initial commit of ebook 38895HEADmain

1 files changed, 33855 insertions, 0 deletions

diff --git a/38895.txt b/38895.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..8117b94
--- /dev/null
+++ b/38895.txt
@@ -0,0 +1,33855 @@
+The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Cloister and the Hearth, by Charles Reade
+
+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 Cloister and the Hearth
+       A Tale of the Middle Ages
+
+Author: Charles Reade
+
+Illustrator: Evelyn Paul
+
+Release Date: February 16, 2012 [EBook #38895]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE CLOISTER AND THE HEARTH ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Emmy, Juliet Sutherland and the Online
+Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+[Transcriber's Note: two diacritical marks cannot be represented in
+plain text these are o with a breve shown as [)o] and the letters
+"oe" with a long macron above shown as [=oe] in the text.]
+
+
+
+THE CLOISTER AND THE HEARTH
+
+
+
+
+_The International Classics_
+
+
+    ADAM BEDE. George Eliot
+    A TALE OF TWO CITIES. Charles Dickens
+    THE CLOISTER AND THE HEARTH. Charles Reade
+    DAVID COPPERFIELD. Charles Dickens
+    IVANHOE. Sir Walter Scott
+    JANE EYRE. Charlotte Bronte
+    LORNA DOONE. R. D. Blackmore
+    QUENTIN DURWARD. Sir Walter Scott
+    THE THREE MUSKETEERS. Alexandre Dumas
+    TWENTY YEARS AFTER. Alexandre Dumas
+    VANITY FAIR. William Makepeace Thackeray
+    WUTHERING HEIGHTS. Emily Bronte
+    WESTWARD HO! Charles Kingsley
+    ARABIAN NIGHTS.
+    THE HUNCHBACK OF NOTRE DAME. Victor Hugo
+    THE WRECK OF THE GROSVENOR. W. Clark Russell
+    BLACK BEAUTY. Anna Sewell
+    THE TALISMAN. Sir Walter Scott
+    THE OLD CURIOSITY SHOP. Charles Dickens
+
+[Illustration: ALL IN A MOMENT SHE WAS LOOKING AT HIM, FULL
+
+_Fr._ [_P. 593_]]
+
+
+
+
+The Cloister and the Hearth
+
+A TALE OF THE MIDDLE AGES
+
+BY CHARLES READE
+
+    WITH SIXTEEN COLOURED ILLUSTRATIONS
+    BY
+    EVELYN PAUL
+
+[Illustration]
+
+    NEW YORK
+    DODD, MEAD AND COMPANY
+    1931
+
+
+
+
+    PUBLISHED IN U. S. A., 1922
+    By DODD, MEAD AND COMPANY, INC.
+
+    PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
+    BY THE CORNWALL PRESS, INC.
+
+
+
+
+PREFACE
+
+
+A SMALL portion of this tale appeared in _Once a Week_, July--September,
+1859, under the title of "A Good Fight."
+
+After writing it, I took wider views of the subject, and also felt
+uneasy at having deviated _unnecessarily_ from the historical outline of
+a true story. These two sentiments have cost me more than a year's very
+hard labour, which I venture to think has not been wasted. After this
+plain statement I trust all who comment on this work will see that, to
+describe it as a reprint, would be unfair to the public and to me. The
+English language is copious and, in any true man's hands, quite able to
+convey the truth; namely, that one fifth of the present work is a
+reprint, and four fifths of it a new composition.
+
+
+
+
+ILLUSTRATIONS
+
+
+  All in a moment she was looking at him, full          _Frontispiece_
+
+                                                              PAGE
+
+  They had taught him penmanship                                4
+
+  She turned her head away, and her long eyelashes
+      drooped sweetly                                          22
+
+  Not more than thirty feet below him were Margaret
+      and Martin                                               70
+
+  Suddenly a huge dog burst out of the coppice                102
+
+  In that strange and mixed attitude of tender offices
+      and deadly suspicion the trio did walk                  150
+
+  Denys saw a steel point come out of the Abbot               216
+
+  They unbonneted and louted low, and she curtsied            258
+
+  The constant lover lay silent on the snow                   272
+
+  The black boat driving bottom upward                        430
+
+  The slighted beauty started to her feet                     474
+
+  "Aha! ladies," said she, "here is a rival an' ye will"      490
+
+  Soon Gerard was at Father Anselm's knees                    506
+
+  Margaret had moments of bliss                               548
+
+  He scanned, with great tearful eyes, this strange
+      figure that looked so wild                              652
+
+  The death of Gerard                                         704
+
+
+
+
+THE CLOISTER AND THE HEARTH
+
+
+
+
+THE CLOISTER & THE HEARTH
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I
+
+
+NOT a day passes over the earth, but men and women of no note do great
+deeds, speak great words, and suffer noble sorrows. Of these obscure
+heroes, philosophers, and martyrs, the greater part will never be known
+till that hour, when many that are great shall be small, and the small
+great; but of others the world's knowledge may be said to sleep: their
+lives and characters lie hidden from nations in the annals that record
+them. The general reader cannot feel them, they are presented so curtly
+and coldly: they are not like breathing stories appealing to his heart,
+but little historic hailstones striking him but to glance off his bosom:
+nor can he understand them; for epitomes are not narratives, as
+skeletons are not human figures.
+
+Thus records of prime truths remain a dead letter to plain folk; the
+writers have left so much to the imagination, and imagination is so rare
+a gift. Here, then, the writer of fiction may be of use to the
+public--as an interpreter.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+There is a musty chronicle, written in tolerable Latin, and in it a
+chapter where every sentence holds a fact. Here is told, with harsh
+brevity, the strange history of a pair, who lived untrumpeted, and died
+unsung, four hundred years ago; and lie now, as unpitied, in that stern
+page, as fossils in a rock. Thus, living or dead, Fate is still unjust
+to them. For if I can but show you what lies below that dry chronicler's
+words, methinks you will correct the indifference of centuries, and give
+those two sore tried souls a place in your heart--for a day.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+It was past the middle of the fifteenth century, Louis XI. was sovereign
+of France; Edward IV. was wrongful King of England; and Philip "the
+Good," having by force and cunning dispossessed his cousin Jacqueline,
+and broken her heart, reigned undisturbed this many years in Holland,
+where our tale begins.
+
+Elias, and Catherine his wife, lived in the little town of Tergou. He
+traded, wholesale and retail, in cloth, silk, brown holland, and, above
+all, in curried leather, a material highly valued by the middling
+people, because it would stand twenty years' wear, and turn an ordinary
+knife, no small virtue in a jerkin of that century, in which folk were
+so liberal of their steel; even at dinner a man would leave his meat
+awhile, and carve you his neighbour, on a very moderate difference of
+opinion.
+
+The couple were well to do, and would have been free from all earthly
+care, but for nine children. When these were coming into the world, one
+per annum, each was hailed with rejoicings, and the saints were thanked,
+not expostulated with; and when parents and children were all young
+together, the latter were looked upon as lovely little playthings
+invented by Heaven for the amusement, joy, and evening solace of people
+in business.
+
+But as the olive-branches shot up, and the parents grew older, and saw
+with their own eyes the fate of large families, misgivings and care
+mingled with their love. They belonged to a singularly wise and
+provident people: in Holland reckless parents were as rare as
+disobedient children. So now when the huge loaf came in on a gigantic
+trencher, looking like a fortress in its moat, and, the tour of the
+table once made, seemed to have melted away, Elias and Catherine would
+look at one another and say, "Who is to find bread for them all when we
+are gone?"
+
+At this observation the younger ones needed all their filial respect to
+keep their little Dutch countenances; for in their opinion dinner and
+supper came by nature like sunrise and sunset, and, so long as that
+luminary should travel round the earth, so long _must_ the brown loaf go
+round their family circle, and set in their stomachs only to rise again
+in the family oven. But the remark awakened the national thoughtfulness
+of the elder boys, and being often repeated, set several of the family
+thinking, some of them good thoughts, some ill thoughts, according to
+the nature of the thinkers.
+
+"Kate, the children grow so, this table will soon be too small."
+
+"We cannot afford it, Eli," replied Catherine, answering not his words,
+but his thought, after the manner of women.
+
+Their anxiety for the future took at times a less dismal but more
+mortifying turn. The free burghers had their pride as well as the
+nobles; and these two could not bear that any of their blood should go
+down in the burgh after their decease.
+
+So by prudence and self-denial they managed to clothe all the little
+bodies, and feed all the great mouths, and yet put by a small hoard to
+meet the future; and, as it grew, and grew, they felt a pleasure the
+miser hoarding for himself knows not.
+
+One day the eldest boy but one, aged nineteen, came to his mother, and
+with that outward composure which has so misled some persons as to the
+real nature of this people begged her to intercede with his father to
+send him to Amsterdam, and place him with a merchant. "It is the way of
+life that likes me; merchants are wealthy; I am good at numbers;
+prithee, good mother, take my part in this, and I shall ever be, as I am
+now, your debtor."
+
+Catherine threw up her hands with dismay and incredulity. "What leave
+Tergou!"
+
+"What is one street to me more than another? If I can leave the folk of
+Tergou, I can surely leave the stones."
+
+"What! quit your poor father now he is no longer young?"
+
+"Mother, if I can leave you, I can leave him."
+
+"What leave your poor brothers and sisters, that love you so dear?"
+
+"There are enough in the house without me."
+
+"What mean you, Richart? Who is more thought of than you? Stay, have I
+spoken sharp to you? Have I been unkind to you?"
+
+"Never that I know of; and if you had, you should never hear of it from
+me. Mother," said Richart gravely, but the tear was in his eye, "it all
+lies in a word. And nothing can change my mind. There will be one mouth
+less for you to feed."
+
+"There now, see what my tongue has done," said Catherine, and the next
+moment she began to cry. For she saw her first young bird on the edge of
+the nest trying his wings, to fly into the world. Richart had a calm,
+strong will, and she knew he never wasted a word.
+
+It ended as nature has willed all such discourse shall end: young
+Richart went to Amsterdam with a face so long and sad as it had never
+been seen before, and a heart like granite.
+
+That afternoon at supper there was one mouth less. Catherine looked at
+Richart's chair and wept bitterly. On this Elias shouted roughly and
+angrily to the children "sit wider! Can't ye: sit wider!" and turned
+his head away over the back of his seat awhile, and was silent.
+
+Richart was launched; and never cost them another penny: but to fit him
+out and place him in the house of Vander Stegen the merchant took all
+the little hoard but one gold crown. They began again. Two years passed,
+Richart found a niche in commerce for his brother Jacob, and Jacob left
+Tergou directly after dinner, which was at eleven in the forenoon. At
+supper that day Elias remembered what had happened the last time; so it
+was in a low whisper he said, "sit wider, dears!" Now until that moment,
+Catherine _would_ not see the gap at table, for her daughter Catherine
+had besought her not to grieve to-night, and she had said, "No,
+sweetheart, I promise I will not, since it vexes my children." But when
+Elias whispered "Sit wider!" says she, "Ay! the table will soon be too
+big for the children: and you thought it would be too small:" and having
+delivered this with forced calmness, she put up her apron the next
+moment, and wept sore.
+
+"'Tis the best that leave us," sobbed she, "that is the cruel part."
+
+"Nay! nay!" said Elias, "our children are good children, and all are
+dear to us alike. Heed her not! What God takes from us still seems
+better than what he spares to us: that is to say, men are by nature
+unthankful--and women silly."
+
+"And I say Richart and Jacob were the flower of the flock," sobbed
+Catherine.
+
+The little coffer was empty again, and to fill it they gathered like
+ants. In those days speculation was pretty much confined to the
+card-and-dice business. Elias knew no way to wealth but the slow and
+sure one. "A penny saved is a penny gained," was his humble creed. All
+that was not required for the business, and the necessaries of life,
+went into the little coffer with steel bands and florid key. They denied
+themselves in turn the humblest luxuries, and then, catching one
+another's looks, smiled; perhaps with a greater joy than self-indulgence
+has to bestow. And so in three years more they had gleaned enough to set
+up their fourth son as a master tailor, and their eldest daughter as a
+robe-maker, in Tergou. Here were two more provided for: their own trade
+would enable them to throw work into the hands of this pair. But the
+coffer was drained to the dregs, and this time the shop too bled a
+little in goods if not in coin.
+
+[Illustration: THEY HAD TAUGHT HIM PENMANSHIP]
+
+Alas! there remained on hand two that were unable to get their bread,
+and two that were unwilling. The unable ones were 1, Giles, a dwarf, of
+the wrong sort, half stupidity, half malice, all head and claws and
+voice, run from by dogs and unprejudiced females, and sided with through
+thick and thin by his mother; 2, Little Catherine, a poor little girl
+that could only move on crutches. She lived in pain, but smiled through
+it, with her marble face and violet eyes and long silky lashes: and
+fretful or repining word never came from her lips. The unwilling ones
+were Sybrandt, the youngest, a ne'er-do-weel, too much in love with play
+to work, and Cornelis, the eldest, who had made calculations, and stuck
+to the hearth, waiting for dead men's shoes. Almost worn out by their
+repeated efforts, and above all dispirited by the moral and physical
+infirmities of those that now remained on hand, the anxious couple would
+often say, "What will become of all these when we shall be no longer
+here to take care of them?" But when they had said this a good many
+times, suddenly the domestic horizon cleared, and then they used still
+to say it, because a habit is a habit, but they uttered it half
+mechanically now, and added brightly and cheerfully, "but thanks to St.
+Bavon and all the saints, there's Gerard."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Young Gerard was for many years of his life a son apart and distinct;
+object of no fears and no great hopes. No fears; for he was going into
+the Church; and the Church could always maintain her children by hook or
+by crook in those days: no great hopes, because his family had no
+interest with the great to get him a benefice, and the young man's own
+habits were frivolous, and indeed, such as our cloth merchant would not
+have put up with in any one but a clerk that was to be. His trivialities
+were reading and penmanship, and he was so wrapt up in them that often
+he could hardly be got away to his meals. The day was never long enough
+for him: and he carried ever a tinder-box and brimstone matches, and
+begged ends of candles of the neighbors, which he lighted at
+unreasonable hours--ay, even at eight of the clock at night in winter,
+when the very burgomaster was abed. Endured at home, his practices were
+encouraged by the monks of a neighboring convent. They had taught him
+penmanship, and continued to teach him, until one day they discovered,
+in the middle of a lesson, that he was teaching them. They pointed this
+out to him in a merry way: he hung his head and blushed: he had
+suspected as much himself, but mistrusted his judgment in so delicate a
+matter. "But, my son," said the elderly monk, "how is it that you, to
+whom God has given an eye so true, a hand so subtle yet firm, and a
+heart to love these beautiful crafts, how is it you do not colour as
+well as write? a scroll looks but barren unless a border of fruit, and
+leaves, and rich arabesques, surround the good words, and charm the
+sense as those do the soul and understanding; to say nothing of the
+pictures of holy men and women departed, with which the several chapters
+should be adorned, and not alone the eye soothed with the brave and
+sweetly blended colours, but the heart lifted by effigies of the saints
+in glory. Answer me, my son."
+
+At this Gerard was confused, and muttered that he had made several
+trials at illuminating, but had not succeeded well; and thus the matter
+rested.
+
+Soon after this a fellow-enthusiast came on the scene in the unwonted
+form of an old lady. Margaret, sister and survivor of the brothers Van
+Eyck, left Flanders, and came to end her days in her native country. She
+bought a small house near Tergou. In course of time she heard of Gerard,
+and saw some of his handiwork: it pleased her so well that she sent her
+female servant, Reicht Heynes, to ask him to come to her. This led to an
+acquaintance: it could hardly be otherwise, for little Tergou had never
+held so many as two zealots of this sort before. At first the old lady
+damped Gerard's courage terribly. At each visit she fished out of holes
+and corners drawings and paintings, some of them by her own hand, that
+seemed to him unapproachable: but if the artist overpowered him, the
+woman kept his heart up. She and Reicht soon turned him inside out like
+a glove: among other things, they drew from him what the good monks had
+failed to hit upon, the reason why he did not illuminate, viz., that he
+could not afford the gold, the blue, and the red, but only the cheap
+earths; and that he was afraid to ask his mother to buy the choice
+colours, and was sure he should ask her in vain. Then Margaret Van Eyck
+gave him a little brush-gold, and some vermilion, and ultramarine, and a
+piece of good vellum to lay them on. He almost adored her. As he left
+the house Reicht ran after him with a candle and two quarters: he quite
+kissed her. But better even than the gold and lapis lazuli to the
+illuminator was the sympathy to the isolated enthusiast. That sympathy
+was always ready, and, as he returned it, an affection sprung up between
+the old painter and the young caligrapher that was doubly characteristic
+of the time. For this was a century in which the fine arts and the
+higher mechanical arts were not separated by any distinct boundary, nor
+were those who practised them: and it was an age in which artists sought
+out and loved one another. Should this last statement stagger a painter
+or writer of our day, let me remind him that even Christians loved one
+another at first starting.
+
+Backed by an acquaintance so venerable, and strengthened by female
+sympathy, Gerard advanced in learning and skill. His spirits, too, rose
+visibly: he still looked behind him when dragged to dinner in the middle
+of an initial G; but once seated showed great social qualities: likewise
+a gay humour, that had hitherto but peeped in him, shone out, and often
+he set the table in a roar, and kept it there, sometimes with his own
+wit, sometimes with jests which were glossy new to his family, being
+drawn from antiquity.
+
+As a return for all he owed his friends the monks, he made them
+exquisite copies from two of their choicest MSS., viz., the life of
+their founder, and their Comedies of Terence, the monastery finding the
+vellum.
+
+The high and puissant Prince, Philip "the Good," Duke of Burgundy,
+Luxemburg, and Brabant, Earl of Holland and Zealand, Lord of Friesland,
+Count of Flanders, Artois, and Hainault, Lord of Salins and Macklyn--was
+versatile.
+
+He could fight as well as any king going; and he could lie as well as
+any, except the King of France. He was a mighty hunter, and could read
+and write. His tastes were wide and ardent. He loved jewels like a
+woman, and gorgeous apparel. He dearly loved maids of honour, and indeed
+paintings generally; in proof of which he ennobled Jan Van Eyck. He had
+also a rage for giants, dwarfs, and Turks. These last stood ever planted
+about him, turbaned, and blazing with jewels. His agents inveigled them
+from Istamboul with fair promises: but, the moment he had got them, he
+baptized them by brute force in a large tub; and, this done, let them
+squat with their faces toward Mecca, and invoke Mahound as much as they
+pleased, laughing in his sleeve at their simplicity in fancying they
+were still infidels. He had lions in cages, and fleet leopards trained
+by Orientals to run down hares and deer. In short, he relished all
+rarities except the humdrum virtues. For anything singularly pretty, or
+diabolically ugly, this was your customer. The best of him was, he was
+open-handed to the poor; and the next best was, he fostered the arts in
+earnest: whereof he now gave a signal proof. He offered prizes for the
+best specimens of "orfevrerie" in two kinds, religious and secular; item
+for the best paintings in white of egg, oils and tempera; these to be on
+panel, silk, or metal, as the artists chose: item for the best
+transparent painting on glass: item for the best illuminating and border
+painting on vellum: item for the fairest writing on vellum. The
+burgomasters of the several towns were commanded to aid all the poorer
+competitors by receiving their specimens and sending them with due care
+to Rotterdam at the expense of their several burghs. When this was cried
+by the bellman through the streets of Tergou, a thousand mouths opened,
+and one heart beat--Gerard's. He told his family timidly he should try
+for two of those prizes. They stared in silence, for their breath was
+gone at his audacity: but one horrid laugh exploded on the floor like a
+petard. Gerard looked down, and there was the dwarf, slit and fanged
+from ear to ear at his expense, and laughing like a lion. Nature
+relenting at having made Giles so small, had given him as a set-off the
+biggest voice on record. His very whisper was a bassoon. He was like
+those stunted wide-mouthed pieces of ordnance we see on fortifications;
+more like a flower-pot than a cannon; but ods tympana how they bellow!
+
+Gerard turned red with anger, the more so as the others began to titter.
+White Catherine saw, and a pink tinge came on her cheek. She said
+softly, "Why do you laugh? Is it because he is our brother you think he
+cannot be capable? Yes, Gerard, try with the rest. Many say you are
+skilful; and mother and I will pray the Virgin to guide your hand."
+
+"Thank you, little Kate. You shall pray to our Lady, and our mother
+shall buy me vellum and the colours to illuminate with."
+
+"What will they cost, my lad?"
+
+"Two gold crowns" (about three shillings and fourpence English money).
+
+"What?" screamed the housewife; "when the bushel of rye costs but a
+groat! What! me spend a month's meal and meat and fire on such vanity as
+that: the lightning from Heaven would fall on me and my children would
+all be beggars."
+
+"Mother!" sighed little Catherine imploringly.
+
+"Oh! it is in vain, Kate," said Gerard, with a sigh. "I shall have to
+give it up, or ask the dame Van Eyck. She would give it me, but I think
+shame to be for ever taking from her."
+
+"It is not her affair," said Catherine, very sharply; "what has she to
+do coming between me and my son?" And she left the room with a red face.
+Little Catherine smiled. Presently the housewife returned with a
+gracious affectionate air, and two little gold pieces in her hand.
+
+"There, sweetheart," said she, "you won't have to trouble dame or
+demoiselle for two paltry crowns."
+
+But on this Gerard fell a-thinking how he could spare her purse.
+
+"One will do, mother. I will ask the good monks to let me send my copy
+of their 'Terence:' it is on snowy vellum, and I can write no better: so
+then I shall only need six sheets of vellum for my borders and
+miniatures, and gold for my ground, and prime colours--one crown will
+do."
+
+"Never tyne the ship for want of a bit of tar, Gerard," said this
+changeable mother. But she added, "Well, there, I will put the crown in
+my pocket. That won't be like putting it back in the box. Going to the
+box to take out instead of putting in, it is like going to my heart with
+a knife for so many drops of blood. You will be sure to want it, Gerard.
+The house is never built for less than the builder counted on."
+
+Sure enough, when the time came, Gerard longed to go to Rotterdam and
+see the duke, and above all to see the work of his competitors, and so
+get a lesson from defeat. And the crown came out of the housewife's
+pocket with a very good grace. Gerard would soon be a priest. It seemed
+hard if he might not enjoy the world a little before separating himself
+from it for life.
+
+The night before he went, Margaret Van Eyck asked him to take a letter
+for her, and when he came to look at it, to his surprise he found it was
+addressed to the Princess Marie, at the Stadthouse, in Rotterdam.
+
+The day before the prizes were to be distributed, Gerard started for
+Rotterdam in his holiday suit, to wit, a doublet of silver-grey cloth
+with sleeves, and a jerkin of the same over it, but without sleeves.
+From his waist to his heels he was clad in a pair of tight-fitting
+buckskin hose fastened by laces (called points) to his doublet. His
+shoes were pointed, in moderation, and secured by a strap that passed
+under the hollow of his foot. On his head and the back of his neck he
+wore his flowing hair, and pinned to his back between his shoulders was
+his hat: it was further secured by a purple silk ribbon little Kate had
+passed round him from the sides of the hat, and knotted neatly on his
+breast; below his hat, attached to the upper rim of his broad
+waist-belt, was his leathern wallet. When he got within a league of
+Rotterdam he was pretty tired, but he soon fell in with a pair that was
+more so. He found an old man sitting by the roadside quite worn out, and
+a comely young woman holding his hand, with a face brimful of concern.
+The country people trudged by and noticed nothing amiss: but Gerard, as
+he passed drew conclusions. Even dress tells a tale to those who study
+it so closely as he did, being an illuminator. The old man wore a gown,
+and a fur tippet, and a velvet cap, sure signs of dignity: but the
+triangular purse at his girdle was lean, the gown rusty, the fur worn,
+sure signs of poverty. The young woman was dressed in plain russet
+cloth: yet snow-white lawn covered that part of her neck the gown left
+visible, and ended half way up her white throat in a little band of gold
+embroidery: and her head-dress was new to Gerard; instead of hiding her
+hair in a pile of linen or lawn, she wore an open net-work of silver
+cord with silver spangles at the interstices: in this her glossy auburn
+hair was rolled in front into two solid waves, and supported behind in a
+luxurious and shapely mass. His quick eye took in all this, and the old
+man's pallor, and the tears in the young woman's eyes. So when he had
+passed them a few yards, he reflected, and turned back, and came towards
+them bashfully.
+
+"Father, I fear you are tired."
+
+"Indeed, my son, I am," replied the old man; "and faint for lack of
+food."
+
+Gerard's address did not appear so agreeable to the girl as to the old
+man. She seemed ashamed, and with much reserve in her manner said, that
+it was her fault; she had underrated the distance, and imprudently
+allowed her father to start too late in the day.
+
+"No! no!" said the old man; "it is not the distance, it is the want of
+nourishment."
+
+The girl put her arms round his neck, with tender concern, but took that
+opportunity of whispering, "Father, a stranger--a young man!"
+
+But it was too late. Gerard, with simplicity, and quite as a matter of
+course, fell to gathering sticks with great expedition. This done, he
+took down his wallet, out with the manchet of bread and the iron flask
+his careful mother had put up, and his everlasting tinder-box; lighted a
+match, then a candle end, then the sticks; and put his iron flask on it.
+Then down he went on his stomach and took a good blow: then looking up,
+he saw the girl's face had thawed, and she was looking down at him and
+his energy with a demure smile. He laughed back to her: "Mind the pot,"
+said he, "and don't let it spill, for Heaven's sake: there's a cleft
+stick to hold it safe with;" and with this he set off running towards a
+corn-field at some distance.
+
+Whilst he was gone, there came by, on a mule with rich purple housings,
+an old man redolent of wealth. The purse at his girdle was plethoric,
+the fur on his tippet was ermine, broad and new.
+
+It was Ghysbrecht Van Swieten, the burgomaster of Tergou. He was old,
+and his face furrowed. He was a notorious miser, and looked one
+generally. But the idea of supping with the duke raised him just now
+into manifest complacency. Yet at the sight of the faded old man and his
+bright daughter sitting by a fire of sticks, the smile died out of his
+face, and he wore a strange look of pain and uneasiness. He reined in
+his mule. "Why, Peter,--Margaret--" said he almost fiercely, "what
+mummery is this!" Peter was going to answer, but Margaret interposed
+hastily, and said: "My father was exhausted, so I am warming something
+to give him strength before we go on." "What, reduced to feed by the
+roadside like the Bohemians," said Ghysbrecht, and his hand went into
+his purse: but it did not seem at home there; it fumbled uncertainly,
+afraid too large a coin might stick to a finger and come out.
+
+At this moment who should come bounding up but Gerard. He had two straws
+in his hand, and he threw himself down by the fire, and relieved
+Margaret of the cooking part: then suddenly recognizing the burgomaster,
+he coloured all over. Ghysbrecht Van Swieten started and glared at him,
+and took his hand out of his purse. "Oh," said he bitterly, "I am not
+wanted:" and went slowly on, casting a long look of suspicion on
+Margaret, and hostility on Gerard, that was not very intelligible.
+However, there was something about it that Margaret could read enough to
+blush at, and almost toss her head. Gerard only stared with surprise.
+"By St. Bavon, I think the old miser grudges us three our quart of
+soup," said he. When the young man put that interpretation on
+Ghysbrecht's strange and meaning look, Margaret was greatly relieved,
+and smiled gaily on the speaker.
+
+Meantime Ghysbrecht plodded on, more wretched in his wealth than these
+in their poverty. And the curious thing is that the mule, the purple
+housings, and one half the coin in that plethoric purse, belonged not to
+Ghysbrecht Van Swieten, but to that faded old man and that comely girl,
+who sat by the road-side fire to be fed by a stranger. They did not know
+this, but Ghysbrecht knew it, and carried in his heart a scorpion of his
+own begetting. That scorpion is remorse; the remorse, that, not being
+penitence, is incurable, and ready for fresh misdeeds upon a fresh
+temptation.
+
+Twenty years ago, when Ghysbrecht was a hard and honest man, the
+touchstone opportunity came to him, and he did an act of heartless
+roguery. It seemed a safe one. It had hitherto proved a safe one, though
+he had never felt safe. To-day he has seen youth, enterprise, and above
+all, knowledge, seated by fair Margaret and her father on terms that
+look familiar and loving.
+
+And the fiends are at his ear again.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II
+
+
+"THE soup is hot," said Gerard.
+
+"But how are we to get it to our mouths?" inquired the senior,
+despondingly.
+
+"Father, the young man has brought us straws." And Margaret smiled
+slily.
+
+"Ay, ay!" said the old man: "but my poor bones are stiff, and indeed the
+fire is too hot for a body to kneel over with these short straws. St.
+John the Baptist, but the young man is adroit!"
+
+For, while he stated his difficulty, Gerard removed it. He untied in a
+moment the knot on his breast, took his hat off, put a stone in each
+corner of it, then wrapping his hand in the tail of his jerkin, whipped
+the flask off the fire, wedged it in between the stones, and put the hat
+under the old man's nose with a merry smile. The other tremulously
+inserted the pipe of rye-straw and sucked. Lo and behold his wan, drawn
+face was seen to light up more and more, till it quite glowed; and, as
+soon as he had drawn a long breath:
+
+"Hippocrates and Galen!" he cried, "'tis a soupe au vin--the
+restorative of restoratives. Blessed be the nation that invented it,
+and the woman that made it, and the young man who brings it to fainting
+folk. Have a suck, my girl, while I relate to our young host the history
+and virtues of this his sovereign compound. This corroborative, young
+sir, was unknown to the ancients: we find it neither in their treatises
+of medicine, nor in those popular narratives, which reveal many of their
+remedies, both in chirurgery and medicine proper. Hector, in the Ilias,
+if my memory does not play me false,--"
+
+_Margaret._ "Alas! he's off."
+
+"--was invited by one of the ladies of the poem to drink a draught of
+wine; but he declined, on the plea that he was just going into battle,
+and must not take aught to weaken his powers. Now, if the 'soupe au vin'
+had been known in Troy, it is clear that in declining 'vinum merum' upon
+that score, he would have added in the next hexameter. 'But a "soupe au
+vin," madam, I will degust, and gratefully.' Not only would this have
+been but common civility--a virtue no perfect commander is wanting
+in--but not to have done it would have proved him a shallow and
+improvident person, unfit to be trusted with the conduct of a war; for
+men going into a battle need sustenance and all the possible support, as
+is proved by this, that foolish generals, bringing hungry soldiers to
+blows with full ones, have been defeated, in all ages, by inferior
+numbers. The Romans lost a great battle in the north of Italy to
+Hannibal the Carthaginian, by this neglect alone. Now, this divine
+elixir gives in one moment force to the limbs and ardour to the spirits;
+and taken into Hector's body at the nick of time, would, by the aid of
+Phoebus, Venus, and the blessed saints, have most likely procured the
+Greeks a defeat. For, note how faint and weary and heart-sick I was a
+minute ago; well, I suck this celestial cordial, and now behold me brave
+as Achilles and strong as an eagle."
+
+"Oh father, now? an eagle; alack!"
+
+"Girl, I defy thee and all the world. Ready, I say, like a foaming
+charger, to devour the space between this and Rotterdam, and strong to
+combat the ills of life, even poverty and old age, which last
+philosophers have called the 'summum malum.' Negatur; unless the man's
+life has been ill-spent--which, by the by, it generally has. Now for the
+moderns."
+
+"Father! dear father!"
+
+"Fear me not, girl, I will be brief, unreasonably and unseasonably
+brief. The 'soupe au vin' occurs not in modern science; but this is only
+one proof more, if proof were needed, that for the last few hundred
+years physicians have been idiots, with their chicken broth and their
+decoction of gold, whereby they attribute the highest qualities to that
+meat which has the least juice of any meat, and to that metal which has
+less chemical qualities than all the metals; mountebanks! dunces!
+homicides! Since, then, from these no light is to be gathered, go we to
+the chroniclers; and first we find that Duguesclin, a French knight,
+being about to join battle with the English--masters, at that time, of
+half France, and sturdy strikers by sea and land--drank, not one, but
+three, 'soupes au vin,' in honour of the Blessed Trinity. This done, he
+charged the islanders; and as might have been foretold, killed a
+multitude, and drove the rest into the sea. But he was only the first of
+a long list of holy and hard-hitting ones who have, by this divine
+restorative, been sustentated, fortified, corroborated, and consoled."
+
+"Dear father, prithee add thyself to that venerable company ere the soup
+cools." And Margaret held the hat imploringly in both hands till he
+inserted the straw once more.
+
+This spared them the "modern instances," and gave Gerard an opportunity
+of telling Margaret how proud his mother would be her soup had profited
+a man of learning.
+
+"Ay! but," said Margaret, "it would like her ill to see her son give all
+and take none himself. Why brought you but two straws?"
+
+"Fair mistress, I hoped you would let me put my lips to your straw,
+there being but two."
+
+Margaret smiled, and blushed. "Never beg that you may command," said
+she. "The straw is not mine, 'tis yours: you cut it in yonder field."
+
+"I cut it, and that made it mine; but, after that, your lip touched it,
+and that made it yours."
+
+"Did it? Then I will lend it you. There--now it is yours again: _your_
+lip has touched it."
+
+"No, it belongs to us both now. Let us divide it."
+
+"By all means; you have a knife."
+
+"No, I will not cut it--that would be unlucky. I'll bite it. There. I
+shall keep my half: you will burn yours, once you get home, I doubt."
+
+"You know me not. I waste nothing. It is odds but I make a hair-pin of
+it, or something."
+
+This answer dashed the novice Gerard instead of provoking him to fresh
+efforts, and he was silent. And now, the bread and soup being disposed
+of, the old scholar prepared to continue his journey. Then came a little
+difficulty: Gerard the adroit could not tie his ribbon again as
+Catherine had tied it. Margaret, after slily eyeing his efforts for some
+time, offered to help him; for at her age girls love to be coy and
+tender, saucy and gentle, by turns, and she saw she had put him out of
+countenance but now. Then a fair head, with its stately crown of auburn
+hair, glossy and glowing through silver, bowed sweetly towards him; and,
+while it ravished his eye, two white supple hands played delicately upon
+the stubborn ribbon, and moulded it with soft and airy touches. Then a
+heavenly thrill ran through the innocent young man, and vague glimpses
+of a new world of feeling and sentiment opened on him. And these new and
+exquisite sensations Margaret unwittingly prolonged: it is not natural
+to her sex to hurry aught that pertains to the sacred toilet. Nay, when
+the taper fingers had at last subjugated the ends of the knot, her mind
+was not quite easy, till, by a manoeuvre peculiar to the female hand,
+she had made her palm convex, and so applied it with a gentle pressure
+to the centre of the knot--a sweet little coaxing hand-kiss, as much as
+to say, "Now be a good knot, and stay so." The palm-kiss was bestowed on
+the ribbon, but the wearer's heart leaped to meet it.
+
+"There, that is how it was," said Margaret, and drew back to take one
+last keen survey of her work; then, looking up for simple approval of
+her skill, received full in her eyes a longing gaze of such ardent
+adoration, as made her lower them quickly and colour all over. An
+indescribable tremor seized her, and she retreated with downcast lashes
+and tell-tale cheeks, and took her father's arm on the opposite side.
+Gerard, blushing at having scared her away with his eyes, took the other
+arm; and so the two young things went downcast and conscious, and
+propped the eagle along in silence.
+
+They entered Rotterdam by the Schiedamze Poort; and, as Gerard was
+unacquainted with the town, Peter directed him the way to the Hoog
+Straet, in which the Stadthouse was. He himself was going with Margaret
+to his cousin, in the Ooster-Waagen Straet, so, almost on entering the
+gate, their roads lay apart. They bade each other a friendly adieu, and
+Gerard dived into the great town. A profound sense of solitude fell upon
+him, yet the streets were crowded. Then he lamented too late that, out
+of delicacy, he had not asked his late companions who they were and
+where they lived.
+
+"Beshrew my shamefacedness!" said he. "But their words and their
+breeding were above their means, and something did whisper me they would
+not be known. I shall never see her more. Oh! weary world, I hate you
+and your ways. To think I must meet beauty and goodness and
+learning--three pearls of price,--and never see them more!"
+
+Falling into this sad reverie, and letting his body go where it would,
+he lost his way; but presently meeting a crowd of persons all moving in
+one direction, he mingled with them, for he argued they must be making
+for the Stadthouse. Soon the noisy troop that contained the moody Gerard
+emerged, not upon the Stadthouse, but upon a large meadow by the side of
+the Maas; and then the attraction was revealed. Games of all sorts were
+going on: wrestling the game of palm, the quintain, legerdemain,
+archery, tumbling, in which art, I blush to say, women as well as men
+performed, to the great delectation of the company. There was also a
+trained bear, who stood on his head, and marched upright, and bowed with
+prodigious gravity to his master; and a hare that beat a drum, and a
+cock that strutted on little stilts disdainfully. These things made
+Gerard laugh now and then; but the gay scene could not really enliven
+it, for his heart was not in tune with it. So, hearing a young man say
+to his fellow that the duke had been in the meadow, but was gone to the
+Stadthouse to entertain the burgomasters and aldermen and the
+competitors for the prizes, and their friends, he suddenly remembered he
+was hungry, and should like to sup with a prince. He left the
+river-side, and this time he found the Hoog Straet, and it speedily led
+him to the Stadthouse. But when he got there he was refused, first at
+one door, then at another, till he came to the great gate of the
+court-yard. It was kept by soldiers, and superintended by a pompous
+major-domo, glittering in an embroidered collar and a gold chain of
+office, and holding a white staff with a gold knob. There was a crowd of
+persons at the gate endeavoring to soften this official rock. They came
+up in turn like ripples, and retired as such in turn. It cost Gerard a
+struggle to get near him, and when he was within four heads of the gate,
+he saw something that made his heart beat: there was Peter, with
+Margaret on his arm, soliciting humbly for entrance.
+
+"My cousin the alderman is not at home. They say he is here."
+
+"What is that to me, old man?"
+
+"If you will not let us pass in to him, at least take this leaf from my
+tablet to my cousin. See I have written his name: he will come out to
+us."
+
+"For what do you take me? I carry no messages. I keep the gate."
+
+He then bawled, in a stentorian voice, inexorably:
+
+"No strangers enter here but the competitors and their companies."
+
+"Come, old man," cried a voice in the crowd, "you have gotten your
+answer; make way."
+
+Margaret turned half round imploringly:
+
+"Good people, we are come from far, and my father is old; and my cousin
+has a new servant that knows us not, and would not let us sit in our
+cousin's house."
+
+At this the crowd laughed hoarsely. Margaret shrank as if they had
+struck her. At that moment a hand grasped hers--a magic grasp: it felt
+like heart meeting heart, or magnet steel. She turned quickly around at
+it, and it was Gerard. Such a little cry of joy and appeal came from her
+bosom, and she began to whimper prettily.
+
+They had hustled her and frightened her for one thing; and her cousin's
+thoughtlessness, in not even telling his servant they were coming, was
+cruel; and the servant's caution, however wise and faithful to her
+master, was bitterly mortifying to her father and her. And to her so
+mortified, and anxious and jostled, came suddenly this kind hand and
+face. "Hinc illae lacrimae."
+
+"All is well now," remarked a coarse humourist; "she hath gotten her
+sweetheart."
+
+"Haw! haw! haw!" went the crowd.
+
+She dropped Gerard's hand directly, and turned round, with eyes flashing
+through her tears:
+
+"I have no sweetheart, you rude men. But I am friendless in your boorish
+town, and this is a friend; and one who knows, what you know not, how to
+treat the aged and the weak."
+
+The crowd was dead silent. They had only been thoughtless, and now felt
+the rebuke, though severe, was just. The silence enabled Gerard to treat
+with the porter.
+
+"I am a competitor, sir."
+
+"What is your name?" and the man eyed him suspiciously.
+
+"Gerard, the son of Elias."
+
+The janitor inspected the slip of parchment he held in his hand:
+
+"Gerard Eliassoen can enter."
+
+"With my company; these two?"
+
+"Nay; those are not your company: they came before you."
+
+"What matter? they are my friends, and without them I go not in."
+
+"Stay without, then."
+
+"That will I not."
+
+"That we will see."
+
+"We will, and speedily." And with this, Gerard raised a voice of
+astounding volume and power, and shouted, so that the whole street rang:
+
+"HO! PHILIP EARL OF HOLLAND!"
+
+"Are you mad?" cried the porter.
+
+"HERE IS ONE OF YOUR VARLETS DEFIES YOU."
+
+"Hush, Hush!"
+
+"AND WILL NOT LET YOUR GUESTS PASS IN."
+
+"Hush! murder! The duke's there. I'm dead," cried the janitor, quaking.
+
+Then suddenly trying to overpower Gerard's thunder, he shouted, with all
+his lungs:
+
+"OPEN THE GATE, YE KNAVES! WAY THERE FOR GERARD ELIASSOEN AND HIS
+COMPANY! (the friends go with him!)"
+
+The gate swung open as by magic. Eight soldiers lowered their pikes half
+way, and made an arch, under which the victorious three marched in
+triumphant. The moment they had passed, the pikes clashed together
+horizontally to bar the gateway, and all but pinned an abdominal citizen
+that sought to wedge in along with them.
+
+Once passed the guarded portal, a few steps brought the trio upon a
+scene of Oriental luxury. The court-yard was laid out in tables loaded
+with rich meats, and piled with gorgeous plate. Guests in rich and
+various costumes sat beneath a leafy canopy of fresh cut branches
+fastened tastefully to golden, silver, and blue silken cords that
+traversed the area; and fruits of many hues, including some artificial
+ones of gold, silver, and wax, hung pendent, or peeped like fair eyes
+among the green leaves of plane-trees and lime-trees. The duke's
+minstrels swept their lutes at intervals, and a fountain played red
+Burgundy in six jets that met and battled in the air. The evening sun
+darted its fires through those bright and purple wine spouts, making
+them jets and cascades of molten rubies, then passing on, tinged with
+the blood of the grape, shed crimson glories here and there on fair
+faces, snowy beards, velvet, satin, jewelled hilts, glowing gold,
+gleaming silver, and sparkling glass. Gerard and his friends stood
+dazzled, spell bound. Presently a whisper buzzed around them, "Salute
+the duke! Salute the duke!" They looked up, and there on high, under the
+dais, was their sovereign, bidding them welcome with a kindly wave of
+the hand. The men bowed low, and Margaret curtsied with a deep and
+graceful obeisance. The duke's hand being up, he gave it another turn,
+and pointed the newcomers out to a knot of valets. Instantly seven of
+his people, with an obedient start, went headlong at our friends, seated
+them at a table, and put fifteen many coloured soups before them, in
+little silver bowls, and as many wines in crystal vases.
+
+"Nay, father, let us not eat until we have thanked our good friend,"
+said Margaret, now first recovering from all this bustle.
+
+"Girl, he is our guardian angel."
+
+Gerard put his face into his hands.
+
+"Tell me when you have done," said he, "and I will reappear and have my
+supper, for I am hungry. I know which of us three is the happiest at
+meeting again."
+
+"Me?" inquired Margaret.
+
+"No: guess again."
+
+"Father?"
+
+"No."
+
+"Then I have no guess which it can be;" and she gave a little crow of
+happiness and gaiety. The soup was tasted, and vanished in a twirl of
+fourteen hands, and fish came on the table in a dozen forms, with
+patties of lobster and almonds mixed, and of almonds and cream, and an
+immense variety of "brouets," known to us as "rissoles." The next trifle
+was a wild boar, which smelt divine. Why, then, did Margaret start away
+from it with two shrieks of dismay, and pinch so good a friend as
+Gerard? Because the duke's "cuisinier" had been too clever; had made
+this excellent dish too captivating to the sight as well as taste. He
+had restored to the animal, by elaborate mimicry with burnt sugar and
+other edible colours, the hair and bristles he had robbed him of by fire
+and water. To make him still more enticing, the huge tusks were
+carefully preserved in the brute's jaw, and gave his mouth the winning
+smile that comes of tusk in man or beast: and two eyes of coloured sugar
+glowed in his head. St. Argus! what eyes! so bright, so blood-shot, so
+threatening--they followed a man and every movement of his knife and
+spoon. But, indeed, I need the pencil of Granville or Tenniel to make
+you see the two gilt valets on the opposite side of the table putting
+the monster down before our friends, with a smiling, self-satisfied,
+benevolent obsequiousness--for this ghastly monster was the flower of
+all comestibles--old Peter clasping both hands in pious admiration of
+it; Margaret wheeling round with horror-stricken eyes and her hand on
+Gerard's shoulder, squeaking and pinching; his face of unwise delight at
+being pinched, the grizzly brute glaring sulkily on all, and the guests
+grinning from ear to ear.
+
+"What's to do?" shouted the duke, hearing the signals of female
+distress. Seven of his people with a zealous start went headlong and
+told him. He laughed and said, "Give her of the beef-stuffing, then, and
+bring me Sir Boar." Benevolent monarch! The beef-stuffing was his own
+private dish. On these grand occasions an ox was roasted whole, and
+reserved for the poor. But this wise as well as charitable prince had
+discovered, that whatever venison, hares, lamb, poultry, &c., you
+skewered into that beef cavern, got cooked to perfection, retaining
+their own juices and receiving those of the reeking ox. These he called
+his beef-stuffing, and took delight therein, as did now our trio; for,
+at his word, seven of his people went headlong, and drove silver
+tridents into the steaming cave at random, and speared a kid, a cygnet,
+and a flock of wild fowl. These presently smoked before Gerard and
+company; and Peter's face sad and slightly morose at the loss of the
+savage hog, expanded and shone. After this, twenty different tarts of
+fruits and herbs, and last of all, confectionery on a Titanic scale;
+cathedrals of sugar, all gilt and painted in the interstices of the
+bas-reliefs; castles with their moats, and ditches, imitated to the
+life; elephants, camels, toads; knights on horseback, jousting; kings
+and princesses looking on; trumpeters blowing; and all these personages
+delicious eating, and their veins filled with sweet-scented juices:
+works of art made to be destroyed. The guests breached a bastion,
+crunched a crusader and his horse and lance, or cracked a bishop, cope,
+chasuble, crosier and all, as remorselessly as we do a caraway comfit;
+sipping, meanwhile, hippocras and other spiced drinks, and Greek and
+Corsican wines, while every now and then little Turkish boys, turbaned,
+spangled, jewelled, and gilt, came offering on bended knee golden
+troughs of rose-water and orange-water to keep the guests' hands cool
+and perfumed.
+
+But long before our party arrived at this final stage, appetite had
+succumbed, and Gerard had suddenly remembered he was the bearer of a
+letter to the Princess Marie, and, in an undertone, had asked one of the
+servants if he would undertake to deliver it. The man took it with a
+deep obeisance: "He could not deliver it himself, but would instantly
+give it one of the princess's suite, several of whom were about."
+
+It may be remembered that Peter and Margaret came here not to dine, but
+to find their cousin. Well, the old gentleman ate heartily, and being
+much fatigued dropped asleep, and forgot all about his cousin. Margaret
+did not remind him, we shall hear why.
+
+Meantime, that cousin was seated within a few feet of them, at their
+backs, and discovered them when Margaret turned round and screamed at
+the boar. But he forbore to speak to them, for municipal reasons.
+Margaret was very plainly dressed and Peter inclined to threadbare. So
+the alderman said to himself,
+
+"'Twill be time to make up to them when the sun sets and the company
+disperses: then I will take my poor relations to my house, and none will
+be the wiser."
+
+Half the courses were lost on Gerard and Margaret. They were no great
+eaters, and just now were feeding on sweet thoughts that have ever been
+unfavourable to appetite. But there is a delicate kind of sensuality, to
+whose influence these two were perhaps more sensitive than any other
+pair in that assembly; the delights of colour, music, and perfume, all
+of which blended so fascinatingly here.
+
+Margaret leaned back and half closed her eyes, and murmured to Gerard:
+"What a lovely scene! the warm sun, the green shade, the rich dresses,
+the bright music of the lutes and the cool music of the fountain, and
+all faces so happy and gay! and then, it is to you we owe it."
+
+Gerard was silent all but his eyes; observing which--
+
+"Now, speak not to me," said Margaret languidly; "let me listen to the
+fountain: what are you a competitor for?"
+
+He told her.
+
+"Very well! You will gain one prize, at least."
+
+"Which? Which? Have you seen any of my work?"
+
+"I? no. But you will gain a prize."
+
+"I hope so: but what makes you think so?"
+
+"Because you were so good to my father."
+
+Gerard smiled at the feminine logic, and hung his head at the sweet
+praise, and was silent.
+
+"Speak not," murmured Margaret. "They say this is a world of sin and
+misery. Can that be? What is your opinion?"
+
+"No! that is all a silly old song," explained Gerard. "'Tis a byword our
+elders keep repeating, out of custom: it is not true."
+
+"How can you know? you are but a child," said Margaret, with pensive
+dignity.
+
+"Why only look round! And then I thought I had lost you for ever; and
+you are by my side: and now the minstrels are going to play again. Sin
+and misery? Stuff and nonsense!"
+
+[Illustration: SHE TURNED HER HEAD AWAY, AND HER LONG EYELASHES DROOPED
+SWEETLY]
+
+The lutes burst out. The court-yard rang again with their delicate
+harmony.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+"What do you admire most of all these beautiful things, Gerard?"
+
+"You know my name? How is that?"
+
+"White magic. I am a witch."
+
+"Angels are never witches. But I can't think how you--"
+
+"Foolish boy! was it not cried at the gate loud enough to deave one?"
+
+"So it was. Where is my head? What do I admire most? If you will sit a
+little more that way, I'll tell you."
+
+"This way?"
+
+"Yes; so that the light may fall on you. There. I see many fair things
+here, fairer than I could have conceived; but the bravest of all to my
+eye, is your lovely hair in its silver frame, and the setting sun
+kissing it. It reminds me of what the Vulgate praises for beauty,
+'_an apple of gold in a network of silver_,' and, O what a pity I did
+not know you before I sent in my poor endeavours at illuminating! I
+could illuminate so much better now. I could do everything better.
+There, now the sun is full on it, it is like an aureole. So our Lady
+looked, and none since her until to-day."
+
+"O fie! it is wicked to talk so. Compare a poor, coarse-favoured girl
+like me with the Queen of Heaven? O Gerard! I thought you were a good
+young man." And Margaret was shocked apparently.
+
+Gerard tried to explain. "I am no worse than the rest: but how can I
+help having eyes; and a heart--Margaret!"
+
+"Gerard?"
+
+"Be not angry now!"
+
+"Now, is it likely?"
+
+"I love you."
+
+"O for shame! you must not say that to me," and Margaret coloured
+furiously at this sudden assault.
+
+"I can't help it. I love you. I love you."
+
+"Hush, hush! for pity's sake! I must not listen to such words from a
+stranger. I am ungrateful to call you a stranger. O how one may be
+mistaken! If I had known you were so bold--" And Margaret's bosom began
+to heave, and her cheeks were covered with blushes, and she looked
+towards her sleeping father, very much like a timid thing that meditates
+actual flight.
+
+Then Gerard was frightened at the alarm he caused. "Forgive me," said he
+imploringly. "How could any one help loving you?"
+
+"Well, sir, I will _try_ and forgive you--you are so good in other
+respects; but then you must promise me never to say you--to say _that_
+again."
+
+"Give me your hand then, or you don't forgive me."
+
+She hesitated; but eventually put out her hand a very little way, very
+slowly, and with seeming reluctance. He took it, and held it prisoner.
+When she thought it had been there long enough, she tried gently to draw
+it away. He held it tight: it submitted quite patiently to force. What
+_is_ the use resisting force? She turned her head away, and her long
+eyelashes drooped sweetly. Gerard lost nothing by his promise. Words
+were not heeded here: and silence was more eloquent. Nature was in that
+day what she is in ours; but manners were somewhat freer. Then, as now,
+virgins drew back alarmed at the first words of love; but of prudery
+and artificial coquetry there was little, and the young soon read one
+another's hearts. Everything was on Gerard's side: his good looks, her
+belief in his goodness, her gratitude; and opportunity: for at the
+duke's banquet this mellow summer eve, all things disposed the female
+nature to tenderness: the avenues to the heart lay open; the senses were
+so soothed and subdued with lovely colours, gentle sounds, and delicate
+odours; the sun gently sinking the warm air, the green canopy, the cool
+music of the now violet fountain.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Gerard and Margaret sat hand in hand in silence: and Gerard's eyes
+sought hers lovingly; and hers now and then turned on him timidly and
+imploringly: and presently two sweet unreasonable tears rolled down her
+cheeks, and she smiled deliciously while they were drying: yet they did
+not take long.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+And the sun declined; and the air cooled, and the fountain plashed more
+gently; and the pair throbbed in unison, and silence, and this weary
+world looked heaven to them.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III
+
+
+A GRAVE white-haired seneschal came to their table, and inquired
+courteously whether Gerard Eliassoen was of their company. Upon Gerard's
+answer, he said:
+
+"The Princess Marie would confer with you, young sir; I am to conduct
+you to her presence."
+
+Instantly all faces within hearing turned sharp round, and were bent
+with curiosity and envy on the man that was to go to a princess.
+
+Gerard rose to obey.
+
+"I wager we shall not see you again," said Margaret, calmly, but
+colouring a little.
+
+"That will you," was the reply: then he whispered in her ear: "This is
+my good princess; but you are my queen." He added aloud: "Wait for me, I
+pray you, I will presently return."
+
+"Ay, ay!" said Peter awaking and speaking at one and the same moment.
+
+Gerard gone, the pair whose dress was so homely, yet they were with the
+man whom the princess sent for, became "the cynosure of neighbouring
+eyes;" observing which, William Johnson came forward, acted surprise,
+and claimed his relations:
+
+"And to think that there was I at your backs, and you saw me not."
+
+"Nay, cousin Johnson, I saw you long syne," said Margaret, coldly.
+
+"You saw me, and spoke not to me?"
+
+"Cousin, it was for you to welcome us to Rotterdam, as it is for us to
+welcome you at Sevenbergen. Your servant denied us a seat in your
+house."
+
+"The idiot!"
+
+"And I had a mind to see whether it was 'like maid like master:' for
+there is sooth in bywords."
+
+William Johnson blushed purple. He saw Margaret was keen, and suspected
+him. He did the wisest thing under the circumstances, trusted to deeds
+not words. He insisted on their coming home with him at once, and he
+would show them whether they were welcome to Rotterdam or not.
+
+"Who doubts it, cousin? Who doubts it?" said the scholar.
+
+Margaret thanked him graciously, but demurred to go just now: said she
+wanted to hear the minstrels again. In about a quarter of an hour
+Johnson renewed his proposal, and bade her observe that many of the
+guests had left. Then her real reason came out.
+
+"It were ill manners to our friend: and he will lose us. He knows not
+where we lodge in Rotterdam, and the city is large, and we have parted
+company once already."
+
+"Oh!" said Johnson, "we will provide for that. My young man, ahem! I
+mean my secretary, shall sit here and wait, and bring him on to my
+house: he shall lodge with me and with no other."
+
+"Cousin, we shall be too burdensome."
+
+"Nay, nay; you shall see whether you are welcome, or not, you and your
+friends, and your friends' friends if need be: and I shall hear what the
+princess would with him."
+
+Margaret felt a thrill of joy that Gerard should be lodged under the
+same roof with her; then she had a slight misgiving. "But if your young
+man should be thoughtless, and go play, and Gerard miss him?"
+
+"He go play? He leave that spot where I put him? and bid him stay? Ho!
+Stand forth, Hans Cloterman."
+
+A figure clad in black serge and dark violet hose arose, and took two
+steps and stood before them without moving a muscle: a solemn, precise
+young man, the very statue of gravity and starched propriety. At his
+aspect Margaret, being very happy, could hardly keep her countenance.
+But she whispered Johnson, "I would put my hand in the fire for him. We
+are at your command, cousin, as soon as you have given him his orders."
+
+Hans was then instructed to sit at the table and wait for Gerard, and
+conduct him to Ooster-Waagen Straet. He replied, not in words, but by
+calmly taking the seat indicated, and Margaret, Peter, and William
+Johnson went away together.
+
+"And, indeed, it is time you were abed, father, after all your travel,"
+said Margaret. This had been in her mind all along.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Hans Cloterman sat waiting for Gerard, solemn and business-like. The
+minutes flew by, but excited no impatience in that perfect young man.
+Johnson did him no more than justice when he laughed to scorn the idea
+of his secretary leaving his post, or neglecting his duty, in pursuit of
+sport or out of youthful hilarity and frivolity.
+
+As Gerard was long in coming, the patient Hans--his employer's eye being
+no longer on him--improved the time by quaffing solemnly, silently, and
+at short but accurately measured intervals, goblets of Corsican wine.
+The wine was strong, so was Cloterman's head: and Gerard had been gone a
+good hour ere the model secretary imbibed the notion that Creation
+expected Cloterman to drink the health of all good fellows, and
+"nommement" of the Duke of Burgundy there present. With this view he
+filled bumper nine, and rose gingerly but solemnly and slowly. Having
+reached his full height, he instantly rolled upon the grass, goblet in
+hand, spilling the cold liquor on more than one ankle--whose owners
+frisked--but not disturbing a muscle in his own long face, which, in the
+total eclipse of reason, retained its gravity, primness, and
+infallibility.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The seneschal led Gerard through several passages to the door of the
+pavilion, where some young noblemen, embroidered and feathered, sat
+sentinel, guarding the heir-apparent, and playing cards by the red light
+of torches their servants held. A whisper from the seneschal, and one of
+them rose reluctantly, stared at Gerard with haughty surprise, and
+entered the pavilion. He presently returned, and, beckoning the pair,
+led them through a passage or two and landed them in an ante-chamber,
+where sat three more young gentlemen, feathered, furred, and embroidered
+like pieces of fancy work, and deep in that instructive and edifying
+branch of learning, dice.
+
+"You can't see the princess--it is too late," said one.
+
+Another followed suit:--
+
+"She passed this way but now with her nurse. She is gone to bed, doll
+and all. Deuce-ace again!"
+
+Gerard prepared to retire. The seneschal, with an incredulous smile,
+replied:--
+
+"The young man is here by the countess's orders; be so good as conduct
+him to her ladies."
+
+On this a superb Adonis rose, with an injured look, and led Gerard into
+a room where sat or lolloped eleven ladies, chattering like magpies.
+Two, more industrious than the rest, were playing cat's-cradle with
+fingers as nimble as their tongues. At the sight of a stranger all the
+tongues stopped like one piece of complicated machinery, and all the
+eyes turned on Gerard, as if the same string that checked the tongues
+had turned the eyes on. Gerard was ill at ease before, but this battery
+of eyes discountenanced him, and down went _his_ eyes on the ground.
+Then the cowards finding, like the hare who ran by the pond and the
+frogs scuttled into the water, that there was a creature they could
+frighten, giggled and enjoyed their prowess. Then a duenna said,
+severely, "Mesdames!" and they were all abashed at once as though a
+modesty string had been pulled. This same duenna took Gerard, and
+marched before him in solemn silence. The young man's heart sank, and he
+had half a mind to turn and run out of the place. "What must princes
+be," he thought, "when their courtiers are so freezing? Doubtless they
+take their breeding from him they serve." These reflections were
+interrupted by the duenna suddenly introducing him into a room where
+three ladies sat working, and a pretty little girl tuning a lute. The
+ladies were richly but not showily dressed, and the duenna went up to
+the one who was hemming a kerchief, and said a few words in a low tone.
+This lady then turned towards Gerard, with a smile, and beckoned him to
+come near her. She did not rise, but she laid aside her work, and her
+manner of turning towards him, slight as the movement was, was full of
+grace and ease and courtesy. She began a conversation at once.
+
+"Margaret Van Eyck is an old friend of mine, sir, and I am right glad to
+have a letter from her hand, and thankful to you, sir, for bringing it
+to me safely. Marie, my love, this is the young gentleman who brought
+you that pretty miniature."
+
+"Sir, I thank you a thousand times," said the young lady.
+
+"I am glad you feel her debtor, sweetheart, for our friend could have us
+to do him a little service in return."
+
+"I will do anything on earth for him," replied the young lady with
+ardour.
+
+"Anything on earth is nothing in the world," said the Countess of
+Charolois, quietly.
+
+"Well, then, I will----What would you have me to do, sir?"
+
+Gerard had just found out what high society he was in. "My sovereign
+demoiselle," said he, gently and a little tremulously, "where there have
+been no pains there needs no reward."
+
+"But we must obey mamma. All the world must obey mamma."
+
+"That is true. Then, our demoiselle, reward me, if you will, by letting
+me hear the stave you were going to sing and I did interrupt it."
+
+"What, you love music, sir?"
+
+"I adore it."
+
+The little princess looked inquiringly at her mother, and received a
+smile of assent. She then took her lute and sang a romaunt of the day.
+Although but twelve years old, she was a well-taught and painstaking
+musician. Her little claw swept the chords with courage and precision,
+and struck out the notes of the arpeggio clear, and distinct, and
+bright, like twinkling stars; but the main charm was her voice. It was
+not mighty, but it was round, clear, full, and ringing like a bell. She
+sang with a certain modest eloquence, though she knew none of the tricks
+of feeling. She was too young to be theatrical, or even sentimental, so
+nothing was forced--all gushed. Her little mouth seemed the mouth of
+Nature. The ditty, too, was as pure as its utterance. As there were none
+of those false divisions--those whining slurs, which are now sold so
+dear by Italian songsters, though every jackal in India delivers them
+gratis to his customers all night, and sometimes gets shot for them, and
+always deserve it--so there were no cadences and fiorituri, the trite,
+turgid, and feeble expletives of song, the skim milk, with which
+mindless musicians and mindless writers quench fire, wash out colour,
+and drown melody and meaning dead.
+
+While the pure and tender strain was flowing from the pure young throat,
+Gerard's eyes filled. The countess watched him with interest, for it was
+usual to applaud the princess loudly, but not with cheek and eye. So
+when the voice ceased, and the glasses left off ringing, she asked
+demurely, "Was he content?"
+
+Gerard gave a little start; the spoken voice broke the charm, and
+brought him back to earth.
+
+"Oh, madam!" he cried, "surely it is thus that cherubs and seraphs sing,
+and charm the saints in heaven."
+
+"I am somewhat of your opinion, my young friend," said the countess,
+with emotion; and she bent a look of love and gentle pride upon her
+girl: a heavenly look, such as, they say, is given to the eye of the
+short-lived resting on the short-lived.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The countess resumed:
+
+"My old friend requests me to be serviceable to you. It is the first
+favour she has done us the honour of asking us, and the request is
+sacred. You are in holy orders, sir?"
+
+Gerard bowed.
+
+"I fear you are not a priest, you look too young."
+
+"Oh no, madam; I am not even a sub-deacon. I am only a lector; but next
+month I shall be an exorcist; and before long an acolyth."
+
+"Well, Monsieur Gerard, with your accomplishments you can soon pass
+through the inferior orders. And let me beg you to do so. For the day
+after you have said your first mass I shall have the pleasure of
+appointing you to a benefice."
+
+"Oh, madam!"
+
+"And, Marie, remember I make this promise in your name as well as my
+own."
+
+"Fear not mamma: I will not forget. But if he will take my advice, what
+he will be is Bishop of Liege. The Bishop of Liege is a beautiful
+bishop. What! do you not remember him, mamma, that day we were at
+Liege? he was braver than grandpa himself. He had on a crown, a high
+one, and it was cut in the middle, and it was full of oh! such beautiful
+jewels: and his gown stiff with gold; and his mantle, too; and it had a
+broad border, all pictures: but, above all, his gloves; you have no such
+gloves, mamma. They were embroidered and covered with jewels, and
+scented with such lovely scent; I smelt them all the time he was giving
+me his blessing on my head with them. Dear old man! I dare say he will
+die soon--most old people do--and then, sir, you can be bishop, you
+know, and wear--"
+
+"Gently, Marie, gently: bishoprics are for old gentlemen; and this is a
+young gentleman."
+
+"Mamma! he is not so very young."
+
+"Not compared with you, Marie, eh?"
+
+"He is a good bigth, dear mamma; and I am sure he is _good_ enough for a
+bishop."
+
+"Alas, mademoiselle! you are mistaken."
