyrant, and seized an opportunity on a rainy
+day when a stream was flowing down the street. I took him to a point
+where the stream passed a stone pillar, told him that the water was
+narrowest there, and invited him to jump. He jumped accordingly, and
+gave his poor old pate such a smash against the pillar that he fell
+senseless. I took to my heels as swiftly as possible; nor did I even
+trouble to inquire what became of him.
+
+
+_II.--The Priest_
+
+
+The next day I went to a place called Maqueda, where, as it were in
+punishment for my evil deeds, I fell in with a certain priest. I
+accosted him for alms, when he inquired whether I knew how to assist at
+mass. I answered that I did, which was true, for the blind man had
+taught me. The priest, therefore, engaged me on the spot.
+
+There is an old proverb which speaks of getting out of the frying-pan
+into the fire, which was indeed my unhappy case in this change of
+masters. This priest was, without exception, the most niggardly of all
+miserable devils I have ever met with. He had a large old chest, the key
+of which he always carried about him; and when the charity bread came
+from the church, he would with his own hands deposit it in the chest and
+turn the key. The only other eatable we had was a string of onions, of
+which every fourth day I was allowed _one_. Five farthings' worth of
+meat was his allowance for dinner and supper. It is true he divided the
+broth with me; but my share of the meat I might have put in my eye
+instead of my mouth, and have been none the worse for it; but sometimes,
+by good luck, I got a little morsel of bread.
+
+At the end of three weeks I was so exhausted with sheer hunger that I
+could hardly stand on my legs. One day, when my miserable, covetous
+thief of a master had gone out, an angel, in the likeness of a tinker,
+knocked at the door, and inquired whether I had anything to mend.
+Suddenly a light flashed upon me. "I have lost the key of this chest,"
+said I, "can you fit it?" He drew forth a bunch of keys, fitted it, and
+lo! the lid of the chest arose. "I have no money," I said to my
+preserver, "but give me the key and help yourself." He helped himself,
+and so, when he had gone, did I.
+
+But it was not predestined for me that such good luck should continue
+long; for on the third day I beheld the priest turning and counting the
+loaves over and over again. At last he said, "If I were not assured of
+the security of this chest, I should say that somebody had stolen my
+bread; but from this day I shall count the loaves; there remain now
+exactly nine and a piece."
+
+"May nine curses light upon you, you miserable beggar!" said I to
+myself. The utmost I dared do, for some days, was to nibble here and
+there a morsel of the crust. At last it occurred to me that the chest
+was old and in parts broken. Might it not be supposed that rats had made
+an entrance? I therefore picked one loaf after another until I made up a
+tolerable supply of crumbs, which I ate like so many sugar-plums.
+
+The priest, when he returned, beheld the havoc with dismay.
+
+"Confound the rats!" quoth he. "There is no keeping anything from them."
+I fared well at dinner, for he pared off all the places which he
+supposed the rats had nibbled at, and gave them to me, saying, "There,
+eat that; rats are very clean animals." But I received another shock
+when I beheld my tormentor nailing pieces of wood over all the holes in
+the chest. All I could do was to scrape other holes with an old knife;
+and so it went on until the priest set a trap for the rats, baiting it
+with bits of cheese that he begged from his neighbours. I did not nibble
+my bread with less relish because I added thereto the bait from the
+rat-trap. The priest, almost beside himself with astonishment at finding
+the bread nibbled, the bait gone, and no rat in the trap, consulted his
+neighbours, who suggested, to his great alarm, that the thief must be a
+snake.
+
+For security, I kept my precious key in my mouth--which I could do
+without inconvenience, as I had been in the habit of carrying in my
+mouth the coins I had stolen from my former blind master. But one night,
+when I was fast asleep, it was decreed by an evil destiny that the key
+should be placed in such a position in my mouth that my breath caused a
+loud whistling noise. My master concluded that this must be the hissing
+of the snake; he arose and stole with a club in his hand towards the
+place whence the sound proceeded; then, lifting the club, he discharged
+with all his force a blow on my unfortunate head. When he had fetched a
+light, he found me moaning, with the tell-tale key protruding from my
+mouth.
+
+"Thank God," he exclaimed, "that the rats and snakes which have so long
+devoured my substance are at last discovered!"
+
+As soon as my wounds were healed, he turned me out of his door as if I
+had been in league with the evil one.
+
+
+_III.--The Poor Gentleman_
+
+
+By the assistance of some kind people I made my way to Toledo, where I
+sought my living by begging from door to door. But one day I encountered
+a certain esquire; he was well dressed, and walked with an air of ease
+and consequence. "Are you seeking a master, my boy?" he said. I replied
+that I was, and he bade me follow him.
+
+He led me through a dark and dismal entry to a house absolutely bare of
+furniture; and the hopes I had formed when he engaged me were further
+depressed when he told me that he had already breakfasted, and that it
+was not his custom to eat again till the evening. Disconsolately I began
+to eat some crusts that I had about me.
+
+"Come here, boy," said my master. "What are you eating?" I showed him
+the bread. "Upon my life, but this seems exceedingly nice bread," he
+exclaimed; and seizing the largest piece, he attacked it fiercely.
+
+When night came on, and I was expecting supper, my master said, "The
+market is distant, and the city abounds with rogues; we had better pass
+the night as we can, and to-morrow we will fare better. Nothing will
+ensure length of life so much as eating little."
+
+"Then truly," said I to myself in despair, "I shall never die."
+
+I spent the night miserably on a hard cane bedstead without a mattress.
+In the morning my master arose, washed his hands and face, dried them on
+his garments for want of a towel, and then carefully dressed himself,
+with my assistance. Having girded on his sword, he went forth to hear
+mass, without saying a word about breakfast. "Who would believe," I
+said, observing his erect bearing and air of gentility as he walked up
+the street, "that such a fine gentleman had passed the whole of
+yesterday without any other food than a morsel of bread? How many are
+there in this world who voluntarily suffer more for their false idea of
+honour, than they would undergo for their hopes of an hereafter!"
+
+The day advanced, and my master did not return; my hopes of dinner
+disappeared like those of breakfast. In desperation, I went out begging,
+and such was the talent I had acquired in this art that I came back with
+four pounds of bread, a piece of cow-heel, and some tripe. I found my
+master at home, and he did not disapprove of what I had done.
+
+"It is much better," said he, "to ask, for the love of God, than to
+steal. I only charge you on no account to say you live with me."
+
+When I sat down to supper, my poor master eyed me so longingly that I
+resolved to invite him to partake of my repast; yet I wondered whether
+he would take it amiss if I did so. But my wishes towards him were soon
+gratified.
+
+"Ah!" said he; "cow-heel is delicious. There is nothing I am more fond
+of."
+
+"Then taste it, sir," said I, "and try whether this is as good as you
+have eaten." Presently he was grinding the food as ravenously as a
+greyhound.
+
+In this manner we passed eight or ten days, my master taking the air
+every day with the most perfect ease of a man of fashion, and returning
+home to feast on the contributions of the charitable, levied by poor
+Lazaro. Whereas my former masters declined to feed me, this one expected
+that I should maintain him. But I was much more sorry for him than angry
+at him, and with all his poverty I found greater satisfaction in serving
+him than either of the others.
+
+At length a man came to demand the rent, which of course my master could
+not pay. He answered the man very courteously that he was going out to
+change a piece of gold. But this time he made his exit for good. Next
+morning the man came to seize my master's effects, and on finding there
+were none, he had me arrested. But I was soon found to be innocent, and
+released. Thus did I lose my third and poorest master.
+
+
+_IV.--The Dealer in Indulgences_
+
+
+My fourth master was a holy friar, eager in the pursuit of every kind of
+secular business and amusement. He kept me so incessantly on the trot
+that I could not endure it, so I took my leave of him without asking it.
+
+The next master that fortune threw in my way was a bulero, or dealer in
+papal indulgences, one of the cleverest and most impudent rogues that I
+have ever seen. He practised all manner of deceit, and resorted to the
+most subtle inventions to gain his end. A regular account of his
+artifices would fill a volume; but I will only recount a little
+manoeuvre which will give you some idea of his genius and invention.
+
+He had preached two or three days at a place near Toledo, but found his
+indulgences go off but slowly. Being at his wits' end what to do, he
+invited the people to the church next morning to take his farewell.
+After supper at the inn that evening, he and the alguazil quarrelled and
+began to revile each other, my master calling the alguazil a thief, the
+alguazil declaring that the bulero was an impostor, and that his
+indulgences were forged. Peace was not restored until the alguazil had
+been taken away to another inn.
+
+Next morning, during my master's farewell sermon, the alguazil entered
+the church and publicly repeated his charge, that the indulgences were
+forged. Whereupon my devout master threw himself on his knees in the
+pulpit, and exclaimed: "O Lord, Thou knowest how cruelly I am
+calumniated! I pray Thee, therefore, to show by a miracle the whole
+truth as to this matter. If I deal in iniquity may this pulpit sink with
+me seven fathoms below the earth, but if what is said be false let the
+author of the calumny be punished, so that all present may be convinced
+of his malice."
+
+Hardly had he finished his prayer when the alguazil fell down, foaming
+at the mouth, and rolled about in the utmost apparent agony. At this
+wonderful interposition of Providence, there was a general clamour in
+the church, and some terrified people implored my sainted master, who
+was kneeling in the pulpit, with his eyes towards heaven, to intercede
+for the poor wretch. He replied that no favour should be sought for one
+whom God had chastised, but that as we were bidden to return good for
+evil, he would try to obtain pardon for the unhappy man. Desiring the
+congregation to pray for the sinner, he commanded the holy bull to be
+placed on the alguazil's head. Gradually the sufferer was restored, and
+fell at the holy commissary's feet, imploring his pardon, which was
+granted with benevolent words of comfort.
+
+Great now was the demand for indulgences; people came flocking from all
+parts, so that no sermons were necessary in the church to convince them
+of the benefits likely to result to the purchasers. I must confess that
+I was deceived at the time, but hearing the merriment which it afforded
+to the holy commissary and the alguazil, I began to suspect that it
+originated in the fertile brain of my master, and from that time I
+ceased to be a child of grace. For, I argued, "If I, being an
+eye-witness to such an imposition, could almost believe it, how many
+more, amongst this poor innocent people, must be imposed on by these
+robbers?"
+
+On leaving the bulero I entered the service of a chaplain, which was the
+first step I had yet made towards attaining an easy life, for I had here
+a mouthful at will. Having bidden the chaplain farewell, I attached
+myself to an alguazil. But I did not long continue in the train of
+justice; it pleased Heaven to enlighten and put me into a much better
+way, for certain gentlemen procured me an office under government. This
+I yet keep, and flourish in it, with the permission of God and every
+good customer. In fact, my charge is that of making public proclamation
+of the wine which is sold at auctions, etc.; of bearing those company
+who suffer persecution for justice's sake, and publishing to the world,
+with a loud voice, their faults.
+
+About this time the arch-priest of Salvador, to whom I was introduced,
+and who was under obligations to me for crying his wine, showed his
+sense of it by uniting me with one of his own domestics. About this time
+I was at the top of the ladder, and enjoyed all kinds of good fortune.
+This happy state I conceived would continue; but fortune soon began to
+show another aspect, and a fresh series of miseries and difficulties
+followed her altered looks--troubles which it would be too cruel a task
+for me to have to recount.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+
+
+DMITRI MEREJKOWSKI
+
+
+The Death of the Gods
+
+
+     Among Russian writers whose works have achieved European
+     reputation, prominence must be given to Dmitri Merejkowski.
+     The son of a court official, Merejkowski was born in 1866, and
+     began to write verses at the age of fifteen, his first volume
+     of poems appearing in 1888. Then, nine years later, came the
+     first of his great trilogy, "The Death of the Gods," which is
+     continued in "The Resurrection of the Gods," and completed by
+     "Anti-Christ," the last-named having for its central character
+     the figure of Peter the Great, the creator of modern Russia.
+     "The Death of the Gods," by many considered the finest of the
+     three, is a vivid picture of the times of the Roman Emperor
+     Julian, setting forth the doctrine that the pagan and the
+     Christian elements in human nature are equally legitimate and
+     sacred, a doctrine which, in its various guises, runs through
+     the trilogy.
+
+
+_I.--Julian's Boyhood_
+
+
+All was dark in the great palace at Macellum, an ancient residence of
+Cappadocian princes. Here dwelt Julian and Gallus, the youthful cousins
+of the reigning Emperor Constantius, and the nephews of Constantine the
+Great. They were the last representatives of the hapless house of the
+Flavii. Their father, Julian Constantius, brother of Constantine, was
+murdered by the orders of Constantius on his accession to the throne,
+and the two orphans lived in constant fear of death.
+
+Julian was not asleep. He listened to the regular breathing of his
+brother, who slept near him on a more comfortable bed, and to the heavy
+snore of his tutor Mardonius in the next room. Suddenly the door of the
+secret staircase opened softly, and a bright light dazzled Julian.
+Labda, an old slave, entered, carrying a metal lamp in her hand.
+
+The old woman, who loved Julian, and held him to be the true successor
+of Constantine the Great, placed the lamp in a stone niche above his
+head, and produced honey cakes for him to eat. Then she blessed him with
+the sign of the cross and disappeared.
+
+A heavy slumber fell on Julian, and then he awoke full of fears. He sat
+up on his bed, and listened in the silence to the beatings of his own
+heart. Suddenly, voices and steps resounded from room to room. Then the
+steps approached, the voices became distinct.
+
+The boy called out, "Gallus, wake up! Mardonius, can't you hear
+something?"
+
+Gallus awoke, and at the same moment old Mardonius, with his grey hair
+all dishevelled, entered and rushed towards the secret door.
+
+"The soldiers of the Prefect! ... Dress! ... We must fly! ..." he
+exclaimed.
+
+Mardonius was too late; all he could do was to draw an old sword and
+stand in warlike attitude before the door, brandishing his weapon. The
+centurion, who was drunk, promptly seized him by the throat and threw
+him out of the way, and the Roman legionaries entered.
+
+"In the name of the most orthodox and blessed Augustus Constantius
+Imperator! I, Marcus Scuda, Tribune of the Fretensian Legion, take under
+my safeguard Julian and Gallus, sons of the Patrician Julius Flavius."
+
+It was Scuda's plan to gain favour with his superiors by boldly carrying
+off the lads and sending them down to his barracks at Caesarea. There
+were rumours from time to time of their escaping from Macellum, and
+Scuda knew, the emperor's fear lest these possible claimants for the
+throne should gain a following among the soldiers of the people. At
+Caesarea they would be in safe custody.
+
+For the first time he gazed upon Gallus and Julian. The former, with his
+indolent and listless blue eyes and flaxen hair, trembled and blinked,
+his eyelids heavy with sleep, and crossed himself. The latter, thin,
+sickly, and pale, with large shining eyes, stared at Scuda fixedly, and
+shook with bridled rage. In his right hand, hidden by the panther skin
+of his bed, which he had flung over his shoulder, he gripped the handle
+of a Persian dagger given him by Labda; it was tipped with the keenest
+of poisons.
+
+A wild chance of safety suddenly occurred to Mardonius. Throwing aside
+his sword, he caught hold of the tribune's mantle, and shrieked out, "Do
+you know what you're doing, rascals? How dare you insult an envoy of
+Constantius? It is I who am charged to conduct these two princes to
+court. The august emperor has restored them to his favour. Here is the
+order from Constantinople!"
+
+"What is he saying? What order is it?" Scuda waited in perplexity while
+Mardonius, after hunting in a drawer, pulled out a roll of parchment,
+and presented it to the tribune. Scuda saw the name of the emperor, and
+read the first lines, without remarking the date of the document. At the
+sight of the great imperial seal of dark green wax he became frightened.
+
+"Pardon, there is some mistake," said the tribune humbly. "Don't ruin
+us! We are all brothers and fellow-sinners! I beseech you in the name of
+Christ!"
+
+"I know what acts you commit in the name of Christ. Away with you!
+Begone at once!" screamed Mardonius. The tribune gave the order to
+retire, and only when the sound of the steps dying away assured
+Mardonius that all peril was over did the old man forget his tutorial
+dignity. A wild fit of laughter seized him, and he began to dance.
+
+"Children, children!" he cried gleefully. "Glory to Hermes! We've done
+them cleverly! That edict was annulled three years ago! Ah, the idiots,
+the idiots!"
+
+At daybreak Julian fell into a deep sleep.
+
+
+_II.--Julian the Emperor_
+
+
+Gallus had fallen at the hands of the imperial executioner, and Julian
+had been banished to the army in Gaul. Constantius hoped to get news of
+the defeat and death of Julian, and was horribly disappointed when
+nothing was heard but tidings of victory.
+
+Julian, successful in arms and worshipped by his soldiers, became more
+and more convinced that the old Olympian gods were protecting him and
+advancing his cause, and only for prudential reasons did he continue to
+attend Christian churches. In his heart he abhorred the crucified
+Galilean God of the Christians, and longed for the restoration of the
+old worship of Apollo and the gods of Greece and Rome.
+
+More than two years after the victory of Argentoratum, when Julian had
+delivered all Gaul from the barbarians, he received an important letter
+from the Emperor Constantius.
+
+Each new victory in Gaul had maddened the soul of Constantius, and
+smitten his vanity to the quick. He writhed with jealousy, and grew thin
+and sleepless and sick. At the same time he sustained defeat after
+defeat in his own campaign in Asia against the Persians. Musing, during
+nights of insomnia, the emperor blamed himself for having let Julian
+live.
+
+Finally, Constantius decided to rob Julian of his best soldiers, and
+then, by gradually disarming him, to draw him into his toils and deal
+him the mortal blow.
+
+With this intention he sent a letter to Julian by the tribune Decensius,
+commanding him to select the most trusted legions, namely, the Heruli,
+Batavians, and Celts, and to dispatch them into Asia for the emperor's
+own use. Each remaining legion was also to be deflowered of its three
+hundred bravest warriors, and Julian's transport crippled of the pick of
+the porters and baggage carriers.
+
+Julian at once warned Decensius, and proved to him that rebellion was
+inevitable among the savage legions raised in Gaul, who would almost
+certainly prefer to die rather than quit their native soil. But
+Decensius took no account of these warnings.
+
+On the departure of the first cohorts, the soldiers, hitherto only
+restrained by Julian's stern and wise discipline, became excited and
+tumultuous. Savage murmurs ran through the crowd. The cries came nearer;
+wild agitation seized the garrison.
+
+"What has happened?" asked a veteran.
+
+"Twenty soldiers have been beaten to death!"
+
+"Twenty! No; a hundred!"
+
+A legionary, with torn clothes and terrified appearance, rushed into the
+crowd, shouting, "Comrades, quick to the palace! Quick! Julian's just
+been beheaded!"
+
+These words kindled the long-smouldering flame. Everyone began to shout,
+"Where is the envoy from the Emperor Constantius?"
+
+"Down with the envoy!"
+
+"Down with the emperor!"
+
+Another mob swept by the barracks, calling out, "Glory to the Emperor
+Julian! Glory to Augustus Julian!"
+
+Then the cohorts, who had marched out the night before, mutinied, and
+were soon seen returning. The crowd grew thicker and thicker, like a
+raging flood.
+
+"To the palace! To the palace!" the cry was raised. "Let us make Julian
+emperor! Let us crown him with the diadem!"
+
+Foreseeing the revolt, Julian had not left his quarters nor shown
+himself to the soldiers, but for two days and two nights had waited for
+a sign.
+
+The indistinct cries of the mutineers came to him, borne faintly upon
+the wind.
+
+A servant entered, and announced that an old man from Athens desired to
+see the Caesar on urgent business. Julian ran to meet the newcomer; it
+was the high-priest of the mysteries of Eleusis, whom he had impatiently
+expected.
+
+"Caesar," said the old man, "be not hasty. Decide nothing to-night; wait
+for the morrow, the gods are silent."
+
+Outside could be heard the noise of soldiers pouring into the courtyard,
+and thrilling the old palace with their cries. The die was cast, Julian
+put on his armour, warcloak, and helmet, buckled on his sword, and ran
+down the principal staircase to the main entrance. In a moment the crowd
+felt his supremacy; in action his will never vacillated; at his first
+gesture the mob was silenced.
+
+Julian spoke to the soldiers, asked them to restore order, and declared
+that he would neither abandon them nor permit them to be taken from
+Gaul.
+
+"Down with Constantius!" cried the legionaries. "Thou art our emperor!
+Glory to Augustus Julian the Invincible!"
+
+Admirably did Julian affect surprise, lowering his eyes, and turning
+aside his head with a deprecating gesture of his lifted palms.
+
+The shouts redoubled. "Silence!" exclaimed Julian, striding towards the
+crowd. "Do you think that I can betray my sovereign? Are we not sworn?"
+
+The soldiers seized his hands, and many, falling at his feet, kissed
+them, weeping and crying, "We are willing to die for you! Have pity on
+us; be our emperor!"
+
+With an effort that might well have been thought sincere, Julian
+answered, "My children, my dear comrades, I am yours in life and in
+death! I can refuse you nothing!"
+
+A standard-bearer pulled from his neck the metal chain denoting his
+rank, and Julian wound it twice around his own neck. This chain made him
+Emperor of Rome.
+
+"Hoist him on a shield," shouted the soldiery. A round buckler was
+tendered. Hundreds of arms heaved the emperor. He saw a sea of helmeted
+heads, and heard, like the rolling of thunder, the exultant cry, "Glory
+to Julian, the divine Augustus!"
+
+It seemed the will of destiny.
+
+
+_III.--The Worship of Apollo_
+
+
+Constantius was dead, and Julian sole emperor of Rome.
+
+Before all the army the golden cross had been wrenched from the imperial
+standard, and a little silver statue of the sun-god, Mithra-Helios, had
+been soldered to the staff of the Labarum.
+
+One of the men in the front rank uttered a single word so distinctly
+that Julian heard it, "Anti-Christ!"
+
+Toleration was promised to the Christians, but Julian organised
+processions in honour of the Olympian gods, and encouraged in every way
+the return of the old and dying worship.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Five miles from Antioch stood the celebrated wood of Daphne, consecrated
+to Apollo. A temple had been built there, where every year the praises
+of the sun-god were celebrated.
+
+Julian, without telling anyone of his intention, quitted Antioch at
+daybreak. He wished to find out for himself whether the inhabitants
+remembered the ancient sacred feast. All along the road he mused on the
+solemnity, hoping to see lads and maidens going up the steps of the
+temple, the crowd of the faithful, the choirs, and the smoke of incense.
+
+Presently the columns and pediments of the temple shone through the
+wood, but not a worshipper yet had Julian encountered. At last he saw a
+boy of twelve years old, on a path overgrown with wild hyacinth.
+
+"Do you know, child, where are the sacrificers and the people?" Julian
+asked.
+
+The child made no answer.
+
+"Listen, little one. Can you not lead me to the priest of Apollo?"
+
+The boy put a finger to his lips and then to both his ears, and shook
+his head gravely. Suddenly he pointed out to Julian an old man, clothed
+in a patched and tattered tunic, and Julian recognised a temple priest.
+The weak and broken old man stumbled along in drunken fashion, carrying
+a large basket and laughing and mumbling to himself as he went. He was
+red-nosed, and his watery and short-sighted eyes had an expression of
+childlike benevolence.
+
+"The priest of Apollo?" asked Julian.
+
+"I am he. I am called Gorgius. What do you want, good man?"
+
+He smelt strongly of wine. Julian thought his behaviour indecent.
+
+"You seem to be drunk, old man!"
+
+Gorgius, in no wise dismayed, put down his basket and rubbed his bald
+head.
+
+"Drunk? I don't think so. But I may have had four or five cups in honour
+of the celebration; and, as to that, I drink more through sorrow than
+mirth. May the Olympians have you in their keeping!"
+
+"Where are the victims?" asked Julian. "Have many people been sent from
+Antioch? Are the choirs ready?"
+
+"Victims! Small thanks for victims! Many's the long year, my brother,
+since we saw that kind of thing. Not since the time of Constantine. It
+is all over--done for! Men have forgotten the gods. We don't even get a
+handful of wheat to make a cake; not a grain of incense, not a drop of
+oil for the lamps. There's nothing for it but to go to bed and die....
+The monks have taken everything.... Our tale is told.... And you say
+'don't drink.' But it's hard not to drink when one suffers. If I didn't
+drink I should have hanged myself long ago."
+
+"And no one has come from Antioch for this great feast day?" asked
+Julian.
+
+"None but you, my son. I am the priest, you are the people! Together we
+will offer the victim to the god. It is my own offering. We've eaten
+little for three days, this lad and I, to save the necessary money.
+Look; it is a sacred bird!"
+
+He raised the lid of the basket. A tethered goose slid out its head,
+cackling and trying to escape.
+
+"Have you dwelt long in this temple; and is this lad your son?"
+questioned Julian.
+
+"For forty years, and perhaps longer; but I have neither relatives nor
+friends. This child helps me at the hour of sacrifice. His mother was
+the great sibyl Diotima, who lived here, and it is said that he is the
+son of a god," said Gorgius.
+
+"A deaf mute the son of a god?" murmured the emperor, surprised.
+
+"In times like ours if the son of a god and a sibyl were not a deaf mute
+he would die of grief," said Gorgius.
+
+"One thing more I want to ask you," said Julian. "Have you ever heard
+that the Emperor Julian desired to restore the worship of the old gods?"
+
+"Yes, but ... what can he do, poor man? He will not succeed. I tell
+you--all's over. Once I sailed in a ship near Thessalonica, and saw
+Mount Olympus. I mused and was full of emotion at beholding the
+dwellings of the gods; and a scoffing old man told me that travellers
+had climbed Olympus, and seen that it was an ordinary mountain, with
+only snow and ice and stones on it. I have remembered those words all my
+life. My son, all is over; Olympus is deserted. The gods have grown
+weary and have departed. But the sun is up, the sacrifice must be
+performed. Come!"
+
+They passed into the temple alone.
+
+From behind the trees came the sound of voices, a procession of monks
+chanting psalms. In the very neighbourhood of Apollo's temple a tomb had
+been built in honour of a Christian martyr.
+
+
+_IV.--"Thou Hast Conquered, Galilean!"_
+
+
+At the beginning of spring Julian quitted Antioch for a Persian campaign
+with an army of sixty-five thousand men.
+
+"Warriors, my bravest of the brave," said Julian, addressing his troops
+at the outset, "remember the destiny of the world is in our hands. We
+are going to restore the old greatness of Rome! Steel your hearts, be
+ready for any fate. There is to be no turning back, I shall be at your
+head, on horseback or on foot, taking all dangers and toils with the
+humblest among you; because, henceforth, you are no longer my servants,
+but my children and my friends. Courage then, my comrades; and remember
+that the strong are always conquerors!"
+
+He stretched his sword, with a smile, toward the distant horizon. The
+soldiers, in unison, held up their bucklers, shouting in rapture,
+"Glory, glory to conquering Caesar!"
+
+But the campaign so bravely begun ended in treachery and disaster.
+
+At the end of July, when the Roman army was in steady retreat, came the
+last battle with the Persians. The emperor looked for a miracle in this
+battle, the victory which would give him such renown and power that the
+Galileans could no longer resist; but it was not till the close of the
+day that the ranks of the enemy were broken. Then a cry of triumph came
+from Julian's lips. He galloped ahead, pursuing the fugitives, not
+perceiving that he was far in advance of his main body. A few bodyguards
+surrounded the Caesar, among them old General Victor. This old man,
+though wounded, was unconscious of his hurt, not quitting the emperor's
+side, and shielding him time after time from mortal blows. He knew that
+it was as dangerous to approach a fleeing enemy as to enter a falling
+building.
+
+"Take heed, Caesar!" he shouted. "Put on this mail of mine!" But Julian
+heard him not, and still rode on, as if he, unsupported, unarmed, and
+terrible, were hunting his countless enemies by glance and gesture only
+from the field.
+
+Suddenly a lance, aimed by a flying Saracen who had wheeled round,
+hissed, and grazing the skin of the emperor's right hand, glanced over
+the ribs, and buried itself in his body. Julian thought the wound a
+slight one, and seizing the double-edged barb to withdraw it, cut his
+fingers. Blood gushed out, Julian uttered a cry, flung his head back,
+and slid from his horse into the arms of the guard.
+
+They carried the emperor into his tent, and laid him on his camp-bed.
+Still in a swoon, he groaned from time to time. Oribazius, the
+physician, drew out the iron lance-head, and washed and bound up the
+deep wound. By a look Victor asked if any hope remained, and Oribazius
+sadly shook his head. After the dressing of the wound Julian sighed and
+opened his eyes.
+
+Hearing the distant noise of battle, he remembered all, and with an
+effort, rose upon his bed. His soul was struggling against death. Slowly
+he tottered to his feet.
+
+"I must be with them to the end.... You see, I am able-bodied still....
+Quick, give me my sword, buckler, horse!"
+
+Victor gave him the shield and sword. Julian took them, and made a few
+unsteady steps, like a child learning to walk. The wound re-opened; he
+let fall his sword and shield, sank into the arms of Oribazius and
+Victor, and looking up, cried contemptuously, "All is over! Thou hast
+conquered, Galilean!" And making no further resistance, he gave himself
+up to his friends, and was laid on the bed.
+
+At night he was in delirium.
+
+"One must conquer ... reason must.... Socrates died like a god.... I
+will not believe!... What do you want from me?... Thy love is more
+terrible than death.... I want sunlight, the golden sun!"
+
+At dawn the sick man lay calm, and the delirium had left him.
+
+"Call the generals--I must speak."
+
+The generals came in, and the curtain of the tent was raised so that the
+fresh air of the morning might blow on the face of the dying. The
+entrance faced east, and the view to the horizon was unbroken.
+
+"Listen, friends," Julian began, and his voice was low, but clear. "My
+hour is come, and like an honest debtor, I am not sorry to give back my
+life to nature, and in my soul is neither pain nor fear. I have tried to
+keep my soul stainless; I have aspired to ends not ignoble. Most of our
+earthly affairs are in the hands of destiny. We must not resist her. Let
+the Galileans triumph. We shall conquer later on!"
+
+The morning clouds were growing red, and the first beam of the sun
+washed over the rim of the horizon. The dying man held his face towards
+the light, with closed eyes.
+
+Then his head fell back, and the last murmur came from his half-open
+lips, "Helios! Receive me unto thyself!"
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+
+
+PROSPER MERIMEE
+
+
+Carmen
+
+
+     Novelist, archaeologist, essayist, and in all three
+     departments one of the greatest masters of French style of his
+     century, Prosper Merimee was born in Paris on September 23,
+     1803. The son of a painter, Merimee was intended for the law,
+     but at the age of twenty-two achieved fame as the author of a
+     number of plays purporting to be translations from the
+     Spanish. From that time until his death at Cannes on September
+     23, 1870, a brilliant series of plays, essays, novels, and
+     historical and archaeological works poured from his fertile
+     pen. Altogether he wrote about a score of tales, and it is on
+     these and on his "Letters to an Unknown" that Merimee's fame
+     depends. His first story to win universal recognition was
+     "Colombo," in 1830. Seventeen years later appeared his
+     "Carmen, the Power of Love," of which Taine, in his celebrated
+     essay on the work, says, "Many dissertations on our primitive
+     savage methods, many knowing treatises like Schopenhauer's on
+     the metaphysics of love and death, cannot compare to the
+     hundred pages of 'Carmen.'"
+
+
+_I.--I Meet Don Jose_
+
+
+One day, wandering in the higher part of the plain of Cachena, near
+Cordova, harassed with fatigue, dying of thirst, burned by an overhead
+sun, I perceived, at some distance from the path I was following, a
+little green lawn dotted with rushes and reeds. It proclaimed to me the
+neighbourhood of a spring, and I saw that a brook issued from a narrow
+gorge between two lofty spurs of the Sierra de Cabra.
+
+At the mouth of the gorge my horse neighed, and another horse that I did
+not see answered immediately. A hundred steps farther, and the gorge,
+suddenly widening, revealed a sort of natural circus, shaded by the
+cliffs which surrounded it. It was impossible to light upon a place
+which promised a pleasanter halt to the traveller.
+
+But the honour of discovering this beautiful spot did not belong to me.
+A man was resting there already, and it my entrance, he had risen and
+approached his horse. He was a young fellow of medium height, but robust
+appearance, with a gloomy and haughty air. In one hand he held his
+horse's halter, in the other a brass blunderbuss. The fierce air of the
+man somewhat surprised me, but not having seen any robbers I no longer
+believed in them. My guide Antonio, however, who came up behind me,
+showed evident signs of terror, and drew near very much against his
+will.
+
+I stretched myself on the grass, drew out my cigar-case, and asked the
+man with the blunderbuss if he had a tinder-box on him. The unknown,
+without speaking, produced his tinder-box, and hastened to strike a
+light for me. In return I gave him one of my best Havanas, for which he
+thanked me with an inclination of the head.
+
+In Spain a cigar given and received establishes relations of
+hospitality, like the sharing of bread and salt in the East. My unknown
+now proved more talkative than I had expected. He seemed half famished,
+and devoured some slices of excellent ham, which I had put in my guide's
+knapsack, wolfishly. When I mentioned I was going to the Venta del
+Cuervo for the night he offered to accompany me, and I accepted
+willingly.
+
+As we rode along Antonio endeavoured to attract my attention by
+mysterious signs, but I took no notice. Doubtless my companion was a
+smuggler, or a robber. What did it matter to me? I knew I had nothing to
+fear from a man who had eaten and smoked with me.
+
+We arrived at the venta, which was one of the most wretched I had yet
+come across. An old woman opened the door, and on seeing my companion,
+exclaimed, "Ah, Senor Don Jose!"
+
+Don Jose frowned and raised his hand, and the old woman was silent at
+once.
+
+The supper was better than I expected, and after supper Don Jose played
+the mandoline and sang some melancholy songs. My guide decided to pass
+the night in the stable, but Don Jose and I stretched ourselves on mule
+cloths on the floor.
+
+Very disagreeable itchings snatched me from my first nap, and drove me
+to a wooden bench outside the door. I was about to close my eyes for the
+second time, when, to my surprise, I saw Antonio leading a horse. He
+stopped on seeing me, and said anxiously, "Where is he?"
+
+"In the venta; he is sleeping. He is not afraid of the fleas. Why are
+you taking away my horse?"
+
+I then observed that, in order to prevent any noise, Antonio had
+carefully wrapped the animal's feet in the remains of an old sack.
+
+"Hush!" said Antonio. "That man there is Jose Navarro, the most famous
+bandit of Andalusia. There are two hundred ducats for whoever gives him
+up. I know a post of lancers a league and a half from here, and before
+it is day I will bring some of them here."
+
+"What harm has the poor man done you that you denounce him?" said I.
+
+"I am a poor wretch, sir!" was all Antonio could say. "Two hundred
+ducats are not to be lost, especially when it is a matter of delivering
+the country from such vermin."
+
+My threats and requests were alike unavailing. Antonio was in the
+saddle, he set spurs to his horse after freeing its feet from the rags,
+and was soon lost to sight in the darkness.
+
+I was very much annoyed with my guide, and somewhat uneasy; but quickly
+making up my mind, returned to the inn, and shook Don Jose to awaken
+him.
+
+"Would you be very pleased to see half a dozen lancers arrive here?" I
+said.
+
+He leapt to his feet.
+
+"Ah, your guide has betrayed me! Your guide! I had suspected him. Adieu,
+sir. God repay you the service I am in your debt for. I am not quite as
+bad as you think. Yes, there is still something in me deserving the pity
+of a gentleman. Adieu!"
+
+He ran to the stable, and some minutes later I heard him galloping into
+the fields.
+
+As for me, I asked myself if I had been right in saving a robber,
+perhaps a murderer, from the gallows only because I had eaten ham and
+rice and smoked with him.
+
+I think Antonio cherished a grudge against me; but, nevertheless, we
+parted good friends at Cordova.
+
+
+_II.--My Experience with Carmen_
+
+
+I passed some days at Cordova searching for a certain manuscript in the
+Dominican's library.
+
+One evening I was leaning on the parapet of the quay, smoking, when a
+woman came up the flight of stairs leading to the river and sat down
+beside me. She was simply dressed, all in black, and we fell into
+conversation.
+
+On my taking out my repeater watch she was greatly astonished.
+
+"What inventions they have among you foreigners!"
+
+Then she told me she was a gipsy, and proposed to tell my fortune.
+
+"Have you heard people speak of La Carmencita?" she added. "That is me!"
+
+"Good!" I said to myself. "Last week I supped with a highway robber; now
+to-day I will eat ices with a gipsy. When travelling one must see
+everything."
+
+With that I escorted the Senorita Carmen to a cafe, and we had ices.
+
+My gipsy had a strange and wild beauty, a face which astonished at
+first, but which one could not forget. Her eyes, in particular, had an
+expression, at once loving and fierce, that I have found in no human
+face since.
+
+It would have been ridiculous to have had my fortune told in a public
+cafe and I begged the fair sorceress to allow me to accompany her to her
+domicile. She at once consented, but insisted on seeing my watch again.
+
+"Is it really of gold?" she said, examining it with great attention.
+
+Night had set in, and most of the shops were closed and the streets
+almost deserted as we crossed the Guadalquiver bridge, and went on to
+the outskirts of the town.
+
+The house we entered was by no means a palace. A child opened the door,
+and disappeared when the gipsy said some words to it in the Romany
+tongue.
+
+Then the gipsy produced some cards, a magnet, a dried chameleon, and
+other things necessary for her art. She told me to cross my left hand
+with a piece of money, and the magic ceremonies began. It was evident to
+me that she was no half-sorceress.
+
+Unfortunately, we were soon disturbed. Of a sudden the door opened
+violently, and a man entered, who denounced the gipsy in a manner far
+from polite.
+
+I at once recognised my friend Don Jose, and greeted him cheerfully.
+
+"The same as ever! This will have an end," he said turning fiercely to
+the gipsy, who now started talking to him in her own language. She grew
+animated as she spoke, and her eyes became terrible. It appeared to me
+she was urging him warmly to do something at which he hesitated. I think
+I understood what it was only too well from seeing her quickly pass and
+repass her little hand under her chin. There was some question of a
+throat to cut, and I had a suspicion that the throat was mine.
+
+Don Jose only answered with two or three words in a sharp tone, and the
+gipsy, casting a look of deep contempt at him, retired to a corner of
+the room, and taking an orange, peeled it and began to eat it.
+
+Don Jose took my arm, opened the door, and led me into the street. We
+walked some way together in the profoundest silence. Then, stretching
+out his hand, "Keep straight on," he Said, "and you will find the
+bridge."
+
+With that he turned his back on me, and walked rapidly away. I returned
+to my inn a little crestfallen and depressed. Worst of all was that, as
+I was undressing, I discovered my watch was missing.
+
+I departed for Seville next day, and after several months of rambling in
+Andalusia, was once more back in Cordova, on my way to Madrid.
+
+The good fathers at the Dominican convent received me with open arms.
+
+"Your watch has been found again, and will be returned to you," one of
+them told me. "The rascal is in gaol, and is to be executed the day
+after to-morrow. He is known in the country under the name of Jose
+Navarro, and he is a man to be seen."
+
+I went to see the prisoner, and took him some cigars. At first he
+shrugged his shoulders and received me coldly, but I saw him again on
+the morrow, and passed a part of the day with him. It was from his mouth
+I learnt the sad adventures of his life.
+
+
+_III.--Don Jose's Story_
+
+
+"I was born," he said, "at Elizondo, and my name--Don Jose
+Lizzarrabengoa--will tell you that I am Basque, and an old Christian. If
+I take the _don_, it is because I have the right to do so. One day when
+I had been playing tennis with a lad from Alava I won, and he picked a
+quarrel with me. We took our iron-tipped sticks, and fought, and again I
+had the advantage; but it forced me to quit the country. I met some
+dragoons, and enlisted in the Almanza regiment of cavalry. Soon I became
+a corporal, and they were under promise to make me sergeant when, to my
+misfortune, I was put on guard at the tobacco factory at Seville.
+
+"I was young then, and I was always thinking of my native country, and
+was afraid of the Andalusian young women and their jesting ways. But one
+Friday--I shall never forget it--when I was on duty, I heard people
+saying, 'Here's the gipsy.' And, looking up, I saw her for the first
+time. I saw that Carmen whom you know, in whose house I met you some
+months ago.
+
+"She made some joke at me as she passed into the factory, and flipped a
+cassia flower just between my eyes. When she had gone, I picked it up
+and put it carefully in my pocket. First piece of folly!
+
+"A few hours afterwards I was ordered to take two of my men into the
+factory. There had been a quarrel, and Carmen had slashed another woman
+with two terrible cuts of her knife across the face. The case was clear.
+I took Carmen by the arm, and bade her follow me. At the guard-house the
+sergeant said it was serious, and that she must be taken to prison. I
+placed her between two dragoons, and, walking behind, we set out for the
+town.
+
+"At first the gipsy kept silence, but presently she turned to me, and
+said softly, 'You are taking me to prison! Alas! what will become of me?
+Have pity on me, Mr. Officer! You are so young, so good-looking! Let me
+escape, and I will give you a piece of the loadstone which will make all
+women love you.'
+
+"I answered her as seriously as I could that the order was to take her
+to prison, and that there was no help for it.
+
+"My accent told her I was from the Basque province, and she began to
+speak to me in my native tongue. Gipsies, you know, sir, speak all
+languages. She told me she had been carried off by gipsies from Navarro,
+and was working at the factory in order to earn enough to return home to
+her poor mother. Would I do nothing for a country-woman? The Spanish
+women at the factory had slandered her native place.
+
+"It was all lies, sir. She always lied. But I believed her at the time.
+
+"'If I pushed you and you fell,' she resumed, in Basque, 'it would not
+be these two conscripts who would hold me.'
+
+"I forgot my order and everything, and said, "'Very well, my country-
+woman; and may our Lady of the Mountain be your aid!'
+
+"Suddenly Carmen turned round and dealt me a blow on the chest with her
+fist. I let myself fall backwards on purpose, and, with one bound, she
+leapt over me, and started to run. There was no risk of overtaking her
+with our spurs, our sabres, and our lances. The prisoner disappeared in
+no time, and all the women-folk in the quarter favoured her escape, and
+made fun of us, pointing out the wrong road on purpose. We had to return
+at last to the guard-house without a receipt from the governor of the
+prison.
+
+"The result of this was I was degraded and sent to prison for a month.
+Farewell to the sergeant's stripes, I thought.
+
+"One day in prison the jailor entered, and gave me a special loaf of
+bread.
+
+"'Here,' he said, 'see what your cousin has sent you.'
+
+"I was astonished, for I had no cousin in Seville, and when I broke the
+loaf I found a small file and a gold piece inside it. No doubt then, it
+was a present from Carmen, for a gipsy would set fire to a town to
+escape a day's imprisonment, and I was touched by this mark of
+remembrance.
+
+"But I served my sentence, and, on coming out, was put on sentry outside
+the colonel's door, like a common soldier. It was a terrible
+humiliation.
+
+"While I was on duty I saw Carmen again. She was dressed out like a
+shrine, all gold and ribbons, and was going in one evening with a party
+of gipsies to amuse the colonel's guests. She recognised me, and named a
+place where I could meet her next day. When I gave her back the gold
+piece she burst into laughter, but kept it all the same. Do you know, my
+son,' she said to me when we parted, 'I believe I love you a little. But
+that cannot last. Dog and wolf do not keep house together long. Perhaps,
+if you adopted the gipsy law, I would like to become your wife. But it
+is nonsense; it is impossible. Think no more of Carmencita, or she will
+bring you to the gallows.'
+
+"She spoke the truth. I would have been wise to think no more of her;
+but after that day I could think of nothing else, and walked about
+always hoping to meet her, but she had left the town.
+
+"It was some weeks later, when I had been placed as a night sentinel at
+one of the town gates that I saw Carmen. I was put there to prevent
+smuggling; but Carmen persuaded me to let five of her friends pass in,
+and they were all well laden with English goods. She told me I might
+come and see her next day at the same house I had visited before.
+
+"Carmen had moods, like the weather in our country. She would make
+appointments and not keep them, and at another time, would be full of
+affection.
+
+"One evening when I had called on a friend of Carmen's the gipsy entered
+the room, followed by a young man, a lieutenant in our regiment.
+
+"He told me to decamp, and I said something sharp to him. We soon drew
+our swords, and presently the point of mine entered his body. Then
+Carmen extinguished the lamp, and, wounded though I was, we started
+running down the street. 'Great fool,' she said. 'You can do nothing but
+foolish things. Besides, I told you I would bring you bad luck.' She
+made me take off my uniform and put on a striped cloak, and this with a
+handkerchief over my head, enabled me to pass fairly well for a peasant.
+Then she took me to a house at the end of a little lane, and she and
+another gipsy washed and dressed my wounds. Next day Carmen pointed out
+to me the new career she destined me for. I was to go to the coast and
+become a smuggler. In truth it was the only one left me, now that I had
+incurred the punishment of death. Besides, I believed I could make sure
+of her love. Carmen introduced me to her people, and at first the
+freedom of the smuggler's life pleased me better than the soldier's
+life. I saw Carmen often, and she showed more liking for me than ever;
+but, she would not admit that she was willing to be my wife."
+
+
+_IV.--The End of Don Jose's Story_
+
+
+"One becomes a rogue without thinking, sir. A pretty girl makes one lose
+one's head, one fights for her, a misfortune happens, one is driven to
+the mountains, from smuggler one becomes robber before reflecting.
+
+"Carmen often made me jealous, especially after she accepted me as her
+husband, and she warned me not to interfere with her freedom. On my part
+I wanted to change my way of life, but when I spoke to her about
+quitting Spain and trying to live honestly in America, she laughed at
+me.
+
+"'We are not made for planting cabbages,' she said; '_our_ destiny is to
+live at the expense of others.' Then she told me of a fresh piece of
+smuggling on hand, and I let myself be persuaded to resume the wretched
+traffic.
+
+"While I was in hiding at Granada, there were bullfights to which Carmen
+went. When she returned, she spoke much of a very skilful picador, named
+Lucas. She knew the name of his horse, and how much his embroidered
+jacket cost him. I paid no heed to this, but began to grow alarmed when
+I heard that Carmen had been seen about with Lucas. I asked her how and
+why she had made his acquaintance.
+
+"'He is a man,' she said, 'with whom business can be done. He has won
+twelve hundred pounds at the bullfights. One of two things: we must
+either have the money, or, as he is a good horseman, we can enroll him
+in our band.'
+
+"'I wish,' I replied, 'neither his money nor his person, and I forbid
+you to speak to him.'
+
+"'Take care,' she said; 'when anyone dares me to do a thing it is soon
+done.'
+
+"Luckily the picador left for Malaga, and I set about my smuggling. I
+had a great deal to do in this expedition, and it was about that time I
+first met you. Carmen robbed you of your watch at our last interview,
+and she wanted your money as well. We had a violent dispute about that,
+and I struck her. She turned pale and wept. It was the first time I saw
+her weep, and it had a terrible effect on me. I begged her pardon, but
+it was not till three days later that she would kiss me.
+
+"'There is a fete at Cordova,' she said, when we were friends again. 'I
+am going to see it, then I shall find out the people who carry money
+with them and tell you.'
+
+"I let her go, but when a peasant told me there was a bull-fight at
+Cordova, I set off like a madman to the spot. Lucas was pointed out to
+me, and on the bench close to the barrier I recognised Carmen. It was
+enough for me to see her to be certain how things stood. Lucas, at the
+first bull, did the gallant, as I had foreseen. He tore the bunch of
+ribbons from the bull and carried it to Carmen, who put it in her hair
+on the spot. The bull took upon itself the task of avenging me. Lucas
+was thrown down with his horse on his chest, and the bull on the top of
+both. I looked at Carmen, she had already left her seat, but I was so
+wedged in I was obliged to wait for the end of the fights.
+
+"I got home first, however, and Carmen only arrived at two o'clock in
+the morning.
+
+"'Come with me,' I said.
+
+"'Very well, let us go,' she answered.
+
+"I went and fetched my horse; I put her behind me, and we travelled all
+the rest of the night without speaking. At daybreak we were in a
+solitary gorge.
+
+"'Listen,' I said to Carmen, 'I forget everything. Only swear to me one
+thing, that you will follow me to America, and live there quietly with
+me.'
+
+"'No,' she said, in a sulky tone, 'I do not want to go to America. I am
+quite comfortable here.'
+
+"I implored her to let us change our way of life and Carmen answered, 'I
+will follow you to death, but I will not live with you any longer. I
+always thought you meant to kill me, and now I see that is what you are
+going to do. It is destiny, but you will not make me yield.'
+
+"'Listen to me!' I said, 'for the last time. You know that it is for you
+I have become a robber and a murderer. Carmen! my Carmen, there is still
+time for us to save ourselves,' I promised anything and everything if
+she would love me again.
+
+"'Jose,' she replied, 'you ask me for the impossible. I do not love you
+any more. All is over between us. You have the right to kill me. But
+Carmen must always be free. To love you is impossible, and I do not wish
+to live with you.'
+
+"Fury took possession of me, and I killed her with my knife. An hour
+later I laid her in a grave in the wood. Then I mounted my horse,
+galloped to Cordova, and gave myself up at the first guard-house....
+Poor Carmen! it is the gipsies who are to blame for having brought her
+up like that."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+
+
+MARY RUSSELL MITFORD
+
+
+Our Village
+
+
+     Mary Russell Mitford was known first as a dramatist, with
+     tragedy as her forte, and in later years as a novelist, but by
+     posterity she will be remembered as a portrayer of country
+     life, in simply worded sketches, with a quiet colouring of
+     humour. These sketches were collected, as "Our Village," into
+     five volumes, between 1824 and 1832. Miss Mitford was born
+     Dec. 16, 1787, at Alresford, Hampshire, England, the daughter
+     of a foolish spendthrift father, to whom she was pathetically
+     devoted, and lived in her native county almost throughout her
+     life. In her later years she received a Civil List pension.
+     She died on January 10, 1855. The quietness of the country is
+     in all Miss Mitford's writing, but it is a cheerful country,
+     pervaded by a rosy-cheeked optimism. Her letters, too,
+     scribbled on small scraps of paper, are as attractive as her
+     books.
+
+
+_I.--Some of the Inhabitants_
+
+
+Will you walk with me through our village, courteous reader? The journey
+is not long. We will begin at the lower end, and proceed up the hill.
+
+The tidy, square, red cottage on the right hand, with the long,
+well-stocked garden by the side of the road, belongs to a retired
+publican from a neighbouring town; a substantial person with a comely
+wife--one who piques himself on independence and idleness, talks
+politics, reads the newspapers, hates the minister, and cries out for
+reform. He hangs over his gate, and tries to entice passengers to stop
+and chat. Poor man! He is a very respectable person, and would be a very
+happy one if he would add a little employment to his dignity. It would
+be the salt of life to him.
+
+Next to his house, though parted from it by another long garden with a
+yew arbour at the end, is the pretty dwelling of the shoemaker, a pale,
+sickly-looking, black-haired man, the very model of sober industry.
+There he sits in his little shop from early morning till late at night.
+An earthquake would hardly stir him. There is at least as much vanity in
+his industry as in the strenuous idleness of the retired publican. The
+shoemaker has only one pretty daughter, a light, delicate, fair-haired
+girl of fourteen, the champion, protectress, and play-fellow of every
+brat under three years old, whom she jumps, dances, dandles, and feeds
+all day long. A very attractive person is that child-loving girl. She
+likes flowers, and has a profusion of white stocks under her window, as
+pure and delicate as herself.