+
+"I know not that, Monsieur Gerard; but I am a little puzzled to know on
+what grounds mademoiselle there pronounces your character so boldly."
+
+"Alas, mamma!" said the princess, "you have not looked at his face,
+then;" and she raised her eyebrows at her mother's simplicity.
+
+"I beg your pardon," said the countess, "I have. Well, sir, if I cannot
+go quite so fast as my daughter, attribute it to my age, not to a want
+of interest in your welfare. A benefice will do to begin your career
+with; and I must take care it is not too far from--what call you the
+place?"
+
+"Tergou, madam."
+
+"A priest gives up much," continued the countess; "often, I fear, he
+learns too late how much:" and her woman's eye rested a moment on Gerard
+with mild pity and half surprise at his resigning her sex, and all the
+heaven they can bestow, and the great parental joys: "at least you shall
+be near your friends. Have you a mother?"
+
+"Yes, madam; thanks be to God!"
+
+"Good! You shall have a church near Tergou. She will thank me. And now,
+sir, we must not detain you too long from those who have a better claim
+on your society than we have. Duchess, oblige me by bidding one of the
+pages conduct him to the hall of banquet; the way is hard to find."
+
+Gerard bowed low to the countess and the princess, and backed towards
+the door.
+
+"I hope it will be a nice benefice," said the princess to him, with a
+pretty smile, as he was going out; then, shaking her head with an air of
+solemn misgiving, "but you had better have been Bishop of Liege."
+
+Gerard followed his new conductor, his heart warm with gratitude: but
+ere he reached the banquet-hall a chill came over him. The mind of one
+who has led a quiet, uneventful life is not apt to take in contradictory
+feelings at the same moment and balance them, but rather to be
+overpowered by each in turn. While Gerard was with the countess, the
+excitement of so new a situation, the unlooked for promise, the joy and
+pride it would cause at home, possessed him wholly: but now it was
+passion's turn to be heard again. What, give up Margaret, whose soft
+hand he still felt in his, and her deep eyes in his heart? resign her
+and all the world of love and joy she had opened on him to-day? The
+revulsion, when it did come, was so strong, that he hastily resolved to
+say nothing at home about the offered benefice. "The countess is so
+good," thought he, "she has a hundred ways of aiding a young man's
+fortune: she will not compel me to be a priest when she shall learn I
+love one of her sex: one would almost think she does know it, for she
+cast a strange look on me and said, 'A priest gives up much, too much.'
+I dare say she will give me a place about the palace." And with this
+hopeful reflection his mind was eased, and, being now at the entrance of
+the banqueting-hall, he thanked his conductor, and ran hastily with
+joyful eyes to Margaret. He came in sight of her table--she was gone.
+Peter was gone too. Nobody was at the table at all: only a citizen in
+sober garments had just tumbled under it dead drunk, and several persons
+were raising him to carry him away. Gerard never guessed how important
+this solemn drunkard was to him: he was looking for "Beauty," and let
+the "Beast" lie. He ran wildly round the hall, which was now
+comparatively empty. She was not there. He left the palace: outside he
+found a crowd gaping at two great fanlights just lighted over the gate.
+He asked them earnestly if they had seen an old man in a gown, and a
+lovely girl pass out. They laughed at the question. "They were staring
+at these new lights that turn night into day. They didn't trouble their
+heads about old men and young wenches, every-day sights." From another
+group he learned there was a Mystery being played under canvas hard by,
+and all the world gone to see it. This revived his hopes, and he went
+and saw the Mystery. In this representation divine personages, too
+sacred for me to name here, came clumsily down from heaven to talk
+sophistry with the cardinal Virtues, the nine Muses, and the seven
+deadly Sins, all present in human shape, and not unlike one another. To
+enliven which weary stuff in rattled the Prince of the power of the air,
+and an imp that kept molesting him and buffeting him with a bladder, at
+each thwack of which the crowd were in ecstasies. When the Vices had
+uttered good store of obscenity and the Virtues twaddle, the celestials,
+including the nine Muses, went gingerly back to heaven one by one; for
+there was but one cloud; and two artisans worked it up with its
+supernatural freight, and worked it down with a winch, in full sight of
+the audience. These disposed of, the bottomless pit opened and flamed in
+the centre of the stage; the carpenters and Virtues shoved the Vices in,
+and the Virtues and Beelzebub and his tormentor danced merrily round the
+place of eternal torture to the fife and tabor.
+
+This entertainment was writ by the Bishop of Ghent for the diffusion of
+religious sentiment by the aid of the senses, and was an average
+specimen of theatrical exhibitions so long as they were in the hands of
+the clergy. But, in course of time, the laity conducted plays, and so
+the theatre, I learn from the pulpit, has become profane.
+
+Margaret was nowhere in the crowd, and Gerard could not enjoy the
+performance: he actually went away in Act 2, in the midst of a
+much-admired piece of dialogue, in which Justice out-quibbled Satan. He
+walked through many streets, but could not find her he sought. At last,
+fairly worn out, he went to a hostelry and slept till daybreak. All that
+day, heavy and heartsick, he sought her, but could never fall in with
+her or her father, nor ever obtain the slightest clue. Then he felt she
+was false or had changed her mind. He was irritated now, as well as sad.
+More good fortune fell on him: he almost hated it. At last, on the third
+day, after he had once more been through every street, he said "She is
+not in the town, and I shall never see her again. I will go home." He
+started for Tergou with a royal favour promised, with fifteen golden
+angels in his purse, a golden medal on his bosom and a heart like a lump
+of lead.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV
+
+
+IT was near four o'clock in the afternoon. Eli was in the shop. His
+eldest and youngest sons were abroad. Catherine and her little crippled
+daughter had long been anxious about Gerard, and now they were gone a
+little way down the road, to see if by good luck he might be visible in
+the distance; and Giles was alone in the sitting-room, which I will
+sketch, furniture and dwarf included.
+
+The Hollanders were always an original and leading people. They claim to
+have invented printing (wooden type), oil-painting, liberty, banking,
+gardening, &c. Above all, years before my tale, they invented
+cleanliness. So while the English gentry, in velvet jerkins, and
+chicken-toed shoes, trode floors of stale rushes, foul receptacle of
+bones, decomposing morsels, spittle, dogs' eggs, and all abominations,
+this hosier's sitting-room at Tergou was floored with Dutch tiles, so
+highly glazed and constantly washed, that you could eat off them. There
+was one large window; the cross stone-work in the centre of it was very
+massive, and stood in relief, looking like an actual cross to the
+inmates, and was eyed as such in their devotions. The panes were very
+small and lozenge-shaped, and soldered to one another with strips of
+lead: the like you may see to this day in our rural cottages. The chairs
+were rude and primitive, all but the arm-chair, whose back, at right
+angles with its seat, was so high that the sitter's head stopped two
+feet short of the top. This chair was of oak and carved at the summit.
+There was a copper pail, that went in at the waist, holding holy water;
+and a little hand-besom to sprinkle it far and wide; and a long, narrow
+but massive oak table, and a dwarf sticking to its rim by his teeth, his
+eyes glaring, and his claws in the air like a pouncing vampire. Nature,
+it would seem, did not make Giles a dwarf out of malice prepense: she
+constructed a head and torso with her usual care: but just then her
+attention was distracted, and she left the rest to chance; the result
+was a human wedge, an inverted cone. He might justly have taken her to
+task in the terms of Horace:--
+
+                  Amphora coepit
+    Institui; currente rota cur urceus exit?
+
+His centre was anything but his centre of gravity. Bisected, upper Giles
+would have outweighed three lower Giles. But this very disproportion
+enabled him to do feats that would have baffled Milo. His brawny arms
+had no weight to draw after them; so he could go up a vertical pole like
+a squirrel, and hang for hours from a bough by one hand like a cherry by
+its stalk. If he could have made a vacuum with his hands, as the lizard
+is said to do with its feet, he would have gone along a ceiling. Now,
+this pocket athlete was insanely fond of gripping the dinner-table with
+both hands, and so swinging; and then--climax of delight!--he would
+seize it with his teeth, and taking off his hands, hold on like grim
+death by his huge ivories.
+
+But all our joys, however elevating, suffer interruption. Little Kate
+caught Sampsonet in this posture, and stood aghast. She was her mother's
+daughter, and her heart was with the furniture, not with the 12mo.
+gymnast.
+
+"Oh, Giles! how can you? Mother is at hand. It dents the table."
+
+"Go and tell her, little talebearer," snarled Giles. "You are the one
+for making mischief."
+
+"Am I?" inquired Kate, calmly; "that is news to me."
+
+"The biggest in Tergou," growled Giles, fastening on again.
+
+"Oh, indeed?" said Kate drily.
+
+This piece of unwonted satire launched, and Giles not visibly blasted,
+she sat down quietly and cried.
+
+Her mother came in almost at that moment, and Giles hurled himself under
+the table, and there glared.
+
+"What is to do now?" said the dame, sharply. Then turning her
+experienced eye from Kate to Giles, and observing the position he had
+taken up, and a sheepish expression, she hinted at cuffing of ears.
+
+"Nay, mother," said the girl; "it was but a foolish word Giles spoke. I
+had not noticed it at another time; but I was tired and in care for
+Gerard, you know."
+
+"Let no one be in care for me," said a faint voice at the door, and in
+tottered Gerard, pale dusty, and worn out; and amidst uplifted hands and
+cries of delight, curiosity, and anxiety, mingled, dropped exhausted
+into the nearest chair.
+
+Beating Rotterdam, like a covert, for Margaret, and the long journey
+afterwards, had fairly knocked Gerard up. But elastic youth soon
+revived, and behold him the centre of an eager circle. First of all
+they must hear about the prizes. Then Gerard told them he had been
+admitted to see the competitors' works all laid out in an enormous hall
+before the judges pronounced. "Oh, mother! oh Kate; when I saw the
+goldsmith's work, I had like to have fallen on the floor. I had thought
+not all the goldsmiths on earth had so much gold, silver, jewels, and
+craft of design and facture. But, in sooth, all the arts are divine."
+
+Then to please the females, he described to them the reliquaries,
+feretories, calices, crosiers, crosses, pyxes, monstrances, and other
+wonders ecclesiastical, and the goblets, hanaps, watches, clocks,
+chains, brooches, &c., so that their mouths watered.
+
+"But Kate, when I came to the illuminated work from Ghent and Bruges, my
+heart sank. Mine was dirt by the side of it. For the first minute I
+could almost have cried; but I prayed for a better spirit, and presently
+I was able to enjoy them, and thank God for those lovely works, and for
+those skilful, patient craftsmen, whom I own my masters. Well, the
+coloured work was so beautiful I forgot all about the black and white.
+But, next day, when all the other prizes had been given, they came to
+the writing, and whose name think you was called first?"
+
+"Yours," said Kate.
+
+The others laughed her to scorn.
+
+"You may well laugh," said Gerard, "but for all that Gerard Eliassoen of
+Tergou was the name the herald shouted. I stood stupid; they thrust me
+forward. Everything swam before my eyes. I found myself kneeling on a
+cushion at the feet of the duke. He said something to me, but I was so
+fluttered I could not answer him. So then he put his hand to his side
+and did not draw a glaive and cut off my dull head, but gave me a gold
+medal, and there it is." There was a yell and almost a scramble. "And
+then he gave me fifteen great bright golden angels. I had seen one
+before, but I never handled one. Here they are."
+
+"Oh Gerard! oh Gerard!"
+
+"There is one for you, our eldest; and one for you, Sybrandt, and for
+you, Little Mischief; and two for thee, Little Lily, because God hath
+afflicted thee; and one for myself to buy colours and vellum; and nine
+for her that nursed us all, and risked the two crowns upon poor Gerard's
+hand."
+
+The gold drew out their characters. Cornelis and Sybrandt clutched each
+his coin with one glare of greediness and another glare of envy at Kate
+who had got two pieces. Giles seized his and rolled it along the floor
+and gambolled after it. Kate put down her crutches and sat down, and
+held out her little arms to Gerard with a heavenly gesture of love and
+tenderness, and the mother, fairly benumbed at first by the shower of
+gold that fell on her apron, now cried out, "Leave kissing him, Kate, he
+is my son, not yours. Ah, Gerard, my boy! I have not loved you as you
+deserved."
+
+Then Gerard threw himself on his knees beside her, and she flung her
+arms round him and wept for joy and pride, upon his neck.
+
+"Good lad! good lad!" cried the hosier, with some emotion. "I must go
+and tell the neighbors. Lend me the medal, Gerard, I'll show it my good
+friend, Peter Buyskens; he is ever regaling me with how his son Jorian
+won the tin mug a shooting at the butts."
+
+"Ay, do my man; and show Peter Buyskens one of the angels. Tell him
+there are fourteen more where that came from. Mind you bring it me
+back!"
+
+"Stay a minute, father, there is better news behind," said Gerard,
+flushing with joy at the joy he caused.
+
+"Better! Better than this?"
+
+Then Gerard told his interview with the countess, and the house rang
+with joy.
+
+"Now God bless the good lady and bless the Dame Van Eyck! A benefice?
+our son! My cares are at an end. Eli, my good friend and master, now we
+two can die happy whenever our time comes. This dear boy will take our
+place, and none of these loved ones will want a home or a friend."
+
+From that hour Gerard was looked upon as the stay of the family. He was
+a son apart, but in another sense. He was always in the right, and
+nothing was too good for him. Cornelis and Sybrandt became more and more
+jealous of him, and longed for the day he should go to his benefice:
+they would get rid of the favourite, and his reverence's purse would be
+open to them. With these views he co-operated. The wound love had given
+him, throbbed duller and duller. His success and the affection and
+admiration of his parents, made him think more highly of himself, and
+resent with more spirit Margaret's ingratitude and discourtesy. For all
+that, she had power to cool him towards the rest of her sex, and now for
+every reason he wished to be ordained priest as soon as he could pass
+the intermediate orders. He knew the Vulgate already better than most of
+the clergy, and studied the rubric and the dogmas of the Church with his
+friends the monks; and, the first time the bishop came that way, he
+applied to be admitted "exorcist," the third step in holy orders. The
+bishop questioned him, and ordained him at once. He had to kneel, and
+after a short prayer, the bishop delivered to him a little MS. full of
+exorcisms, and said: "Take this, Gerard, and have power to lay hands on
+the possessed, whether baptized or catechumens!" and he took it
+reverently, and went home invested by the Church with power to cast out
+demons.
+
+Returning home from the church, he was met by little Kate on her
+crutches.
+
+"Oh, Gerard! who think you, hath sent to our house seeking you?--the
+burgomaster himself."
+
+"Ghysbrecht Van Swieten? What would he with me?"
+
+"Nay, Gerard, I know not. But he seems urgent to see you. You are to go
+to his house on the instant."
+
+"Well, he is the burgomaster: I will go: but it likes me not. Kate, I
+have seen him cast such a look on me as no friend casts. No matter; such
+looks forewarn the wise. To be sure, he knows--"
+
+"Knows what, Gerard?"
+
+"Nothing."
+
+"Nothing?"
+
+"Kate, I'll go."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V
+
+
+GHYSBRECHT VAN SWIETEN was an artful man. He opened on the novice with
+something quite wide of the mark he was really aiming at. "The town
+records," said he, "are crabbedly written, and the ink rusty with age."
+He offered Gerard the honour of transcribing them fair.
+
+Gerard inquired what he was to be paid.
+
+Ghysbrecht offered a sum that would have just purchased the pens, ink,
+and parchment.
+
+"But, burgomaster, my labour? Here is a year's work."
+
+"Your labour? Call you marking parchment labour? Little sweat goes to
+that, I trow."
+
+"'Tis labour, and skilled labour to boot: and that is better paid in all
+crafts than rude labour, sweat or no sweat. Beside, there's my time."
+
+"Your time? Why what is time to you, at two-and-twenty?" Then fixing his
+eyes keenly on Gerard, to mark the effect of his words, he said: "Say
+rather, you are idle grown. You are in love. Your body is with these
+chanting monks, but your heart is with Peter Brandt and his red-haired
+girl."
+
+"I know no Peter Brandt."
+
+"This denial confirmed Ghysbrecht's suspicion that the caster-out of
+demons was playing a deep game.
+
+"Ye lie!" he shouted. "Did I not find you at her elbow, on the road to
+Rotterdam?"
+
+"Ah!"
+
+"Ah. And you were seen at Sevenbergen but t'other day."
+
+"Was I?"
+
+"Ay; and at Peter's house."
+
+"At Sevenbergen?"
+
+"Ay, at Sevenbergen."
+
+Now, this was what in modern days is called a draw. It was a guess, put
+boldly forth as fact, to elicit by the young man's answer, whether he
+had been there lately or not.
+
+The result of the artifice surprised the crafty one. Gerard started up
+in a strange state of nervous excitement.
+
+"Burgomaster," said he, with trembling voice, "I have not been at
+Sevenbergen this three years, and I knew not the name of those you saw
+me with, nor where they dwelt; but as my time is precious, though you
+value it not, give you good day." And he darted out with his eyes
+sparkling.
+
+Ghysbrecht started up in huge ire; but he sank into his chair again.
+
+"He fears me not. He knows something if not all."
+
+Then he called hastily to his trusty servant, and almost dragged him to
+a window.
+
+"See you yon man?" he cried. "Haste! Follow him! But let him not see
+you. He is young, but old in craft. Keep him in sight all day. Let me
+know whither he goes and what he does."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+It was night when the servant returned.
+
+"Well? well?" cried Van Swieten, eagerly.
+
+"Master, the young man went from you to Sevenbergen."
+
+Ghysbrecht groaned.
+
+"To the house of Peter the Magician."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI
+
+
+
+"LOOK into your own heart and write!" said Herr Cant; and earth's
+cuckoos echoed the cry. Look into the Rhine where it is deepest, and the
+Thames where it is thickest, and paint the bottom. Lower a bucket into a
+well of self-deception, and what comes up must be immortal truth,
+mustn't it? Now, in the first place no son of Adam ever reads his own
+heart at all, except by the habit acquired, and the light gained, from
+some years' perusal of other hearts; and even then, with his acquired
+sagacity and reflected light, he can but spell and decipher his own
+heart, not read it fluently. Half way to Sevenbergen Gerard looked into
+his own heart, and asked it why he was going to Sevenbergen. His heart
+replied without a moment's hesitation. "We are going out of curiosity,
+to know why she jilted us, and to show her it has not broken our hearts,
+and that we are quite content with our honours and our benefice in
+prospectu, and don't want her nor any of her fickle sex."
+
+He soon found out Peter Brandt's cottage; and there sat a girl in the
+doorway, plying her needle, and a stalwart figure leaned on a long bow
+and talked to her. Gerard felt an unaccountable pang at the sight of
+him. However, the man turned out to be past fifty years of age, an old
+soldier, whom Gerard remembered to have seen shoot at the butts with
+admirable force and skill. Another minute and the youth stood before
+them. Margaret looked up and dropped her work, and uttered a faint cry,
+and was white and red by turns. But these signs of emotion were swiftly
+dismissed, and she turned far more chill and indifferent than she would
+if she had not betrayed this agitation.
+
+"What! is it you, Master Gerard? What on earth brings you here, I
+wonder?"
+
+"I was passing by and saw you; so I thought I would give you good day
+and ask after your father."
+
+"My father is well. He will be here anon."
+
+"Then I may as well stay till he comes."
+
+"As you will. Good Martin, step into the village and tell my father here
+is a friend of his."
+
+"And not of yours?"
+
+"My father's friends are mine."
+
+"That is doubtful. It was not like a friend to promise to wait for me,
+and then make off the moment my back was turned. Cruel Margaret! you
+little know how I searched the town for you; how for want of you nothing
+was pleasant to me."
+
+"These are idle words; if you had desired my father's company, or mine,
+you would have come back. There I had a bed laid for you, sir, at my
+cousin's, and he would have made much of you, and, who knows, I might
+have made much of you too. I was in the humour that day. You will not
+catch me in the same mind again, neither you nor any young man, I
+warrant me."
+
+"Margaret, I came back the moment the countess let me go; but you were
+not there."
+
+"Nay, you did not, or you had seen Hans Cloterman at our table; we left
+him to bring you on."
+
+"I saw no one there, but only a drunken man that had just tumbled down."
+
+"At our table? How was he clad?"
+
+"Nay, I took little heed: in sad coloured garb."
+
+At this Margaret's face gradually warmed; but presently, assuming
+incredulity and severity, she put many shrewd questions, all of which
+Gerard answered most loyally. Finally, the clouds cleared, and they
+guessed how the misunderstanding had come about. Then came a revulsion
+of tenderness, all the more powerful that they had done each other
+wrong; and then, more dangerous still, came mutual confessions. Neither
+had been happy since, neither ever would have been happy but for this
+fortunate meeting.
+
+And Gerard found a MS. Vulgate lying open on the table, and pounced upon
+it like a hawk. MSS. were his delight; but before he could get to it two
+white hands quickly came flat upon the page, and a red face over them.
+
+"Nay, take away your hands, Margaret, that I may see where you are
+reading, and I will read there too at home; so shall my soul meet yours
+in the sacred page. You will not? Nay, then, I must kiss them away."
+And he kissed them so often, that for very shame they were fain to
+withdraw, and, lo! the sacred book lay open at
+
+    An apple of gold in a network of silver.
+
+"There, now," said she, "I had been hunting for it ever so long, and
+found it but even now--and to be caught!" and with a touch of
+inconsistency she pointed it out to Gerard with her white finger.
+
+"Ay," said he, "but to-day it is all hidden in that great cap."
+
+"It is a comely cap, I'm told by some."
+
+"Maybe: but what it hides is beautiful."
+
+"It is not: it is hideous."
+
+"Well, it was beautiful at Rotterdam."
+
+"Ay, everything was beautiful that day" (with a little sigh).
+
+And now Peter came in, and welcomed Gerard cordially, and would have him
+stay to supper. And Margaret disappeared; and Gerard had a nice learned
+chat with Peter; and Margaret reappeared with her hair in a silver net,
+and shot a glance half arch half coy, and glided about them, and spread
+supper, and beamed bright with gaiety and happiness. And in the cool
+evening Gerard coaxed her out, and she objected, and came; and coaxed
+her on to the road to Tergou and she declined, and came, and there they
+strolled up and down, hand in hand; and when he must go they pledged
+each other never to quarrel or misunderstand one another again; and they
+sealed the promise with a long loving kiss, and Gerard went home on
+wings.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+From that day Gerard spent most of his evenings with Margaret, and the
+attachment deepened and deepened on both sides till the hours they spent
+together were the hours they lived; the rest they counted and underwent.
+And at the outset of this deep attachment all went smoothly; obstacles
+there were, but they seemed distant and small to the eyes of hope, youth
+and love. The feelings and passions of so many persons, that this
+attachment would thwart, gave no warning smoke to show their volcanic
+nature and power. The course of true love ran smoothly, placidly, until
+it had drawn these two young hearts into its current for ever.
+
+And then--
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII
+
+
+ONE bright morning unwonted velvet shone, unwonted feathers waved, and
+horses' hoofs glinted and rang through the streets of Tergou, and the
+windows and balconies were studded with wondering faces. The French
+ambassador was riding through to sport in the neighbouring forest.
+
+Besides his own suite he was attended by several servants of the Duke of
+Bergundy, lent to do him honour and minister to his pleasure. The duke's
+tumbler rode before him with a grave, sedate majesty that made his more
+noble companions, seem light, frivolous persons. But ever and anon, when
+respect and awe neared the oppressive, he rolled off his horse so
+ignobly and funnily that even the ambassador was fain to burst out
+laughing. He also climbed up again by the tail in a way provocative of
+mirth, and so he played his part. Towards the rear of the pageant rode
+one that excited more attention still--the duke's leopard. A huntsman
+mounted on a Flemish horse of prodigious size and power, carried a long
+box fastened to the rider's loins by straps curiously contrived, and on
+this box sat a bright leopard crouching. She was chained to the
+huntsman. The people admired her glossy hide and spots, and pressed
+near, and one or two were for feeling her, and pulling her tail; then
+the huntsman shouted in a terrible voice, "Beware! At Antwerp one did
+but throw a handful of dust at her, and the duke made dust of him."
+
+"Gramercy!"
+
+"I speak sooth. The good duke shut him up in prison, in a cell under
+ground, and the rats cleaned the flesh off his bones in a night. Served
+him right for molesting the poor thing." There was a murmur of fear, and
+the Tergovians shrank from tickling the leopard of their sovereign.
+
+But an incident followed that raised their spirits again. The duke's
+giant, a Hungarian seven feet four inches high, brought up the rear.
+This enormous creature had, like some other giants, a treble, fluty
+voice of little power. He was a vain fellow, and not conscious of this
+nor any defect. Now it happened he caught sight of Giles sitting on top
+of the balcony; so he stopped and began to make fun of him.
+
+"Hallo! brother!" squeaked he, "I had nearly passed without seeing
+thee."
+
+"_You_ are plain enough to see," bellowed Giles, in his bass tones.
+
+"Come on my shoulder, brother," squeaked Titan, and held out a shoulder
+of mutton fist to help him down.
+
+"If I do I'll cuff your ears," roared the dwarf.
+
+The giant saw the homuncule was irascible, and played upon him, being
+encouraged thereto by the shouts of laughter. For he did not see that
+the people were laughing not at his wit, but at the ridiculous
+incongruity of the two voices--the gigantic feeble fife, and the petty,
+deep, loud drum, the mountain delivered of a squeak and the mole-hill
+belching thunder.
+
+The singular duet came to as singular an end. Giles lost all patience
+and self-command, and being a creature devoid of fear, and in a rage to
+boot, he actually dropped upon the giant's neck, seized his hair with
+one hand, and punched his head with the other. The giant's first impulse
+was to laugh, but the weight and rapidity of the blows soon corrected
+that inclination.
+
+"He! he! Ah! ha! hallo! oh! oh! Holy saints! here! help! or I must
+throttle the imp. I can't! I'll split your skull against the----" and he
+made a wild run backwards at the balcony. Giles saw his danger, seized
+the balcony in time with both hands, and whipped over it just as the
+giant's head came against it with a stunning crack. The people roared
+with laughter and exultation at the address of their little champion.
+The indignant giant seized two of the laughers, knocked them together
+like dumb-bells, shook them and strewed them flat--(Catherine shrieked
+and threw her apron over Giles)--then strode wrathfully away after the
+party. This incident had consequences no one then present foresaw. Its
+immediate results were agreeable. The Tergovians turned proud of Giles,
+and listened with more affability to his prayers for parchment. For he
+drove a regular trade with his brother Gerard in this article. Went
+about and begged it gratis, and Gerard gave him coppers for it.
+
+On the afternoon of the same day, Catherine and her daughter were
+chatting together about their favourite theme, Gerard, his goodness, his
+benefice, and the brightened prospects of the whole family.
+
+Their good luck had come to them in the very shape they would have
+chosen; besides the advantages of a benefice such as the Countess
+Charolois would not disdain to give, there was the feminine delight at
+having a priest, a holy man, in their own family. "He will marry
+Cornelis, and Sybrandt: for they can wed (good housewives), now if they
+will. Gerard will take care of you and Giles, when we are gone."
+
+"Yes mother, and we can confess to him instead of to a stranger," said
+Kate.
+
+"Ay, girl! and he can give the sacred oil to your father and me, and
+close our eyes when our time comes."
+
+"Oh, mother! not for many, many years I do pray Heaven. Pray speak not
+of that, it always makes me sad. I hope to go before you, mother dear.
+No; let us be gay to-day. I am out of pain; mother, quite out of all
+pain; it does seem so strange; and I feel so bright and happy,
+that--mother, can you keep a secret?"
+
+"Nobody better, child. Why, you know I can."
+
+"Then I will show you something so beautiful. You never saw the like, I
+trow. Only Gerard must never know; for sure he means to surprise us
+with; he covers it up so, and sometimes he carries it away altogether."
+
+Kate took her crutches, and moved slowly away, leaving her mother in an
+exalted state of curiosity. She soon returned with something in a cloth,
+uncovered it, and there was a lovely picture of the Virgin, with all her
+insignia, and wearing her tiara over a wealth of beautiful hair, which
+flowed loose over her shoulders. Catherine, at first was struck with
+awe.
+
+"It is herself," she cried; "it is the Queen of Heaven. I never saw one
+like her to my mind before."
+
+"And her eyes, mother: lifted to the sky, as if they belonged there, and
+not to a mortal creature. And her beautiful hair of burning gold."
+
+"And to think I have a son that can make the saints live again upon a
+piece of wood!"
+
+"The reason is, he is a young saint himself, mother. He is too good for
+this world; he is here to portray the blessed, and then to go away and
+be with them for ever."
+
+Ere they had half done admiring it, a strange voice was heard at the
+door. By one of the furtive instincts of their sex they hastily hid the
+picture in the cloth, though there was no need. And the next moment in
+came, casting his eyes furtively around, a man that had not entered the
+house this ten years--Ghysbrecht Van Swieten.
+
+The two women were so taken by surprise, that they merely stared at him
+and at one another, and said, "The Burgomaster!" in a tone so
+expressive, that Ghysbrecht felt compelled to answer it.
+
+"Yes! I own, the last time I came here was not on a friendly errand. Men
+love their own interest--Eli's and mine were contrary. Well, let this
+visit atone for the last. To-day I come on your business, and none of
+mine." Catherine and her daughter exchanged a swift glance of
+contemptuous incredulity. They knew the man better than he thought.
+
+"It is about your son Gerard."
+
+"Ay! ay! you want him to work for the town all for nothing. He told us."
+
+"I come on no such errand. It is to let you know he has fallen into bad
+hands."
+
+"Now Heaven and the saints forbid! Man, torture not a mother! Speak out,
+and quickly: speak ere you have time to coin a falsehood: we know thee."
+
+Ghysbrecht turned pale at this affront, and spite mingled with the other
+motives that brought him here. "Thus it is, then," said he, grinding his
+teeth, and speaking very fast. "Your son Gerard is more like to be the
+father of a family than a priest: he is for ever with Margaret, Peter
+Brandt's red-haired girl, and he loves her like a cow her calf."
+
+Mother and daughter both burst out laughing. Ghysbrecht stared at them.
+
+"What, you knew it?"
+
+"Carry this tale to those who know not my son Gerard. Women are nought
+to him."
+
+"Other women, mayhap. But this one is the apple of his eye to him or
+will be, if you part them not, and soon. Come, dame, make me not waste
+time and friendly counsel: my servant has seen them together a score of
+times, handed, and reading babies in one another's eyes like--you know,
+dame--you have been young too."
+
+"Girl, I am ill at ease. Yea I have been young, and know how blind and
+foolish the young are. My heart! He has turned me sick in a moment.
+Kate, if it should be true."
+
+"Nay, nay!" cried Kate, eagerly. "Gerard might love a young woman: all
+young men do: I can't find what they see in them to love so: but if he
+did he would let us know; he would not deceive us. You wicked man! No,
+dear mother look not so! Gerard is too good to love a creature of earth.
+His love is for our Lady and the saints. Ah! I will show you the
+picture--there: if his heart was earthly could he paint the Queen of
+Heaven like that--look! look!" and she held the picture out
+triumphantly, and more radiant and beautiful in this moment of
+enthusiasm than ever dead picture was or will be, overpowered the
+burgomaster with her eloquence and her feminine proof of Gerard's
+purity. His eyes and mouth opened, and remained open: in which state
+they kept turning face and all, as if on a pivot, from the picture to
+the women, and from the women to the picture.
+
+"Why, it is herself," he gasped.
+
+"Isn't it?" cried Kate, and her hostility was softened. "You admire it?
+I forgive you for frightening us."
+
+"Am I in a mad-house?" said Ghysbrecht Van Swieten, thoroughly puzzled.
+"You show me a picture of the girl; and you say he painted it; and that
+is proof he cannot love her. Why they all paint their sweethearts,
+painters do."
+
+"A picture of the girl?" exclaimed Kate, shocked. "Fie! this is no girl;
+this is our blessed Lady."
+
+"No; no, it is Margaret Brandt."
+
+"Oh blind! It is the Queen of Heaven."
+
+"No; only of Sevenbergen village."
+
+"Profane man! behold her crown!"
+
+"Silly child! look at her red hair! Would the Virgin be seen in red
+hair? She who had the pick of all the colours ten thousand years before
+the world began."
+
+At this moment an anxious face was insinuated round the edge of the open
+door: it was their neighbour Peter Buyskens.
+
+"What is to do?" said he in a cautious whisper. "We can hear you all
+across the street. What on earth is to do?"
+
+"O, neighbour! What is to do? Why here is the burgomaster blackening our
+Gerard."
+
+"Stop!" cried Van Swieten. "Peter Buyskens is come in the nick of time.
+He knows father and daughter both. They cast their glamour on him."
+
+"What is she a witch, too?"
+
+"Else the egg takes not after the bird. Why is her father called the
+magician? I tell you they bewitched this very Peter here; they cast
+unholy spells on him, and cured him of the colic: now, Peter, look and
+tell me who is that? and you be silent, women, for a moment, if you can;
+who is it, Peter?"
+
+"Well to be sure!" said Peter in reply: and his eye seemed fascinated by
+the picture.
+
+"Who is it?" repeated Ghysbrecht, impetuously.
+
+Peter Buyskens smiled. "Why you know as well as I do; but what have they
+put a crown on her for, I never saw her in a crown, for my part."
+
+"Man alive! Can't you open your great jaws, and just speak a wench's
+name plain out to oblige three people?"
+
+"I'd do a great deal more to oblige one of you than that, burgomaster.
+If it isn't as natural as life!"
+
+"Curse the man! he won't, he won't--curse him!"
+
+"Why, what have I done, now?"
+
+"Oh, sir!" said little Kate, "for pity's sake tell us; are these the
+features of a living woman, of--of--Margaret Brandt?"
+
+"A mirror is not truer, my little maid."
+
+"But is it she, sir, for very certain?"
+
+"Why, who else should it be?"
+
+"Now, why couldn't you say so at once?" snarled Ghysbrecht.
+
+"I did say so, as plain as I could speak," snapped Peter; and they
+growled over this small bone of contention so zealously, that they did
+not see Catherine and her daughter had thrown their aprons over their
+heads, and were rocking to and fro in deep distress. The next moment
+Elias came in from the shop, and stood aghast. Catherine, though her
+face was covered, knew his footstep.
+
+"That is my poor man," she sobbed. "Tell him, good Peter Buyskens, for I
+have not the courage."
+
+Elias turned pale. The presence of the burgomaster in his house, after
+so many years of coolness, coupled with his wife's and daughter's
+distress, made him fear some heavy misfortune.
+
+"Richart! Jacob!" he gasped.
+
+"No! no!" said the burgomaster; "it is nearer home, and nobody is dead
+or dying, old friend."
+
+"God bless you, burgomaster! Ah! something is gone off my breast that
+was like to choke me. Now, what is the matter?"
+
+Ghysbrecht then told him all that he told the women, and showed the
+picture in evidence.
+
+"Is that all?" said Eli, profoundly relieved. "What are ye roaring and
+bellowing for? It is vexing, it is angering, but it is not like death
+nor even sickness. Boys will be boys. He will outgrow that disease: 'tis
+but skin deep."
+
+But when Ghysbrecht told him that Margaret was a girl of good character;
+that it was not to be supposed she would be so intimate if marriage had
+not been spoken of between them, his brow darkened.
+
+"Marriage? that shall never be," said he, sternly. "I'll stay that, ay,
+by force if need be, as I would his hand lifted to cut his throat. I'd
+do what old John Koestein did t'other day."
+
+"And what is that, in Heaven's name?" asked the mother, suddenly
+removing her apron.
+
+It was the burgomaster who replied:
+
+"He made me shut young Albert Koestein up in the prison of the
+Stadthouse till he knocked under: it was not long. Forty-eight hours,
+all alone, on bread and water, cooled his hot stomach. 'Tell my father I
+am his humble servant,' says he, 'and let me into the sun once more--the
+sun is worth all the wenches in the world.'"
+
+"Oh the cruelty of men!" sighed Catherine.
+
+"As to that, the burgomaster has no choice: it is the law. And if a
+father says, 'Burgomaster, lock up my son,' he must do it. A fine thing
+it would be if a father might not lock up his own son."
+
+"Well, well! it won't come to that with me and my son. He never
+disobeyed me in his life: he never shall. Where is he? It is past
+supper-time. Where is he, Kate?"
+
+"Alas, I know not, father."
+
+"I know," said Ghysbrecht; "he is at Sevenbergen. My servant met him on
+the road."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Supper passed in gloomy silence. Evening descended--no Gerard: eight
+o'clock came--no Gerard. Then the father sent all to bed except
+Catherine.
+
+"You and I will walk abroad, wife, and talk over this new care."
+
+"Abroad, my man, at this time? Whither?"
+
+"Why on the road to Sevenbergen."
+
+"Oh no, no hasty words, father. Poor Gerard! he never vexed you before."
+
+"Fear me not. But it must end; and I am not one that trusts to-morrow
+with to-day's work."
+
+The old pair walked hand in hand; for strange as it may appear to some
+of my readers, the use of the elbow to couples walking was not
+discovered in Europe till centuries after this. They sauntered on a long
+time in silence. The night was clear and balmy. Such nights, calm and
+silent, recall the past from the dead.
+
+"It is a many years since we walked so late, my man," said Catherine,
+softly.
+
+"Ay, sweetheart, more than we shall see again (Is he never coming, I
+wonder?")
+
+"Not since our courting days, Eli."
+
+"No. Ay, you were a buxom lass then."
+
+"And you were a comely lad, as ever a girl's eye stole a look at. I do
+suppose Gerard is with her now, as you used to be with me. Nature is
+strong, and the same in all our generations."
+
+"Nay, I hope he has left her by now, confound her, or we shall be here
+all night."
+
+"Eli!"
+
+"Well, Kate?"
+
+"I have been happy with you sweetheart, for all our rubs,--much happier,
+I trow, than if I had--been--a--a--nun. You won't speak harshly to the
+poor child? One can be firm without being harsh."
+
+"Surely."
+
+"Have you been happy with me, my poor Eli?"
+
+"Why, you know I have. Friends I have known, but none like thee. Buss
+me, wife!"
+
+"A heart to share joy and grief with is a great comfort to man or woman.
+Isn't it, Eli?"
+
+"It is so, my lass."
+
+    '_It doth joy double,
+     And halveth trouble,_'
+
+runs the byword. And so I have found it, sweetheart. Ah! here comes the
+young fool."
+
+Catherine trembled and held her husband's hand tight. The moon was
+bright, but they were in the shadow of some trees, and their son did not
+see them. He came singing in the moonlight, and his face shining.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII
+
+
+WHILE the burgomaster was exposing Gerard at Tergou, Margaret had a
+trouble of her own at Sevenbergen. It was a housewife's distress, but
+deeper than we can well conceive. She came to Martin Wittenhaagen, the
+old soldier, with tears in her eyes.
+
+"Martin, there's nothing in the house, and Gerard is coming, and he is
+so thoughtless. He forgets to sup at home. When he gives over work then
+he runs to me straight, poor soul: and often, he comes quite faint. And
+to think I have nothing to set before my servant that loves me so dear."
+
+Martin scratched his head. "What can I do?"
+
+"It is Thursday: it is your day to shoot,--sooth to say, I counted on
+you to-day."
+
+"Nay," said the soldier, "I may not shoot when the duke or his friends
+are at the chace; read else. I am no scholar." And he took out of his
+pouch a parchment with a grand seal. It purported to be a stipend and a
+licence given by Philip Duke of Burgundy to Martin Wittenhaagen, one of
+his archers, in return for services in the wars, and for a wound
+received at the duke's side. The stipend was four marks yearly to be
+paid by the Duke's almoner and the licence was to shoot three arrows
+once a week, viz., on Thursday, and no other day, in any of the Duke's
+forests in Holland, at any game but a seven-year-old buck or a doe
+carrying fawn, proviso, that the duke should not be hunting on that day,
+or any of his friends. In this case Martin was not to go and disturb the
+woods on peril of his salary, and his head, and a fine of a penny.
+
+Margaret sighed and was silent.
+
+"Come, cheer up, mistress," said he, "for your sake I'll peril my
+carcass; I have done that for many a one that was not worth your
+forefinger. It is no such mighty risk either. I'll but step into the
+skirts of the forest, here. It is odds but they drive a hare or a fawn
+within reach of my arrow."
+
+"Well, if I let you go you must promise me not to go far, and not to be
+seen; far better Gerard went supperless than ill should come to you,
+faithful Martin."
+
+The required promise given, Martin took his bow and three arrows, and
+stole cautiously into the wood: it was scarce a furlong distant. The
+horns were heard faintly in the distance, and all the game was afoot.
+"Come," thought Martin, "I shall soon fill the pot and no one be the
+wiser." He took his stand behind a thick oak that commanded a view of an
+open glade, and strung his bow, a truly formidable weapon. It was of
+English yew, six feet two inches high, and thick in proportion: and
+Martin, broad chested, with arms all iron and cord, and used to the bow
+from infancy, could draw a three-foot arrow to the head, and, when it
+flew, the eye could scarce follow it, and the bowstring twanged as
+musical as a harp. This bow had laid many a stout soldier low in the
+wars of the Hoecks and Cabbel-jaws. In those days a battle-field was not
+a cloud of smoke; the combatants were few but the deaths many; for they
+saw what they were about, and fewer bloodless arrows flew than bloodless
+bullets now. A hare came cantering, then sat sprightly, and her ears
+made a capital V. Martin levelled his tremendous weapon at her: the
+arrow flew, the string twanged: but Martin had been in a hurry to pot
+her, and lost her by an inch: the arrow seemed to hit her, but it struck
+the ground close to her, and passed under her belly like a flash, and
+hissed along the short grass and disappeared. She jumped three feet
+perpendicular, and away at the top of her speed. "Bungler!" said Martin.
+A sure proof he was not an habitual bungler, or he would have blamed the
+hare. He had scarcely fitted another arrow to his string when a
+wood-pigeon settled on the very tree he stood under.
+
+"Aha!" thought he, "you are small, but dainty." This time he took more
+pains; drew his arrow carefully, loosed it smoothly, and saw it, to all
+appearance, go clean through the bird, carrying feathers sky-ward like
+dust. Instead of falling at his feet, the bird, whose breast was torn,
+not fairly pierced, fluttered feebly away, and, by a great effort rose
+above the trees, flew some fifty yards, and fell dead at last; but
+where, he could not see for the thick foliage.
+
+"Luck is against me," said he, despondingly. But he fitted another
+arrow, and eyed the glade keenly. Presently he heard a bustle behind
+him, and turned round just in time to see a noble buck cross the open,
+but too late to shoot at him. He dashed his bow down with an
+imprecation. At that moment a long, spotted animal glided swiftly across
+after the deer; its belly seemed to touch the ground as it went. Martin
+took up his bow hastily: he recognized the duke's leopard. "The hunters
+will not be far from her," said he, "and I must not be seen. Gerard must
+go supperless this night."
+
+He plunged into the wood, following the buck and leopard, for that was
+his way home. He had not gone far when he heard an unusual sound ahead
+of him--leaves rustling violently, and the ground trampled. He hurried
+in the direction. He found the leopard on the buck's back, tearing him
+with teeth and claw, and the buck running in a circle and bounding
+convulsively, with the blood pouring down his hide. Then Martin formed a
+desperate resolution to have the venison for Margaret. He drew his arrow
+to the head and buried it in the deer, who, spite of the creature on his
+back, bounded high into the air, and fell dead. The leopard went on
+tearing him as if nothing had happened.
+
+Martin hoped that the creature would gorge itself with blood, and then
+let him take the meat. He waited some minutes, then walked resolutely
+up, and laid his hand on the buck's leg. The leopard gave a frightful
+growl, and left off sucking blood. She saw Martin's game, and was sulky
+and on her guard. What was to be done? Martin had heard that wild
+creatures cannot stand the human eye. Accordingly he stood erect and
+fixed his on the leopard; the leopard returned a savage glance, and
+never took her eye off Martin. Then Martin continuing to look the beast
+down, the leopard, brutally ignorant of natural history, flew at his
+head with a frightful yell, flaming eyes, and jaws and claws distended.
+He had but just time to catch her by the throat, before her teeth could
+crush his face; one of her claws seized his shoulder and rent it, the
+other aimed at his cheek, would have been more deadly still, but Martin
+was old fashioned, and wore no hat, but a scapulary of the same stuff as
+his jerkin, and this scapulary he had brought over his head like a hood;
+the brute's claw caught in the loose leather. Martin kept her teeth off
+his face with great difficulty, and gripped her throat fiercely, and she
+kept rending his shoulder. It was like blunt reaping-hooks grinding and
+tearing. The pain was fearful: but, instead of cowing the old soldier,
+it put his blood up, and he gnashed his teeth with rage almost as fierce
+as hers, and squeezed her neck with iron force. The two pairs of eyes
+flared at one another--and now the man's were almost as furious as the
+brute's. She found he was throttling her, and made a wild attempt to
+free herself, in which she dragged his cowl all over his face and
+blinded him, and tore her claw out of his shoulder, flesh and all: but
+still he throttled her with hand and arm of iron. Presently her long
+tail, that was high in the air, went down. "Aha!" cried Martin,
+joyfully, and gripped her like death; next, her body lost its
+elasticity, and he held a choked and powerless thing: he gripped it till
+all motion ceased, then dashed it to the earth; then, panting, removed
+his cowl: the leopard lay mute at his feet with tongue protruding and
+bloody paw; and for the first time terror fell on Martin. "I am a dead
+man: I have slain the duke's leopard." He hastily seized a few handfuls
+of leaves and threw them over her; then shouldered the buck and
+staggered away, leaving a trail of blood all the way--his own and the
+buck's. He burst into Peter's house a horrible figure, bleeding and
+blood-stained, and flung the deer's carcass down.
+
+"There, no questions," said he, "but broil me a steak on't; for I am
+faint."
+
+Margaret did not see he was wounded: she thought the blood was all from
+the deer.
+
+She busied herself at the fire, and the stout soldier stanched and bound
+his own wound apart, and soon he and Gerard and Margaret were supping
+royally on broiled venison.
+
+They were very merry; and Gerard, with wonderful thoughtfulness, had
+brought a flask of Schiedam, and under its influence Martin revived, and
+told them how the venison was got; and they all made merry over the
+exploit.
+
+Their mirth was strangely interrupted. Margaret's eye became fixed and
+fascinated, and her cheek pale with fear. She gasped, and could not
+speak, but pointed to the window with trembling finger. Their eyes
+followed hers, and there in the twilight crouched a dark form with eyes
+like glowworms.
+
+It was the leopard.
+
+While they stood petrified, fascinated by the eyes of green fire, there
+sounded in the wood a single deep bay. Martin trembled at it.
+
+"They have lost her, and laid muzzled bloodhounds on her scent. They
+will find her here, and the venison. Good-bye, friends, Martin
+Wittenhaagen ends here."
+
+Gerard seized his bow, and put it into the soldier's hands.
+
+"Be a man," he cried, "shoot her, and fling her into the wood ere they
+come up. Who will know?"
+
+More voices of hounds broke out, and nearer.
+
+"Curse her!" cried Martin. "I spared her once; now she must die, or I,
+or both more likely;" and he reared his bow, and drew his arrow to the
+head.
+
+"Nay! nay!" cried Margaret, and seized the arrow: it broke in half: the
+pieces fell on each side of the bow. The air at the same time filled
+with the tongues of the hound: they were hot upon the scent.
+
+"What have you done, wench? You have put the halter round my throat."
+
+"No!" cried Margaret. "I have saved you: stand back from the window,
+both! Your knife quick!"
+
+She seized his long-pointed knife, almost tore it out of his girdle, and
+darted from the room. The house was now surrounded with baying dogs and
+shouting men.
+
+The glowworm eyes moved not.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX
+
+
+MARGARET cut off a huge piece of venison, and ran to the window, and
+threw it out to the green eyes of fire. They darted on it with a savage
+snarl: and there was a sound of rending and crunching: at this moment, a
+hound uttered a bay so near and loud it rang through the house; and the
+three at the window shrank together. Then the leopard feared for her
+supper, and glided swiftly and stealthily away with it toward the woods,
+and the very next moment horses and men and dogs came helter skelter
+past the window, and followed her full cry. Martin and his companions
+breathed again: the leopard was swift, and would not be caught within a
+league of their house. They grasped hands. Margaret seized this
+opportunity, and cried a little: Gerard kissed the tears away.
+
+To table once more and Gerard drank to woman's wit: "'Tis stronger than
+man's force," said he.
+
+"Ay," said Margaret, "when those she loves are in danger; not else."
+
+To-night Gerard stayed with her longer than usual, and went home prouder
+than ever of her, and happy as a prince. Some little distance from
+home, under the shadow of some trees, he encountered two figures: they
+almost barred his way.
+
+It was his father and mother.
+
+Out so late: what could be the cause?
+
+A chill fell on him.
+
+He stopped and looked at them: they stood grim and silent. He stammered
+out some words of inquiry:
+
+"Why ask?" said his father; "you know why we are here."
+
+"Oh, Gerard!" said his mother, with a voice full of reproach and yet of
+affection.
+
+Gerard's heart quaked: he was silent.
+
+Then his father pitied his confusion, and said to him:
+
+"Nay, you need not to hang your head. You are not the first young fool
+that has been caught by a red cheek, and a pair of blue eyes."
+
+"Nay, nay!" put in Catherine: "it was witchcraft. Peter the Magician is
+well known for that."
+
+"Come, Sir Priest," resumed his father, "you know you must not meddle
+with women-folk. But give us your promise to go no more to Sevenbergen,
+and here all ends: we won't be hard on you for one fault."
+
+"I cannot promise that, father."
+
+"Not promise it, you young hypocrite."
+
+"Nay, father, miscall me not: I lacked courage to tell you what I knew
+would vex you: and right grateful am I to that good friend, whoever he
+be, that has let you wot. 'Tis a load off my mind. Yes, father, I love
+Margaret: and call me not a priest, for a priest I will never be. I will
+die sooner."
+
+"That we shall see, young man. Come, gainsay me no more; you will learn
+what 'tis to disrespect a father."
+
+Gerard held his peace: and the three walked home in gloomy silence,
+broken only by a deep sigh or two from Catherine.
+
+From that hour the little house at Tergou was no longer the abode of
+peace. Gerard was taken to task next day before the whole family; and
+every voice was loud against him, except little Kate's, and the dwarf's,
+who was apt to take his cue from her without knowing why. As for
+Cornelis and Sybrandt, they were bitterer than their father. Gerard was
+dismayed at finding so many enemies, and looked wistfully into his
+little sister's face: her eyes were brimming at the harsh words
+showered on one who but yesterday was the universal pet. But she gave
+him no encouragement: she turned her head away from him, and said:
+
+"Dear, dear Gerard, pray to Heaven to cure you of this folly!"
+
+"What, are you against me too?" said Gerard, sadly; and he rose with a
+deep sigh, and left the house, and went to Sevenbergen.
+
+The beginning of a quarrel, where the parties are bound by affection
+though opposed in interest and sentiment, is comparatively innocent;
+both are perhaps in the right at first starting, and then it is that a
+calm, judicious, friend, capable of seeing both sides, is a gift from
+Heaven. For, the longer the dissension endures, the wider and deeper it
+grows by the fallibility and irascibility of human nature: these are not
+confined to either side, and finally the invariable end is reached--both
+in the wrong.
+
+The combatants were unequally matched: Elias was angry, Cornelis and
+Sybrandt spiteful; but Gerard, having a larger and more cultivated mind,
+saw both sides where they saw but one, and had fits of irresolution, and
+was not wrath, but unhappy. He was lonely too in this struggle. He could
+open his heart to no one. Margaret was a high-spirited girl: he dared
+not tell her what he had to endure at home; she was capable of siding
+with his relations by resigning him, though at the cost of her own
+happiness. Margaret Van Eyck had been a great comfort to him on another
+occasion; but now he dared not make her his confidante. Her own history
+was well known. In early life she had many offers of marriage; but
+refused them all for the sake of that art, to which a wife's and
+mother's duties are so fatal: thus she remained single and painted with
+her brothers. How could he tell her that he declined the benefice she
+had got him, and declined it for the sake of that, which at his age she
+had despised and sacrificed so lightly?
+
+Gerard at this period bade fair to succumb. But the other side had a
+horrible ally in Catherine Senior. This good-hearted but uneducated
+woman, could not, like her daughter, act quietly and firmly: still less
+could she act upon a plan. She irritated Gerard at times, and so helped
+him; for anger is a great sustainer of the courage: at others, she
+turned round in a moment and made onslaughts on her own forces. To take
+a single instance out of many: one day they were all at home, Catherine
+and all, Cornelis said: "Our Gerard wed Margaret Brandt? Why it is
+hunger marrying thirst."
+
+"And what will it be when you marry?" cried Catherine. "Gerard can
+paint, Gerard can write, but what can you do to keep a woman, ye lazy
+loon? Nought but wait for your father's shoon. Oh, we can see why you
+and Sybrandt would not have the poor boy to marry. You are afraid he
+will come to us for a share of our substance. And say that he does, and
+say that we give it him, it isn't yourn we part from, and mayhap never
+will be."
+
+On these occasions Gerard smiled slily, and picked up heart: and
+temporary confusion fell on Catherine's unfortunate allies. But at last,
+after more than six months of irritation, came the climax. The father
+told the son before the whole family he had ordered the burgomaster to
+imprison him in the Stadthouse rather than let him marry Margaret.
+Gerard turned pale with anger at this, but by a great effort held his
+peace. His father went on to say, "And a priest you shall be before the
+year is out, nilly-willy."
+
+"Is it so?" cried Gerard. "Then hear me, all. By God and St. Bavon I
+swear I will never be a priest while Margaret lives. Since force is to
+decide it, and not love and duty, try force, father; but force shall not
+serve you, for the day I see the burgomaster come for me, I leave Tergou
+for ever, and Holland too, and my father's house, where it seems I have
+been valued all these years, not for myself, but for what is to be got
+out of me."
+
+And he flung out of the room white with anger and desperation.
+
+"There!" cried Catherine, "that comes of driving young folk too hard.
+But men are crueller than tigers, even to their own flesh and blood.
+Now, Heaven forbid he should ever leave us, married or single."
+
+As Gerard came out of the house, his cheeks pale and his heart panting,
+he met Reicht Heynes: she had a message for him: Margaret Van Eyck
+desired to see him. He found the old lady seated grim as a judge. She
+wasted no time in preliminaries, but inquired coldly why he had not
+visited her of late: but before he could answer, she said in a sarcastic
+tone, "I thought we had been friends, young sir."
+
+At this Gerard looked the picture of doubt and consternation.
+
+"It is because you never told her you were in love," said Reicht Heynes,
+pitying his confusion.
+
+"Silence, wench! Why should he tell us his affairs? We are not his
+friends: we have not deserved his confidence."
+
+"Alas! my second mother," said Gerard, "I did not dare to tell you my
+folly."
+
+"What folly? It is it folly to love?"
+
+"I am told so every day of my life."
+
+"You need not have been afraid to tell my mistress; she is always kind
+to true lovers."
+
+"Madam--Reicht,--I was afraid because I was told--"
+
+"Well? you were told--?"
+
+"That in your youth you scorned love, preferring art."
+
+"I did, boy; and what is the end of it? Behold me here a barren stock,
+while the women of my youth have a troop of children at their side and
+grandchildren at their knee. I gave up the sweet joys of wifehood and
+motherhood for what? for my dear brothers. They have gone and left me
+long ago; for my art. It has all but left me too. I have the knowledge
+still, but what avails that when the hand trembles. No, Gerard: I look
+on you as my son. You are good, you are handsome, you are a painter,
+though not like some I have known. I will not let you throw your youth
+away as I did mine: you shall marry this Margaret. I have inquired, and
+she is a good daughter. Reicht here is a gossip. She has told me all
+about it. But that need not hinder _you_ to tell me."
+
+Poor Gerard was overjoyed to be permitted to praise Margaret aloud, and
+to one who could understand what he loved in her.
+
+Soon there were two pairs of wet eyes over his story; and when the poor
+boy saw that, there were three.
+
+Women are creatures brimful of courage. Theirs is not exactly the same
+quality as manly courage; that would never do, hang it all; we should
+have to give up trampling on them. No; it is a vicarious courage. They
+never take part in a bull-fight by any chance; but it is remarked that
+they sit at one unshaken by those tremors, and apprehensions for the
+combatants, to which the male spectator--feeble-minded wretch!--is
+subject. Nothing can exceed the resolution with which they have been
+known to send forth men to battle: as some witty dog says, "Les femmes
+sont tres braves avec le peau d'autrui."
+
+By this trait Gerard now profited. Margaret and Reicht were agreed that
+_a man_ should always take the bull by the horns. Gerard's only course
+was to marry Margaret Brandt off-hand; the old people would come to
+after a while, the deed once done. Whereas, the longer this
+misunderstanding continued on its present footing, the worse for all
+parties, especially for Gerard.
+
+"See how pale and thin they have made him amongst them."
+
+"Indeed you are, Master Gerard," said Reicht. "It makes a body sad to
+see a young man so wasted and worn. Mistress, when I met him in the
+street to-day, I had like to have burst out crying: he was so changed."
+
+"And I'll be bound the others keep their colour; eh, Reicht? such as it
+is."
+
+"Oh, I see no odds in them."
+
+"Of course not. We painters are no match for boors. We are glass, they
+are stone. We can't stand the worry, worry, worry of little minds; and
+it is not for the good of mankind we should be exposed to it. It is hard
+enough, Heaven knows, to design and paint a masterpiece, without having
+gnats and flies stinging us to death into the bargain."
+
+Exasperated as Gerard was by his father's threat of violence, he
+listened to these friendly voices telling him the prudent course was
+rebellion. But though he listened he was not convinced.
+
+"I do not fear my father's violence," he said, "but I do fear his anger.
+When it came to the point he would not imprison me. I would marry
+Margaret to-morrow if that was my only fear. No; he would disown me. I
+should take Margaret from her father, and give her a poor husband, who
+would never thrive, weighed down by his parent's curse. Madam! I
+sometimes think if I could but marry her secretly and then take her away
+to some country where my craft is better paid than in this; and after a
+year or two, when the storm had blown over, you know, could come back
+with money in my purse, and say 'My dear parents, we do not seek your
+substance, we but ask you to love us once more as you used, and as we
+have never ceased to love you'--but alas! I shall be told these are the
+dreams of an inexperienced young man."
+
+The old lady's eyes sparkled.
+
+"It is no dream, but a piece of wonderful common sense in a boy; it
+remains to be seen whether you have spirit to carry out your own
+thought. There is a country, Gerard, where certain fortune awaits you at
+this moment. Here the arts freeze, but there they flourish, as they
+never yet flourished in any age or land."
+
+"It is Italy!" cried Gerard. "It is Italy!"
+
+"Ay, Italy! where painters are honoured like princes, and scribes are
+paid three hundred crowns for copying a single manuscript. Know you not
+that his Holiness the Pope has written to every land for skilful scribes
+to copy the hundreds of precious manuscripts that are pouring into that
+favoured land from Constantinople, whence learning and learned men are
+driven by the barbarian Turks?"
+
+"Nay, I know not that; but it has been the dream and hope of my life to
+visit Italy, the queen of all the arts; oh, madam. But the journey, and
+we are all so poor."
+
+"Find you the heart to go, I'll find the means. I know where to lay my
+hand on ten golden angels: they will take you to Rome; and the girl with
+you if she loves you as she ought."
+
+They sat till midnight over this theme. And, after that day, Gerard
+recovered his spirits, and seemed to carry a secret talisman against all
+the gibes and the harsh words that flew about his ears at home.
+
+Besides the money she procured him for the journey, Margaret Van Eyck
+gave him money's worth. Said she, "I will tell you secrets that I
+learned from masters that are gone from me, and have left no fellow
+behind. Even the Italians know them not; and what I tell you now in
+Tergou you shall sell dear in Florence. Note my brother Jan's pictures:
+time, which fades all other paintings, leaves his colours bright as the
+day they left the easel. The reason is, he did nothing blindly, nothing
+in a hurry. He trusted to no hireling to grind his colours; he did it
+himself, or saw it done. His panel was prepared, and prepared again--I
+will show you how--a year before he laid his colour on. Most of them are
+quite content to have their work sucked up and lost, sooner than not be
+in a hurry. Bad painters are always in a hurry. Above all, Gerard, I
+warn you use but little oil, and never boil it; boiling it melts that
+vegetable dross into its very heart, which it is our business to clear
+away; for impure oil is death to colour. No; take your oil and pour it
+into a bottle with water. In a day or two, the water will turn muddy:
+that is muck from the oil. Pour the dirty water carefully away, and add
+fresh. When that is poured away, you will fancy the oil is clear. You
+are mistaken. Reicht, fetch me _that_!" Reicht brought a glass trough
+with a glass lid fitting tight. "When your oil has been washed in
+bottle, put it into this trough with water, and put the trough in the
+sun all day. You will soon see the water turbid again. But mark, you
+must not carry this game too far, or the sun will turn your oil to
+varnish. When it is as clear as crystal, not too luscious, drain
+carefully, and cork it up tight. Grind your own prime colours, and lay
+them on with this oil, and they shall live. Hubert would put sand or
+salt in the water to clear the oil quicker. But Jan used to say, 'Water
+will do it best, give water time.' Jan Van Eyck was never in a hurry,
+and that is why the world will not forget _him_ in a hurry."
+
+This and several other receipts, quae nunc perscribere longum est,
+Margaret gave him with sparkling eyes, and Gerard received them like a
+legacy from Heaven, so interesting are some things that read
+uninteresting. Thus provided with money and knowledge, Gerard decided to
+marry, and fly with his wife to Italy. Nothing remained now but to
+inform Margaret Brandt of his resolution, and to publish the banns as
+quietly as possible. He went to Sevenbergen earlier than usual on both
+these errands. He began with Margaret; told her of the Dame Van Eyck's
+goodness, and the resolution he had come to at last, and invited her
+co-operation.
+
+She refused it plump.
+
+"No, Gerard; you and I have never spoken of your family, but when you
+come to marriage--" She stopped, then began again. "I do think your
+father has no ill will to me more than to another. He told Peter
+Buyskens as much, and Peter told me. But so long as he is bent on your
+being a priest (you ought to have told me this instead of I you), I
+could not marry you, Gerard, dearly as I love you."
+
+Gerard strove in vain to shake this resolution. He found it very easy to
+make her cry, but impossible to make her yield. Then Gerard was
+impatient and unjust.
+
+"Very well!" he cried; "then you are on their side, and you will drive
+me to be a priest, for this must end one way or another. My parents hate
+me in earnest, but my lover only loves me in jest."
+
+And with this wild, bitter speech, he flung away home again and left
+Margaret weeping.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+When a man misbehaves, the effect is curious on a girl who loves him
+sincerely. It makes her pity him. This, to some of us males, seems
+anything but logical. The fault is in our own eye; the logic is too
+swift for us. The girl argues thus:--"How unhappy, how vexed, poor ...
+must be; _him_ to misbehave! Poor thing!"
+
+Margaret was full of this sweet womanly pity, when, to her great
+surprise, scarce an hour and a half after he left her, Gerard came
+running back to her with the fragments of a picture in his hand, and
+panting with anger and grief.
+
+"There Margaret! see! see! the wretches! Look at their spite! They have
+cut your portrait to pieces."
+
+Margaret looked. And, sure enough, some malicious hand had cut her
+portrait into five pieces. She was a good girl, but she was not ice; she
+turned red to her very forehead.
+
+"Who did it?"
+
+"Nay, I know not. I dared not ask; for I should hate the hand that did
+it, ay, till my dying day. My poor Margaret! The butchers, the ruffians.
+Six months' work cut out of my life, and nothing to show for it now.
+See, they have hacked through your very face; the sweet face that every
+one loves who knows it. O, heartless, merciless vipers!"
+
+"Never mind, Gerard," said Margaret, panting. "Since this is how they
+treat you for my sake-- Ye rob him of my portrait, do ye? Well, then he
+shall have the face itself, such as it is."
+
+"O, Margaret!"
+
+"Yes, Gerard; since they are so cruel, I will be the kinder: forgive me
+for refusing you. I will be your wife: to-morrow, if it is your
+pleasure."