+
+The first house on the opposite side of the way is the blacksmith's--a
+gloomy dwelling, where the sun never seems to shine; dark and smoky
+within and without, like a forge. The blacksmith is a high officer in
+our little state, nothing less than a constable; but alas, alas! when
+tumults arise, and the constable is called for, he will commonly be
+found in the thickest of the fray. Lucky would it be for his wife and
+her eight children if there were no public-house in the land.
+
+Then comes the village shop, like other village shops, multifarious as a
+bazaar--a repository for bread, shoes, tea, cheese, tape, ribbons, and
+bacon; for everything, in short, except the one particular thing which
+you happen to want at the moment, and will be sure not to find.
+
+Divided from the shop by a narrow yard is a habitation of whose inmates
+I shall say nothing. A cottage--no, a miniature house, all angles, and
+of a charming in-and-outness; the walls, old and weather-stained,
+covered with hollyhocks, roses, honeysuckles, and a great apricot-tree;
+the casements full of geraniums (oh, there is our superb white cat
+peeping out from among them!); the closets (our landlord has the
+assurance to call them rooms) full of contrivances and corner-cupboards;
+and the little garden behind full of common flowers. That house was
+built on purpose to show in what an exceeding small compass comfort may
+be packed.
+
+The next tenement is a place of importance, the Rose Inn--a whitewashed
+building, retired from the road behind its fine swinging sign, with a
+little bow-window room coming out on one side, and forming, with our
+stable on the other, a sort of open square, which is the constant resort
+of carts, waggons, and return chaises.
+
+Next door lives a carpenter, "famed ten miles around, and worthy all his
+fame," with his excellent wife and their little daughter Lizzy, the
+plaything and queen of the village--a child three years old according to
+the register, but six in size and strength and intellect, in power and
+self-will. She manages everybody in the place; makes the lazy carry her,
+the silent talk to her, and the grave to romp with her. Her chief
+attraction lies in her exceeding power of loving, and her firm reliance
+on the love and the indulgence of others.
+
+How pleasantly the road winds up the hill, with its broad, green borders
+and hedgerows so thickly timbered! How finely the evening sun falls on
+that sandy, excavated bank, and touches the farmhouse on the top of the
+eminence!
+
+
+_II.--Hannah Bint_
+
+
+The shaw leading to Hannah Bint's habitation is a very pretty mixture of
+wood and coppice. A sudden turn brings us to the boundary of the shaw,
+and there, across the open space, the white cottage of the keeper peeps
+from the opposite coppice; and the vine-covered dwelling of Hannah Bint
+rises from amidst the pretty garden, which lies bathed in the sunshine
+around it.
+
+My friend Hannah Bint is by no means an ordinary person. Her father,
+Jack Bint (for in all his life he never arrived at the dignity of being
+called John), was a drover of high repute in his profession. No man
+between Salisbury Plain and Smithfield was thought to conduct a flock of
+sheep so skilfully through all the difficulties of lanes and commons,
+streets and high-roads, as Jack Bint, aided by Jack Bint's famous dog,
+Watch.
+
+No man had a more thorough knowledge of the proper night stations, where
+good feed might be procured for his charge, and good liquor for Watch
+and himself; Watch, like other sheepdogs, being accustomed to live
+chiefly on bread and beer, while his master preferred gin.
+
+But when a rheumatic fever came one hard winter, and finally settled in
+Jack Bint's limbs, reducing the most active and handy man in the parish
+to the state of a confirmed cripple, poor Jack, a thoughtless but kind
+creature, looked at his three motherless children with acute misery.
+Then it was that he found help where he least expected it--in the sense
+and spirit of his young daughter, a girl of twelve years old.
+
+Hannah was a quick, clever lass of a high spirit, a firm temper, some
+pride, and a horror of accepting parochial relief--that surest safeguard
+to the sturdy independence of the English character. So when her father
+talked of giving up their comfortable cottage and removing to the
+workhouse, while she and her brothers must move to service, Hannah
+formed a bold resolution, and proceeded to act at once on her own plans
+and designs.
+
+She knew that the employer in whose service her father's health had
+suffered so severely was a rich and liberal cattle-dealer in the
+neighbourhood, who would willingly aid an old and faithful servant. Of
+Farmer Oakley, accordingly, she asked, not money, but something much
+more in his own way--a cow! And, amused and interested by the child's
+earnestness, the wealthy yeoman gave her a very fine young Alderney.
+
+She then went to the lord of the manor, and, with equal knowledge of
+character, begged his permission to keep her cow on the shaw common. He,
+too, half from real good nature, and half not to be outdone in
+liberality by his tenant, not only granted the requested permission, but
+reduced the rent so much that the produce of the vine seldom failed to
+satisfy their kind landlord.
+
+Now Hannah showed great judgment in setting up as a dairy-woman. One of
+the most provoking of the petty difficulties which beset a small
+establishment in this neighbourhood is the trouble, almost the
+impossibility, of procuring the pastoral luxuries of milk, eggs, and
+butter. Hannah's Alderney restored us to our rural privilege. Speedily
+she established a regular and gainful trade in milk, eggs, butter,
+honey, and poultry--for poultry they had always kept.
+
+In short, during the five years she has ruled at the shaw cottage the
+world has gone well with Hannah Bint. She has even taught Watch to like
+the buttermilk as well as strong beer, and has nearly persuaded her
+father to accept milk as a substitute for gin. Not but that Hannah hath
+had her enemies as well as her betters. The old woman at the lodge, who
+always piqued herself on being spiteful, and crying down new ways,
+foretold that she would come to no good; nay, even Ned Miles, the
+keeper, her next neighbour, who had whilom held entire sway over the
+shaw common, as well as its coppices, grumbled as much as so
+good-natured and genial a person could grumble when he found a little
+girl sharing his dominion, a cow grazing beside his pony, and vulgar
+cocks and hens hovering around the buckwheat destined to feed his noble
+pheasants.
+
+Yes! Hannah hath had her enemies, but they are passing away. The old
+woman at the lodge is dead, poor creature; and the keeper?--why, he is
+not dead, or like to die, but the change that has taken place there is
+the most astonishing of all--except perhaps the change in Hannah
+herself.
+
+Few damsels of twelve years old, generally a very pretty age, were less
+pretty than Hannah Bint. Short and stunted in her figure, thin in face,
+sharp in feature, with a muddied complexion, wild, sunburnt hair, and
+eyes whose very brightness had in them something startling,
+over-informed, too clever for her age; at twelve years old she had quite
+the air of a little old fairy.
+
+Now, at seventeen, matters are mended. Her complexion has cleared; her
+countenance has developed itself; her figure has shot up into height and
+lightness, and a sort of rustic grace; her bright, acute eye is softened
+and sweetened by a womanly wish to please; her hair is trimmed and
+curled and brushed with exquisite neatness; and her whole dress arranged
+with that nice attention to the becoming which would be called the
+highest degree of coquetry if it did not deserve the better name of
+propriety. The lass is really pretty, and Ned Miles has discovered that
+she is so. There he stands, the rogue, close at her side (for he hath
+joined her whilst we have been telling her little story, and the milking
+is over); there he stands holding her milk-pail in one hand, and
+stroking Watch with the other. There they stand, as much like lovers as
+may be; he smiling and she blushing; he never looking so handsome, nor
+she so pretty, in their lives.
+
+There they stand, and one would not disturb them for all the milk and
+the butter in Christendom. I should not wonder if they were fixing the
+wedding-day.
+
+
+_III.--A Country Cricket Match_
+
+
+I doubt if there be any scene in the world more animating or delightful
+than a cricket match. I do not mean a set match at Lord's Ground--no!
+the cricket I mean is a real solid, old-fashioned match between
+neighbouring parishes, where each attacks the other for honour and a
+supper.
+
+For the last three weeks our village has been in a state of great
+excitement, occasioned by a challenge from our north-western neighbours,
+the men of B----, to contend with us at cricket. Now, we have not been
+much in the habit of playing matches. The sport had languished until the
+present season, when the spirit began to revive. Half a dozen fine,
+active lads, of influence among their comrades, grew into men and
+yearned for cricket. In short, the practice recommenced, and the hill
+was again alive with men and boys and innocent merriment. Still, we were
+modest and doubted our own strength.
+
+The B---- people, on the other hand, must have been braggers born. Never
+was such boasting! Such ostentatious display of practice! It was a
+wonder they did not challenge all England. Yet we firmly resolved not to
+decline the combat; and one of the most spirited of the new growth,
+William Grey by name, and a farmer's son by station, took up the glove
+in a style of manly courtesy that would have done honour to a knight in
+the days of chivalry.
+
+William Grey then set forth to muster his men, remembering with great
+complacency that Samuel Long, the very man who had bowled us out at a
+fatal return match some years ago at S--, our neighbours south-by-east,
+had luckily, in a remove of a quarter of a mile last Lady Day, crossed
+the boundaries of his old parish and actually belonged to us. Here was a
+stroke of good fortune! Our captain applied to him instantly, and he
+agreed at a word. We felt we had half gained the match when we had
+secured him. Then James Brown, a journeyman blacksmith and a native,
+who, being of a rambling disposition, had roamed from place to place for
+half a dozen years, had just returned to our village with a prodigious
+reputation in cricket and gallantry. To him also went the indefatigable
+William Grey, and he also consented to play. Having thus secured two
+powerful auxiliaries, we began to reckon the regular forces.
+
+Thus ran our list. William Grey, 1; Samuel Long, 2; James Brown, 3;
+George and John Simmons, one capital, the other so-so--an uncertain
+hitter, but a good fieldsman, 5; Joel Brent, excellent, 6; Ben
+Appleton--here was a little pause, for Ben's abilities at cricket were
+not completely ascertained, but then he was a good fellow, so full of
+fun and waggery! No doing without Ben. So he figured in the list as 7.
+George Harris--a short halt there too--slowish, but sure, 8; Tom
+Coper--oh, beyond the world Tom Coper, the red-headed gardening lad,
+whose left-handed strokes send _her_ (a cricket-ball is always of the
+feminine gender) send her spinning a mile, 9; Harry Willis, another
+blacksmith, 10.
+
+We had now ten of our eleven, but the choice of the last occasioned some
+demur. John Strong, a nice youth--everybody likes John Strong--was the
+next candidate, but he is so tall and limp that we were all afraid his
+strength, in spite of his name, would never hold out. So the eve of the
+match arrived and the post was still vacant, when a little boy of
+fifteen, David Willis, brother to Harry, admitted by accident to the
+last practice, saw eight of them out, and was voted in by acclamation.
+
+Morning dawned. On calling over our roll, Brown was missing; and it
+transpired that he had set off at four o'clock in the morning to play in
+a cricket match at M----, a little town twelve miles off, which had been
+his last residence. Here was desertion! Here was treachery! How we cried
+him down! We were well rid of him, for he was no batter compared with
+William Grey; not fit to wipe the shoes of Samuel Long as a bowler; the
+boy David Willis was worth fifty of him. So we took tall John Strong. I
+never saw any one prouder than the good-humoured lad was at this not
+very flattering piece of preferment.
+
+_They_ began the warfare--these boastful men of B----! And what think
+you was the amount of their innings? These challengers--the famous
+eleven--how many did they get? Think! Imagine! Guess! You cannot. Well,
+they got twenty-two, or, rather, they got twenty, for two of theirs were
+short notches, and would never have been allowed, only that, seeing what
+they were made of, we and our umpires were not particular. Oh, how well
+we fielded.
+
+Then we went in. And what of our innings? Guess! A hundred and sixty-nine!
+We headed them by a hundred and forty-seven; and then they gave in,
+as well they might. William Grey pressed them much to try another
+innings, but they were beaten sulky and would not move.
+
+The only drawback in my enjoyment was the failure of the pretty boy
+David Willis, who, injudiciously put in first, and playing for the first
+time in a match amongst men and strangers, was seized with such a fit of
+shamefaced shyness that he could scarcely hold his bat, and was bowled
+out without a stroke, from actual nervousness. Our other modest lad,
+John Strong, did very well; his length told in the field, and he got
+good fame. William Grey made a hit which actually lost the cricket-ball.
+We think she lodged in a hedge a quarter of a mile off, but nobody could
+find her. And so we parted; the players retired to their supper and we
+to our homes, all good-humoured and all happy--except the losers.
+
+
+_IV.--Love, the Leveller_
+
+
+The prettiest cottage on our village green is the little dwelling of
+Dame Wilson. The dame was a respected servant in a most respectable
+family, which she quitted only on her marriage with a man of character
+and industry, and of that peculiar universality of genius which forms
+what is called, in country phrase, a handy fellow. His death, which
+happened about ten years ago, made quite a gap in our village
+commonwealth.
+
+Without assistance Mrs. Wilson contrived to maintain herself and her
+children in their old, comfortable home. The house had still, within and
+without, the same sunshiny cleanliness, and the garden was still famous
+over all other gardens. But the sweetest flower of the garden, and the
+joy and pride of her mother's heart, was her daughter Hannah. Well might
+she be proud of her! At sixteen, Hannah Wilson was, beyond a doubt, the
+prettiest girl in the village, and the best. Her chief characteristic
+was modesty. Her mind was like her person: modest, graceful, gentle and
+generous above all.
+
+Our village beauty had fairly reached her twentieth year without a
+sweetheart; without the slightest suspicion of her having ever written a
+love-letter on her own account, when, all of a sudden, appearances
+changed. A trim, elastic figure, not unaccompanied, was descried walking
+down the shady lane. Hannah had gotten a lover!
+
+Since the new marriage act, we, who belong to the country magistrates,
+have gained a priority over the rest of the parish in matrimonial news.
+We (the privileged) see on a work-day the names which the Sabbath
+announces to the generality. One Saturday, walking through our little
+hall, I saw a fine athletic young man, the very image of health and
+vigour, mental and bodily, holding the hand of a young woman, who was
+turning bashfully away, listening, and yet not seeming to listen, to his
+tender whispers. Hannah! And she went aside with me, and a rapid series
+of questions and answers conveyed the story of the courtship. "William
+was," said Hannah, "a journeyman hatter, in B----. He had walked over to
+see the cricketing, and then he came again. Her mother liked him.
+Everybody liked him--and she had promised. Was it wrong?"
+
+"Oh, no! And where are you to live?" "William had got a room in B----.
+He works for Mr. Smith, the rich hatter in the market-place, and Mr.
+Smith speaks of him, oh, so well! But William will not tell me where our
+room is. I suppose in some narrow street or lane, which he is afraid I
+shall not like, as our common is so pleasant. He little
+thinks--anywhere--" She stopped suddenly. "Anywhere with him!"
+
+The wedding-day was a glorious morning.
+
+"What a beautiful day for Hannah!" was the first exclamation at the
+breakfast-table. "Did she tell you where they should dine?"
+
+"No, ma'am; I forgot to ask."
+
+"I can tell you," said the master of the house, with the look of a man
+who, having kept a secret as long as it was necessary, is not sorry to
+get rid of the burthen. "I can tell you--in London."
+
+"In London?"
+
+"Yes. Your little favourite has been in high luck. She has married the
+only son of one of the best and richest men in B----, Mr. Smith, the
+great hatter. It is quite a romance. William Smith walked over to see a
+match, saw our pretty Hannah, and forgot to look at the cricketers. He
+came again and again, and at last contrived to tame this wild dove, and
+even to get the _entree_ of the cottage. Hearing Hannah talk is not the
+way to fall out of love with her. So William, finding his case serious,
+laid the matter before his father, and requested his consent to the
+marriage. Mr. Smith was at first a little startled. But William is an
+only son, and an excellent son; and after talking with me, and looking
+at Hannah, the father relented. But, having a spice of his son's
+romance, and finding that he had not mentioned his station in life, he
+made a point of its being kept secret till the wedding-day. I hope the
+shock will not kill Hannah."
+
+"Oh, no! Hannah loves her husband too well."
+
+And I was right. Hannah has survived the shock. She is returned to
+B----, and I have been to call on her. She is still the same Hannah, and
+has lost none of her old habits of kindness and gratitude. She did
+indeed just hint at her trouble with visitors and servants; seemed
+distressed at ringing the bell, and visibly shrank from the sound of a
+double knock. But in spite of these calamities Hannah is a happy woman.
+The double rap was her husband's, and the glow on her cheek, and the
+smile of her lips and eyes when he appeared spoke more plainly than
+ever: "Anywhere with him!"
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+
+
+DAVID MOIR
+
+
+Autobiography of Mansie Wauch
+
+
+     David Macbeth Moir was born at Musselburgh, Scotland, Jan. 5,
+     1798, and educated at the grammar school of the Royal Burgh
+     and at Edinburgh University, from which he received the
+     diploma of surgeon in 1816. He practised as a physician in his
+     native town from 1817 until 1843, when, health failing, he
+     practically withdrew from the active duties of his profession.
+     Moir began to write in both prose and verse for various
+     periodicals when quite a youth, but his long connection with
+     "Blackwood's Magazine" under the pen name of "Delta",
+     began in 1820, and he became associated with
+     Christopher North, the Ettrick Shepherd, and others of the
+     Edinburgh coterie distinguished in "Noctes Ambrosianae." He
+     contributed to "Blackwood," histories, biographies, essays,
+     and poems, to the number of about 400. His poems were esteemed
+     beyond their merits by his generation, and his reputation now
+     rests almost solely on the caustic humour of his
+     "Autobiography of Mansie Wauch," published in 1828, a series
+     of sketches of the manner of life in the shop-keeping and
+     small-trading class of a Scottish provincial town at the
+     beginning of the nineteenth century. Moir died at Dumfries on
+     July 6, 1851.
+
+
+_I.--Mansie's Forebears and Early Life_
+
+
+Some of the rich houses and great folk pretend to have histories of the
+ancientness of their families, which they can count back on their
+fingers almost to the days of Noah's Ark, and King Fergus the First, but
+it is not in my power to come further back than auld grand-faither, who
+died when I was a growing callant. I mind him full well. To look at him
+was just as if one of the ancient patriarchs had been left on the earth,
+to let succeeding survivors witness a picture of hoary and venerable
+eld.
+
+My own father, auld Mansie Wauch, was, at the age of thirteen, bound a
+'prentice to the weaver trade, which he prosecuted till a mortal fever
+cut through the thread of his existence. Alas, as Job says, "How time
+flies like a weaver's shuttle!" He was a decent, industrious,
+hard-working man, doing everything for the good of his family, and
+winning the respect of all who knew the value of his worth. On the
+five-and-twentieth year of his age he fell in love with, and married, my
+mother, Marion Laverock.
+
+I have no distinct recollection of the thing myself, but there is every
+reason to believe that I was born on October 13, 1765, in a little house
+in the Flesh-Market Gate, Dalkeith, and the first thing I have any clear
+memory of was being carried on my auntie's shoulders to see the Fair
+Race. Oh! but it was a grand sight! I have read since the story of
+Aladdin's Wonderful Lamp, but that fair and the race, which was won by a
+young birkie who had neither hat nor shoon, riding a philandering beast
+of a horse thirteen or fourteen years auld, beat it all to sticks.
+
+In time, I was sent to school, where I learned to read and spell, making
+great progress in the Single and Mother's Carritch. What is more, few
+could fickle me in the Bible, being mostly able to spell it all over,
+save the second of Ezra and the seventh of Nehemiah, which the Dominie
+himself could never read through twice in the same way, or without
+variation.
+
+Being of a delicate make--nature never intended me for the naval or
+military line, or for any robustious profession--I was apprenticed to
+the tailoring trade. Just afterwards I had a terrible stound of
+calf-love, my first flame being the minister's lassie, Jess, a buxom and
+forward queen, two or three years older than myself. I used to sit
+looking at her in the kirk, and felt a droll confusion when our eyes
+met. It dirled through my heart like a dart. Fain would I have spoken to
+her, but aye my courage failed me, though whiles she gave me a smile
+when she passed. She used to go to the well every night with her two
+stoups to draw water, so I thought of watching to give her two apples
+which I had carried in my pocket for more than a week for that purpose.
+How she started when I stappit them into her hand, and brushed by
+without speaking!
+
+Jamie Coom, the blacksmith, who I aye jealoused was my rival, came up
+and asked Jess, with a loud guffaw, "Where is the tailor?" When I heard
+that, I took to my heels till I found myself on the little stool by the
+fireside with the hamely sound of my mother's wheel bum-bumming in my
+lug, like a gentle lullaby.
+
+The days of the years of my 'prenticeship having glided cannily over, I
+girt myself round about with a proud determination of at once cutting my
+mother's apron-string. So I set out for Edinburgh in search of a
+journeyman's place, which I got the very first day in the Grassmarket.
+My lodging was up six pairs of stairs, in a room which I rented for
+half-a-crown a week, coals included; but my heart was sea-sick of
+Edinburgh folk and town manners, for which I had no stomach. I could
+form no friendly acquaintanceship with a living soul. Syne I abode by
+myself, like St. John in the Isle of Patmos, on spare allowance, making
+a sheep-head serve me for three days' kitchen.
+
+Everything around me seemed to smell of sin and pollution, and often did
+I commune with my own heart, that I would rather be a sober, poor,
+honest man in the country, able to clear my day and way by the help of
+Providence, than the provost himself, my lord though he be, or even the
+mayor of London, with his velvet gown trailing for yards in the glaur
+behind him, or riding about the streets in a coach made of clear crystal
+and wheels of beaten gold.
+
+But when my heart was sickening unto death, I fell in with the greatest
+blessing of my life, Nanse Cromie, a bit wench of a lassie frae the
+Lauder direction, who had come to be a servant in the flat below our
+workshop, and whom I often met on the stairs.
+
+If ever a man loved, and loved like mad, it was me; and I take no shame
+in the confession. Let them laugh who like; honest folk, I pity them;
+such know not the pleasures of virtuous affection. Matters were by and
+bye settled full tosh between us; and though the means of both parties
+were small, we were young, and able and willing to help one another.
+Nanse and me laid our heads together towards the taking a bit house in
+the fore-street of Dalkeith, and at our leisure bought the plenishing.
+
+Two or three days after Maister Wiggie, the minister, had gone through
+the ceremony of tying us together, my sign was nailed up, painted in
+black letters on a blue ground, with a picture of a jacket on one side
+and a pair of shears on the other; and I hung up a wheen ready-made
+waistcoats, caps, and Kilmarnock cowls in the window. Business in fact,
+flowed in upon us in a perfect torrent.
+
+Both Nanse and I found ourselves so proud of our new situation that we
+slipped out in the dark and had a prime look with a lantern at the sign,
+which was the prettiest ye ever saw, although some sandblind creatures
+had taken the neatly painted jacket for a goose.
+
+
+_II.--The Resurrection Men_
+
+
+A year or two after the birth and christening of wee Benjie, my son, I
+was cheated by a swindling black-aviced Englishman out of some weeks'
+lodgings and keep, and a pair of new velveteen knee-breeches.
+
+Then there arose a great surmise that some loons were playing false with
+the kirkyard; and, on investigation, it was found that four graves had
+been opened, and the bodies harled away to the college. Words cannot
+describe the fear, the dool, and the misery it caused, and the righteous
+indignation that burst through the parish.
+
+But what remead? It was to watch in the session-house with loaded guns,
+night about, three at a time. It was in November when my turn came. I
+never liked to go into the kirkyard after darkening, let-a-be sit
+through a long winter night with none but the dead around us. I felt a
+kind of qualm of faintness and downsinking about my heart and stomach,
+to the dispelling of which I took a thimbleful of spirits, and, tying my
+red comforter about my neck, I marched briskly to the session-house.
+
+Andrew Goldie, the pensioner, lent me his piece and loaded it to me. Not
+being well acquaint with guns, I kept the muzzle aye away from me, as it
+is every man's duty not to throw his precious life into jeopardy. A
+bench was set before the sessions-house fire, which bleezed brightly. My
+spirits rose, and I wondered, in my bravery, that a man like me should
+be afraid of anything. Nobody was there but a towzy, carroty-haired
+callant.
+
+The night was now pitmirk. The wind soughed amid the headstones and
+railings of the gentry (for we must all die), and the black corbies in
+the steeple-holes cackled and crawed in a fearsome manner. Oh, but it
+was lonesome and dreary; and in about an hour the laddie wanted to rin
+awa hame; but, trying to look brave, though half-frightened out of my
+seven senses, I said, "Sit down, sit down; I've baith whiskey and porter
+wi' me. Hae, man, there's a cawker to keep your heart warm; and set down
+that bottle of Deacon Jaffrey's best brown stout to get a toast."
+
+The wind blew like a hurricane; the rain began to fall in perfect
+spouts. Just in the heart of the brattle the grating of the yett turning
+on its rusty hinges was but too plainly heard.
+
+"The're coming; cock the piece, ye sumph!" cried the laddie, while his
+red hair rose, from his pow like feathers. "I hear them tramping on the
+gravel," and he turned the key in the lock and brizzed his back against
+the door like mad, shouting out, "For the Lord's sake, prime the gun, or
+our throats will be cut before you can cry Jack Robinson."
+
+I did the best I could, but the gun waggled to and fro like a cock's
+tail on a rainy day. I trust I was resigned to die, but od' it was a
+frightful thing to be out of one's bed to be murdered in an old
+session-house at the dead hour of the night by devils incarnate of
+ressurrection men with blacked faces, pistols, big sticks, and other
+deadly weapons.
+
+After all, it was only Isaac, the bethrel, who, when we let him in, said
+that he had just keppit four ressurrectioners louping over the wall. But
+that was a joke. I gave Isaac a dram to kep his heart up, and he sung
+and leuch as if he had been boozing with some of his drucken cronies;
+for feint a hair cared he about auld kirkyards, or vouts, or dead folk
+in their winding-sheets, with the wet grass growing over them. Then,
+although I tried to stop him, he began to tell stories of Eirish
+ressurrectioners, and ghaists, seen in the kirkyard at midnight.
+
+Suddenly a clap like thunder was heard, and the laddie, who had fallen
+asleep on the bench, jumped up and roared "Help!" "Murder!" "Thieves!"
+while Isaac bellowed out, "I'm dead! I'm killed!--shot through the head!