+
+Gerard kissed her hands with rapture and then her lips; and in a tumult
+of joy ran for Peter and Martin. They came and witnessed the betrothal;
+a solemn ceremony in those days, and indeed for more than a century
+later, though now abolished.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X
+
+
+THE banns of marriage had to be read three times, as in our days; with
+this difference, that they were commonly read on week-days, and the
+young couple easily persuaded the cure to do the three readings in
+twenty-four hours: he was new to the place, and their looks spoke
+volumes in their favour. They were cried on Monday at matins and at
+vespers; and, to their great delight, nobody from Tergou was in the
+church. The next morning they were both there palpitating with anxiety,
+when, to their horror, a stranger stood up and forbade the banns, on the
+score that the parties were not of age, and their parents not
+consenting.
+
+Outside the church door, Margaret and Gerard held a trembling and almost
+despairing consultation; but, before they could settle anything, the man
+who had done them so ill a turn approached, and gave them to understand
+that he was very sorry to interfere; that his inclination was to further
+the happiness of the young: but that in point of fact his only means of
+getting a living was by forbidding banns: what then? "The young people
+give me a crown, and I undo my work handsomely; tell the cure I was
+misinformed; and all goes smoothly."
+
+"A crown? I will give you a golden angel to do this," said Gerard,
+eagerly. The man consented as eagerly, and went with Gerard to the cure,
+and told him he had made a ridiculous mistake, which a sight of the
+parties had rectified. On this the cure agreed to marry the young couple
+next day at ten: and the professional obstructor of bliss went home with
+Gerard's angel. Like most of these very clever knaves, he was a fool,
+and proceeded to drink his angel at a certain hostelry in Tergou, where
+was a green devoted to archery and the common sports of the day. There,
+being drunk, he bragged of his day's exploit; and who should be there,
+imbibing every word, but a great frequenter of the spot, the
+ne'er-do-weel Sybrandt. Sybrandt ran home to tell his father; his father
+was not at home; he was gone to Rotterdam to buy cloth of the merchants.
+Catching his elder brother's eye, he made him a signal to come out, and
+told him what he had heard.
+
+There are black sheep in nearly every large family: and these two were
+Gerard's black brothers. Idleness is vitiating: waiting for the death of
+those we ought to love is vitiating: and these two one-idead curs were
+ready to tear any one to death who should interfere with that miserable
+inheritance, which was their thought by day and their dream by night.
+Their parents' parsimony was a virtue; it was accompanied by industry,
+and its motive was love of their offspring: but in these perverse and
+selfish hearts that homely virtue was perverted into avarice, than which
+no more fruitful source of crimes is to be found in nature.
+
+They put their heads together, and agreed not to tell their mother,
+whose sentiments were so uncertain, but to go first to the burgomaster.
+They were cunning enough to see that he was averse to the match, though
+they could not divine why.
+
+Ghysbrecht Van Swieten saw through them at once; but he took care not to
+let them see through him. He heard their story; and putting on
+magisterial dignity and coldness, he said:
+
+"Since the father of the family is not here, his duty falleth on me, who
+am the father of the town. I know your father's mind; leave all to me:
+and above all, tell not a woman a word of this, least of all the women
+that are in your own house: for chattering tongues mar wisest counsels."
+
+So he dismissed them a little superciliously: he was ashamed of his
+confederates.
+
+On their return home they found their brother Gerard seated on a low
+stool at their mother's knee: she was caressing his hair with her hand,
+speaking very kindly to him, and promising to take his part with his
+father and thwart his love no more. The main cause of this change of
+mind was characteristic of the woman. She it was who in a moment of
+female irritation had cut Margaret's picture to pieces. She had watched
+the effect with some misgivings, and had seen Gerard turn pale as death,
+and sit motionless like a bereaved creature, with the pieces in his
+hands, and his eyes fixed on them till tears came and blinded them. Then
+she was terrified at what she had done; and next her heart smote her
+bitterly; and she wept sore apart: but, being what she was, dared not
+own it, but said to herself, "I'll not say a word, but I'll make it up
+to him." And her bowels yearned over her son, and her feeble violence
+died a natural death, and she was transferring her fatal alliance to
+Gerard when the two black sheep came in. Gerard knew nothing of the
+immediate cause; on the contrary, inexperienced as he was in the ins and
+outs of females, her kindness made him ashamed of a suspicion he had
+entertained that she was the depredator; and he kissed her again and
+again, and went to bed happy as a prince to think his mother was his
+mother once more at the very crisis of his fate.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The next morning, at ten o'clock, Gerard and Margaret were in the church
+at Sevenbergen, he radiant with joy, she with blushes. Peter was also
+there, and Martin Wittenhaagen, but no other friend. Secrecy was
+everything. Margaret had declined Italy. She could not leave her father;
+he was too learned and too helpless. But it was settled they should
+retire into Flanders for a few weeks until the storm should be blown
+over at Tergou. The cure did not keep them waiting long, though it
+seemed an age. Presently he stood at the altar, and called them to him.
+They went hand in hand, the happiest in Holland. The cure opened his
+book.
+
+But ere he uttered a single word of the sacred rite, a harsh voice cried
+"Forbear!" And the constables of Tergou came up the aisle and seized
+Gerard in the name of the law. Martin's long knife flashed out directly.
+
+"Forbear, man!" cried the priest, "What! draw your weapon in a church,
+and ye who interrupt this holy sacrament, what means this impiety?"
+
+"There is no impiety," said the burgomaster's servant respectfully.
+"This young man would marry against his father's will, and his father
+has prayed our burgomaster to deal with him according to the law. Let
+him deny it if he can."
+
+"Is this so, young man?"
+
+Gerard hung his head.
+
+"We take him to Rotterdam to abide the sentence of the duke."
+
+At this Margaret uttered a cry of despair, and the young creatures, who
+were so happy a moment ago, fell to sobbing in one another's arms so
+piteously, that the instruments of oppression drew back a step, and were
+ashamed; but one of them that was good-natured stepped up under pretence
+of separating them, and whispered to Margaret:
+
+"Rotterdam? it is a lie. We but take him to our Stadthouse."
+
+They took him away on horseback, on the road to Rotterdam; and, after a
+dozen halts, and by sly detours, to Tergou. Just outside the town they
+were met by a rude vehicle covered with canvas. Gerard was put into
+this, and about five in the evening was secretly conveyed into the
+prison of the Stadthouse. He was taken up several flights of stairs and
+thrust into a small room lighted only by a narrow window, with a
+vertical iron bar. The whole furniture was a huge oak chest.
+
+Imprisonment in that age was one of the highroads to death. It is
+horrible in its mildest form; but in those days it implied cold,
+unbroken solitude, torture, starvation, and often poison. Gerard felt he
+was in the hands of an enemy.
+
+"Oh, the look that man gave me on the road to Rotterdam. There is more
+here than my father's wrath. I doubt I shall see no more the light of
+day." And he kneeled down and commended his soul to God.
+
+Presently he rose and sprang at the iron bar of the window and clutched
+it. This enabled him to look out by pressing his knees against the wall.
+It was but for a minute; but in that minute, he saw a sight such as none
+but a captive can appreciate.
+
+Martin Wittenhaagen's back.
+
+Martin was sitting, quietly fishing in the brook near the Stadthouse.
+
+Gerard sprang again at the window, and whistled. Martin instantly showed
+that he was watching much harder than fishing. He turned hastily round
+and saw Gerard;--made him a signal, and taking up his line and bow went
+quickly off.
+
+Gerard saw by this that his friends were not idle: yet he had rather
+Martin had stayed. The very sight of him was a comfort. He held on,
+looking at the soldier's retiring form as long as he could, then falling
+back somewhat heavily, wrenched the rusty iron bar, held only by rusty
+nails, away from the stone-work just as Ghysbrecht Van Swieten opened
+the door stealthily behind him. The burgomaster's eye fell instantly on
+the iron, and then glanced at the window; but he said nothing. The
+window was a hundred feet from the ground; and if Gerard had a fancy for
+jumping out, why should he balk it? He brought a brown loaf and a
+pitcher of water, and set them on the chest in solemn silence. Gerard's
+first impulse was to brain him with the iron bar, and fly down the
+stairs; but the burgomaster seeing something wicked in his eye, gave a
+little cough, and three stout fellows, armed, showed themselves directly
+at the door.
+
+"My orders are to keep you thus until you shall bind yourself by an oath
+to leave Margaret Brandt, and return to the Church to which you have
+belonged from your cradle."
+
+"Death sooner."
+
+"With all my heart." And the burgomaster retired.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Martin went with all speed to Sevenbergen; there he found Margaret pale
+and agitated, but full of resolution and energy. She was just finishing
+a letter to the Countess Charolois, appealing to her against the
+violence and treachery of Ghysbrecht.
+
+"Courage!" cried Martin on entering. "I have found him. He is in the
+haunted tower; right at the top of it. Ay! I know the place: many a poor
+fellow has gone up there straight, and come down feet foremost."
+
+He then told them how he had looked up and seen Gerard's face at a
+window that was like a slit in the wall.
+
+"Oh Martin! how did he look?"
+
+"What mean you? He looked like Gerard Eliassoen."
+
+"But was he pale?"
+
+"A little."
+
+"Looked he anxious? Looked he like one doomed?"
+
+"Nay, nay; as bright as a pewter pot."
+
+"You mock me. Stay! then that must have been at sight of you. He counts
+on us. Oh! what shall we do? Martin, good friend, take this at once to
+Rotterdam."
+
+Martin held out his hand for the letter.
+
+Peter had sat silent all this time, but pondering, and yet contrary to
+custom, keenly attentive to what was going on around him.
+
+"Put not your trust in princes," said he.
+
+"Alas! what else have we to trust in?"
+
+"Knowledge."
+
+"Well-a-day, father! your learning will not serve us here."
+
+"How know you that? Wit has been too strong for iron bars ere to-day."
+
+"Ay, father; but nature is stronger than wit, and she is against us.
+Think of the height! No ladder in Holland might reach him."
+
+"I need no ladder; what I need is a gold crown."
+
+"Nay. I have money for that matter. I have nine angels. Gerard gave them
+me to keep; but what do they avail? The burgomaster will not be bribed
+to let Gerard free."
+
+"What do they avail? Give me but one crown, and the young man shall sup
+with us this night."
+
+Peter spoke so eagerly and confidently, that for a moment Margaret felt
+hopeful; but she caught Martin's eye dwelling upon him with an
+expression of benevolent contempt.
+
+"It passes the powers of man's invention," said she, with a deep sigh.
+
+"Invention?" cried the old man. "A fig for invention. What need we
+invention at this time of day? Everything has been said that is to be
+said and done that ever will be done. I shall tell you how a Florentine
+knight was shut up in a tower higher than Gerard's: yet did his faithful
+squire stand at the tower foot and get him out, with no other engine
+than that in your hand, Martin, and certain kickshaws I shall buy for a
+crown."
+
+Martin looked at his bow, and turned it round in his hand; and seemed to
+interrogate it. But the examination left him as incredulous as before.
+
+Then Peter told them his story, how the faithful squire got the knight
+out of a high tower at Brescia. The manoeuvre, like most things that
+are really scientific, was so simple, that now their wonder was they had
+taken for impossible what was not even difficult.
+
+The letter never went to Rotterdam. They trusted to Peter's learning and
+their own dexterity.
+
+It was nine o'clock on a clear moonlight night; Gerard, senior, was
+still away; the rest of his little family had been sometime abed.
+
+A figure stood by the dwarf's bed. It was white, and the moonlight shone
+on it.
+
+With an unearthly noise, between a yell and a snarl, the gymnast rolled
+off his bed and under it by a single unbroken movement. A soft voice
+followed him in his retreat.
+
+"Why, Giles, are you afeard of me?"
+
+At this, Giles's head peeped cautiously up, and he saw it was only his
+sister Kate.
+
+She put her finger to her lips. "Hush! lest the wicked Cornelis or the
+wicked Sybrandt hear us." Giles's claws seized the side of the bed, and
+he returned to his place by one undivided gymnastic.
+
+Kate then revealed to Giles that she had heard Cornelis and Sybrandt
+mention Gerard's name; and being herself in great anxiety at his not
+coming home all day, had listened at their door, and had made a fearful
+discovery. Gerard was in prison, in the haunted tower of the Stadthouse.
+He was there it seemed by their father's authority. But here must be
+some treachery; for how could their father have ordered this cruel act?
+he was at Rotterdam. She ended by entreating Giles to bear her company
+to the foot of the haunted tower, to say a word of comfort to poor
+Gerard, and let him know their father was absent, and would be sure to
+release him on his return.
+
+"Dear Giles, I would go alone, but I am afeard of the spirits that men
+say do haunt the tower: but with you I shall not be afeard."
+
+"Nor I with you," said Giles. "I don't believe there are any spirits in
+Tergou. I never saw one. This last was the likest one ever I saw; and it
+was but you, Kate, after all."
+
+In less than half an hour Giles and Kate opened the house door
+cautiously and issued forth. She made him carry a lantern though the
+night was bright. "The lantern gives me more courage against the evil
+spirits," said she.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The first day of imprisonment is very trying, especially if to the
+horror of captivity is added the horror of utter solitude. I observe
+that in our own day a great many persons commit suicide during the first
+twenty-four hours of the solitary cell. This is doubtless why our Jairi
+abstain so carefully from the impertinence of watching their little
+experiment upon the human soul at that particular stage of it.
+
+As the sun declined, Gerard's heart too sank and sank: with the waning
+light even the embers of hope went out. He was faint, too, with hunger;
+for he was afraid to eat the food Ghysbrecht had brought him; and hunger
+alone cows men. He sat upon the chest, his arms and his head drooping
+before him, a picture of despondency. Suddenly something struck the wall
+beyond him very sharply, and then rattled on the floor at his feet. It
+was an arrow; he saw the white feather. A chill ran through him--they
+meant then to assassinate him from the outside. He crouched. No more
+missiles came. He crawled on all fours, and took up the arrow: there was
+no head to it. He uttered a cry of hope: had a friendly hand shot it? He
+took it up, and felt it all over: he found a soft substance attached to
+it. Then one of his eccentricities was of grand use to him. His
+tinder-box enabled him to strike a light: it showed him two things that
+made his heart bound with delight, none the less thrilling for being
+somewhat vague. Attached to the arrow was a skein of silk; and on the
+arrow itself were words written.
+
+How his eyes devoured them, his heart panting the while!
+
+      Well beloved, make fast the silk to thy knife and
+      lower to us: but hold thine end fast: then count an
+      hundred and draw up.
+
+Gerard seized the oak chest and with almost superhuman energy dragged it
+to the window: a moment ago he could not have moved it. Standing on the
+chest and looking down he saw figures at the tower foot. They were so
+indistinct they looked like one huge form. He waved his bonnet to them
+with trembling hand: then he undid the silk rapidly but carefully, and
+made one end fast to his knife and lowered it till it ceased to draw.
+Then he counted a hundred. Then pulled the silk carefully up: it came up
+a little heavier. At last he came to a large knot, and by that knot a
+stout whipcord was attached to the silk. What could this mean? While he
+was puzzling himself, Margaret's voice came up to him, low but clear.
+"Draw up, Gerard, till you see Liberty." At the word Gerard drew the
+whipcord line up, and drew and drew till he came to another knot, and
+found a cord of some thickness take the place of the whipcord. He had no
+sooner begun to draw this up than he found that he had now a heavy
+weight to deal with. Then the truth suddenly flashed on him, and he went
+to work and pulled and pulled till the perspiration rolled down him: the
+weight got heavier and heavier, and at last he was well nigh exhausted;
+looking down he saw in the moonlight a sight that revived him: it was as
+it were a great snake coming up to him out of the deep shadow cast by
+the tower. He gave a shout of joy, and a score more wild pulls, and lo!
+a stout new rope touched his hand: he hauled and hauled, and dragged the
+end into his prison and instantly passed it through both handles of the
+chest in succession, and knotted it firmly; then sat for moment to
+recover his breath and collect his courage. The first thing was to make
+sure that the chest was sound, and capable of resisting his weight
+poised in mid air. He jumped with all his force upon it. At the third
+jump the whole side burst open, and out scuttled the contents, a host of
+parchments.
+
+[Illustration: NOT MORE THAN THIRTY FEET BELOW HIM WERE MARGARET AND
+MARTIN]
+
+After the first start and misgiving this gave him, Gerard comprehended
+that the chest had not burst but opened: he had doubtless jumped upon
+some secret spring. Still it shook in some degree his confidence in the
+chest's powers of resistance; so he gave it an ally: he took the iron
+bar and fastened it with the small rope across the large rope, and
+across the window. He now mounted the chest, and from the chest put his
+foot through the window, and sat half in and half out, with one hand on
+that part of the rope which was inside. In the silent night he heard his
+own heart beat.
+
+The free air breathed on his face, and gave him the courage to risk what
+we must all lose one day--for liberty. Many dangers awaited him, but
+the greatest was the first getting on to the rope outside. Gerard
+reflected. Finally he put himself in the attitude of a swimmer, his body
+to the waist being in the prison, his legs outside. Then holding the
+inside rope with both hands, he felt anxiously with his feet for the
+outside rope, and when he had got it, he worked it in between the palms
+of his feet, and kept it there tight: then he uttered a short prayer,
+and all the calmer for it, put his left hand on the sill and gradually
+wriggled out. Then he seized the iron bar, and for one fearful moment
+hung outside from it by his right hand, while his left hand felt for the
+rope down at his knees; it was too tight against the wall for his
+fingers to get round it higher up. The moment he had fairly grasped it,
+he left the bar, and swiftly seized the rope with the right hand too;
+but in this manoeuvre his body necessarily fell about a yard. A
+stifled cry came up from below. Gerard hung in mid air. He clenched his
+teeth and nipped the rope tight with his feet and gripped it with his
+hands, and went down slowly hand below hand. He passed by one huge rough
+stone after another. He saw there was green moss on one. He looked up
+and he looked down. The moon shone into his prison window: it seemed
+very near. The fluttering figures below seemed an awful distance. It
+made him dizzy to look down: so he fixed his eyes steadily on the wall
+close to him, and went slowly down, down, down.
+
+He passed a rusty, slimy, streak on the wall: it was some ten feet long.
+The rope made his hands very hot. He stole another look up.
+
+The prison window was a good way off, now.
+
+Down--down--down--down.
+
+The rope made his hands sore.
+
+He looked up. The window was so distant, he ventured now to turn his
+eyes downward again: and there, not more than thirty feet below him were
+Margaret and Martin, their faithful hands upstretched to catch him
+should he fall. He could see their eyes and their teeth shine in the
+moon light. For their mouths were open, and they were breathing hard.
+
+"Take care, Gerard! Oh take care! Look not down."
+
+"Fear me not," cried Gerard, joyfully, and eyed the wall, but came down
+faster.
+
+In another moment his feet were at their hands. They seized him ere he
+touched the ground, and all three clung together in one embrace.
+
+"Hush! away in silence, dear one."
+
+They stole along the shadow of the wall.
+
+Now, ere they had gone many yards, suddenly a stream of light shot from
+an angle of the building, and lay across their path like a barrier of
+fire, and they heard whispers and footsteps close at hand.
+
+"Back!" hissed Martin. "Keep in the shade."
+
+They hurried back, passed the dangling rope, and made for a little
+square projecting tower. They had barely rounded it when the light shot
+trembling past them, and flickered uncertainly into the distance.
+
+"A lantern!" groaned Martin, in a whisper. "They are after us."
+
+"Give me my knife," whispered Gerard. "I'll never be taken alive."
+
+"No, no!" murmured Margaret: "is there no way out where we are?"
+
+"None, none. But I carry six lives at my shoulder:" and, with the word,
+Martin strung his bow, and fitted an arrow to the string: "in war never
+wait to be struck: I will kill one or two ere they shall know where
+their death comes from:" then motioning his companions to be quiet, he
+began to draw his bow, and, ere the arrow was quite drawn to the head,
+he glided round the corner ready to loose the string the moment the
+enemy should offer a mark.
+
+Gerard and Margaret held their breath in horrible expectation: they had
+never seen a human being killed.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+And now a wild hope, but half repressed, thrilled through Gerard, that
+this watchful enemy might be the burgomaster in person. The soldier, he
+knew, would send an arrow through a burgher or burgomaster as he would
+through a boar in a wood.
+
+But who may foretell the future, however near? The bow, instead of
+remaining firm, and loosing the deadly shaft, was seen to waver first,
+then shake violently, and the stout soldier staggered back to them, his
+knees knocking and his cheeks blanched with fear. He let his arrow fall,
+and clutched Gerard's shoulder.
+
+"Let me feel flesh and blood," he gasped; "the haunted tower! the
+haunted tower!"
+
+His terror communicated itself to Margaret and Gerard. They gasped,
+rather than uttered, an inquiry.
+
+"Hush!" he cried, "it will hear you. _Up_ the wall! it is going _up_ the
+wall! Its head is on fire. _Up_ the wall, as mortal creatures walk upon
+green sward. If you know a prayer say it! For hell is loose to-night."
+
+"I have power to exorcise spirits," said Gerard, trembling. "I will
+venture forth."
+
+"Go alone, then!" said Martin. "I have looked on't once and live."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XI
+
+
+THE strange glance of hatred the burgomaster had cast on Gerard, coupled
+with his imprisonment, had filled the young man with a persuasion that
+Ghysbrecht was his enemy to the death: and he glided round the angle of
+the tower, fully expecting to see no supernatural appearance, but some
+cruel and treacherous contrivance of a bad man to do him mischief in
+that prison, his escape from which could hardly be known.
+
+As he stole forth, a soft but brave hand crept into his, and Margaret
+was by his side to share this new peril.
+
+No sooner was the haunted tower visible, than a sight struck their eyes
+that benumbed them as they stood. More than half way up the tower, a
+creature with a fiery head, like an enormous glowworm, was steadily
+mounting the wall: the body was dark, but its outline visible through
+the glare from the head, and the whole creature not much less than four
+feet long.
+
+At the foot of the tower stood a thing in white, that looked exactly
+like the figure of a female. Gerard and Margaret palpitated with awe.
+
+"The rope, the rope! It is going up the rope," gasped Gerard.
+
+As they gazed, the glowworm disappeared in Gerard's late prison, but its
+light illuminated the cell inside and reddened the window. The white
+figure stood motionless below.
+
+Such as can retain their senses after the first prostrating effect of
+the supernatural, are apt to experience terror in one of its strangest
+forms, a wild desire to fling themselves upon the terrible object. It
+fascinates them as the snake the bird. The great tragedian Macready used
+to render this finely in Macbeth at Banquo's second appearance. He flung
+himself with averted head at the horrible shadow. This strange impulse
+now seized Margaret. She put down Gerard's hand quietly, and stood
+bewildered; then, all in a moment, with a wild cry, darted towards the
+spectre. Gerard, not aware of the natural impulse I have spoken of,
+never doubted the evil one was drawing her to her perdition. He fell on
+his knees.
+
+"Exorcizo vos. In nomine beatae Mariae, exorcizo vos."
+
+While the exorcist was shrieking his incantations in extremity of
+terror, to his infinite relief he heard the spectre utter a feeble cry
+of fear. To find that hell had also its little weaknesses was
+encouraging. He redoubled his exorcisms and presently he saw the ghastly
+shape kneeling at Margaret's knees and heard it praying piteously for
+mercy.
+
+Kate and Giles soon reached the haunted tower. Judge their surprise when
+they found a new rope dangling from the prisoner's window to the ground.
+
+"I see how it is," said the inferior intelligence, taking facts as they
+came. "Our Gerard has come down this rope. He has got clear. Up I go,
+and see."
+
+"No, Giles, no!" said the superior intelligence, blinded by prejudice.
+"See you not this is glamour? This rope is a line the evil one casts out
+to wile thee to destruction. He knows the weaknesses of all our hearts;
+he has seen how fond you are of going up things. Where should our Gerard
+procure a rope? how fasten it in the sky like this? It is not in nature.
+Holy saints protect us this night, for hell is abroad."
+
+"Stuff!" said the dwarf: "the way to hell is down, and this rope leads
+up. I never had the luck to go up such a long rope. It may be years ere
+I fall in with such a long rope all ready hung for me. As well be
+knocked on the head at once as never know happiness."
+
+And he sprung on to the rope with a cry of delight, as a cat jumps with
+a mew on to a table where fish is. All the gymnast was on fire; and the
+only concession Kate could gain from him was permission to fasten the
+lantern on his neck first.
+
+"A light scares the ill spirits," said she.
+
+And so, with his huge arms and his legs like feathers, Giles went up
+the rope faster than his brother came down it. The light at the nape of
+his neck made a glowworm of him. His sister watched his progress with
+trembling anxiety. Suddenly a female figure started out of the solid
+masonry, and came flying at her with more than mortal velocity.
+
+Kate uttered a feeble cry. It was all she could, for her tongue clove to
+her palate with terror. Then she dropped her crutches, and sank upon her
+knees, hiding her face and moaning:
+
+"Take my body, but spare my soul!"
+
+_Margaret_ (panting). "Why it is a woman."
+
+_Kate_ (quivering). "Why it is a woman."
+
+_Margaret._ "How you scared me."
+
+_Kate._ "I am scared enough myself. Oh! oh! oh!"
+
+"This is strange. But the fiery-headed thing? Yet it was with you, and
+you are harmless. But why are you here at this time of night?"
+
+"Nay, why are YOU?"
+
+"Perhaps we are on the same errand? Ah you are his _good_ sister, Kate."
+
+"And you are Margaret Brandt."
+
+"Yea."
+
+"All the better. You love him: you are here. Then Giles was right. He
+has won free."
+
+Gerard came forward, and put the question at rest. But all further
+explanation was cut short by a horrible, unearthly noise, like a
+sepulchre ventriloquizing.
+
+"PARCHMENT!--PARCHMENT!--PARCHMENT!"
+
+At each repetition it rose in intensity. They looked up, and there was
+the dwarf, with his hands full of parchments, and his face, lighted with
+fiendish joy, and lurid with diabolical fire. The light being at his
+neck, a more infernal "transparency" never startled mortal eye. With the
+word the awful imp hurled parchment at the astonished heads below. Down
+came records, like wounded wild ducks, some collapsed, others fluttering
+and others spread out and wheeling slowly down in airy circles. They had
+hardly settled when again the sepulchral roar was heard:
+"Parchment:--Parchment!" and down pattered and sailed another flock of
+documents: another followed: they whitened the grass. Finally the
+fire-headed imp with his light body and horny hands slid down the rope
+like a falling star and (business before sentiment) proposed to his
+rescued brother an immediate settlement for the merchandise he had just
+delivered.
+
+"Hush!" said Gerard; "you speak too loud. Gather them up and follow us
+to a safer place than this."
+
+"Will you not come home with me, Gerard?" said little Kate.
+
+"I have no home."
+
+"You shall not say so. Who is more welcome than you will be, after this
+cruel wrong, to your father's house?"
+
+"Father? I have no father," said Gerard sternly. "He that was my father
+is turned my gaoler. I have escaped from his hands; I will never come
+within their reach again."
+
+"An enemy did this and not our father."
+
+And she told him what she had overheard Cornelis and Sybrandt say. But
+the injury was too recent to be soothed. Gerard showed a bitterness of
+indignation he had hitherto seemed incapable of.
+
+"Cornelis and Sybrandt are two curs that have shown me their teeth and
+their heart a long while; but they could do no more. My father it is
+that gave the burgomaster authority, or he durst not have laid a finger
+on me, that am a free burgher of this town. So be it, then. I was his
+son. I am his prisoner. He has played his part. I shall play mine.
+Farewell the burgh where I was born and lived honestly, and was put in
+prison. While there is another town left in creation, I'll never trouble
+you again, Tergou."
+
+"Oh, Gerard! Gerard!"
+
+Margaret whispered her:--"Do not gainsay him now. Give his choler time
+to cool!"
+
+Kate turned quickly towards her. "Let me look at your face!" The
+inspection was favourable, it seemed, for she whispered:--"It is a
+comely face, and no mischief-maker's."
+
+"Fear me not," said Margaret, in the same tone. "I could not be happy
+without your love as well as Gerard's."
+
+"These are comfortable words," sobbed Kate. Then, looking up, she said,
+"I little thought to like you so well. My heart is willing, but my
+infirmity will not let me embrace you."
+
+At this hint, Margaret wound gently round Gerard's sister, and kissed
+her lovingly.
+
+"Often he has spoken of you to me, Kate, and often I longed for this."
+
+"You, too, Gerard," said Kate, "kiss me ere you go, for my heart lies
+heavy at parting with you this night."
+
+Gerard kissed her, and she went on her crutches home. The last thing
+they heard of her was a little patient sigh. Then the tears came and
+stood thick in Margaret's eyes; but Gerard was a man, and noticed not
+his sister's sigh.
+
+As they turned to go to Sevenbergen, the dwarf nudged Gerard with his
+bundle of parchments, and held out a concave claw.
+
+Margaret dissuaded Gerard. "Why take what is not ours?"
+
+"Oh! spoil an enemy how you can."
+
+"But may they not make this a handle for fresh violence?"
+
+"How can they? Think you I shall stay in Tergou after this? The
+burgomaster robbed me of my liberty; I doubt I should take his life for
+it if I could."
+
+"Oh fie, Gerard!"
+
+"What? Is life worth more than liberty. Well I can't take his life, so I
+take the first thing that comes to hand."
+
+He gave Giles a few small coins, with which the urchin was gladdened,
+and shuffled after his sister. Margaret and Gerard were speedily joined
+by Martin, and away to Sevenbergen.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XII
+
+
+GHYSBRECHT VAN SWIETEN kept the key of Gerard's prison in his pouch. He
+waited till ten of the clock ere he visited him; for he said to himself,
+"A little hunger sometimes does well; it breaks 'em." At ten he crept up
+the stairs with a loaf and pitcher, followed by his trusty servant well
+armed. Ghysbrecht listened at the door. There was no sound inside. A
+grim smile stole over his features. "By this time he will be as
+down-hearted as Albert Koestein was," thought he. He opened the door.
+
+No Gerard.
+
+Ghysbrecht stood stupefied.
+
+Although his face was not visible, his body seemed to lose all motion in
+so peculiar a way, and then after a little he fell a trembling so, that
+the servant behind him saw there was something amiss, and crept close to
+him and peeped over his shoulder. At sight of the empty cell and the
+rope, and iron bar, he uttered a loud exclamation of wonder: but his
+surprise doubled when his master, disregarding all else suddenly flung
+himself on his knees before the empty chest, and felt wildly all over it
+with quivering hands, as if unwilling to trust his eyes in a matter so
+important.
+
+The servant gazed at him in utter bewilderment.
+
+"Why, master, what is the matter?"
+
+Ghysbrecht's pale lips worked as if he was going to answer; but they
+uttered no sound: his hands fell by his side, and he stared into the
+chest.
+
+"Why, master, what avails glaring into that empty box? The lad is not
+there. See here! Note the cunning of the young rogue; he hath taken out
+the bar, and--"
+
+"GONE! GONE! GONE!"
+
+"Gone? What is gone? Holy saints! he is planet struck."
+
+"STOP THIEF!" shrieked Ghysbrecht, and suddenly turned on his servant
+and collared him, and shook him with rage. "D'ye stand there, knave, and
+see your master robbed? Run! fly! A hundred crowns to him that finds it
+me again. No, no! 'tis in vain. Oh fool! fool! to leave that in the same
+room with him. But none ever found the secret spring before. None ever
+would but he. It was to be. It is to be. Lost! lost!" and his years and
+infirmity now gained the better of his short-lived frenzy, and he sank
+on the chest muttering "lost! lost!"
+
+"What is lost, master?" asked the servant kindly.
+
+"House and lands and good name," groaned Ghysbrecht, and wrung his hands
+feebly.
+
+"WHAT?" cried the servant.
+
+This emphatic word, and the tone of eager curiosity, struck on
+Ghysbrecht's ear, and revived his natural cunning.
+
+"I have lost the town records," stammered he, and he looked askant at
+the man like a fox caught near a hen-roost.
+
+"Oh, is that all?"
+
+"Is't not enough? What will the burghers say to me? What will the burgh
+do?" Then he suddenly burst out again, "A hundred crowns to him who
+shall recover them; all, mind, all that were in this box. If one be
+missing, I give nothing."
+
+"'Tis a bargain, master: the hundred crowns are in my pouch. See you not
+that where Gerard Eliassoen is, there are the pieces of sheepskin you
+rate so high?"
+
+"That is true; that is true; good Dierich: good faithful Dierich. All,
+mind, all, that were in the chest."
+
+"Master, I will take the constables to Gerard's house and seize him for
+the theft."
+
+"The theft? ay! good; very good. It is theft. I forgot that. So, as he
+is a thief now, we will put him in the dungeons below: where the toads
+are and the rats. Dierich, that man must never see daylight again. 'Tis
+his own fault; he must be prying. Quick, quick! ere he has time to talk,
+you know, time to talk."
+
+In less than half an hour Dierich Brower and four constables entered the
+hosier's house, and demanded young Gerard of the panic-stricken
+Catherine.
+
+"Alas! what has he done now?" cried she: "that boy will break my heart."
+
+"Nay, dame, but a trick of youth," said Dierich. "He hath but made off
+with certain skins of parchment, in a frolic doubtless; but the
+burgomaster is answerable to the burgh for their safe keeping, so he is
+in care about them: as for the youth, he will doubtless be quit for a
+reprimand."
+
+This smooth speech completely imposed on Catherine: but her daughter was
+more suspicious, and that suspicion was strengthened by the
+disproportionate anger and disappointment Dierich showed the moment he
+learned Gerard was not at home, had not been at home that night.
+
+"Come away then," said he roughly. "We are wasting time." He added,
+vehemently, "I'll find him if he is above ground."
+
+Affection sharpens the wits, and often it has made an innocent person
+more than a match for the wily. As Dierich was going out, Kate made him
+a signal she would speak with him privately. He bade his men go on, and
+waited outside the door. She joined him.
+
+"Hush!" said she, "my mother knows not. Gerard has left Tergou."
+
+"How?"
+
+"I saw him last night."
+
+"Ay? Where?" cried Dierich, eagerly.
+
+"At the foot of the haunted tower."
+
+"How did he get the rope?"
+
+"I know not; but this I know; my brother Gerard bade me there farewell,
+and he is many leagues from Tergou ere this. The town you know, was
+always unworthy of him, and, when it imprisoned him, he vowed never to
+set foot in it again. Let the burgomaster be content, then. He has
+imprisoned him, and he has driven him from his birthplace and from his
+native land. What need now to rob him and us of our good name?"
+
+This might at another moment have struck Dierich as good sense; but he
+was too mortified at this escape of Gerard and the loss of a hundred
+crowns.
+
+"What need had he to steal?" retorted he, bitterly.
+
+"Gerard stole not the trash; he but _took_ it to spite the burgomaster
+who stole his liberty; but he shall answer to the duke for it, he shall.
+As for these skins of parchment you keep such a coil about, look in the
+nearest brook, or stye, and 'tis odds but you find them."
+
+"Think ye so, mistress?--think ye so?" And Dierich's eyes flashed.
+"Mayhap you know 'tis so."
+
+"This I know, that Gerard is too good to steal, and too wise to load
+himself with rubbish, going a journey."
+
+"Give you good day, then," said Dierich, sharply. "The sheepskin you
+scorn, I value more than the skin of any be in Tergou."
+
+And he went off hastily on a false scent.
+
+Kate returned into the house and drew Giles aside.
+
+"Giles, my heart misgives me; breathe not to a soul what I say to you. I
+have told Dirk Brower that Gerard is out of Holland: but much I doubt he
+is not a league from Tergou."
+
+"Why, where is he, then?"
+
+"Where should he be, but with her he loves? But if so, he must not
+loiter. These be deep and dark and wicked men that seek him. Giles, I
+see that in Dirk Brower's eye makes me tremble. Oh! why cannot I fly to
+Sevenbergen, and bid him away? Why am I not lusty and active like other
+girls? God forgive me for fretting at His will: but I never felt till
+now what it is to be lame and weak and useless. But you are strong, dear
+Giles," added she coaxingly, "you are very strong."
+
+"Yes, I am strong;" thundered Perpusillus: then, catching sight of her
+meaning, "but I hate to go on foot," he added, sulkily.
+
+"Alas! alas! who will help me if you will not? Dear Giles, do you not
+love Gerard?"
+
+"Yes I like him best of the lot. I'll go to Sevenbergen on Peter
+Buyskens his mule. Ask you him, for he won't lend her me."
+
+Kate remonstrated. The whole town would follow him. It would be known
+whither he was gone, and Gerard be in worse danger than before.
+
+Giles parried this by promising to ride out of the town the opposite
+way, and not turn the mule's head toward Sevenbergen till he had got rid
+of the curious.
+
+Kate then assented, and borrowed the mule. She charged Giles with a
+short but meaning message, and made him repeat it after her, over and
+over, till he could say it word for word.
+
+Giles started on the mule, and little Kate retired, and did the last
+thing now in her power for her beloved brother; prayed on her knees long
+and earnestly for his safety.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIII
+
+
+GERARD and Margaret went gaily to Sevenbergen in the first flush of
+recovered liberty, and successful adventure. But these soon yielded to
+sadder thoughts. Gerard was an escaped prisoner, and liable to be
+retaken and perhaps punished; and therefore he and Margaret would have
+to part for a time. Moreover he had conceived a hatred to his native
+place. Margaret wished him to leave the country for a while, but at the
+thought of his going to Italy her heart fainted. Gerard, on the
+contrary, was reconciled to leaving Margaret only by his desire to visit
+Italy, and his strong conviction that there he should earn money and
+reputation, and remove every obstacle to their marriage. He had already
+told her all that the demoiselle Van Eyck had said to him. He repeated
+it, and reminded Margaret that the gold pieces were only given him to go
+to Italy with. The journey was clearly for Gerard's interest. He was a
+craftsman and an artist, lost in this boorish place. In Italy they would
+know how to value him. On this ground above all the unselfish girl gave
+her consent: but many tender tears came with it, and at that Gerard,
+young and loving as herself, cried bitterly with her, and often they
+asked one another what they had done, that so many different persons
+should be their enemies, and combine, as it seemed, to part them.
+
+They sat hand in hand till midnight, now deploring their hard fate, now
+drawing bright and hopeful pictures of the future, in the midst of which
+Margaret's tears would suddenly flow, and then poor Gerard's eloquence
+would die away in a sigh.
+
+The morning found them resigned to part, but neither had the courage to
+say when; and much I doubt whether the hour of parting ever would have
+struck.
+
+But about three in the afternoon, Giles, who had made a circuit of many
+miles to avoid suspicion, rode up to the door. They both ran out to him,
+eager with curiosity.
+
+"Brother Gerard," cried he, in his tremendous tones, "Kate bids you run
+for your life. They charge you with theft; you have given them a handle.
+Think not to explain. Hope not for justice in Tergou. The parchments you
+took they are but a blind. She hath seen your death in the men's eyes: a
+price is on your head. Fly! For Margaret's sake and all who love you,
+loiter not life away, but fly!"
+
+It was a thunder-clap, and left two white faces looking at one another,
+and at the terrible messenger.
+
+Then Giles, who had hitherto but uttered by rote what Catherine bade
+him, put in a word of his own.
+
+"All the constables were at our house after you, and so was Dirk Brower.
+Kate is wise, Gerard. Best give ear to her rede, and fly."
+
+"Oh, yes! Gerard," cried Margaret, wildly. "Fly on the instant. Ah!
+those parchments; my mind misgave me: why did I let you take them?"
+
+"Margaret, they are but a blind: Giles says so: no matter, the old
+caitiff shall never see them again; I will not go till I have hidden his
+treasure where he shall never find it." Gerard then, after thanking
+Giles warmly, bade him farewell, and told him to go back, and tell Kate
+he was gone. "For I shall be gone, ere you reach home," said he. He then
+shouted for Martin; and told him what had happened, and begged him to go
+a little way towards Tergou; and watch the road.
+
+"Ay!" said Martin, "and if I see Dirk Brower, or any of his men, I will
+shoot an arrow into the oak tree that is in our garden; and on that you
+must run into the forest hard by, and meet me at the weird hunter's
+spring. Then I will guide you through the wood."
+
+Surprise thus provided against, Gerard breathed again. He went with
+Margaret, and, while she watched the oak-tree tremblingly, fearing every
+moment to see an arrow strike among the branches, Gerard dug a deep
+hole to bury the parchments in.
+
+He threw them in, one by one. They were nearly all charters and records
+of the burgh: but one appeared to be a private deed between Floris
+Brandt, father of Peter, and Ghysbrecht.
+
+"Why this is as much yours as his," said Gerard. "I will read this."
+
+"Oh, not now, Gerard, not now," cried Margaret. "Every moment you lose
+fills me with fear; and see, large drops of rain are beginning to fall,
+and the clouds lower."
+
+Gerard yielded to this remonstrance: but he put the deed into his bosom,
+and threw the earth in over the others, and stamped it down.
+
+While thus employed there came a flash of lightning followed by a peal
+of distant thunder, and the rain came down heavily. Margaret and Gerard
+ran into the house, whither they were speedily followed by Martin.
+
+"The road is clear," said he, "and a heavy storm coming on."
+
+His words proved true. The thunder came nearer and nearer till it
+crashed overhead: the flashes followed one another close, like the
+strokes of a whip, and the rain fell in torrents. Margaret hid her face
+not to see the lightning. On this, Gerard put up the rough shutter, and
+lighted a candle. The lovers consulted together, and Gerard blessed the
+storm that gave him a few hours more with Margaret. The sun set
+unperceived, and still the thunder pealed, and the lightning flashed,
+and the rain poured. Supper was set, but Gerard and Margaret could not
+eat: the thought that this was the last time they should sup together,
+choked them. The storm lulled a little. Peter retired to rest. But
+Gerard was to go at peep of day, and neither he nor Margaret could
+afford to lose an hour in sleep. Martin sat a while, too: for he was
+fitting a new string to his bow, a matter in which he was very nice.
+
+The lovers murmured their sorrows and their love beside him.
+
+Suddenly the old man held up his hand to them to be silent.
+
+They were quiet and listened, and heard nothing. But the next moment a
+footstep crackled faintly upon the autumn leaves that lay strewn in the
+garden at the back door of the house. To those who had nothing to fear
+such a step would have said nothing: but to those who had enemies it was
+terrible. For it was a foot trying to be noiseless.
+
+Martin fitted an arrow to his string, and hastily blew out the candle.
+At this moment, to their horror, they heard more than one footstep
+approach the other door of the cottage, not quite so noiselessly as the
+other, but very stealthily--and then a dead pause.
+
+Their blood froze in their veins.
+
+"Oh! Kate! oh, Kate! You said, fly on the instant." And Margaret moaned
+and wrung her hands in anguish and terror, and wild remorse for having
+kept Gerard.
+
+"Hush girl!" said Martin, in a stern whisper.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+A heavy knock fell on the door.
+
+And on the hearts within.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIV
+
+
+AS if this had been a concerted signal, the back door was struck as
+rudely the next instant. They were hemmed in. But at these alarming
+sounds Margaret seemed to recover some share of self-possession. She
+whispered, "Say he _was_ here, but is gone." And with this she seized
+Gerard and almost dragged him up the rude steps that led to her father's
+sleeping-room. Her own lay next beyond it.
+
+The blows on the door were repeated.
+
+"Who knocks at this hour?"
+
+"Open, and you will see!"
+
+"I open not to thieves--honest men are all abed now."
+
+"Open to the law, Martin Wittenhaagen, or you shall rue it."
+
+"Why, that is Dirk Brower's voice, I trow. What make you so far from
+Tergou?"
+
+"Open, and you will know."
+
+Martin drew the bolt, very slowly, and in rushed Dierich and four more.
+They let in their companion who was at the back door.
+
+"Now, Martin, where is Gerard Eliassoen?"
+
+"Gerard Eliassoen? Why he was here but now?"
+
+"Was here?" Dierich's countenance fell. "And where is he now?"
+
+"They say he has gone to Italy. Why? What is to do?"
+
+"No matter. When did he go? Tell me not that he went in such a storm as
+this!"
+
+"Here is a coil about Gerard Eliassoen," said Martin contemptuously.
+Then he lighted the candle, and, seating himself coolly by the fire,
+proceeded to whip some fine silk round his bow-string at the place
+where the nick of the arrow frets it. "I'll tell you," said he
+carelessly. "Know you his brother Giles--a little misbegotten imp all
+head and arms? Well, he came tearing over here on a mule, and bawled out
+something. I was too far off to hear the creature's words, but only its
+noise. Anyway, he started Gerard. For as soon as he was gone, there was
+such crying and kissing, and then Gerard went away. They do tell me he
+has gone to Italy--mayhap you know where that is; for I don't."
+
+Dierich's countenance fell lower and lower at this account. There was no
+flaw in it. A cunninger man than Martin would, perhaps, have told a lie
+too many, and raised suspicion. But Martin did his task well. He only
+told the one falsehood he was bade to tell, and of his own head invented
+nothing.
+
+"Mates," said Dierich, "I doubt he speaks sooth. I told the burgomaster
+how 'twould be. He met the dwarf galloping Peter Buyskens' mule from
+Sevenbergen. 'They have sent that imp to Gerard,' says he, 'so, then,
+Gerard is at Sevenbergen.' 'Ah, master!' says I, ''tis too late now. We
+should have thought of Sevenbergen before, instead of wasting our time
+hunting all the odd corners of Tergou for those cursed parchments that
+we shall never find till we find the man that took 'em. If he was at
+Sevenbergen,' quoth I, 'and they sent the dwarf to him, it must have
+been to warn him we are after him. He is leagues away by now,' quoth I.
+Confound that chalk-faced girl! she has out-witted us bearded men: and
+so I told the burgomaster, but he would not hear to reason. A wet jerkin
+apiece, that is all we shall get, mates, by this job."
+
+Martin grinned coolly in Dierich's face.
+
+"However," added the latter, "to content the burgomaster, we will search
+the house."
+
+Martin turned grave directly.
+
+This change of countenance did not escape Dierich. He reflected a
+moment.
+
+"Watch outside two of you, one on each side of the house, that no one
+jump from the upper windows. The rest come with me."
+
+And he took the candle and mounted the stairs, followed by three of his
+comrades.
+
+Martin was left alone.
+
+The stout soldier hung his head. All had gone so well at first: and now
+this fatal turn! Suddenly it occurred to him that all was not yet lost.
+Gerard must be either in Peter's room or Margaret's; they were not so
+very high from the ground. Gerard would leap out. Dierich had left a man
+below; but what then? For half a minute Gerard and he would be two to
+one, and in that brief space, what might not be done?
+
+Martin then held the back door ajar and watched. The light shone in
+Peter's room. "Curse the fool!" said he, "is he going to let them take
+him like a girl?"
+
+The light now passed into Margaret's bedroom. Still no window was
+opened. Had Gerard intended to escape that way he would not have waited
+till the men were in the room. Martin saw that at once, and left the
+door, and came to the foot-stair and listened. He began to think Gerard
+must have escaped by the window while all the men were in the house. The
+longer the silence continued the stronger grew this conviction. But it
+was suddenly and rudely dissipated.
+
+Faint cries issued from the inner bedroom--Margaret's.
+
+"They have taken him," groaned Martin; "they have got him."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+It now flashed across Martin's mind that if they took Gerard away his
+life was not worth a button; and that, if evil befell him, Margaret's
+heart would break. He cast his eyes wildly round like some savage beast
+seeking an escape, and in a twinkling formed a resolution terribly
+characteristic of those iron times and of a soldier driven to bay. He
+stepped to each door in turn, and imitating Dirk Bower's voice, said
+sharply, "Watch the window!" He then quietly closed and bolted both
+doors. He then took up his bow and six arrows; one he fitted to his
+string, the others he put into his quiver. His knife he placed upon a
+chair behind him, the hilt towards him; and there he waited at the foot
+of the stair with the calm determination to slay those four men, or be
+slain by them. Two, he knew, he could dispose of by his arrows, ere they
+could get near him, and Gerard and he must take their chance
+hand-to-hand, with the remaining pair. Besides, he had seen men
+panic-stricken by a sudden attack of this sort. Should Brower and his
+men hesitate but an instant before closing with him, he should shoot
+three instead of two, and then the odds would be on the right side.
+
+He had not long to wait. The heavy steps sounded in Margaret's room, and
+came nearer and nearer.
+
+The light also approached, and voices.
+
+Martin's heart, stout as it was, beat hard, to hear men coming thus to
+their death, and, perhaps to his; more likely so than not; for four is
+long odds in a battle-field of ten feet square, and Gerard might be
+bound, perhaps, and powerless to help. But this man, whom we have seen
+shake in his shoes at a Giles-o'-lanthorn, never wavered in this awful
+moment of real danger, but stood there, his body all braced for combat,
+and his eyes glowing, equally ready to take life and lose it. Desperate
+game! to win which was exile instant and for life, and to lose it was to
+die that moment upon that floor he stood on.
+
+Dierich Brower and his men found Peter in his first sleep. They opened
+his cupboards; they ran their knives into an alligator he had nailed to
+his wall; they looked under his bed: it; was a large room, and
+apparently full of hiding places, but they found no Gerard.
+
+Then they went on to Margaret's room, and the very sight of it was
+discouraging--it was small and bare, and not a cupboard in it; there
+was, however, a large fireplace and chimney. Dierich's eye fell on these
+directly. Here they found the beauty of Sevenbergen sleeping on an old
+chest, not a foot high, and no attempt made to cover it; but the sheets
+were snowy white, and so was Margaret's own linen. And there she lay,
+looking like a lily fallen into a rut.
+
+Presently she awoke, and sat up in the bed, like one amazed; then,
+seeing the men, began to scream faintly, and pray for mercy.
+
+She made Dierich Brower ashamed of his errand.
+
+"Here is a to-do," said he, a little confused. "We are not going to hurt
+you, my pretty maid. Lie you still, and shut your eyes, and think of
+your wedding-night, while I look up this chimney to see if Master Gerard
+is there."
+
+"Gerard! in my room?"
+
+"Why not? They say that you and he--"
+
+"Cruel; you know they have driven him away from me--driven him from his
+native place. This is a blind. You are thieves; you are wicked men; you
+are not men of Sevenbergen, or you would know Margaret Brandt better
+than to look for her lover in this room of all others in the world. Oh
+brave! Four great hulking men to come, armed to the teeth, to insult one
+poor honest girl! The women that live in your own houses must be
+naught, or you would respect them too much to insult a girl of good
+character."
+
+"There, come away, before we hear worse," said Dierich, hastily. "He is
+not in the chimney. Plaster will mend what a cudgel breaks; but a
+woman's tongue is a double-edged dagger, and a girl is a woman with her
+mother's milk still in her." And he beat a hasty retreat. "I told the
+burgomaster how 'twould be."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XV
+
+
+WHERE is the woman that cannot act a part? Where is she who will not do
+it, and do it well, to save the man she loves? Nature on these great
+occasions comes to the aid of the simplest of the sex, and teaches her
+to throw dust in Solomon's eyes. The men had no sooner retired, than
+Margaret stepped out of bed, and opened the long chest on which she had
+been lying down in her skirt and petticoat and stockings, and nightdress
+over all; and put the lid, bed-clothes and all, against the wall: then
+glided to the door and listened. The footsteps died away through her
+father's room, and down the stairs.
+
+Now in that chest there was a peculiarity that it was almost impossible
+for a stranger to detect. A part of the boarding of the room had been
+broken, and Gerard being applied to to make it look neater, and being
+short of materials, had ingeniously sawed away a space sufficient just
+to admit Margaret's _soi-disant_ bed, and with the materials thus
+acquired he had repaired the whole room. As for the bed or chest it
+really rested on the rafters a foot below the boards. Consequently it
+was full two feet deep, though it looked scarce one.
+
+All was quiet. Margaret kneeled and gave thanks to Heaven. Then she
+glided from the door, and leaned over the chest, and whispered tenderly,
+"Gerard!"
+
+Gerard did not reply.
+
+She then whispered, a little louder, "Gerard, all is safe, thank Heaven!
+You may rise; but, oh! be cautious!"
+
+Gerard made no reply.
+
+She laid her hand upon his shoulder--"Gerard!"
+
+No reply.
+
+"Oh! what is this?" she cried, and her hands ran wildly over his face
+and his bosom. She took him by the shoulders; she shook him; she lifted
+him; but he escaped from her trembling hands, and fell back not like a
+man but like a body. A great dread fell on her. The lid had been down.
+She had lain upon it. The men had been some time in the room. With all
+the strength of frenzy she tore him out of the chest. She bore him in
+her arms to the window. She dashed the window open. The sweet air came
+in. She laid him in it and in the moonlight. His face was the colour of
+ashes, his body was all limp and motionless. She felt his heart. Horror!
+it was as still as the rest! Horror of horrors! she had stifled him with
+her own body.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The mind cannot all at once believe so great and sudden and strange a
+calamity. Gerard, who had got alive into that chest scarce five minutes
+ago, how could he be dead?
+
+She called him by all the endearing names that heart could think or
+tongue could frame. She kissed him and fondled him and coaxed him and
+implored him to speak to her.
+
+No answer to words of love, such as she had never uttered to him before,
+nor thought she could utter. Then the poor creature, trembling all over,
+began to say over that ashy face little foolish things that were at once
+terrible and pitiable.
+
+"Oh, Gerard! I am very sorry you are dead. I am very sorry I have killed
+you. Forgive me for not letting the men take you, it would have been
+better than this. Oh, Gerard! I am very, very sorry for what I have
+done." Then she began suddenly to rave. "No! no! such things can't be,
+or there is no God. It is monstrous. How can my Gerard be dead? How can
+I have killed my Gerard? I love him. Oh, God! you know how I love him.
+He does not. I never told him. If he knew my heart, he would speak to
+me, he would not be so deaf to his poor Margaret. It is all a trick to
+make me cry out and betray him: but, no, I love him too well for that.
+I'll choke first." And she seized her own throat, to check her wild
+desire to scream in her terror and anguish.
+
+"If he would but say one word. Oh, Gerard! don't die without a word.
+Have mercy on me and scold me! but speak to me: if you are angry with
+me, scold me! curse me! I deserve it: the idiot that killed the man she
+loved better than herself. Ah! I am a murderess. The worst in all the
+world. Help, help! I have murdered him. Ah! ah! ah! ah! ah!"
+
+She tore her hair, and uttered shriek after shriek so wild, so piercing,
+they fell like a knell upon the ears of Dierich Brower and his men. All
+started to their feet, and looked at one another.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVI
+
+
+MARTIN WITTENHAAGEN standing at the foot of the stairs with his arrow
+drawn nearly to the head and his knife behind him, was struck with
+amazement to see the men come back without Gerard: he lowered his bow,
+and looked open-mouthed at them. They, for their part, were equally
+puzzled at the attitude they had caught him in.
+
+"Why, mates, was the old fellow making ready to shoot at _us_?"
+
+"Stuff!" said Martin, recovering his stolid composure, "I was but trying
+my new string. There, I'll unstring my bow, if you think that."
+
+"Humph!" said Dierich, suspiciously, "there is something more in you
+than I understand: put a log on, and let us dry our hides a bit, ere we
+go."
+
+A blazing fire was soon made and the men gathered round it, and their
+clothes and long hair were soon smoking from the cheerful blaze. Then it
+was that the shrieks were heard in Margaret's room. They all started up,
+and one of them seized the candle, and ran up the steps that led to the
+bedrooms.
+
+Martin rose hastily, too, and being confused by these sudden screams,
+and apprehending danger from the man's curiosity, tried to prevent him
+from going there.
+
+At this Dierich threw his arms round him from behind, and called on the
+others to keep him. The man that had the candle got clear away, and all
+the rest fell upon Martin, and after a long and fierce struggle, in the
+course of which they were more than once all rolling on the floor, with
+Martin in the middle, they succeeded in mastering the old Samson, and
+binding him hand and foot with a rope they had brought for Gerard.
+
+Martin groaned aloud. He saw the man had made his way to Margaret's room
+during the struggle, and here was he powerless.
+
+"Ay, grind your teeth, you old rogue," said Dierich, panting with the
+struggle. "You shan't use them."
+
+"It is my belief, mates, that our lives were scarce safe while this old
+fellow's bones were free."
+
+"He makes me think this Gerard is not far off," put in another.
+
+"No such luck," replied Dierich. "Hallo, mates. Jorian Ketel is a long
+time in that girl's bedroom. Best go and see after him, some of us."
+
+The rude laugh caused by this remark had hardly subsided, when hasty
+footsteps were heard running along overhead.
+
+"Oh! here he comes, at last. Well, Jorian, what is to do now up there?"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVII
+
+
+JORIAN KETEL went straight to Margaret's room, and there, to his
+infinite surprise, he found the man he had been in search of, pale and
+motionless, his head in Margaret's lap, and she kneeling over him, mute
+now, and stricken to stone. Her eyes were dilated, yet glazed, and she
+neither saw the light nor heard the man, nor cared for anything on
+earth, but the white face in her lap.
+
+Jorian stood awe-struck, the candle shaking in his hand.
+
+"Why, where was he, then, all the time?"
+
+Margaret heeded him not. Jorian went to the empty chest and inspected
+it. He began to comprehend. The girl's dumb and frozen despair moved
+him.
+
+"This is a sorry sight," said he: "it is a black night's work: all for a
+few skins! Better have gone with us than so. She is past answering me,
+poor wench. Stop--let us try whether--"
+
+He took down a little round mirror, no bigger than his hand, and put it
+to Gerard's mouth and nostrils, and held it there. When he withdrew it
+it was dull.
+
+"THERE IS LIFE IN HIM!" said Jorian Ketel to himself.
+
+Margaret caught the words instantly, though only muttered, and it was as
+if a statue should start into life and passion. She rose and flung her
+arms round Jorian's neck.
+
+"Oh bless the tongue that tells me so!" and she clasped the great rough
+fellow again and again, eagerly, almost fiercely.
+
+"There, there! let us lay him warm," said Jorian; and in a moment he
+raised Gerard, and laid him on the bed-clothes. Then he took out a flask
+he carried, and filled his hand twice with Schiedamze, and flung it
+sharply each time in Gerard's face. The pungent liquor co-operated with
+his recovery--he gave a faint sigh. Oh, never was sound so joyful to
+human ear! She flew towards him, but then stopped, quivering for fear
+she should hurt him. She had lost all confidence in herself.
+
+"That is right--let him alone," said Jorian: "don't go cuddling him as
+you did me, or you'll drive his breath back again. Let him alone: he is
+sure to come to. 'Tisn't like as if he was an old man."
+
+Gerard sighed deeply, and a faint streak of colour stole to his lips.
+Jorian made for the door. He had hardly reached it, when he found his
+legs seized from behind.
+
+It was Margaret! She curled round his knees like a serpent, and kissed
+his hand, and fawned on him. "You won't tell? You have saved his life;
+you have not the heart to thrust him back into his grave, to undo your
+own good work?"
+
+"No, no! It is not the first time I've done you two a good turn; 'twas I
+told you in the church whither we had to take him. Besides, what is Dirk
+Brower to me? I'll see him hanged ere I'll tell him. But I wish you'd
+tell _me_ where the parchments are? There are a hundred crowns offered
+for them. That would be a good windfall for my Joan and the children,
+you know."
+
+"Ah! they shall have those hundred crowns."
+
+"What! are the things in the house?" asked Jorian, eagerly.
+
+"No; but I know where they are: and, by God and St. Bavon I swear you
+shall have them to-morrow. Come to me for them when you will, but come
+alone."
+
+"I were mad, else. What! share the hundred crowns with Dirk Brower? And
+now may my bones rot in my skin if I let a soul know the poor boy is
+here."
+
+He then ran off, lest by staying longer he should excite suspicion, and
+have them all after him. And Margaret knelt, quivering from head to
+foot, and prayed beside Gerard, and for Gerard.
+
+"What is to do?" replied Jorian, to Dierich Brower's query; "why we have
+scared the girl out of her wits. She was in a kind of fit."
+
+"We had better all go and doctor her, then."
+
+"Oh yes! and frighten her into the churchyard. Her father is a doctor,
+and I have roused him, and set him to bring her round. Let us see the
+fire, will ye?"
+
+His off-hand way disarmed all suspicion. And soon after the party agreed
+that the kitchen of the "Three Kings" was much warmer than Peter's
+house, and they departed, having first untied Martin.
+
+"Take note, mate, that I was right, and the burgomaster wrong," said
+Dierich Brower, at the door: "I said we should be too late to catch him,
+and we were too late."
+
+Thus Gerard, in one terrible night, grazed the prison and the grave.
+
+And how did he get clear at last? Not by his cunningly contrived
+hiding-place, nor by Margaret's ready wit; but by a good impulse in one
+of his captors, by the bit of humanity left in a somewhat reckless
+fellow's heart, aided by his desire of gain. So mixed and seemingly
+incongruous are human motives, so short sighted our shrewdest counsels.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+They whose moderate natures, or gentle fates, keep them, in life's
+passage, from the fierce extremes of joy and anguish our nature is
+capable of, are perhaps the best, and certainly the happiest, of
+mankind. But to such readers I should try in vain to convey what bliss
+unspeakable settled now upon these persecuted lovers. Even to those who
+have joyed greatly, and greatly suffered, my feeble art can present but
+a pale reflection of Margaret's and Gerard's ecstasy.
+
+To sit and see a beloved face come back from the grave to the world, to
+health and beauty by swift gradations; to see the roses return to the
+loved cheek, love's glance to the loved eye, and his words to the loved
+mouth; this was Margaret's--a joy to balance years of sorrow. It was
+Gerard's to awake from a trance, and find his head pillowed on
+Margaret's arm; to hear the woman he adored murmur new words of eloquent
+love, and shower tears and tender kisses and caresses on him. He never
+knew, till this sweet moment, how ardently, how tenderly, she loved him.
+He thanked his enemies. They wreathed their arms sweetly round each
+other, and trouble and danger seemed a world, an age, behind them. They
+called each other husband and wife. Were they not solemnly betrothed?
+And had they not stood before the altar together? Was not the blessing
+of Holy Church upon their union?--her curse on all who would part them?
+
+But as no woman's nerves can bear with impunity so terrible a strain,
+presently Margaret turned faint, and sank on Gerard's shoulder, smiling
+feebly, but quite, quite unstrung. Then Gerard was anxious, and would
+seek assistance. But she held him with a gentle grasp, and implored him
+not to leave her for a moment. "While I can lay my hand on you, I feel
+you are safe, not else. Foolish Gerard! nothing ails me. I am weak,
+dearest, but happy, oh! so happy."
+
+Then it was Gerard's turn to support that dear head, with its great
+waves of hair flowing loose over him, and nurse her, and soothe her,
+quivering on his bosom, with soft encouraging words and murmurs of love,
+and gentle caresses. Sweetest of all her charms is a woman's weakness to
+a manly heart.
+
+Poor things! they were happy. To-morrow they must part. But that was
+nothing to them now. They had seen Death, and all other troubles seemed
+light as air. While there is life there is hope: while there is hope
+there is joy. Separation for a year or two, what was it to them, who
+were so young, and had caught a glimpse of the grave? The future was
+bright, the present was Heaven: so passed the blissful hours.
+
+Alas! their innocence ran other risks besides the prison and the grave:
+they were in most danger from their own hearts and their inexperience,
+now that visible danger there was none.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVIII
+
+
+GHYSBRECHT VAN SWIETEN could not sleep all night for anxiety. He was
+afraid of thunder and lightning: or he would have made one of the party
+that searched Peter's house. As soon as the storm ceased altogether, he
+crept down stairs, saddled his mule, and rode to the "Three Kings" at
+Sevenbergen. There he found his men sleeping, some on chairs, some on
+the tables, some on the floor. He roused them furiously, and heard the
+story of their unsuccessful search, interlarded with praises of their
+zeal.
+
+"Fool! to let you go without me," cried the burgomaster. "My life on't
+he was there all the time. Looked ye under the girl's bed?"
+
+"No: there was no room for a man there."
+
+"How know ye that, if ye looked not?" snarled Ghysbrecht. "Ye should
+have looked under her bed and in it, too; and sounded all the panels
+with your knives. Come, now, get up, and I shall show ye how to
+search."
+
+Dierich Brower got up, and shook himself: "If you find him, call me a
+horse and no man."
+
+In a few minutes Peter's house was again surrounded.
+
+The fiery old man left his mule in the hands of Jorian Ketel, and, with
+Dierich Brower and the others, entered the house.
+
+The house was empty.
+
+Not a creature to be seen, not even Peter. They went up-stairs, and then
+suddenly one of the men gave a shout, and pointed through Peter's
+window, which was open. The other looked, and there, at some little
+distance, walking quietly across the fields with Margaret and Martin,
+was the man they sought. Ghysbrecht with an exulting yell, descended the
+stairs, and flung himself on his mule; and he and his men set off in hot
+pursuit.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIX
+
+
+GERARD, warned by recent peril, rose before daybreak, and waked Martin.
+The old soldier was astonished. He thought Gerard had escaped by the
+window last night. Being consulted as to the best way for him to leave
+the country and elude pursuit, he said there was but one road safe. "I
+must guide you through the great forest to a bridle-road I know of. This
+will take you speedily to a hostelry, where they will lend you a swift
+horse: and then a day's gallop will take you out of Holland. But let us
+start ere the folk here quit their beds."
+
+Peter's house was but a furlong and a half from the forest. They
+started, Martin with his bow and three arrows, for it was Thursday:
+Gerard with nothing but a stout oak staff Peter gave him for the
+journey.
+
+Margaret pinned up her kirtle and farthingale, for the road was wet.
+Peter went as far as his garden hedge with them, and then, with more
+emotion than he often bestowed on passing events, gave the young man his
+blessing.
+
+The sun was peeping above the horizon as they crossed the stony field
+and made for the wood. They had crossed about half, when Margaret, who
+kept nervously looking back every now and then, uttered a cry, and,
+following her instinct, began to run towards the wood, screaming with
+terror all the way.
+
+Ghysbrecht and his men were in hot pursuit.
+
+Resistance would have been madness. Martin and Gerard followed
+Margaret's example. The pursuers gained slightly on them; but Martin
+kept shouting, "Only win the wood! only win the wood!"
+
+They had too good a start for the men on foot, and their hearts bounded
+with hope at Martin's words, for the great trees seemed now to stretch
+their branches like friendly arms towards them, and their leaves like a
+screen.
+
+But an unforeseen danger attacked them. The fiery old burgomaster flung
+himself on his mule, and, spurring him to a gallop, he headed not his
+own men only but the fugitives. His object was to cut them off. The old
+man came galloping in a semicircle, and got on the edge of the wood,
+right in front of Gerard; the others might escape for ought he cared.
+
+Margaret shrieked and tried to protect Gerard by clasping him; but he
+shook her off without ceremony.
+
+Ghysbrecht in his ardor forgot that hunted animals turn on the hunter;
+and that two men can hate, and two can long to kill the thing they hate.
+
+Instead of attempting to dodge him, as the burgomaster made sure he
+would, Gerard flew right at him with a savage, exulting cry, and struck
+at him with all his heart and soul and strength. The oak staff came down
+on Ghysbrecht's face with a frightful crash, and laid him under his
+mule's tail beating the devil's tattoo with his heels, his face
+streaming, and his collar spattered with blood.
+
+The next moment, the three were in the wood. The yell of dismay and
+vengeance that burst from Ghysbrecht's men at that terrible blow which
+felled their leader, told the fugitives that it was now a race for life
+or death.
+
+"Why run?" cried Gerard panting. "You have your bow; and I have this:"
+and he shook his bloody staff.
+
+"Boy!" roared Martin; "The GALLOWS! Follow me!" and he fled into the
+wood. Soon they heard a cry like a pack of hounds opening on sight of
+the game. The men were in the wood, and saw them flitting amongst the
+trees. Margaret moaned and panted, as she ran; and Gerard clenched his
+teeth, and grasped his staff. The next minute they came to a stiff hazel
+coppice. Martin dashed into it, and shouldered the young wood aside as
+if it were standing corn.
+
+Ere they had gone fifty yards in it they came to four blind paths.
+
+Martin took one. "Bend low," said he: and, half creeping, they glided
+along. Presently their path was again intersected with other little
+tortuous paths. They took one of them; it seemed to lead back, but it
+soon took a turn, and after a while brought them to a thick pine grove
+where the walking was good and hard: there were no paths here and the
+young fir-trees were so thick you could not see three yards before your
+nose.
+
+When they had gone some way in this, Martin sat down, and having learned
+in war to lose all impression of danger with the danger itself took a
+piece of bread and a slice of ham out of his wallet, and began quietly
+to eat his breakfast.
+
+The young ones looked at him with dismay. He replied to their looks.
+
+"All Sevenbergen could not find you now; you will lose your purse Gerard
+long before you get to Italy: is that the way to carry a purse?"
+
+Gerard looked, and there was a large triangular purse, entangled by its
+chains to the buckle and strap of his wallet.
+
+"This is none of mine," said he. "What is in it, I wonder?" and he tried
+to detach it: but in passing through the coppice it had become
+inextricably entangled in his strap and buckle. "It seems loath to leave
+me," said Gerard, and he had to cut it loose with his knife. The purse,
+on examination proved to be well provided with silver coins of all
+sizes, but its bloated appearance was greatly owing to a number of
+pieces of brown paper folded and doubled. A light burst on Gerard. "Why
+it must be that old thief's? and see! stuffed with paper to deceive the
+world!"
+
+The wonder was, how the burgomaster's purse came on Gerard.
+
+They hit at last upon the right solution. The purse must have been at
+Ghysbrecht's saddle-bow, and Gerard rushing at his enemy, had
+unconsciously torn it away, thus felling his enemy and robbing him, with
+a single gesture.
+
+Gerard was delighted at this feat, but Margaret was uneasy.
+
+"Throw it away, Gerard, or let Martin take it back. Already they call
+you a thief. I cannot bear it."
+
+"Throw it away? give it him back? not a stiver. This is spoil lawfully
+won in battle from an enemy. Is it not, Martin?"
+
+"Why of course. Send him back the brown paper and you will; but the
+purse or the coin--that were a sin."
+
+"Oh, Gerard!" said Margaret, "you are going to a distant land. We need
+the good-will of Heaven. How can we hope for that, if we take what is
+not ours?"
+
+But Gerard saw it in a different light.
+
+"It is Heaven that gives it me by a miracle, and I shall cherish it
+accordingly," said this pious youth. "Thus the favoured people spoiled
+the Egyptians, and were blessed."
+
+"Take your own way," said Margaret, humbly, "you are wiser than I am.
+You are my husband," added she, in a low murmuring voice; "is it for me
+to gainsay you?"
+
+These humble words from Margaret, who till that day had held the whip
+hand rather surprised Martin for the moment. They recurred to him some
+time afterwards, and then they surprised him less.
+
+Gerard kissed her tenderly in return for her wife-like docility, and
+they pursued their journey hand-in-hand, Martin leading the way, into
+the depths of the huge forest. The farther they went the more absolutely
+secure from pursuit they felt. Indeed the townspeople never ventured so
+far as this into the trackless part of the forest.
+
+Impetuous natures repent quickly. Gerard was no sooner out of all
+danger, than his conscience began to prick him.
+
+"Martin, would I had not struck quite so hard."
+
+"Whom? Oh! let that pass; he is cheap served."
+
+"Martin, I saw his grey hairs as my stick fell on him. I doubt they will
+not from my sight this while."
+
+Martin grunted with contempt. "Who spares a badger for his grey hairs?
+The greyer your enemy is, the older; and the older the craftier; and the
+craftier the better for a little killing."
+
+"Killing? Killing, Martin? speak not of killing!" And Gerard shook all
+over.
+
+"I am much mistook if you have not," said Martin cheerfully.
+
+"Now Heaven forbid!"
+
+"The old vagabone's skull cracked like a walnut. Aha!"
+
+"Heaven and the saints forbid it!"
+
+"He rolled off his mule like a stone shot out of a cart. Said I to
+myself, 'there is one wiped out.'" And the iron old soldier grinned
+ruthlessly.
+
+Gerard fell on his knees, and began to pray for his enemy's life.
+
+At this Martin lost his patience. "Here's mummery. What, you that set up
+for learning, know you not that a wise man never strikes his enemy but
+to kill him? And what is all this coil about killing of old men? If it
+had been a young one now, with the joys of life waiting for him, wine,
+women, and pillage? But an old fellow at the edge of the grave, why
+_not_ shove him in? Go he must, to-day or to-morrow; and what better
+place for greybeards? Now, if ever I should be so mischancy as to last
+so long as Ghysbrecht did, and have to go on a mule's legs instead of
+Martin Wittenhaagen's, and a back like this (striking the wood of his
+bow), instead of this (striking the string), I'll thank and bless any
+young fellow, who will knock me on the head, as you have done that old
+shopkeeper; malison on his memory."
+
+"Oh, culpa mea! culpa mea!" cried Gerard, and smote upon his breast.
+
+"Look there," said Martin to Margaret scornfully, "_he is a priest at
+heart still_: and when he is not in ire, St. Paul, what a milk-sop!"
+
+"Tush, Martin!" cried Margaret reproachfully: then she wreathed her arms
+round Gerard, and comforted him with the double magic of a woman's sense
+and a woman's voice.
+
+"Sweetheart!" murmured she, "you forget: you went not a step out of the
+way to harm him who hunted you to your death. You fled from him. He it
+was who spurred on you. Then did you strike; but in self-defence and a
+single blow, and with that which was in your hand. Malice had drawn
+knife, or struck again and again. How often have men been smitten with
+staves not one but many blows, yet no lives lost! If then your enemy has
+fallen, it is through his own malice, not yours, and by the will of
+God."
+
+"Bless you, Margaret, bless you for thinking so!"
+
+"Yes, but, beloved one; if you have had the _misfortune_ to kill that
+wicked man, the more need is there that you fly with haste from Holland.
+Oh! let us on."
+
+"Nay, Margaret," said Gerard. "I fear not man's vengeance, thanks to
+Martin here, and this thick wood: only Him I fear whose eye pierces the
+forest, and reads the heart of man. If I but struck in self-defence,
+'tis well; but if in hate, He may bid the avenger of blood follow me to
+Italy; to Italy? ay, to earth's remotest bounds."
+
+"Hush!" said Martin, peevishly. "I can't hear for your chat."
+
+"What is it?"
+
+"Do you hear nothing, Margaret? My ears are getting old."
+
+Margaret listened, and presently she heard a tuneful sound, like a
+single stroke upon a deep ringing bell. She described it so to Martin.
+
+"Nay, I heard it," said he.
+
+"And so did I," said Gerard: "it was beautiful. Ah! there it is again.
+How sweetly it blends with the air. It is a long way off. It is before
+us; is it not?"
+
+"No, no! the echoes of this wood confound the ear of a stranger. It
+comes from the pine grove."
+
+"What the one we passed?"
+
+"The one we passed?"
+
+"Why, Martin, is this _anything_? You look pale."
+
+"Wonderful!" said Martin, with a sickly sneer. "He asks me is it
+_anything_? Come, on, on! at any rate, let us reach a better place than
+this."
+
+"A better place--for what?"
+
+"To stand at bay, Gerard," said Martin gravely: "and die like soldiers,
+killing three for one."
+
+"What's that sound?"
+
+"IT IS THE AVENGER OF BLOOD."
+
+"Oh, Martin, save him! Oh, Heaven be merciful! What new mysterious peril
+is this?"
+
+"GIRL, IT'S A BLOODHOUND."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XX
+
+
+THE courage, like the talent, of common men, runs in a narrow groove.
+Take them but an inch out of that, and they are done. Martin's courage
+was perfect as far as it went. He had met and baffled many dangers in
+the course of his rude life; and these familiar dangers he could face
+with Spartan fortitude, almost with indifference: but he had never been
+hunted by a bloodhound; nor had he ever seen that brute's unerring
+instinct baffled by human cunning. Here then a sense of the supernatural
+combined with novelty to unsteel his heart. After going a few steps he
+leaned on his bow, and energy and hope oozed out of him. Gerard, to whom
+the danger appeared slight in proportion as it was distant, urged him to
+flight.
+
+"What avails it?" said Martin, sadly; "if we get clear of the wood we
+shall die cheap; here, hard by, I know a place where we may die dear."
+
+"Alas! good Martin," cried Gerard: "despair not so quickly: there must
+be some way to escape."
+
+"Oh, Martin!" cried Margaret, "what if we were to part company? Gerard's
+life alone is forfeit. Is there no way to draw the pursuit on us twain
+and let him go safe?"
+
+"Girl, you know not the bloodhound's nature. He is not on this man's
+track or that; he is on the track of blood. My life on't they have taken
+him to where Ghysbrecht fell, and from the dead man's blood to the man
+that shed it that cursed hound will lead them, though Gerard should run
+through an army, or swim the Meuse." And again he leaned upon his bow,
+and his head sank.
+
+The hound's mellow voice rang through the wood.
+
+              A cry more tunable
+    Was never halloed to, nor cheered with horn,
+    In Crete, in Sparta, or in Thessaly.
+
+Strange that things beautiful should be terrible and deadly. The eye of
+the boa-constrictor while fascinating its prey is lovely. No royal crown
+holds such a jewel; it is a ruby with the emerald's green light playing
+ever upon it. Yet the deer that sees it, loses all power of motion, and
+trembles, and awaits his death; and even so, to compare hearing with
+sight, this sweet and mellow sound seemed to fascinate Martin
+Wittenhaagen. He stood uncertain, bewildered, and unnerved. Gerard was
+little better now. Martin's last words had daunted him. He had struck an
+old man and shed his blood, and, by means of that very blood, blood's
+four-footed avenger was on his track. Was not the finger of Heaven in
+this?
+
+Whilst the men were thus benumbed, the woman's brain was all activity.
+The man she loved was in danger.
+
+"Lend me your knife," said she to Martin. He gave it to her.
+
+"But 'twill be little use in your hands," said he.
+
+Then Margaret did a sly thing. She stepped behind Gerard, and furtively
+drew the knife across her arm, and made it bleed freely: then stooping,
+smeared her hose and shoes: and still as the blood trickled she smeared
+them: but so adroitly that neither Gerard nor Martin saw. Then she
+seized the soldier's arm.
+
+"Come be a man," said she "and let this end. Take us to some thick
+place, where numbers will not avail our foes."
+
+"I am going," said Martin sulkily. "Hurry avails not: we cannot shun the
+hound, and the place is hard by;" then turning to the left, he led the
+way, as men go to execution.
+
+He soon brought them to a thick hazel coppice, like the one that had
+favoured their escape in the morning.
+
+"There," said he, "this is but a furlong broad, but it will serve our
+turn."
+
+"What are we to do?"
+
+"Get through this, and wait on the other side: then as they come
+straggling through, shoot three, knock two on the head, and the rest
+will kill us."
+
+"Is that all you can think of?" said Gerard.
+
+"That is all."
+
+"Then, Martin Wittenhaagen, I take the lead; for you have lost your
+head. Come, can you obey so young a man as I am?"
+
+"Oh! yes, Martin," cried Margaret, "do not gainsay Gerard? He is wiser
+than his years."
+
+Martin yielded a sullen assent.
+
+"Do then as you see me do," said Gerard; and drawing his huge knife, he
+cut at every step a hazel shoot or two close by the ground, and turning
+round twisted them breast high behind him among the standing shoots.
+Martin did the same, but with a dogged hopeless air. When they had thus
+painfully travelled through the greater part of the coppice, the
+bloodhound's deep bay came nearer, and nearer, less and less musical,
+louder, and sterner.
+
+Margaret trembled.
+
+Martin went down on his stomach and listened.
+
+"I hear a horse's feet."
+
+"No," said Gerard. "I doubt it is a mule's. That cursed Ghysbrecht is
+still alive: none other would follow me up so bitterly."
+
+"Never strike your enemy but to slay him," said Martin, gloomily.
+
+"I'll hit harder this time, if Heaven gives me the chance," said Gerard.
+
+At last they worked through the coppice, and there was an open wood. The
+trees were large, but far apart, and no escape possible that way.
+
+[Illustration: SUDDENLY A HUGE DOG BURST OUT OF THE COPPICE]
+
+And now with the hound's bay mingled a score of voices, hooping and
+hallooing.
+
+"The whole village is out after us," said Martin.
+
+"I care not," said Gerard. "Listen, Martin. I have made the track smooth
+to the dog, but rough to the men, that we may deal with them apart. Thus
+the hound will gain on the men, and as soon as he comes out of the
+coppice we must kill him."
+
+"The hound? There are more than one."
+
+"I hear but one."
+
+"Ay! but one speaks, the others run mute; but let the leading hound lose
+the scent, then another shall give tongue. There will be two dogs at
+least, or devils in dogs' hides."
+
+"Then we must kill two instead of one. The moment they are dead, into
+the coppice again, and go right back."
+
+"That is a good thought, Gerard!" said Martin, plucking up heart.
+
+"Hush! the men are in the wood."
+
+Gerard now gave his orders in a whisper.
+
+"Stand you with your bow by the side of the coppice--there, in the
+ditch. I will go but a few yards to yon oak-tree, and hide behind it;
+the dogs will follow me, and, as they come out, shoot as many as you
+can, the rest will I brain as they come round the tree."
+
+Martin's eye flashed. They took up their places.
+
+The hooping and hallooing came closer and closer, and soon even the
+rustling of the young wood was heard, and every now and then the
+unerring bloodhound gave a single bay.
+
+It was terrible! the branches rustling nearer and nearer, and the
+inevitable struggle for life and death coming on minute by minute, and
+that death-knell leading it. A trembling hand was laid on Gerard's
+shoulder. It made him start violently, strung up as he was.
+
+"Martin says if we are forced to part company, make for that high
+ash-tree we came in by."
+
+"Yes! yes! yes! but go back, for Heaven's sake! don't come here, all out
+in the open!"
+
+She ran back towards Martin; but, ere she could get to him, suddenly a
+huge dog burst out of the coppice, and stood erect a moment. Margaret
+cowered with fear, but he never noticed her. Scent was to him what
+sight is to us. He lowered his nose an instant, and the next moment,
+with an awful yell, sprang straight at Gerard's tree, and rolled
+head-over-heels dead as a stone, literally spitted by an arrow from the
+bow that twanged beside the coppice in Martin's hand. That same moment
+out came another hound and smelt his dead comrade. Gerard rushed out at
+him; but ere he could use his cudgel, a streak of white lightning seemed
+to strike the hound, and he grovelled in the dust, wounded desperately,
+but not killed, and howling piteously.
+
+Gerard had not time to despatch him: the coppice rustled too near: it
+seemed alive. Pointing wildly to Martin to go back, Gerard ran a few
+yards to the right, then crept cautiously into the thick coppice just as
+three men burst out. These had headed their comrades considerably; the
+rest were following at various distances. Gerard crawled back almost on
+all fours. Instinct taught Martin and Margaret to do the same upon their
+line of retreat. Thus, within the distance of a few yards, the pursuers
+and pursued were passing one another upon opposite tracks.
+
+A loud cry announced the discovery of the dead and wounded hound. Then
+followed a babble of voices, still swelling as fresh pursuers reached
+the spot. The hunters, as usual on a surprise, were wasting time, and
+the hunted ones were making the most of it.
+
+"I hear no more hounds," whispered Martin to Margaret, and he was
+himself again.
+
+It was Margaret's turn to tremble and despair.
+
+"Oh! why did we part with Gerard? They will kill my Gerard, and I not
+near him."
+
+"Nay, nay! the head to catch him is not on their shoulders. You bade him
+meet us at the ash-tree?"
+
+"And so I did. Bless you, Martin, for thinking of that. To the
+ash-tree!"
+
+"Ay! but with less noise."
+
+They were now nearly at the edge of the coppice, when suddenly they
+heard hooping and hallooing behind them. The men had satisfied
+themselves the fugitives were in the coppice; and were beating back.
+
+"No matter," whispered Martin to his trembling companion. "We shall have
+time to win clear and slip out of sight by hard running."
+
+"Ah!"
+
+He stopped suddenly; for just as he was going to burst out of the
+brushwood, his eye caught a figure keeping sentinel. It was Ghysbrecht
+Van Swieten seated on his mule; a bloody bandage was across his nose,
+the bridge of which was broken; but over this his eyes peered keenly,
+and it was plain by their expression he had heard the fugitives rustle,
+and was looking out for them. Martin muttered a terrible oath, and
+cautiously strung his bow, then with equal caution fitted his last arrow
+to the string. Margaret put her hands to her face, but said nothing. She
+saw this man must die or Gerard. After the first impulse she peered
+through her fingers, her heart panting to her throat.
+
+The bow was raised, and the deadly arrow steadily drawn to its head,
+when at that moment an active figure leaped on Ghysbrecht from behind so
+swiftly, it was like a hawk swooping on a pigeon. A kerchief went over
+the burgomaster, in a turn of the hand his head was muffled in it, and
+he was whirled from his seat and fell heavily upon the ground, where he
+lay groaning with terror; and Gerard jumped down after him.
+
+"Hist, Martin! Martin!"
+
+Martin and Margaret came out, the former open-mouthed, crying, "Now fly!
+fly! while they are all in the thicket; we are saved."
+
+At this crisis, when safety seemed at hand, as fate would have it,
+Margaret, who had borne up so bravely till now, began to succumb, partly
+from loss of blood.
+
+"Oh, my beloved! fly!" she gasped. "Leave me, for I am faint."
+
+"No! no!" cried Gerard. "Death together, or safety. Ah! the mule! mount
+her, you, and I'll run by your side."
+
+In a moment Martin was on Ghysbrecht's mule, and Gerard raised the
+fainting girl in his arms and placed her on the saddle, and relieved
+Martin of his bow.
+
+"Help! treason! murder! murder!" shrieked Ghysbrecht, suddenly rising on
+his hams.
+
+"Silence, cur," roared Gerard, and trode him down again by the throat as
+men crush an adder.
+
+"Now, have you got her firm? Then fly! for our lives! for our lives!"
+
+But even as the mule, urged suddenly by Martin's heel, scattered the
+flints with his hind hoofs ere he got into a canter, and even as Gerard
+withdrew his foot from Ghysbrecht's throat to run, Dierich Brower and
+his five men, who had come back for orders, and heard the burgomaster's
+cries, burst roaring out of the coppice on them.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXI
+
+
+SPEECH is the familiar vent of human thoughts: but there are emotions so
+simple and overpowering, that they rush out not in words, but in
+eloquent sounds. At such moments man seems to lose his characteristics,
+and to be merely one of the higher animals; for these, when greatly
+agitated, ejaculate, though they cannot speak.
+
+There was something terrible and truly animal, both in the roar of
+triumph with which the pursuers burst out of the thicket on our
+fugitives, and the sharp cry of terror with which these latter darted
+away. The pursuers' hands clutched the empty air, scarce two feet behind
+them, as they fled for life. Confused for a moment, like lions that miss
+their spring, Dierich and his men let Gerard and the mule put ten yards
+between them. Then they flew after with uplifted weapons. They were sure
+of catching them; for this was not the first time the parties had
+measured speed. In the open ground they had gained visibly on the three
+this morning, and now, at last, it was a fair race again, to be settled
+by speed alone. A hundred yards were covered in no time. Yet still there
+remained these ten yards between the pursuers and the pursued.
+
+This increase of speed since the morning puzzled Dierich Brower. The
+reason was this. When three run in company, the pace is that of the
+slowest of the three. From Peter's house to the edge of the forest
+Gerard ran Margaret's pace; but now he ran his own; for the mule was
+fleet, and could have left them all far behind. Moreover youth and
+chaste living began to tell. Daylight grew imperceptibly between the
+hunted ones and the hunters. Then Dierich made a desperate effort, and
+gained two yards; but in a few seconds Gerard had stolen them quietly
+back. The pursuers began to curse.
+
+Martin heard, and his face lighted up. "Courage, Gerard! courage, brave
+lad! they are straggling."
+
+It was so. Dierich was now headed by one of his men, and another dropped
+into the rear altogether.
+
+They came to a rising ground, not sharp, but long; and here youth, and
+grit, and sober living, told more than ever.
+
+Ere he reached the top, Dierich's forty years weighed him down like
+forty bullets. "Our cake is dough," he gasped. "Take him dead, if you
+can't alive": and he left running, and followed at a foot's pace. Jorian
+Ketel tailed off next; and then another, and so, one by one, Gerard ran
+them all to a standstill, except one who kept on stanch as a bloodhound,
+though losing ground every minute. His name, if I am not mistaken, was
+Eric Wouverman. Followed by him, they came to a rise in the wood,
+shorter, but much steeper than the last.
+
+"Hand on mane!" cried Martin.
+
+Gerard obeyed, and the mule helped him up the hill faster even than he
+was running before.
+
+At the sight of this manoeuvre Dierich's man lost heart, and, being
+now full eighty yards behind Gerard, and rather more than that in
+advance of his nearest comrade, he pulled up short, and, in obedience to
+Dierich's order, took down his crossbow, levelled it deliberately, and
+just as the trio were sinking out of sight over the crest of the hill,
+sent the bolt whizzing among them.
+
+There was a cry of dismay; and, next moment, as if a thunderbolt had
+fallen on them, they were all lying on the ground, mule and all.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXII
+
+
+THE effect was so sudden and magical, that the shooter himself was
+stupefied for an instant. Then he hailed his companions to join him in
+effecting the capture, and himself set off up the hill: but, ere he had
+got half way, up rose the figure of Martin Wittenhaagen with a bent bow
+in his hand. Eric Wouverman no sooner saw him in this attitude, than he
+darted behind a tree, and made himself as small as possible. Martin's
+skill with that weapon was well known, and the slain dog was a keen
+reminder of it.
+
+Wouverman peered round the bark cautiously: there was the arrow's point
+still aimed at him. He saw it shine. He dared not move from his
+shelter.
+
+When he had been at peep-bo some minutes, his companions came up in
+great force.
+
+Then with a scornful laugh, Martin vanished, and presently was heard to
+ride off on the mule.
+
+All the men ran up together. The high ground commanded a view of a
+narrow but almost interminable glade.
+
+They saw Gerard and Margaret running along at a prodigious distance;
+they looked like gnats; and Martin galloping after them _ventre a
+terre_.
+
+The hunters were outwitted as well as outrun. A few words will explain
+Martin's conduct. We arrive at causes by noting coincidences: yet, now
+and then, coincidences are deceitful. As we have all seen a hare tumble
+over a briar just as the gun went off, and so raise expectations, then
+dash them to earth by scudding away untouched, so the burgomaster's mule
+put her foot in a rabbit-hole at or about the time the cross-bow bolt
+whizzed innocuous over her head: she fell and threw both her riders.
+Gerard caught Margaret, but was carried down by her weight and impetus;
+and behold, the soil was strewn with dramatis personae.
+
+The docile mule was up again directly, and stood trembling. Martin was
+next, and looking round saw there was but one in pursuit; on this he
+made the young lovers fly on foot, while he checked the enemy as I have
+recorded.
+
+He now galloped after his companions, and, when after a long race he
+caught them, he instantly put Gerard and Margaret on the mule, and ran
+by their side till his breath failed, then took his turn to ride, and so
+in rotation. Thus the runner was always fresh, and, long ere they
+relaxed their speed, all sound and trace of them was hopelessly lost to
+Dierich and his men. These latter went crest-fallen back to look after
+their chief, and their winged bloodhound.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIII
+
+
+LIFE and liberty, while safe, are little thought of: for why? they are
+matters of course. Endangered, they are rated at their real value. In
+this, too, they are like sunshine, whose beauty men notice not at noon
+when it is greatest, but towards evening when it lies in flakes of topaz
+under shady elms. Yet it is feebler then; but gloom lies beside it, and
+contrast reveals its fire. Thus Gerard and Margaret, though they started
+at every leaf that rustled louder than its fellows, glowed all over with
+joy and thankfulness as they glided among the friendly trees in safety
+and deep tranquil silence, baying dogs and brutal voices yet ringing in
+their mind's ears.
+
+But presently Gerard found stains of blood on Margaret's ankles.
+"Martin! Martin! help! they have wounded her: the crossbow!"
+
+"No, no," said Margaret, smiling to re-assure him. "I am not wounded,
+nor hurt at all."
+
+"But what is it, then, in Heaven's name?" cried Gerard, in great
+agitation.
+
+"Scold me not then!" and Margaret blushed.
+
+"Did I ever scold you?"
+
+"No, dear Gerard. Well, then, Martin said it was blood those cruel dogs
+followed; so I thought, if I could but have a little blood on my shoon,
+the dogs would follow me instead, and let my Gerard wend free. So I
+scratched my arm with Martin's knife--forgive me! Whose else could I
+take? Yours, Gerard? Ah, no. You forgive me?" said she beseechingly, and
+lovingly and fawningly, all in one.
+
+"Let me see this scratch first," said Gerard, choking with emotion.
+"There, I thought so. A scratch? I call it a cut--a deep terrible, cruel
+cut."
+
+Gerard shuddered at sight of it.
+
+"She might have done it with her bodkin," said the soldier. "Milksop!
+that sickens at sight of a scratch and a little blood."
+
+"No, no. I could look on a sea of blood; but not on hers. Oh, Margaret!
+how could you be so cruel?"
+
+Margaret smiled with love ineffable. "Foolish Gerard," murmured she, "to
+make so much of nothing." And she flung the guilty arm round his neck.
+"As if I would not give all the blood in my heart for you, let alone a
+few drops from my arm." And, with this, under the sense of his recent
+danger, she wept on his neck for pity and love: and he wept with her.
+
+"And I must part from her," he sobbed, "we two that love so dear--one
+must be in Holland, one in Italy. Ah me! ah me! ah me!"
+
+At this Margaret wept afresh, but patiently and silently. Instinct is
+never off its guard, and with her unselfishness was an instinct. To
+utter her present thoughts would be to add to Gerard's misery at
+parting, so she wept in silence.
+
+Suddenly they emerged upon a beaten path and Martin stopped.
+
+"This is the bridle-road I spoke of," said he, hanging his head, "and
+there away lies the hostelry."
+
+Margaret and Gerard cast a scared look at one another.
+
+"Come a step with me, Martin," whispered Gerard. When he had drawn him
+aside, he said to him in a broken voice, "Good Martin, watch over her
+for me! She is my wife; yet I leave her. See Martin! here is gold--it
+was for my journey; it is no use my asking her to take it: she would
+not; but you will for her, will you not? Oh Heaven! and is this all I
+can do for her? Money? But poverty is a curse. You will not let her want
+for anything, dear Martin? The burgomaster's silver is enough for me."
+
+"Thou art a good lad, Gerard. Neither want nor harm shall come to her. I
+care more for her little finger than for all the world: and were she
+nought to me, even for thy sake would I be a father to her. Go with a
+stout heart, and God be with thee going and coming." And the rough
+soldier wrung Gerard's hand, and turned his head away, with unwonted
+feeling.
+
+After a moment's silence, he was for going back to Margaret; but Gerard
+stopped him. "No, good Martin: prithee, stay here behind this thicket,
+and turn your head away from us while I--Oh Martin! Martin!"
+
+By this means Gerard escaped a witness of his anguish at leaving her he
+loved, and Martin escaped a piteous sight. He did not see the poor young
+things kneel and renew before Heaven those holy vows cruel men had
+interrupted. He did not see them cling together like one, and then try
+to part and fail, and return to one another, and cling again, like
+drowning, despairing creatures. But he heard Gerard sob, and sob, and
+Margaret moan.
+
+At last there was a hoarse cry, and feet pattered on the hard road.
+
+He started up, and there was Gerard running wildly, with both hands
+clasped above his head, in prayer, and Margaret tottering back towards
+him with palms extended piteously, as if for help, and ashy cheek, and
+eyes fixed on vacancy.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+He caught her in his arms, and spoke words of comfort to her; but her
+mind could not take them in; only at the sound of his voice she moaned
+and held him tight, and trembled violently.
+
+He got her on the mule, and put his arm round her, and so, supporting
+her frame, which, from being strung like a bow, had now turned all
+relaxed and powerless, he took her slowly and sadly home.
+
+She did not shed one tear, nor speak one word.
+
+At the edge of the wood he took her off the mule, and bade her go across
+to her father's house. She did as she was bid.
+
+Martin to Rotterdam. Sevenbergen was too hot for him.
+
+Gerard, severed from her he loved, went like one in a dream. He hired a
+horse and guide at the little hostelry, and rode swiftly towards the
+German frontier. But all was mechanical; his senses felt blunted; trees
+and houses and men moved by him like objects seen through a veil. His
+companion spoke to him twice, but he did not answer. Only once he cried
+out savagely, "Shall we never be out of this hateful country?"
+
+After many hours' riding they came to the brow of a steep hill; a small
+brook ran at the bottom.
+
+"Halt!" cried the guide, and pointed across the valley. "Here is
+Germany."
+
+"Where?"
+
+"On t'other side of the bourn. No need to ride down the hill, I trow."
+
+Gerard dismounted without a word, and took the burgomaster's purse from
+his girdle: while he opened it, "You will soon be out of this hateful
+country," said the guide, half sulkily; "mayhap the one you are going to
+will like you no better: anyway, though it be a church you have robbed,
+they cannot take you, once across that bourn."
+
+These words at another time would have earned the speaker an admonition,
+or a cuff. They fell on Gerard now like idle air. He paid the lad in
+silence, and descended the hill alone. The brook was silvery: it ran
+murmuring over little pebbles, that glittered, varnished by the clear
+water: he sat down and looked stupidly at them. Then he drank of the
+brook: then he laved his hot feet and hands in it; it was very cold: it
+waked him. He rose, and taking a run, leaped across it into Germany.
+Even as he touched the strange land he turned suddenly and looked back.
+"Farewell, ungrateful country!" he cried. "But for _her_ it would cost
+me nought to leave you for ever, and all my kith and kin, and--the
+mother that bore me, and--my playmates, and my little native town.
+Farewell, fatherland--welcome the wide world! omne so--lum for--ti
+p--p--at--ri--a." And with these brave words in his mouth he drooped
+suddenly with arms and legs all weak, and sat down and sobbed bitterly
+upon the foreign soil.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+When the young exile had sat a while bowed down, he rose and dashed the
+tears from his eyes like a man; and, not casting a single glance more
+behind him to weaken his heart, stepped out into the wide world.
+
+His love and heavy sorrow left no room in him for vulgar misgivings.
+Compared with rending himself from Margaret, it seemed a small thing to
+go on foot to Italy in that rude age.
+
+All nations meet in a convent; so thanks to his good friends the monks,
+and his own thirst of knowledge, he could speak most of the languages
+needed on that long road. He said to himself, "I will soon be at Rome:
+the sooner the better, now."
+
+After walking a good league, he came to a place where four ways met.
+Being country roads and serpentine, they had puzzled many an
+inexperienced neighbor passing from village to village. Gerard took out
+a little dial Peter had given him, and set it in the autumn sun, and by
+this compass steered unhesitatingly for Rome; inexperienced as a young
+swallow flying south, but, unlike the swallow, wandering south alone.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIV
+
+
+NOT far on this road he came upon a little group. Two men in sober suits
+stood leaning lazily on each side of a horse, talking to one another.
+The rider, in a silk doublet and bright green jerkin and hose, both of
+English cloth, glossy as a mole, lay flat on his stomach in the
+afternoon sun, and looked an enormous lizard. His velvet cloak (flaming
+yellow) was carefully spread over the horse's loins.
+
+"Is aught amiss?" inquired Gerard.
+
+"Not that I wot of," replied one of the servants.
+
+"But your master, he lies like a corpse. Are ye not ashamed to let him
+grovel on the ground?"
+
+"Go to, the bare ground is the best cure for his disorder. If you get
+sober in bed it gives you a headache; but you leap up from the hard
+ground like a lark in spring; eh, Ulric?"
+
+"He speaks sooth, young man," said Ulric, warmly.
+
+"What, is the gentleman drunk?"
+
+The servants burst into a hoarse laugh at the simplicity of Gerard's
+question. But suddenly Ulric stopped, and eyeing him all over, said very
+gravely, "Who are you, and where born, that know not the count is ever
+drunk at this hour?" and Gerard found himself a suspected character.
+
+"I am a stranger," said he, "but a true man, and one that loves
+knowledge: therefore ask I questions, and not for love of prying."
+
+"If you be a true man," said Ulric, shrewdly, "then give us trinkgeld
+for the knowledge we have given you."
+
+Gerard looked blank. But putting a good face on it, said, "Trinkgeld you
+shall have, such as my lean purse can spare, an if you will tell me why
+ye have ta'en his cloak from the man, and laid it on the beast."
+
+Under the inspiring influence of coming trinkgeld two solutions were
+instantly offered Gerard at once: the one was, that, should the count
+come to himself (which, being a seasoned toper, he was apt to do all in
+a minute), and find his horse standing sweating in the cold, while a
+cloak lay idle at hand, he would fall to cursing, and peradventure to
+laying on; the other, more pretentious, was, that a horse is a poor
+milksop, which drinking nothing but water, has to be cockered up and
+warmed outside; but a master, being a creature ever filled with good
+beer, has a store of inward heat that warms him to the skin, and renders
+a cloak a mere shred of idle vanity.
+
+Each of the speakers fell in love with his theory, and to tell the
+truth, both had taken a hair or two of the dog that had bitten their
+master to the brain: so their voices presently rose so high that the
+green sot began to growl instead of snoring; in their heat they did not
+notice this.
+
+Ere long the argument took a turn that sooner or later was pretty sure
+to enliven a discussion in that age. Hans, holding the bridle with his
+right hand, gave Ulric a sound cuff with his left; Ulric returned it
+with interest, his right hand being free, and at it they went ding dong
+over the horse's mane, pommelling one another, and jagging the poor
+beast, till he ran backward and trode with iron heel upon a promontory
+of the green lord; he, like the toad stung by Ithuriel's spear, started
+up howling, with one hand clapped to the smart and the other tugging at
+his hilt. The servants, amazed with terror, let the horse go; he
+galloped off whinnying, the men in pursuit of him crying out with fear,
+and the green noble after them volleying curses, his naked sword in his
+hand and his body rebounding from hedge to hedge in his headlong but
+zigzag career down the narrow lane.
+
+"In which hurtling" Gerard turned his back on them all, and went calmly
+south, glad to have saved the four tin farthings he had got ready for
+trinkgeld, but far too heavy hearted even to smile at their drunken
+extravagance.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The sun was nearly setting, and Gerard, who had now for some time been
+hoping in vain to find an inn by the way, was very ill at ease. To make
+matters worse, black clouds gathered over the sky.
+
+Gerard quickened his pace almost to a run.
+
+It was in vain: down came the rain in torrents, drenched the bewildered
+traveller, and seemed to extinguish the very sun; for his rays already
+fading could not cope with this new assailant. Gerard trudged on, dark,
+and wet and in an unknown region. "Fool! to leave Margaret," said he.
+
+Presently the darkness thickened.
+
+He was entering a great wood. Huge branches shot across the narrow road,
+and the benighted stranger groped his way in what seemed an interminable
+and inky cave with a rugged floor, on which he stumbled and stumbled as
+he went.
+
+On, and on, and on, with shivering limbs, and empty stomach, and
+fainting heart, till the wolves rose from their lairs and bayed all
+round the wood.
+
+His hair bristled; but he grasped his cudgel, and prepared to sell his
+life dear.
+
+There was no wind; and his excited ear heard light feet patter at times
+over the newly fallen leaves, and low branches rustled with creatures
+gliding swiftly past them.
+
+Presently in the sea of ink there was a great fiery star close to the
+ground. He hailed it as he would his patron saint. "CANDLE! a CANDLE!"
+he shouted, and tried to run; but the dark and rugged way soon stopped
+that. The light was more distant than he had thought; but at last in the
+very heart of the forest he found a house with lighted candles and loud
+voices inside it. He looked up to see if there was a sign-board. There
+was none. "Not an inn, after all," said he, sadly. "No matter; what
+Christian would turn a dog out into the wood to-night?" and with this he
+made for the door that led to the voices. He opened it slowly, and put
+his head in timidly. He drew it out abruptly, as if slapped in the face,
+and recoiled into the rain and darkness.
+
+He had peeped into a large but low room, the middle of which was filled
+by a huge round stove or clay oven that reached to the ceiling; round
+this wet clothes were drying, some on lines, and some more compendiously
+on rustics: these latter habiliments, impregnated with the wet of the
+day, but the dirt of a life, and lined with what another foot traveller
+in these parts calls "rammish clowns," evolved rank vapours and compound
+odours inexpressible, in steaming clouds.
+
+In one corner was a travelling family, a large one: thence flowed into
+the common stock the peculiar sickly smell of neglected brats. Garlic
+filled up the interstices of the air. And all this with closed window,
+and intense heat of the central furnace, and the breath of at least
+forty persons.
+
+They had just supped.
+
+Now Gerard, like most artists, had sensitive organs, and the potent
+effluvia struck dismay into him. But the rain lashed him outside, and
+the light and the fire tempted him in.
+
+He could not force his way all at once through the palpable perfumes;
+but he returned to the light again and again like the singed moth. At
+last he discovered that the various smells did not entirely mix, no
+fiend being there to stir them round. Odour of family predominated in
+two corners, stewed rustic reigned supreme in the centre, and garlic in
+the noisy group by the window. He found too, by hasty analysis, that of
+these the garlic described the smallest aerial orbit, and the scent of
+reeking rustic darted farthest; a flavour, as if ancient goats or the
+fathers of all foxes, had been drawn through a river, and were here
+dried by Nebuchadnezzar.
+
+So Gerard crept into a corner close to the door. But though the solidity
+of the main fetors isolated them somewhat, the heat and reeking vapours
+circulated and made the walls drip: and the home-nurtured novice found
+something like a cold snake wind about his legs, and his head turn to a
+great lump of lead; and next he felt like choking, sweetly slumbering,
+and dying, all in one.
+
+He was within an ace of swooning, but recovered to a deep sense of
+disgust and discouragement, and settled to go back to Holland at peep of
+day: this resolution formed, he plucked up a little heart, and, being
+faint with hunger, asked one of the men of garlic whether this was not
+an inn after all?
+
+"Whence come you who know not 'The Star of the Forest?'" was the reply.
+
+"I am a stranger; and in my country inns have aye a sign."
+
+"Droll country yours! What need of a sign to a public-house, a place
+that every soul knows?"
+
+Gerard was too tired and faint for the labour of argument: so he turned
+the conversation, and asked where he could find the landlord.
+
+At this fresh display of ignorance the native's contempt rose too high
+for words; he pointed to a middle-aged woman seated on the other side of
+the oven, and, turning to his mates, let them know what an outlandish
+animal was in the room. Thereat the loud voices stopped one by one, as
+the information penetrated the mass, and each eye turned as on a pivot,
+following Gerard, and his every movement, silently and zoologically.
+
+The landlady sat on a chair an inch or two higher than the rest, between
+two bundles. From the first, a huge heap of feathers and wings, she was
+taking the downy plumes, and pulling the others from the quills, and so
+filling bundle two; littering the floor ankle deep, and contributing to
+the general stock a stuffy little malaria, which might have played a
+distinguished part in a sweet room, but went for nothing here. Gerard
+asked her if he could have something to eat.
+
+She opened her eyes with astonishment. "Supper is over this hour and
+more."
+
+"But I had none of it, good dame."
+
+"Is that my fault? You are welcome to your share for me."
+
+"But I was benighted, and a stranger, and belated sore against my will."
+
+"What have I to do with that? All the world knows 'the Star of the
+Forest' sups from six till eight. Come before six, ye sup well; come
+before eight, ye sup as pleases Heaven; come after eight, ye get a clean
+bed, and a stirrup cup, or a horn of kine's milk at the dawning."
+
+Gerard looked blank. "May I go to bed then, dame?" said he sulkily, "for
+it is ill sitting up wet and fasting, and the byword saith 'he sups who
+sleeps.'"
+
+"The beds are not come yet," replied the landlady: "you will sleep when
+the rest do. Inns are not built for _one_."
+
+It was Gerard's turn to be astonished. "The beds were not come: what in
+Heaven's name did she mean?" But he was afraid to ask, for every word he
+had spoken hitherto had amazed the assembly; and zoological eyes were
+upon him--he felt them. He leaned against the wall and sighed audibly.
+
+At this fresh zoological trait a titter went round the watchful company.
+
+"So this is Germany," thought Gerard, "and Germany is a great country by
+Holland. Small nations for me."
+
+He consoled himself by reflecting it was to be his last, as well as his
+first, night in the land. His reverie was interrupted by an elbow driven
+into his ribs. He turned sharp on his assailant; who pointed across the
+room. Gerard looked, and a woman in the corner was beckoning him. He
+went towards her gingerly, being surprised and irresolute, so that to a
+spectator her beckoning finger seemed to be pulling him across the floor
+with a gut line. When he had got up to her, "hold the child," said she
+in a fine hearty voice and in a moment she plumped the bairn into
+Gerard's arms.
+
+He stood transfixed, jelly of lead in his hands, and sudden horror in
+his elongated countenance.
+
+At this ruefully expressive face the lynx-eyed conclave laughed loud and
+long.
+
+"Never heed them," said the woman cheerfully: "they know no better; how
+should they, bred an' born in a wood?" She was rummaging among her
+clothes with the two penetrating hands, one of which Gerard had set
+free. Presently she fished out a small tin plate and a dried pudding,
+and resuming her child with one arm, held them forth to Gerard with the
+other, keeping a thumb on the pudding to prevent it from slipping off.
+
+"Put it in the stove," said she, "you are too young to lie down
+fasting."
+
+Gerard thanked her warmly: but on his way to the stove his eye fell on
+the landlady. "_May_ I dame?" said he beseechingly.
+
+"Why not?" said she.
+
+The question was evidently another surprise, though less startling than
+its predecessors.
+
+Coming to the stove, Gerard found the oven door obstructed by "the
+rammish clowns." They did not budge. He hesitated a moment: the landlady
+saw, calmly put down her work, and coming up pulled a hircine man or two
+hither, and pushed a hircine man or two thither, with the impassive
+countenance of a housewife moving her furniture. "Turn about is fair
+play," she said. "Ye have been dry this ten minutes and better."
+
+Her experienced eye was not deceived; Gorgonii had done stewing, and
+begun baking. Debarred the stove they trundled home all but one, who
+stood like a table where the landlady had moved him to like a table, and
+Gerard baked his pudding, and, getting to the stove, burst into steam.
+
+The door opened, and in flew a bundle of straw.
+
+It was hurled by a hind with a pitchfork; another and another came
+flying after it till the room was like a clean farm yard. These were
+then dispersed round the stove in layers like the seats in an arena, and
+in a moment the company was all on its back.
+
+The beds had come.
+
+Gerard took out his pudding and found it delicious. While he was
+relishing it, the woman who had given it him, and who was now abed,
+beckoned him again. He went to her bundle side. "She is waiting for
+you," whispered the woman. Gerard returned to the stove, and gobbled the
+rest of his sausage, casting uneasy glances at the landlady seated
+silent as fate amid the prostrate multitude. The food bolted, he went to
+her and said, "Thank you kindly, dame, for waiting for me."
+
+"You are welcome," said she calmly, making neither much nor little of
+the favour; and with that began to gather up the feathers; but Gerard
+stopped her. "Nay, that is my task;" and he went down on his knees and
+collected them with ardour. She watched him demurely.
+
+"I wot not whence ye come," said she with a relic of distrust; adding
+more cordially, "but ye have been well brought up; y' have had a good
+mother, I'll go bail."
+
+At the door she committed the whole company to Heaven in a formula, and
+disappeared. Gerard to his straw in the very corner, for the guests lay
+round the sacred stove by seniority, _i. e._ priority of arrival.
+
+This punishment was a boon to Gerard, for thus he lay on the shore of
+odour and stifling heat, instead of in mid ocean.
+
+He was just dropping off, when he was awaked by a noise, and lo! there
+was the hind remorselessly shaking and waking guest after guest to ask
+him whether it was he who had picked up the mistress's feathers.
+
+"It was I," cried Gerard.
+
+"Oh, it was you was it?" said the other, and came striding rapidly over
+the intermediate sleepers. "She bade me say, 'One good turn deserves
+another,' and so here's your night-cap," and he thrust a great oaken mug
+under Gerard's nose.
+
+"I thank her and bless her, here goes--ugh!" and his gratitude ended in
+a wry face, for the beer was muddy, and had a strange medicinal twang
+new to the Hollander.
+
+"Trinke aus!" shouted the hind reproachfully.
+
+"Enow is as good as a feast," said the youth, Jesuitically.
+
+The hind cast a look of pity on this stranger who left liquor in his
+mug. "Ich brings euch," said he and drained it to the bottom.
+
+And now Gerard turned his face to the wall and pulled up two handfuls of
+the nice clean straw, and bored in them with his finger, and so made a
+scabbard, and sheathed his nose in it. And soon they were all asleep:
+men, maids, wives, and children, all lying higgledy-piggledy, and
+snoring in a dozen keys like an orchestra slowly tuning; and Gerard's
+body lay on straw in Germany, and his spirit was away to Sevenbergen.
+
+When he woke in the morning he found nearly all his fellow-passengers
+gone. One or two were waiting for dinner, nine o'clock: it was now six.
+He paid the landlady her demand, two pfenning, or about an English
+halfpenny and he of the pitchfork demanded trinkgeld, and getting a
+trifle more than usual, and seeing Gerard eye a foaming milk-pail he had
+just brought from the cow, hoisted it up bodily to his lips. "Drink your
+fill, man," said he, and on Gerard offering to pay for the delicious
+draught, told him in broad patois, that a man might swallow a skinful of
+milk, or a breakfast of air, without putting hand to pouch. At the door
+Gerard found his benefactress of last night, and a huge-chested artisan,
+her husband.
+
+Gerard thanked her, and in the spirit of the age offered her a creutzer
+for her pudding.
+
+But she repulsed his hand quietly. "For what do you take me?" said she,
+colouring faintly; "we are travellers and strangers the same as you, and
+bound to feel for those in like plight."
+
+Then Gerard blushed in his turn and stammered excuses.
+
+The hulking husband grinned superior to them both.
+
+"Give the vixen a kiss for her pudding, and cry quits," said he with an
+air impartial, judge-like and Jove-like.
+
+Gerard obeyed the loftly behest, and kissed the wife's cheek. "A
+blessing go with you both, good people," said he.
+
+"And God speed you, young man!" replied the honest couple: and with that
+they parted; and never met again in this world.
+
+The sun had just risen: the rain-drops on the leaves glittered like
+diamonds. The air was fresh and bracing, and Gerard steered south, and
+did not even remember his resolve of over night.
+
+Eight leagues he walked that day, and in the afternoon came upon a huge
+building with an enormous arched gateway and a postern by its side.
+
+"A monastery!" cried he joyfully; "I go no further lest I fare worse."
+He applied at the postern, and, on stating whence he came and whither
+bound, was instantly admitted and directed to the guest chamber, a large
+and lofty room, where travellers were fed and lodged gratis by the
+charity of the monastic orders. Soon the bell tinkled for vespers, and
+Gerard entered the church of the convent and from his place heard a
+service sung so exquisitely it seemed the choir of heaven. But one thing
+was wanting, Margaret was not there to hear it with him, and this made
+him sigh bitterly amid rapture. At supper, plain but wholesome and
+abundant food, and good beer, brewed in the convent, were set before him
+and his fellows, and at an early hour they were ushered into a large
+dormitory, and, the number being moderate, had each a truckle bed, and
+for covering sheepskins dressed with the fleece on: but previously to
+this a monk, struck by his youth and beauty, questioned him, and soon
+drew out his projects and his heart. When he was found to be convent
+bred and going alone to Rome, he became a personage, and in the morning
+they showed him over the convent and made him stay and dine in the
+refectory. They also pricked him a route on a slip of parchment, and the
+prior gave him a silver guilden to help him on the road, and advised him
+to join the first honest company he should fall in with, "and not face
+alone the manifold perils of the way."
+
+"Perils?" said Gerard to himself.
+
+That evening he came to a small straggling town where was one inn. It
+had no sign; but being now better versed in the customs of the country
+he detected it at once by the coats of arms on its walls. These
+belonged to the distinguished visitors who had slept in it at different
+epochs since its foundation, and left these customary tokens of their
+patronage. At present it looked more like a mausoleum than a hotel.
+Nothing moved nor sounded either in it, or about it. Gerard hammered on
+the great oak door: no answer. He hallooed: no reply. After a while he
+hallooed louder, and at last a little round window or rather hole in the
+wall, opened, a man's head protruded cautiously, like a tortoise's from
+its shell, and eyed Gerard stolidly, but never uttered a syllable.
+
+"Is this an inn?" asked Gerard with a covert sneer.
+
+The head seemed to fall into a brown study; eventually it nodded, but
+lazily.
+
+"Can I have entertainment here?"
+
+Again the head pondered and ended by nodding, but sullenly, and seemed a
+skull overburdened with catch-penny interrogatories.
+
+"How am I to get within, an't please you?"
+
+At this the head popped in, as if the last question had shot it; and a
+hand popped out, pointed round the corner of the building, and slammed
+the window.
+
+Gerard followed the indication, and after some research discovered that
+the fortification had one vulnerable part, a small, low door on its
+flank. As for the main entrance, that was used to keep out thieves and
+customers, except once or twice in a year, when they entered together,
+_i. e._ when some duke or count arrived in pomp with his train of gaudy
+ruffians.
+
+Gerard, having penetrated the outer fort, soon found his way to the
+stove (as the public room was called from the principal article in it),
+and sat down near the oven, in which were only a few live embers that
+diffused a mild and grateful heat.
+
+After waiting patiently a long time, he asked a grim old fellow with a
+long white beard, who stalked solemnly in, and turned the hour-glass and
+then was stalking out--when supper would be. The grisly Ganymede counted
+the guests on his fingers--"When I see thrice as many here as now."
+Gerard groaned.
+
+The grisly tyrant resented the rebellious sound. "Inns are not built for
+one," said he; "if you can't wait for the rest, look out for another
+lodging."
+
+Gerard sighed.
+
+At this the greybeard frowned.
+
+After a while company trickled steadily in, till full eighty persons of
+various conditions were congregated, and to our novice the place became
+a chamber of horrors; for here the mothers got together and compared
+ringworms, and the men scraped the mud off their shoes with their
+knives, and left it on the floor, and combed their long hair out,
+inmates included, and made their toilet, consisting generally of a dry
+rub. Water, however, was brought in ewers. Gerard pounced on one of
+these, but at sight of the liquid contents lost his temper and said to
+the waiter, "Wash you first your water, and then a man may wash his
+hands withal."
+
+"An it likes you not, seek another inn!"
+
+Gerard said nothing, but went quietly and courteously besought an old
+traveller to tell him how far it was to the next inn.
+
+"About four leagues."
+
+Then Gerard appreciated the grim pleasantry of th' unbending sire.
+
+That worthy now returned with an armful of wood, and, counting the
+travellers, put on a log for every six, by which act of raw justice the
+hotter the room the more heat he added. Poor Gerard noticed this little
+flaw in the ancient man's logic, but carefully suppressed every symptom
+of intelligence, lest his feet should have to carry his brains four
+leagues farther that night.
+
+When perspiration and suffocation were far advanced, they brought in the
+table-cloths; but oh, so brown, so dirty, and so coarse: they seemed
+like sacks that had been worn out in agriculture and come down to this,
+or like shreds from the mainsail of some worn-out ship. The Hollander,
+who had never seen such linen even in nightmare, uttered a faint cry.
+
+"What is to do?" inquired a traveller. Gerard pointed ruefully to the
+dirty sackcloth. The other looked at it with lack-lustre eye, and
+comprehended nought.
+
+A Burgundian soldier with his arbalest at his back came peeping over
+Gerard's shoulder, and, seeing what was amiss, laughed so loud that the
+room rang again, then slapped him on the back and cried, "Courage! le
+diable est mort."
+
+Gerard stared: he doubted alike the good tidings and their relevancy:
+but the tones were so hearty and the arbalestrier's face,
+notwithstanding a formidable beard, was so gay and genial, that he
+smiled, and after a pause said drily, "Il a bien fait: avec l'eau et
+linge du pays on allait le noircir a ne se reconnaitre plus."
+
+"Tiens, tiens!" cried the soldier, "v'la qui parle le Francais, peu s'en
+faut," and he seated himself by Gerard, and in a moment was talking
+volubly of war, women, and pillage, interlarding his discourse with
+curious oaths, at which Gerard drew away from him more or less.
+
+Presently in came the grisly servant, and counted them all on his
+fingers superciliously, like Abraham telling sheep, then went out again
+and returned with a deal trencher and deal spoon to each.
+
+Then there was an interval. Then he brought them a long mug apiece made
+of glass, and frowned. By and bye he stalked gloomily in with a hunch of
+bread apiece, and exited with an injured air. Expectation thus raised,
+the guests sat for nearly an hour balancing the wooden spoons, and with
+their own knives whittling the bread. Eventually when hope was extinct,
+patience worn out, and hunger exhausted, a huge vessel was brought in
+with pomp, the lid was removed, a cloud of steam rolled forth, and
+behold some thin broth with square pieces of bread floating. This,
+though not agreeable to the mind, served to distend the body. Slices of
+Strasbourg ham followed, and pieces of salt fish, both so highly salted
+that Gerard could hardly swallow a mouthful. Then came a kind of gruel,
+and, when the repast had lasted an hour and more some hashed meat highly
+peppered: and the French and Dutch being now full to the brim with the
+above dainties, and the draughts of beer the salt and spiced meats had
+provoked, in came roasted kids, most excellent, and carp and trout fresh
+from the stream. Gerard made an effort and looked angrily at them, but
+"could no more" as the poets say. The Burgundian swore by the liver and
+pike-staff of the good centurion, the natives had outwitted him. Then
+turning to Gerard, he said, "Courage, l'ami, le diable est mort," as
+loudly as before, but not with the same tone of conviction. The canny
+natives had kept an internal corner for contingencies, and polished the
+kids' very bones.
+
+The feast ended with a dish of raw animalcula in a wicker cage. A cheese
+had been surrounded with little twigs and strings; then a hole made in
+it and a little sour wine poured in. This speedily bred a small but
+numerous vermin. When the cheese was so rotten with them that only the
+twigs and string kept it from tumbling to pieces and walking off
+quadrivious, it came to table. By a malicious caprice of fate cage and
+menagerie were put down right under the Dutchman's organ of
+self-torture. He recoiled with a loud ejaculation, and hung to the bench
+by the calves of his legs.
+
+"What is the matter?" said a traveller disdainfully. "Does the good
+cheese scare ye? Then put it hither, in the name of all the saints!"
+
+"Cheese!" cried Gerard, "I see none. These nauseous reptiles have made
+away with every bit of it."
+
+"Well," replied another, "It is not gone far. By eating of the mites we
+eat the cheese to boot."
+
+"Nay, not so," said Gerard. "These reptiles are made like us, and digest
+their food and turn it to foul flesh even as we do ours to sweet: as
+well might you think to chew grass by eating of grass-fed beeves, as to
+eat cheese by swallowing these uncleanly insects."
+
+Gerard raised his voice in uttering this, and the company received the
+paradox in dead silence, and with a distrustful air, like any other
+stranger, during which the Burgundian, who understood German but
+imperfectly, made Gerard Gallicise the discussion. He patted his
+interpreter on the back. "C'est bien, mon gars: plus fin que toi n'est
+pas bete," and administered his formula of encouragement; and Gerard
+edged away from him; for next to ugly sights and ill odours the poor
+wretch disliked profaneness.
+
+Meantime, though shaken in argument, the raw reptiles were duly eaten
+and relished by the company, and served to provoke thirst, a principal
+aim of all the solids in that part of Germany. So now the company drank
+"garausses" all around, and their tongues were unloosed, and oh the
+Babel! But above the fierce clamour rose at intervals like some hero's
+war cry in battle, the trumpet-like voice of the Burgundian soldier
+shouting lustily "Courage, camarades, le diable est mort!"
+
+Entered grisly Ganymede holding in his hand a wooden dish with circles
+and semicircles marked on it in chalk. He put it down on the table and
+stood silent, sad, and sombre, as Charon by Styx waiting for his
+boat-load of souls. Then pouches and purses were rummaged, and each
+threw a coin into the dish. Gerard timidly observed that he had drunk
+next to no beer, and inquired how much less he was to pay than the
+others.
+
+"What mean you?" said Ganymede roughly. "Whose fault is it you have not
+drunken? Are all to suffer because one chooses to be a milksop? You will
+pay no more than the rest and no less."
+
+Gerard was abashed.
+
+"Courage, petit, le diable est mort," hiccoughed the soldier, and flung
+Ganymede a coin.
+
+"You are as bad as he is," said the old man peevishly, "you are paying
+too much;" and the tyrannical old Aristides returned him some coin out
+of the trencher with a most reproachful countenance. And now the man,
+whom Gerard had confuted an hour and a half ago, awoke from a brown
+study, in which he had been ever since, and came to him and said,
+"_Yes_: but the honey is none the worse for passing through the bees'
+bellies."
+
+Gerard stared. The answer had been so long on the road he hadn't an idea
+what it was an answer to. Seeing him dumbfoundered, the other concluded
+him confuted, and withdrew calmed.
+
+The bedrooms were upstairs dungeons with not a scrap of furniture except
+the bed, and a male servant settled inexorably who should sleep with
+whom. Neither money nor prayers would get a man a bed to himself here:
+custom forbade it sternly. You might as well have asked to monopolize a
+see-saw. They assigned to Gerard a man with a great black beard. He was
+an honest fellow enough; but not perfect; he would _not_ go to bed, and
+_would_ sit on the edge of it telling the wretched Gerard by force, and
+at length, the events of the day, and alternately laughing and crying at
+the same circumstances, which were not in the smallest degree pathetic
+or humorous, but only dead trivial. At last Gerard put his fingers in
+his ears, and lying down in his clothes for the sheets were too dirty
+for him to undress, contrived to sleep. But in an hour or two he awoke
+cold, and found that his drunken companion had got all the feather bed;
+so mighty is instinct. They lay between two beds; the lower one hard and
+made of straw, the upper soft and filled with feathers light as down.
+Gerard pulled at it, but the experienced drunkard held it fast
+mechanically. Gerard tried to twitch it away by surprise; but instinct
+was too many for him. On this he got out of bed, and, kneeling down on
+his bed-fellow's unguarded side easily whipped the prize away and rolled
+with it under the bed, and there lay on one edge of it, and curled the
+rest round his shoulders. Before he slept he often heard something
+grumbling and growling above him, which was some little satisfaction.
+Thus Instinct was outwitted, and victorious Reason lay chuckling on
+feathers, and not quite choked with dust.
+
+At peep of day Gerard rose, flung the feather bed upon his snoring
+companion, and went in search of milk and air.
+
+A cheerful voice hailed him in French: "What ho! you are up with the
+sun, comrade."
+
+"He rises betimes that lies in a dog's lair," answered Gerard, crossly.
+
+"Courage, l'ami! le diable est mort," was the instant reply. The soldier
+then told him his name was Denys, and he was passing from Flushing in
+Zealand to the duke's French dominions; a change the more agreeable to
+him, as he should revisit his native place, and a host of pretty girls
+who had wept at his departure, and should hear French spoken again. "And
+who are you, and whither bound?"
+
+"My name is Gerard, and I am going to Rome," said the more reserved
+Hollander, and in a way that invited no further confidences.
+
+"All the better; we will go together as far as Burgundy."
+
+"That is not my road."
+
+"All roads take to Rome."
+
+"Ay, but the shortest road thither is my way."
+
+"Well, then, it is I who must go out of my way a step for the sake of
+good company, for thy face likes me, and thou speakest French, or
+nearly."
+
+"There go two words to that bargain," said Gerard, coldly. "I steer by
+proverbs too. They do put old heads on young men's shoulders. 'Bon loup
+mauvais compagnon, dit le brebis:' and a soldier, they say, is near akin
+to a wolf."
+
+"They lie," said Denys: "besides, if he is, 'les loups nese mangent pas
+entre eux.'"
+
+"Ay, but, sir soldier, I am not a wolf; and, thou knowest, 'a bien
+petite occasion se saisit le loup du mouton.'"
+
+"Let us drop wolves and sheep, being men; my meaning is, that a good
+soldier never pillages--a comrade. Come, young man, too much suspicion
+becomes not your years. They who travel should learn to read faces;
+methinks you might see lealty in mine sith I have seen it in yourn. Is
+it yon fat purse at your girdle you fear for?" (Gerard turned pale.)