+Oh, oh, oh!" Surely, I had fainted away, for, when I came to myself, I
+found my red comforter loosed, my face all wet, Isaac rubbing down his
+waistcoat with his sleeve--the laddie swigging ale out of a bicker--and
+the brisk brown stout, which, by casting its cork, had caused all the
+alarm, whizz-whizz, whizzing in the chimney lug.
+
+
+_III.--The Friends of the People_
+
+
+The sough of war and invasion flew over the land at this time, like a
+great whirlwind; and the hearts of men died within their persons with
+fear and trembling. Abroad the heads of crowned kings were cut off, and
+great dukes and lords were thrown into dark dungeons, or obligated to
+flee for their lives to foreign countries.
+
+But worst of all the trouble seemed a smittal one, and even our own land
+began to show symptoms of the plague spot. Agents of the Spirit of
+Darkness, calling themselves the Friends of the People, held secret
+meetings, and hatched plots to blow up our blessed king and
+constitution. Yet the business, though fearsome in the main, was in some
+parts almost laughable. Everything was to be divided, and everyone made
+alike. Houses and lands were to be distributed by lots, and the mighty
+man and the beggar--the old man and the hobble-de-hoy--the industrious
+man and the spendthrift, the maimed, the cripple, and the blind, the
+clever man of business, and the haveril simpleton, made all just
+brethern, and alike. Save us! but to think of such nonsense! At one of
+their meetings, held at the sign of the Tappet Hen and the Tankard,
+there was a prime fight of five rounds between Tammy Bowsie, the snab,
+and auld Thrashem, the dominie, about their drawing cuts which was to
+get Dalkeith Palace, and which Newbottle Abbey! Oh, sic riff-raff!
+
+It was a brave notion of the king to put the loyalty of the land to the
+test, that the daft folk might be dismayed, and that the clanjamphrey
+might be tumbled down before their betters, like the windle-straes in a
+hurricane. And so they were. Such crowds came forward when the names of
+the volunteers were taken down. I will never forget the first day that I
+got my regimentals on, and when I looked myself in the glass, just to
+think I was a sodger who never in my life could thole the smell of
+powder! Oh, but it was grand! I sometimes fancied myself a general, and
+giving the word of command. Big Sam, who was a sergeant in the
+fencibles, and enough to have put five Frenchmen to flight any day of
+the year, whiles came to train us; but as nature never intended me for
+the soldiering trade, I never got out of the awkward squad, though I had
+two or three neighbours to keep me in countenance.
+
+We all cracked very crouse about fighting; but one dark night we got a
+fleg in sober earnest. Jow went the town bell, and row-de-dow gaed the
+drums, and all in a minute was confusion and uproar in ilka street. I
+was seized with a severe shaking of the knees and a flapping at the
+heart, when, through the garret window, I saw the signal posts were in a
+bleeze, and that the French had landed. This was in reality to be a
+soldier! I never got such a fright since the day I was cleckit. There
+was such a noise and hullabaloo in the streets, as if the Day of
+Judgment had come to find us all unprepared.
+
+Notwithstanding, we behaved ourselves like true-blue Scotsmen, called
+forth to fight the battles of our country, and if the French had come,
+as they did not come, they would have found that to their cost, as sure
+as my name is Mansie. However, it turned out that it was a false alarm,
+and that the thief Buonaparte had not landed at Dunbar, as it was
+jealoused; so, after standing under arms for half the night, we were
+sent home to our beds.
+
+But next day we were taken out to be taught the art of firing. We went
+through our motions bravely--to load, ram down the cartridge, made
+ready, present, fire. But so flustered and confused was I that I never
+had mind to pull the tricker, though I rammed down a fresh cartridge at
+the word of command. At the end of the firing the sergeant of the
+company ordered all that had loaded pieces to come to the front, and six
+of us stepped out in a little line in face of the regiment. Our pieces
+were cocked, and at the word "Fire!" off they went. It was an act of
+desperation on my part to draw the tricker, and I had hardly well shut
+my blinkers when I got such a thump on the shoulder as knocked me
+backwards, head over heels, on the grass. When I came to my senses and
+found myself not killed outright, and my gun two or three ells away, I
+began to rise up. Then I saw one of the men going forward to lift the
+fatal piece, but my care for the safety of others overcame the sense of
+my own peril. "Let alane, let alane!" cried I to him, "and take care of
+yoursell, for it has to gang off five times yet." I thought in my
+innocence that we should hear as many reports as I had crammed
+cartridges down her muzzle. This was a sore joke against me for a length
+of time; but I tholed it patiently, considering cannily within myself,
+that even Johnny Cope himself had not learned the art of war in a single
+morning.
+
+
+_IV.--My First and Last Play_
+
+
+Maister Glen, a farmer from the howes of the Lammermoor, Hills, a
+far-awa cousin of our neighbour Widow Grassie, came to Dalkeith to buy a
+horse at our fair. He put up free of expense at the widow's, who asked
+me to join him and her at a bit warm dinner, as may be, being a
+stranger, he would not like to use the freedom of drinking by himself--a
+custom which is at the best an unsocial one--especially with none but
+women-folk near him.
+
+When we got our joy filled for the second time, and began to be better
+acquainted, we became merry, and cracked away just like two pen-guns. I
+asked him, ye see, about sheep and cows, and ploughing and thrashing,
+and horses and carts, and fallow land and lambing-time, and such like;
+and he, in his turn, made inquiries regarding broad and narrow cloth,
+Shetland hose, and mittens, thread, and patent shears, measuring, and
+all other particulars belonging to our trade, which he said, at long and
+last, after we had joked together, was a power better one than the
+farming line; and he promised to bind his auldest callant 'prentice to
+me to the tailoring trade.
+
+On the head of this auld Glen and I had another jug, three being cannie,
+after which we were both a wee tozymozy. Mistress Grassie saw plainly
+that we were getting into a state where we could not easily make a halt,
+and brought in the tea-things and told us that a company of strolling
+players had come to the town and were to give an exhibition in Laird
+Wheatley's barn. Many a time I had heard of play-acting, and I
+determined to run the risk of Maister Wiggie, our minister's rebuke, for
+the transgression. Auld Glen, being as full of nonsense and as fain to
+gratify his curiosity as myself, volunteered to pay the ransom of a
+shilling for admission, so we went to the barn, which had been browley
+set out for the occasion by Johnny Hammer, the joiner.
+
+The place was choke-full, just to excess, and when the curtain was
+hauled up in came a decent old gentleman in great distress, and implored
+all the powers of heaven and earth to help him find his runaway daughter
+that had decamped with some ne'er-do-weel loon of a half-pay captain.
+Out he went stumping on the other side, determined, he said, to find
+them, though he should follow them to Johnny Groat's house, or something
+to that effect. Hardly was his back turned than in came the birkie and
+the very young lady the old gentleman described, arm-and-arm together,
+laughing like daft Dog on it! It was a shameless piece of business. As
+true as death, before all the crowd of folk, he put his arm round her
+waist and called her his sweetheart, and love, and dearie, and darling,
+and everything that is fine.
+
+In the middle of their goings on, the sound of a coming foot was heard,
+and the lassie, taking guilt to her, cried out, "Hide me, hide me, for
+the sake of goodness, for yonder comes my old father!" No sooner said
+than done. In he stappit her into a closit, and, after shutting the door
+on her, he sat down upon a chair, pretending to be asleep in the
+twinkling of a walking-stick. The old father came bounsing in, shook him
+up, and gripping him by the cuff of the neck, aske him, in a fierce
+tone, what he had made of his daughter. Never since I was born did I
+ever see such brazen-faced impudence! The rascal had the face to say at
+once that he had not seen the lassie for a month. As a man, as a father,
+as an elder of our kirk, my corruption was raised, for I aye hated lying
+as a poor cowardly sin, so I called out, "Dinna believe him, auld
+gentleman; he's telling a parcel of lees. Never saw her for a month!
+Just open that press-door, and ye'll see whether I am speaking truth or
+not!" The old man stared and looked dumfounded; and the young one,
+instead of running forward with his double nieves to strike me, began
+a-laughing, as if I had done him a good turn.
+
+But never since I had a being did I ever witness such an uproar and
+noise as immediately took place. The whole house was so glad that the
+scoundrel had been exposed that they set up siccan a roar of laughter,
+and thumped away at siccan a rate with their feet that down fell the
+place they called the gallery, all the folk in't being hurl'd
+topsy-turvy among the sawdust on the floor below.
+
+Then followed cries of "Murder," "Hold off me," "My ribs are in," "I'm
+killed," "I'm speechless." There was a rush to the door, the lights were
+knocked out, and such tearing, swearing, tumbling, and squealing was
+never witnessed in the memory of man since the building of Babel. I was
+carried off my feet, my wind was fairly gone, and a sick qualm came over
+me, which entirely deprived me of my senses. On opening my eyes in the
+dark, I found myself leaning with my broadside against the wall on the
+opposite side of the close, with the tail of my Sunday coat docked by
+the hainch buttons. So much for plays and play-actors--the first and the
+last I trust in grace that I shall ever see.
+
+Next morning I had to take my breakfast in bed, a thing very uncommon to
+me, except on Sunday mornings whiles, when each one according to the
+bidding of the Fourth Commandment, has a licence to do as he likes.
+Having a desperate sore head, our wife, poor body, put a thimbleful of
+brandy into my first cup of tea which had a wonderful virtue in putting
+all things to rights.
+
+In the afternoon Thomas Burlings, the ruling elder in the kirk, popped
+into the shop, and, in our two-handed crack, after asking me in a dry,
+curious way if I had come by no skaith in the business of the play, he
+said the thing had now spread far and wide, and was making a great noise
+in the world. I thought the body a wee sharp in his observe, so I
+pretended to take it quite lightly. Then he began to tell me a wheen
+stories, each one having to do with drinking.
+
+"It's a wearyfu' thing that whisky," said Thomas. "I wish it could be
+banished to Botany Bay."
+
+"It is that," said I. "Muckle and nae little sin does it breed and
+produce in this world."
+
+"I'm glad," quoth Thomas, stroking down his chin in a slee way, "I'm
+glad the guilty should see the folly o' their ain ways; it's the first
+step, ye ken, till amendment. And indeed I tell't Maister Wiggie, when
+he sent me here, that I could almost become guid for your being mair
+wary of your conduct for the future time to come."
+
+This was a thunder-clap to me, but I said briskly, "So ye're after some
+session business in this visit, are ye?"
+
+"Ye've just guessed it," answered Thomas, sleeking down his front hair
+with his fingers in a sober way. "We had a meeting this forenoon, and it
+was resolved ye should stand a public rebuke in the meeting house next
+Sunday."
+
+"Hang me if I do!" answered I. "Not for all the ministers and elders
+that were ever cleckit. I was born a free man, I live in a free country,
+I am the subject of a free king and constitution, and I'll be shot
+before I submit to such rank diabolical papistry."
+
+"Hooly and fairly, Mansie," quoth Thomas. "They'll maybe no be sae hard
+as they threaten. But ye ken, my friend, I'm speaking to you as a
+brither; it was an unco'-like business for an elder, not only to gang
+till a play, which is ane of the deevil's rendevouses, but to gan there
+in a state of liquor, making yourself a world's wonder, and you an elder
+of our kirk! I put the question to yourself soberly."
+
+His threatening I could despise; but ah, his calm, brotherly, flattering
+way I could not thole with. So I said till him, "Weel, weel, Thomas, I
+ken I have done wrong, and I am sorry for't; they'll never find me in
+siccan a scrape again."
+
+Thomas Burlings, in a friendly way, shook hands with me; telling that he
+would go back and plead with the session in my behalf. To do him justice
+he was not worse than his word, for I have aye attended the kirk as
+usual, standing, when it came to my rotation, at the plate, and nobody,
+gentle or simple, ever spoke to me on the subject of the playhouse, or
+minted the matter of the rebuke from that day to this.
+
+
+_V.--Benjie a Barber_
+
+
+When wee Benjie came to his thirteenth year, many and long were the
+debates between his fond mother and me what trade we would bring him up
+to. His mother thought that he had just the physog of an admiral, and
+when the matter was put to himsell, Benjie said quite briskly he would
+like to be a gentleman. At which I broke through my rule never to lift
+my fist to the bairn, and gave him such a yerk in the cheek with the
+loof of my hand, as made, I am sure, his lugs ring, and sent him dozing
+to the door like a peerie.
+
+We discussed, among other trades and professions, a lawyer's advocatt, a
+preaching minister, a doctor, a sweep, a rowley-powley man, a
+penny-pie-man, a man-cook, that easiest of all lives, a gentleman's
+gentleman; but in the end Nanse, when I suggested a barber, gave a
+mournful look and said in a state of Christian resignation, "Tak' your
+ain way, gudeman."
+
+And so Benjie was apprenticed to be a barber, for, as I made the
+observe, "Commend me to a safe employment, and a profitable. They may
+give others the nick, and draw blood, but catch them hurting themselves.
+The foundations of the hair-cutting and the shaving line are as sure as
+that of the everlasting rocks; beards being likely to roughen, and heads
+to require polling as long as wood grows and water runs."
+
+Benjie is now principal shop-man in a Wallflower Hair-Powder and Genuine
+Macassar Oil Warehouse, kept by three Frenchmen, called Moosies
+Peroukey, in the West End of London. But, though our natural enemies, he
+writes me that he has found them agreeable and shatty masters, full of
+good manners and pleasant discourse, and, except in their language,
+almost Christians.
+
+I aye thought Benjie was a genius, and he is beginning to show himself
+his father's son, being in thoughts of taking out a patent for making a
+hair-oil from rancid butter. If he succeeds it will make the callant's
+fortune. But he must not marry Madamoselle Peroukey without my special
+consent, as Nance says that her having a French woman for a
+daughter-in-law would be the death of her.
+
+As for myself, I have now retired from business with my guid wife Nanse
+to our ain cottage at Lugton, with a large garden and henhouse attached,
+there to spend the evening of our days. I have enjoyed a pleasant run of
+good health through life, reading my Bible more in hope than fear; our
+salvation, and not our destruction, being, I should suppose, its
+purpose. And I trust that the overflowing of a grateful heart will not
+be reckoned against me for unrighteousness.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+
+
+JAMES MORIER
+
+
+The Adventures of Hajji Baba of Ispahan
+
+
+     "Hajji Baba" stands by itself among the innumerable books
+     written of the East by Europeans. For these inimitable
+     concessions of a Persian rogue are intended to give a picture
+     of Oriental life as seen by Oriental and not by Western
+     eyes---to present the country and people of Persia from a
+     strictly Persian standpoint. This daring attempt to look at
+     the East from the inside, as it were, is acknowledged to be
+     successful; all Europeans familiar with Persia testify to the
+     truth, often very caustic truth, of James Morier's
+     portraiture. The author of "The Adventures of Hajji Baba of
+     Ispahan" was born about 1780, and spent most of his days as a
+     diplomatic representative of Great Britain in the East. He
+     first visited Persia in 1808-09, as private secretary to the
+     mission mentioned in the closing pages of "Hajji Baba." He
+     returned to Persia in 1811-12, and again in 1814, and wrote
+     two books about the country. But the thoroughness and candour
+     of his intimacy with the Persian character were not fully
+     revealed until the publication of "Hajji Baba" in 1824. So
+     popular was the work that Morier wrote an amusing sequel to it
+     entitled "Hajji Baba in England." He died on March 23, 1849.
+
+
+_I.--The Turcomans_
+
+
+My father, Kerbelai Hassan, was one of the most celebrated barbers of
+Ispahan. I was the son of his second wife, and as I was born when my
+father and mother were on a pilgrimage to the tomb of Hosein, in
+Kerbelah, I was called Hajji, or the pilgrim, a name which has procured
+for me a great deal of unmerited respect, because that honoured title is
+seldom conferred on any but those who have made the great pilgrimage to
+the tomb of the blessed Prophet of Mecca.
+
+I was taught to read and write by a mollah, or priest, who kept a school
+in a mosque near at hand; when not in school I attended the shop, and by
+the time I was sixteen it would be difficult to say whether I was most
+accomplished as a barber or a scholar. My father's shop, being situated
+near the largest caravanserai in the city, was the common resort of the
+foreign merchants; and one of them, Osman Aga, of Bagdad, took a great
+fancy to me, and so excited me by describing the different cities he had
+visited, that I soon felt a strong desire to travel. He was then in want
+of someone to keep his accounts, and as I associated the two
+qualifications of barber and scribe, he made me such advantageous offers
+that I agreed to follow him.
+
+His purpose was to journey to Meshed with the object of purchasing the
+lambskins of Bokhara. Our caravan proceeded without impediment to
+Tehran; but the dangerous part of the journey was yet to come, as a
+tribe of Turcomans were known to infest the road.
+
+We advanced by slow marches over a parched and dreary country, and our
+conversation chiefly turned upon the Turcomans. Everyone vaunted his own
+courage; my master above the rest, his teeth actually chattering with
+apprehension, boasted of what he would do in case we were attacked. But
+when we in reality perceived a body of Turcomans coming down upon us,
+the scene instantly changed. Some ran away; others, and among them my
+master, yielded to intense fear, and began to exclaim: "O Allah! O
+Imams! O Mohammed the Prophet, we are gone! We are dying! We are dead!"
+A shower of arrows, which the enemy discharged as they came in, achieved
+their conquest, and we soon became their prey. The Turcomans having
+completed their plunder, placed each of us behind a horseman, and we
+passed through wild tracts of mountainous country to a large plain,
+covered with the black tents and the flocks and herds of our enemies.
+
+My master was set to tend camels in the hills; but when the Turcomans
+discovered my abilities as a barber and a surgeon, I became a general
+favourite, and gained the confidence of the chief of the tribe himself.
+Finally, he determined to permit me to accompany him on a predatory
+excursion into Persia--a permission which I hoped would lead to my
+escaping. I was the more ready to do so, in that I secretly possessed
+fifty ducats. These had been concealed by my master, Osman Aga, in his
+turban at the outset of his journey. The turban had been taken from him
+and carried to the women's quarters, whence I had recovered it. I had
+some argument with myself as to whether I ought to restore the ducats to
+him; but I persuaded myself that the money was now mine rather than his.
+"Had it not been for me," I said, "the money was lost for ever; who,
+therefore, has a better claim to it than myself?"
+
+We carried off much property on the raid, but as our only prisoners were
+a court poet, a carpet-spreader, and a penniless cadi, we had little to
+hope for in the way of ransom. On our return journey we perceived a
+large body of men, too compact for a caravan--plainly some great
+personage and his escort. The Turcomans retired hastily, but I lagged
+behind, seeing in this eventuality a means of escape. I was soon
+overtaken and seized, plundered of my fifty ducats and everything else,
+and dragged before the chief personage of the party--a son of the Shah,
+on his way to become governor of Khorassan.
+
+Kissing the ground before him, I related my story, and petitioned for
+the return of my fifty ducats. The rogues who had taken the money were
+brought before the prince, who ordered them to be bastinadoed until they
+produced it. After a few blows they confessed, and gave up the ducats,
+which were carried to the prince. He counted the money, put it under the
+cushion on which he was reclining, and said loudly to me, "You are
+dismissed."
+
+"My money, where is it?" I exclaimed.
+
+"Give him the shoe," said the prince to his master of the ceremonies,
+who struck me over the mouth with the iron-shod heel of his slipper,
+saying: "Go in peace, or you'll have your ears cut off."
+
+"You might as well expect a mule to give up a mouthful of fresh grass,"
+said an old muleteer to whom I told my misfortune, "as a prince to give
+up money that has once been in his hands."
+
+Reaching Meshed in a destitute state, I practised for a time the trade
+of water-carrier, and then became an itinerant vendor of smoke. I was
+not very scrupulous about giving my tobacco pure; and when one day the
+_Mohtesib_, or inspector, came to me, disguised as an old woman, I gave
+him one of my worst mixtures. Instantly he summoned half a dozen stout
+fellows; my feet were noosed, and blow after blow was inflicted on them
+until they were a misshapen mass of flesh and gore. All that I possessed
+was taken from me, and I crawled home miserably on my hands and knees.
+
+I felt I had entered Meshed in an unlucky hour, and determined to leave
+it. Dressed as a dervish I joined a caravan for Tehran.
+
+
+_II.--The Fate of the Lovely_
+
+
+I at first resolved to follow the career of a dervish, tempted thereto
+by the confidences of my companion, Dervish Sefer, who befriended me
+after my unhappy encounter with the Mohtesib.
+
+"With one-fiftieth of your accomplishments, and a common share of
+effrontery," he told me, "you may command both the purses and the lives
+of your hearers. By impudence I have been a prophet, by impudence I have
+wrought miracles--by impudence, in short, I live a life of great ease."
+
+But a chance came to me of stealing a horse, the owner of which
+confessed he had himself stolen it; and by selling it I hoped to add to
+the money I had obtained as a dervish, and thereby get into some
+situation where I might gain my bread honestly. Unfortunately, when I
+had reached Tehran, the real owner of the horse appeared. I was
+compelled to refund to the dealer the money I had been paid for the
+horse, and had some difficulty, when we went before the magistrate at
+the bazaar, in proving that I was not a thief. I had heard that the
+court poet, with whom I had formed a friendship during his captivity
+among the Turcomans, had escaped and returned to Tehran. To him,
+therefore, I repaired, and through his good offices I secured a post as
+assistant to Mirza Ahmak, the king's chief physician.
+
+Although the physician was willing to have my services, he was too
+avaricious to pay me anything for them; and I would not have remained
+long with him had I not fallen in love. In the heat of summer I made any
+bed in the open air, in a corner of a terrace that overlooked an inner
+court where the women's apartments were situated. I came presently to
+exchanging glances with a beautiful Curdish slave. From glances we came
+to conversation. At length, when Zeenab--for that was her name--was
+alone in the women's apartments, she would invite me down from the
+terrace, and we would spend long hours feasting and singing together.
+
+But our felicity was destined to be interrupted. The Shah was about to
+depart for his usual summer campaign, and, according to his wont, paid a
+round of visits to noblemen, thereby reaping for himself a harvest of
+presents. The physician, being reputed rich, was marked out as prey fit
+for the royal grasp. The news of the honour to be paid him left him
+half-elated at the distinction, half-trembling at the ruin that awaited
+his finances. The Shah came with his full suite, dined gorgeously at my
+master's expense, and, as is customary, visited the women's apartments.
+Presently came the news that my master had presented the Shah with
+Zeenab! She was to be trained as a dancing-girl, and was to dance before
+the Shah on his return from the campaign.
+
+When Zeenab was thus removed out of my reach, I had no inducement to
+remain in the physician's service. I therefore sought and secured a post
+as _nasakchi_, or officer of the chief executioner. I was now a person
+of authority with the crowd, and used my stick so freely upon their
+heads and backs that I soon acquired a reputation for courage. Nor did I
+fail to note the advice given to me by my brother officers as to the
+making of money by extortion--how an officer inflicts the bastinado
+fiercely or gently according to the capacity of the sufferer to pay; how
+bribes may be obtained from villages anxious not to have troops
+quartered upon them, and so on. I lived in such an atmosphere of
+violence and cruelty--I heard of nothing but slitting noses, putting out
+eyes, and chopping men in two--that I am persuaded I could almost have
+impaled my own father.
+
+The chief executioner was a tall and bony man, extremely ferocious.
+"Give me good hard fighting," he was accustomed to declare; "let me have
+my thrust with the lance, and my cut with the sabre, and I want no more.
+We all have our weaknesses--these are mine." This terrible man
+accompanied the Shah in his campaign, and I and the others went along
+with him, in the army that was to expel the Muscovite infidels from
+Georgia. Having heard that the Muscovites were posted on the Pembaki
+river, the chief executioner, with a large body of cavalry and infantry,
+proceeded to advance upon them.
+
+On reaching the river, we found two Muscovite soldiers on the opposite
+bank. The chief put on a face of the greatest resolution. "Go, seize,
+strike, kill!" he exclaimed. "Bring me their heads!"
+
+Several men dashed into the river, but the Russians, firing steadily,
+killed two of them, whereupon the rest retreated; nor could all the
+chief's oaths, entreaties, and offers of money persuade anybody to go
+forward.
+
+While we were thus parleying, a shot hit the chief executioner's
+stirrup, which awoke his fears to such a degree that he recalled his
+troops, and himself rode hastily away, exclaiming, "Curses be on their
+beards! Whoever fought after this fashion? Killing, killing, as if we
+were so many hogs! They will not run away, do all you can to them. They
+are worse than brutes! O Allah, Allah, if there was no dying in the
+case, how the Persians would fight!"
+
+On our return to the camp, a proclamation was issued announcing that an
+army of 50,000 infidels had been vanquished by the all-victorious armies
+of the Shah, that 10,000 of the dogs had given up their souls, and that
+the prisoners were so many that the prices of slaves had diminished a
+hundred per cent.
+
+When we went back with the Shah to Tehran, a horrid event occurred which
+plunged me in the greatest misery. I heard that Zeenab was ill, and
+unable to dance before the Shah; and, knowing the royal methods of
+treating unsatisfactory slaves, I feared greatly for the consequences.
+My fears were warranted. I was ordered, with others, to wait below the
+tower of the royal harem at midnight and bear away a corpse. We saw a
+woman struggling with two men at the top of the tower. The woman was
+flung over. We rushed forward. At my feet, in the death-agony, lay my
+beloved Zeenab. I hung over her in the deepest despair; my feelings
+could not be concealed from the ruffians around me.
+
+I abandoned everything, and left Tehran next day determined to become a
+real dervish, and spend the rest of my life in penitence and privations.
+
+
+_III.--Among the Holy Men_
+
+
+As I was preparing next night to sleep on the bare ground outside a
+caravanserai--for I was almost destitute--I saw a horseman ride up whom
+I recognised. It was one of the nasakchis who had assisted in the burial
+of Zeenab. I had been betrayed, then; my love for the king's slave had
+been revealed, and they were pursuing me.
+
+I went into the caravanserai, sought out a friend--the dervish whom I
+had known at Meshed--and asked his advice. "I can expect no mercy from
+this man," I said, "particularly as I have not enough money to offer
+him, for I know his price. Where shall I go?"