+"Look hither!" and he undid his belt, and poured out of it a double
+handful of gold pieces, then returned them to their hiding place. "There
+is a hostage for you," said he; "carry you that, and let us be
+comrades," and handed him his belt, gold and all.
+
+Gerard stared. "If I am over prudent, you have not enow." But he flushed
+and looked pleased at the other's trust in him.
+
+"Bah! I can read faces; and so must you, or you'll never take your four
+bones safe to Rome."
+
+"Soldier, you would find me a dull companion, for my heart is very
+heavy," said Gerard, yielding.
+
+"I'll cheer you, mon gars."
+
+"I think you would," said Gerard sweetly; "and sore need have I of a
+kindly voice in mine ear this day."
+
+"Oh! no soul is sad alongside me. I lift up their poor little hearts
+with my consigne: 'Courage, tout le monde, le diable est mort.' Ha! ha!"
+
+"So be it then," said Gerard. "But take back your belt, for I could
+never trust by halves. We will go together as far as Rhine, and God go
+with us both!"
+
+"Amen!" said Denys, and lifted his cap. "En avant!"
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The pair trudged manfully on, and Denys enlivened the weary way. He
+chattered about battles and sieges, and things which were new to Gerard;
+and he was one of those who _make_ little incidents wherever they go. He
+passed nobody without addressing him. "They don't understand it, but it
+wakes them up," said he. But, whenever they fell in with a monk or
+priest, he pulled a long face, and sought the reverend father's
+blessing, and fearlessly poured out on him floods of German words in
+such order as not to produce a single German sentence. He doffed his cap
+to every woman, high or low, he caught sight of, and with eagle eye
+discerned her best feature, and complimented her on it in his native
+tongue, well adapted to such matters: and, at each carrion crow or
+magpie, down came his cross-bow, and he would go a furlong off the road
+to circumvent it; and indeed he did shoot one old crow with laudable
+neatness and despatch, and carried it to the nearest hen-roost, and
+there slipped in and set it upon a nest. "The good-wife will say,
+'Alack, here is Beelzebub a hatching of my eggs.'"
+
+"No, you forget, he is dead," objected Gerard.
+
+"So he is, so he is. But she doesn't know that, not having the luck to
+be acquainted with me, who carry the good news from city to city,
+uplifting men's hearts."
+
+Such was Denys in time of peace.
+
+Our travellers towards nightfall reached a village; it was a very small
+one, but contained a place of entertainment. They searched for it, and
+found a small house with barn and stables. In the former was the
+everlasting stove, and the clothes drying round it on lines, and a
+traveller or two sitting morose. Gerard asked for supper. "Supper? We
+have no time to cook for travellers; we only provide lodging, good
+lodging for man and beast. You can have some beer."
+
+"Madman, who, born in Holland, sought other lands!" snorted Gerard in
+Dutch. The landlady started.
+
+"What gibberish is that?" asked she, and crossed herself with looks of
+superstitious alarm. "You can buy what you like in the village, and cook
+it in our oven; but, prithee, mutter no charms nor sorceries here, good
+man; don't ye now, it do make my flesh creep so."
+
+They scoured the village for food, and ended by supping on roasted eggs
+and brown bread.
+
+At a very early hour their chambermaid came for them. It was a
+rosy-cheeked old fellow with a lanthorn.
+
+They followed him. He led them across a dirty farm-yard, where they had
+much ado to pick their steps, and brought them into a cow-house. There,
+on each side of every cow, was laid a little clean straw, and a tied
+bundle of ditto for a pillow. The old man looked down on this his work
+with paternal pride. Not so Gerard. "What, do you set Christian men to
+lie among cattle?"
+
+"Well, it is hard upon the poor beasts. They have scarce room to turn."
+
+"Oh! what, it is not hard on us then?"
+
+"Where is the hardship? I have lain among them all my life. Look at me!
+I am four score, and never had a headache in all my born days--all along
+of lying among the kye. Bless your silly head, kine's breath is ten
+times sweeter to drink nor Christians'. You try it!" and he slammed the
+bedroom door.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+"Denys, where are you?" whined Gerard.
+
+"Here, on her other side."
+
+"What are you doing?"
+
+"I know not. But, as near as I can guess, I think I must be going to
+sleep. What are you at?"
+
+"I am saying my prayers."
+
+"Forget me not in them!"
+
+"Is it likely? Denys I shall soon have done: do not go to sleep, I want
+to talk."
+
+"Despatch then! for I feel--augh--like--like--floating--in the sky--on a
+warm cloud."
+
+"Denys!"
+
+"Augh! eh! hallo! is it time to get up?"
+
+"Alack, no. There, I hurried my orisons to talk; and look at you, going
+to sleep! We shall be starved before morning, having no coverlets."
+
+"Well, you know what to do."
+
+"Not I, in sooth."
+
+"Cuddle the cow."
+
+"Thank you."
+
+"Burrow in the straw then. You must be very new to the world, to grumble
+at this. How would you bear to lie on the field of battle on a frosty
+night, as I did t'other day, stark naked, with nothing to keep me warm
+but the carcass of a fellow I had been and helped kill?"
+
+"Horrible! horrible! Tell me all about it! Oh but this is sweet."
+
+"Well, we had a little battle in Brabant, and won a little victory, but
+it cost us dear: several arbalestriers turned their toes up, and I among
+them."
+
+"Killed, Denys? come now!"
+
+"Dead as mutton. Stuck full of pike-holes till the blood ran out of me,
+like the good wine of Macon from the trodden grapes. It is right
+bounteous in me to pour the tale in minstrel phrase for--augh--I am
+sleepy. Augh--now where was I?"
+
+"Left dead on the field of battle, bleeding like a pig; that is to say
+like grapes, or something; go on, prithee go on, 'tis a sin to sleep in
+the midst of a good story."
+
+"Granted. Well, some of those vagabonds, that strip the dead soldier on
+the field of glory, came and took every rag off me; they wrought me no
+further ill, because there was no need."
+
+"No: you were dead."
+
+"C'est convenu. This must have been at sundown; and with the night came
+a shrewd frost that barkened the blood on my wounds, and stopped all the
+rivulets that were running from my heart, and about midnight I awoke as
+from a trance."
+
+"And thought you were in heaven?" asked Gerard eagerly, being a youth
+inoculated with monkish tales.
+
+"Too frost bitten for that, mon gars; besides, I heard the wounded
+groaning on all sides; so I knew I was in the old place. I saw I could
+not live the night through without cover. I groped about shivering and
+shivering; at last one did suddenly leave groaning. 'You are sped,' said
+I, so made up to him, and true enough he was dead, but warm, you know. I
+took my lord in my arms; but was too weak to carry him: so rolled with
+him into a ditch hard by: and there my comrades found me in the morning
+properly stung with nettles and hugging a dead Fleming for the bare
+life."
+
+Gerard shuddered. "And this is war; this is the chosen theme of poets
+and troubadours, and Reden Ryckers. Truly was it said by the men of old
+'dulce bellum _inexpertis_.'"
+
+"Tu dis?"
+
+"I say,--oh what stout hearts some men have!"
+
+"N'est-ce pas, p'tit? So after that sort--thing--this sort thing is
+heaven. Soft--warm--good company comradancow--cou'age--diable--m--ornk!"
+
+And the glib tongue was still for some hours.
+
+In the morning Gerard was wakened by a liquid hitting his eye, and it
+was Denys employing the cow's udder as a squirt.
+
+"Oh fie!" cried Gerard, "to waste the good milk:" and he took a horn out
+of his wallet. "Fill this! but indeed I see not what right we have to
+meddle with her milk at all."
+
+"Make your mind easy! Last night la camarade was not nice; but what
+then, true friendship dispenses with ceremony. To-day we make as free
+with her."
+
+"Why what did she do, poor thing?"
+
+"Ate my pillow."
+
+"Ha! ha!"
+
+"On waking I had to hunt for my head, and found it down in the stable
+gutter. She ate our pillow from us, we drink our pillow from her. A
+votre sante, madame; et sans rancune;" and the dog drank her to her own
+health.
+
+"The ancient was right though," said Gerard. "Never have I risen so
+refreshed since I left my native land. Henceforth let us shun great
+towns, and still lie in a convent or a cow-house; for I'd liever sleep
+on fresh straw than on linen well washed six months agone; and the
+breath of kine it is sweeter than that of Christians, let alone the
+garlic, which men and women folk affect, but cowen abhor from, and so do
+I, St. Bavon be my witness!"
+
+The soldier eyed him from head to foot: "Now but for that little tuft on
+your chin I should take you for a girl: and by the fingernails of St.
+Luke, no ill-favoured one neither."
+
+These three towns proved types and repeated themselves with slight
+variations for many a weary league: but, even when he could get neither
+a convent nor a cow-house, Gerard learned in time to steel himself to
+the inevitable, and to emulate his comrade, whom he looked on as almost
+superhuman for hardihood of body and spirit.
+
+There was however a balance to all this veneration.
+
+Denys, like his predecessor Achilles, had his weak part, his very weak
+part thought Gerard.
+
+His foible was "woman."
+
+Whatever he was saying or doing, he stopped short at sight of a
+farthingale, and his whole soul became occupied with that garment and
+its inmate till they had disappeared; and sometimes for a good while
+after.
+
+He often put Gerard to the blush by talking his amazing German to such
+females as he caught standing or sitting indoors or out; at which they
+stared; and when he met a peasant girl on the road, he took off his cap
+to her and saluted her as if she was a queen. The invariable effect of
+which was, that she suddenly drew herself up quite stiff like a soldier
+on parade, and wore a forbidding countenance.
+
+"They drive me to despair," said Denys. "Is that a just return to a
+civil bonnetade? They are large, they are fair, but stupid as swans."
+
+"What breeding can you expect from women that wear no hose?" inquired
+Gerard; "and some of them no shoon? They seem to me reserved, and
+modest, as becomes their sex; and sober, whereas the men are little
+better than beer-barrels. Would you have them brazen as well as
+hoseless?"
+
+"A little affability adorns even beauty," sighed Denys.
+
+"Then let them alone, sith they are not to your taste," retorted Gerard.
+"What, is there no sweet face in Bergundy that would pale to see you so
+wrapped up in strange women?"
+
+"Half a dozen that would cry their eyes out."
+
+"Well then!"
+
+"But it is a long way to Burgundy."
+
+"Ay, to the foot, but not to the heart. I am there, sleeping and waking,
+and almost every minute of the day."
+
+"In Burgundy? Why I thought you had never--"
+
+"In Burgundy?" cried Gerard contemptuously. "No, in sweet Sevenbergen.
+Ah! well-a-day! well-a-day!"
+
+Many such dialogues as this passed between the pair on the long and
+weary road, and neither could change the other.
+
+One day about noon they reached a town of some pretensions and Gerard
+was glad, for he wanted to buy a pair of shoes: his own were quite worn
+out. They soon found a shop that displayed a goodly array and made up to
+it, and would have entered it; but the shopkeeper sat on the door-step
+taking a nap, and was so fat as to block up the narrow doorway: the very
+light could hardly struggle past his "too, too solid flesh," much less a
+carnal customer.
+
+My fair readers, accustomed, when they go shopping, to be met half way
+with nods, and becks and wreathed smiles, and waived into a seat, while
+almost at the same instant an eager shopman flings himself half across
+the counter in a semicircle to learn their commands, can best appreciate
+this mediaeval Teuton, who kept a shop as a dog keeps a kennel: and sat
+at the exclusion of custom, snoring like a pig.
+
+Denys and Gerard stood and contemplated this curiosity; emblem, permit
+me to remark, of the lets and hindrances to commerce that characterized
+his epoch.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+"Jump over him!"
+
+"The door is too low."
+
+"March through him!"
+
+"The man is too thick."
+
+"What is the coil?" inquired a mumbling voice from the interior:
+apprentice with his mouth full.
+
+"We want to get into your shop."
+
+"What for, in Heaven's name??!!!"
+
+"Shoon; lazy bones!"
+
+The ire of the apprentice began to rise at such an explanation. "And
+could ye find no hour out of all the twelve to come pestering us for
+shoon, but the one little, little hour my master takes his nap, and I
+sit down to my dinner, when all the rest of the world is full long ago?"
+
+Denys heard, but could not follow the sense. "Waste no more time talking
+their German gibberish," said he; "take out thy knife and tickle his fat
+ribs."
+
+"That will I not," said Gerard.
+
+"Then here goes; I'll prong him with this."
+
+Gerard seized the mad fellow's arm in dismay, for he had been long
+enough in the country to guess that the whole town would take part in
+any brawl with the native against a stranger. But Denys twisted away
+from him, and the cross-bow bolt in his hand was actually on the road to
+the sleeper's ribs; but at that very moment two females crossed the road
+towards him; he saw the blissful vision, and instantly forgot what he
+was about, and awaited their approach with unreasonable joy.
+
+Though companions they were not equals; except in attractiveness to a
+Burgundian cross-bow man: for one was very tall, the other short, and,
+by one of those anomalies which society, however primitive, speedily
+establishes, the long one held up the little one's tail. The tall one
+wore a plain linen coif on her head, a little grogram cloak over her
+shoulders, a grey kirtle, and a short farthingale or petticoat of bright
+red cloth, and feet and legs quite bare, though her arms were veiled in
+tight linen sleeves.
+
+The other a kirtle broadly trimmed with fur, her arms in double sleeves,
+whereof the inner of yellow satin clung to the skin; the outer, all
+befurred, were open at the inside of the elbow, and so the arm passed
+through and left them dangling. Velvet head-dress, huge purse at girdle,
+gorgeous train, bare legs. And thus they came on, the citizen's wife
+strutting, and the maid gliding after, holding her mistress's train
+devoutly in both hands, and bending and winding her lithe body prettily
+enough to do it. Imagine (if not pressed for time) a bantam, with a
+guinea-hen stepping obsequious at its stately heel.
+
+This pageant made straight for the shoemaker's shop. Denys louted low;
+the worshipful lady nodded graciously, but rapidly, having business on
+hand, or rather on foot; for in a moment she poked the point of her
+little shoe into the sleeper, and worked it round in him like a gimlet,
+till with a long snarl he woke. The incarnate shutter rising and
+grumbling vaguely, the lady swept in and deigned him no further notice.
+He retreated to his neighbor's shop the tailor's, and, sitting on the
+step, protected it from the impertinence of morning calls. Neighbors
+should be neighborly.
+
+Denys and Gerard followed the dignity into the shop, where sat the
+apprentice at dinner; the maid stood outside with her insteps crossed,
+leaning against the wall, and tapping it with her nails.
+
+"Those, yonder," said the dignity briefly, pointing with an imperious
+little white hand to some yellow shoes gilded at the toe. While the
+apprentice stood stock still, neutralized by his dinner and his duty,
+Denys sprang at the shoes, and brought them to her; she smiled, and
+calmly seating herself, protruded her foot, shod, but hoseless, and
+scented. Down went Denys on his knees, and drew off her shoe, and tried
+the new ones on the white skin devoutly. Finding she had a willing
+victim, she abused the opportunity, tried first one pair, then another,
+then the first again, and so on, balancing and hesitating for about half
+an hour, to Gerard's disgust and Denys's weak delight. At last she was
+fitted, and handed two pair of yellow and one pair of red shoes out to
+her servant. Then was heard a sigh. It burst from the owner of the shop:
+he had risen from slumber, and was now hovering about, like a partridge
+near her brood in danger. "There go all my coloured shoes?" said he, as
+they disappeared in the girl's apron.
+
+The lady departed: Gerard fitted himself with a stout pair, asked the
+price, paid it without a word, and gave his old ones to a beggar in the
+street, who blessed him in the market-place, and threw them furiously
+down a well in the suburbs. The comrades left the shop, and in it two
+melancholy men, that looked, and even talked, as if they had been robbed
+wholesale.
+
+"My shoon are sore worn," said Denys, grinding his teeth; "but I'll go
+barefoot till I reach France, ere I'll leave my money with such churls
+as these."
+
+The Dutchman replied calmly, "They seem indifferent well sewn."
+
+As they drew near the Rhine, they passed through forest after forest,
+and now for the first time ugly words sounded in travellers' mouths,
+seated around stoves. "Thieves!" "black gangs!" "cutthroats!" etc.
+
+The very rustics were said to have a custom hereabouts of murdering the
+unwary traveller in these gloomy woods, whose dark and devious windings
+enabled those, who were familiar with them, to do deeds of rapine and
+blood undetected, or, if detected, easily to baffle pursuit.
+
+Certain it was, that every clown they met, carried, whether for offence
+or defence, a most formidable weapon; a light axe with a short pike at
+the head, and a long slender handle of ash or yew, well seasoned. These
+the natives could all throw with singular precision, so as to make the
+point strike an object at several yards' distance, or could slay a
+bullock at hand with a stroke of the blade. Gerard bought one and
+practised with it, Denys quietly filed and ground his bolts sharp,
+whistling the whilst; and, when they entered a gloomy wood, he would
+unsling his cross-bow and carry it ready for action; but not so much
+like a traveller fearing an attack as a sportsman watchful not to miss a
+snap shot.
+
+One day, being in a forest a few leagues from Dusseldorf, as Gerard was
+walking like one in a dream, thinking of Margaret, and scarce seeing the
+road he trode, his companion laid a hand on his shoulder, and strung his
+cross-bow with glittering eye. "Hush!" said he in a low whisper that
+startled Gerard more than thunder. Gerard grasped his axe tight, and
+shook a little: he heard a rustling in the wood hard by, and at the same
+moment Denys sprang into the wood, and his cross-bow went to his
+shoulder, even as he jumped. Twang! went the metal string; and after an
+instant's suspense he roared, "Run forward, guard the road, he is hit!
+he is hit!"
+
+Gerard darted forward, and, as he ran, a young bear burst out of the
+wood right upon him: finding itself intercepted, it went up on its hind
+legs with a snarl, and, though not half grown, opened formidable jaws
+and long claws. Gerard in a fury of excitement and agitation flung
+himself on it and delivered a tremendous blow on its nose with his axe,
+and the creature staggered; another, and it lay grovelling with Gerard
+hacking it.
+
+"Hallo! stop! you are mad to spoil the meat."
+
+"I took it for a robber," said Gerard panting. "I mean I had made ready
+for a robber, so I could not hold my hand."
+
+"Ay, these chattering travellers have stuffed your head full of thieves
+and assassins: they have not got a real live robber in their whole
+nation. Nay, I'll carry the beast; bear thou my cross-bow."
+
+"We will carry it by turns then," said Gerard, "for 'tis a heavy load:
+poor thing how its blood drips. Why did we slay it?"
+
+"For supper, and the reward the baillie of the next town shall give us."
+
+"And for that it must die, when it had but just begun to live: and
+perchance it hath a mother that will miss it sore this night, and loves
+it as ours love us; more than mine doth me."
+
+"What, know you not that his mother was caught in a pitfall last month,
+and her skin is now at the tanner's? and his father was stuck full of
+cloth-yard shafts t'other day, and died like Julius Caesar, with his
+hands folded on his bosom, and a dead dog in each of them?"
+
+But Gerard would not view it jestingly: "Why then," said he, "we have
+killed one of God's creatures that was all alone in the world--as I am
+this day, in this strange land."
+
+"You young milksop," roared Denys, "these things must not be looked at
+so, or not another bow would be drawn nor quarel fly in forest nor
+battle-field. Why, one of your kidney consorting with a troop of pikemen
+should turn them to a row of milk-pails: it is ended, to Rome thou goest
+not alone; for never wouldst thou reach the Alps in a whole skin. I take
+thee to Remiremont, my native place, and there I marry thee to my young
+sister, she is blooming as a peach. Thou shakest thy head? ah! I forgot;
+thou lovest elsewhere, and art a one woman man, a creature to me scarce
+conceivable. Well then, I shall find thee, not a wife, nor a leman, but
+a friend; some honest Bergundian who shall go with thee as far as Lyons;
+and much I doubt that honest fellow will be myself, into whose liquor
+thou hast dropped sundry powders to make me love thee; for erst I
+endured not doves in doublet and hose. From Lyons, I say, I can trust
+thee by ship to Italy, which being by all accounts the very stronghold
+of milksops, thou wilt there be safe: they will hear thy words, and make
+thee their duke in a twinkling."
+
+Gerard sighed: "In sooth I love not to think of this Dusseldorf where we
+are to part company, good friend."
+
+They walked silently, each thinking of the separation at hand; the
+thought checked trifling conversation, and at these moments it is a
+relief to do something, however insignificant. Gerard asked Denys to
+lend him a bolt. "I have often shot with a long bow, but never with one
+of these!"
+
+"Draw thy knife and cut this one out of the cub," said Denys slily.
+
+"Nay, nay, I want a clean one."
+
+Denys gave him three out of his quiver.
+
+Gerard strung the bow, and levelled it at a bough that had fallen into
+the road at some distance. The power of the instrument surprised him;
+the short but thick steel bow jarred him to the very heel as it went
+off, and the swift steel shaft was invisible in its passage; only the
+dead leaves, with which November had carpeted the narrow road, flew
+about on the other side of the bough.
+
+"Ye aimed a thought too high," said Denys.
+
+"What a deadly thing! no wonder it is driving out the long-bow,--to
+Martin's much discontent."
+
+"Ay, lad," said Denys triumphantly, "it gains ground every day, in spite
+of their laws and their proclamations to keep up the yewen bow, because
+forsooth their grandsires shot with it, knowing no better. You see,
+Gerard, war is not pastime. Men will shoot at their enemies with the
+hittingest arm and the killingest, not with the longest and missingest."
+
+"Then these new engines I hear of will put both bows down; for these,
+with a pinch of black dust, and a leaden ball, and a child's finger,
+shall slay you Mars and Goliah, and the Seven Champions."
+
+"Pooh! pooh!" said Denys warmly; "petrone nor harquebuss shall ever put
+down Sir Arbalest. Why, we can shoot ten times while they are putting
+their charcoal and their lead into their leathern smoke belchers, and
+then kindling their matches. All that is too fumbling for the field of
+battle; there a soldier's weapon needs be ay ready like his heart."
+
+Gerard did not answer; for his ear was attracted by a sound behind them.
+It was a peculiar sound, too, like something heavy, but not hard,
+rushing softly over the dead leaves. He turned round with some little
+curiosity. A colossal creature was coming down the road at about sixty
+paces distance.
+
+He looked at it in a sort of calm stupor at first; but the next moment
+he turned ashy pale.
+
+"Denys!" he cried. "Oh God! Denys!"
+
+Denys whirled round.
+
+It was a bear as big as a cart-horse.
+
+It was tearing along with its huge head down, running on a hot scent.
+
+The very moment he saw it Denys said in a sickening whisper:
+
+"THE CUB!"
+
+Oh! the concentrated horror of that one word, whispered hoarsely, with
+dilating eyes! For in that syllable it all flashed upon them both like a
+sudden stroke of lightning in the dark--the bloody trail, the murdered
+cub, the mother upon them, _and it_. DEATH.
+
+All this in a moment of time. The next, she saw them. Huge as she was,
+she seemed to double herself (it was her long hair bristling with rage):
+she raised her head big as a bull's, her swine-shaped jaws opened wide
+at them, her eyes turned to blood and flame, and she rushed upon them,
+scattering the leaves about her like a whirlwind as she came.
+
+"Shoot!" screamed Denys, but Gerard stood shaking from head to foot,
+useless.
+
+"Shoot, man! ten thousand devils, shoot! too late! Tree! tree!" and he
+dropped the cub, pushed Gerard across the road, and flew to the first
+tree and climbed it, Gerard the same on his side; and, as they fled,
+both men uttered inhuman howls like savage creatures grazed by death.
+
+With all their speed one or other would have been torn to fragments at
+the foot of his tree; but the bear stopped a moment at the cub.
+
+Without taking her bloodshot eye off those she was hunting, she smelt it
+all round, and found, how, her Creator only knows, that it was dead,
+quite dead. She gave a yell such as neither of the hunted ones had ever
+heard, nor dreamed to be in nature; and flew after Denys. She reared and
+struck at him as he climbed. He was just out of reach.
+
+Instantly she seized the tree, and with her huge teeth tore a great
+piece out of it with a crash. Then she reared again, dug her claws deep
+into the bark, and began to mount it slowly, but as surely as a monkey.
+
+Denys's evil star had led him to a dead tree, a mere shaft, and of no
+very great height. He climbed faster than his pursuer, and was soon at
+the top. He looked this way and that for some bough of another tree to
+spring to. There was none: and, if he jumped down, he knew the bear
+would be upon him ere he could recover the fall, and make short work of
+him. Moreover Denys was little used to turning his back on danger, and
+his blood was rising at being hunted. He turned to bay.
+
+"My hour is come," thought he. "Let me meet death like a man." He
+kneeled down and grasped a small shoot to steady himself, drew his long
+knife, and, clenching his teeth, prepared to jab the huge brute as soon
+as it should mount within reach.
+
+Of this combat the result was not doubtful.
+
+The monster's head and neck were scarce vulnerable for bone and masses
+of hair. The man was going to sting the bear, and the bear to crack the
+man like a nut.
+
+Gerard's heart was better than his nerves. He saw his friend's mortal
+danger, and passed at once from fear to blindish rage. He slipped down
+his tree in a moment, caught up the cross-bow, which he had dropped in
+the road, and, running furiously up, sent a bolt into the bear's body
+with a loud shout. The bear gave a snarl of rage and pain, and turned
+its head irresolutely.
+
+"Keep aloof!" cried Denys, "or you are a dead man."
+
+"I care not;" and in a moment he had another bolt ready and shot it
+fiercely into the bear, screaming, "Take that! take that!"
+
+Denys poured a volley of oaths down at him. "Get away, idiot!"
+
+He was right: the bear finding so formidable and noisy a foe behind him,
+slipped growling down the tree, rending deep furrows in it as she
+slipped. Gerard ran back to his tree and climbed it swiftly. But while
+his legs were dangling some eight feet from the ground, the bear came
+rearing and struck with her fore paw, and out flew a piece of bloody
+cloth from Gerard's hose. He climbed, and climbed; and presently he
+heard as it were in the air a voice say, "Go out on the bough!" He
+looked, and there was a long massive branch before him shooting upwards
+at a slight angle; he threw his body across it, and by a series of
+convulsive efforts worked up it to the end.
+
+Then he looked round panting.
+
+The bear was mounting the tree on the other side. He heard her claws
+scrape, and saw her bulge on both sides of the massive tree. Her eye not
+being very quick she reached the fork and passed it, mounting the main
+stem. Gerard drew breath more freely. The bear either heard him, or
+found by scent she was wrong: she paused; presently she caught sight of
+him. She eyed him steadily; then quietly descended to the fork.
+
+Slowly and cautiously she stretched out a paw and tried the bough. It
+was a stiff oak branch, sound as iron. Instinct taught the creature
+this: it crawled carefully out on the bough, growling savagely as it
+came.
+
+Gerard looked wildly down. He was forty feet from the ground. Death
+below. Death moving slow but sure on him in a still more horrible form.
+His hair bristled. The sweat poured from him. He sat helpless,
+fascinated, tongue-tied.
+
+As the fearful monster crawled growling towards him, incongruous
+thoughts coursed through his mind. Margaret: the Vulgate, where it
+speaks of the rage of a she-bear robbed of her whelps,--Rome,--Eternity.
+
+The bear crawled on. And now the stupor of death fell on the doomed man;
+he saw the open jaws and bloodshot eyes coming, but in a mist.
+
+As in a mist he heard a twang: he glanced down; Denys, white and silent
+as death, was shooting up at the bear. The bear snarled at the twang;
+but crawled on. Again the cross-bow twanged; and the bear snarled; and
+came nearer. Again the cross-bow twanged, and the next moment the bear
+was close upon Gerard, where he sat, with hair standing stiff on end,
+and eyes starting from their sockets, palsied. The bear opened her jaws
+like a grave; and hot blood spouted from them upon Gerard as from a
+pump. The bough rocked. The wounded monster was reeling; it clung, it
+stuck its sickles of claws deep into the wood; it toppled, its claws
+held firm, but its body rolled off, and the sudden shock to the branch
+shook Gerard forward on his stomach with his face upon one of the bear's
+straining paws. At this, by a convulsive effort, she raised her head up,
+up, till he felt her hot fetid breath. Then huge teeth snapped together
+loudly close below him in the air, with a last effort of baffled hate.
+The ponderous carcass rent the claws out of the bough; then pounded the
+earth with a tremendous thump. There was a shout of triumph below, and
+the very next instant a cry of dismay; for Gerard had swooned, and,
+without an attempt to save himself, rolled headlong from the perilous
+height.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXV
+
+
+DENYS caught at Gerard, and somewhat checked his fall: but it may be
+doubted whether this alone would have saved him from breaking his neck
+or a limb. His best friend now was the dying bear, on whose hairy
+carcass his head and shoulders descended. Denys tore him off her. It was
+needless. She panted still, and her limbs quivered, but a hare was not
+so harmless; and soon she breathed her last: and the judicious Denys
+propped Gerard up against her, being soft, and fanned him. He came to by
+degrees, but confused, and feeling the bear all around him, rolled away
+yelling.
+
+"Courage," cried Denys, "le diable est mort."
+
+"Is it dead? quite dead?" inquired Gerard from behind a tree; for his
+courage was feverish, and the cold fit was on him just now, and had been
+for some time.
+
+"Behold," said Denys, and pulled the brute's ear playfully, and opened
+her jaws, and put in his head, with other insulting antics; in the midst
+of which Gerard was violently sick.
+
+Denys laughed at him.
+
+"What is the matter now?" said he, "also why tumble off your perch just
+when we had won the day?"
+
+"I swooned, I trow."
+
+"But _why_?"
+
+Not receiving an answer, he continued, "Green girls faint as soon as
+look at you, but then they choose time and place. What woman ever
+fainted up a tree?"
+
+"She sent her nasty blood all over me. I think the smell must have
+overpowered me. Faugh! I hate blood."
+
+"I do believe it potently."
+
+"See what a mess she has made me!"
+
+"But with her blood, not yours. I pity the enemy that strives to satisfy
+you."
+
+"You need not to brag, Maitre Denys; I saw you under the tree, the
+colour of your shirt."
+
+"Let us distinguish," said Denys colouring: "it is permitted to tremble
+_for a friend_."
+
+Gerard for answer, flung his arms round Denys's neck in silence.
+
+"Look here," whined the stout soldier, affected by this little gush of
+nature and youth, "was ever aught so like a woman? I love thee, little
+milksop, go to. Good! behold him on his knees now. What new caprice is
+this?"
+
+"Oh, Denys, ought we not to return thanks to Him who has saved both our
+lives against such fearful odds?" And Gerard kneeled and prayed aloud.
+And presently he found Denys kneeling quiet beside him, with his hands
+across his bosom, after the custom of his nation, and a face as long as
+his arm. When they arose Gerard's countenance was beaming.
+
+"Good Denys," said he, "Heaven will reward thy piety."
+
+"Ah, bah! I did it out of politeness," said the Frenchman. "It was to
+please thee, little one. C'est egal: 'twas well and orderly prayed; and
+edified me to the core, while it lasted. A bishop had scarce handled the
+matter better: so now our evensong being sung, and the saints enlisted
+with us--marchons."
+
+Ere they had taken two steps, he stopped. "By-the-by, the cub!"
+
+"Oh, no, no!" cried Gerard.
+
+"You are right. It is late: we have lost time climbing trees, and
+tumbling off 'em, and swooning, and vomiting, and praying, and the brute
+is heavy to carry; and, now I think on't, we shall have papa after it
+next; these bears make such a coil about an odd cub: what is this? You
+are wounded! you are wounded!"
+
+"Not I."
+
+"He is wounded, miserable that I am."
+
+"Be calm, Denys. I am not touched, I feel no pain anywhere."
+
+"You? you only feel when another is hurt," cried Denys, with great
+emotion and throwing himself on his knees he examined Gerard's leg with
+glistening eyes.
+
+"Quick! quick! before it stiffens," he cried: and hurried him on.
+
+"Who makes the coil about nothing now?" inquired Gerard composedly.
+
+Denys's reply was a very indirect one.
+
+"Be pleased to note," said he, "that I have a bad heart. You were man
+enough to save my life, yet I must sneer at you, a novice in war; was
+not I a novice once myself? then you fainted from a wound, and I thought
+you swooned for fear, and called you a milksop. Briefly, I have a bad
+tongue and a bad heart."
+
+"Denys!"
+
+"Plait-il?"
+
+"You lie."
+
+"You are very good to say so, little one, and I am eternally obliged to
+you," mumbled the remorseful Denys.
+
+Ere they had walked many furlongs, the muscles of the wounded leg
+contracted and stiffened, till presently Gerard could only just put his
+toe to the ground, and that with great pain.
+
+At last he could bear it no longer.
+
+"Let me lie down and die," he groaned, "for this is intolerable."
+
+Denys represented that it was afternoon, and the nights were now frosty,
+and cold and hunger ill companions, and that it would be unreasonable to
+lose heart, a certain great personage being notoriously defunct. So
+Gerard leaned upon his axe and hobbled on, but presently he gave in all
+of a sudden, and sank helpless in the road.
+
+Denys drew him aside into the wood, and to his surprise gave him his
+cross-bow and bolts, enjoining him strictly to lie quiet, and if any
+ill-looking fellows should find him out and come to him, to bid them
+keep aloof; and, should they refuse, to shoot them dead at twenty paces.
+"Honest men keep the path, and, knaves in a wood none but fools do
+parley with them." With this he snatched up Gerard's axe and set off
+running, not, as Gerard expected, toward Dusseldorf, but on the road
+they had come.
+
+Gerard lay aching and smarting, and to him Rome, that seemed so near at
+starting, looked far, far, off, now that he was two hundred miles nearer
+it. But soon all his thoughts turned Sevenbergen-wards. How sweet it
+would be one day to hold Margaret's hand and tell her all he had gone
+through for her! The very thought of it, and her, soothed him, and in
+the midst of pain and irritation of the nerves he lay resigned, and
+sweetly, though faintly, smiling.
+
+He had lain thus more than two hours, when suddenly there were shouts,
+and the next moment something struck a tree hard by and quivered in it.
+
+He looked, it was an arrow.
+
+He started to his feet. Several missiles rattled among the boughs, and
+the wood echoed with battle-cries. Whence they came he could not tell,
+for noises in these huge woods are so reverberated that a stranger is
+always at fault as to their whereabout; but they seemed to fill the
+whole air. Presently there was a lull: then he heard the fierce
+galloping of hoofs; and still louder shouts and cries arose, mingled
+with shrieks and groans, and above all strange and terrible sounds like
+fierce claps of thunder, bellowing loud, and then dying off in cracking
+echoes; and red tongues of flame shot out ever and anon among the trees,
+and clouds of sulphureous smoke came drifting over his head: and all was
+still.
+
+Gerard was struck with awe. "What will become of Denys?" he cried. "Oh
+why did you leave me? Oh Denys, my friend, my friend!"
+
+Just before sunset Denys returned, almost sinking under a hairy bundle.
+It was the bear's skin.
+
+Gerard welcomed him with a burst of joy that astonished him.
+
+"I thought never to see you again, dear Denys: were you in the battle?"
+
+"No. What battle?"
+
+"The bloody battle of men, or fiends, that raged in the wood a while
+agone;" and with this he described it to the life, and more fully than I
+have done.
+
+Denys patted him indulgently on the back.
+
+"It is well:" said he, "thou are a good limner; and fever is a great
+spur to the imagination. One day I lay in a cart-shed with a cracked
+skull, and saw two hosts manoeuvre and fight a good hour on eight feet
+square, the which I did fairly describe to my comrade in due order, only
+not so gorgeously as thou, for want of book learning."
+
+"What then you believe me not? when I tell you the arrows whizzed over
+my head, and the combatants shouted, and--"
+
+"May the foul fiends fly away with me if I believe a word of it."
+
+Gerard took his arm and quietly pointed to a tree close by.
+
+"Why it looks like--it is--a broad arrow as I live:" and he went close
+and looked up at it.
+
+"It came out of the battle. I heard it, and saw it."
+
+"An English arrow."
+
+"How know you that?"
+
+"Marry, by its length. The English bowmen draw the bow to the ear,
+others only to the right breast. Hence the English loose a three-foot
+shaft, and this is one of them, perdition seize them. Well, if this is
+not glamour there has been a trifle of a battle: and if there has been a
+battle in so ridiculous a place for a battle as this, why then 'tis no
+business of mine, for my duke hath no quarrel hereabouts; so let's to
+bed," said the professional: and with this he scraped together a heap of
+leaves, and made Gerard lie on it, his axe by his side: he then lay down
+beside him with one hand on his arbalest, and drew the bearskin over
+them, hair inward. They were soon as warm as toast and fast asleep.
+
+But long before the dawn Gerard woke his comrade.
+
+"What shall I do, Denys, I die of famine?"
+
+"Do? why go to sleep again incontinent: qui dort dine."
+
+"But I tell you I am too hungry to sleep," snapped Gerard.
+
+"Let us march then," replied Denys, with paternal indulgence.
+
+He had a brief paroxysm of yawns; then made a small bundle of bears'
+ears, rolling them up in a strip of the skin, cut for the purpose; and
+they took the road.
+
+Gerard leaned on his axe, and, propped by Denys on the other side,
+hobbled along not without sighs.
+
+"I hate pain," said Gerard, viciously.
+
+"Therein you show judgment," replied papa, smoothly.
+
+It was a clear starlight night; and soon the moon rising revealed the
+end of the wood at no great distance; a pleasant sight, since Dusseldorf
+they knew was but a short league further.
+
+At the edge of the wood they came upon something so mysterious that they
+stopped to gaze at it, before going up to it. Two white pillars rose in
+the air, distant a few paces from each other; and between them stood
+many figures, that looked like human forms.
+
+"I go no further till I know what this is," said Gerard, in an agitated
+whisper; "are they effigies of the saints, for men to pray to on the
+road? or live robbers waiting to shoot down honest travellers? nay,
+living men they cannot be, for they stand on nothing that I see. Oh!
+Denys, let us turn back till daybreak: this is no mortal sight."
+
+Denys halted and peered long and keenly. "They are men," said he, at
+last. Gerard was for turning back all the more.
+
+"But men that will never hurt us, nor we them. Look not to their feet
+for that they stand on!"
+
+"Where then i' the name of all saints?"
+
+"Look over their heads!" said Denys gravely.
+
+Following this direction, Gerard presently discerned the outline of a
+dark wooden beam passing from pillar to pillar; and, as the pair got
+nearer, walking now on tiptoe, one by one dark snakelike cords came out
+in the moonlight, each pendent from the beam to a dead man, and tight as
+wire.
+
+Now as they came under this awful monument of crime and wholesale
+vengeance, a light air swept by; and several of the corpses swung, or
+gently gyrated, and every rope creaked. Gerard shuddered at this ghastly
+salute. So thoroughly had the gibbet with its sickening load seized and
+held their eyes, that it was but now they perceived a fire right
+underneath, and a living figure sitting huddled over it. His axe lay
+beside him, the bright blade shining red in the glow. He was asleep.
+
+Gerard started, but Denys only whispered. "Courage, comrade, here is a
+fire."
+
+"Ay! but there is a man at it."
+
+"There will soon be three," and he began to heap some wood on it that
+the watcher had prepared; during which the prudent Gerard seized the
+man's axe, and sat down tight on it grasping his own, and examining the
+sleeper. There was nothing outwardly distinctive in the man. He wore the
+dress of the country folk, and the hat of the district, a three-cornered
+hat called a Brunswicker, stiff enough to turn a sword cut, and with a
+thick brass hat-band. The weight of the whole thing had turned his ears
+entirely down, like a fancy rabbit's in our century; but even this,
+though it spoiled him as a man, was nothing remarkable. They had of late
+met scores of these dog's-eared rustics. The peculiarity was--this clown
+watching under a laden gallows. What for?
+
+Denys, if he felt curious, would not show it; he took out two bears'
+ears from his bundle, and, running sticks through them began to toast
+them. "'Twill be eating coined money," said he; "for the burgomaster of
+Dusseldorf had given us a rix-dollar for these ears, as proving the
+death of their owners; but better a lean purse than a lere stomach."
+
+"Unhappy man!" cried Gerard, "could you eat food _here_?"
+
+"Where the fire is lighted there must the meat roast, and where it
+roasts there must it be eaten; for nought travels worse than your
+roasted meat."
+
+"Well, eat thou, Denys, an thou canst! but I am cold and sick; there is
+no room for hunger in my heart after what mine eyes have seen," and he
+shuddered over the fire; "oh! how they creak! and who is this man I
+wonder? what an ill-favoured churl!"
+
+Denys examined him like a connoisseur looking at a picture; and in due
+course delivered judgment. "I take him to be of the refuse of that
+company, whereof these (pointing carelessly upward) were the cream, and
+so ran their heads into danger."
+
+"At that rate, why not stun him before he wakes?" and Gerard fidgeted
+where he sat.
+
+Denys opened his eyes with humorous surprise. "For one who sets up for a
+milksop you have the readiest hand. Why should two stun one? tush! he
+wakes: note now what he says at waking, and tell me."
+
+These last words were hardly whispered when the watcher opened his eyes.
+At sight of the fire made up, and two strangers eyeing him keenly, he
+stared, and there was a severe and pretty successful effort to be calm;
+still a perceptible tremor ran all over him. Soon he manned himself, and
+said gruffly, "Good morrow." But, at the very moment of saying it, he
+missed his axe, and saw how Gerard was sitting upon it with his own laid
+ready to his hand. He lost countenance again directly. Denys smiled
+grimly at this bit of by-play.
+
+"Good morrow!" said Gerard quietly, keeping his eye on him.
+
+The watcher was now too ill at ease to be silent. "You make free with my
+fire," said he; but he added in a somewhat faltering voice, "you are
+welcome."
+
+Denys whispered to Gerard. The watcher eyed them askant.
+
+"My comrade says, sith we share your fire, you shall share his meat."
+
+"So be it," said the man, warmly. "I have half a kid hanging on a bush
+hard by, I'll go fetch it;" and he arose with a cheerful and obliging
+countenance, and was retiring.
+
+Denys caught up his cross-bow, and levelled it at his head. The man fell
+on his knees.
+
+Denys lowered his weapon, and pointed him back to his place. He rose and
+went back slowly and unsteadily, like one disjointed; and sick at heart
+as the mouse, that the cat lets go a little way, and then darts and
+replaces.
+
+"Sit down, friend," said Denys grimly, in French.
+
+The man obeyed finger and tone, though he knew not a word of French.
+
+"Tell him the fire is not big enough for more than three. He will take
+my meaning."
+
+This being communicated by Gerard, the man grinned; ever since Denys
+spoke he had seemed greatly relieved. "I wist not ye were strangers,"
+said he to Gerard.
+
+Denys cut a piece of bear's ear, and offered it with grace to him he had
+just levelled cross-bow at.
+
+He took it calmly, and drew a piece of bread from his wallet, and
+divided it with the pair. Nay, more, he winked and thrust his hand into
+the heap of leaves he sat on (Gerard grasped his axe ready to brain him)
+and produced a leathern bottle holding full two gallons. He put it to
+his mouth, and drank their healths then handed it to Gerard; he passed
+it untouched to Denys.
+
+"Mort de ma vie!" cried the soldier "it is Rhenish wine, and fit for the
+gullet of an archbishop. Here's to thee, thou prince of good fellows,
+wishing thee a short life and a merry one! Come, Gerard, sup! sup!
+Pshaw, never heed them, man! they heed not thee. Natheless, did I hang
+over such a skin of Rhenish as this, and three churls sat beneath a
+drinking it and offered me not a drop I'd soon be down among them."
+
+"Denys! Denys!"
+
+"My spirit would cut the cord and womp would come my body amongst ye,
+with a hand on the bottle, and one eye winking, t'other--"
+
+Gerard started up with a cry of horror and his fingers to his ears, and
+was running from the place, when his eye fell on the watcher's axe. The
+tangible danger brought him back. He sat down again on the axe with his
+fingers in his ears.
+
+"Courage, l'ami, le diable est mort!" shouted Denys gaily, and offered
+him a piece of bear's ear, put it right under his nose as he stopped his
+ears. Gerard turned his head away with loathing. "Wine!" he gasped.
+"Heaven knows I have much need of it, with such companions as thee
+and--"
+
+He took a long draught of the Rhenish wine: it ran glowing through his
+veins, and warmed and strengthened his heart; but could not check his
+tremors whenever a gust of wind came. As for Denys and the other, they
+feasted recklessly, and plied the bottle unceasingly, and drank healths
+and caroused beneath that creaking sepulchre and its ghastly tenants.
+
+"Ask him how they came here," said Denys with his mouthful, and pointing
+up without looking.
+
+On this question being interpreted to the watcher, he replied that
+treason had been their end, diabolical treason and priestcraft. He then,
+being rendered communicative by drink, delivered a long prosy narrative,
+the purport of which was as follows. These honest gentlemen who now
+dangled here so miserably, were all stout men and true, and lived in the
+forest by their wits. Their independence and thriving state excited the
+jealousy and hatred of a large portion of mankind; and many attempts
+were made on their lives and liberties; these the Virgin and their
+patron saints, coupled with their individual skill and courage,
+constantly baffled. But yester-eve a party of merchants came slowly on
+their mules from Dusseldorf. The honest men saw them crawling, and let
+them penetrate near a league into the forest, then set upon them to make
+them disgorge a portion of their ill-gotten gains. But, alas! the
+merchants were no merchants at all, but soldiers of more than one
+nation, in the pay of the Archbishop of Cologne; haubergeons had they
+beneath their gowns, and weapons of all sorts at hand; nathless, the
+honest men fought stoutly, and pressed the traitors hard, when lo!
+horsemen, that had been planted in ambush many hours before, galloped
+up, and with these new diabolical engines of war, shot leaden bullets
+and laid many an honest fellow low, and so quelled the courage of others
+that they yielded them prisoners. These, being taken red-handed, the
+victors, who with malice inconceivable had brought cords knotted round
+their waists, did speedily hang, and by their side the dead ones, to
+make the gallanter show. "That one at the end was the captain. He never
+felt the cord. He was riddled with broad arrows and leaden balls or ever
+they could take him: a worthy man as ever cried 'Stand and deliver!' but
+a little hasty, not much: stay! I forgot; he is dead. Very hasty, and
+obstinate as a pig. That one in the buff jerkin is the lieutenant, as
+good a soul as ever lived; he was hanged alive: This one here, I never
+could abide; no (not that one; that is Conrad my bosom friend); I mean
+this one right overhead in the chicken-toed shoon: you were always
+carrying tales, ye thief, and making mischief; you know you were; and
+sirs, I am a man that would rather live united in a coppice than in a
+forest with backbiters and tale-bearers; strangers, I drink to you." And
+so he went down the whole string, indicating with the neck of the bottle
+like a showman with his pole and giving a neat description of each,
+which though pithy was invariably false; for the showman had no real eye
+for character and had misunderstood every one of these people.
+
+"Enough palaver!" cried Denys. "Marchons! Give me his axe: now tell him
+he must help you along."
+
+The man's countenance fell, but he saw in Denys's eye that resistance
+would be dangerous; he submitted. Gerard it was who objected. He said,
+"Y pensez-vous? to put my hand on a thief, it maketh my flesh creep."
+
+"Childishness! all trades must live. Besides I have my reasons. Be not
+you wiser than your elder."
+
+"No. Only if I am to lean on him I must have my hand in my bosom, still
+grasping the haft of my knife."
+
+[Illustration: IN THAT STRANGE AND MIXED ATTITUDE OF TENDER OFFICES AND
+DEADLY SUSPICION THE TRIO DID WALK]
+
+"It is a new attitude to walk in; but please thyself."
+
+And in that strange and mixed attitude of tender offices and deadly
+suspicion the trio did walk. I wish I could draw them: I would not trust
+to the pen.
+
+The light of the watch-tower at Dusseldorf was visible as soon as they
+cleared the wood; and cheered Gerard. When, after an hour's march, the
+black outline of the tower itself and other buildings stood out clear to
+the eye, their companion halted and said gloomily, "You may as well slay
+me out of hand as take me any nearer the gates of Dusseldorf town."
+
+On this being communicated to Denys, he said at once, "Let him go then,
+for in sooth his neck will be in jeopardy if he wends much further with
+us." Gerard acquiesced as a matter of course. His horror of a criminal
+did not in the least dispose him to active co-operation with the law.
+But the fact is, that at this epoch no private citizen in any part of
+Europe ever meddled with criminals but in self-defence, except by-the-by
+in England, which, behind other nations in some things, was centuries
+before them all in this.
+
+The man's personal liberty being restored, he asked for his axe. It was
+given him. To the friends' surprise he still lingered. Was he to have
+nothing for coming so far out of his way with them?
+
+"Here are two batzen, friend."
+
+"And the wine, the good Rhenish?"
+
+"Did you give aught for it?"
+
+"Ay! the peril of my life."
+
+"Hum! what say you, Denys?"
+
+"I say it was worth its weight in gold. Here, lad, here be silver
+groshen, one for every acorn on that gallows tree: and here is one more
+for thee--who wilt doubtless be there in due season."
+
+The man took the coins, but still lingered.
+
+"Well? what now?" cried Gerard, who thought him shamefully overpaid
+already. "Do'st seek the hide off our bones?"
+
+"Nay, good sirs; but you have seen to-night how parlous a life is mine.
+Ye be true men, and your prayers avail: give me then a small trifle of a
+prayer, an't please you; for I know not one."
+
+Gerard's choler began to rise at the egotistical rogue; moreover, ever
+since his wound he had felt gusts of irritability. However, he bit
+his lip and said, "There go two words to that bargain; tell me first, is
+it true what men say of you Rhenish thieves, that ye do murder innocent
+and unresisting travellers as well as rob them?"
+
+The other answered sulkily, "They you call thieves are not to blame for
+that; the fault lies with the law."
+
+"Gramercy! so 'tis the law's fault that ill men break it?"
+
+"I mean not so: but the law in this land slays an honest man an if he do
+but steal. What follows? he would be pitiful, but is discouraged
+herefrom: pity gains him no pity, and doubles his peril: an he but cut a
+purse his life is forfeit; therefore cutteth he the throat to boot to
+save his own neck: dead men tell no tales. Pray then for the poor soul,
+who by bloody laws is driven to kill or else be slaughtered; were there
+less of this unreasonable gibbeting on the high road, there should be
+less enforced cutting of throats in dark woods, my masters."
+
+"Fewer words had served," replied Gerard, coldly; "I asked a question, I
+am answered," and, suddenly doffing his bonnet,
+
+      "'Obsecro Deum omnipotentem, ut, qua cruce jam pendent
+      isti quindecim latrones fures et homicidae, in ea
+      homicida fur et latro tu pependeris quam citissime,
+      pro publica salute, in honorem justi Dei cui sit
+      gloria, in aeternum, Amen.'"
+
+"And so good day."
+
+The greedy outlaw was satisfied at last. "That is Latin," he muttered,
+"and more than I bargained for." So indeed it was.
+
+And he returned to his business with a mind at ease. The friends
+pondered in silence the many events of the last few hours.
+
+At last Gerard said, thoughtfully, "That she-bear saved both our
+lives--by God's will."
+
+"Like enough," replied Denys; "and talking of that, it was lucky we did
+not dawdle over our supper."
+
+"What mean you?"
+
+"I mean they are not all hanged; I saw a refuse of seven or eight as
+black as ink around our fire."
+
+"When? when?"
+
+"Ere we had left it five minutes."
+
+"Good heavens! And you said not a word."
+
+"It would but have worried you, and had set our friend a looking back,
+and mayhap tempted him to get his skull split. All other danger was
+over; they could not see us, we were out of the moonshine and indeed,
+just turning a corner; ah! there is the sun; and here are the gates of
+Dusseldorf. Courage, l'ami; le diable est mort."
+
+"My head! my head!" was all poor Gerard could reply.
+
+So many shocks, emotions, perils, horrors, added to the wound, his
+first, had tried his youthful body and sensitive nature, too severely.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+It was noon of the same day.
+
+In a bedroom of "The Silver Lion" the rugged Denys sat anxious, watching
+his young friend.
+
+And he lay raging with fever, delirious at intervals, and one word for
+ever on his lips:
+
+"Margaret!--Margaret!--Margaret!"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXVI
+
+
+IT was the afternoon of the next day. Gerard was no longer light-headed,
+but very irritable, and full of fancies; and in one of these he begged
+Denys to get him a lemon to suck. Denys, who from a rough soldier had
+been turned by tender friendship into a kind of grandfather, got up
+hastily, and bidding him set his mind at ease, "lemons he should have in
+the twinkling of a quart pot," went and ransacked the shops for them.
+
+They were not so common in the North as they are now, and he was absent
+a long while, and Gerard getting very impatient, when at last the door
+opened. But it was not Denys. Entered softly an imposing figure; an old
+gentleman in a long sober gown trimmed with rich fur, cherry-coloured
+hose, and pointed shoes, with a sword by his side in a morocco scabbard,
+a ruff round his neck not only starched severely, but treacherously
+stiffened in furrows by rebatoes, or a little hidden framework of wood;
+and on his head a four-cornered cap with a fur border; on his chin and
+bosom a majestic white beard. Gerard was in no doubt as to the vocation
+of his visitor, for, the sword excepted, this was as familiar to him as
+the full dress of a physician. Moreover a boy followed at his heels with
+a basket, where phials, lint and surgical tools rather courted than
+shunned observation. The old gentleman came softly to the bedside, and
+said mildly and sotto voce, "How is't with thee, my son?"
+
+Gerard answered gratefully that his wound gave him little pain now; but
+his throat was parched, and his head heavy.
+
+"A wound? they told me not of that. Let me see it. Ay, ay, a good clean
+bite. The mastiff had sound teeth that took this out, I warrant me": and
+the good doctor's sympathy seemed to run off to the quadruped he had
+conjured; his jackal.
+
+"This must be cauterized forthwith, or we shall have you starting back
+from water, and turning somersaults in bed under our hands. 'Tis the
+year for raving curs, and one hath done your business; but we will
+baffle him yet. Urchin, go heat thine iron."
+
+"But, sir," edged in Gerard, "'twas no dog, but a bear."
+
+"A bear! young man?" remonstrated the senior severely: "think what you
+say; 'tis ill jesting with the man of art who brings his grey hairs and
+long study to heal you. A bear quotha! Had you dissected as many bears
+as I, or the tithe, and drawn their teeth to keep your hand in, you
+would know that no bear's jaw ever made this foolish trifling wound. I
+tell you 'twas a dog, and, since you put me to it, I even deny that it
+was a dog of magnitude, but neither more nor less than one of these
+little furious curs that are so rife, and run devious, biting each manly
+leg, and laying its wearer low, but for me and my learned brethren, who
+still stay the mischief with knife and cautery."
+
+"Alas sir! when said I 'twas a bear's jaw? I said, 'A bear': it was his
+paw, now."
+
+"And why didst not tell me that at once?"
+
+"Because you kept telling me instead."
+
+"Never conceal aught from your leech, young man," continued the senior,
+who was a good talker, but one of the worst listeners in Europe. "Well,
+it is an ill business. All the horny excrescences of animals, to wit
+claws of tigers, panthers, badgers, cats, bears, and the like, and horn
+of deer, and nails of humans, especially children, are imbued with
+direst poison. Y'had better have been bitten by a cur, _whatever you may
+say_, than gored by bull or stag, or scratched by bear. However, shalt
+have a good biting cataplasm for thy leg; meantime keep we the body
+cool: put out thy tongue! good!--fever. Let me feel thy pulse:
+good!--fever. I ordain flebotomy and on the instant."
+
+"Flebotomy! that is blood-letting: humph? Well no matter, if 'tis sure
+to cure me; for I will not lie idle here." The doctor let him know that
+flebotomy was infallible; especially in this case.
+
+"Hans, go fetch the things needful; and I will entertain the patient
+meantime with reasons."
+
+The man of art then explained to Gerard that in disease the blood
+becomes hot and distempered and more or less poisonous: but, a portion
+of this unhealthy liquid removed, Nature is fain to create a purer fluid
+to fill its place. Bleeding therefore, being both a cooler and a
+purifier, was a specific in all diseases for all diseases were febrile,
+whatever empirics might say.
+
+"But think not," said he warmly, "that it suffices to bleed: any paltry
+barber can open a vein (though not all can close it again). The art is
+to know what vein to empty for what disease. T'other day they brought me
+one tormented with earache. I let him blood in the right thigh and away
+flew his earache. By-the-by he has died since then. Another came with
+the toothache. I bled him behind the ear, and relieved him in a giffy.
+He is also since dead as it happens. I bled our bailiff between the
+thumb and forefinger for rheumatism. Presently he comes to me with a
+headache and drumming in the ears, and holds out his hand over the
+basin; but I smiled at his folly, and bled him in the left ankle sore
+against his will, and made his head as light as a nut."
+
+Diverging then from the immediate theme after the manner of enthusiasts,
+the reverend teacher proceeded thus:--
+
+"Know, young man, that two schools of art contend at this moment
+throughout Europe. The Arabian, whose ancient oracles are Avicenna,
+Rhazes, Albucazis; and its revivers are Chauliac and Lanfranc; and the
+Greek school, whose modern champions are Bessarion, Platinus, and
+Marsilius Ficinus, but whose pristine doctors were medicine's very
+oracles, Phoebus, Chiron, AEsculapius, and his sons Podalinus and
+Machaon, Pythagoras, Democritus, Praxagoras who invented the arteries,
+and Dioctes 'qui primus urinae animum dedit.' All these taught orally.
+Then came Hippocrates, the eighteenth from AEsculapius, and of him we
+have manuscripts; to him we owe 'the vital principle.' He also invented
+the bandage, and tapped for water on the chest: and above all he
+dissected; yet only quadrupeds; for the brutal prejudices of the pagan
+vulgar withheld the human body from the knife of science. Him followed
+Aristotle, who gave us the aorta, the largest blood-vessel in the human
+body."
+
+"Surely, sir, the Almighty gave us all that is in our bodies, and not
+Aristotle, nor any Grecian man," objected Gerard humbly.
+
+"Child! of course He gave us the thing; but Aristotle did more, he gave
+us the name of the thing. But young men will still be talking. The next
+great light was Galen; he studied at Alexandria, then the home of
+science. He, justly malcontent with quadrupeds, dissected apes, as
+coming nearer to man: and bled like a Trojan. Then came Theophilus, who
+gave us the nerves, the lacteal vessels, and the pia mater."
+
+This worried Gerard. "I cannot lie still and hear it said that mortal
+man bestowed the parts which Adam our father took from Him, who made him
+of the clay, and us his sons."
+
+"Was ever such perversity?" said the doctor, his colour rising. "Who is
+the real donor of a thing to man? he who plants it secretly in the dark
+recesses of man's body, or the learned wight who reveals it to his
+intelligence, and so enriches his mind with the knowledge of it?
+Comprehension is your only true possession. Are you answered?"
+
+"I am put to silence, sir."
+
+"And that is better still: for garrulous patients are ill to cure,
+especially in fever: I say then that Eristratus gave us the cerebral
+nerves and the milk vessels; nay more, he was the inventor of lithotomy,
+whatever you may say. Then came another whom I forget: you do somewhat
+perturb me with your petty exceptions. Then came Ammonius the author of
+lithotrity, and here comes Hans with the basin--to stay your volubility.
+Blow thy chafer, boy, and hand me the basin; 'tis well. Arabians quotha!
+What are they but a sect of yesterday, who about the year 1000 did fall
+in with the writings of those very Greeks, and read them awry, having no
+concurrent light of their own? for their demigod, and camel-driver,
+Mahound, impostor in science as in religion, had strictly forbidden them
+anatomy even of the lower animals, the which he who severeth from
+medicine, 'tollit solem e mundo,' as Tully quoth. Nay, wonder not at my
+fervour, good youth. Where the general weal stands in jeopardy, a little
+warmth is civic, humane, and honourable; now there is settled of late
+in this town a pestilent Arabist, a mere empiric, who despising anatomy,
+and scarce knowing Greek from Hebrew, hath yet spirited away half my
+patients; and I tremble for the rest. Put forth thine ankle; and thou,
+Hans, breathe on the chafer."
+
+Whilst matters were in this posture, in came Denys with the lemons, and
+stood surprised. "What sport is toward?" said he, raising his brows.
+
+Gerard coloured a little and told him the learned doctor was going to
+flebotomize him and cauterize him; that was all.
+
+"Ay! indeed; and yon imp, what bloweth he hot coals for?"
+
+"What should it be for," said the doctor to Gerard, "but to cauterize
+the vein when opened, and the poisonous blood let free? 'Tis the only
+safe way. Avicenna indeed recommends a ligature of the vein; but how
+'tis to be done he saith not, nor knew he himself I wot, nor any of the
+spawn of Ishmael. For me, I have no faith in such tricksy expedients:
+and take this with you for a safe principle! 'whatever an Arab or
+Arabist says is right, must be wrong.'"
+
+"Oh, I see now what 'tis for," said Denys; "and art thou so simple as to
+let him put hot iron to thy living flesh? didst ever keep thy little
+finger but ten moments in a candle? and this will be as many minutes.
+Art not content to burn in purgatory after thy death? must thou needs
+buy a foretaste on't here?"
+
+"I never thought of that," said Gerard gravely: "The good doctor spake
+not of burning, but of cautery; to be sure 'tis all one, but cautery
+sounds not so fearful as burning."
+
+"Imbecile! That is their art; to confound a plain man with dark words,
+till his hissing flesh lets him know their meaning. Now listen to what I
+have seen. When a soldier bleeds from a wound in battle, these leeches
+say, 'Fever. Blood him!' and so they burn the wick at t'other end too.
+They bleed the bled. Now at fever's heels comes desperate weakness; then
+the man needs all his blood to live; but these prickers and burners,
+having no forethought, recking nought of what is sure to come in a few
+hours, and seeing like brute beasts only what is under their noses, have
+meantime robbed him of the very blood his hurt had spared him to battle
+that weakness withal; and so he dies exhausted: hundreds have I seen so
+scratched, and pricked, out of the world, Gerard, and tall fellows too:
+but lo! if they have the luck to be wounded where no doctor can be had,
+then they live; this too have I seen. Had I ever outlived that field in
+Brabant but for my most lucky mischance, lack of chirurgery? The frost
+choked all my bleeding wounds and so I lived. A chirurgeon had pricked
+yet one more hole in this my body with his lance, and drained my last
+drop out, and my spirit with it. Seeing them thus distraught in bleeding
+of the bleeding soldier, I place no trust in them; for what slays a
+veteran may well lay a milk-and-water bourgeois low."
+
+"This sounds like common sense," sighed Gerard languidly, "but no need
+to raise your voice so: I was not born deaf, and just now I hear
+acutely."
+
+"Common sense! very common sense indeed," shouted the bad listener; "why
+this is a soldier; a brute whose business is to kill men, not cure
+them." He added in very tolerable French, "Woe be to you, unlearned man,
+if you come between a physician and his patient, and woe be to you,
+misguided youth, if you listen to that man of blood."
+
+"Much obliged," said Denys with mock politeness; "but I am a true man,
+and would rob no man of his name. I do somewhat in the way of blood, but
+not worth mention in this presence. For one I slay, you slay a score,
+and for one spoonful of blood I draw, you spill a tubful. The world is
+still gulled by shows. We soldiers vapour with long swords: and even in
+war beget two foes for every one we kill; but you smooth gownsmen, with
+soft phrases and bare bodkins, 'tis you that thin mankind."
+
+"A sick chamber is no place for jesting," cried the physician.
+
+"No, doctor, nor for bawling," said the patient peevishly.
+
+"Come, young man," said the senior kindly; "be reasonable! Cuilibet in
+sua arte credendum est. My whole life has been given to this art. I
+studied at Montpelier; the first school in France and by consequence in
+Europe. There learned I Dririmancy, Scatomancy, Pathology, Therapeusis,
+and, greater than them all, Anatomy. For there we disciples of
+Hippocrates and Galen had opportunities those great ancients never knew.
+Good-bye, quadrupeds and apes, and Paganism, and Mohammedanism; we
+bought of the churchwardens, we shook the gallows; we undid the sexton's
+work o' dark nights, penetrated with love of science and our kind; all
+the authorities had their orders from Paris to wink; and they winked.