+
+The dervish replied, "You must lose not a moment in getting within the
+sanctuary of the tomb of Fatimeh at Kom. You can reach it before
+morning, and then you will be safe even from the Shah's power."
+
+"But how shall I live when I am there?" I asked.
+
+"I shall soon overtake you, and then, Inshallah (please God), you will
+not fare so ill as you imagine."
+
+As the day broke, I could distinguish the gilt cupola of the tomb before
+me; and as I perceived the horseman at some distance behind, I made all
+possible speed until I had passed the gateway of the sanctuary. Kissing
+the threshold of the tomb, I said my prayers with all the fervency of
+one who has got safe from a tempest into port.
+
+My friend the dervish arrived soon afterwards, and immediately urged
+upon me the importance of saying my prayers, keeping fasts, and wearing
+a long and mortified countenance. As he assured me that unless I made a
+pretence of deep piety I should be starved or stoned to death, I assumed
+forthwith the character of a rigid Mussulman. I rose at the first call,
+made my ablutions at the cistern in the strictest forms, and then prayed
+in the most conspicuous spot I could find.
+
+By the intensity of my devotion I won the goodwill of Mirza Abdul
+Cossim, the first _mashtehed_ (divine) of Persia, and by his influence I
+obtained a pardon from the Shah. Now that I was free from the sanctuary,
+I became anxious to gain some profit by my fame for piety; so I applied
+to Mirza Abdul Cossim, who straightway sent me to assist the mollah
+Nadan, one of the principal men of the law in Tehran. My true path of
+advancement, I believed, was now open. I was on the way to become a
+mollah.
+
+Nadan was an exemplary Mussulman in all outward matters; but I was not
+long in discovering that he had two ruling passions--jealousy of the
+chief priest of Tehran, and a hunger for money. My earliest duty was to
+gratify his second passion by negotiating temporary marriages for
+handsome fees. In these transactions we prospered fairly well; but
+unfortunately Nadan's desire to supplant the chief priest led him to
+stir up the populace to attack the Christians of the city, and plunder
+their property. The Shah was then in a humour to protect the Christians;
+consequently, Nadan had his beard plucked out by the roots, was mounted
+on an ass with his face to its tail, and was driven out of the city with
+blows and execrations.
+
+Once more homeless and almost penniless, not knowing what to do, I
+strolled in the dusk into a bath, and undressed. The bath was empty save
+for one man, whom I recognized as the chief priest. He was splashing
+about in a manner that struck me as remarkable for so sedate a
+character; then a most unusual floundering, attended with a gurgling of
+the throat, struck my ear. To my horror, I saw that he was drowned. Here
+was a predicament; it was inevitable that I should be charged with his
+murder.
+
+Suddenly it occurred to me that I bore a close resemblance to the dead
+man. For an hour or two, at any rate, I might act as an impostor. So, in
+the dim light, I dressed myself in the chief priest's clothes, and
+repaired to his house.
+
+I was there received by two young slaves, who paid me attentions that
+would at most times have delighted me; but just then they filled me with
+apprehension, and I was heartily glad when I got rid of the slaves and
+fastened the door. I then explored the chief priest's pockets, and found
+therein two letters. One was from the chief executioner--a notorious
+drunkard--begging permission to take unlimited wine for his health's
+sake. The other was from a priest at the mollah's village saying that he
+had extracted from the peasantry one hundred tomauns (L80), which would
+be delivered to a properly qualified messenger.
+
+To the chief executioner I wrote cheerfully granting the permission he
+sought, and suggesting that the loan of a well-caparisoned horse would
+not be amiss. I wrote a note to the priest requesting that the money be
+delivered to the bearer, our confidential Hajji Baba. Next morning I
+rose early, and made certain alterations in the chief priest's clothes
+so as to avoid detection. I went to the chief executioner's house,
+presented the letter, and received the horse, upon which I rode hastily
+away to the village. Having obtained the hundred tomauns I escaped
+across the frontier to Bagdad.
+
+
+_IV.--Hajji and the Infidels_
+
+
+On reaching Bagdad, I sought the house of my old master, Osman Aga, long
+since returned from his captivity, and through his assistance, and with
+my hundred tomauns as capital, I was able to set up in business as a
+merchant in pipe-sticks, and, having made myself as like as possible to
+a native of Bagdad, I travelled in Osman Aga's company to
+Constantinople. Having a complaint to make, I went to Mirza Ferouz,
+Persian ambassador on a special mission to Constantinople.
+
+"Your wit and manner are agreeable," he said to me; "you have seen the
+world and its business; you are a man who can make play under another's
+beard. Such I am in want of."
+
+"I am your slave and your servant," I replied.
+
+"Lately an ambassador came from Europe to Tehran," said Mirza Ferouz,
+"saying he was sent, with power to make a treaty, by a certain
+Boonapoort, calling himself Emperor of the French. He promised, that
+Georgia should be reconquered for us from the Russians, and that the
+English should be driven from India. Soon afterwards the English
+infidels in India sent agents to impede the reception of the Frenchman.
+We soon discovered that much was to be got between the rival curs of
+uncleanness; and the true object of my mission here is to discover all
+that is to be known of these French and English. In this you can help
+me."
+
+This proposal I gladly accepted, and went forth to interview a scribe of
+the Reis Effendi with whom I had struck up a friendship. He told me that
+Boonapoort was indeed a rare and daring infidel, who, from a mere
+soldier, became the sultan of an immense nation, and gave the law to all
+the Europeans.
+
+"And is there not a tribe of infidels called Ingliz?" I asked.
+
+"Yes, truly. They live in an island, are powerful in ships, and in
+watches and broad-cloth are unrivalled. They have a shah, but it is a
+farce to call him by that title. The power lies with certain houses full
+of madmen, who meet half the year round for the purposes of quarrelling.
+Nothing can be settled in the state, be it only whether a rebellious aga
+is to have his head cut off and his property confiscated, or some such
+trifle, until these people have wrangled. Let us bless Allah and our
+Prophet that we are not born to eat the miseries of the poor English
+infidels, but can smoke our pipes in quiet on the shores of our own
+peaceful Bosphorus!"
+
+I returned to my ambassador full of the information I had acquired;
+daily he sent me in search of fresh particulars, and before long I felt
+able to draw up the history of Europe that the Shah had ordered Mirza
+Ferouz to provide. So well pleased was the ambassador with my labours,
+that he announced his intention of taking me back to Persia and
+continuing me in Government employ. To this I readily agreed, knowing
+that, with the protection of men in office, I might show myself in my
+own country with perfect safety.
+
+On out return to Tehran we found an English ambassador negotiating a
+treaty, the French having gone away unsuccessful. Owing to the knowledge
+I had acquired of European affairs when at Constantinople, I was much
+employed in these transactions with the infidels, and when I gained the
+confidence of the grand vizier himself, destiny almost as much as
+whispered that the buffetings of the world had taken their departure
+from me.
+
+The negotiations reached a difficult point, and threatened to break
+down; neither the Persians nor the infidels would give way. I was sent
+by the grand vizier on a delicate mission to the English ambassador. I
+prevailed. I returned to the grand vizier with a sack of gold for him
+and the promise of a diamond ring, and the treaty was signed.
+
+It was decided to send an ambassador to England. Mirza Berouz was
+appointed, and I was chosen as his first mirza, or secretary. What
+pleased me most of all was that I was sent to Ispahan to raise part of
+the money for the presents to be taken to England. Hajji Baba, the
+barber's son, entered his native place as Mirza Hajji Baba, the Shah's
+deputy, with all the parade of a man of consequence, and on a mission
+that gave him unbounded opportunity of enriching himself. I found
+myself, after all my misfortunes, at the summit of what, in my Persian
+eyes, was perfect human bliss.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+
+
+DAVID CHRISTIE MURRAY
+
+
+The Way of the World
+
+
+     David Christie Murray was born at West Bromwich, England,
+     April 13, 1847, and began his journalistic career at
+     Birmingham. In 1873 he moved to London and joined the staff of
+     the "Daily News" and in 1878 he was correspondent of the
+     "Times" and the "Scotsman" in the Russo-Turkish war. He now
+     began to transfer his abundant experience of life to the pages
+     of fiction. His first novel, "A Life's Atonement," was
+     published in 1880, and was followed a year later by "Joseph's
+     Coat." In "The Way of the World," published in 1884, his art
+     as a story-teller and his keen observation of men and manners
+     were displayed as strikingly as in any of his later works--
+     several of which were written in collaboration with other
+     authors. Altogether he produced over thirty volumes of short
+     stories and novels single-handed. At the end of last century
+     he emerged from his literary seclusion in Wales and became
+     active in current affairs; he was one of the leading English
+     champions of Dreyfus, and obtained the warm friendship of
+     Emile Zola. He died on August 1, 1907.
+
+
+_I.--The Upstart_
+
+
+Your sympathies are requested for Mr. Bolsover Kimberley, a gentleman
+embarrassed beyond measure.
+
+Mr. Kimberley was thirty-five years of age. He was meek, and had no
+features to speak of. His hair was unassuming, and his whiskers were too
+shy to curl. He was a clerk in a solicitor's office in the town of
+Gallowbay, and he seemed likely to live to the end of his days in the
+pursuit of labours no more profitable or pretentious.
+
+A cat may look at a king. A solicitor's clerk may love an earl's
+daughter. It was an undeniable madness in Kimberley even to dream of
+loving the Lady Ella Santerre. He knew perfectly well what a fool he
+was; but he was in love for all that.
+
+To Bolsover Kimberley, seated in a little room with a dingy red desk and
+cobwebbed skylight, there entered Mr. Ragshaw, senior clerk to Messrs.
+Begg, Batter, and Bagg, solicitors.
+
+"My dear Mr. Kimberley," said Mr. Ragshaw, "allow me the honour of
+shaking hands with you. I believe that I am the first bearer of good
+news."
+
+Mr. Kimberley turned pale.
+
+"My firm, sir," pursued Mr. Ragshaw, "represented the trustees of the
+late owner of the Gallowbay Estate, who died three months ago at the age
+of twenty, leaving no known relatives. We instituted a search, which
+resulted in the discovery of an indisputable title to the estate. Permit
+me to congratulate you, sir--the estate is yours."
+
+Bolsover Kimberley gasped, and his voice was harsh.
+
+"How much?"
+
+"The estate, sir, is now approximately valued at forty-seven thousand
+per annum."
+
+Kimberley lurched forward, and fell over in a dead faint. Mr. Ragshaw's
+attentions restored him to his senses, and he drank a little water, and
+sobbed hysterically.
+
+When he had recovered a little, he arose weakly from the one office
+chair, took off his office coat, rolled it up neatly, and put it in his
+desk. Then he put on his walking coat and his hat and went out.
+
+"Don't you think, Mr. Kimberley," asked Mr. Ragshaw, with profound
+respect, "that a little something----"
+
+They were outside the Windgall Arms, and Kimberley understood.
+
+"Why, yes, sir," he said; "but I never keep it in the 'ouse, and having
+had to pay a tailor's bill this week, I don't happen----"
+
+"My _dear_ sir, allow me!" said Ragshaw, with genuine emotion.
+
+The champagne, the dinner that followed, the interviews with pressmen,
+the excitement and obsequiousness of everybody, conveyed to Kimberley's
+mind, in a dizzy sort of a way, that he was somebody in the world, and
+ought to be proud of it. But his long life of servitude, his shyness and
+want of nerve, all weighed heavily upon him, and he was far from being
+happy.
+
+Mr. Begg, senior partner of Messrs. Begg, Batter, and Bagg, was sitting
+in his office a day or two later when a clerk ushered in the Earl of
+Windgall.
+
+"What's this news about Gallowbay, Begg? Is it true?" asked the earl.
+
+"It is certainly true," answered Begg.
+
+"What sort of fellow is this Kimberley?"
+
+"Well, he seems to be a shy little man, _gauche_, and--and--underbred,
+even for his late position."
+
+"That's a pity. I should like to see him," added the grey little
+nobleman. "I suppose you will act for him as you did for poor young
+Edward?"
+
+Poor young Edward was the deceased minor whose early death had wrecked
+the finest chances the Windgall family craft had ever carried.
+
+"I suppose so," said Begg.
+
+"I presume," said the earl, "that even if he wanted to call in his money
+you could arrange elsewhere?"
+
+"With regard to the first mortgage?" asked Mr. Begg. "Certainly."
+
+"And what about the new arrangement?" asked the earl nervously.
+
+"Impossible, I regret to say."
+
+"Very well," returned the earl, with a sigh. "I suppose the timber must
+go. If poor Edward had lived, it would all have been very different."
+
+Next day, when Kimberley, preposterously overdressed and thoroughly
+ashamed of himself, was trying to talk business in Mr. Begg's office,
+the Earl of Windgall was announced. There was nothing in the world that
+could have terrified him more. And when the father of his ideal love,
+Lady Ella Santerre, shook him by the hand, he could only gasp and gurgle
+in response. But the earl's manner gradually reassured him, and in a
+little time he began to plume himself in harmless trembling vanity upon
+sitting in the same room with a nobleman and a great lawyer.
+
+"I am pleased to have met Mr. Kimberley," said the earl, in going; "and
+I trust we shall see more of each other."
+
+Mr. Kimberley flushed, and bowed in a violent flutter.
+
+As the earl was driven homeward he could not help feeling that he was
+engaged in a shameful enterprise. People would talk if he invited this
+gilded little snob to Shouldershott Castle, and would know very well why
+he was asked there. Let them talk.
+
+"A million and a quarter!" said the poor peer. "And if I don't catch
+him, somebody else will."
+
+Meanwhile, Captain Jack Clare, an extremely popular young officer of
+dragoons, was in the depths of despair. He was the younger brother of
+Lord Montacute, whose family was poor; he loved Lady Ella Santerre,
+whose family was still poorer. The heads of the families had forbidden
+the match for financial reasons. He had stolen an interview with Ella,
+and had found that she bowed to the decision of the seniors.
+
+"It is all quite hopeless and impossible," she had said. "Good-bye,
+Jack!"
+
+As he rode dispiritedly away, he could not see, for the intervening
+trees, that she was kneeling in the fern and crying.
+
+
+_II.--A Peer in Difficulties_
+
+
+The Lady Ella slipped an arm about her father's neck.
+
+"You are in trouble, dear," she said. "Can I help you?"
+
+"No," said the poor nobleman. "There's no help for it, Beggs says, and
+they'll have to cut down the timber in the park. Poverty, my dear,
+poverty."
+
+This was a blow, and a heavy one.
+
+"That isn't the worst of it," said Windgall, after a pause. "I am in the
+hands of the Jews. A wretched Hebrew fellow says he _will_ have a
+thousand pounds by this day week. He might as well ask me for a
+million."
+
+"The diamonds are worth more than a thousand pounds, dear," she said
+gently.
+
+"No, no, my darling," he answered. "I have robbed you of everything
+already."
+
+"You must take them, papa," she said in tender decision. She left him,
+only to return in a few minutes' time with a dark shagreen case in her
+hands. The earl paced about the room for a minute or two.
+
+"I take these," he said at last, "in bitter unwillingness, because I
+can't help taking them, my dear. I had best get the business over, Ella.
+I will go up to town this afternoon."
+
+During the whole of his journey the overdressed figure of Kimberley
+seemed to stand before the embarrassed man, and a voice seemed to issue
+from it. "Catch me, flatter me, wheedle me, marry me to one of your
+daughters, and see the end of your woes." He despised himself heartily
+for permitting the idea to enter his mind, but he could not struggle
+against its intrusion.
+
+Next day Kimberley entered his jewellers to consult him concerning a
+scarf-pin. It was a bull-dog's head, carved in lava, and not quite
+life-size. The eyes were rubies, the collar was of gold and brilliants.
+This egregious jewel was of his own designing, and was of a piece with
+his general notions of how a millionaire should attire himself.
+
+As he passed through the door somebody leapt from a cab carrying
+something in his hands, and jostled against him. He turned round
+apologetically, and confronted the Earl of Windgall.
+
+His lordship looked like a man detected in a theft, and shook hands with
+a confused tremor.
+
+"Can you spare me half an hour?" he asked. Then he handed the package to
+the shop-man. "Take care of that," he stammered. "It is valuable. I will
+call to-morrow."
+
+That afternoon Kimberley accepted an invitation to stay at Shouldershott
+Castle.
+
+He was prodigiously flattered and fluttered. When he thought of being
+beneath the same roof with Lady Ella, he flushed and trembled as he had
+never done before.
+
+"I shall see her," he muttered wildly to himself. "I shall see her in
+the 'alls, the 'alls of dazzling light." It is something of a wonder
+that he did not lose his mental balance altogether.
+
+When he was daily in the presence of Ella, the little man's heart ached
+with sweet anguish and helpless worship and desire. Yet before her he
+was tongue-tied, incapable of uttering a consecutive sentence. With her
+sister, Lady Alice Santerre, who had been the intended bride of the
+deceased heir to the Gallowbay Estate, Kimberley felt on a different
+footing. He had hardly ever been so much at ease with anybody in his
+life as this young lady made him.
+
+Kimberley's own anxious efforts at self-improvement, Lady Alice's
+good-natured advice, and the bold policy of the earl, who persuaded him
+to undergo the terrors of an election, and get returned to Parliament as
+member for Gallowbay, gradually made the millionaire a more presentable
+person. He learned how to avoid dropping his h's; but two vices were
+incurable--the shyness and his appalling taste in dress.
+
+The world, meanwhile, had guessed at the earl's motives in extending his
+friendship to Kimberley, and the little man's name was knowingly linked
+with that of Lady Alice. Kimberley came to hear what the world was
+saying through meeting Mr. Blandy, his former employer. Mr. Blandy
+invited him to his house, honoured the occasion with champagne, drank
+freely of it, and became confidential.
+
+"The noble earl'll nail you f' one o' the girls, Kimbly. I'm a lill bit
+'fected when I think, seeing my dear Kimbly 'nited marriage noble
+family. That's what makes me talk like this. I b'leeve you're gone coon
+already, ole man. 'Gratulate you, allmy heart."
+
+Kimberley went away in a degradation of soul. Was it possible that this
+peer of the realm could be so coarsely and openly bent on securing him
+and his money that the whole world should know of it? What had
+Kimberley, he asked himself bitterly, to recommend him but his money?
+But then, triumphing over his miseries, came the fancy--he could have
+his dream of love; he had cried for the moon, and now he could have it.
+
+
+_III.--Ella's Martyrdom_
+
+
+The earl's liabilities amounted roughly to ninety thousand pounds. The
+principal mortgagee was insisting upon payment or foreclosure, and there
+was a general feeling abroad that the estate was involved beyond its
+capacity to pay.
+
+Kimberley learned these circumstances in an interview with Mr. Begg. A
+few days afterwards he drove up desperately to the castle and asked for
+a private interview with his lordship.
+
+"My lord," he said, when they were alone, "I want to ask your lordship's
+acceptance of these papers."
+
+The earl understood them at a glance. Kimberley had bought his debts.
+
+"I ask you to take them now," Kimberley went on, "before I say another
+word."
+
+He rose, walked to the fire, and dropped the papers on the smouldering
+coal. The earl seized the papers and rescued them, soiled but unsinged.
+
+"Kimberley," he said, "I dare not lay myself under such an obligation to
+any man alive."
+
+"They are yours, my lord," replied Kimberley. "I shall never touch them
+again. You're under no obligation to me, my lord. But"--he blushed and
+stammered--"I want to ask you for the hand of Lady Ella."
+
+It took Windgall a full minute to pull himself together. He had schooled
+himself to the trembling hope that Alice might be chosen; but Ella!
+"Forgive me," he began, "I was unprepared--I was not altogether
+unprepared--" Then he lapsed into silence.
+
+"I will submit your proposal to my daughter," he said after a time,
+"but--I am powerless--altogether powerless."
+
+Kimberley went home in a tremor of nervous anxiety, and Windgall sent
+for his daughter.
+
+"I want you to understand, my dear," he began nervously, "that you are
+free to act just as you will. Mr. Kimberley gave these into my hands
+this morning"--showing her the papers. "He gave them freely, as a gift.
+If I could accept them I should be free from the nightmare of debt. But
+in the same breath with that unconditional gift, he asked me for your
+hand in marriage."
+
+She kept silence.
+
+"You know our miserable necessities, Ella," he pleaded. "But I can't
+force your inclinations in a matter like this, my dear."
+
+She ran to him, and threw her arms about his neck.
+
+"If it depends upon me to end your troubles, my dear, they are ended
+already."
+
+"Shall I," he asked lamely, "make Kimberley happy?"
+
+She answered simply, "Yes."
+
+Kimberley came to luncheon next day. Lady Ella gave him a hand like
+marble, and he kissed it. Her father, anxious to preserve a seeming
+satisfaction, put his arm about her waist and kissed her. Her cheek was
+like ice and her whole figure trembled.
+
+It was a dull, dreadful meal to all three who sat at table, and the
+millionaire's heart was the heaviest and the sorest.
+
+If Ella suffered, she had the consolation, so dear to the nobler sort of
+women, that she was a sacrifice. If Windgall suffered, he had a solid
+compensation locked in the drawers of his library table. But Kimberley
+had no consolation, and knew only that he was expected somehow to be
+happy, and was, in spite of his prosperous wooing, more miserable than
+he had ever been before.
+
+As time went on, Kimberley grew no happier. The gulf between Lady Ella
+and himself had not been bridged by their betrothal. She was always
+courteous to him, but always cold. She had accepted him, and yet----
+
+The first inkling that something was wrong came through the altered
+demeanour of Alice. The girl was furious at her father for sacrificing
+her sister, and furious with her sister for consenting to the sacrifice;
+her former half-humourous comradeship for Kimberley was changed into
+chilly disdain.
+
+The suspicions that were thus suggested to him were confirmed by a
+meeting with Ella outside the castle lodge. As he approached, he caught
+sight of her face as she was nodding a smiling good-bye to the old
+gate-keeper. She saw Kimberley, and the smile fled from her face with so
+swift a change, and left for a mere second something so like terror
+there, that he could scarcely fail to notice it.
+
+He returned home possessed with remorse and shame. There was no doubt
+what the end should be. Ella must be released.
+
+"She never cared about the money," he said, pacing the room with
+tear-blotted face. "She wanted to save her father, and she was ready to
+break her heart to do it. But she shall never break her heart through
+me. No, no. What a fool I was to think she could ever be happy with a
+man like me!"
+
+
+_IV.--The Renunciation_
+
+
+Jack Clare, with a heart burning with rage at what he deemed Ella's
+treachery, had resigned his commission and bought an estate in New
+Zealand with a sum of money that had been left him. He became possessed
+of a desire to see Ella once more. He wrote to her that he was about to
+start for New Zealand, and wished to say good-bye to her. This letter he
+brought to the castle gate-keeper, and caused it to be taken to Ella.
+Then he paced up and down the avenue, impatiently awaiting her.
+
+Destiny ordained that Kimberley should come that way just then on his
+fateful errand of releasing Ella from her engagement. As he entered the
+park his resolve failed him; he wandered unhappily to and fro, until he
+became aware of a strange gentleman prowling about the avenue in a
+mighty hurry. The stranger caught sight of him.
+
+"Pardon me," said Kimberley nervously, "have you lost your way?"
+
+Jack eyed him from head to foot--the vulgar glories of his attire, the
+extraordinary bull-dog pin. This, he guessed, was Kimberley--the man to
+whom Ella had sold herself. He smiled bitterly, and turned on his heel.
+
+"I beg your pardon, sir," said Kimberley ruffled. "I did myself the
+honour to address you."
+
+"You pestilential little cad!" cried Jack, wheeling round and letting
+out his wrath; "go home!"
+
+"Cad, sir!" answered Kimberley in indignation.
+
+"I call any man a cad, sir," answered Jack, "who goes about dressed like
+that."
+
+Jack walked on and Kimberley stood rooted to the ground. He was crushed
+and overwhelmed beneath the sense of his own humiliation. His fineries
+had been the one thing on which he had relied to make himself look like
+a gentleman, and he knew now what they made him look like.
+
+He retreated to a little arboured seat, and a few minutes later would
+have given anything to escape from it. For he was a witness of the
+parting of Jack and Ella. He saw the tears streaming from her eyes; he
+heard Jack tell her that he had never loved another woman and never
+would. As they clasped each other's hands for the final good-bye, Jack
+seized her passionately and kissed her. Her head fell back from his
+shoulder; she had fainted. He laid her down upon the grass, and looked
+upon her in an agony of fear and self-reproach. Then his mood changed.
+
+"Curse the man that broke her heart and mine!" he cried wildly.
+"Darling, look up!"
+
+Presently she recovered, and he begged her forgiveness.
+
+"I am better," said Ella feebly. "Leave me now. Good-bye, dear!"
+
+Soon afterwards a little man, with a tear-stained face and enormous
+bull-dog scarf-pin, arrived at the castle, and asked in a breaking voice
+to see his lordship.
+
+"Did you know, my lord," he began, "that Lady Ella was breaking her
+heart because she was to marry me?"
+
+"Really--"
+
+"You didn't know it? I should be glad to think you didn't. Perhaps in
+spite of all I said, you thought I had bought those papers to have you
+in my grasp. I am not a gentleman, my lord, but I hope I am above that.
+I was a fool to think I could ever make Lady Ella happy, and I resign my
+claim upon her hand, my lord, and I must leave your roof for ever."
+
+"Stop, sir!" cried the earl, in a rage of embarrassment and despair. He
+seemed face to face with the wreck of all his hopes. "Do you know that
+this is an insult to my daughter and to me?"
+
+"My lord," returned Kimberley, "I am very sorry, but it was a shame to
+ask her to marry a man like me. I won't help to break her heart--I
+can't--not if I break my own a million times over."
+
+The earl beat his foot upon the carpet. It was true enough. It _had_
+been a shame; and yet the man was a gentleman when all was said and
+done.
+
+"By heaven, Kimberley," cried his lordship, in spite of himself, "you
+are a noble-hearted fellow!"
+
+"Excuse me the trouble I have caused you. Good-bye, my lord." Kimberley
+bowed and left.
+
+That night Kimberley received a package containing the papers and a note
+from the earl congratulating him on the magnanimous manner in which he
+had acted, but declaring that he felt compelled to return the documents.
+This added another drop to the bitterness of Kimberley's cup. He could
+well nigh have died for shame; he could well nigh have died for pity of
+himself.
+
+
+_V.--Kimberley's Wedding Gift_
+
+
+"My lord," said Kimberley, as he met the earl of Windgall outside the
+London hotel where the earl was staying, "can you give me a very few
+minutes?"
+
+"Certainly," said his lordship. "You are not well?" he added, with
+solicitude.
+
+He had brought a dispatch-box with him; he put it on the table and
+slowly unlocked it. The earl's heart beat violently as he looked once
+more upon the precious documents.
+
+"You sent these back to me," said Kimberley. "Will you take 'em now? My
+lord, my lord, marry lady Ella to the man she loves, and take these for
+a wedding gift. I helped to torture her. I have a right to help to make
+her happy."
+
+Windgall was as wildly agitated as Kimberley himself. He recoiled and
+waved his hands.
+
+"I--I do not think, Kimberley," he said with quivering lip, "that I have
+ever known so noble an act before."
+
+"If I die," said Kimberley in a loud voice which quavered suddenly down
+into a murmur, "everything is to go to Lady Ella, with my dearest love
+and worship."
+
+Windgall caught only the first three words; he tugged at the bell-pull,
+and sent for a doctor.
+
+An hour afterwards Kimberley was in bed with brain fever.
+
+On the following morning Jack Clare stood in the rain on the deck of the
+steamship Patagonia, a travelling-cap pulled moodily over his eyes,
+watching the bestowal of his belongings in the hold.
+
+"Honourable Captain Clare aboard?" cried a voice from the quay. A
+messenger came and handed Jack a letter. He saw with amazement that it
+bore the Windgall crest.
+
+It was a hastily written note from the earl stating that circumstances
+had occurred which enabled him to withdraw his opposition to the union
+of Clare with Lady Ella.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Kimberley recovered. He can speak now to Clare's wife without
+embarrassment and without pain. Has he forgotten his love? No. He will
+never love again, never marry; but he is by no means unhappy or solitary
+or burdened with regrets. And he knows that those for whom he made his
+great sacrifice have given him their profoundest gratitude and sincerest
+friendship.
+
+The ways of the world are various and many. And along them travel all
+sorts of people. Very dark grey, indeed--almost black some of
+them--middling grey, light grey, and here and there a figure that shines
+with a pure white radiance.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+
+
+FRANK NORRIS
+
+
+The Pit
+
+
+     Frank Norris, one of the most brilliant of contemporary
+     American novelists, was born at Chicago in 1870. He was
+     educated at the University of California and at Harvard, and
+     also spent three years as an art student in Paris. Afterwards
+     he adopted journalism, and served in the capacity of war
+     correspondent for various newspapers. His first novel,
+     "McTeague," a virile, realistic romance, brought him instant
+     recognition. This was followed in 1900 by "Moran of the Lady
+     Betty," a romantic narrative of adventures on the Californian
+     Coast. In 1901 Norris conceived the idea of trilogy of novels
+     dealing with wheat, the object being an arraignment of wheat
+     operations at Chicago, and the consequent gambling with the
+     world's food-supply. The first of the series, "The Octopus,"
+     deals with wheat raising and transportation; the second, "The
+     Pit," a vigorous, human story covers wheat-exchange gambling,
+     and appeared in 1903; the third, which was to have been
+     entitled "The Wolf," was cut short by the author's death,
+     which occurred on October 25, 1902.
+
+
+_I.--Curtis Jadwin and His Wife_
+
+
+Laura Dearborn's native town was Barrington, in Massachusetts. Both she
+and her younger sister Page had lived there until the death of their
+father. The mother had died long before, and of all their relations,
+Aunt Wess, who lived at Chicago, alone remained. It was at the
+entreaties of Aunt Wess and of their dearest friends, the Cresslers,
+that the two girls decided to live with their aunt in Chicago. Both
+Laura and Page had inherited money, and when they faced the world they
+had the assurance that, at least, they were independent.
+
+Chicago, the great grey city, interested Laura at every instant and
+under every condition. The life was tremendous. All around, on every
+side, in every direction, the vast machinery of commonwealth clashed and
+thundered from dawn to dark, and from dark to dawn. For thousands of
+miles beyond its confines the influence of the city was felt. At times
+Laura felt a little frightened at the city's life, and of the men for
+whom all the crash of conflict and commerce had no terrors. Those who
+could subdue this life to their purposes, must they not be themselves
+terrible, pitiless, brutal? What could women ever know of the life of
+men, after all?
+
+Her friend, Mr. Cressler, who had been almost a second father to her,
+was in business, and had once lost a fortune by a gamble in wheat; and
+there was Mr. Curtis Jadwin, whom she had met at the opera with the
+Cresslers.
+
+Mrs. Cressler had told Laura, very soon after her arrival in Chicago,
+that Mr. Jadwin wanted to marry her.
+
+"I've known Curtis Jadwin now for fifteen years--nobody better," said
+Mrs. Cressler. "He's as old a family friend as Charlie and I have. And I
+tell you the man is in love with you. He told me you had more sense and
+intelligence than any girl he had ever known, and that he never
+remembered to have seen a more beautiful woman. What do you think of
+him, Laura--of Mr. Jadwin?"
+
+"I don't know," Laura answered. "I thought he was a _strong_
+man--mentally, and that he would be kindly and generous. But I saw very
+little of him."
+
+"Jadwin struck you as being a kindly man, a generous man? He's just
+that, and charitable. You know, he has a Sunday-school over on the West
+side--a Sunday-school for mission children--and I do believe he's more
+interested in that than in his business. He wants to make it the biggest
+Sunday-school in Chicago. It's an ambition of his. Laura," she
+exclaimed, "he's a _fine man_. No one knows Curtis Jadwin better than
+Charlie and I, and we just _love_ him. The kindliest, biggest-hearted
+fellow. Oh, well, you'll know him for yourself, and then you'll see!"
+
+"I don't know anything about him," Laura had remarked in answer to this.
+"I never heard of him before the theatre party."
+
+But Mrs. Cressler promptly supplied information. Curtis Jadwin was a man
+about thirty-five, who had begun life without a _sou_ in his pockets.
+His people were farmers in Michigan, hardy, honest fellows, who ploughed
+and sowed for a living. Curtis had only a rudimentary schooling, and had
+gone into business with a livery-stable keeper. Someone in Chicago owed
+him money, and, in default of payment, had offered him a couple of lots
+of ground on Wabash Avenue. That was how he happened to come to Chicago.
+Naturally enough, as the city grew the Wabash Avenue property increased
+in value. He sold the lots, and bought other real estate; sold that, and
+bought somewhere else, and so on till he owned some of the best business
+sites in the city, and was now one of the largest real-estate owners in
+Chicago. But he no longer bought and sold. His property had grown so
+large, that just the management of it alone took up most of his time. As
+a rule, he deplored speculation. He had no fixed principles about it,
+and occasionally he hazarded small operations.
+
+It was after this that Laura's first aversion to the great grey city
+fast disappeared, and she saw it in a kindlier aspect.
+
+Soon it was impossible to deny that Curtis Jadwin--"J" as he was called
+in business--was in love with her. The business man, accustomed to deal
+with situations with unswerving directness, was not in the least afraid
+of Laura. He was aggressive, assertive, and his addresses had all the
+persistence and vehemence of veritable attack. He contrived to meet her
+everywhere, and even had the Cresslers and Laura over to his mission
+Sunday-school for the Easter festival, an occasion of which Laura
+carried away a confused recollection of enormous canvas mottoes, sheaves
+of lilies, imitation bells of tinfoil, revival hymns vociferated from
+seven hundred distended mouths, and through it all the smell of poverty,
+the odour of uncleanliness, that mingled strangely with the perfume of
+the lilies.
+
+Somehow Laura found that with Jadwin all the serious, all the sincere,
+earnest side of her character was apt to come to the front.
+
+Yet for a long time Laura could not make up her mind that she loved him,
+but "J" refused to be dismissed.
+
+"I told him I did not love him. Only last week I told him so," Laura
+explained to Mrs. Cressler.
+
+"Well, then, why did you promise to marry him?"
+
+"My goodness! You don't realise what it's been. Do you suppose you can
+say 'no' to that man?"
+
+"Of course not--of course not!" declared Mrs. Cressler joyfully. "That's
+'J' all over. I might have known he'd have you if he set out to do it."
+
+They were married on the last day of June of that summer in the
+Episcopalian church. Immediately after the wedding the couple took the
+train for Geneva Lake, where Jadwin had built a house for his bride.
+
+
+_II.--A Corner in Wheat_
+
+
+The months passed. Soon three years had gone by since the ceremony in
+St. James's Church, and all that time the price of wheat had been
+steadily going down. Heavy crops the world over had helped the decline.
+
+Jadwin had been drawn into the troubled waters of the Pit, and was by
+now "blooded to the game." It was in April that he decided that better
+times and higher prices were coming for wheat, and announced his
+intentions to Sam Gretry, his broker.
+
+"Sam," he said, "the time is come for a great big chance. We've been
+hammering wheat down and down and down till we've got it below the cost
+of production, and now she won't go any further with all the hammering
+in the world. The other fellows, the rest of the bear crowd, don't seem
+to see it; but I see it. Before fall we're going to have higher prices.
+Wheat is going up, and when it does I mean to be right there. I'm going
+to _buy_. I'm going to buy September wheat, and I'm going to buy it
+to-morrow--500,000 bushels of it; and if the market goes as I think it
+will later on, I'm going to buy more. I'm going to boost this market
+right through till the last bell rings, and from now on Curtis Jadwin
+spells b-u-double l--bull."
+
+"They'll slaughter you," said Gretry; "slaughter you in cold blood.
+You're just one man against a gang--a gang of cut-throats. Those bears
+have got millions and millions back of them. 'J,' you are either
+Napoleonic, or--or a colossal idiot!"
+
+All through the three years that had passed Jadwin had grown continually
+richer. His real estate appreciated in value; rents went up. Every time
+he speculated in wheat it was upon a larger scale, and every time he
+won. Hitherto he had been a bear; now, after the talk with Gretry, he
+had secretly "turned bull" with the suddenness of a strategist.
+
+A marvellous golden luck followed Jadwin all that summer. The crops were
+poor, the yield moderate.
+
+Jadwin sold out in September, having made a fortune, and then, in a
+single vast clutch, bought 3,000,000 bushels of the December option.
+
+Never before had he ventured so deeply into the Pit.
+
+One morning in November, at breakfast, Laura said to her husband,
+"Curtis, dear, when is it all going to end--your speculating? You never
+used to be this way. It seems as though, nowadays, I never had you to
+myself. Even when you are not going over papers and reports, or talking
+by the hour to Mr. Gretry in the library, your mind seems to be away
+from me. I--I am lonesome, dearest, sometimes. And, Curtis, what is the
+use? We're so rich now we can't spend our money."
+
+"Oh, it's not the money!" he answered. "It's the fun of the thing--the
+excitement."
+
+That very week Jadwin made 500,000 dollars.
+
+"I don't own a grain of wheat now," he assured his wife. "I've got to be
+out of it."
+
+But try as he would, the echoes of the rumbling of the Pit reached
+Jadwin at every hour of the day and night. He stayed at home over
+Christmas. Inactive, he sat there idle, while the clamour of the Pit
+swelled daily louder, and the price of wheat went up.
+
+Jadwin chafed and fretted at his inaction and his impatience harried him
+like a gadfly. Would no one step into the place of high command.
+
+Very soon the papers began to speak of an unknown "bull" clique who were
+rapidly coming into control of the market, and it was no longer a secret
+to Laura that her husband had gone back to the market, and that, too,
+with such an impetuosity that his rush had carried him to the very heart
+of the turmoil.
+
+He was now deeply involved; his influence began to be felt. Not an
+important move on the part of the "unknown bull," the nameless,
+mysterious stranger, that was not noted and discussed.
+
+It was very late in the afternoon of a lugubrious March day when Jadwin
+and Gretry, in the broker's private room, sat studying the latest
+Government reports as to the supply of wheat, and Jadwin observed, "Why,
+Sam, there's less than 100,000,000 bushels in the farmers' hands. That's
+awfully small."
+
+"It ain't, as you might say, colossal," admitted Gretry.
+
+"Sam," said Jadwin again, "the shipments have been about 5,000,000 a
+week; 20,000,000 a month, and it's four months before a new crop. Europe
+will take 80,000,000 out of the country. I own 10,000,000 now. Why,
+there ain't going to be any wheat left in Chicago by May! If I get in
+now, and buy a long line of cash wheat, where are all these fellows
+going to get it to deliver to me? Say, where are they going to get it?
+Come on, now, tell me, where are they going to get it?"
+
+Gretry laid down his pencil, and stared at Jadwin.
+
+"'J,'" he faltered, "'J,' I'm blest if I know."
+
+And then, all in the same moment, the two men were on their feet.
+
+Jadwin sprang forward, gripping the broker by the shoulder.
+
+"Sam," he shouted, "do you know----Great God! Do you know what this
+means? Sam, we can corner the market!"
+
+
+_III.--The Corner Breaks_
+
+
+The high prices meant a great increase of wheat acreage. In June the
+preliminary returns showed 4,000,000 more acres under wheat in the two
+states of Dakota alone, and in spite of all Gretry's remonstrances,
+Jadwin still held on, determined to keep up prices to July.
+
+But now it had become vitally necessary for Jadwin to sell out his
+holdings. His "long line" was a fearful expense; insurance and storage
+charges were eating rapidly into the profits. He _must_ get rid of the
+load he was carrying little by little.
+
+A month ago, and the foreign demand was a thing almost insensate. There
+was no question as to the price. It was, "Give us the wheat, at whatever
+figure, at whatever expense."
+
+At home in Chicago Jadwin was completely master of the market. His
+wealth increased with such rapidity that at no time was he able even to
+approximate the gains that accrued to him because of his corner. It was
+more than twenty million, and less than fifty million. That was all he
+knew.
+
+It was then that he told Gretry he was going to buy in the July crops.
+
+"' J,' listen to me," said Gretry. "Wheat is worth a dollar and a half
+to-day, and not one cent more. If you run it up to two dollars--"
+
+"It will go there of itself, I tell you."
+
+"If you run it up to two dollars it will be that top-heavy that the
+littlest kick in the world will knock it over. Be satisfied now with
+what you've, got. Suppose the price does break a little, you'd still
+make your pile. But swing this deal over into July, and it's ruin. The
+farmers all over the country are planting wheat as they've never planted
+it before. Great Scott, 'J,' you're fighting against the earth itself."
+
+"Well, we'll fight it then."
+
+"Here's another point," went on Gretry. "You ought to be in bed this
+very minute. You haven't got any nerves left at all. You acknowledge you
+don't sleep. You ought to see a doctor."
+
+"Fiddlesticks!" exclaimed Jadwin. "I'm all right. Haven't time to see a
+doctor."
+
+So the month of May drew to its close, and as Jadwin beheld more and
+more the broken speculators, with their abject humility, a vast contempt
+for human nature grew within him. The business hardened his heart, and
+he took his profits as if by right of birth.
+
+His wife he saw but seldom. Occasionally they breakfasted together; more
+often they met at dinner. But that was all.
+
+And now by June 11 the position was critical.
+
+"The price broke to a dollar and twenty yesterday," said Gretry. "Just
+think, we were at a dollar and a half a little while ago."
+
+"And we'll be at two dollars in another ten days, I tell you."
+
+"Do you know how we stand, 'J'?" said the broker gravely. "Do you know
+how we stand financially? It's taken pretty nearly every cent of our
+ready money to support this July market. Oh, we can figure out our paper
+profits into the millions. We've got thirty, forty, fifty million
+bushels of wheat that's worth over a dollar a bushel; but if we can't
+sell it we're none the better off--and that wheat is costing us six
+thousand dollars a day. Where's the money going to come from, old man?
+You don't seem to realise that we are in a precarious condition. The
+moment we can't give our boys buying orders, the moment we admit that we
+can't buy all the wheat that's offered, there's the moment we bust."
+
+"Well, we'll buy it," cried Jadwin. "I'll show those brutes. I'll
+mortgage all my real estate, and I'll run up wheat so high before the
+next two days that the Bank of England can't pull it down; then I'll
+sell our long line, and with the profits of that I'll run it up again.
+Two dollars! Why, it will be two-fifty before you know how it happened."
+
+That day Jadwin placed as heavy a mortgage as the place would stand upon
+every piece of real estate that he owned. He floated a number of
+promissory notes, and taxed his credit to its farthest stretch. But sure
+as he was of winning, Jadwin could, not bring himself to involve his
+wife's money in the hazard, though his entire personal fortune swung in
+the balance.
+
+Jadwin knew the danger. The new harvest was coming in--the new harvest
+of wheat--huge beyond all possibility of control; so vast that no money
+could buy it. And from Liverpool and Paris cables had come in to Gretry
+declining to buy wheat, though he had offered it cheaper than he had
+ever done before.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+On the morning of June 13, Gretry gave his orders to young Landry Court
+and his other agents in the Pit, to do their best to keep the market up.
+"You can buy each of you up to half a million bushels apiece. If that
+don't keep the price up--well, I'll let you know what to do. Look here,
+keep your heads cool. I guess to-day will decide things."
+
+In the Pit roar succeeded roar. It seemed that a support long thought to
+be secure was giving way. Not a man knew what he or his neighbour was
+doing. The bids leaped to and fro, and the price of July wheat could not
+so much as be approximated.
+
+Landry caught one of the Gretry traders by the arm.
+
+"What shall we do?" he shouted. "I've bought up to my limit. No more
+orders have come in. What's to be done?"
+
+"I don't know," the other shouted back--"I don't know! Looks like a
+smash; something's gone wrong."
+
+In Gretry's office Jadwin stood hatless and pale. Around him were one of
+the heads of a great banking house and a couple of other men,
+confidential agents, who had helped to manipulate the great corner.
+
+"It's the end of the game," Gretry exclaimed, "you've got no more money!
+Not another order goes up to that floor."
+
+"It's a lie!" Jadwin cried, "keep on buying, I tell you! Take all
+they'll offer. I tell you we'll touch the two dollar mark before noon."
+
+"It's useless, Mr. Jadwin," said the banker quietly, "You were
+practically beaten two days ago."
+
+But Jadwin was beyond all appeal. He threw off Gretry's hand.
+
+"Get out of my way!" he shouted. "Do you hear? I'll play my hand alone
+from now on."
+
+"'J,' old man--why, see here!" Gretry implored, still holding him by the
+arm. "Here, where are you going?"
+
+Jadwin's voice rang like a trumpet-call:
+
+"_Into the Pit!_ If you won't execute my orders I'll act myself. I'm
+going into the Pit, I tell you!"
+
+"'J,' you're mad, old fellow! You're ruined--don't you
+understand?--you're ruined!"
+
+"Then God curse you, Sam Gretry, for the man who failed me in a crisis!"
+And, as he spoke, Curtis Jadwin struck the broker full in the face.
+
+Gretry staggered back from the blow. His pale face flashed to crimson
+for an instant, his fists clenched; then his hands fell to his sides.
+
+"No," he said; "let him go--let him go. The man is merely mad!"
+
+Jadwin thrust the men who tried to hold him to one side, and rushed from
+the room.
+
+"It's the end," Gretry said simply. He wrote a couple of lines, and
+handed the note to the senior clerk. "Take that to the secretary of the
+board at once."
+
+Straight into the turmoil and confusion of the Pit, into the scene of so
+many of his victories, came the "Great Bull." The news went flashing and
+flying from lip to lip. The wheat Pit, torn and tossed and rent asunder,
+stood dismayed, so great had been his power. What was about to happen?
+Jadwin himself, the great man, in the Pit! Had his enemies been too
+premature in their hope of his defeat? For a second they hesitated, then
+moved by a common impulse, feeling the push of the wonderful new harvest
+behind them, gathered themselves together for the final assault, and
+again offered the wheat for sale--offered it by thousands upon thousands
+of bushels.
+
+Blind and insensate, Jadwin strove against the torrent of the wheat.
+Under the stress and violence of the hour, something snapped in his
+brain; but he stood erect there in the middle of the Pit, iron to the
+end, proclaiming over the din of his enemies, like a bugle sounding to
+the charge of a forlorn hope.
+
+"Give a dollar for July--give a dollar for July!"
+
+Then little by little the tumult of the Pit subsided. There were sudden
+lapses in the shouting, and again the clamour would break out.
+
+All at once the Pit, the entire floor of the Board of Trade, was struck
+dumb. In the midst of the profound silence the secretary announced. "All
+trades with Gretry & Co. must be closed at once!"
+
+The words were greeted with a wild yell of exultation. Beaten--beaten at
+last, the Great Bull! Smashed! The great corner smashed! Jadwin busted!
+Cheer followed cheer, hats went into the air. Men danced and leaped in a
+frenzy of delight.
+
+Young Landry Court, who had stood by Jadwin in the Pit, led his defeated
+captain out. Jadwin was in a daze--he saw nothing, heard nothing, but
+submitted to Landry's guidance.
+
+From the Pit came the sound of dying cheers.
+
+"They can cheer now all they want. _They didn't do it,"_ said a man at
+the door. "It was the wheat itself that beat him; no combination of men
+could have done it."
+
+
+_IV.--A Fresh Start_
+
+
+The evening had closed in wet and misty, and when Laura Jadwin came down
+to the dismantled library a heavy rain was falling.
+
+"There, dear," Laura said, "now sit down on the packing-box there. You
+had better put your hat on. It is full of draughts now that the
+furniture and curtains are out. You've had a pretty bad siege of it, you
+know, and this is only the first week you've been up."
+
+"I've had too good a nurse," he answered, stroking her hand, "not to be
+as fit as a fiddle by now. You must be tired yourself, Laura. Why, for
+whole days there--and nights, too, they tell me--you never left the
+room."
+
+Laura shook her head, and said:
+
+"I wonder what the West will be like. Do you know I think I am going to
+like it, Curtis?"
+
+"It will be starting in all over again, old girl. Pretty hard at first,
+I'm afraid."
+
+"Hard--now?" She took his hand and laid it to her cheek.
+
+"By all the rules you ought to hate me," he began. "What have I done for
+you but hurt you, and at last bring you to----"
+
+But she shut her gloved-hand over his mouth.
+
+"The world is all before us where to choose, now, isn't it?" she
+answered. "And this big house and all the life we have led in it was
+just an incident in our lives--an incident that is closed."
+
+"We're starting all over again, honey.... Well, there's the carriage, I
+guess."
+
+They rose, gathering up their valises.
+
+"Ho!" said Jadwin. "No servants now, Laura, to carry our things down for
+us and open the door; and it's a hack, old girl, instead of the
+victoria."
+
+"What if it is?" she cried. "What do servants, money, and all amount to
+now?"
+
+As Jadwin laid his hand upon the knob of the front door, he all at once
+put down his valise and put his arm about his wife. She caught him about
+the neck, and looked deep into his eyes a long moment, and then, without
+speaking, they kissed each other.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+
+
+GEORGES OHNET
+
+
+The Ironmaster
+
+
+     Georges Ohnet, one of the most prolific and popular of French
+     novelists and playwrights, was born in Paris on April 3, 1848.
+     His father was an architect, and, after a period devoted to
+     the study of law, Georges Ohnet adopted a journalistic career.
+     He first came into prominence as the part-author of the drama
+     "Regina Sarpi," in 1875. "The Ironmaster, or Love and Pride,"
+     was originally conceived as a play, and as such was submitted
+     in vain to the theatrical managers of Paris. It was entitled
+     "Marrying for Money" ("Les Mariages d'Argent") and on its
+     rejection he laid it aside and directed his attention to the
+     novel, "Serge Panine." This was immediately successful, and
+     was crowned with honour by the French Academy. Its author
+     adapted it as a play, and then, in 1883, did the opposite with
+     "Les Manages d'Argent," calling it "Le Maitre de Forges." As a
+     novel, "The Ironmaster," with its dramatic plot and strong,
+     moving story, attracted universal attention, and has been
+     translated into several European languages.
+
+
+_I.--The Faithless Lover_
+
+
+The Chateau de Beaulieu, in the Louis XIII. style, is built of white
+stone with red brick dressings. A broad terrace more than five hundred
+yards long, with a balustrade in red granite, and decked with parterres
+of flowers, becomes a delightful walk in autumn. M. Derblay's ironworks
+may have somewhat spoilt the beauty of the landscape, but Beaulieu
+remains a highly covetable estate.
+
+Madame de Beaulieu sat in the drawing-room knitting woollen hoods for
+the children in the village, while her daughter Claire contemplated,
+without seeing it, the admirable horizon before her. At last, turning
+her beautiful, sad face to her mother, she asked, "How long is it since
+we have had any letters from St. Petersburg?"
+
+"Come," said the marchioness, taking hold of Claire's hands--"come, why
+do you always think about that, and torture your mind so?"
+
+"What can I think of," answered Claire bitterly, "but of my betrothed?
+And how can I avoid torturing my mind as you say, in trying to divine
+the reason of his silence?"
+
+"I own it is difficult to explain," rejoined the marchioness. "After
+spending a week with us last year, my nephew, the Duc de Bligny, started
+off promising to return to Paris during the winter. He next began by
+writing that political complications detained him at his post. Summer
+came, but not the duke. Here now is autumn, and Gaston no longer even
+favours us with pretences. He does not even trouble to write."
+
+"But supposing he were ill?" Claire ventured to say.
+
+"That is out of the question," replied the marchioness pitilessly. "The
+embassy would have informed us. You may be sure he is in perfect health,
+and that he led the cotillon all last winter in the ball-rooms of St.