+Gods of Olympus, how they winked! The gracious king assisted us; he
+sent us twice a year a living criminal condemned to die, and said 'Deal
+ye with him as science asks: dissect him alive, if ye think fit.'"
+
+"By the liver of Herod, and Nero's bowels, he'll make me blush for the
+land that bore me, an if he praises it any more," shouted Denys at the
+top of his voice.
+
+Gerard gave a little squawk, and put his fingers in his ears; but
+speedily drew them out and shouted angrily, and as loudly, "You great,
+roaring, blaspheming, bull of Basan, hold your noisy tongue!"
+
+Denys summoned a contrite look.
+
+"Tush, slight man," said the doctor with calm contempt, and vibrated a
+hand over him as in this age men make a pointer dog down charge; then
+flowed majestic on. "We seldom, or never dissected the living criminal,
+except in part. We mostly inoculated them with such diseases as the
+barren time afforded, selecting of course the more interesting ones."
+
+"That means the foulest," whispered Denys meekly.
+
+"These we watched through all their stages, to maturity."
+
+"Meaning the death of the poor rogue," whispered Denys meekly.
+
+"And now, my poor sufferer, who best merits your confidence, this honest
+soldier with his youth, his ignorance, and his prejudices, or a
+greybeard laden with the gathered wisdom of ages?"
+
+"That is," cried Denys impatiently, "will you believe what a jackdaw in
+a long gown has heard from a starling in a long gown, who heard it from
+a jay-pie, who heard it from a magpie, who heard it from a popinjay; or
+will you believe what I, a man with nought to gain by looking awry, nor
+speaking false, have seen; not heard with the ears which are given us to
+gull us, but seen with these sentinels mine eyne, seen, seen; to wit
+that fevered and blooded men die, that fevered men not blooded live?
+stay, who sent for this sang-sue? Did you?"
+
+"Not I. I thought you had."
+
+"Nay," explained the doctor, "the good landlord told me one was 'down'
+in his house: so I said to myself, 'a stranger, and in need of my art';
+and came incontinently."
+
+"It was the act of a good Christian, sir."
+
+"Of a good bloodhound," cried Denys contemptuously. "What, art thou so
+green as not to know that all these landlords are in league with certain
+of their fellow-citizens, who pay them toll on each booty? Whatever you
+pay this ancient for stealing your life blood, of that the landlord
+takes his third for betraying you to him. Nay, more, as soon as ever
+your blood goes down the stair in that basin there, the landlord will
+see it or smell it, and send swiftly to his undertaker and get his third
+out of that job. For if he waited till the doctor got down stairs, the
+doctor would be beforehand and bespeak _his_ undertaker, and then _he_
+would get the black thirds. Say I sooth, old Rouge et Noir? dites!"
+
+"Denys, Denys, who taught you to think so ill of man?"
+
+"Mine eyes, that are not to be gulled by what men say, seeing this many
+a year what they do, in all the lands I travel."
+
+The doctor with some address made use of these last words to escape the
+personal question. "I too have eyes as well as thou, and go not by
+tradition only, but by what I have seen, and not only seen but done. I
+have healed as many men by bleeding, as that interloping Arabist has
+killed for want of it. 'Twas but t'other day I healed one threatened
+with leprosy; I but bled him at the tip of the nose. I cured last year a
+quartan ague: how? bled its forefinger. Our cure lost his memory. I
+brought it him back on the point of my lance; I bled him behind the ear.
+I bled a dolt of a boy, and now he is the only one who can tell his
+right hand from his left in a whole family of idiots. When the plague
+was here years ago, no sham plague, such as empirics proclaim every six
+years or so but the good honest Byzantine pest, I blooded an alderman
+freely, and cauterized the symptomatic buboes, and so pulled him out of
+the grave: whereas our then chirurgeon, a most pernicious Arabist,
+caught it himself, and died of it, aha, calling on Rhazes, Avicenna, and
+Mahound, who, could they have come, had all perished as miserably as
+himself."
+
+"Oh, my poor ears," sighed Gerard.
+
+"And am I fallen so low that one of your presence and speech rejects my
+art, and listens to a rude soldier, so far behind even his own miserable
+trade as to bear an arbalest, a worn-out invention, that German children
+shoot at pigeons with, but German soldiers mock at since ever
+arquebusses came and put them down?"
+
+"You foul-mouthed old charlatan," cried Denys, "the arbalest is
+shouldered by taller men than ever stood in Rhenish hose, and even now
+it kills as many more than your noisy, stinking arquebuss, as the
+lancet does than all our toys together. Go to! He was no fool who first
+called you 'leeches.' Sang-sues! va!"
+
+Gerard groaned. "By the holy virgin, I wish you were both at Jericho,
+bellowing."
+
+"Thank you, comrade. Then I'll bark no more, but at need I'll bite. If
+he has a lance, I have a sword; if he bleeds you, I'll bleed him. The
+moment his lance pricks your skin, little one, my sword-hilt knocks
+against his ribs; I have said it."
+
+And Denys turned pale, folded his arms, and looked gloomy and dangerous.
+
+Gerard sighed wearily. "Now, as all this is about me, give me leave to
+say a word."
+
+"Ay! let the young man choose life or death for himself."
+
+Gerard then indirectly rebuked his noisy counsellers by contrast and
+example. He spoke with unparalleled calmness, sweetness, and gentleness.
+And these were the words of Gerard the son of Eli. "I doubt not you both
+mean me well: but you assassinate me between you. Calmness and quiet are
+everything to me; but you are like two dogs growling over a bone.
+
+"And in sooth, bone I should be, did this uproar last long."
+
+There was a dead silence, broken only by the silvery voice of Gerard, as
+he lay tranquil, and gazed calmly at the ceiling, and trickled into
+words.
+
+"First, venerable sir, I thank you for coming to see me, whether from
+humanity, or in the way of honest gain; all trades must live.
+
+"Your learning, reverend sir, seems great, to me at least, and for your
+experience, your age voucheth it.
+
+"You say you have bled many, and of these many many have not died
+thereafter, but lived, and done well. I must needs believe you."
+
+The physician bowed; Denys grunted.
+
+"Others you say you have bled, and--they are dead. I must needs believe
+you.
+
+"Denys knows few things compared with you, but he knows them well. He is
+a man not given to conjecture. This I myself have noted. He says he has
+seen the fevered and blooded for the most part die; the fevered and not
+blooded live. I must needs believe him.
+
+"Here, then, all is doubt.
+
+"But thus much is certain; if I be bled, I must pay you a fee, and be
+burnt and excruciated with a hot iron, who am no felon.
+
+"Pay a certain price in money and anguish for a doubtful remedy, that
+will I never.
+
+"Next to money and ease, peace and quiet are certain goods, above all in
+a sick-room; but 'twould seem men cannot argue medicine without heat and
+raised voices; therefore, sir, I will essay a little sleep, and Denys
+will go forth and gaze on the females of the place, and I will keep you
+no longer from those who can afford to lay out blood, and money, in
+flebotomy and cautery."
+
+The old physician had naturally a hot temper; he had often during this
+battle of words mastered it with difficulty, and now it mastered him.
+The most dignified course was silence; he saw this, and drew himself up
+and made loftily for the door, followed close by his little boy and big
+basket.
+
+But at the door he choked, he swelled, he burst. He whirled and came
+back open-mouthed, and the little boy and big basket had to whisk
+semicircularly not to be run down, for de minimis non curat
+Medicina--even when not in a rage.
+
+"Ah! you reject my skill, you scorn my art. My revenge shall be to leave
+you to yourself; lost idiot, take your last look at me, and at the sun.
+Your blood be on your head!" And away he stamped.
+
+But on reaching the door he whirled and came back; his wicker tail
+twirling round after him like a cat's.
+
+"In twelve hours at furthest you will be in the secondary stage of
+fever. Your head will split. Your carotids will thump. Aha! And let but
+a pin fall you will jump to the ceiling. Then send for me: and I'll not
+come." He departed. But at the door-handle gathered fury, wheeled and
+came flying, with pale, terror-stricken boy and wicker tail whisking
+after him. "Next will come--CRAMPS of the STOMACH. Aha!
+
+"Then--BILIOUS VOMIT. Aha!
+
+"Then--COLD SWEAT, and DEADLY STUPOR.
+
+"Then--CONFUSION OF ALL THE SENSES.
+
+"Then--BLOODY VOMIT.
+
+"And after that nothing can save you, not even I: and if I could I would
+not, and so farewell!"
+
+Even Denys changed colour at threats so fervent and precise; but Gerard
+only gnashed his teeth with rage at the noise, and seized his hard
+bolster with kindling eye.
+
+This added fuel to the fire and brought the insulted ancient back from
+the impassable door, with his whisking train.
+
+"And after that--MADNESS!
+
+"And after that--BLACK VOMIT!
+
+"And then--CONVULSIONS!
+
+"And then--THAT CESSATION OF ALL VITAL FUNCTIONS THE VULGAR CALL
+'DEATH,' for which thank your own Satanic folly and insolence,
+farewell." He went. He came. He roared, "And think not to be buried in
+any Christian churchyard; for the bailiff is my good friend, and I shall
+tell him how and why you died: felo de se! felo de se! Farewell."
+
+Gerard sprang to his feet on the bed by some supernatural gymnastic
+power excitement lent him, and, seeing him so moved, the vindictive
+orator came back at him fiercer than ever, to launch some master-threat
+the world has unhappily lost: for as he came with his whisking train,
+and shaking his fist, Gerard hurled the bolster furiously in his face,
+and knocked him down like a shot, the boy's head cracked under his
+falling master's, and crash went the dumb-strickened orator into the
+basket; and there sat wedged in an inverted angle, crushing phial after
+phial. The boy, being light, was strewed afar; but in a squatting
+posture: so that they sat in a sequence like graduated specimens, the
+smaller howling. But soon the doctor's face filled with horror, and he
+uttered a far louder and unearthly screech, and kicked and struggled
+with wonderful agility for one of his age.
+
+He was sitting on the hot coals.
+
+They had singed the cloth and were now biting the man. Struggling wildly
+but vainly to get out of the basket, he rolled yelling over with it
+sideways, and lo! a great hissing: then the humane Gerard ran and
+wrenched off the tight basket not without a struggle. The doctor lay on
+his face groaning, handsomely singed with his own chafer, and slaked a
+moment too late by his own villainous compounds, which however, being as
+various and even beautiful in colour, as they were odious in taste, had
+strangely diversified his grey robe and painted it more gaudy than neat.
+
+Gerard and Denys raised him up and consoled him. "Courage, man, 'tis
+but cautery; balm of Gilead; why you recommended it but now to my
+comrade here."
+
+The physician replied only by a look of concentrated spite, and went out
+in dead silence, thrusting his stomach forth before him in the drollest
+way. The boy followed him next moment, but in that slight interval he
+left off whining, burst in a grin, and conveyed to the culprits by an
+unrefined gesture his accurate comprehension of, and rapturous though
+compressed joy at, his master's disaster.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXVII
+
+
+THE worthy physician went home and told his housekeeper he was in agony
+from "a bad burn." Those were the words. For in phlogistic, as in other
+things, we cauterize our neighbour's digits, but burn our own fingers.
+His housekeeper applied some old woman's remedy mild as milk. He
+submitted like a lamb to her experience: his sole object in the case of
+this patient being cure: meantime he made out his bill for broken
+phials, and took measures to have the travellers imprisoned at once. He
+made oath before a magistrate that they, being strangers and indebted to
+him, meditated instant flight from the township.
+
+Alas! it was his unlucky day. His sincere desire, and honest endeavour,
+to perjure himself, were baffled by a circumstance he had never foreseen
+nor indeed thought possible.
+
+He had spoken the truth.
+
+And IN AN AFFIDAVIT!
+
+The officers, on reaching the Silver Lion, found the birds were flown.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+They went down to the river, and, from intelligence they received there
+started up the bank in hot pursuit.
+
+This temporary escape the friends owed to Denys's good sense and
+observation. After a peal of laughter, that it was a cordial to hear,
+and after venting his watchword three times, he turned short grave, and
+told Gerard Dusseldorf was no place for them. "That old fellow," said
+he, "went off unnaturally silent for such a babbler: we are strangers
+here: _the bailiff is his friend_: in five minutes we shall lie in a
+dungeon for assaulting a Dusseldorf dignity: are you strong enough to
+hobble to the water's edge? it is hard by. Once there you have but to
+lie down in a boat instead of a bed: and what is the odds?"
+
+"The odds? Denys? untold, and all in favour of the boat. I pine for
+Rome: for Rome is my road to Sevenbergen: and then we shall lie in the
+boat, but ON the Rhine, the famous Rhine: the cool, refreshing Rhine. I
+feel its breezes coming: the very sight will cure a little
+hop-o'-my-thumb fever like mine; away! away!"
+
+Finding his excitable friend in this mood, Denys settled hastily with
+the landlord, and they hurried to the river. On inquiry they found to
+their dismay that the public boat was gone this half-hour, and no other
+would start that day, being afternoon. By dint however of asking a great
+many questions, and collecting a crowd, they obtained an offer of a
+private boat from an old man and his two sons.
+
+This was duly ridiculed by a bystander. "The current is too strong for
+three oars."
+
+"Then my comrade and I will help row," said the invalid.
+
+"No need," said the old man. "Bless your silly heart, _he_ owns t'other
+boat."
+
+There was a powerful breeze right astern; the boatmen set a broad sail,
+and, rowing also, went off at a spanking rate.
+
+"Are ye better, lad, for the river breeze?"
+
+"Much better. But indeed the doctor did me good."
+
+"The doctor? Why you would none of his cures."
+
+"No, but I mean--you will say I am nought--but knocking the old fool
+down--somehow--it soothed me."
+
+"Amiable dove! how thy little character opens more and more every day,
+like a rosebud. I read thee all wrong at first."
+
+"Nay, Denys, mistake me not, neither. I trust I had borne with his idle
+threats, though in sooth his voice went through my poor ears: but he was
+an infidel, or next door to one, and such I have been taught to abhor.
+Did he not as good as say, we owed our inward parts to men with long
+Greek names, and not to Him, whose name is but a syllable, but whose
+hand is over all the earth? Pagan!"
+
+"So you knocked him down forthwith--like a good Christian."
+
+"Now Denys, you will still be jesting. Take not an ill man's part! Had
+it been a thunderbolt from Heaven, he had met but his due; yet he took
+but a sorry bolster from this weak arm."
+
+"What weak arm?" inquired Denys with twinkling eyes. "I have lived among
+arms, and by Samson's hairy paw never saw I one more like a catapult.
+The bolster wrapped round his nose and the two ends kissed behind his
+head, and his forehead resounded, and had he been Goliath, or Julius
+Caesar, instead of an old quacksalver, down he had gone. St. Denys guard
+me from such feeble opposites as thou! and above all from their weak
+arms--thou diabolical young hypocrite."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The river took many turns, and this sometimes brought the wind on their
+side instead of right astern. Then they all moved to the weather side to
+prevent the boat heeling over too much; all but a child of about five
+years old, the grandson of the boatman, and his darling: this urchin had
+slipped on board at the moment of starting, and being too light to
+affect the boat's trim was above, or rather below, the laws of
+navigation.
+
+They sailed merrily on, little conscious that they were pursued by a
+whole posse of constables armed with the bailiff's writ, and that their
+pursuers were coming up with them: for, if the wind was strong, so was
+the current.
+
+And now Gerard suddenly remembered that this was a very good way to Rome
+but not to Burgundy. "Oh Denys," said he with an almost alarmed look,
+"this is not your road."
+
+"I know it," said Denys quietly. "But what can I do? I cannot leave thee
+till the fever leaves thee: and 'tis on thee still; for thou art both
+red and white by turns; I have watched thee. I must e'en go on to
+Cologne I doubt, and then strike across."
+
+"Thank Heaven," said Gerard, joyfully. He added eagerly with a little
+touch of self-deception, "'Twere a sin to be so near Cologne and not see
+it. Oh man, it is a vast and ancient city, such as I have often dreamed
+of, but ne'er had the good luck to see. Me miserable, by what hard
+fortune do I come to it now. Well then, Denys," continued the young man
+less warmly, "it is old enough to have been founded by a Roman lady in
+the first century of grace, and sacked by Attila the barbarous, and
+afterwards sore defaced by the Norman Lothaire. And it has a church for
+every week in the year, forbye chapels and churches innumerable of
+convents and nunneries, and above all the stupendous minster yet
+unfinished, and therein, but in their own chapel, lie the three kings
+that brought gifts to our Lord, Melchior gold, and Gaspar frankincense,
+and Balthazar the black king, he brought myrrh: and over their bones
+stands the shrine the wonder of the world; it is of ever-shining brass
+brighter than gold, studded with images fairly wrought, and inlaid with
+exquisite devices, and brave with colours; and two broad stripes run to
+and fro of jewels so great so rare, each might adorn a crown or ransom
+its wearer at need: and upon it stand the three kings curiously
+counterfeited, two in solid silver richly gilt; these be bareheaded; but
+he of AEthiop ebony, and beareth a golden crown: and in the midst our
+blessed Lady in virgin silver, with Christ in her arms; and at the
+corners, in golden branches, four goodly waxen tapers do burn night and
+day. Holy eyes have watched and renewed that light unceasingly for ages,
+and holy eyes shall watch them in saecula. I tell thee, Denys, the oldest
+song, the oldest Flemish or German legend, found them burning, and they
+shall light the earth to its grave. And there is St. Ursel's church, a
+British saint's, where lie her bones and all the other virgins her
+fellows: eleven thousand were they who died for the faith, being put to
+the sword by barbarous Moors, on the twenty-third day of October, two
+hundred and thirty-eight: their bones are piled in the vaults, and many
+of their skulls are in the church. St. Ursel's is in a thin golden case,
+and stands on the high altar, but shown to humble Christians only on
+solemn days."
+
+"Eleven thousand virgins!" cried Denys. "What babies German men must
+have been in days of yore. Well: would all their bones might turn flesh
+again, and their skulls sweet faces, as we pass through the gates. 'Tis
+odds but some of them are wearied of their estate by this time."
+
+"Tush, Denys!" said Gerard; "why wilt thou, being good, still make
+thyself seem evil? If thy wishing-cap be on, pray that we may meet the
+meanest she of all those wise virgins in the next world: and, to that
+end, let us reverence their holy dust in this one. And then there is the
+church of the Maccabees, and the caldron, in which they and their mother
+Solomona were boiled by a wicked king for refusing to eat swine's
+flesh."
+
+"O peremptory king! and pig-headed Maccabees! I had eaten bacon with my
+pork liever than change places at the fire with my meat."
+
+"What scurvy words are these? it was their faith."
+
+"Nay, bridle thy choler, and tell me, are there nought but churches in
+this thy so vaunted city? For I affect rather Sir Knight than Sir
+Priest."
+
+"Ay marry, there is an university near a hundred years old; and there is
+a market place; no fairer in the world: and at the four sides of it
+houses great as palaces; and there is a stupendious senate-house all
+covered with images, and at the head of them stands one of stout Herman
+Gryn, a soldier like thyself, lad."
+
+"Ay. Tell me of him! what feat of arms earned him his niche?"
+
+"A rare one. He slew a lion in fair combat, with nought but his cloak
+and a short sword. He thrust the cloak in the brute's mouth, and cut his
+spine in twain, and there is the man's effigy and eke the lion's to
+prove it. The like was never done but by three more I ween; Samson was
+one, and Lysimachus of Macedon another, and Benaiah, a captain of
+David's host."
+
+"Marry! three tall fellows. I would like well to sup with them all
+to-night."
+
+"So would not I," said Gerard drily.
+
+"But tell me," said Denys, with some surprise, "when wast thou in
+Cologne?"
+
+"Never, but in the spirit. I prattle with the good monks by the way, and
+they tell me all the notable things both old and new."
+
+"Ay, ay, have not I seen your nose under their very cowls? But when I
+speak of matters that are out of sight, my words they are small, and the
+thing it was big: now thy words be as big or bigger than the things; art
+a good limner with thy tongue; I have said it: and, for a saint, as
+ready with hand, or steel, or bolster--as any poor sinner living: and
+so, shall I tell thee which of all these things thou has described draws
+me to Cologne?"
+
+"Ay, Denys."
+
+"Thou, and thou only; no dead saint, but my living friend and comrade
+true; 'tis thou alone draws Denys of Burgundy to Cologne."
+
+Gerard hung his head.
+
+At this juncture one of the younger boatmen suddenly inquired what was
+amiss with "little turnip-face?"
+
+His young nephew thus described had just come aft grave as a judge, and
+burst out crying in the midst without more ado. On this phenomenon, so
+sharply defined, he was subjected to many interrogatories, some
+coaxingly uttered, some not. Had he hurt himself? had he over-ate
+himself? was he frightened? was he cold? was he sick? was he an idiot?
+
+To all and each he uttered the same reply, which English writers render
+thus, oh! oh! oh! and French writers thus, hi! hi! hi! So fixed are
+Fiction's phonetics.
+
+"Who can tell what ails the peevish brat?" snarled the young boatman
+impatiently. "Rather look this way and tell me whom be these after!" The
+old man and his other son looked, and saw four men walking along the
+east bank of the river; at the sight they left rowing awhile, and
+gathered mysteriously in the stern, whispering and casting glances
+alternately at their passengers and the pedestrians.
+
+The sequel may show they would have employed speculation better in
+trying to fathom the turnip-face mystery: I beg pardon of my age: I mean
+"the deep mind of dauntless infancy."
+
+"If 'tis as I doubt," whispered one of the young men, "why not give them
+a squeak for their lives; let us make for the west bank."
+
+The old man objected stoutly. "What," said he, "run our heads into
+trouble for strangers? are ye mad? Nay, let us rather cross to the east
+side: still side with the strong arm! that is my rede. What say you,
+Werter?"
+
+"I say, please yourselves."
+
+What age and youth could not decide upon, a puff of wind settled most
+impartially. Came a squall and the little vessel heeled over: the men
+jumped to windward to trim her: but, to their horror, they saw in the
+very boat from stem to stern a ditch of water rushing to leeward, and
+the next moment they saw nothing, but felt the Rhine: the cold and
+rushing Rhine.
+
+"Turnip-face" had drawn the plug.
+
+The officers unwound the cords from their waists.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Gerard could swim like a duck: but the best swimmer, canted out of a
+boat capsized, must sink ere he can swim. The dark water bubbled louder
+over his head, and then he came up almost blind and deaf for a moment:
+the next he saw the black boat bottom uppermost, and figures clinging to
+it; he shook his head like a water-dog and made for it by a sort of
+unthinking imitation: but ere he reached it he heard a voice behind him
+cry not loud but with deep manly distress, "Adieu, comrade, adieu!"
+
+He looked, and there was poor Denys sinking, sinking, weighed down by
+his wretched arbalest. His face was pale, and his eyes staring wide, and
+turned despairingly on his dear friend. Gerard uttered a wild cry of
+love and terror, and made for him, cleaving the water madly; but the
+next moment Denys was under water.
+
+The next, Gerard was after him.
+
+The officers knotted a rope and threw the end in.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXVIII
+
+
+THINGS good and evil balance themselves in a remarkable manner; and
+almost universally. The steel bow attached to the arbalestrier's back,
+and carried above his head, had sunk him. That very steel bow, owing to
+that very position, could not escape Gerard's hands, one of which
+grasped it, and the other went between the bow and the cord; which was
+as good. The next moment, Denys, by means of his cross-bow, was hoisted
+with so eager a jerk that half his body bobbed up out of water.
+
+"Now, grip me not! grip me not!" cried Gerard, in mortal terror of that
+fatal mistake.
+
+"Pas si bete," gurgled Denys.
+
+Seeing the sort of stuff he had to deal with, Gerard was hopeful and
+calm directly. "On thy back," said he sharply, and seizing the arbalest
+and taking a stroke forward he aided the desired movement. "Hand on my
+shoulder! slap the water with the other hand! No--with a downward
+motion: so. Do nothing more than I bid thee." Gerard had got hold of
+Denys's long hair, and twisting it hard, caught the end between his side
+teeth, and with the strong muscles of his youthful neck easily kept up
+the soldier's head, and struck out lustily across the current. A moment
+he had hesitated which side to make for, little knowing the awful
+importance of that simple decision; then, seeing the west bank a trifle
+nearest, he made towards it, instead of swimming to jail like a good
+boy, and so furnishing one a novel incident. Owing to the force of the
+current they slanted considerably, and, when they had covered near a
+hundred yards, Denys murmured uneasily, "How much more of it?"
+
+"Courage," mumbled Gerard. "Whatever a duck knows, a Dutchman knows; art
+safe as in bed."
+
+The next moment, to their surprise, they found themselves in shallow
+water; and so waded ashore. Once on terra firma, they looked at one
+another from head to foot as if eyes could devour, then by one impulse
+flung each an arm round the other's neck, and panted there with hearts
+too full to speak. And at this sacred moment life was sweet as heaven to
+both; sweetest perhaps to the poor exiled lover, who had just saved his
+friend. Oh, joy to whose height what poet has yet soared, or ever tried
+to soar? To save a human life: and that life a loved one. Such moments
+are worth living for, ay threescore years and ten. And then, calmer,
+they took hands, and so walked along the bank hand-in-hand like a pair
+of sweethearts, scarce knowing or caring whither they went.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The boat people were all safe on the late concave now convex craft, Herr
+Turnip-face, the "Inverter of things," being in the middle. All this
+fracas seemed not to have essentially deranged his habits. At least he
+was greeting when he shot our friends into the Rhine, and greeting when
+they got out again.
+
+"Shall we wait till they right the boat?"
+
+"No, Denys, our fare is paid; we owe them nought. Let us on, and
+briskly."
+
+Denys assented, observing that they could walk all the way to Cologne on
+this bank.
+
+"I fare not to Cologne," was the calm reply.
+
+"Why, whither then?"
+
+"To Burgundy."
+
+"To Burgundy? Ah, no! that is too good to be sooth."
+
+"Sooth 'tis; and sense into the bargain. What matters it to me how I go
+to Rome."
+
+"Nay, nay; you but say so to pleasure me. The change is too sudden: and
+think me not so ill hearted as take you at your word. Also did I not see
+your eyes sparkle at the wonders of Cologne? the churches, the images,
+the relics--"
+
+"How dull art thou, Denys; that was when we were to enjoy them together.
+Churches; I shall see plenty, go Romeward how I will. The bones of
+saints and martyrs; alas! the world is full of them: but a friend like
+thee, where on earth's face shall I find another? No, I will not turn
+thee farther from the road that leads to thy dear home, and her that
+pines for thee. Neither will I rob myself of thee by leaving thee. Since
+I drew thee out of Rhine I love thee better than I did. Thou art my
+pearl: I fished thee; and must keep thee. So gainsay me not, or thou
+wilt bring back my fever; but cry courage, and lead on; and hey for
+Burgundy!"
+
+Denys gave a joyful caper. "Courage! va pour la Bourgogne. Oh! soyez
+tranquille! cette fois il est bien decidement mort, ce coquin la." And
+they turned their backs on the Rhine.
+
+On this decision making itself clear, across the Rhine there was a
+commotion in the little party that had been watching the discussion, and
+the friends had not taken many steps, ere a voice came to them over the
+water. "HALT!"
+
+Gerard turned, and saw one of those four holding out a badge of office
+and a parchment slip. His heart sank; for he was a good citizen, and
+used to obey the voice that now bade him turn again to Dusseldorf--the
+Law's.
+
+Denys did not share his scruples. He was a Frenchman, and despised every
+other nation, laws, inmates and customs included. He was a soldier, and
+took a military view of the situation. Superior force opposed; river
+between; rear open; why, 'twas retreat made easy. He saw at a glance
+that the boat still drifted in mid stream, and there was no ferry nearer
+than Dusseldorf. "I shall beat a retreat to that hill," said he, "and
+then, being out of sight, quick step."
+
+They sauntered off.
+
+"Halt, in the bailiff's name!" cried a voice from the shore.
+
+Denys turned round and ostentatiously snapped his fingers at the
+bailiff, and proceeded.
+
+"Halt! in the archbishop's name."
+
+Denys snapped his fingers at his grace, and proceeded.
+
+"Halt! in the emperor's name."
+
+Denys snapped his fingers at his majesty, and proceeded.
+
+Gerard saw this needless pantomime with regret, and as soon as they had
+passed the brow of the hill said, "There is now but one course, we must
+run to Burgundy instead of walking;" and he set off, and ran the best
+part of a league without stopping.
+
+Denys was fairly blown, and inquired what on earth had become of
+Gerard's fever. "I begin to miss it sadly," said he drily.
+
+"I dropped it in Rhine, I trow," was the reply.
+
+Presently they came to a little village, and here Denys purchased a loaf
+and a huge bottle of Rhenish wine. For he said "we must sleep in some
+hole or corner. If we lie at an inn we shall be taken in our beds." This
+was no more than common prudence on the old soldier's part.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The official network for catching law-breakers, especially plebeian
+ones, was very close in that age; though the co-operation of the public
+was almost null, at all events upon the Continent. The innkeepers were
+everywhere under close surveillance as to their travellers, for whose
+acts they were even in some degree responsible, more so it would seem
+than for their sufferings.
+
+The friends were both glad when the sun set: and delighted, when after a
+long trudge under the stars (for the moon, if I remember right, did not
+rise till about 3 in the morning) they came to a large barn belonging to
+a house at some distance. A quantity of barley had been lately thrashed:
+for the heap of straw on one side the thrashing floor was almost as high
+as the unthrashed corn on the other.
+
+"Here be two royal beds," said Denys, "which shall we lie on, the mow,
+or the straw?"
+
+"The straw for me," said Gerard.
+
+They sat on the heap, and ate their brown bread, and drank their wine,
+and then Denys covered his friend up in straw, and heaped it high above
+him, leaving him only a breathing-hole: "Water they say is death to
+fevered men; I'll make warm water on't any how."
+
+Gerard bade him make his mind easy. "These few drops from Rhine cannot
+chill me. I feel heat enough in my body now to parch a kennel, or boil a
+cloud if I was in one." And with this epigram his consciousness went so
+rapidly he might really be said to "fall asleep."
+
+Denys, who lay awake awhile, heard that which made him nestle closer.
+Horses' hoofs came ringing up from Dusseldorf, and the wooden barn
+vibrated as they rattled past howling in a manner too well known and
+understood in the 15th century, but as unfamiliar in Europe now as a red
+Indian's war-whoop.
+
+Denys shook where he lay.
+
+Gerard slept like a top.
+
+It all swept by, and troop and howls died away.
+
+The stout soldier drew a long breath; whistled in a whisper; closed his
+eyes; and slept like top 2.
+
+In the morning he sat up and put out his hand to wake Gerard. It lighted
+on the young man's forehead, and found it quite wet. Denys then in his
+quality of nurse forbore to wake him. "It is ill to check sleep or sweat
+in a sick man," said he. "I know that far, though I ne'er minced ape nor
+gallows-bird."
+
+After waiting a good hour, he felt desperately hungry: so he turned and
+in self-defense went to sleep again.
+
+Poor fellow, in his hard life he had been often driven to this
+manoeuvre. At high noon he was waked by Gerard moving, and found him
+sitting up with the straw smoking round him like a dunghill. Animal heat
+versus moisture. Gerard called him "a lazy loon." He quietly grinned.
+
+They set out, and the first thing Denys did was to give Gerard his
+arbalest, etc., and mount a high tree on the road. "Coast clear to the
+next village," said he, and on they went.
+
+On drawing near the village Denys halted and suddenly inquired of Gerard
+how he felt.
+
+"What! can you not see? I feel as if Rome was no further than yon
+hamlet."
+
+"But thy body, lad; thy skin?"
+
+"Neither hot nor cold: and yesterday t'was hot one while and cold
+another. But what I cannot get rid of is this tiresome leg."
+
+"Le grand malheur! Many of my comrades have found no such difficulty."
+
+"Ah! there it goes again; itches consumedly."
+
+"Unhappy youth," said Denys solemnly, "the sum of thy troubles is this:
+thy fever is gone, and thy wound is--healing. Sith so it is," added he
+indulgently, "I shall tell thee a little piece of news I had otherwise
+withheld."
+
+"What is't?" asked Gerard sparkling with curiosity.
+
+"THE HUE AND CRY IS OUT AFTER US: AND ON FLEET HORSES."
+
+"Oh!"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIX
+
+
+GERARD was staggered by this sudden communication; and his colour came
+and went. Then he clenched his teeth with ire. For men of any spirit at
+all are like the wild boar; he will run from a superior force; owing
+perhaps to his not being an ass: but if you stick to his heels too long,
+and too close, and, in short, bore him, he will whirl, and come tearing
+at a multitude of hunters, and perhaps bore you. Gerard then set his
+teeth and looked battle. But the next moment his countenance fell and he
+said plaintively, "And my axe is in Rhine."
+
+They consulted together. Prudence bade them avoid that village: hunger
+said "buy food."
+
+Hunger spoke loudest. Prudence most convincingly. They settled to strike
+across the fields.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+They halted at a haystack and borrowed two bundles of hay, and lay on
+them in a dry ditch out of sight, but in nettles.
+
+They sallied out in turn and came back with turnips. These they munched
+at intervals in their retreat until sunset.
+
+Presently they crept out shivering into the rain and darkness, and got
+into the road on the other side of the village.
+
+It was a dismal night, dark as pitch and blowing hard. They could
+neither see, nor hear, nor be seen nor heard: and for aught I know
+passed like ghosts close to their foes. These they almost forgot in the
+natural horrors of the black tempestuous night, in which they seemed to
+grope and hew their way as in black marble. When the moon rose they were
+many a league from Dusseldorf. But they still trudged on. Presently they
+came to a huge building.
+
+"Courage!" cried Denys, "I think I know this convent. Ay, it is. We are
+in the see of Juliers. Cologne has no power here."
+
+The next moment they were safe within the walls.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXX
+
+
+HERE Gerard made acquaintance with a monk, who had constructed the great
+dial in the prior's garden, and a wheel for drawing water, and a
+winnowing machine for the grain, &c.; and had ever some ingenious
+mechanism on hand. He had made several psalteries and two dulcimers, and
+was now attempting a set of regalles, or little organ for the choir.
+
+Now Gerard played the humble psaltery a little: but the monk touched
+that instrument divinely, and showed him most agreeably what a novice he
+was in music. He also illuminated finely, but could not write so
+beautifully as Gerard. Comparing their acquirements with the earnestness
+and simplicity of an age in which accomplishments implied a true natural
+bent, Youth and Age soon became like brothers, and Gerard was pressed
+hard to stay that night. He consulted Denys, who assented with a rueful
+shrug.
+
+Gerard told his old new friend whither he was going, and described their
+late adventures, softening down the bolster.
+
+"Alack!" said the good old man, "I have been a great traveller in my
+day: but none molested me." He then told him to avoid inns; they were
+always haunted by rogues and roysterers, whence his soul might take harm
+even did his body escape; and to manage each day's journey so as to lie
+at some peaceful monastery; then suddenly breaking off and looking as
+sharp as a needle at Gerard, he asked him how long since he had been
+shriven? Gerard coloured up and replied feebly--
+
+"Better than a fortnight."
+
+"And thou an exorcist! No wonder perils have overtaken thee. Come, thou
+must be assoiled out of hand."
+
+"Yes, father," said Gerard, "and with all mine heart;" and was sinking
+down to his knees, with his hands joined; but the monk stopped him half
+fretfully--
+
+"Not to me! not to me! not to me! I am as full of the world as thou or
+any he that lives in't. My whole soul it is in these wooden pipes, and
+sorry leathern stops, which shall perish--with them whose minds are
+fixed on suchlike vanities."
+
+"Dear father," said Gerard, "they are for the use of the Church, and
+surely that sanctifies the pains and labour spent on them?"
+
+"That is just what the devil has been whispering in mine ear this
+while," said the monk, putting one hand behind his back and shaking his
+finger half threateningly, half playfully, at Gerard: "he was even so
+kind and thoughtful as to mind me that Solomon built the Lord a house
+with rare hangings, and that this in him was counted gracious and no
+sin. Oh! he can quote Scripture rarely. But I am not so simple a monk as
+you think, my lad," cried the good father with sudden defiance,
+addressing not Gerard but--Vacancy. "This one toy finished, vigils,
+fasts, and prayers for me; prayers standing, prayers lying on the chapel
+floor, and prayers in a right good tub of cold water." He nudged Gerard
+and winked his eye knowingly. "Nothing he hates and dreads like seeing
+us monks at our orisons up to our chins in cold water. For corpus domat
+aqua. So now go confess thy little trumpery sins, pardonable in youth
+and secularity, and leave me to mine, sweet to me as honey, and to be
+expiated in proportion."
+
+Gerard bowed his head, but could not help saying, "Where shall I find a
+confessor more holy and clement?"
+
+"In each of these cells," replied the monk, simply (they were now in the
+corridor): "there go to Brother Anselm, yonder."
+
+Gerard followed the monk's direction and made for a cell; but the doors
+were pretty close to one another, and it seems he mistook: for just as
+he was about to tap, he heard his old friend crying to him in an
+agitated whisper, "Nay! nay! nay!" He turned, and there was the monk at
+his celldoor in a strange state of anxiety, going up and down and
+beating the air double-handed, like a bottom sawyer. Gerard really
+thought the cell he was at must be inhabited by some dangerous wild
+beast, if not by that personage, whose presence in the convent had been
+so distinctly proclaimed. He looked back inquiringly and went on to the
+next door. Then his old friend nodded his head rapidly, bursting in a
+moment into a comparatively blissful expression of face, and shot back
+into his den. He took his hour-glass, turned it, and went to work on his
+regalles: and often he looked up, and said to himself, "Well-a-day, the
+sands how swift they run when the man is bent over earthly toys."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Father Anselm was a venerable monk, with an ample head, and a face all
+dignity and love. Therefore Gerard in confessing to him, and replying to
+his gentle though searching questions, could not help thinking, "here
+is a head!--Oh dear! oh dear! I wonder whether you will let me draw it
+when I have done confessing." And so his own head got confused, and he
+forgot a crime or two. However he did not lower the bolstering this
+time: nor was he so uncandid as to detract from the pagan character of
+the bolstered.
+
+The penance inflicted was this: he was to enter the convent church, and
+prostrating himself, kiss the lowest step of the altar three times: then
+kneeling on the floor, to say three paternosters and a credo: "this done
+come back to me on the instant."
+
+Accordingly, his short mortification performed, Gerard returned and
+found Father Anselm spreading plaster.
+
+"After the soul the body," said he; "know that I am the chirurgeon here,
+for want of a better. This is going on thy leg; to cool it, not to burn
+it, the saints forbid."
+
+During the operation, the monastic leech, who had naturally been
+interested by the Dusseldorf branch of Gerard's confession, rather sided
+with Denys upon "bleeding." "We Dominicans seldom let blood now-a-days;
+the lay leeches say 'tis from timidity and want of skill; but, in sooth,
+we have long found that simples will cure most of the ills that can be
+cured at all. Besides they never kill in capable hands; and other
+remedies slay like thunderbolts. As for the blood, the Vulgate saith
+expressly it is 'the life of a man.' And in medicine or law, as in
+divinity, to be wiser than the All-wise is to be a fool. Moreover,
+simples are mighty. The little four-footed creature that kills the
+poisonous snake, if bitten herself finds an herb powerful enough to
+quell that poison, though stronger and of swifter operation than any
+mortal malady; and we, taught by her wisdom, and our own traditions,
+still search and try the virtues of those plants the good Goth hath
+strewed this earth with some to feed men's bodies, some to heal them.
+Only in desperate ills we mix heavenly with earthly virtue. We steep the
+hair or the bones of some dead saint in the medicine, and thus work
+marvellous cures."
+
+"Think you, father, it is along of the reliques? for Peter a Floris, a
+learned leech and no pagan, denies it stoutly."
+
+"What knows Peter a Floris? And what know I? I take not on me to say we
+can command the saints, and, will they nill they, can draw corporal
+virtue from their blest remains. But I see that the patient drinking
+thus in faith is often bettered as by a charm. Doubtless faith in the
+recipient is for much in all these cures. But, so 'twas ever. A sick
+woman, that all the Jewish leeches failed to cure, did but touch
+Christ's garment and was healed in a moment. Had she not touched that
+sacred piece of cloth she had never been healed. Had she without faith
+not touched it only, but worn it to her grave, I trow she had been none
+the better for't. But we do ill to search these things too curiously.
+All we see around us calls for faith. Have then a little patience! We
+shall soon know all. Meantime, I, thy confessor for the nonce, do
+strictly forbid thee on thy soul's health to hearken learned lay folk on
+things religious. Arrogance is their bane; with it they shut heaven's
+open door in their own faces. Mind I say learned laics. Unlearned ones
+have often been my masters in humility, and may be thine. Thy wound is
+cared for; in three days 'twill be but a scar. And now God speed thee,
+and the saints make thee as good, and as happy, as thou art beautiful
+and gracious." Gerard hoped there was no need to part yet; for he was to
+dine in the refectory. But Father Anselm told him, with a shade of
+regret just perceptible and no more, that he did not leave his cell this
+week, being himself in penitence, and, with this he took Gerard's head
+delicately in both hands, and kissed him on the brow: and almost before
+the cell door had closed on him, was back to his pious offices. Gerard
+went away chilled to the heart by the isolation of the monastic life:
+and saddened too. "Alas!" he thought, "here is a kind face I must never
+look to see again on earth; a kind voice gone from mine ear and my heart
+forever. There is nothing but meeting and parting in this sorrowful
+world. Well-a-day! well-a-day!" This pensive mood was interrupted by a
+young monk who came for him and took him to the refectory; there he
+found several monks seated at a table, and Denys standing like a poker,
+being examined as to the towns he should pass through: the friars then
+clubbed their knowledge, and marked out the route, noting all the
+religious houses on or near that road; and this they gave Gerard. Then
+supper, and after it the old monk carried Gerard to his cell, and they
+had an eager chat, and the friar incidentally revealed the cause of his
+pantomime in the corridor. "Ye had well-nigh fallen into Brother
+Jerome's clutches. Yon was his cell."
+
+"Is Father Jerome an ill man, then?"
+
+"An ill man?" and the friar crossed himself; "a saint, an anchorite, the
+very pillar of this house! He had sent ye barefoot to Loretto. Nay, I
+forgot, y'are bound for Italy: the spiteful old--saint upon earth, had
+sent ye to Canterbory or Compostella. But Jerome was born old and with a
+cowl; Anselm and I were boys once; and wicked beyond anything you can
+imagine" (Gerard wore a somewhat incredulous look), "this keeps us
+humble more or less, and makes us reasonably lenient to youth and hot
+blood."
+
+Then, at Gerard's earnest request, one more heavenly strain upon the
+psalterion, and so to bed, the troubled spirit calmed, and the sore
+heart soothed.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+I have described in full this day, marked only by contrast, a day that
+came like oil on waves after so many passions and perils--because it
+must stand in this narrative as the representative of many such days
+which now succeeded to it. For our travellers on their weary way
+experienced that, which most of my readers will find in the longer
+journey of life, viz., that stirring events are not evenly distributed
+over the whole road, but come by fits and starts, and, as it were, in
+clusters. To some extent this may be because they draw one another by
+links more or less subtle. But there is more in it than that. It happens
+so. Life is an intermittent fever. Now all narrators whether of history
+or fiction, are compelled to slur these barren portions of time--or else
+line trunks. The practice however tends to give the unguarded reader a
+wrong arithmetical impression, which there is a particular reason for
+avoiding in these pages as far as possible. I invite therefore your
+intelligence to my aid, and ask you to try and realize that, although
+there were no more vivid adventures for a long while, one day's march
+succeeded another; one monastery after another fed and lodged them
+gratis with a welcome always charitable, sometimes genial; and, though
+they met no enemy but winter and rough weather, antagonist not always
+contemptible, yet they trudged over a much larger tract of territory
+than that, their passage through which I have described so minutely. And
+so the pair, Gerard bronzed in the face and travel-stained from head to
+foot, and Denys with his shoes in tatters, stiff and footsore both of
+them, drew near the Burgundian frontier.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXI
+
+
+GERALD was almost as eager for this promised land as Denys; for the
+latter constantly chanted its praises, and at every little annoyance
+showed him "they did things better in Burgundy"; and above all played on
+his foible by guaranteeing clean bed-clothes at the inns of that
+polished nation. "I ask no more," the Hollander would say; "to think
+that I have not lain once in a naked bed since I left home! When I look
+at their linen, instead of doffing habit and hose, it is mine eyes and
+nose I would fain be shut of."
+
+Denys carried his love of country so far as to walk twenty leagues in
+shoes that had exploded, rather than buy of a German churl, who would
+throw all manner of obstacles in a customer's way, his incivility, his
+dinner, his body.
+
+Towards sunset they found themselves at equal distances from a little
+town and a monastery: only the latter was off the road. Denys was for
+the inn, Gerard for the convent. Denys gave way, but on condition that,
+once in Burgundy, they should always stop at an inn. Gerard consented to
+this the more readily that his chart with its list of convents ended
+here. So they turned off the road. And now Gerard asked with surprise
+hence this sudden aversion to places, that had fed and lodged them
+gratis so often. The soldier hemm'd and hawed at first; but at last his
+wrongs burst forth. It came out that this was no sudden aversion, but an
+ancient and abiding horror, which he had suppressed till now, but with
+infinite difficulty, and out of politeness: "I saw they had put powder
+in your drink," said he. "So I forbore them. However, being the last,
+why not ease my mind? Know then I have been like a fish out of water in
+all those great dungeons. You straightway levant with some old
+shaveling: so you see not my purgatory."
+
+"Forgive me! I have been selfish."
+
+"Ay, ay, I forgive thee, little one: 'tis not thy fault: art not the
+first fool that has been priest-rid, and monk-bit. But I'll not forgive
+_them_ my misery." Then, about a century before Henry VIII.'s
+commissioners, he delivered his indictment. These gloomy piles were all
+built alike. Inns differed, but here all was monotony. Great gate,
+little gate, so many steps and then a gloomy cloister. Here the dortour,
+there the great cold refectory, where you must sit mumchance, or at
+least inaudible, he who liked to speak his mind out: "and then," said
+he, "nobody is a man here, but all are slaves, and of what? of a
+peevish, tinkling bell, that never sleeps. An 'twere a trumpet now, aye
+sounding alarums, 'twouldn't freeze a man's heart so. Tinkle, tinkle,
+tinkle, and you must sit to meat with maybe no stomach for food. Ere
+your meat settles in your stomach, tinkle, tinkle, and ye must to church
+with maybe no stomach for devotion: I am not a hog at prayers, for one.
+Tinkle, tinkle! and now you must to bed with your eyes open. Well, by
+then you have contrived to shut them, some uneasy imp of darkness has
+got to the bell-rope, and tinkle, tinkle, it behoves you to say a prayer
+in the dark, whether you know one or not. If they heard the sort of
+prayers I mutter when they break my rest with their tinkle! Well, you
+drop off again and get about an eyeful of sleep; lo, it is tinkle,
+tinkle, for matins."
+
+"And the only clapper you love is a woman's," put in Gerard half
+contemptuously.
+
+"Because there is some music in that even when it scolds," was the stout
+reply. "And then to be always checked. If I do but put my finger in the
+salt-cellar, straightway I hear, 'Have you no knife that you finger the
+salt?' And if I but wipe my knife on the cloth to save time, then 'tis,
+'Wipe thy knife dirty on the bread, and clean upon the cloth!' Oh small
+of soul! these little peevish pedantries fall chill upon good fellowship
+like wee icicles a-melting down from strawen eaves."
+
+"I hold cleanliness no pedantry," said Gerard. "Shouldst learn better
+manners once for all."
+
+"Nay. 'Tis they who lack manners. They stop a fellow's mouth at every
+word."
+
+"At every other word you mean; every obscene or blasphemous one."
+
+"Exaggerator, go to! Why, at the very last of these dungeons, I found
+the poor travellers sitting all chilled and mute round one shaveling,
+like rogues awaiting their turn to be hanged: so to cheer them up, I did
+but cry out, 'Courage, tout le monde, le dia--'"
+
+"Connu! what befell?"
+
+"Marry, this. 'Blaspheme not!' quo' the bourreau. 'Plait-il,' say I.
+Doesn't he wheel and wyte on me in a sort of Alsatian French, turning
+all the 'P's' into 'B's.' I had much ado not to laugh in his face."
+
+"Being thyself unable to speak ten words of _his_ language without a
+fault."
+
+"Well, all the world ought to speak French. What avail so many jargons
+except to put a frontier atwixt men's hearts?"
+
+"But what said he."
+
+"What signifies it what a fool says?"
+
+"Oh, not all the words of a fool are folly: or I should not listen to
+you."
+
+"Well, then, he said, 'such as begin by making free with the devil's
+name, aye end by doing it with all the names in heaven.' 'Father,' said
+I, 'I am a soldier, and this is but my "consigne" or watchword.' 'Oh,
+then, it is just a custom?' said he. I not divining the old fox, and
+thinking to clear myself, said, 'Ay, it was.' 'Then that is ten times
+worse,' said he. ''Twill bring him about your ears one of these days. He
+still comes where he hears his name often called.' Observe! no gratitude
+for the tidings which neither his missals nor his breviary had ever let
+him know. Then he was so good as to tell me, soldiers do commonly the
+crimes for which all other men are broke on the wheel; 'a savoir'
+murder, rape, and pillage."
+
+"And is't not true?"
+
+"True or not, it was ill manners," replied Denys, guardedly. "And so
+says this courteous host of mine, 'being the foes of mankind, why make
+enemies of good spirits into the bargain, by still shouting the names of
+evil ones?' and a lot more stuff."
+
+"Well, but Denys, whether you hearken his rede, or slight it, wherefore
+blame a man for raising his voice to save your soul?"
+
+"How can his voice save my soul, when a keeps turning of his 'P's' into
+'B's'?"
+
+Gerard was staggered: ere he could recover at this thunderbolt of
+Gallicism, Denys went triumphant off at a tangent, and stigmatized all
+monks as hypocrites. "Do but look at them, how they creep about and
+cannot eye you like honest men."
+
+"Nay," said Gerard, eagerly, "that modest downcast gaze is part of their
+discipline, 'tis 'custodia oculorum.'"
+
+"Cussed toads eating hoc hac horum? No such thing; just so looks a
+cut-purse. Can't meet a true man's eye. Doff cowl, monk; and behold, a
+thief: don cowl thief, and lo, a monk. Tell me not they will ever be
+able to look God Almighty in the face, when they can't even look a true
+man in the face down here. Ah, here it is, black as ink! into the well
+we go, comrade. Misericorde, there goes the tinkle already. 'Tis the
+best of tinkles though; 'tis for dinner: stay, listen! I thought so; the
+wolf in my stomach cried 'Amen!'" This last statement he confirmed with
+two oaths, and marched like a victorious gamecock into the convent,
+thinking by Gerard's silence he had convinced him, and not dreaming how
+profoundly he had disgusted him.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXII
+
+
+IN the refectory allusion was made, at the table where Gerard sat, to
+the sudden death of the monk, who had undertaken to write out fresh
+copies of the charter of the monastery, and the rule, etc.
+
+Gerard caught this, and timidly offered his services. There was a
+hesitation which he mistook. "Nay, not for hire, my lords, but for love,
+and as a trifling return for many a good night's lodging the brethren of
+your order have bestowed on me a poor wayfarer."
+
+A monk smiled approvingly; but hinted that the late brother was an
+excellent penman, and his work could not be continued but by a master.
+Gerard, on this, drew from his wallet with some trepidation a vellum
+deed, the back of which he had cleaned and written upon by way of
+specimen. The monk gave quite a start at sight of it, and very hastily
+went up the hall to the high table, and bending his knee so as just to
+touch in passing the fifth step and the tenth, or last, presented it to
+the prior with comments. Instantly a dozen knowing eyes were fixed on
+it: and a buzz of voices was heard; and soon Gerard saw the prior point
+more than once, and the monk came back, looking as proud as Punch, with
+a savory crustade ryal, or game pie gravied and spiced, for Gerard, and
+a silver grace cup full of rich pimentum. This latter Gerard took, and
+bowing low, first to the distant prior, then to his own company,
+quaffed, and circulated the cup.
+
+Instantly, to his surprise, the whole table hailed him as a brother:
+"Art convent bred, deny it not?" He acknowledged it, and gave Heaven
+thanks for it, for otherwise he had been as rude and ignorant as his
+brothers, Sybrandt and Cornelis. "But, 'tis passing strange how you
+could know," said he.
+
+"You drank with the cup in both hands," said two monks, speaking
+together.
+
+The voices had for some time been loudish round a table at the bottom of
+the hall: but presently came a burst of mirth so obstreperous and
+prolonged, that the prior sent the very sub-prior all down the hall to
+check it, and inflict penance on every monk at the table. And Gerard's
+cheek burned with shame: for in the heart of the unruly merriment his
+ear had caught the word "courage!" and the trumpet tones of Denys of
+Burgundy.
+
+Soon Gerard was installed in feu Werter's cell, with wax lights, and a
+little frame that could be set at any angle, and all the materials of
+caligraphy. The work however was too much for one evening. Then came the
+question, how could he ask Denys, the monk-hater, to stay longer?
+However he told him, and offered to abide by his decision. He was
+agreeably surprised when Denys said, graciously, "A day's rest will do
+neither of us harm. Write thou, and I'll pass the time as I may."
+
+Gerard's work was vastly admired; they agreed that the records of the
+monastery had gained by poor Werter's death. The sub-prior forced a
+rix-dollar on Gerard, and several brushes and colours out of the convent
+stock, which was very large. He resumed his march warm at heart: for
+this was of good omen; since it was on the pen he relied to make his
+fortune and recover his well-beloved. "Come, Denys," said he, good
+humouredly, "see what the good monks have given me: now, do try to be
+fairer to them; for to be round with you, it chilled my friendship for a
+moment to hear even you call my benefactors 'hypocrites.'"
+
+"I recant," said Denys.
+
+"Thank you! thank you! Good Denys."
+
+"I was a scurrilous vagabond."
+
+"Nay, nay, say not so, neither!"
+
+"But we soldiers are rude and hasty. I give myself the lie, and I offer
+those I misunderstood all my esteem. 'Tis unjust that thousands should
+be defamed for the hypocrisy of a few."
+
+"Now are you reasonable. You have pondered what I said?"
+
+"Nay, it is their own doing."
+
+Gerard crowed a little, we all like to be proved in the right; and was
+all attention when Denys offered to relate how his conversion was
+effected.
+
+"Well then, at dinner the first day, a young monk beside me did open his
+jaws and laughed right out most musically. 'Good,' said I, 'at last I
+have fallen on a man and not a shorn ape.' So, to sound him further, I
+slapped his broad back and administered my consigne. 'Heaven forbid!'
+says he. I stared. For the dog looked as sad as Solomon: a better mime
+saw you never, even at a Mystery. 'I see war is no sharpener of the
+wits,' said he. 'What are the clergy for but to fight the foul fiend?
+and what else are monks for?
+
+    "The fiend being dead,
+    The friars are sped."
+
+You may plough up the convents and we poor monks shall have nought to
+do--but turn soldiers, and so bring him to life again.' Then there was a
+great laugh at my expense. 'Well, you are the monk for me,' said I. 'And
+you are the cross-bow-man for me,' quo' he. 'And I'll be bound you could
+tell us tales of the war should make our hair stand on end.' 'Excusez
+the barber has put that out of question,' quoth I, and then I had the
+laugh."
+
+"What wretched ribaldry!" observed Gerard pensively.
+
+The candid Denys at once admitted he had seen merrier jests hatched with
+less cackle. "'Twas a great matter to have got rid of hypocrisy. 'So,'
+said I, 'I can give you the chare de poule, if that may content ye.'
+'That we will see,' was the cry, and a signal went round."
+
+Denys then related, bursting with glee, how at bedtime he had been taken
+to a cell instead of the great dortour, and strictly forbidden to sleep;
+and, to aid his vigil, a book had been lent him of pictures representing
+a hundred merry adventures of monks in pursuit of the female laity: and
+how in due course he had been taken out barefooted and down to the
+parlour, where was a supper fit for the duke, and at it twelve jolly
+friars, the roaringest boys he had ever met in peace or war. How the
+story, the toast, the jest, the wine cup had gone round, and some had
+played cards with a gorgeous pack, where Saint Theresa, and Saint
+Catharine, etc., bedizened with gold, stood for the four queens; and
+black, white, grey, and crutched friars for the four knaves; and had
+staked their very rosaries, swearing like troopers when they lost. And
+how about midnight a sly monk had stolen out, but had by him and others
+been as cannily followed into the garden, and seen to thrust his hand
+into the ivy and out with a ropeladder. With this he had run up on the
+wall, which was ten feet broad, yet not so nimbly but what a russet
+kirtle had popped up from the outer world as quick as he: and so to
+billing and cooing: that this situation had struck him as rather feline
+than ecclesiastical, and drawn from him the appropriate comment of a
+"mew!" The monks had joined the mewsical chorus, and the lay visitor
+shrieked and been sore discomforted; but Abelard only cried "What, are
+ye there, ye jealous miauling knaves? ye shall caterwaul to some tune
+to-morrow night. I'll fit every manjack of ye with a fardingale." That
+this brutal threat had reconciled him to stay another day--at Gerard's
+request.
+
+Gerard groaned.
+
+Meantime, unable to disconcert so brazen a monk, and the demoiselle
+beginning to whimper, they had danced caterwauling in a circle, then
+bestowed a solemn benediction on the two wallflowers, and off to the
+parlour, where they found a pair lying dead drunk, and the other two
+affectionate to tears. That they had straightway carried off the
+inanimate, and dragged off the loving and lachrymose, kicked them all
+merrily each into his cell,
+
+    "And so shut up in measureless content."
+
+Gerard was disgusted: and said so.
+
+Denys chuckled, and proceeded to tell him how the next day he and the
+young monks had drawn the fish-ponds and secreted much pike, carp,
+tench, and eel for their own use: and how in the dead of night he had
+been taken shoeless by crooked ways into the chapel, a ghostlike place,
+being dark, and then down some steps into a crypt below the chapel
+floor, where suddenly paradise had burst on him.
+
+"'Tis there the holy fathers retire to pray," put in Gerard.
+
+"Not always," said Denys: "wax candles by the dozen were lighted, and
+princely cheer; fifteen soups maigre, with marvellous twangs of venison,
+grouse, and hare in them, and twenty different fishes (being Friday),
+cooked with wondrous art, and each he between two buxom lasses, and each
+lass between two lads with a cowl; all but me: and to think I had to
+woo by interpreter. I doubt the knave put in three words for himself and
+one for me: if he didn't, hang him for a fool. And some of the weaker
+vessels were novices, and not wont to hold good wine: had to be coaxed
+ere they would put it to their white teeth: mais elles s'y faisaient;
+and the story, and the jest, and the cup went round (by-the-by they had
+flagons made to simulate breviaries): and a monk touched the cittern,
+and sang ditties with a voice tuneable as a lark in spring. The posies
+did turn the faces of the women-folk bright red at first: but elles s'y
+faisaient." Here Gerard exploded.
+
+"Miserable wretches! Corrupters of youth! Perverters of innocence! but
+for you being there, Denys, who have been taught no better, oh, would
+God the church had fallen on the whole gang. Impious, abominable,
+hypocrites!"
+
+"Hypocrites?" cried Denys with unfeigned surprise. "Why that is what I
+clept them ere I knew them: and you withstood me. Nay, they are sinners;
+all good fellows are that: but, by St. Denys his helmeted skull, no
+hypocrites, but right jolly roaring blades."
+
+"Denys," said Gerard solemnly; "you little know the peril you ran that
+night. That church you defiled amongst you is haunted: I had it from one
+of the elder monks. The dead walk there, their light feet have been
+heard to patter o'er the stones."
+
+"Misericorde!" whispered Denys.
+
+"Ay, more," said Gerard, lowering his voice almost to a whisper,
+"celestial sounds have issued from the purlieus of that very crypt you
+turned into a tavern. Voices of the dead holding unearthly communion
+have chilled the ear of midnight, and at times, Denys, the faithful in
+their nightly watches have even heard music from dead lips; and chords,
+made by no mortal finger, swept by no mortal hand, have rung faintly,
+like echoes, deep among the dead in those sacred vaults."
+
+Denys wore a look of dismay. "Ugh! if I had known, mules and wain-ropes
+had not hauled me thither; and so" (with a sigh) "I had lost a merry
+time."
+
+Whether further discussion might have thrown any more light upon these
+ghostly sounds who can tell? for up came a "bearded brother" from the
+monastery, spurring his mule, and waving a piece of vellum in his hand.
+It was the deed between Ghysbrecht and Floris Brandt. Gerard valued it
+deeply as a remembrance of home: he turned pale at first but to think
+he had so nearly lost it, and to Denys's infinite amusement not only
+gave a piece of money to the lay brother, but kissed the mule's nose.
+
+"I'll read you now," said Gerard "were you twice as ill written; and--to
+make sure of never losing you"--here he sat down and taking out needle
+and thread sewed it with feminine dexterity to his doublet, and his
+mind, and heart, and soul were away to Sevenbergen.
+
+They reached the promised land, and Denys, who was in high spirits,
+doffed his bonnet to all the females; who curtsied and smiled in return;
+fired his consigne at most of the men; at which some stared, some
+grinned, some both; and finally landed his friend at one of the
+long-promised Burgundian inns.
+
+"It is a little one," said he, "but I know it of old for a good one;
+'Les Trois Poissons.' But what is this writ up? I mind not this:" and he
+pointed to an inscription that ran across the whole building in a single
+line of huge letters. "Oh I see. 'Ici on loge a pied et a cheval,'" said
+Denys going minutely through the inscription, and looking bumptious when
+he had effected it.
+
+Gerard did look, and the sentence in question ran thus--
+
+"ON NE LOGE CEANS A CREDIT: CE BONHOMME EST MORT, LES MAUVAIS PAIEURS
+L'ONT TUE."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXIII
+
+
+THEY met the landlord in the passage.
+
+"Welcome, messieurs," said he taking off his cap with a low bow.
+
+"Come, we are not in Germany," said Gerard.
+
+In the public room they found the mistress, a buxom woman of forty. She
+curtsied to them and smiled right cordially. "Give yourself the trouble
+of sitting ye down, fair sir," said she to Gerard, and dusted two chairs
+with her apron, not that they needed it.
+
+"Thank you, dame," said Gerard. "Well," thought he, "this _is_ a polite
+nation: the trouble of sitting down? That will I with singular patience;
+and presently the labour of eating, also the toil of digestion, and
+finally, by Hercules his aid, the strain of going to bed, and the
+struggle of sinking fast asleep."
+
+"Why, Denys, what are you doing? ordering supper for only two?"
+
+"Why not?"
+
+"What can we sup without waiting for forty more? Burgundy for ever!"
+
+"Aha! Courage, camarade. Le dia--"
+
+"C'est convenu."
+
+The salique law seemed not to have penetrated to French inns. In this
+one at least wimple and kirtle reigned supreme; doublets and hose were
+few in number and feeble in act. The landlord himself wandered
+objectless, eternally taking off his cap to folk for want of thought;
+and the women, as they passed him in turn, thrust him quietly aside
+without looking at him, as we remove a live twig in bustling through a
+wood.
+
+A maid brought in supper, and the mistress followed her empty handed.
+
+"Fall to, my masters," said she cheerily, "y'have but one enemy here;
+and he lies under your knife." (I shrewdly suspect this of formula.)
+
+They fell to. The mistress drew her chair a little towards the table;
+and provided company as well as meat; gossiped genially with them like
+old acquaintances: but, this form gone through, the busy dame was soon
+off and sent in her daughter, a beautiful young woman of about twenty,
+who took the vacant seat. She was not quite so broad and genial as the
+elder, but gentle and cheerful, and showed a womanly tenderness for
+Gerard on learning the distance the poor boy had come, and had to go.
+She stayed nearly half an hour, and, when she left them, Gerard said,
+"This an inn? Why it is like home."
+
+"Qui fit Francois il fit courtois," said Denys bursting with gratified
+pride.