+Petersburg."
+
+Claire, forcing herself to smile, said, "It must be confessed, mother,
+he is not jealous, and yet I have been courted wherever I have gone, and
+am scarcely allowed to remain in peace, even in this desert of Beaulieu.
+It would seem I have attracted the attention of our neighbour the
+ironmaster."
+
+"Monsieur Derblay?"
+
+"Yes, mother; but his homage is respectful, and I have no cause to
+complain of him. I only mentioned him as an example--as one of many. The
+duke stays away, and I remain here alone, patient and--"
+
+"And you act very wrongly!" exclaimed the marchioness.
+
+The opportunity of easing her mind was not to be lost, and she told
+Claire that if the marriage ever did take place she feared there would
+be cause for regret. But her daughter's violent emotion made her realise
+more forcibly than ever how deeply and firmly Claire was attached to the
+Due de Bligny. So she assured her she had heard nothing fresh about him,
+and hoped they might have news from the De Prefonts, who were to arrive
+that day from Paris.
+
+"Ah!" interrupted Mdlle. de Beaulieu, "here is Octave coming with
+Monsieur Bachelin, the notary." And she went to meet them, looking the
+living incarnation of youth in all its grace and vigour.
+
+"You have had good sport, it seems," she said, waylaying her brother,
+and feeling the weight of his game-bag.
+
+"Oh, I'll be modest. This game was not killed by me," answered the
+marquis; and explained that he had lost his way on the Pont Avesnes
+land, and had been rather haughtily accosted by another sportsman, who,
+however, as soon as he heard his name, became very polite, and forced
+him to accept the contents of his own bag.
+
+Maitre Bachelin immediately informed them that this must have been the
+ironmaster himself, whom he had been to see that morning, and all
+questions at issue about the boundaries of the estates were as good as
+settled.
+
+"For," said he, "my worthy friend accepts whatever conditions you may
+lay down. The only point now is to sign the preliminaries, and with this
+object Monsieur Derblay proposes to call at Beaulieu with his sister,
+Mile. Suzanne; that is, if you are pleased to authorise him, Madame la
+Marquise."
+
+"Oh, certainly. Let him come by all means. I shall be glad to see this
+Cyclops, who is blackening all the valley. But come, you have, no doubt,
+brought me some fresh documents in reference to our English lawsuit."
+
+"Yes, Madame la Marquise, yes," rejoined Bachelin, with an appealing
+look. "We will talk business if you desire it."
+
+Without asking any questions, Claire and the marquise gave their mother
+a smile, and left the drawing-room.
+
+"Well, Bachelin, have the English courts decided? Is the action lost?"
+
+The notary lacked courage to reply in words, but his gesture was
+sufficient. The marchioness bit her lips, and a tear glittered for a
+moment.
+
+"Ah!" said the notary. "It is a terrible blow for the house of
+Beaulieu."
+
+"Terrible indeed," said the marchioness; "for it implies my son's and my
+daughter's ruin. Misfortunes seldom come singly," she resumed. "I
+suppose you have some other bad news for me, Bachelin. Tell me
+everything. You have news of the Duc de Bligny?"
+
+"For the last six weeks M. le Duc de Bligny has been in Paris."
+
+"He is aware of the misfortune that has overtaken us?"
+
+"He knew of it one of the first, Madame la Marquise."
+
+The marchioness was grieved more cruelly by this than by the money loss;
+and the notary was thus emboldened to tell her that a gallant friend of
+his, M. Derblay, whose father had been kind enough to call Maitre
+Bachelin his friend, had fallen passionately in love with Mdlle. de
+Beaulieu, and would be the happiest man in the world if he were even
+allowed to hope. He advised the marchioness not to say anything at
+present to her daughter. Maybe the duke would return to more honourable
+feelings, and it would always be time enough for Mdlle. Claire to
+suffer."
+
+"You are right; but, at all events, I must inform my son of this blow
+that strikes him."
+
+Octave was not surprised, but affectionately taking his mother's hand,
+said, "My only concern was for my sister, whose dowry was at stake. You
+must leave her the part of your fortune you were reserving for me. Don't
+you think, mother, that our cousin De Bligny's silence has some
+connection with the loss of this lawsuit?"
+
+"You are mistaken, child," cried the marchioness eagerly. "For the
+duke----"
+
+"Oh, fear nothing, mother," said Octave. "If Gaston hesitates now that
+Mdlle. de Beaulieu no longer comes to him with a million in either hand,
+we are not, I fancy, the sort of folk to seize him by the collar and
+compel him to keep his promises."
+
+"Well said, my son," cried the marchioness.
+
+Bachelin took respectful leave of his noble clients, and hurried off to
+Pont Avesnes as fast as his legs could carry him.
+
+
+_II.--M. Derblay's Passion_
+
+
+It was really M. Derblay whom the Marquis de Beaulieu had met in the
+woods of Pont Avesnes. Letting Octave call after him as loud as he
+liked, he hurried on through the woods. Chance had brought him nearer to
+the woman he adored from afar, in a dream as it were, and his heart was
+full of joy. He, Philippe, might approach her--he would be able to speak
+to her. But at the thought of the Duc de Bligny, a feeling of deep
+sadness overcame him, and his strength waned.
+
+He recalled to mind all the exploits of his life, and asked himself if,
+in virtue of the task he had accomplished, he were not really deserving
+of happiness. After very brilliant studies, he had left the polytechnic
+school with first honours, and had chosen the state mining service when
+the Franco-German war had broken out. He was then two-and-twenty, and
+had just obtained an appointment, but at once enlisted as a volunteer.
+He served with distinction, and when at last he started for home he wore
+on his breast the ribbon of the Legion of Honour. He found the house in
+mourning. His mother had just died, and his little sister, Suzanne, just
+seven years old, clung to him with convulsive tenderness. Within six
+months his father also died, leaving his affairs in a most confused
+state.
+
+Philippe renounced the brilliant career as an engineer already chalked
+out before him, and that his sister might not be dowerless, became a
+manufacturer. In seven years he had liquidated the paternal inheritance;
+his property was really his own, and he felt capable of greatly
+extending his enterprises. Popular in the district, he might come
+forward at the elections to be returned as a deputy. Who knew? Hope
+revived in Philippe Derblay's heart.
+
+After a long talk with Maitre Bachelin, he, on considering the
+situation, felt it was not unfavourable to his hopes. When he presented
+himself at Beaulieu, the marchioness received him kindly, and, touching
+Suzanne's fair hair with her lips, "There is peace signed on this
+child's forehead," said she. "All your sins are forgiven you, neighbour.
+And now come and let me introduce you to the family."
+
+A burning flush suffused Philippe's face, and he bowed low before the
+girl he adored.
+
+"Why, he's a gentleman, dear!" whispered the baroness to Claire. "And
+think, I pictured him with a leather apron! Why, he's decorated, and the
+baron isn't! He's really very good-looking, and his eyes are superb!"
+
+Claire looked at him almost sternly. The contrast was complete between
+him and Bligny, far away. Philippe was relieved to find the Baron de
+Prefont present; he had read a treatise of his, which delighted the
+baron, who at once became very friendly, and insisted on visiting the
+ironworks. Only Claire remained frigid and indifferent, and this on his
+second visit, instead of disconcerting the ironmaster, only irritated
+him; and the more she pretended to ignore him the more determined he
+became to compel her to notice him. They were all on the terrace when
+Monsieur and Mademoiselle Monlinet were announced.
+
+"What can these people want?" said Madame de Beaulieu.
+
+Monsieur Monlinet was a wealthy tradesman, who had just bought the
+Chateau de la Varenne, near by. His daughter had been at school with
+Claire and the Baroness de Prefont, and a bitter warfare was waged
+incessantly between the juvenile aristocrats and the monied damsels
+without handles to their names. All recollections of Athenais had faded
+from Claire's mind, but hatred was still rife in Mlle. Monlinet's heart;
+and when her father, in view of her marriage, bought La Varenne for her,
+the chateau was a threatening fortress, whence she might pounce down on
+her enemy.
+
+Now she advanced towards Mlle, de Beaulieu when she entered the
+drawing-room at Beaulieu and threw her arms round her neck, and boldly
+exclaimed, "Ah, my beautiful Claire! How happy am I to see you!"
+
+This young person had wonderfully improved, had become very pretty, and
+now paralysed her adversaries by her audacity. She soon contrived to
+leave the others, and when alone with Claire informed her she had come
+to beg for advice respecting her marriage.
+
+Mlle, de Beaulieu instantly divined what her relatives had been hiding
+so carefully, and though she became very pale while Athenais looked at
+her in fiendish delight, she determined to die rather than own her love
+for Gaston, and exerted all her will to master herself. The noise of a
+furious gallop resounded, and the Duc de Bligny dashed into the
+courtyard on a horse white with foam. He would have entered the
+drawing-room, but the baron hindered him, while Maitre Bachelin went to
+ask if he might be received.
+
+Claire wore a frightful expression of anger.
+
+"Be kind enough"--she turned to Bachelin--"to ask the duke to go round
+to the terrace and wait a moment. Don't bring him in till I make you a
+sign from the window; but, in the meantime, send M. Derblay to me."
+
+The marchioness and the baroness immediately improvided a
+_mise-en-scene,_ so that when the duke entered, he perceived the
+marchioness seated as usual in her easy chair, the baroness standing
+near the chimney-piece, and Claire with her back to the light. He bowed
+low before the noble woman who had been his second mother.
+
+"Madame la Marquise," he said, "my dear aunt, you see my emotion--my
+grief! Claire, I cannot leave this room till you have forgiven me!"
+
+"But you owe me no explanation, duke," Claire said, with amazing
+serenity; "and you need no forgiveness. I have been told you intend to
+marry. You had the right to do so, it seems to me. Were you not as free
+as myself?"
+
+Thereupon, approaching the doorway, she made a sign to Philippe. Athenais
+boldly followed the ironmaster.
+
+"I must introduce you to one another, gentlemen. Monsieur le Duc de
+Bligny--my cousin." Then, turning towards her faithless lover, and
+defying him, as it were, with her proud gaze, she added, "Duke, Monsieur
+Derblay, my future husband."
+
+
+_III.--The Ironmaster's Disappointment_
+
+
+Touched by the disinterested delicacy of M. Derblay, the marchioness
+sanctioned her daughter's sudden determination without anxiety. In her
+mother's presence, Claire showed every outward sign of happiness, but
+her heart became bitter and her mind disturbed, and nought remained of
+the noble, tender-hearted Claire.
+
+Her only object now was to avenge herself on Athenais and humiliate the
+duke; and the preparations for the wedding were carried on with
+incredible speed. Left ignorant of the ironmaster's generous intentions,
+she attributed his ready deference to all her wishes to his ambition to
+become her husband, and even felt contempt for the readiness with which
+he had enacted his part in the humiliating comedy played before the
+duke, so thoroughly did she misjudge passionate, generous-hearted
+Philippe, whose only dream was to restore her happiness.
+
+Mlle, de Beaulieu arrived at two decisions which stupefied everybody.
+She wished the wedding to take place at midnight, without the least
+pomp, and only the members of the two families to be present. The
+marchioness raised her hands to heaven, and the marquis asked his sister
+if she were going mad, but Philippe declared these wishes seemed very
+proper to him, and so they were carried out.
+
+The marriage contract was signed on the eve of the great day. Claire
+remained ignorant of the fact that she was ruined, and signed quite
+unsuspectingly the act which endowed her with half M. Derblay's fortune.
+
+The service was performed with the same simplicity as would have been
+observed at a pauper's wedding. The dreary music troubled the duke, and
+reminded him of his father's funeral, when his aunt and cousins wept
+with him. He was now alone. Separated for ever from the dear ones who
+had been so kind to him, he compared Philippe's conduct with his own,
+and, turning his eyes to Claire, divined that she wept. A light broke on
+him; he realised the ironmaster's true position, and decided he might
+revenge himself very sweetly.
+
+"She weeps," he said to himself. "She hates that man, and still loves
+me."
+
+After the service he looked in vain for traces of tears. She was calm
+and smiling, and spoke in perfect self-possession.
+
+But when she was left alone, all on a sudden she found herself face to
+face with the cruel reality. She held herself and Philippe in horror.
+She must have been mad, and he had acted most unworthily in lending
+himself to her plans. When he at last ventured to come to her, her harsh
+expression astonished him. She managed to convey to him her wish to
+remain alone, and he showed himself so proud and magnanimous, she asked
+herself if it would be possible for her to live apart from him. How
+could she for ever repel such a loyal, generous man without showing
+herself unjust and cruel?
+
+Her husband approached her. His lips touched her forehead. "Till
+to-morrow," he said. But as he touched her he was seized with a mad,
+passionate longing. He caught her in his arms in an irresistible
+transport. "Oh, if you only knew how much I love you!"
+
+Surprised at first, Claire turned livid.
+
+"Leave me!" she cried in an angry voice.
+
+Philippe drew back. "What!" he said, in a troubled voice. "You repel me
+with horror! Do you hate me, then? And why? Ah, that man who forsook you
+so cowardly--that man, do you still happen to love him?"
+
+"Ah, have you not perceived that I have been mad?" cried Claire, ceasing
+to restrain herself. "I have deserved your anger and contempt, no doubt.
+Come, take everything belonging to me except myself! My fortune is
+yours. I give it you. Let it be the ransom of my liberty."
+
+Philippe was on the point of revealing the truth, which he had hitherto
+hidden with such delicacy and care, but he cast the idea aside. "Do you
+really take me for a man who sells himself?" he asked coldly. "I, who
+came here but a little while ago, palpitating and trembling to tell my
+love! Wasn't I more than mad, more than grotesque? For, after all, I
+have your fortune. I'm paid. I have no right to complain."
+
+Philippe burst into a bitter laugh, and falling on the sofa, hid his
+face in his hands.
+
+"Monsieur," said Claire haughtily, "let us finish this. Spare me useless
+raillery----"
+
+Philippe showed his face, down which tears were streaming. "I am not
+railing, madame; I am weeping--mourning my happiness, for ever lost. But
+this is enough weakness. You wished to purchase your liberty. I give it
+you for nothing. You will realise one day that you have been even more
+unjust than cruel, and you may then think of trying to undo what you
+have done. But it will be useless. If I saw you on your knees begging my
+forgiveness, I should not have a word of pity for you. Adieu, madame. We
+shall live as you have willed it."
+
+Claire simply bent her head in assent. Philippe gave her a last glance,
+hoping for some softening; but she remained inert and frigid. He slowly
+opened the door, and closed it, pausing again to listen if a cry or a
+sigh would give him--wounded as he was--a pretext for returning and
+offering to forgive. But all was silent.
+
+"Proud creature," said he. "You refuse to bend, but I will break you."
+
+The next morning Claire was found insensible, and for months she lay
+ill, nursed by Philippe with silent devotion. From that time forth his
+manner did not change. Gentle and most attentive to Claire in the
+presence of strangers, he was cold, grave, and strictly polite when they
+were alone.
+
+
+_IV.--The Lover's Reward_
+
+
+In the first expansion of her return to life she had decided she would
+be amiable, and frankly grant her friendship to Philippe, but saw, to
+her mortification, she was disposed to grant more than was asked of her.
+When he handed her "the income of her fortune, for six months," she
+became in a moment the proud Claire of other times, and refused to take
+it. Their eyes met; she relapsed, conquered. He it was she loved now.
+She constantly looked at him, and did whatever she thought would please
+him. She learnt with surprise that her husband was on the high road to
+becoming one of the princes of industry--that great power of the
+century. And when she learnt, accidentally from her brother, that she
+herself had had no dowry, she said, "I must win him back, or I shall
+die!"
+
+The Duc and Duchess de Bligny arrived at La Varenne. La Varenne became
+the scene of numerous fetes, but Claire excused herself from attending
+on the ground that she was not yet well enough to sit up late. Athenais'
+anticipated pleasure was all lost, since she could not crush her rival
+with her magnificence. In her jealous rage she began to devote
+particular attention to Monsieur Derblay. At last, Claire judged the cup
+was full, and on her fete day, encouraged for the first time by her
+husband's glances, called Athenais aside and entreated her to stay away
+from their home for a time, at least. Athenais, pale with rage, replied
+insultingly, and Claire summoned the duke to take his wife away if he did
+not wish her to be turned out in presence of everyone.
+
+With perfect composure Bligny asked Philippe if he approved of what
+Madame Derblay had done. In a grave voice, the ironmaster answered,
+"Monsieur le Duc, whatever Madame Derblay may do, whatever reason she
+may have for doing it, I consider everything she does as well done."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Claire saw two pistols lowered. With a shriek, she bounded forward and
+clapped her hand on the muzzle of Bligny's pistol!
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+An hour had elapsed without her regaining consciousness. The ironmaster
+was leaning over her. Suddenly her eyes opened, and she threw her arms
+round his neck. An acute pain passed through her hand, and she
+remembered everything--her despair, her anguish, and her sacrifice.
+
+"One word?" she asked. "Tell me, do you love me?"
+
+Philippe showed her a radiant face.
+
+"Yes, I love you," he replied.
+
+A cry escaped Claire. She clung frantically to Philippe; their eyes met,
+and in inexpressible ecstasy they exchanged their first kiss of love.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+
+
+OUIDA (LOUISE DE LA RAMEE)
+
+
+Under Two Flags
+
+
+     There are few women writers who have created more stir by
+     their works than Louise de la Ramee, the lady who wrote under
+     the pen name of Ouida. Born of English and French parentage at
+     Bury St. Edmund, England, in 1840, she began to turn to
+     account her undoubted literary talents at the age of twenty,
+     when she contributed to the "New Monthly" and "Bentley's
+     Magazine." In the same year appeared her first long story,
+     "Granville de Vigne," which was afterwards renamed and
+     republished as "Held in Bondage." From that time an amazing
+     output of romances fell in rapid succession from her pen, the
+     most picturesque of them, perhaps, being "Under Two Flags"
+     (1867) and "Moths." With respect to the former, although on
+     occasions it exhibits a tendency towards inaccurate
+     observation, the story is told with rare dramatic force and
+     descriptive power. From 1874, Mlle. Ramee made her home in
+     Italy, where, at Lucca, in spite of her reputation as a
+     novelist, she died in straightened circumstances Jan. 25,
+     1908.
+
+
+_I.--An Officer of the Guards_
+
+
+A Guardsman at home is always luxuriously accommodated, and the Hon.
+Bertie Cecil, second son of Viscount Royallieu, was never behind his
+fellows in anything; besides, he was one of the crack officers of the
+1st Life Guards, and ladies sent him pretty things enough to fill the
+Palais Royal.
+
+Then Hon. Bertie was known generally in the brigade as "Beauty," and the
+appellative, gained at Eton, was in no way undeserved. His face, with as
+much delicacy and brilliancy as a woman's, was at once handsome,
+thoroughbred, languid, nonchalant with a certain latent recklessness,
+under the impassive calm of habit.
+
+Life petted him and pampered him; lodged him like a prince, dined him
+like a king, and had never let him feel the want of all that is bought
+by money. How could he understand that he was not as rich a man as his
+oldest and closest comrade, Lord Rockingham, a Colossus, known as "the
+Seraph," the eldest son of the Duke of Lyonesse?
+
+A quarrel with his father (whom he always alluded to as "Royal")
+reminded him that he was ruined; that he would get no help from the old
+lord, or from his elder brother, the heir. He was hopelessly in debt;
+nothing but the will of his creditors stood between him and the fatal
+hour when he must "send in his papers to sell," and be "nowhere" in the
+great race of life.
+
+An appeal for money from his young brother, Berkeley, whom he really
+loved, forced Cecil to look, for the first time, blankly in the face of
+ruin that awaited him.
+
+Berkeley, a boy of twenty, had been gambling, and came to Cecil, as he
+had come often enough before, with his tale of needs. It was L300
+Berkeley wanted, and he had already borrowed L100 from a friend--a
+shameless piece of degradation in Cecil's code.
+
+"It is no use to give you false hopes, young one," said Cecil gently. "I
+can do nothing. If the money were mine it should be yours at a word. But
+I am all downhill, and my bills may be called in at any moment."
+
+"You are such chums with Rockingham, and he's as rich as all the Jews
+put together. What harm could there be if you asked him to lend you some
+money for me?"
+
+Cecil's face darkened.
+
+"You will bring some disgrace on us before you die, Berkeley," he said.
+"Have you no common knowledge of honour? If I did such a thing I should
+deserve to be hounded out of the Guards to-morrow. The only thing for
+you to do is to go down and tell Royal, he will sell every stick and
+stone for your sake."
+
+"I would rather cut my throat," said the boy. "I have had so much from
+him lately."
+
+But in the end he promised to go.
+
+It was hard for Bertie to get it into his brain that he really was at
+the end of his resources. There still seemed one chance open to him. He
+was a fearless rider, and his horse, Forest King, was famous for its
+powers. He entered him for a great race at Baden, and piled on all he
+could, determined to be sunk or saved by the race. If he won he might be
+able to set things right for a time, and then family influence ought to
+procure him an advance in the Guards.
+
+Forest King had never failed its master hitherto, and Bertie would have
+been saved by his faithful steed, but for the fact that a blackguardly
+turf welcher doctored the horse's mouth, and Forest King was beaten, and
+couldn't finish the course.
+
+"Something ails King," said Cecil calmly, "he is fairly knocked off his
+legs. Some vet must look to him; ridden a yard further he will fall."
+
+
+_II "A Mystery--An Error"_
+
+
+Cecil knew that with the failure of Forest King had gone the last plank
+that saved him from ruin, perhaps the last chance that stood between him
+and dishonour. He had never looked on it as within the possibilities of
+hazard that the horse could be defeated, and the blow fell with crushing
+force; the fiercer because his indolence had persisted in ignoring his
+danger, and his whole character was so accustomed to ease and to
+enjoyment.
+
+He got away from his companions, and wandered out alone into the gardens
+in the evening sunlight, throwing himself on a bench beneath a
+mountain-ash.
+
+Here the little Lady Venetia, the eight-year-old sister of the colossal
+Seraph, found him, and Cecil roused himself, and smiled at her.
+
+"They say you have lost all your money," said the child, "and I want you
+to take mine. It is my _very_ own. Papa gives it to me to do just what I
+like with it. Please do take it."
+
+Twenty bright Napoleons fell in a glittering shower on the grass.
+
+"_Petite reine_," Cecil murmured gently, "how some man will love you one
+day. I cannot take your money, and you will understand why when you are
+older. But I will take this if you will give it me," and he picked up a
+little enamelled sweetmeat box, and slipped it into his waistcoat
+pocket. It was only a child's gift, but he kept it through many a dark
+day and wild night.
+
+At that moment as he stood there, with the child beside him, one of the
+men of the gardens brought him an English letter, marked "instant."
+Cecil took it wearily, broke the envelope, and read a scrawled,
+miserable letter, blotted with hot tears, and scored out in impulsive
+misery. The Lady Venetia went slowly away and when next they met it was
+under the burning sun of Africa.
+
+Alone, Cecil's head sank down upon his hands.
+
+"Oh, God!" he thought. "If it were anything--anything except disgrace!"
+
+An hour later and the Seraph's servant brought him a message, asking him
+to come to Lord Rockingham's rooms immediately.
+
+Cecil went, and the Seraph crossed the room with his hand held out; not
+for his life in that moment would he have omitted that gesture of
+friendship. There was a third person in the room, a Jew, M. Baroni, who
+held a folded paper, with the forged signature of _Rockingham_ on it,
+and another signature, the name of the forger in whose favour the bill
+was drawn; that other signature was--_Bertie Cecil_.
+
+"Cecil, my dear fellow," said the Seraph, "I'm ashamed to send for you
+on such a blackguard errand! Here, M. Baroni, make your statement. Later
+on, Mr. Cecil can avenge it."
+
+"My statement is easily made," said the Jew. "I simply charge the Hon.
+Bertie Cecil with having negotiated a bill with my firm for L750 month,
+drawn in his own favour, and accepted at two months' date by your
+lordship. Your signature you, my lord marquis, admit to be a forgery.
+With that forgery I charge your friend!"
+
+Cecil stood silent, with a strange anguish on his face.
+
+"I am not guilty," he said quietly.
+
+"Beauty--Beauty! Never say that to _me_!" said the Seraph. "Do you think
+_I_ can ever doubt you?"
+
+"It is a matter of course," replied Baroni, "that Mr. Cecil denies the
+accusation. It is very wise. But I _must_ arrest Mr. Cecil! Were you
+alone, my lord, you could prosecute or not, as you please; but ours is
+the money obtained by that forgery. If Mr. Cecil will accompany me
+unresistingly, I will not summon legal force."
+
+"Cecil, tell me what is to be done?" said the Seraph hoarsely. "I will
+send for the duke--"
+
+"Send for no one. I will go with this man. He is right as far as he
+knows. The whole is a--a mystery--an error."
+
+Cecil hesitated a moment; then he stretched out his hand. "Will you take
+it--still?"
+
+"Take it! Before all the world, always, come what will!"
+
+The Seraph's voice rang clear as the ring of silver. Another moment, and
+the door had closed. Cecil went slowly out beside his accuser, not
+blaming the Jew in anything.
+
+Once out in the air, the Hebrew laid his hand on his arm. Presently, in
+a side-street, three figures loomed in the shadow of the houses--a
+German official, the commissary of police, and an English detective. The
+Hebrew had betrayed him, and arrested him in the open street.
+
+In an instant all the pride and blood of his race was up. He wrenched
+his wrists free and with his left arm felled the detective to earth with
+a crushing blow. The German---a powerful and firmly-built man--was on
+him at once, but Cecil's science was the finer. For a second the two
+rocked in close embrace, and then the German fell heavily.
+
+The cries of Baroni drew a crowd at once, but Cecil dashed, with the
+swiftness of the deer, forward into the gathering night.
+
+Flight! The craven's refuge--the criminal's resource! Flight! He wished
+in the moment's agony that they would send a bullet through his brain.
+
+Soon the pursuers were far behind. But Cecil knew that he had but the
+few remaining hours of night left to save those for whom he had elected
+to sacrifice his life.
+
+
+_III.--Under Another Flag_
+
+
+Cigarette was the pet of the army of Africa, and was as lawless as most
+of her patrons. She was the Friend of the Flag. Soldiers had been about
+her from her cradle. They had been her books, her teachers, her
+guardians, and, later on, her lovers, all the days of her life. She had
+no sense of duty taught her, except to face fire boldly, never to betray
+a comrade, and to worship but two deities--"_la Gloire_" and "_la
+France_." Her own sex would have seen no good in her, but her
+comrades-in-arms could, and did. A certain chasseur d'Afrique in this
+army at Algiers puzzled her. He treated her with a grave courtesy, that
+made her wish, with impatient scorn for the wish, that she knew how to
+read, and had not her hair cut short like a boy's--a weakness the little
+vivandiere had never been visited with before.
+
+"You are too fine for us, _mon brave_," she said pettishly once to this
+chasseur. "They say you are English, but I don't believe it. Say what
+you are, then?"
+
+"A soldier of France. Can you wish me more?"
+
+"True," she said simply. "But you were not always a soldier of France?
+You joined, they say, twelve years ago. What were you before then?"
+
+"Before?" he answered slowly. "Well--a fool"
+
+"You belonged to the majority, then!" said Cigarette. "But why did you
+come into the service? You were born in the noblesse--bah, I know an
+aristocrat at a glance! What ruined you, Monsieur l'Aristocrat?"
+
+"Aristocrat? I am none. I am Louis Victor, a corporal of the chasseurs."
+
+"You are dull, _mon brave_."
+
+Cigarette left him, and made her way to the officers' quarters. High or
+low, they were all the same to Cigarette, and she would have talked to
+the emperor himself as coolly as she did to any private.
+
+She praised the good looks of the corporal of chasseurs, and his
+colonel, M. le Marquis de Chateauroy, answered, with a curse, "I wish my
+corporal were shot! One can never hear the last of him!"
+
+Meanwhile, the corporal of chasseurs sat alone among the stones of a
+ruined mosque. He was a dashing cavalry soldier, who had a dozen wounds
+cut over his body by the Bedouin swords in many and hot skirmishes; who
+had waited through sultry African nights for the lion's tread; and who
+had served well in fierce, arduous work in trying campaigns and in close
+discipline.
+
+From the extremes of luxury and indolence Cecil came to the extremes of
+hardship and toil. He had borne the change mutely, and without a murmur,
+though the first years were years of intense misery. His comrades had
+grown to love him, seeing his courage and his willingness to help them,
+with a rough, dog-like love.
+
+Twelve years ago in England it was accepted that Bertie Cecil and his
+servant Rake had been killed in a railway accident in France.
+
+And the solitary corporal of chasseurs read in the "Galignani" of the
+death of his father, Viscount Royallieu, and of his elder brother. The
+title and estate that should have been his had gone to his younger
+brother.
+
+
+_IV.--From Death to Life_
+
+
+The Seraph, now Duke of Lyonesse, and his sister Venetia, Princess
+Corona, came on a visit to the French camp, and with them Berkeley,
+Viscount Royallieu. Corporal Louis Victor saw them, and, safe from
+recognition himself, knew them. But Cecil was not to go down to the
+grave unreleased. First, his brother Berkeley coming upon him alone in
+the solitude of a desert camp, made concealment impossible.
+
+"Have you lived stainlessly _since_?" were Cecil's only words, stern as
+the demand of a judge.
+
+"God is my witness, yes! But you--they said you were dead. That was my
+first disgrace, and my last; you bore the weight of my shame. What can I
+say? Such nobility, such sacrifice--"
+
+It was for himself that Berkeley trembled.
+
+"I have kept your secret twelve years; I will keep it still," said Cecil
+gravely. "Only leave Algeria at once."
+
+A slight incident revealed the corporal's identity to the Princess
+Corona. By his bearing he had attracted the attention of the visitors to
+the camp, and on being admitted to the villa of the princess to restore
+a gold chain dropped carelessly in the road, he disclosed the little
+enamelled box, marked "Venetia," the gift of the child in the garden at
+Baden.
+
+"That box is mine!" cried the princess. "I gave it! And you? You are my
+brother's friend? You are Bertie Cecil?"
+
+"_Petite reine_!" he murmured.
+
+Then he acknowledged who he was, not even for his brother's sake could
+he have lied to _her_; but he implored her to say nothing to the Seraph.
+"I was innocent, but in honour I can never give you or any living thing
+_proof_ that this crime was not mine."
+
+"He is either a madman or a martyr," she mused, when Cecil had left her.
+That he loved her was plain, and the time was not far distant when she
+should love him, and be willing to share any sacrifice love and honour
+might demand.
+
+The hatred of Colonel Chateauroy for his corporal brought matters to a
+climax. Meeting Cecil returning from his visit to Venetia, Chateauroy
+could not refrain from saying insulting things concerning the princess.
+
+"_You lie_!" cried Cecil; "and you know that you lie! Breathe her name
+once more, and, as we are both living men, I will have your life for
+your outrage!"
+
+And as he spoke Cecil smote him on the lips.
+
+Chateauroy summoned the guard, the corporal was placed under arrest, and
+brought to court-martial.
+
+In three days' time Corporal Louis Victor would be shot by order of the
+court-martial.
+
+Cigarette, and Cigarette alone, prevented the sentence being carried
+out, and that at the cost of her life.
+
+She was away from the camp at the time in a Moorish town when the news
+came to her; and she stumbled on Berkeley Cecil, and, knowing him for an
+Englishman, worked on his feelings, and gave him no rest till he had
+acknowledged the condemned man for his elder brother and the lawful
+Viscount Royallieu, peer of England.
+
+With this document, signed and sealed by Berkeley, Cigarette galloped
+off to the fortress where the marshal of France, who was Viceroy of
+Africa, had arrived. The marshal knew Cigarette; he had decorated her
+with the cross for her valour in battle, and with the whole army of
+Africa he loved and admired her.
+
+Cigarette gave him the document, and told him all she knew of the
+corporal's heroism. And the marshal promised the sentence should be
+deferred until he had found out the whole truth of the matter.
+
+With the order of release in her bosom Cigarette once more vaulted into
+the saddle, to ride hard through the day and night--for at sunrise on
+the morrow will the sentence be executed.
+
+And now it is sunrise, and the prisoner has been brought out to the
+slope of earth out of sight of the camp.
+
+At the last the Seraph appeared, and found in the condemned man the
+friend of his youth. It was only with great difficulty that Rockingham
+was overpowered, for he swore Cecil should not be killed, and a dozen
+soldiers were required to get him away.
+
+Then Cecil raised his hand, and gave the signal for his own death-shot.
+
+The levelled carbines covered him; ere they could fire a shrill cry
+pierced the air: "Wait! In the name of France!"
+
+Dismounted and breathless, Cigarette was by the side of Cecil, and had
+flung herself on his breast.
+
+Her cry came too late; the volley was fired, and while the prisoner
+stood erect, grazed only by some of the balls, Cigarette fell, pierced
+and broken by the fire. She died in Cecil's arms, with the comrades she
+had loved around her.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+It is spring. Cecil is Lord of Royallieu, the Lady Venetia is his bride.
+
+"It was worth banishment to return," he murmured to her. "It was worth
+the trials that I bore to learn the love that I have known."
+
+And the memories of both went back to a place in a desert land where the
+folds of the tricolour drooped over one little grave--a grave where the
+troops saluted as they passed it, because on the white stone there was
+carved a name that spoke to every heart:
+
+              CIGARETTE
+    ENFANT DE L'ARMEE, SOLDAT DE LA FRANCE.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+
+
+JAMES PAYN
+
+
+Lost Sir Massingberd
+
+
+     James Payn, one of the most prolific literary workers of the
+     second half of the nineteenth century, was born at Cheltenham,
+     England, Feb. 28, 1830, and died March 23, 1898. After a false
+     start in education for the army, he went to Cambridge
+     University, where he was president of the Union, and published
+     some poems. The acceptance of his contributions by "Household
+     Words" turned him to his true vocation. After writing some
+     years for "Chambers's Journal" he became its editor from 1850
+     till 1874. His first work of fiction, "The Foster Brothers," a
+     story founded on his college life, appeared in 1859, but it
+     was not until five years later that Payn's name was
+     established as a novelist. This was on the publication of
+     "Lost Sir Massingberd, a Romance of Real Life." The story
+     first appeared in "Chambers's Journal," and is marked by all
+     his good qualities--ingenious construction, dramatic
+     situations, and a skilful arrangement of incidents.
+     Altogether, Payn wrote about sixty volumes of novels and short
+     stories.
+
+
+_I.--Neither Fearing God Nor Regarding Man_
+
+
+In a Midland county, not as yet scarred by factories, there stands a
+village called Fairburn, which at the time I knew it first had for its
+squire, its lord, its despot, one Sir Massingberd Heath. Its rector, at
+that date, was the Rev. Matthew Long, into whose wardship I, Peter
+Meredith, an Anglo-Indian lad, was placed by my parents. I loved Mr.
+Long, although he was my tutor; and oh, how I feared and hated Mr.
+Massingberd! It was not, however, my boyhood alone that caused me to
+hold this man as a monster of iniquity; it was the opinion which the
+whole county entertained of him, more or less. Like the unjust judge, he
+neither feared God nor regarded man.
+
+He had been a fast, very fast friend of the regent; but they were no
+longer on speaking terms. Sir Massingberd had left the gay, wicked world
+for good, and was obliged to live at his beautiful country seat in spite
+of himself. He was irretrievably ruined, and house and land being
+entailed upon his nephew Marmaduke, he had nothing but a life interest
+in anything.
+
+Marmaduke Heath was Mr. Long's pupil as well as myself, and he resided
+with his uncle at the Hall. He dreaded his relative beyond measure. All
+the pretended frankness with which the old man sometimes treated the lad
+was unable to hide the hate with which Sir Massingberd really regarded
+him; but for this heir-presumptive to the entail, the baronet might
+raise money to any extent, and once more take his rightful station in
+the world.
+
+Abject terror obscured the young existence of Marmaduke Heath. The
+shadow of Sir Massingberd cast itself over him alike when he went out
+from his hated presence and when he returned to it.
+
+Soon after my first meeting with Marmaduke, Sir Massingberd unexpectedly
+appeared before me. He was a man of Herculean proportions, dressed like
+an under-gamekeeper, but with the face of one who was used to command.
+On his forehead was a curious indented frown like the letter V, and his
+lips curled contemptuously upward in the same shape. These two together
+gave him a weird, demoniacal look, which his white beard, although long
+and flowing, had not enough of dignity to do away with. He ordered his
+nephew to go home, and the boy instantly obeyed, as though he almost
+dreaded a blow from his uncle. Then the baronet strode away, and his
+laugh echoed again and again, for it was joy to know that he was feared.
+
+Mr. Long determined to buy a horse for me, and upon my suggestion that I
+wished Marmaduke Heath to spend more time in my company, he and I went
+up to the Hall to ask Sir Massingberd if he were willing. The squire
+received us curtly, and upon hearing of my tutor's intention, declared
+that he himself would select a horse for Marmaduke. Then, since he
+wished to talk with Mr. Long concerning Mr. Chint, the family lawyer, he
+bade me go to his nephew's room, calling upon Grimjaw, a loathsome old
+dog, to act as my guide. This beast preceded me up the old oak staircase
+to a chamber door, before which it sat and whined. Marmaduke opened this
+and admitted me, and we sat talking together.
+
+My tutor found us together, and knowing the house better than the heir
+did, offered to play cicerone and show me over. In the state bed-room, a
+great room facing the north, he disclosed to us a secret stairway that
+opened behind a full-length portrait. Marmaduke, who had been unaware of
+its existence, grew ghastly pale.
+
+"The foot of the stairway is in the third bookcase on the left of the
+library door," said Mr. Long. "I dare say that nobody has moved the
+picture for twenty years."
+
+"Yes, yes!" said Marmaduke passionately. "My uncle has moved it. When I
+was ill, upon my coming to Fairburn, I slept here, and I had terrible
+visions. I see it all now. He wanted to frighten me to death, or to make
+me mad. He would come and stand by my bedside and stare at me. Cruel--
+cruel coward!"
+
+Then he begged us to go away. "My uncle will wonder at your long delay.
+He will suspect something," he said.
+
+"Peter," observed my tutor gravely, as we went homeward, "whatever you
+may think of what has passed to-day, say nothing. I am not so ignorant
+of the wrongs of that poor boy as I appear, but there is nothing for it
+but patience."
+
+
+_II.--A Gypsy's Curse_
+
+
+In a few days I was in possession of an excellent horse, and Marmaduke
+had the like fortune. My tutor examined the steed Sir Massingberd had
+bought with great attention, and after commenting on the tightness of
+the curb, declared that he would accompany us on our first ride. After
+we had left the village, he expressed a wish to change mounts with
+Marmaduke, and certainly if he had been a horsebreaker he could not have
+taken more pains with the animal. In the end he expressed himself highly
+satisfied. Some days afterwards, however, Panther, for so we called the
+horse, behaved in a strange and incomprehensible fashion, and at last
+became positively fiendish. Shying at a gypsy encampment, he rushed at
+headlong speed down a zigzagged chalk road, and at last pitched
+head-first over a declivity. When I found Marmaduke blood was at his
+mouth, blood at his ears, blood everywhere.
+
+"Marmaduke, Marmaduke!" I cried. "Speak! Speak, if it be but a single
+word! Great heaven, he is dead!"
+
+"Dead! No, not he," answered a hoarse, cracked voice at my ear. "The
+devil would never suffer a Heath of Fairburn to die at his age!"
+
+"Woman," cried I, for it was an old gypsy, who had somehow transported
+herself to the spot, "for God's sake go for help! There is a house
+yonder amongst the trees."
+
+"And why should I stir a foot," replied she fiercely, "for the child of
+a race that has ever treated me and mine as dogs?"
+
+Then she cursed Sir Massingberd as the oppressor of her kith and kin,
+concluding with the terrible words, "May he perish, inch by inch, within
+reach of the aid that shall never come, ere the God of the poor take him
+into His hand!"
+
+"If you hate Sir Massingberd Heath," said I despairingly, "and want to
+do him the worst service that lies in your power, flee, flee to that
+house, and bid them save this boy's life, which alone stands between his
+beggared uncle and unknown riches!"
+
+Revenge accomplished what pity had failed to work. She knelt at his
+side, from a pocket produced a spirit-flask in a leathern case, and
+applied it to his lips. After a painful attempt to swallow, he
+succeeded; his eyelids began tremulously to move, and the colour to
+return to his pallid cheeks. She disappeared; during her absence I noted
+that the tarnished silver top of the flask bore upon it a facsimile of
+one of the identical griffins which guarded each side of the broad steps
+that led to Fairburn Hall.
+
+After a short interval, a young and lovely girl appeared, accompanied by
+a groom and butler, who bore between them a small sofa, on which
+Marmaduke was lifted and gently carried to the house. The master came in
+soon, accompanied by the local doctor, who at last delivered the verdict
+that my friend "would live to be a baronet."
+
+He said, moreover, that the youth must be kept perfectly quiet, and not
+moved thence on any consideration--it might be for weeks. Harvey Gerard,
+a noble-looking gentleman, refused to admit Sir Massingberd under his
+roof.
+
+The baronet, however, did appear towards twilight, and forced his way
+into the house, where Harvey Gerard met him with great severity. Soon
+hatred took the place of all other expressions on the baronet's face,
+and he swore that he would see his nephew.
+
+"That you shall not do, Sir Massingberd," said the gentleman. "If you
+attempt to do so, my servants will put you out of the house by force."
+
+"Before night, then, I shall send for him, and he shall be carried back
+to Fairburn, to be nursed in his proper home."
+
+"Nursed!" repeated Harvey Gerard hoarsely. "Nursed by the gravedigger!"
+
+Sir Massingberd turned livid.
+
+"To hear you talk one would think that I had tried to murder the boy,"
+he said.
+
+"I _know_ you did!" cried Harvey Gerard solemnly. "To-day you sent your
+nephew forth upon that devil with a snaffle-bridle instead of a curb!
+See, I track your thoughts like slime. Base ruffian, begone from beneath
+this roof, false coward!"
+
+Sir Massingberd started up like one stung by an adder.
+
+"Yes, I say coward!" continued Harvey Gerard. "Heavens, that this
+creature should still feel touch of shame! Be off, be off; molest not
+anyone within this house at peril of your life! Murderer!"
+
+For once Sir Massingberd had met his match--and more. He seized his hat,
+and hurried from the room.
+
+
+_III.--A Wife Undesired_
+
+
+When Marmaduke recovered consciousness, twelve hours after his terrible
+fall, he told me that he had been given a sign of his approaching
+demise.
+
+"I have seen a vision in the night," he said, "far too sweet and fair
+not to have been sent from heaven itself. They say the Heaths have
+always ghastly warnings when their hour is come; but this was surely a
+gentle messenger."
+
+"Your angel is Lucy Gerard," replied I quietly, "and we are at this
+moment in her father's house."
+
+He was silent for a time, with features as pale as the pillow on which
+he lay; then he repeated her name as though it were a prayer.
+
+"It would indeed be bitter for me to die _now_," he said.
+
+I myself was stricken with love for Lucy Gerard, and would have laid
+down my life to kiss her finger-tips. Nearly half a century has passed
+over my head since the time of which I write, and yet, I swear to you,
+my old heart glows again, and on my withered cheeks there comes a blush
+as I call to mind the time when I first met that pure and lovely girl.
+But from the moment that Marmaduke Heath spoke to me as he did, upon his
+bed of sickness, of our host's daughter, I determined within myself not
+only to stand aside, and let him win if he could, but to help him by all
+the means within my power. And so it came about that later I told Lucy
+that his recovery depended upon her kindness, and won her to look upon
+him with compassion and with tenderness.
+
+Mr. Clint, the lawyer, came from London, and arrangements were made for
+Marmaduke to continue in Harvey Gerard's care, and when Marmaduke was
+convalescent the Gerards removed him to their residence in Harley
+street. After I had bidden them farewell, I rode slowly towards
+Fairburn, but was stopped at some distance by a young gypsy boy, who
+summoned me to the encampment to converse with the aged woman whom I had
+seen on the occasion of the accident. She bade me sit down beside her,
+and after a time produced the silver-mounted flask, concerning whose
+history I felt great curiosity. I asked her how it came into her
+possession, and she herself asked a question in turn.
+
+"Has it never struck you why Sir Massingberd has not long ago taken to
+himself a young wife, and begotten an heir for the lands of Fairburn, in
+despite of his nephew?"
+
+"If that be so," said I, "why does not Sir Massingberd marry?"
+
+Thereupon she told me that many years ago he had joined their company,
+and shared their wandering fortune. Her sister Sinnamenta, a beautiful
+girl beloved by the handsome Stanley Carew, had fascinated him, and he
+would have married her according to gypsy rites; but since her father
+did not believe that he meant to stay with the tribe longer than it
+suited him, he peremptorily refused his request. Sir Massingberd left
+them; they struck tent at once, and travelled to Kirk Yetholm, in
+Roxburghshire, a mile from the frontier of Northumberland. There the
+wretch followed her, and again proposed to go through the Cingari
+ceremony, and this time the father consented. It was on the wedding-day
+that he gave my informant the shooting-flask as a remembrance, just
+before he and his wife went away southward. Long months afterwards
+Sinnamenta returned heart-stricken, woebegone, about to become a mother,
+with nothing but wretchedness in the future, and even her happy past a
+dream dispelled.
+
+The gypsies were at Fairburn again, and Sinnamenta's father sent for Sir
+Massingberd, and he was told that the marriage was legal, Kirk Yetholm
+being over the border. An awful silence succeeded this disclosure. Sir
+Massingberd turned livid, and twice in vain essayed to speak; he was
+well-nigh strangled with passion. At last he caught Sinnamenta's Wrist
+with fingers of steel.
+
+"What man shall stop me from doing what I will with my own?" he cried.
+"Come along with me, my pretty one!"
+
+Stanley Carew flung himself upon him, knife in hand; but the others
+plucked him backward, and Sir Massingberd signed to his wife to followed
+him, and she obeyed. That night Stanley Carew was arrested on a false
+charge of horse-stealing, and lying witnesses soon afterwards brought
+him to the gallows.
+
+"I know not what she suffered immediately after she was taken from us,"
+concluded the old woman. "But this I have heard, that when he told her
+of the death of Stanley Carew, she fell down like one dead, and
+presently, being delivered of a son, the infant died after a few hours.
+Yonder," she looked menacingly towards Fairburn Hall, "the mother
+lives--a maniac. What else could keep me here in a place that tortures
+me with memories of my youth, and of loving faces that have crumbled
+into dust? What else but the hope of one day seeing my little sister
+yet, and the vengeance of Heaven upon him who has worked her ruin? If
+Massingberd Heath escape some awful end, there is no Avenger on high. I
+am old, but I shall see it yet, I shall see it before I die."
+
+
+_IV.--The Curse Fulfilled_
+
+
+I returned to Fairburn, and soon Sir Massingberd, finding that all
+correspondence with his nephew was interrupted by Harvey Gerard, began
+to pay small attentions to my tutor and myself. At last he appeared at
+the rectory, and desired me to forward a letter to Marmaduke.
+This--finding nothing objectionable in the contents--I agreed to do, and
+he departed, after inviting me to make use of his grounds whenever I
+pleased. On the morrow I yielded to curiosity, and after wandering to
+and fro in the park, came near a small stone house with unglazed,
+iron-grated windows. A short, sharp shriek clove the humid air, and
+approaching, I looked into a sitting-room, where an ancient female sat
+eating a chicken without knife or fork. Her hair was scanty and white as
+snow, but hung almost to the ground.
+
+"Permit me to introduce myself," she said. "I am Sinnamenta, Lady Heath.
+You are not Stanley Carew, are you? They told me that he was hung, but I
+know better than that. To be hung for nothing must be a terrible thing;
+but how much worse to be hung for love! It is not customary to watch a
+lady when she is partaking of refreshment."
+
+Then the poor mad creature turned her back, and I withdrew from the sad
+scene. A day or two afterwards the post carried misfortune from me to
+Harley Street. The wily baronet had fooled me, and had substituted a
+terrible letter for that which he had persuaded me to enclose to his
+nephew.
+
+"Return hither, sir, at once," he had written. "It is far worse than
+idle to attempt to cross my will. I give you twenty-four hours to arrive
+after the receipt of this letter. I shall consider your absence to be
+equivalent to a contumacious refusal. However well it may seem with you,
+it will not be well. Whenever you think yourself safest, you will be
+most in danger. There is, indeed, but one place of safety for you; come
+you home."
+
+Very soon afterwards, and before we knew of this villainy, word reached
+us that the baronet was lost, and could not be found. He had started on
+his usual nocturnal rounds in the preserves, and nobody had seen him
+since midnight. Old Grimjaw, the dog, had been found on the doorstep,
+nigh frozen to death.
+
+The news spread like wild-fire through Fairburn village. I myself joined
+the searchers, but soon separated from them, and passing the home
+spinney, near by which was the famous Wolsey oak, a tree of great age. I
+heard a sound that set my heart beating, and fluttering like the wings
+of a prisoned bird against its cage. Was it a strangled cry for "Help!"
+repeated once, twice, thrice, or was it the cold wind clanging and
+grinding the naked branches of the spinney? But nought living was to be
+seen; a bright wintry sun completely penetrated the leafless woodland.
+At last I came upon the warm but lifeless body of Grimjaw lying on the
+grass, and I hurried madly from the accursed place to where the men were
+dragging the lake.
+
+No clue was found, and my tutor began to fear that the gypsies had made
+away with their enemy. Word came that they had passed through the
+turnpike with a covered cart, and we rode out to interview them. The old
+woman met us, and conducted us to the vehicle, when we found Sinnamenta,
+Lady Heath, weaving rushes into crowns.
+
+"My little sister is not beaten now," said the beldam. "May God's curse
+have found Sir Massingberd! I would that I had his fleshless bones to
+show you. Where he may be we know not; we only hope that in some hateful
+spot he may be suffering unimagined pains!"
+
+By the next post I received bitter news from Harley Street. A copy of
+the menacing epistle reached me from Harvey Gerard. In a postscript Lucy
+added that Marmaduke was too ill to write. An hour later Mr. Long and I
+set off to town, where we found the lad in a less morbid state than we
+had expected. He had asked, and gained, Harvey Gerard's permission to
+marry his daughter, and the beautiful girl was supporting him with all
+her strength.
+
+The services of Townsend, the great Bow street runner, were called for;
+but in spite of his endeavours, no solution was discovered to the
+mystery of Sir Massingberd's disappearance. Fairburn Hall remained
+without a master, occupied only by the servants.
+
+At last Marmaduke came of age, and as he and Lucy were now man and wife,
+it was decreed that they must return to the old home. Art changed that
+sombre house into a comfortable and splendid mansion, and when Lucy
+brought forth a son, the place seemed under a blessing, and no longer
+under a curse. But it was not until the christening feast of the young
+heir was celebrated with due honour that the secret of Sir Massingberd's
+disappearance was discovered.
+
+Some young boys, playing at hide-and-seek, were using the Wolsey oak for
+"home," and, whilst waiting there, dug a hole with their knives, and
+came upon a life-preserver that the baronet had always carried. Then a
+keeper climbed the tree, and cried out that it was hollow, and there was
+a skeleton inside.
+
+"It's my belief," said the man, "that Sir Massingberd must have climbed
+up into the fork to look about him for poachers, and that the wood gave
+way beneath him, and let him down feet foremost into the trunk."
+
+Later, as I looked upon the ghastly relics of humanity, the old gypsy's
+curse recurred to my mind with dreadful distinctness. "May he perish,
+inch by inch, within reach of the aid that shall never come, ere the God
+of the poor take him into His hand."
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+End of Project Gutenberg's The World's Greatest Books, Vol VI., by Various
+
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