+
+"Courteous? nay, Christian; to welcome us like home guests and old
+friends, us vagrants, here to-day and gone to-morrow. But indeed who
+better merits pity and kindness than the worn traveller far from his
+folk? Hola! here's another."
+
+The new comer was the chambermaid, a woman of about twenty-five, with a
+cocked nose, a large laughing mouth, and a sparkling black eye: and a
+bare arm very stout but not very shapely.
+
+The moment she came in, one of the travellers passed a somewhat free
+jest on her, the next the whole company were roaring at his expense, so
+swiftly had her practised tongue done his business. Even as, in a
+passage of arms between a novice and a master of fence, foils
+clash--novice pinked. On this another, and then another, must break a
+lance with her: but Marion stuck her great arms upon her haunches, and
+held the whole room in play. This country girl possessed in perfection
+that rude and ready humour, which looks mean and vulgar on paper but
+carries all before it spoken: not wit's rapier; its bludgeon. Nature had
+done much for her in this way, and daily practice in an inn the rest.
+
+Yet shall she not be photographed by me, but feebly indicated: for it
+was just four hundred years ago, the raillery was coarse, she returned
+every stroke in kind, and, though a virtuous woman, said things without
+winking, which no decent man of our day would say even among men.
+
+Gerard sat gaping with astonishment. This was to him almost a new
+variety of "that interesting species," homo. He whispered Denys, "Now I
+see why you Frenchmen say 'a woman's tongue is her sword'": just then
+she levelled another assailant; and the chivalrous Denys to console and
+support "the weaker vessel," the iron kettle among the clay pots,
+administered his consigne, "Courage, ma mie, le--" etc.
+
+She turned on him directly. "How can _he_ be dead as long as there is an
+archer left alive?" (General laughter at her ally's expense.)
+
+"It is 'washing day' my masters," said she with sudden gravity.
+
+"Apres? We travellers cannot strip and go bare while you wash our
+clothes," objected a peevish old fellow by the fireside, who had kept
+mumchance during the raillery, but crept out into the sunshine of
+commonplaces.
+
+"I aimed not your way, ancient man," replied Marion superciliously.
+"But, _since you ask me_" (here she scanned him slowly from head to
+foot), "I trow you might take a turn in the tub, clothes and all, and no
+harm done" (laughter). "But what I spoke for, I thought--this young
+sire--might like his beard starched."
+
+Poor Gerard's turn had come: his chin crop was thin and silky.
+
+The loudest of all the laughters this time was the traitor Denys, whose
+beard was of a good length, and singularly stiff and bristly: so that
+Shakespeare, though he never saw him, hit him in the bull's eye.
+
+    "Full of strange oaths and bearded like the pard."
+                                           _As You Like It._
+
+Gerard bore the Amazonian satire mighty calmly. He had little personal
+vanity. "Nay, 'chambriere'" said he with a smile, "mine is all unworthy
+your pains: take you this fair growth in hand!" and he pointed to
+Denys's vegetable.
+
+"Oh, time for that, when I starch the besoms."
+
+Whilst they were all shouting over this palpable hit, the mistress
+returned, and, in no more time than it took her to cross the threshold,
+did our Amazon turn to a seeming Madonna meek and mild.
+
+Mistresses are wonderful subjugators. Their like I think breathes not on
+the globe. Housemaids, decide! It was a waste of histrionic ability
+though; for the landlady had heard, and did not at heart disapprove, the
+peals of laughter.
+
+"Ah, Marion, lass," said she, good-humouredly, "If you laid me an egg
+every time you cackle, 'Les Trois Poissons' would never lack an omelet."
+
+"Now, dame," said Gerard, "what is to pay?"
+
+"What for?"
+
+"Our supper."
+
+"Where is the hurry? cannot you be content to pay when you go? lose the
+guest, find the money, is the rule of 'The Three Fish.'"
+
+"But, dame, outside 'The Three Fish' it is thus written--'Ici--on ne
+loge--'"
+
+"Bah! Let that flea stick on the wall! Look hither," and she pointed to
+the smoky ceiling, which was covered with hieroglyphics. These were
+accounts, vulgo scores; intelligible to this dame and her daughter, who
+wrote them at need by simply mounting a low stool, and scratching with a
+knife so as to show lines of ceiling through the deposit of smoke. The
+dame explained that the writing on the wall was put there to frighten
+moneyless folk from the inn altogether, or to be acted on at odd times
+when a nonpaying face should come in and insist on being served. "We
+can't refuse them plump, you know. The law forbids us."
+
+"And how know you mine is not such a face?"
+
+"Out, fie! it is the best face that has entered 'The Three Fish' this
+autumn."
+
+"And mine, dame?" said Denys; "dost see no knavery here?"
+
+She eyed him calmly. "Not such a good one as the lad's: nor ever will
+be. But it is the face of a true man. For all that," added she drily,
+"an I were ten years younger, I'd as lieve not meet that face on a dark
+night too far from home."
+
+Gerard stared. Denys laughed. "Why, dame, I would but sip the night dew
+off the flower; and you needn't take ten years off, nor ten days, to be
+worth risking a scratched face for."
+
+"There, our mistress," said Marion, who had just come in, "said I not
+t'other day, you could make a fool of them still, an if you were
+properly minded?"
+
+"I dare say ye did: it sounds like some daft wench's speech."
+
+"Dame," said Gerard, "this is wonderful."
+
+"What? Oh: no, no, that is no wonder at all. Why, I have been here all
+my life: and reading faces is the first thing a girl picks up in an
+inn."
+
+_Marion._] "And frying eggs the second; no, telling lies; frying eggs is
+the third, though."
+
+_The Mistress._] "And holding her tongue the last, and modesty the day
+after never at all."
+
+_Marion._] "Alack! Talk of _my_ tongue. But I say no more. She, under
+whose wing I live, now deals the blow. I'm sped--'tis but a chambermaid
+gone. Catch what's left on't," and she staggered and sank backwards on
+to the handsomest fellow in the room, which happened to be Gerard.
+
+"Tic! tic!" cried he, peevishly, "there, don't be stupid! that is too
+heavy a jest for me. See you not I am talking to the mistress?"
+
+Marion resumed her elasticity with a grimace; made two little bounds
+into the middle of the floor and there turned a pirouette. "There,
+mistress," said she, "I give in, 'tis you that reigns supreme with the
+men; leastways with male children."
+
+"Young man," said the mistress, "this girl is not so stupid as her
+deportment: in reading of faces, and frying of omelets, there we are
+great. 'Twould be hard if we failed at these arts, since they are about
+all we do know."
+
+"You do not quite take me, dame," said Gerard. "That honesty in a face
+should shine forth to your experienced eye, that seems reasonable: but
+how by looking on Denys here could you learn his one little foible, his
+insanity, his miserable mulierosity?" Poor Gerard got angrier the more
+he thought of it.
+
+"His mule--his what?" (crossing herself with superstitious awe at the
+polysyllable).
+
+"Nay, 'tis but the word I was fain to invent for him."
+
+"Invent? What can a child like you make other words than grow in
+Burgundy by nature? Take heed what ye do! why we are overrun with them
+already, especially bad ones. Lord, these be times. I look to hear of a
+new thistle invented next."
+
+"But, dame, I found language too poor to paint him. I was fain to
+invent. You know Necessity is the mother of--"
+
+"Ay! ay, that is old enough, o' conscience."
+
+"Well then, dame, mulierose--that means wrapped up, body and soul, in
+women. So prithee tell me; how did you ever detect the noodle's
+mulierosity?"
+
+"Alas! good youth, you make a mountain of a molehill. We that are women
+be notice-takers; and out of the tail of our eye see more than most men
+can, glaring through a prospect glass. Whiles I move to and fro doing
+this and that, my glance is still on my guests, and I did notice that
+this soldier's eyes were never off the womenfolk: my daughter, or
+Marion, or even an old woman like me, all was gold to him: and there a
+sat glowering; oh you foolish, foolish, man! Now _you_ still turned to
+the speaker, her or him, and that is common sense."
+
+Denys burst into a hoarse laugh. "You never were more out. Why this
+silky smooth-faced companion is a very Turk--all but his beard. He is
+what d'ye call 'em oser than ere an archer in the duke's body guard. He
+is more wrapped up in one single Dutch lass called Margaret than I am in
+the whole bundle of ye brown and fair."
+
+"Man alive, that is just the contrary," said the hostess. "Yourn is the
+bane, and hisn the cure. Cling you still to Margaret, my dear. I hope
+she is an honest girl."
+
+"Dame, she is an angel."
+
+"Ay, ay, they are all that till better acquainted. I'd as lieve have her
+no more than honest, and then she will serve to keep you out of worse
+company. As for you, soldier, there is trouble in store for you. Your
+eyes were never made for the good of your soul."
+
+"Nor of his pouch either," said Marion striking in, "and his lips they
+will sip the dew, as he calls it, off many a bramble bush."
+
+"Overmuch clack! Marion; overmuch clack."
+
+"Ods bodikins, mistress; ye didn't hire me to be one o' your three
+fishes, did ye?" and Marion sulked thirty seconds.
+
+"Is that the way to speak to our mistress?" remonstrated the landlord,
+who had slipped in.
+
+"Hold your whisht," said his wife sharply, "it is not your business to
+check the girl, she is a good servant to you."
+
+"What is the cock never to crow, and the hens at it all day?"
+
+"You can crow as loud as you like, my man--out o' doors. But the hen
+means to rule the roost."
+
+"I know a byword to that tune," said Gerard.
+
+"Do ye now? out wi't then."
+
+    "'Femme veut en toute saison,
+    Estre dame en sa maison.'"
+
+"I never heard it afore: but 'tis as sooth as gospel. Ay they that set
+these bywords a rolling had eyes and tongues, and tongues and eyes.
+Before all the world give me an old saw."
+
+"And me a young husband," said Marion. "Now there was a chance for you
+all, and nobody spoke. Oh! it is too late now. I've changed my mind."
+
+"All the better for some poor fellow," suggested Denys.
+
+And now the arrival of the young mistress, or, as she was called, the
+little mistress, was the signal for them all to draw round the fire,
+like one happy family, travellers, host, hostess, and even servants in
+the outer ring, and tell stories till bedtime. And Gerard in his turn
+told a tremendous one out of his repertory, a MS. collection of "acts of
+the saints," and made them all shudder deliciously; but soon after began
+to nod; exhausted by the effort I should say. The young mistress saw,
+and gave Marion a look. She instantly lighted a rush, and laying her
+hand on Gerard's shoulder invited him to follow her. She showed him a
+room where were two nice white beds, and bade him choose. "Either is
+paradise," said he. "I'll take this one. Do you know, I have not lain in
+a naked bed once since I left my home in Holland."
+
+"Alack! poor soul!" said she; "well then the sooner my flax and your
+down (he! he!) come together, the better; so--allons!" and she held out
+her cheek as business-like as if it had been her hand for a fee.
+
+"Allons? what does that mean?"
+
+"It means 'good-night.' Ahem! What don't they salute the chambermaid in
+your part?"
+
+"Not all in a moment."
+
+"What, do they make a business on't?"
+
+"Nay, perverter of words, I mean we make not so free with strange
+women."
+
+"They must be strange women if they do not think you strange fools then.
+Here is a coil. Why all the old greasy greybeards, that lie at our inn,
+do kiss us chambermaids; faugh! and what have we poor wretches to set on
+t'other side the compt, but now and then a nice young--? Alack! time
+flies, chambermaids can't be spared long in the nursery; so how is't to
+be?"
+
+"An't please you arrange with my comrade for both. He is mulierose; I am
+not."
+
+"Nay 'tis the curb he will want, not the spur. Well! well! you shall to
+bed without paying the usual toll; and oh but 'tis sweet to fall in with
+a young man, who can withstand these ancient ill customs, and gainsay
+brazen hussies. Shalt have thy reward."
+
+"Thank you! But what are you doing with my bed?"
+
+"Me? oh only taking off these sheets, and going to put on the pair the
+drunken miller slept in last night."
+
+"Oh no! no! You cruel, black-hearted thing! There! there!"
+
+"A la bonne heure! What will not perseverance effect? But note now the
+frowardness of a mad wench! I cared not for't a button. I am dead sick
+of that sport this five years. But you denied me: so then forthwith I
+behoved to have it; belike had gone through fire and water for't. Alas,
+young sir, we women are kittle cattle; poor perverse toads: excuse us:
+and keep us in our place, savoir, at arm's length! and so good-night!"
+
+At the door she turned and said with a complete change of tone and
+manner: "The Virgin guard thy head, and the Holy Evangelists watch the
+bed where lies a poor young wanderer far from home! Amen!"
+
+And the next moment he heard her run tearing down the stairs, and soon
+a peal of laughter from the salle betrayed her whereabouts.
+
+"Now that is a character," said Gerard profoundly; and yawned over the
+discovery.
+
+In a very few minutes he was in a dry bath of cold, clean, linen,
+inexpressibly refreshing to him after so long disuse: then came a
+delicious glow: and then--Sevenbergen.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+In the morning Gerard awoke infinitely refreshed, and was for rising,
+but found himself a close prisoner. His linen had vanished. Now this was
+paralysis; for the night-gown is a recent institution. In Gerard's
+century, and indeed long after, men did not play fast and loose with
+clean sheets (when they could get them), but crept into them clothed
+with--their innocence, like Adam: out of bed they seem to have taken
+most after his eldest son.
+
+Gerard bewailed his captivity to Denys; but that instant the door
+opened, and in sailed Marion with their linen, newly washed and ironed,
+on her two arms, and set it down on the table.
+
+"Oh you good girl," cried Gerard.
+
+"Alack, have you found me out at last?"
+
+"Yes indeed. Is this another _custom_?"
+
+"Nay, not to take them unbidden: but at night we aye question
+travellers, are they for linen washed. So I came in to you: but you were
+both sound. Then said I to the little mistress, 'La! where is the sense
+of waking wearied men, t'ask them is Charles the Great dead, and would
+they liever carry foul linen or clean, especially this one with a skin
+like cream.' 'And so he has, I declare,' said the young mistress."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+"That was me," remarked Denys with the air of a commentator.
+
+"Guess once more, and you'll hit the mark."
+
+"Notice him not, Marion; he is an impudent fellow; and I am sure we
+cannot be grateful enough for your goodness, and I am sorry I ever
+refused you--anything you fancied you should like."
+
+"Oh, are ye there," said l'espiegle. "I take that to mean you would fain
+brush the morning dew off, as your bashful companion calls it; well
+then, excuse me, 'tis _customary_, but not prudent. I decline. Quits
+with you, lad."
+
+"Stop! stop!" cried Denys as she was making off victorious, "I am
+curious to know how many of ye were here last night a-feasting your eyes
+on us twain.'"
+
+"'Twas so satisfactory a feast as we weren't half a minute over't. Who?
+why the big mistress, the little mistress, Janet and me, and the whole
+posse comitatus, on tiptoe. We mostly make our rounds, the last thing
+not to get burned down; and in prodigious numbers. Somehow that maketh
+us bolder, especially where archers lie scattered about."
+
+"Why did not you tell me? I'd have lain awake."
+
+"Beau sire, the saying goes that the good and the ill are all one while
+their lids are closed. So we said 'Here is one, who will serve God best
+asleep. Break not his rest!'"
+
+"She is funny," said Gerard dictatorially.
+
+"I must be either that or knavish."
+
+"How so?"
+
+"Because 'The Three Fish' pay me to be funny. You will eat before you
+part? Good! then I'll go see the meat be fit for such worshipful teeth."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+"Denys!"
+
+"What is your will?"
+
+"I wish that was a great boy, and going along with us, to keep us
+cheery."
+
+"So do not I. But I wish it was going along with us as it is."
+
+"Now Heaven forfend! A fine fool you would make of yourself."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+They broke their fast, settled their score, and said farewell. Then it
+was they found Marion had not exaggerated the "custom of the country."
+The three principal women took and kissed them right heartily, and they
+kissed the three principal women. The landlord took and kissed them, and
+they kissed the landlord; and the cry was "Come back, the sooner the
+better!"
+
+"Never pass 'The Three Fish;' should your purses be void, bring
+yourselves: 'le sieur credit' is not dead for you."
+
+And they took the road again.
+
+They came to a little town, and Denys went to buy shoes. The shopkeeper
+was in the doorway, but wide awake. He received Denys with a bow down to
+the ground. The customer was soon fitted, and followed to the street,
+and dismissed with graceful salutes from the doorstep.
+
+The friends agreed it was Elysium to deal with such a shoemaker as this.
+"Not but what my German shoes have lasted well enough," said Gerard the
+just.
+
+Outside the town was a pebbled walk.
+
+"This is to keep the burghers' feet dry, a-walking o' Sundays with their
+wives and daughters," said Denys.
+
+Those simple words of Denys, one stroke of a careless tongue, painted
+"home" in Gerard's heart. "Oh! how sweet," said he. "Mercy! what is
+this? A gibbet; and ugh, two skeletons thereon! Oh, Denys, what a sorry
+sight to woo by!"
+
+"Nay," said Denys, "a comfortable sight; for every rogue i' the air
+there is one the less a-foot."
+
+A little farther on they came to two pillars, and between these was a
+huge wheel closely studded with iron prongs; and entangled in these were
+bones and fragments of cloth miserably dispersed over the wheel.
+
+Gerard hid his face in his hands. "Oh to think those patches and bones
+are all that is left of a man! Of one who was what we are now."
+
+"Excusez! a thing that went on two legs and stole; are we no more than
+that?"
+
+"How know ye he stole? Have true men never suffered death and torture
+too?"
+
+"None of my kith ever found the way to the gibbet, I know."
+
+"The better their luck. Prithee how died the saints?"
+
+"Hard. But not in Burgundy."
+
+"Ye massacred them wholesale at Lyons, and that is on Burgundy's
+threshold. To you the gibbet proves the crime; because you read not
+story. Alas! had you stood on Calvary that bloody day we sigh for to
+this hour, I tremble to think you had perhaps shouted for joy at the
+gibbet builded there; for the cross was but the Roman gallows, Father
+Martin says."
+
+"The blaspheming old hound!"
+
+"Oh fie! fie! a holy and a book-learned man. Ay, Denys, y'had read them,
+that suffered there, by the bare light of the gibbet. 'Drive in the
+nails!' y'had cried: 'drive in the spear! Here be three malefactors.
+Three "roues."' Yet of those little three one was the first Christian
+saint, and another was the Saviour of the world which gibbeted him."
+
+Denys assured him on his honour they managed things better in Burgundy.
+He added too after profound reflection, that the horrors Gerard had
+alluded to had more than once made him curse and swear with rage when
+told by the good cure in his native village at Easter-tide; "but they
+chanced in an outlandish nation; and near a thousand years agone. Mort
+de ma vie, let us hope it is not true: or at least sore exaggerated. Do
+but see how all tales gather as they roll!"
+
+Then he reflected again, and all in a moment turned red with ire. "Do ye
+not blush to play with your book-craft on your unlettered friend, and
+throw dust in his eyes, evening the saints with these reptiles?"
+
+Then suddenly he recovered his good humour. "Since your heart beats for
+vermin, feel for the carrion crows! they be as good vermin as these:
+would ye send them to bed supperless, poor pretty poppets? Why, these be
+their larder: the pangs of hunger would gnaw them dead, but for cold
+cutpurse hung up here and there."
+
+Gerard, who had for some time maintained a dead silence, informed him
+the subject was closed between them and for ever. "There are things,"
+said he, "in which our hearts seem wide as the poles asunder, and eke
+our heads. But I love thee dearly all the same," he added with infinite
+grace and tenderness.
+
+Towards afternoon they heard a faint wailing noise on ahead: it grew
+distincter as they proceeded. Being fast walkers they soon came up with
+its cause: a score of pikemen, accompanied by several constables, were
+marching along, and in advance of them was a herd of animals they were
+driving. These creatures, in number rather more than a hundred, were of
+various ages, only very few were downright old: the males were downcast
+and silent. It was the females from whom all the outcry came. In other
+words the animals thus driven along at the law's point were men and
+women.
+
+"Good Heaven!" cried Gerard. "What a band of them! But stay, surely all
+those children cannot be thieves: why there are some in arms. What on
+earth is this, Denys?"
+
+Denys advised him to ask that "bourgeois" with the badge. "This is
+Burgundy: here a civil question ever draws a civil reply."
+
+Gerard went up to the officer and removing his cap, a civility which
+was immediately returned, said, "For our Lady's sake, sir, what do ye
+with these poor folk?"
+
+"Nay, what is that to you, my lad?" replied the functionary
+suspiciously.
+
+"Master, I'm a stranger, and athirst for knowledge."
+
+"That is another matter. What are we doing? ahem. Why we--Dost hear,
+Jacques? Here is a stranger seeks to know what we are doing," and the
+two machines were tickled that there should be a man who did not know
+something they happened to know. In all ages this has tickled. However
+the chuckle was brief, and moderated by their native courtesy, and the
+official turned to Gerard again. "What we are doing? hum!" and now he
+hesitated not from any doubt as to what he was doing, but because he was
+hunting for a single word that should convey the matter.
+
+"Ce que nous faisons, mon gars?--Mais--dam--NOUS TRANSVASONS."
+
+"You decant? that should mean you pour from one vessel to another."
+
+"Precisely." He explained that last year the town of Charmes had been
+sore thinned by a pestilence, whole houses emptied and trades short of
+hands. Much ado to get in the rye; and the flax half spoiled. So the
+bailiff and aldermen had written to the duke's secretary; and the duke
+he sent far and wide to know what town was too full. "That are we," had
+the baillie of Toul writ back. "Then send four or five score of your
+townsfolk," was the order. "Was not this to decant the full town into
+the empty, and is not the good duke the father of his people, and will
+not let the duchy be weakened, nor its fair towns laid waste, by sword
+nor pestilence; but meets the one with pike, and arbalest (touching his
+cap to the sergeant and Denys alternately), and t'other with policy?
+LONG LIVE THE DUKE!"
+
+The pikemen of course were not to be outdone in loyalty: so they shouted
+with stentorian lungs "LONG LIVE THE DUKE!" Then the decanted ones,
+partly because loyalty was a nonreasoning sentiment in those days,
+partly perhaps because they feared some further ill consequence should
+they alone be mute, raised a feeble tremulous shout "Long live the
+Duke!"
+
+But, at this, insulted nature rebelled. Perhaps indeed the sham
+sentiment drew out the real, for, on the very heels of that loyal
+noise, a loud and piercing wail burst from every woman's bosom and a
+deep groan from every man's; oh! the air filled in a moment with womanly
+and manly anguish. Judge what it must have been when the rude pikemen
+halted unbidden, all confused; as if a wall of sorrow had started up
+before them.
+
+"En avant," roared the sergeant, and they marched again, but muttering
+and cursing.
+
+"Ah the ugly sound," said the civilian, wincing. "Les malheureux!" cried
+he ruefully: for where is the single man can hear the sudden agony of a
+multitude and not be moved? "Les ingrats! They are going whence they
+were de trop to where they will be welcome: from starvation to
+plenty--and they object. They even make dismal noises. One would think
+we were thrusting them forth from Burgundy."
+
+"Come away," whispered Gerard, trembling; "come away," and the friends
+strode forward.
+
+When they passed the head of the column, and saw the men walk with their
+eyes bent in bitter gloom upon the ground, and the women, some carrying,
+some leading, little children, and weeping as they went, and the poor
+bairns, some frolicking, some weeping because "their mammies" wept,
+Gerard tried hard to say a word of comfort, but choked and could utter
+nothing to the mourners; but gasped: "Come on, Denys. I cannot mock such
+sorrow with little words of comfort." And now, artist-like, all his aim
+was to get swiftly out of the grief he could not soothe. He almost ran
+not to hear these sighs and sobs.
+
+"Why, mate," said Denys, "art the colour of a lemon. Man alive, take not
+other folks' troubles to heart! not one of those whining milksops there
+but would see thee, a stranger, hanged without winking."
+
+Gerard scarce listened to him.
+
+"Decant them?" he groaned: "ay, if blood were no thicker than wine.
+Princes, ye are wolves. Poor things! Poor things! Ah, Denys! Denys! with
+looking on their grief mine own comes home to me. Well-a-day. Ah,
+well-a-day!"
+
+"Ay, now you talk reason. That you, poor lad, should be driven all the
+way from Holland to Rome, is pitiful indeed. But these snivelling curs,
+where is their hurt? There is six score of 'em to keep one another
+company: besides they are not going out of Burgundy."
+
+"Better for them if they had never been in it."
+
+"Mechant, va! they are but going from one village to another, a mule's
+journey! whilst thou--there, no more. Courage, camarade, le diable est
+mort."
+
+Gerard shook his head very doubtfully, but kept silence for about a
+mile, and then he said thoughtfully, "Ay, Denys, but then I am sustained
+by book-learning. These are simple folk that likely thought their
+village was the world: now what is this? more weeping. Oh! 'tis a sweet
+world. Humph? A little girl that hath broke her pipkin. Now may I hang
+on one of your gibbets but I'll dry somebody's tears:" and he pounced
+savagely upon this little martyr, like a kite on a chick, but with more
+generous intentions. It was a pretty little lass of about twelve: the
+tears were raining down her two peaches, and her palms lifted to heaven
+in that utter, though temporary, desolation, which attends calamity at
+twelve; and at her feet the fatal cause, a broken pot, worth, say the
+fifth of a modern farthing.
+
+"What, hast broken thy pot, little one?" said Gerard, acting intensest
+sympathy.
+
+"Helas! bel gars; as you behold;" and the hands came down from the sky
+and both pointed at the fragments. A statuette of adversity.
+
+"And you weep so for that?"
+
+"Needs I must, bel gars. My mammy will massacre me. Do they not already"
+(with a fresh burst of woe) "c-c-call me J-J-Jean-net-on C-c-casse tout?
+It wanted but this; that I should break my poor pot. Helas! fallait-il
+donc, mere de Dieu?"
+
+"Courage, little love," said Gerard: "'tis not thy heart lies broken;
+money will soon mend pots. See now, here is a piece of silver, and
+there, scarce a stone's throw off, is a potter; take the bit of silver
+to him, and buy another pot, and the copper the potter will give thee
+keep that to play with thy comrades."
+
+The little mind took in all this, and smiles began to struggle with the
+tears: but spasms are like waves, they cannot go down the very moment
+the wind of trouble is lulled. So Denys thought well to bring up his
+reserve of consolation. "Courage, ma mie, le diable est mort!" cried
+that inventive warrior gaily. Gerard shrugged his shoulders at such a
+way of cheering a little girl.
+
+    "What a fine thing
+    Is a lute with one string,"
+
+said he.
+
+The little girl's face broke into warm sunshine.
+
+"Oh, the good news! oh, the good news!" she sang out with such heartfelt
+joy, it went off into a honeyed whine; even as our gay old tunes have a
+pathos underneath. "So then," said she, "they will no longer be able to
+threaten us little girls with him, MAKING OUR LIVES A BURDEN!" And she
+bounded off "to tell Nanette," she said.
+
+There is a theory that everything has its counterpart; if true, Denys it
+would seem had found the mind his consigne fitted.
+
+While he was roaring with laughter at its unexpected success and
+Gerard's amazement, a little hand pulled his jerkin and a little face
+peeped round his waist. Curiosity was now the dominant passion in that
+small but vivid countenance.
+
+"Est-ce toi qui l'a tue, beau soldat?"
+
+"Oui, ma mie," said Denys, as gruffly as ever he could, rightly deeming
+this would smack of supernatural puissance to owners of bell-like
+trebles. "C'est moi. Ca vaut une petite embrassade--pas?"
+
+"Je crois ben. Aie! aie!"
+
+"Qu'as-tu?"
+
+"Ca pique! Ca pique!"
+
+"Quel dommage! je vais la couper."
+
+"Nenni, ce n'est rien; et pisque t'as tue ce mechant. T'es fierement
+beau, tout d' meme, toi; t'es ben miex que ma grande soeur."
+
+"Will you not kiss me too, ma mie?" said Gerard.
+
+"Je ne demande par miex. Tiens, tiens, tiens! c'est doulce celle-ci. Ah,
+que j'aimons les hommes! Des fames, ca ne m'aurait jamais donne l'arjan
+blanc, plutot ca m'aurait ri au nez. C'est si peu de chose, les fames.
+Serviteur, beaulx sires! Bon voiage; et n'oubliez point la Jeanneton!"
+
+"Adieu, petit coeur," said Gerard, and on they marched: but presently
+looking back they saw the contemner of women in the middle of the road,
+making them a reverence, and blowing them kisses with little May morning
+face.
+
+"Come on," cried Gerard lustily. "I shall win to Rome yet. Holy St.
+Bavon, what a sunbeam of innocence hath shot across our bloodthirsty
+road! Forget thee, little Jeanneton? not likely, amidst all this
+slobbering, and gibbeting, and decanting. Come on, thou laggard!
+forward!"
+
+"Dost call this marching?" remonstrated Denys: "why we shall walk o'er
+Christmas-day and never see it."
+
+At the next town they came to, suddenly an arbalestrier ran out of a
+tavern after them, and in a moment his beard and Denys's were like two
+brushes stuck together. It was a comrade. He insisted on their coming
+into the tavern with him, and breaking a bottle of wine. In course of
+conversation, he told Denys there was an insurrection in the duke's
+Flemish provinces, and soldiers were ordered thither from all parts of
+Burgundy. "Indeed I marvelled to see thy face turned this way."
+
+"I go to embrace my folk that I have not seen these three years. Ye can
+quell a bit of a rising without me I trow."
+
+Suddenly Denys gave a start. "Dost hear, Gerard? this comrade is bound
+for Holland."
+
+"What then? ah, a letter! a letter to Margaret! but will he be so good,
+so kind?"
+
+The soldier with a torrent of blasphemy informed him he would not only
+take it, but go a league or two out of his way to do it.
+
+In an instant out came inkhorn and paper from Gerard's wallet; and he
+wrote a long letter to Margaret, and told her briefly what I fear I have
+spun too tediously; dwelt most on the bear, and the plunge in the Rhine,
+and the character of Denys, whom he painted to the life. And with many
+endearing expressions bade her be of good cheer; some trouble and peril
+there had been, but all that was over now, and his only grief left was
+that he could not hope to have a word from her hand till he should reach
+Rome. He ended with comforting her again as hard as he could. And so
+absorbed was he in his love and his work, that he did not see all the
+people in the room were standing peeping, to watch the nimble and true
+finger execute such rare penmanship.
+
+Denys, proud of his friend's skill, let him alone, till presently the
+writer's face worked, and soon the scalding tears began to run down his
+young cheeks, one after another, on the paper where he was then writing
+comfort, comfort. Then Denys rudely repulsed the curious, and asked his
+comrade with a faltering voice whether he had the heart to let so sweet
+a love letter miscarry? The other swore by the face of St. Luke he would
+lose the forefinger of his right hand sooner.
+
+Seeing him so ready, Gerard charged him also with a short, cold letter
+to his parents; and in it he drew hastily with his pen two hands
+grasping each other, to signify farewell. By-the-by, one drop of
+bitterness found its way into his letter to Margaret. "I write to thee
+alone, and to those who love thee. If my flesh and blood care to hear
+news of me, they must be kind to thee and then thou mayst read my letter
+to them. But not else, and even then let this not out of thy hand or
+thou lovest me not. I know what I ask of thee, and why I ask it. Thou
+knowest not. I am older now by many years than thou art, and I was a
+month agone. Therefore obey me in this one thing, dear heart, or thou
+wilt make me a worse wife than I hope to make thee a husband, God
+willing."
+
+On second thoughts I believe there was something more than bitterness in
+this. For his mind, young but intense, had been bent many hours in every
+day upon Sevenbergen and Tergou, and speculated on every change of
+feeling and circumstance that his exile might bring about.
+
+Gerard now offered money to the soldier. He hesitated, but declined it.
+"No, no! art comrade of my comrade; and may"----(etc.)----"but thy love
+for the wench touches me. I'll break another bottle at thy charge an
+thou wilt, and so cry quits."
+
+"Well said, comrade," cried Denys. "Hadst taken money, I had invited
+thee to walk in the court-yard and cross swords with me."
+
+"Whereupon I had cut thy comb for thee," retorted the other.
+
+"Hadst done thy endeavour, drole, I doubt not."
+
+They drank the new bottle, shook hands, adhered to custom, and parted on
+opposite routes.
+
+This delay however somewhat put out Denys's calculations, and evening
+surprised them ere they reached a little town he was making for, where
+was a famous hotel. However, they fell in with a roadside auberge, and
+Denys, seeing a buxom girl at the door, said, "This seems a decent inn,"
+and led the way into the kitchen. They ordered supper, to which no
+objection was raised, only the landlord requested them to pay for it
+beforehand. It was not an uncommon proposal in any part of the world.
+Still it was not universal, and Denys was nettled, and dashed his hand
+somewhat ostentatiously into his purse and pulled out a gold angel.
+"Count me the change, and speedily," said he. "You tavern-keepers are
+more likely to rob me than I you."
+
+While the supper was preparing, Denys disappeared, and was eventually
+found by Gerard in the yard, helping Manon, his plump but not bright
+decoy duck, to draw water, and pouring extravagant compliments into her
+dullish ear. Gerard grunted and returned to table, but Denys did not
+come in for a good quarter of an hour.
+
+"Up-hill work at the end of a march," said he shrugging his shoulders.
+
+"What matters that to you?" said Gerard, drily. "The mad dog bites all
+the world."
+
+"Exaggerator. You know I bite but the fairer half. Well, here comes
+supper; that is better worth biting."
+
+During supper the girl kept constantly coming in and out, and looking
+point-blank at them, especially at Denys; and at last in leaning over
+him to remove a dish, dropped a word in his ear; and he replied with a
+nod.
+
+As soon as supper was cleared away, Denys rose and strolled to the door,
+telling Gerard the sullen fair had relented, and given him a little
+rendezvous in the stable yard.
+
+Gerard suggested that the cow-house would have been a more appropriate
+locality. "I shall go to bed, then," said he, a little crossly. "Where
+is the landlord? out at this time of night? no matter. I know our room.
+Shall you be long, pray?"
+
+"Not I. I grudge leaving the fire and thee. But what can I do? There are
+two sorts of invitations a Burgundian never declines."
+
+Denys found a figure seated by the well. It was Manon; but instead of
+receiving him as he thought he had a right to expect, coming by
+invitation, all she did was to sob. He asked her what ailed her? She
+sobbed. Could he do anything for her? She sobbed.
+
+The good-natured Denys, driven to his wits' end, which was no great
+distance, proffered the custom of the country by way of consolation. She
+repulsed him roughly, "Is it a time for fooling?" said she, and sobbed.
+
+"You seem to think so," said Denys, waxing wroth. But the next moment he
+added, tenderly, "and I who could never bear to see beauty in distress."
+
+"It is not for myself."
+
+"Who then? your sweetheart?"
+
+"Oh, que nenni. My sweetheart is not on earth now: and to think I have
+not an ecu to buy masses for his soul;" and in this shallow nature the
+grief seemed now to be all turned in another direction.
+
+"Come, come," said Denys, "shalt have money to buy masses for thy dead
+lad; I swear it. Meantime tell me why you weep."
+
+"For you."
+
+"For me? Art mad?"
+
+"No. I am not mad. 'Tis you that were mad to open your purse before
+him."
+
+The mystery seemed to thicken, and Denys wearied of stirring up the mud
+by questions, held his peace to see if it would not clear of itself.
+Then the girl finding herself no longer questioned seemed to go through
+some internal combat. At last she said, doggedly and aloud, "I will. The
+Virgin give me courage! What matters it if they kill me, since he is
+dead? Soldier, the landlord is out."
+
+"Oh, is he?"
+
+"What, do landlords leave their taverns at this time of night? also see
+what a tempest! We are sheltered here, but t'other side it blows a
+hurricane."
+
+Denys said nothing.
+
+"He is gone to fetch the band."
+
+"The band! what band?"
+
+"Those who will cut your throat and take your gold. Wretched man; to go
+and shake gold in an innkeeper's face!"
+
+The blow came so unexpectedly it staggered even Denys, accustomed as he
+was to sudden perils. He muttered a single word, but in it a volume.
+
+"Gerard!"
+
+"Gerard! What is that? Oh, 'tis thy comrade's name, poor lad. Get him
+out quick ere they come; and fly to the next town."
+
+"And thou?"
+
+"They will kill me."
+
+"That shall they not. Fly with us."
+
+"'Twill avail me nought; one of the band will be sent to kill me. They
+are sworn to slay all who betray them."
+
+"I'll take thee to my native place full thirty leagues from hence, and
+put thee under my own mother's wing, ere they shall hurt a hair o' thy
+head. But first Gerard. Stay thou here whilst I fetch him!"
+
+As he was darting off, the girl seized him convulsively, and with all
+the iron strength excitement lends to women. "Stay me not! for pity's
+sake," he cried; "'tis life or death."
+
+"Sh!--sh!" whispered the girl, shutting his mouth hard with her hand,
+and putting her pale lips close to him, and her eyes, that seemed to
+turn backwards, straining towards some indistinct sound.
+
+He listened.
+
+He heard footsteps, many footsteps: and no voices. She whispered in his
+ear "They are come."
+
+And trembled like a leaf.
+
+Denys felt it was so. Travellers in that number would never have come in
+dead silence.
+
+The feet were now at the very door.
+
+"How many?" said he in a hollow whisper.
+
+"Hush!" and she put her mouth to his very ear.
+
+And who, that had seen this man and woman in that attitude, would have
+guessed what freezing hearts were theirs, and what terrible whispers
+passed between them?
+
+"Seven."
+
+"How armed?"
+
+"Sword and dagger: and the giant with his axe. They call him the Abbot."
+
+"And my comrade?"
+
+"Nothing can save him. Better lose one life than two. Fly!"
+
+Denys's blood froze at this cynical advice. "Poor creature, you know not
+a soldier's heart."
+
+He put his head in his hands a moment, and a hundred thoughts of dangers
+baffled whirled through his brain.
+
+"Listen, girl! There is one chance for our lives, if thou wilt but be
+true to us. Run to the town; to the nearest tavern, and tell the first
+soldier there, that a soldier here is sore beset, but armed, and his
+life to be saved if they will but run. Then to the bailiff. But first to
+the soldiers. Nay, not a word, but buss me, good lass, and fly! men's
+lives hang on thy heels."
+
+She kilted up her gown to run. He came round to the road with her; saw
+her cross the road cringing with fear, then glide away, then turn into
+an erect shadow, then melt away in the storm.
+
+And now he must get to Gerard. But how? He had to run the gauntlet of
+the whole band. He asked himself, what was the worst thing they could
+do? for he had learned in war that an enemy does, not what you hope he
+will do, but what you hope he will not do. "Attack me as I enter the
+kitchen! Then I must not give them time."
+
+Just as he drew near to the latch, a terrible thought crossed him.
+"Suppose they had already dealt with Gerard. Why, then," thought he,
+"nought is left but to kill, and be killed;" and he strung his bow, and
+walked rapidly into the kitchen. There were seven hideous faces seated
+round the fire, and the landlord pouring them out neat brandy, blood's
+forerunner in every age.
+
+"What? company!" cried Denys, gaily: "one minute, my lads, and I'll be
+with you;" and he snatched up a lighted candle off the table, opened the
+door that led to the staircase, and went up it hallooing. "What, Gerard!
+whither hast thou skulked to?" There was no answer. He hallooed louder,
+"Gerard, where art thou?"
+
+After a moment in which Denys lived an hour of agony, a peevish
+half-inarticulate noise issued from the room at the head of the little
+stairs. Denys burst in, and there was Gerard asleep.
+
+"Thank God!" he said, in a choking voice, then began to sing loud,
+untuneful ditties. Gerard put his fingers into his ears; but presently
+he saw in Denys's face a horror that contrasted strangely with this
+sudden merriment.
+
+"What ails thee?" said he, sitting up and staring.
+
+"Hush!" said Denys, and his hand spoke even more plainly than his lips.
+"Listen to me."
+
+Denys then pointing significantly to the door, to show Gerard sharp ears
+were listening hard by, continued his song aloud, but under cover of it
+threw in short muttered syllables.
+
+"(Our lives are in peril.)
+
+"(Thieves.)
+
+"(Thy doublet.)
+
+"(Thy sword.)
+
+"Aid.
+
+"Coming.
+
+"Put off time." Then aloud.
+
+"Well, now, wilt have t'other bottle? say Nay."
+
+"No, not I."
+
+"But I tell thee, there are half a dozen jolly fellows. Tired."
+
+"Ay, but I am too wearied," said Gerard. "Go thou."
+
+"Nay, nay!" Then he went to the door and called out cheerfully,
+"Landlord, the young milksop will not rise. Give those honest fellows
+t'other bottle. I will pay for't in the morning."
+
+He heard a brutal and fierce chuckle.
+
+Having thus by observation made sure the kitchen door was shut, and the
+miscreants were not actually listening, he examined the chamber door
+closely: then quietly shut it, but did not bolt it: and went and
+inspected the window.
+
+It was too small to get out of, and yet a thick bar of iron had been let
+in the stone to make it smaller; and, just as he made this chilling
+discovery, the outer door of the house was bolted with a loud clang.
+
+Denys groaned, "The beasts are in the shambles."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+But would the thieves attack them while they were awake? Probably not.
+
+Not to throw away this their best chance the poor souls now made a
+series of desperate efforts to converse, as if discussing ordinary
+matters; and by this means Gerard learned all that had passed, and that
+the girl was gone for aid.
+
+"Pray Heaven, she may not lose heart by the way," said Denys,
+sorrowfully.
+
+And Denys begged Gerard's forgiveness for bringing him out of his way
+for this.
+
+Gerard forgave him.
+
+"I would fear them less, Gerard, but for one they call the Abbot. I
+picked him out at once. Taller than you, bigger than us both put
+together. Fights with an axe. Gerard, a man to lead a herd of deer to
+battle. I shall kill that man to-night, or he will kill me. I think
+somehow 'tis he will kill me."
+
+"Saints forbid! Shoot him at the door! What avails his strength against
+your weapon?"
+
+"I shall pick him out: but, if it comes to hand fighting, run swiftly
+under his guard, or you are a dead man. I tell thee neither of us may
+stand a blow of that axe: thou never sawest such a body of a man."
+
+Gerard was for bolting the door; but Denys with a sigh showed him that
+half the door-post turned outward on a hinge, and the great bolt was
+little more than a blind. "I have forborne to bolt it," said he, "that
+they may think us the less suspicious."
+
+Near an hour rolled away thus. It seemed an age. Yet it was but a little
+hour: and the town was a league distant. And some of the voices in the
+kitchen became angry and impatient.
+
+"They will not wait much longer," said Denys, "and we have no chance at
+all unless we surprise them."
+
+"I will do whate'er you bid," said Gerard meekly.
+
+There was a cupboard on the same side as the door; but between it and
+the window. It reached nearly to the ground, but not quite. Denys opened
+the cupboard door and placed Gerard on a chair behind it. "If they run
+for the bed, strike at the napes of their necks! a sword cut there
+always kills or disables." He then arranged the bolsters and their shoes
+in the bed so as to deceive a person peeping from a distance, and drew
+the short curtains at the head.
+
+Meantime Gerard was on his knees. Denys looked round and saw him.
+
+"Ah!" said Denys, "above all pray them to forgive me for bringing you
+into this guetapens!"
+
+And now they grasped hands and looked in one another's eyes; oh, such a
+look! Denys's hand was cold, and Gerard's warm.
+
+They took their posts.
+
+Denys blew out the candle.
+
+"We must keep silence now."
+
+But in the terrible tension of their nerves and very souls they found
+they could hear a whisper fainter than any man could catch at all
+outside that door. They could hear each other's heart thump at times.
+
+"Good news!" breathed Denys, listening at the door.
+
+"They are casting lots."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+"Pray that it may be the Abbot."
+
+"Yes. Why?"
+
+"If he comes alone I can make sure of him."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+"Denys!"
+
+"Ay!"
+
+"I fear I shall go mad, if they do not come soon."
+
+"Shall I feign sleep? Shall I snore?"
+
+"Will that--?"
+
+"Perhaps."
+
+"Do then, and God have mercy on us!"
+
+Denys snored at intervals.
+
+There was a scuffling of feet heard in the kitchen, and then all was
+still.
+
+Denys snored again. Then took up his position behind the door.
+
+But he, or they, who had drawn the lot, seemed determined to run no
+foolish risks. Nothing was attempted in a hurry.
+
+When they were almost starved with cold, and waiting for the attack, the
+door on the stairs opened softly and closed again. Nothing more.
+
+There was another harrowing silence.
+
+Then a single light footstep on the stair; and nothing more.
+
+Then a light crept under the door; and nothing more.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Presently there was a gentle scratching, not half so loud as a mouse's,
+and the false door-post opened by degrees and left a perpendicular space
+through which the light streamed in. The door, had it been bolted, would
+now have hung by the bare tip of the bolt, which went into the real
+door-post, but, as it was, it swung gently open of itself. It opened
+inwards, so Denys did not raise his crossbow from the ground, but merely
+grasped his dagger.
+
+The candle was held up, and shaded from behind by a man's hand.
+
+He was inspecting the beds from the threshold, satisfied that his
+victims were both in bed.
+
+The man glided into the apartment. But at the first step something in
+the position of the cupboard and chair made him uneasy. He ventured no
+further, but put the candle on the floor and stooped to peer under the
+chair; but, as he stooped, an iron hand grasped his shoulder, and a
+dagger was driven so fiercely through his neck that the point came out
+at his gullet. There was a terrible hiccough, but no cry; and half a
+dozen silent strokes followed in swift succession, each a death-blow,
+and the assassin was laid noiselessly on the floor.
+
+Denys closed the door; bolted it gently; drew the post to, and even
+while he was doing it whispered Gerard to bring a chair. It was done.
+
+"Help me set him up."
+
+"Dead?"
+
+"Parbleu."
+
+"What for?"
+
+"Frighten them! Gain time."
+
+Even while saying this, Denys had whipped a piece of string round the
+dead man's neck, and tied him to the chair, and there the ghastly figure
+sat fronting the door.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+"Denys, I can do better. Saints forgive me!"
+
+"What? Be quick then, we have not many moments."
+
+And Denys got his cross-bow ready, and, tearing off his straw mattress,
+reared it before him and prepared to shoot the moment the door should
+open, for he had no hope any more would come singly, when they found the
+first did not return.
+
+While thus employed, Gerard was busy about the seated corpse, and, to
+his amazement, Denys saw a luminous glow spreading rapidly over the
+white face.
+
+Gerard blew out the candle. And on this the corpse's face shone still
+more like a glowworm's head.
+
+Denys shook in his shoes, and his teeth chattered.
+
+"What in Heaven's name is this?" he whispered.
+
+"Hush! 'tis but phosphorus. But 'twill serve."
+
+"Away! they will surprise thee."
+
+In fact uneasy mutterings were heard below, and at last a deep voice
+said, "What makes him so long? is the drole rifling them?"
+
+It was their comrade they suspected then, not the enemy. Soon a step
+came softly but rapidly up the stairs: the door was gently tried.
+
+When this resisted, which was clearly not expected, the sham post was
+very cautiously moved, and an eye no doubt peeped through the aperture:
+for there was a howl of dismay, and the man was heard to stumble back
+and burst into the kitchen, where a babel of voices rose directly on his
+return.
+
+Gerard ran to the dead thief and began to work on him again.
+
+"Back, madman!" whispered Denys.
+
+"Nay, nay. I know these ignorant brutes. They will not venture here
+awhile. I can make him ten times more fearful."
+
+"At least close that opening! Let them not see you at your devilish
+work."
+
+Gerard closed the sham post, and in half a minute his brush made the
+dead head a sight to strike any man with dismay. He put his art to a
+strange use, and one unparalleled perhaps in the history of mankind. He
+illuminated his dead enemy's face to frighten his living foe: the
+staring eyeballs he made globes of fire; the teeth he left white, for so
+they were more terrible by the contrast, but the palate and tongue he
+tipped with fire, and made one lurid cavern of the red depths the
+chap-fallen jaw revealed: and on the brow he wrote in burning letters
+"LA MORT." And, while he was doing it, the stout Denys was quaking, and
+fearing the vengeance of Heaven; for one man's courage is not another's;
+and the band of miscreants below were quarrelling and disputing loudly,
+and now without disguise.
+
+The steps that led down to the kitchen were fifteen, but they were
+nearly perpendicular: there was therefore in point of fact no distance
+between the besiegers and besieged, and the latter now caught almost
+every word. At last one was heard to cry out "I tell ye the devil has
+got him and branded him with hell-fire. I am more like to leave this
+cursed house than go again into a room that is full of fiends."
+
+"Art drunk? or mad? or a coward?" said another.
+
+"Call me a coward, I'll give thee my dagger's point, and send thee where
+Pierre sits o' fire for ever."
+
+"Come, no quarrelling when work is afoot," roared a tremendous diapason,
+"or I'll brain ye both with my fist, and send ye where we shall all go
+soon or late."
+
+"The Abbot," whispered Denys, gravely.
+
+He felt the voice he had just heard could belong to no man but the
+colossus he had seen in passing through the kitchen. It made the place
+vibrate. The quarrelling continued some time, and then there was a dead
+silence.
+
+"Look out, Gerard."
+
+"Ay. What will they do next?"
+
+"We shall soon know."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+"Shall I wait for you, or cut down the first that opens the door?"
+
+"Wait for me, lest we strike the same and waste a blow. Alas! we cannot
+afford that."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Dead silence.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Sudden came into the room a thing that made them start and their hearts
+quiver.
+
+And what was it? A moonbeam.
+
+Even so can this machine, the body, by the soul's action be strung up to
+start and quiver. The sudden ray shot keen and pure into that shamble.
+
+Its calm, cold, silvery soul traversed the apartment in a stream of no
+great volume; for the window was narrow.
+
+After the first tremor Gerard whispered, "Courage, Denys! God's eye is
+on us even here." And he fell upon his knees with his face turned
+towards the window.
+
+Ay it was like a holy eye opening suddenly on human crime and human
+passions. Many a scene of blood and crime that pure cold eye has rested
+on; but on few more ghastly than this, where two men, with a lighted
+corpse between them, waited panting, to kill or be killed. Nor did the
+moonlight deaden that horrible corpse-light. If anything it added to its
+ghastliness: for the body sat at the edge of the moonbeam, which cut
+sharp across the shoulder and the ear, and seemed blue and ghastly and
+unnatural by the side of that lurid glow in which the face and eyes and
+teeth shone horribly. But Denys dared not look that way.
+
+The moon drew a broad stripe of light across the door, and on that his
+eyes were glued. Presently he whispered, "Gerard!"
+
+Gerard looked and raised his sword.
+
+Acutely as they had listened they had heard of late no sound on the
+stair. Yet there--on the door-post, at the edge of the stream of
+moonlight, were the tips of the fingers of a hand.
+
+The nails glistened.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Presently they began to crawl, and crawl, down towards the bolt, but
+with infinite slowness and caution. In so doing they crept into the
+moonlight. The actual motion was imperceptible, but slowly, slowly, the
+fingers came out whiter and whiter: but the hand between the main
+knuckles and the wrist remained dark. Denys slowly raised his crossbow.
+
+He levelled it. He took a long steady aim.
+
+Gerard palpitated. At last the crossbow twanged. The hand was instantly
+nailed, with a stern jar, to the quivering doorpost. There was a scream
+of anguish. "Cut," whispered Denys eagerly, and Gerard's uplifted sword
+descended and severed the wrist with two swift blows. A body sank down
+moaning outside.
+
+The hand remained inside, immovable, with blood trickling from it down
+the wall. The fierce bolt slightly barbed had gone through it, and deep
+into the real door-post.
+
+[Illustration: DENYS SAW A STEEL POINT COME OUT OF THE ABBOT]
+
+"Two," said Denys, with terrible cynicism.
+
+He strung his crossbow, and kneeled behind his cover again.
+
+"The next will be the Abbot."
+
+The wounded man moved, and presently crawled down to his companions on
+the stairs, and the kitchen door was shut.
+
+There nothing was heard now but low muttering. The last incident had
+revealed the mortal character of the weapons used by the besieged.
+
+"I begin to think the Abbot's stomach is not so great as his body," said
+Denys.
+
+The words were scarcely out of his mouth, when the following events
+happened all in a couple of seconds. The kitchen door was opened
+roughly, a heavy but active man darted up the steps without any manner
+of disguise, and a single ponderous blow sent the door not only off its
+hinges, but right across the room on to Denys's fortification, which it
+struck so rudely as nearly to lay him flat. And in the doorway stood a
+colossus with a glittering axe.
+
+He saw the dead man with the moon's blue light on half his face, and the
+red light on the other half and inside his chapfallen jaws: he stared,
+his arms fell, his knees knocked together, and he crouched with terror.
+
+"LA MORT!" he cried in tones of terror, and turned and fled. In which
+act Denys started up and shot him through both jaws. He sprang with one
+bound into the kitchen, and there leaned on his axe, spitting blood and
+teeth and curses.
+
+Denys strung his bow and put his hand into his breast.
+
+He drew it out dismayed.
+
+"My last bolt is gone," he groaned.
+
+"But we have our swords, and you have slain the giant."
+
+"No, Gerard," said Denys gravely: "I have not. And the worst is I have
+wounded him. Fool! to shoot at a retreating lion. He had never faced thy
+handiwork again, but for my meddling."
+
+"Ha! to your guard! I hear them open the door."
+
+Then Denys, depressed by the one error he had committed in all this
+fearful night, felt convinced his last hour had come. He drew his sword,
+but like one doomed. But what is this? a red light flickers on the
+ceiling. Gerard flew to the window and looked out. There were men with
+torches, and breastplates gleaming red. "We are saved! Armed men!" And
+he dashed his sword through the window shouting "Quick! quick! we are
+sore pressed."
+
+"Back!" yelled Denys; "they come! strike none but him!"
+
+That very moment the Abbot and two men with naked weapons rushed into
+the room. Even as they came, the outer door was hammered fiercely, and
+the Abbot's comrades hearing it, and seeing the torchlight, turned and
+fled. Not so the terrible Abbot: wild with rage and pain, he spurned his
+dead comrade, chair and all, across the room, then, as the men faced him
+on each side with kindling eyeballs, he waved his tremendous axe like a
+feather right and left, and cleared a space, then lifted it to hew them
+both in pieces.
+
+His antagonists were inferior in strength, but not in swiftness and
+daring, and above all they had settled how to attack him. The moment he
+reared his axe, they flew at him like cats, and both together. If he
+struck a full blow with his weapon he would most likely kill one, but
+the other would certainly kill him: he saw this, and intelligent as well
+as powerful, he thrust the handle fiercely in Denys's face, and,
+turning, jabbed with the steel at Gerard. Denys went staggering back
+covered with blood. Gerard had rushed in like lightning, and, just as
+the axe turned to descend on him, drove his sword so fiercely through
+the giant's body, that the very hilt sounded on his ribs like the blow
+of a pugilist, and Denys, staggering back to help his friend, saw a
+steel point come out of the Abbot behind.
+
+The stricken giant bellowed like a bull, dropped his axe, and clutching
+Gerard's throat tremendously, shook him like a child. Then Denys with a
+fierce snarl drove his sword into the giant's back. "Stand firm now!"
+and he pushed the cold steel through and through the giant and out at
+his breast.
+
+Thus horribly spitted on both sides, the Abbot, gave a violent shudder,
+and his heels hammered the ground convulsively. His lips, fast turning
+blue, opened wide and deep, and he cried "LA MORT!--LA MORT!--LA MORT!!"
+The first time in a roar of despair, and then twice in a horror-stricken
+whisper never to be forgotten.
+
+Just then the street door was forced.
+
+Suddenly the Abbot's arms whirled like windmills, and his huge body
+wrenched wildly and carried them to the doorway, twisting their wrists
+and nearly throwing them off their legs.
+
+"He'll win clear yet," cried Denys: "out steel! and in again!"
+
+They tore out their smoking swords, but, ere they could stab again, the
+Abbot leaped full five feet high, and fell with a tremendous crash
+against the door below, carrying it away with him like a sheet of paper,
+and through the aperture the glare of torches burst on the awe struck
+faces above, half blinding them.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The thieves at the first alarm had made for the back door, but driven
+thence by a strong guard ran back to the kitchen, just in time to see
+the lock forced out of the socket, and half a dozen mailed archers burst
+in upon them. On these in pure despair they drew their swords.
+
+But ere a blow was struck on either side, the staircase door behind them
+was battered into their midst with one ponderous blow, and with it the
+Abbot's body came flying, hurled, as they thought by no mortal hand, and
+rolled on the floor spouting blood from back and bosom in two furious
+jets, and quivered, but breathed no more.
+
+The thieves smitten with dismay fell on their knees directly, and the
+archers bound them, while, above, the rescued ones still stood like
+statues rooted to the spot, their dripping swords extended in the red
+torchlight, expecting their indomitable enemy to leap back on them as
+wonderfully as he had gone.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXIV
+
+
+"WHERE be the true men?"
+
+"Here be we. God bless you all! God bless you!"
+
+There was a rush to the stairs, and half a dozen hard but friendly hands
+were held out and grasped them warmly. "Y'have saved our lives, lads,"
+cried Denys, "y'have saved our lives this night."
+
+A wild sight met the eyes of the rescued pair. The room flaring with
+torches, the glittering breastplates of the archers, their bronzed
+faces, the white cheeks of the bound thieves, and the bleeding giant,
+whose dead body these hard men left lying there in its own gore.
+
+Gerard went round the archers and took them each by the hand with
+glistening eyes, and on this they all kissed him; and this time he
+kissed them in return. Then he said to one handsome archer of his own
+age, "Prithee, good soldier, have an eye to me. A strange drowsiness
+overcomes me. Let no one cut my throat while I sleep--for pity's sake."
+
+The archer promised with a laugh; for he thought Gerard was jesting: and
+the latter went off into a deep sleep almost immediately.
+
+Denys was surprised at this: but did not interfere; for it suited his
+immediate purpose. A couple of archers were inspecting the Abbot's body,
+turning it half over with their feet, and inquiring, "Which of the two
+had flung this enormous rogue down from an upper story like that; they
+would fain have the trick of his arm."
+
+Denys at first pished and pshawed, but he dared not play the braggart,
+for he said to himself "That young vagabond will break in and say 'twas
+the finger of Heaven, and no mortal arm, or some such stuff, and make me
+look like a fool." But now, seeing Gerard unconscious, he suddenly gave
+this required information:
+
+"Well, then, you see, comrades, I had run my sword through this one up
+to the hilt; and one or two more of 'em came buzzing about me; so it
+behoved me have my sword or die: so I just put my foot against his
+stomach, gave a tug with my hand and a spring with my foot, and sent him
+flying to kingdom come! He died in the air, and his carrion rolled in
+amongst you without ceremony: made you jump I warrant me. But pikestaves
+and pillage! what avails prattling of these trifles once they are gone
+by? buvons, camarades, buvons."
+
+The archers remarked that it was easy to say "buvons" where no liquor
+was, but not so easy to do it.
+
+"Nay, I'll soon find ye liquor. My nose hath a natural alacrity at
+scenting out the wine. You follow me: and I my nose: bring a torch!" And
+they left the room, and, finding a short flight of stone steps,
+descended them and entered a large, low, damp cellar.
+
+It smelt close and dank: and the walls were encrusted here and there
+with what seemed cobwebs; but proved to be saltpetre that had oozed out
+of the damp stones, and crystallized.
+
+"Oh! the fine mouldy smell," said Denys. "In such placen still lurks the
+good wine: advance thy torch. Diable! what is that in the corner? A pile
+of rags? No: 'tis a man."
+
+They gathered round with the torch, and lo! a figure crouched on a heap
+in the corner, pale as ashes and shivering.
+
+"Why, it is the landlord," said Denys.
+
+"Get up, thou craven heart!" shouted one of the archers.
+
+"Why, man, the thieves are bound, and we are dry, that bound them. Up!
+and show us thy wine; for no bottles see I here."
+
+"What, be the rascals bound?" stammered the pale landlord; "good news.
+W--w--wine? that will I, honest sirs."
+
+And he rose with unsure joints and offered to lead the way to the wine
+cellar. But Denys interposed. "You are all in the dark, comrades. He is
+in league with the thieves."
+
+"Alack, good soldier, me in league with the accursed robbers! Is that
+reasonable?"
+
+"The girl said so any way."
+
+"The girl! What girl? Ah! Curse her, traitress!"
+
+"Well," interposed the other archer; "the girl is not here, but gone on
+to the bailiff. So let the burghers settle whether this craven be guilty
+or no: for we caught him not in the act: and let him draw us our wine."
+
+"One moment," said Denys, shrewdly. "Why cursed he the girl? If he be a
+true man, he should bless her as we do."
+
+"Alas, sir!" said the landlord, "I have but my good name to live by, and
+I cursed her to you, because you said she had belied me."
+
+"Humph! I trow thou art a thief, and where is the thief that cannot lie
+with a smooth face? Therefore hold him, comrades: a prisoner can draw
+wine an if his hands be not bound."
+
+The landlord offered no objection; but on the contrary said he would
+with pleasure show them where his little stock of wine was, but hoped
+they would pay for what they should drink, for his rent was due this two
+months.
+
+The archers smiled grimly at his simplicity as they thought it; one of
+them laid a hand quietly but firmly on his shoulder, the other led on
+with the torch.
+
+They had reached the threshold when Denys cried "Halt!"
+
+"What is't?"
+
+"Here be bottles in this corner; advance thy light."
+
+The torch-bearer went towards him. He had just taken off his scabbard
+and was probing the heap the landlord had just been crouched upon.
+
+"Nay, nay," cried the landlord, "the wine is in the next cellar. There
+is nothing _there_."
+
+"Nothing is mighty hard, then," said Denys, and drew out something with
+his hand from the heap.
+
+It proved to be only a bone.
+
+Denys threw it on the floor: it rattled.
+
+"There is nought there but the bones of the house," said the landlord.
+
+"Just now 'twas nothing. Now that we have found something 'tis nothing
+but bones. Here's another. Humph? look at this one, comrade; and you
+come too and look at it, and bring yon smooth knave along."
+
+The archer with the torch, whose name was Philippe, held the bone to the
+light and turned it round and round.
+
+"Well?" said Denys.
+
+"Well, if this was a field of battle I should say 'twas the shank-bone
+of a man! no more, no less. But 'tisn't a battle field, nor a
+churchyard; 'tis an inn."
+
+"True, mate: but yon knave's ashy face is as good a light to me as a
+field of battle. I read the bone by it. Bring yon face nearer, I say.
+When the chine is amissing, and the house dog can't look at you without
+his tail creeping between his legs, who was the thief? Good brothers
+mine, my mind it doth misgive me. The deeper I thrust the more there be.
+Mayhap if these bones could tell their tale they would make true men's
+flesh creep that heard it."
+
+"Alas! young man, what hideous fancies are these! The bones are bones of
+beeves, and sheep, and kids, and not, as you think, of men and women.
+Holy saints preserve us!"
+
+"Hold thy peace! thy words are air. Thou hast not got burghers by the
+ear, that know not a veal knuckle from their grandsire's ribs; but
+soldiers--men that have gone to look for their dear comrades, and found
+their bones picked as clean by the crows, as these I doubt have been by
+thee and thy mates. Men and women, saidst thou? And prithee, when spake
+I a word of women's bones? Wouldst make a child suspect thee. Field of
+battle, comrade! Was not this house a field of battle half an hour
+agone? Drag him close to me, let me read his face; now then, what is
+this, thou knave?" and he thrust a small object suddenly in his face.
+
+"Alas! I know not."
+
+"Well, I would not swear neither: but it is too like the thumb bone of
+a man's hand; mates, my flesh it creeps. Churchyard! how know I this is
+not one?"
+
+And he now drew his sword out of the scabbard and began to rake the heap
+of earth and broken crockery and bones out on the floor.
+
+The landlord assured him he but wasted his time. "We poor innkeepers are
+sinners," said he, "we give short measure and baptize the wine; we are
+fain to do these things; the laws are so unjust to us; but we are not
+assassins. How could we afford to kill our customers? May Heaven's
+lightning strike me dead if there be any bones there but such as have
+been used for meat. 'Tis the kitchen wench flings them here; I swear by
+God's holy mother, by holy Paul, by holy Dominic, and Denys my patron
+saint----ah!"
+
+Denys held out a bone under his eye in dead silence. It was a bone no
+man however ignorant, however lying, could confound with those of sheep
+or oxen. The sight of it shut the lying lips, and palsied the heartless
+heart.
+
+The landlord's hair rose visibly on his head like spikes, and his knees
+gave way as if his limbs had been struck from under him. But the archers
+dragged him fiercely up, and kept him erect under the torch staring
+fascinated at the dead skull which, white as the living cheek opposed,
+but no whiter, glared back again at its murderer, whose pale lips now
+opened, and opened, but could utter no sound.
+
+"Ah!" said Denys, solemnly, and trembling now with rage, "look on the
+sockets out of which thou hast picked the eyes, and let them blast thine
+eyes, that crows shall pick out ere this week shall end. Now, hold thou
+that while I search on. Hold it, I say, or here I rob the gallows--" and
+he threatened the quaking wretch with his naked sword, till with a groan
+he took the skull and held it, almost fainting.
+
+Oh! that every murderer, and contriver of murder, could see him, sick,
+and staggering with terror, and with his hair on end holding the cold
+skull, and feeling that his own head would soon be like it. And soon the
+heap was scattered, and, alas! not one nor two, but many skulls were
+brought to light, the culprit moaning at each discovery.
+
+Suddenly Denys uttered a strange cry of distress to come from so bold
+and hard a man; and held up to the torch a mass of human hair. It was
+long, glossy, and golden. A woman's beautiful hair. At sight of it the
+archers instinctively shook the craven wretch in their hands: and he
+whined.
+
+"I have a little sister with hair just so fair and shining as this,"
+gulped Denys. "Jesu! if it should be hers! There quick, take my sword
+and dagger, and keep them from my hand, lest I strike him dead and wrong
+the gibbet. And thou, poor innocent victim, on whose head this most
+lovely hair did grow, hear me swear thus, on bended knee, never to leave
+this man till I see him broken to pieces on the wheel even for thy
+sake."
+
+He rose from his knee. "Ay, had he as many lives as here be hairs, I'd
+have them all, by God." And he put the hair into his bosom. Then in a
+sudden fury seized the landlord fiercely by the neck, and forced him to
+his knees; and foot on head ground his face savagely among the bones of
+his victims, where they lay thickest: and the assassin first yelled,
+then whined and whimpered, just as a dog first yells, then whines, when
+his nose is so forced into some leveret or other innocent he has killed.
+
+"Now lend me thy bowstring, Philippe!" He passed it through the eyes of
+a skull alternately, and hung the ghastly relic of mortality and crime
+round the man's neck; then pulled him up and kicked him industriously
+into the kitchen, where one of the aldermen of the burgh had arrived
+with constables, and was even now taking an archer's deposition.
+
+The grave burgher was much startled at sight of the landlord driven in
+bleeding from a dozen scratches inflicted by the bones of his own
+victims, and carrying his horrible collar. But Denys came panting after,
+and in a few fiery words soon made all clear.
+
+"Bind him like the rest," said the alderman sternly. "I count him the
+blackest of them all."
+
+While his hands were being bound, the poor wretch begged piteously that
+"the skull might be taken from him."
+
+"Humph!" said the alderman. "Certes I had not ordered such a thing to be
+put on mortal man. Yet being there I will not lift voice nor finger to
+doff it. Methinks it fits thee truly, thou bloody dog. 'Tis thy ensign,
+and hangs well above a heart so foul as thine."
+
+He then inquired of Denys if he thought they had secured the whole gang
+or but a part.
+
+"Your worship," said Denys, "there are but seven of them, and this
+landlord. One we slew upstairs, one we tumbled down dead, the rest are
+bound before you."
+
+"Good! go fetch the dead one from upstairs, and lay him beside him I
+caused to be removed."
+
+Here a voice like a guinea-fowl's broke peevishly in. "Now, now, now,
+where is the hand? that is what I want to see." The speaker was a little
+pettifogging clerk.
+
+"You will find it above, nailed to the door-post by a cross-bow bolt."
+
+"Good!" said the clerk. He whispered his master, "What a godly show will
+the 'pieces de conviction' make!" and with this he wrote them down,
+enumerating them in separate squeaks as he penned them.
+Skulls,--Bones,--A woman's hair,--A thief's hand,--1 axe--2 carcases,--1
+cross-bow bolt. This done he itched to search the cellar himself: there
+might be other invaluable morsels of evidence, an ear, or even an
+earring. The alderman assenting he caught up a torch and was hurrying
+thither, when an accident stopped him, and indeed carried him a step or
+two in the opposite direction.
+
+The constables had gone up the stair in single file.
+
+But the head constable no sooner saw the phosphorescent corpse seated by
+the bedside, than he stood stupefied: and next he began to shake like
+one in an ague, and, terror gaining on him more and more, he uttered a
+sort of howl and recoiled swiftly. Forgetting the steps, in his recoil,
+he tumbled over backward on his nearest companion: but _he_, shaken by
+the shout of dismay, and catching a glimpse of something horrid, was
+already staggering back, and in no condition to sustain the head
+constable, who, like most head constables was a ponderous man. The two
+carried away the third, and the three the fourth, and they streamed into
+the kitchen, and settled on the floor, overlapping each other like a
+sequence laid out on a card-table. The clerk coming hastily with his
+torch ran an involuntary tilt again the fourth man, who, sharing the
+momentum of the mass, knocked him instantly on his back, the ace of that
+fair quint: and there he lay kicking and waving his torch, apparently in
+triumph, but really in convulsion; sense and wind being driven out
+together by the concussion.
+
+"What is to do now, in Heaven's name?" cried the alderman, starting up
+with considerable alarm. But Denys explained, and offered to accompany
+his worship. "So be it," said the latter. His men picked themselves
+ruefully up, and the alderman put himself at their head and examined the
+premises above and below. As for the prisoners, their interrogatory was
+postponed till they could be confronted with the servant.
+
+Before dawn, the thieves, alive and dead, and all the relics and
+evidences of crime and retribution, were swept away into the law's net,
+and the inn was silent and almost deserted. There remained but one
+constable, and Denys and Gerard, the latter still sleeping heavily.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXV
+
+
+GERARD awoke, and found Denys watching him with some anxiety.
+
+"It is you for sleeping! Why, 'tis high noon."
+
+"It was a blessed sleep," said Gerard, "methinks Heaven sent it me. It
+hath put as it were a veil between me and that awful night. To think
+that you and I sit here alive and well. How terrible a dream I seem to
+have had!"
+
+"Ay, lad, that is the wise way to look at these things, when once they
+are past, why they are dreams, shadows. Break thy fast, and then thou
+wilt think no more on't. Moreover I promised to bring thee on to the
+town by noon, and take thee to his worship."
+
+"What for?"
+
+"He would put questions to thee; by the same when he was for waking thee
+to that end, but I withstood him earnestly, and vowed to bring thee to
+him in the morning."
+
+"Thou shalt not break troth for me."
+
+Gerard then sopped some rye bread in red wine and ate it to break his
+fast: then went with Denys over the scene of combat, and came back
+shuddering, and finally took the road with his friend, and kept peering
+through the hedges and expecting sudden attacks unreasonably, till they
+reached the little town. Denys took him to "The White Hart."
+
+"No fear of cut-throats here," said he. "I know the landlord this many a
+year. He is a burgess, and looks to be bailiff. 'Tis here I was making
+for yestreen. But we lost time, and night overtook us--and--"
+
+"And you saw a woman at the door, and would be wiser than la Jeanneton;
+she told us they were nought."
+
+"Why, what saved our lives if not a woman? Ay, and risked her own to do
+it."
+
+"That is true, Denys, and though women are nothing to me, I long to
+thank this poor girl, and reward her, ay though I share every doit in my
+purse with her. Do not you?"
+
+"Parbleu."
+
+"Where shall we find her?"
+
+"Mayhap the alderman will tell us. We must go to him first."
+
+The alderman received them with the most singular and inexplicable
+expression of countenance. However, after a moment's reflection, he wore
+a grim smile, and finally proceeded to put interrogatories to Gerard,
+and took down the answers. This done he told them that they must stay in
+the town until the thieves were tried, and be at hand to give evidence,
+on peril of fine and imprisonment. They looked very blank at this.
+
+"However," said he, "'twill not be long, the culprits having been taken
+red handed." He added, "and you know in any case you could not leave the
+place this week."
+
+Denys stared at this remark, and Gerard smiled at what he thought the
+simplicity of the old gentleman in dreaming that a provincial town of
+Burgundy had attraction to detain him from Rome and Margaret.
+
+He now went to that which was nearest both their hearts. "Your worship,"
+said he, "we cannot find our benefactress in the town."
+
+"Nay, but who is your benefactress?"
+
+"Who? why the good girl that came to you by night and saved our lives at
+peril of her own. Oh sir, our hearts burn within us to thank and bless
+her: where is she?"
+
+"Oh, _she_ is in prison."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXVI
+
+
+"IN prison, sir; good lack, for what misdeed?"
+
+"Well, she is a witness, and may be a necessary one."
+
+"Why, Messire Bailiff," put in Denys, "you lay not all your witnesses by
+the heels I trow."
+
+The alderman, pleased at being called bailiff, became communicative. "In
+a case of blood we detain all testimony that is like to give us leg
+bail, and so defeat Justice, and that is why we still keep the
+womenfolk. For a man at odd times bides a week in one mind, but a woman,
+if she do her duty to the realm o' Friday, she shall undo it afore
+Sunday, or try. Could you see yon wench now, you should find her a
+blubbering at having betrayed five males to the gallows. Had they been
+females, we might have trusted to a subpoena. For they despise one
+another. And there they show some sense. But now I think on't, there
+were other reasons for laying this one by the heels. Hand me those
+depositions, young sir." And he put on his glasses. "Ay! she was
+implicated: she was one of the band."
+
+A loud disclaimer burst from Denys and Gerard at once.
+
+"No need to deave me," said the alderman. "Here 'tis in black and white.
+'Jean Hardy (that is one of the thieves), being questioned confessed
+that,'--humph? Ay, here 'tis. 'And that the girl Manon was the decoy,
+and her sweetheart was Georges Vipont, one of the band; and hanged last
+month: and that she had been deject ever since, and had openly blamed
+the band for his death, saying, if they had not been rank cowards, he
+had never been taken, and it is his opinion she did but betray them out
+of very spite, and--'"
+
+"His opinion," cried Gerard indignantly, "what signifies the opinion of
+a cut-throat, burning to be revenged on her who has delivered him to
+justice? And an you go to that what avails his testimony? Is a thief
+never a liar? Is he not aye a liar? and here a motive to lie? Revenge,
+why 'tis the strongest of all the passions. And oh, sir, what madness to
+question a detected felon and listen to him lying away an honest
+life--as if he were a true man swearing in open day, with his true hand
+on the Gospel laid!"
+
+"Young man," said the alderman, "restrain thy heat in presence of
+authority! I find by your tongue you are a stranger. Know then that in
+this land we question all the world. We are not so weak as to hope to
+get at the truth by shutting either our left ear or our right."
+
+"And so you would listen to Satan belying the saints!"
+
+"Ta! ta! The law meddles but with men and women, and these cannot utter
+a story all lies, let them try ever so. Wherefore we shut not the
+barn-door (as the saying is) against any man's grain. Only having taken
+it in we do winnow and sift it. And who told you I had swallowed the
+thief's story whole like fair water? Not so. I did but credit so much
+on't as was borne out by better proof."
+
+"Better proof?" and Gerard looked blank. "Why who but the thieves would
+breathe a word against her?"
+
+"Marry, herself."
+
+"Herself, sir? what did you question her too?"
+
+"I tell you we question all the world. Here is her deposition, can you
+read?--Read it yourself then."
+
+Gerard looked at Denys and read him
+
+
+MANON'S DEPOSITION
+
+"I am a native of Epinal. I left my native place two years ago because I
+was unfortunate: I could not like the man they bade me. So my father
+beat me. I ran away from my father. I went to service. I left service
+because the mistress was jealous of me. The reason they gave for turning
+me off was, because I was saucy. Last year I stood in the market-place
+to be hired with other girls. The landlord of 'The Fair Star' hired me.
+I was eleven months with him. A young man courted me. I loved him. I
+found out that travellers came and never went away again. I told my
+lover. He bade me hold my peace. He threatened me. I found my lover was
+one of a band of thieves. When travellers were to be robbed the landlord
+went out and told the band to come. Then I wept and prayed for the
+travellers' souls. I never told. A month ago my lover died.
+
+"The soldier put me in mind of my lover. He was bearded like him I had
+lost. I cannot tell whether I should have interfered, if he had had no
+beard. I am sorry I told now."
+
+The paper almost dropped from Gerard's hands. Now for the first time he
+saw that Manon's life was in mortal danger. He knew the dogged law, and
+the dogged men that executed it. He threw himself suddenly on his knees
+at the alderman's feet. "Oh, sir! think of the difference between those
+cruel men and this poor weak woman! Could you have the heart to send her
+to the same death with them; could you have the heart to condemn us to
+look on and see her slaughtered, who, but that she risked her life for
+ours, had not now been in jeopardy? Alas, sir! show me and my comrade
+some pity, if you have none for her, poor soul. Denys and I be true men,
+and you will rend our hearts if you kill that poor simple girl. What can
+we do? What is left for us to do then but cut our throats at her
+gallow's foot?"
+
+The alderman was tough but mortal; the prayers and agitation of Gerard
+first astounded, then touched him. He showed it in a curious way. He
+became peevish and fretful. "There get up, do," said he. "I doubt
+whether anybody would say as many words for me. What ho, Daniel! go
+fetch the town clerk." And, on that functionary entering from an
+adjoining room, "Here is a foolish lad fretting about yon girl. Can we
+stretch a point? say we admit her to bear witness, and question her
+favorably."
+
+The town clerk was one of your "impossibility" men.
+
+"Nay, sir, we cannot do that: she was not concerned in this business.
+Had she been accessory, we might have offered her a pardon to bear
+witness."
+
+Gerard burst in. "But she did better. Instead of being accessory, she
+stayed the crime; and she proffered herself as witness by running hither
+with the tale."
+
+"Tush, young man, 'tis a matter of law." The alderman and the clerk then
+had a long discussion, the one maintaining, the other denying, that she
+stood as fair in law, as if she had been accessory to the attempt on our
+travellers' lives. And this was lucky for Manon: for the alderman,
+irritated by the clerk reiterating that he could not do this and could
+not that, and could not do t'other, said "he would show him he _could_
+do anything he chose." And he had Manon out, and, upon the landlord of
+the "White Hart" being her bondsman, and Denys depositing five gold
+pieces with him, and the girl promising, not without some coaxing from
+Denys, to attend as a witness, he liberated her, but eased his
+conscience by telling her in his own terms his reason for this leniency.
+
+"The town had to buy a new rope for everybody hanged, and present it to
+the bourreau, or else compound with him in money: and she was not in his
+opinion worth this municipal expense; whereas decided characters like
+her late confederates, were." And so Denys and Gerard carried her off,
+Gerard dancing round her for joy, Denys keeping up her heart by assuring
+her of the demise of a troublesome personage, and she weeping
+inauspiciously. However, on the road to the "White Hart" the public
+found her out, and having heard the whole story from the archers, who
+naturally told it warmly in her favour, followed her hurrahing and
+encouraging her, till finding herself backed by numbers she plucked up
+heart. The landlord too saw at a glance that her presence in the inn
+would draw custom, and received her politely and assigned her an upper
+chamber: here she buried herself, and being alone rained tears again.
+
+Poor little mind, it was like a ripple, up and down, down and up, up and
+down. Bidding the landlord be very kind to her, and keep her a prisoner
+without letting her feel it, the friends went out: and lo! as they
+stepped into the street they saw two processions coming towards them
+from opposite sides. One was a large one attended with noise and howls
+and those indescribable cries, by which rude natures reveal at odd times
+that relationship to the beasts of the field and forest, which at other
+times we succeed in hiding. The other, very thinly attended by a few
+nuns and friars, came slow and silent.
+
+The prisoners going to exposure in the market-place. The gathered bones
+of the victims coming to the churchyard.
+
+And the two met in the narrow street nearly at the inn door, and could
+not pass each other for a long time, and the bier, that bore the relics
+of mortality, got wedged against the cart that carried the men, who had
+made those bones what they were, and in a few hours must die for it
+themselves. The mob had not the quick intelligence to be at once struck
+with this stern meeting: but at last a woman cried "Look at your work,
+ye dogs!" and the crowd took it like wildfire, and there was a horrible
+yell, and the culprits groaned and tried to hide their heads upon their
+bosoms, but could not, their hands being tied. And there they stood
+images of pale, hollow-eyed despair, and oh how they looked on the
+bier, and envied those whom they had sent before them on the dark road
+they were going upon themselves! And the two men who were the cause of
+both processions, stood and looked gravely on, and even Manon, hearing
+the disturbance, crept to the window, and, hiding her face, peeped
+trembling through her fingers as women will.
+
+This strange meeting parted Denys and Gerard. The former yielded to
+curiosity and revenge, the latter doffed his bonnet, and piously
+followed the poor remains of those whose fate had so nearly been his
+own. For some time he was the one lay mourner: but when they had reached
+the suburbs, a long way from the greater attraction that was filling the
+market-place, more than one artisan threw down his tools, and more than
+one shopman left his shop, and touched with pity, or a sense of our
+common humanity, and perhaps decided somewhat by the example of Gerard,
+followed the bones bare headed, and saw them deposited with the prayers
+of the Church in hallowed ground.
+
+After the funeral rites Gerard stepped respectfully up to the cure, and
+offered to buy a mass for their souls.
+
+Gerard, son of Catherine, always looked at two sides of a penny: and he
+tried to purchase this mass a trifle under the usual terms, on account
+of the pitiable circumstances. But the good cure gently but adroitly
+parried his ingenuity, and blandly screwed him up to the market price.
+
+In the course of the business they discovered a similarity of
+sentiments. Piety and worldly prudence are not very rare companions:
+still it is unusual to carry both so far as these two men did. Their
+collision in the prayer market led to mutual esteem, as when knight
+encountered knight worthy of his steel. Moreover the good cure loved a
+bit of gossip, and finding his customer was one of those who had fought
+the thieves at Domfront, would have him into his parlour and hear the
+whole from his own lips. And his heart warmed to Gerard and he said,
+"God was good to thee. I thank him for't, with all my soul. Thou art a
+good lad." He added drily, "shouldst have told me this tale in the
+churchyard. I doubt I had given thee the mass for love. However," said
+he (the thermometer suddenly falling) "'tis ill-luck to go back upon a
+bargain. But I'll broach a bottle of my old Medoc for thee: and few be
+the guests I would do that for." The cure went to his cupboard and,
+while he groped for the choice bottle, he muttered to himself, "At
+their old tricks again!"
+
+"Plait-il?" said Gerard.
+
+"I said nought. Ay, here 'tis."
+
+"Nay, your reverence. You surely spoke: you said 'At their old tricks
+again!'"
+
+"Said I so in sooth?" and his reverence smiled. He then proceeded to
+broach the wine, and filled a cup for each. Then he put a log of wood on
+the fire, for stoves were none in Burgundy. "And so I said 'At their old
+tricks!' did I? Come, sip the good wine, and, whilst it lasts, story for
+story, I care not if I tell you a little tale."
+
+Gerard's eyes sparkled.
+
+"Thou lovest a story?"
+
+"As my life."
+
+"Nay, but raise not thine expectations too high, neither. 'Tis but a
+foolish trifle compared with thine adventures."
+
+
+THE CURE'S TALE
+
+"Once upon a time, then, in the kingdom of France, and in the Duchy of
+Burgundy, and not a day's journey from the town, where now we sit a
+sipping of old Medoc, there lived--a cure. I say he lived; but barely.
+The parish was small, the parishioners greedy; and never gave their cure
+a doit more than he could compel. The nearer they brought him to a
+disembodied spirit by meagre diet, the holier should be his prayers in
+their behalf. I know not if this was their creed, but their practice
+gave it colour.
+
+"At last he pickled a rod for them.
+
+"One day the richest farmer in the place had twins to baptize. The cure
+was had to the christening dinner as usual; but, ere he would baptize
+the children, he demanded, not the christening fees only, but the burial
+fees. 'Saints defend us, parson,' cried the mother; 'talk not of
+burying! I did never see children liker to live.' 'Nor I,' said the
+cure, 'the praise be to God. Natheless, they are sure to die; being sons
+of Adam, as well as of thee, dame. But, die when they will, 'twill cost
+them nothing; the burial fees being paid and entered in this book.' 'For
+all that, 'twill cost them something,' quoth the miller, the greatest
+wag in the place, and as big a knave as any; for which was the biggest
+God knoweth, but no mortal man, not even the hangman. 'Miller, I tell
+thee nay', quo the cure. 'Parson, I tell you ay,' quo the miller.
+''Twill cost them their lives.' At which millstone conceit was a great
+laugh; and in the general mirth the fees were paid and the Christians
+made.
+
+"But when the next parishioner's child, and the next after, and all, had
+to pay each his burial fee, or lose his place in heaven, discontent did
+secretly rankle in the parish. Well, one fine day they met in secret,
+and sent a churchwarden with a complaint to the bishop, and a
+thunderbolt fell on the poor cure. Came to him at dinner-time a summons
+to the episcopal palace, to bring the parish books and answer certain
+charges. Then the cure guessed where the shoe pinched. He left his food
+on the board; for small his appetite now; and took the parish books and
+went quaking.
+
+"The bishop entertained him with a frown, and exposed the plaint.
+'Monseigneur,' said the cure right humbly, 'doth the parish allege many
+things against me, or this one only?' 'In sooth, but this one,' said the
+bishop; and softened a little. 'First, monseigneur, I acknowledge the
+fact.' ''Tis well,' quoth the bishop; 'that saves time and trouble. Now
+to your excuse, if excuse there be.' 'Monseigneur, I have been cure of
+that parish seven years, and fifty children have I baptized, and buried
+not five. At first I used to say, "Heaven be praised, the air of this
+village is main healthy," but on searching the register book I found
+'twas always so, and on probing the matter, it came out that of those
+born at Domfront, all, but here and there one, did go and get hanged at
+Aix. But this was to defraud not their cure only, but the entire Church
+of her dues: since "pendards" pay no funeral fees, being buried in air.
+Thereupon, knowing by sad experience their greed, and how they grudge
+the Church every sou, I laid a trap to keep them from hanging: for,
+greed against greed, there be of them that will die in their beds like
+true men, ere the Church shall gain those funeral fees for nought.' Then
+the bishop laughed till the tears ran down, and questioned the
+churchwarden, and he was fain to confess that too many of the parish did
+come to that unlucky end at Aix. 'Then,' said the bishop, 'I do approve
+the act, for myself and my successors; and so be it ever, till they mend
+their manners and die in their beds.' And the next day came the
+ringleaders crest-fallen to the cure, and said, 'Parson, ye were ever
+good to us, barring this untoward matter: prithee let there be no ill
+blood anent so trivial a thing.' And the cure said, 'My children, I
+were unworthy to be your pastor could I not forgive a wrong; go in
+peace, and get me as many children as may be, that by the double fees
+the cure you love may miss starvation.'
+
+"And the bishop often told the story, and it kept his memory of the cure
+alive, and at last he shifted him to a decent parish, where he can offer
+a glass of old Medoc to such as are worthy of it. Their name it is not
+legion."
+
+A light broke in upon Gerard, his countenance showed it.
+
+"Ay!" said his host, "I am that cure: so now thou canst guess why I said
+'At their old tricks.' My life on't they have wheedled my successor into
+remitting those funeral fees. You are well out of that parish. And so am
+I."
+
+The cure's little niece burst in, "Uncle, the weighing:--la! a
+stranger!" And burst out.
+
+The cure rose directly, but would not part with Gerard.
+
+"Wet thy beard once more, and come with me."
+
+In the church porch they found the sexton with a huge pair of scales,
+and weights of all sizes. Several humble persons were standing by, and
+soon a woman stepped forward with a sickly child and said, "Be it heavy,
+be it light, I vow, in rye meal of the best, whate'er this child shall
+weigh, and the same will duly pay to holy Church, an if he shall cast
+his trouble. Pray, good people, for this child, and for me his mother
+hither come in dole and care!"
+
+The child was weighed, and yelled as if the scale had been the font.
+
+"Courage! dame," cried Gerard. "This is a good sign. There is plenty of
+life here to battle its trouble."
+
+"Now, blest be the tongue that tells me so," said the poor woman. She
+hushed her ponderling against her bosom, and stood aloof watching,
+whilst another woman brought her child to scale.
+
+But presently a loud, dictatorial voice was heard. "Way there, make way
+for the seigneur!"
+
+The small folk parted on both sides like waves ploughed by a lordly
+galley, and in marched in gorgeous attire, his cap adorned by a feather
+with a topaz at its root, his jerkin richly furred, satin doublet, red
+hose, shoes like skates, diamond-hilted sword in velvet scabbard, and
+hawk on his wrist, "the lord of the manor." He flung himself into the
+scales as if he was lord of the zodiac as well as the manor; whereat
+the hawk balanced and flapped; but stuck: then winked.
+
+While the sexton heaved in the great weights, the cure told Gerard: "My
+lord had been sick unto death, and vowed his weight in bread and cheese
+to the poor, the Church taking her tenth."
+
+"Permit me, my lord; if your lordship continues to press with your
+lordship's staff on the other scale, you will disturb the balance."
+
+His lordship grinned and removed his staff, and leaned on it. The cure
+politely but firmly objected to that too.
+
+"Mille diables! what am I to do with it, then?" cried the other.
+
+"Deign to hold it out so, my lord, wide of both scales."
+
+When my lord did this, and so fell into the trap he had laid for holy
+Church, the good cure whispered to Gerard, "Cretensis incidit in
+Cretensem!" which I take to mean, "Diamond cut diamond." He then said
+with an obsequious air, "If that your lordship grudges Heaven full
+weight, you might set the hawk on your lacquey, and so save a pound."
+
+"Gramercy for thy rede, cure," cried the great man, reproachfully.
+"Shall I for one sorry pound grudge my poor fowl the benefit of holy
+Church? I'd as lieve the devil should have me and all my house as her,
+any day i' the year."
+
+"Sweet is affection," whispered the cure.
+
+"Between a bird and a brute," whispered Gerard.
+
+"Tush!" and the cure looked terrified.
+
+The seigneur's weight was booked, and Heaven I trust and believe did not
+weigh his gratitude in the balance of the sanctuary.
+
+For my unlearned reader is not to suppose there was anything the least
+eccentric in the man, or his gratitude to the Giver of health and all
+good gifts. Men look forward to death, and back upon past sickness, with
+different eyes. Item, when men drive a bargain, they strive to get the
+sunny side of it; it matters not one straw whether it is with man or
+Heaven they are bargaining. In this respect we are the same now, at
+bottom, as we were four hundred years ago: only in those days we did it
+a grain or two more naively, and that naivete shone out more palpably,
+because, in that rude age, body prevailing over mind, all sentiments
+took material forms. Man repented with scourges, prayed by bead, bribed
+the saints with wax tapers, put fish into the body to sanctify the soul,
+sojourned in cold water for empire over the emotions, and thanked God
+for returning health in 1 cwt. 2 stone 7 lb. 3 oz. 1 dwt. of bread and
+cheese.
+
+Whilst I have been preaching, who preach so rarely and so ill, the good
+cure has been soliciting the lord of the manor to step into the church,
+and give order what shall be done with his great-great-grandfather.
+
+"Ods bodikins! what, have you dug him up?"
+
+"Nay, my lord, he never was buried."
+
+"What, the old dict was true after all?"
+
+"So true that the workmen this very day found a skeleton erect in the
+pillar they are repairing. I had sent to my lord at once, but I knew he
+would be here."
+
+"It is he! 'Tis he!" said his descendant, quickening his pace. "Let us
+go see the old boy. This youth is a stranger I think."
+
+Gerard bowed.
+
+"Know then that my great-great-grandfather held his head high, and,
+being on the point of death, revolted against lying under the aisle with
+his forbears for mean folk to pass over. So, as the tradition goes, he
+swore his son (my great-grandfather) to bury him erect in one of the
+pillars of the church" (here they entered the porch). "'For,' quoth he,
+'NO BASE MAN SHALL PASS OVER MY STOMACH.' Peste!" and, even while
+speaking, his lordship parried adroitly with his stick a skull that came
+hopping at him, bowled by a boy in the middle of the aisle, who took to
+his heels yelling with fear the moment he saw what he had done. His
+lordship hurled the skull furiously after him as he ran, at which the
+cure gave a shout of dismay and put forth his arm to hinder him, but was
+too late.
+
+The cure groaned aloud. And, as if this had evoked spirits of mischief,
+up started a whole pack of children from some ambuscade, and unseen, but
+heard loud enough, clattered out of the church like a covey rising in a
+thick wood.
+
+"Oh! these pernicious brats," cried the cure. "The workmen cannot go to
+their nonemete but the church is rife with them. Pray Heaven they have
+not found his late lordship; nay, I mind, I hid his lordship under a
+workman's jerkin, and--saints defend us! the jerkin has been moved."
+
+The poor cure's worst misgivings were realized: the rising generation of
+plebeians had played the mischief with the haughty old noble. "The
+little ones had jockeyed for the bones oh" and pocketed such of them as
+seemed adapted for certain primitive games then in vogue amongst them.
+
+"I'll excommunicate them," roared the curate, "and all their race."
+
+"Never heed," said the scapegrace lord: and stroked his hawk; "there is
+enough of him to swear by. Put him back! put him back!"
+
+"Surely, my lord, 'tis your will his bones be laid in hallowed earth,
+and masses said for his poor prideful soul?"
+
+The noble stroked his hawk.
+
+"Are ye there, Master Cure?" said he. "Nay, the business is too old: he
+is out of purgatory by this time, _up or down_. I shall not draw my
+pursestrings for him. Every dog his day. Adieu, Messires, adieu,
+ancestor:" and he sauntered off whistling to his hawk and caressing it.
+
+His reverence looked ruefully after him.
+
+"Cretensis incidit in Cretensem," said he sorrowfully. "I thought I had
+him safe for a dozen masses. Yet I blame him not, but that young
+ne'er-do-weel which did trundle his ancestor's skull at us: for who
+could venerate his great-great-grandsire and play football with his
+head? Well it behoves us to be better Christians than he is." So they
+gathered the bones reverently, and the cure locked them up and forbade
+the workmen, who now entered the church, to close up the pillar, till he
+should recover by threats of the Church's wrath every atom of my lord.
+And he showed Gerard a famous shrine in the church. Before it were the
+usual gifts of tapers, &c. There was also a wax image of a falcon, most
+curiously moulded and coloured to the life, eyes and all. Gerard's eye
+fell at once on this, and he expressed the liveliest admiration. The
+cure assented. Then Gerard asked "Could the saint have loved hawking?"
+
+The cure laughed at his simplicity. "Nay, 'tis but a statuary hawk. When
+they have a bird of gentle breed they cannot train they make his image,
+and send it to this shrine with a present, and pray the saint to work
+upon the stubborn mind of the original, and make it ductile as wax: that
+is the notion, and methinks a reasonable one, too."
+
+Gerard assented. "But alack, reverend sir, were I a saint, methinks I
+should side with the innocent dove, rather than with the cruel hawk that
+rends her."
+
+"By St. Denys you are right," said the cure. "But, que voulez-vous? the
+saints are debonair, and have been flesh themselves, and know man's
+frailty and absurdity. 'Tis the Bishop of Avignon sent this one."
+
+"What do bishops hawk in this country?"
+
+"One and all. Every noble person hawks, and lives with hawk on wrist.
+Why my lord abbot hard by, and his lordship that has just parted from
+us, had a two years' feud as to where they should put their hawks down
+on that very altar there. Each claimed the right hand of the altar for
+his bird."
+
+"What desecration!"
+
+"Nay! nay! thou knowest we make them doff both glove and hawk to take
+the blessed eucharist. Their jewelled gloves will they give to a servant
+or simple Christian to hold: but their beloved hawks they will put down
+on no place less than the altar."
+
+Gerard inquired how the battle of the hawks ended.
+
+"Why, the abbot he yielded, as the Church yields to laymen. He searched
+ancient books, and found that the left hand was the more honourable,
+being in truth the right hand, since the altar is east, but looks
+westward. So he gave my lord the soi-disant right hand, and contented
+himself with the real right hand, and even so may the Church still
+outwit the lay nobles and their arrogance, saving your presence."
+
+"Nay, sir, I honour the Church. I am convent bred, and owe all I have
+and am to holy Church."
+
+"Ah, that accounts for my sudden liking to thee. Art a gracious youth.
+Come and see me whenever thou wilt."
+
+Gerard took this as a hint that he might go now. It jumped with his own
+wish, for he was curious to hear what Denys had seen and done all this
+time. He made his reverence and walked out of the church; but was no
+sooner clear of it than he set off to run with all his might: and,
+tearing round a corner, ran into a large stomach, whose owner clutched
+him, to keep himself steady under the shock; but did not release his
+hold on regaining his equilibrium.
+
+"Let go, man," said Gerard.
+
+"Not so. You are my prisoner."
+
+"Prisoner?"
+
+"Ay."
+
+"What for in heaven's name?"
+
+"What for? Why sorcery."
+
+"SORCERY?"
+
+"Sorcery."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXVII
+
+
+THE culprits were condemned to stand pinioned in the market-place for
+two hours, that should any persons recognize them or any of them as
+guilty of other crimes, they might depose to that effect at the trial.
+
+They stood however the whole period, and no one advanced anything fresh
+against them. This was the less remarkable that they were night birds,
+vampires who preyed in the dark on weary travellers, mostly strangers.
+
+But, just as they were being taken down, a fearful scream was heard in
+the crowd, and a woman pointed at one of them, with eyes almost starting
+from their sockets: but ere she could speak she fainted away.
+
+Then men and women crowded round her partly to aid her, partly from
+curiosity. When she began to recover they fell to conjectures.
+
+"'Twas at him she pointed."
+
+"Nay, 'twas at this one."
+
+"Nay, nay," said another, "'twas at yon hangdog with the hair hung round
+his neck."
+
+All further conjecture was cut short. The poor creature no sooner
+recovered her senses than she flew at the landlord like a lioness. "My
+child! Man! man! Give me back my child." And she seized the glossy
+golden hair that the officers had hung round his neck, and tore it from
+his neck, and covered it with kisses: then, her poor confused mind
+clearing, she saw even by this token that her lost girl was dead, and
+sank suddenly down shrieking and sobbing so over the poor hair, that the
+crowd rushed on the assassin with one savage growl. His life had ended
+then and speedily, for in those days all carried death at their girdles.
+But Denys drew his sword directly, and shouting "A moi, camarades!" kept
+the mob at bay. "Who lays a finger on him dies." Other archers backed
+him, and with some difficulty they kept him uninjured, while Denys
+appealed to those who shouted for his blood.
+
+"What sort of vengeance is this? would you be so mad as rob the wheel,
+and give the vermin an easy death?"
+
+The mob was kept passive by the archers' steel rather than by Denys's
+words, and growled at intervals with flashing eyes. The municipal
+officers seeing this, collected round, and with the archers made a
+guard, and prudently carried the accused back to gaol.
+
+The mob hooted them, and the prisoners, indiscriminately. Denys saw the
+latter safely lodged, then made for the "White Hart," where he expected
+to find Gerard.
+
+On the way he saw two girls working at a first floor window. He saluted
+them. They smiled. He entered into conversation. Their manners were
+easy, their complexion high.
+
+He invited them to a repast at the "White Hart." They objected. He
+acquiesced in their refusal. They consented. And in this charming
+society he forgot all about poor Gerard, who meantime was carried off to
+gaol; but on the way suddenly stopped, having now somewhat recovered his
+presence of mind, and demanded to know by whose authority he was
+arrested. "By the vice-baillie's," said the constable.
+
+"The vice-baillie! Alas! what have I a stranger done to offend a
+vice-baillie For this charge of sorcery must be a blind. No sorcerer am
+I: but a poor true lad far from his home."
+
+This vague shift disgusted the officer. "Show him the capias, Jacques,"
+said he.
+
+Jacques held out the writ in both hands about a yard and a half from
+Gerard's eye; and at the same moment the large constable suddenly pinned
+him; both officers were on tenter-hooks lest the prisoner should grab
+the document, to which they attached a superstitious importance.
+
+But the poor prisoner had no such thought. Query whether he would have
+touched it with the tongs. He just craned out his neck and read it, and,
+to his infinite surprise, found the vice-bailiff who had signed the writ
+was the friendly alderman. He took courage and assured his captor there
+was some error. But finding he made no impression, demanded to be taken
+before the alderman.
+
+"What say you to that, Jacques?"
+
+"Impossible. We have no orders to take him before his worship. Read the
+writ!"
+
+"Nay, but good kind fellows, what harm can it be? I will give ye each an
+ecu."
+
+"Jacques, what say you to that?"
+
+"Humph? I say we have no orders not to take him to his worship. Read the
+writ!"
+
+"Then say we take him to prison round by his worship."
+
+It was agreed. They got the money: and bade Gerard observe they were
+doing him a favour. He saw they wanted a little gratitude as well as
+much silver. He tried to satisfy _this_ cupidity, but it stuck in his
+throat. Feigning was not his forte.
+
+He entered the alderman's presence with his heart in his mouth, and
+begged with faltering voice to know what he had done to offend since he
+left that very room with Manon and Denys.
+
+"Nought that I know of," said the alderman.
+
+On the writ being shown him, he told Gerard he had signed it at
+daybreak. "I get old and my memory faileth me: a discussing of the girl
+I quite forgot your own offence: but I remember now. All is well. You
+are he I committed for sorcery. Stay! ere you go to gaol, you shall hear
+what your accuser says: run and fetch him, you."
+
+The man could not find the accuser all at once. So the alderman, getting
+impatient, told Gerard the main charge was that he had set a dead body a
+burning with diabolical fire, that flamed, but did not consume. "And if
+'tis true, young man, I'm sorry for thee, for thou wilt assuredly burn
+with fire of good pine logs in the market-place of Neufchasteau."
+
+"Oh, sir, for pity's sake let me have speech with his reverence the
+cure."
+
+The alderman advised Gerard against it. "The Church was harder upon
+sorcerers than was the corporation."
+
+"But, sir, I am innocent," said Gerard, between snarling and whining.
+
+"Oh; if _you_--_think_--you are _innocent_--officer, go with him to the
+cure! but see he 'scape you not. Innocent quotha?"
+
+They found the cure in his doublet repairing a wheelbarrow. Gerard told
+him all, and appealed piteously to him. "Just for using a little
+phosphorus--in self-defence--against cut-throats they are going to
+hang."
+
+It was lucky for our magician that he had already told his tale in full
+to the cure: for thus that shrewd personage had hold of the stick at the
+right end. The corporation held it by the ferule. His reverence looked
+exceedingly grave and said, "I must question you privately on this
+untoward business." He took him into a private room and bade the officer
+stand outside and guard the door, and be ready to come if called. The
+big constable stood outside the door, quaking, and expecting to see the
+room fly away and leave a stink of brimstone. Instantly they were alone
+the cure unlocked his countenance and was himself again.
+
+"Show me the trick on't," said he, all curiosity.
+
+"I cannot, sir, unless the room be darkened."
+
+The cure speedily closed out the light with a wooden shutter. "Now
+then."
+
+"But on what shall I put it?" said Gerard. "Here is no dead face. 'Twas
+that made it look so dire." The cure groped about the room. "Good: here
+is an image: 'tis my patron saint."
+
+"Heaven forbid! That were profanation."
+
+"Pshaw! 'twill rub off, will't not?"
+
+"Ay, but it goes against me to take such liberty with a saint," objected
+the sorcerer.
+
+"Fiddlestick!" said the divine.
+
+"To be sure my putting it on his holiness will show your reverence it is
+no Satanic art."
+
+"Mayhap 'twas for that I did propose it," said the cure subtly.
+
+Thus encouraged Gerard fired the eyes and nostrils of the image and made
+the cure jump. Then lighted up the hair in patches: and set the whole
+face shining like a glowworm's.
+
+"By'r Lady," shouted the cure, "'tis strange, and small my wonder that
+they took you for a magician, seeing a dead face thus fired. Now come
+thy ways with me!"
+
+He put on his grey gown and great hat, and in a few minutes they found
+themselves in presence of the alderman. By his side, poisoning his mind,
+stood the accuser, a singular figure in red hose and red shoes, a black
+gown with blue bands, and a cocked hat.
+
+After saluting the alderman, the cure turned to this personage and said
+good-humouredly, "So, Mangis, at thy work again, babbling away honest
+men's lives! Come, your worship, this is the old tale; two of a trade
+can ne'er agree. Here is Mangis, who professes sorcery, and would sell
+himself to Satan to-night, but that Satan is not so weak as to buy what
+he can have gratis, this Mangis, who would be a sorcerer, but is only a
+quacksalver, accuses of magic a true lad, who did but use in
+self-defence a secret of chemistry well known to me and to all
+churchmen."
+
+"But he is no churchman to dabble in such mysteries," objected the
+alderman.
+
+"He is more churchman than layman, being convent bred, and in the lesser
+orders," said the ready cure. "Therefore, sorcerer, withdraw thy plaint
+without more words!"
+
+"That will I not, your reverence," replied Mangis stoutly. "A sorcerer I
+am, but a white one, not a black one. I make no pact with Satan, but on
+the contrary still battle him with lawful and necessary arts. I ne'er
+profane the sacraments, as do the black sorcerers, nor turn myself into
+a cat and go sucking infants' blood, nor e'en their breath, nor set dead
+men o' fire. I but tell the peasants when their cattle and their hens
+are possessed, and at what time of the moon to plant rye, and what days
+in each month are lucky for wooing of women and selling of bullocks, and
+so forth: above all, it is my art and my trade to detect the black
+magicians, as I did that whole tribe of them who were burnt at Dol but
+last year."
+
+"Ay, Mangis. And what is the upshot of that famous fire thy tongue did
+kindle?"
+
+"Why, their ashes were cast to the wind."
+
+"Ay. But the true end of thy comedy is this. The parliament of Dijon
+hath since sifted the matter, and found they were no sorcerers, but good
+and peaceful citizens; and but last week did order masses to be said for
+their souls, and expiatory farces and mysteries to be played for them in
+seven towns of Burgundy; all which will not of those cinders make men
+and women again. Now 'tis our custom in this land, when we have slain
+the innocent by hearkening to false knaves like thee, not to blame our
+credulous ears, but the false tongue that gulled them. Wherefore bethink
+thee that, at a word from me to my lord bishop, thou wilt smell burning
+pine nearer than e'er knave smelt it and lived, and wilt travel on a
+smoky cloud to him whose heart thou bearest (for the word devil in the
+Latin it meaneth 'false accuser'), and whose livery thou wearest."
+
+And the cure pointed at Mangis with his staff.
+
+"That is true i'fegs," said the alderman, "for red and black be the foul
+fiendys colours."
+
+By this time the white sorcerer's cheek was as colourless as his dress
+was fiery. Indeed the contrast amounted to pictorial. He stammered out
+"I respect holy Church and her will; he shall fire the churchyard, and
+all in it, for me: I do withdraw the plaint."
+
+"Then withdraw thyself," said the vice-bailiff.
+
+The moment he was gone, the cure took the conversational tone, and told
+the alderman courteously that the accused had received the chemical
+substance from holy Church, and had restored it her, by giving it all to
+him.
+
+"Then 'tis in good hands," was the reply; "young man, you are free. Let
+me have your reverence's prayers."
+
+"Doubt it not! Humph? Vice-baillie, the town owes me four silver franks,
+this three months and more."
+
+"They shall be paid, cure, ay, ere the week be out."
+
+On this good understanding Church and State parted. As soon as he was in
+the street Gerard caught the priest's hand, and kissed it.
+
+"Oh, sir! Oh, your reverence. You have saved me from the fiery stake.
+What can I say, what do? what--"
+
+"Nought, foolish lad. Bounty rewards itself. Natheless--Humph?--I wish I
+had done't without leasing. It ill becomes my function to utter
+falsehoods."
+
+"Falsehood, sir?" Gerard was mystified.
+
+"Didst not hear me say thou hadst given me that same phosphorus? 'Twill
+cost me a fortnight's penance, that light word." The cure sighed, and
+his eye twinkled cunningly.
+
+"Nay, nay," cried Gerard eagerly. "Now Heaven forbid! That was no
+falsehood, father: well you knew the phosphorus was yours, is yours."
+And he thrust the bottle into the cure's hand; "But alas, 'tis too poor
+a gift: will you not take from my purse somewhat for holy Church?" and
+now he held out his purse with glistening eyes.
+
+"Nay," said the other brusquely, and put his hands quickly behind him:
+"not a doit. Fie! fie! art pauper et exul. Come thou rather each day at
+noon and take thy diet with me; for my heart warms to thee;" and he went
+off abruptly with his hands behind him.
+
+They itched.
+
+But they itched in vain.
+
+Where there's a heart there's a Rubicon.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Gerard went hastily to the inn to relieve Denys of the anxiety so long
+and mysterious an absence must have caused him. He found him seated at
+his ease, playing dice with two young ladies whose manners were
+unreserved, and complexion high.
+
+Gerard was hurt. "N'oubliez point la Jeanneton!" said he, colouring up.
+
+"What of her?" said Denys gaily rattling the dice.
+
+"She said 'le peu que sont les femmes.'"
+
+"Oh did she? and what say you to that, mesdemoiselles?"
+
+"We say that none run women down, but such as are too old or too
+ill-favoured, or too witless, to please them."
+
+"Witless, quotha. Wise men have not folly enough to please them, nor
+madness enough to desire to please them," said Gerard loftily: "but 'tis
+to my comrade I speak, not to you, you brazen toads, that make so free
+with a man at first sight."
+
+"Preach away, comrade. Fling a byword or two at our heads. Know, girls,
+that he is a very Solomon for bywords. Methinks he was brought up by
+hand on 'em."
+
+"Be thy friendship a byword!" retorted Gerard. "The friendship that
+melts to nought at sight of a farthingale."
+
+"Malheureux!" cried Denys, "I speak but pellets, and thou answerest
+daggers."
+
+"Would I could," was the reply. "Adieu."
+
+"What a little savage!" said one of the girls.
+
+Gerard opened the door and put in his head. "I have thought of a
+byword," said he spitefully,
+
+    "'Qui hante femmes et dez
+     Il mourra en pauvretez.'
+
+There." And having delivered this thunderbolt of antique wisdom he
+slammed the door viciously ere any of them could retort.
+
+And now, being somewhat exhausted by his anxieties, he went to the bar
+for a morsel of bread and a cup of wine. The landlord would sell nothing
+less than a pint bottle. Well then he would have a bottle: but, when he
+came to compare the contents of the bottle with its size, great was the
+discrepancy: on this he examined the bottle keenly, and found that the
+glass was thin where the bottle tapered, but towards the bottom
+unnaturally thick. He pointed this out at once.
+
+The landlord answered superciliously that he did not make bottles: and
+was nowise accountable for their shape.
+
+"That we will see presently," said Gerard. "I will take this thy pint to
+the vice-bailiff."
+
+"Nay, nay, for Heaven's sake," cried the landlord changing his tone at
+once. "I love to content my customers. If, by chance this pint be short,
+we will charge it and its fellow three sous, instead of two sous each."
+
+"So be it. But much I admire that you, the host of so fair an inn,
+should practise thus. The wine too smacketh strongly of spring water."
+
+"Young sir," said the landlord, "we cut no travellers' throats at this
+inn, as they do at most. However, you know all about that. The 'White
+Hart' is no lion, nor bear. Whatever masterful robbery is done here, is
+done upon the poor host. How then could he live at all if he dealt not a
+little crooked with the few who pay?"
+
+Gerard objected to this system root and branch. Honest trade was small
+profits, quick returns; and neither to cheat nor be cheated.
+
+The landlord sighed at this picture. "So might one keep an inn in
+heaven, but not in Burgundy. When foot soldiers going to the wars are
+quartered on me, how can I but lose by their custom? Two sous per day is
+their pay, and they eat two sous' worth, and drink into the bargain. The
+pardoners are my good friends, but palmers and pilgrims, what think you
+I gain by them? marry, a loss. Minstrels and jongleurs draw custom, and
+so claim to pay no score, except for liquor. By the secular monks I
+neither gain nor lose, but the black and grey friars have made vow of
+poverty, but not of famine; eat like wolves and give the poor host
+nought but their prayers; and mayhap not them: how can he tell? In my
+father's day we had the weddings: but now the great gentry let their
+houses and their plates, their mugs, and their spoons, to any honest
+couple that want to wed, and thither the very mechanics go with their
+brides and bridal train. They come not to us: indeed we could not find
+seats and vessels for such a crowd as eat and drink and dance the week
+out at the homeliest wedding now. In my father's day the great gentry
+sold wine by the barrel only; but now they have leave to cry it, and
+sell it by the galopin, in the very market-place. How can we vie with
+them? They grow it. We buy it of the grower. The coroner's quests we
+have still, and these would bring goodly profit, but the meat is aye
+gone ere the mouths be full."
+
+"You should make better provision," suggested his hearer.
+
+"The law will not let us. We are forbidden to go into the market for the
+first hour. So, when we arrive, the burghers have bought all but the
+refuse. Besides the law forbids us to buy more than three bushels of
+meal at a time: yet market day comes but once a week. As for the
+butchers, they will not kill for us unless we bribe them."
+
+"Courage!" said Gerard kindly, "the shoe pinches every trader
+somewhere."
+
+"Ay: but not as it pinches us. Our shoe is trode all o' one side as well
+as pinches us lame. A savoir, if we pay not the merchants we buy meal,
+meat, and wine of, they can cast us into prison and keep us there till
+we pay or die. But we cannot cast into prison those who buy those very
+victuals of us. A traveller's horse we may keep for his debt; but where
+in Heaven's name? In our own stable, eating his head off at our cost.
+Nay, we may keep the traveller himself, but where? In gaol? Nay, in our
+own good house, and there must we lodge and feed him gratis. And so
+fling good silver after bad? merci; no: let him go with a wanion. Our
+honestest customers are the thieves. Would to Heaven there were more of
+them. They look not too close into the shape of the canakin, nor into
+the host's reckoning: with them and with their purses 'tis lightly come,
+and lightly go. Also they spend freely, not knowing but each carouse may
+be their last. But the thief-takers, instead of profiting by this fair
+example, are for ever robbing the poor host. When noble or honest
+travellers descend at our door, come the provost's men pretending to
+suspect them, and demanding to search them and their papers. To save
+which offence the host must bleed wine and meat. Then come the excise to
+examine all your weights and measures. You must stop their mouths with
+meat and wine. Town excise. Royal excise. Parliament excise. A swarm of
+them, and all with a wolf in their stomachs and a sponge in their
+gullets. Monks, friars, pilgrims, palmers, soldiers, excisemen,
+provost-marshals and men, and mere bad debtors, how can the 'White Hart'
+butt against all these? Cutting no throats in self-defence as do your
+'Swans' and 'Roses' and 'Boar's Heads' and 'Red Lions' and 'Eagles,'
+your 'Moons,' 'Stars,' and 'Moors,' how can the 'White Hart' give a pint
+of wine for a pint? And everything risen so. Why, lad, not a pound of
+bread I sell but costs me three good copper deniers, twelve to the sou;
+and each pint of wine, bought by the tun, costs me four deniers; every
+sack of charcoal two sous, and gone in a day. A pair of partridges five
+sous. What think you of that? Heard one ever the like? five sous for two
+little beasts all bone and feather? A pair of pigeons, thirty deniers.
+'Tis ruination!!! For we may not raise _our_ pricen with the market. Oh
+no. I tell thee the shoe is trod all o' one side as well as pinches the
+water into our eyn. We may charge nought for mustard, pepper, salt, or
+firewood. Think you we get them for nought? Candle it is a sou the
+pound. Salt five sous the stone, pepper four sous the pound, mustard
+twenty deniers the pint: and raw meat, dwindleth it on the spit with no
+cost to me but loss of weight? Why what think you I pay my cook? But you
+shall never guess. A HUNDRED SOUS A YEAR AS I AM A LIVING SINNER.
+
+"And my waiter thirty sous, besides his perquisites. He is a hantle
+richer than I am. And then to be insulted as well as pillaged. Last
+Sunday I went to church. It is a place I trouble not often. Didn't the
+cure lash the hotel-keepers? I grant you he hit all the trades, except
+the one that is a byword for looseness, and pride, and sloth, to wit the
+clergy. But, mind you, he stripeit the other lay estates with a feather,
+but us hotel-keepers with a neat's pizzle: godless for this, godless for
+that, and most godless of all for opening our doors during mass. Why the
+law forces us to open at all hours to travellers from another town,
+stopping, halting, or passing: those be the words. They can fine us
+before the bailiff if we refuse them, mass or no mass: and, say a
+townsman should creep in with the true travellers, are we to blame? They
+all vow they are tired wayfarers; and can I ken every face in a great
+town like this? So if we respect the law our poor souls are to suffer,
+and if we respect it not, our poor lank purses must bleed at two holes,
+fine and loss of custom."
+
+A man speaking of himself in general, is "a babbling brook;" of his
+wrongs, "a shining river."
+
+    "Labitur et labetur in omne volubilis aevum."
+
+So luckily for my readers, though not for all concerned, this injured
+orator was arrested in mid career. Another man burst in upon his wrongs
+with all the advantage of a recent wrong; a wrong red hot. It was Denys
+cursing and swearing and crying that he was robbed.
+
+"Did those hussies pass this way? who are they? where do they bide? They
+have ta'en my purse and fifteen golden pieces: raise the hue and cry!
+ah! traitresses! vipers! These inns are all guetapens."
+
+"There now," cried the landlord to Gerard.
+
+Gerard implored him to be calm and say how it had befallen.
+
+"First one went out on some pretence: then after a while the other went
+to fetch her back, and, neither returning, I clapped hand to purse and
+found it empty: the ungrateful creatures, I was letting them win it in a
+gallop: but loaded dice were not quick enough; they must claw it all in
+a lump."
+
+Gerard was for going at once to the alderman and setting the officers to
+find them.
+
+"Not I," said Denys. "I hate the law. No: as it came so let it go."
+
+Gerard would not give if up so.
+
+At a hint from the landlord he forced Denys along with him to the
+provost-marshal. That dignitary shook his head. "We have no clue to
+occasional thieves, that work honestly at their needles, till some gull
+comes and tempts them with an easy booty, and then they pluck him."
+
+"Come away," cried Denys furiously. "I knew what use a bourgeois would
+be to me at a pinch:" and he marched off in a rage.
+
+"They are clear of the town ere this," said Gerard.
+
+"Speak no more on't if you prize my friendship. I have five pieces with
+the bailiff, and ten I left with Marion, luckily: or these traitresses
+had feathered their nest with my last plume. What dost gape for so? Nay,
+I do ill to vent my choler on thee: I'll tell thee all. Art wiser than
+I. What saidst thou at the door? No matter. Well then I did offer
+marriage to that Marion."
+
+Gerard was dumbfoundered.
+
+"What? you offered her what?"
+
+"Marriage. Is that such a mighty strange thing to offer a wench?"
+
+"'Tis a strange thing to offer to a strange girl in passing."
+
+"Nay, I am not such a sot as you opine. I saw the corn in all that
+chaff. I knew I could not get her by fair means, so I was fain to try
+foul. 'Mademoiselle,' said I, 'marriage is not one of my habits, but
+struck by your qualities I make an exception: deign to bestow this hand
+on me.'"
+
+"And she bestowed it on thine ear."
+
+"Not so. On the contrary she--Art a disrespectful young monkey. Know
+that here, not being Holland or any other barbarous state, courtesy
+begets courtesy. Says she a colouring like a rose, 'Soldier, you are too
+late. He is not a patch on you for looks, but then--he has loved me a
+long time.'
+
+"'He? who?'
+
+"'T'other.'
+
+"'What other?'
+
+"'Why he that was not too late.' Oh, that is the way they all speak, the
+loves; the she-wolves. Their little minds go in leaps. Think you they
+marshal their words in order of battle? their tongues are in too great a
+hurry. Says she, 'I love him not; not to say love him: but he does me,
+and dearly: and for that reason I'd sooner die than cause him grief, I
+would.'"
+
+"Now I believe she did love him."
+
+"Who doubts that? Why she said so, round about, as they always say these
+things, and with 'nay' for 'ay'. 'I hope you will be happy together,'
+said I.
+
+"Well one thing led to another, and at last as she could not give me her
+hand, she gave me a piece of advice, and that was to leave part of my
+money with the young mistress. Then, when bad company had cleaned me
+out, I should have some to travel back with, said she. I said I would
+better her advice, and leave it with her. Her face got red. Says she,
+'Think what you do. Chambermaids have an ill name for honesty.' 'Oh, the
+devil is not so black as he is painted,' said I. 'I'll risk it;' and I
+left fifteen gold pieces with her."
+
+Gerard sighed. "I wish you may ever see them again. It is wondrous in
+what esteem you do hold this sex, to trust so to the first comer. For my
+part I know little about them; I never saw but one I could love as well
+as I love thee. But the ancients must surely know; and they held women
+cheap. 'Levius quid foemina,' said they, which is but la Jeanneton's
+tune in Latin, 'Le peu que sont les femmes.' Also do but see how the
+greybeards of our own day speak of them, being no longer blinded by
+desire: this alderman to wit."
+
+"Oh novice of novices," cried Denys, "not to have seen why that old fool
+rails so on the poor things! One day, out of the millions of women he
+blackens one did prefer some other man to him: for which solitary piece
+of bad taste, and ten to one 'twas good taste, he doth bespatter
+creation's fairer half, thereby proving what? le peu que sont les
+hommes."
+
+"I see women have a shrewd champion in thee," said Gerard, with a smile.
+But the next moment inquired gravely why he had not told him all this
+before.
+
+Denys grinned. "Had the girl said 'Ay,' why then I had told thee
+straight. But 'tis a rule with us soldiers never to publish our defeats:
+'tis much if after each check we claim not a victory."
+
+"Now that is true," said Gerard, "Young as I am, I have seen this: that
+after every great battle the generals on both sides go to the nearest
+church and sing each a Te Deum for the victory: methinks a Te Martem, or
+Te Bellonam, or Te Mercurium, Mercury being the god of lies, were more
+fitting."
+
+"Pas si bete," said Denys, approvingly. "Hast a good eye: canst see a
+steeple by daylight. So now tell me how thou hast fared in this town all
+day."
+
+"Come," said Gerard, "'tis well thou hast asked me: for else I had never
+told thee." He then related in full how he had been arrested, and by
+what a providential circumstance he had escaped long imprisonment or
+speedy conflagration.
+
+His narrative produced an effect he had little expected or desired. "I
+am a traitor," cried Denys. "I left thee in a strange place to fight
+thine own battles, while I shook the dice with those jades. Now take
+thou this sword and pass it through my body forthwith."
+
+"What for in Heaven's name?" inquired Gerard.
+
+"For an example," roared Denys. "For a warning to all false loons that
+profess friendship, and disgrace it."
+
+"Oh, very well," said Gerard. "Yes. Not a bad notion. Where will you
+have it?"
+
+"Here, through my heart; that is, where other men have a heart, but I
+none, or a satanic false one."
+
+Gerard made a motion to run him through, and flung his arms round his
+neck instead. "I know no way to thy heart but this, thou great silly
+thing."
+
+Denys uttered an exclamation, then hugged him warmly,--and, quite
+overcome by this sudden turn of youthful affection and native grace,
+gulped out in a broken voice "Railest on women--and art--like them--with
+thy pretty ways. Thy mother's milk is in thee still. Satan would love
+thee, or--le bon Dieu would kick him out of hell for shaming it. Give me
+thy hand! Give me thy hand! May" (a tremendous oath) "if I let thee out
+of my sight till Italy."
+
+And so the stanch friends were more than reconciled after their short
+tiff.
+
+The next day the thieves were tried. The pieces de conviction were
+reduced in number, to the great chagrin of the little clerk, by the
+interment of the bones. But there was still a pretty show. A thief's
+hand struck off flagrante delicto; a murdered woman's hair; the Abbot's
+axe, and other tools of crime. The skulls &c. were sworn to by the
+constables who had found them. Evidence was lax in that age and place.
+They all confessed but the landlord. And Manon was called to bring the
+crime home to him. Her evidence was conclusive. He made a vain attempt
+to shake her credibility by drawing from her that her own sweetheart had
+been one of the gang, and that she had held her tongue so long as he was
+alive. The public prosecutor came to the aid of his witness, and
+elicited that a knife had been held to her throat, and her own
+sweetheart had sworn with solemn oaths to kill her should she betray
+them, and that this terrible threat, and not the mere fear of death, had
+glued her lips.
+
+The other thieves were condemned to be hanged, and the landlord to be
+broken on the wheel. He uttered a piercing cry when his sentence was
+pronounced.
+
+As for poor Manon she became the subject of universal criticism. Nor did
+opinion any longer run dead in her favour; it divided into two broad
+currents. And, strange to relate, the majority of her own sex took her
+part, and the males were but equally divided; which hardly happens once
+in a hundred years. Perhaps some lady will explain the phenomenon. As
+for me, I am a little shy of explaining things I don't understand. It
+has become so common. Meantime, had she been a lover of notoriety, she
+would have been happy, for the town talked of nothing but her. The poor
+girl however had but one wish; to escape the crowd that followed her,
+and hide her head somewhere where she could cry over her "pendard,"
+whom all these proceedings brought vividly back to her affectionate
+remembrance. Before he was hanged he had threatened her life: but she
+was not one of your fastidious girls, who love their male divinities any
+the less for beating them, kicking them, or killing them, but rather the
+better, provided these attentions are interspersed with occasional
+caresses; so it would have been odd indeed had she taken offence at a
+mere threat of that sort. He had never threatened her with a rival. She
+sobbed single-mindedly.
+
+Meantime the inn was filled with thirsters for a sight of her, who
+feasted and drank, to pass away the time till she should deign to
+appear. When she had been sobbing some time, there was a tap at her
+door, and the landlord entered with a proposal. "Nay, weep not, good
+lass, your fortune it is made an you like. Say the word, and you are
+chambermaid of the 'White Hart.'"
+
+"Nay, nay," said Manon with a fresh burst of grief. "Never more will I
+be a servant in an inn. I'll go to my mother."
+
+The landlord consoled and coaxed her: and she became calmer, but none
+the less determined against his proposal.
+
+The landlord left her. But ere long he returned and made her another
+proposal. Would she be his wife, and landlady of the "White Hart?"
+
+"You do ill to mock me," said she sorrowfully.
+
+"Nay, sweetheart. I mock thee not. I am too old for sorry jests. Say you
+the word, and you are my partner for better for worse."
+
+She looked at him, and saw he was in earnest: on this she suddenly
+rained hard to the memory of "le pendard:" the tears came in a torrent
+being the last; and she gave her hand to the landlord of the "White
+Hart," and broke a gold crown with him in sign of plighted troth.
+
+"We will keep it dark till the house is quiet," said the landlord.
+
+"Ay," said she: "but meantime prithee give me linen to hem, or work to
+do: for the time hangs on me like lead."
+
+Her betrothed's eye brightened at this house-wifely request, and he
+brought her up two dozen flagons of various sizes to clean and polish.
+
+She gathered complacency as she reflected that by a strange turn of
+fortune all this bright pewter was to be hers.
+
+And this mighty furbishing up of pewter reminds me that justice requires
+me to do a stroke of the same work.
+
+Well then, the deposition, read out in the alderman's room as Manon's,
+was not so exact as such things ought to be. The alderman had condensed
+her evidence. Now there are in every great nation about three persons
+capable of condensing evidence without falsifying it: but this alderman
+was not one of that small band. In the first part of the deposition he
+left out as unimportant these words "my mother advised me to keep out of
+his way till his wrath should cool."
+
+Between the words "jealous of me" and "the reason" Manon had said "My
+master was aye at my heels: so I told my mistress, and said I would
+rather go than be cause of mischief." This the alderman suppressed as
+mere babel: whereas it was a worthy trait. He also let slip the word
+"afterwards" in the next sentence. Manon had said the reason they gave
+_afterwards_, _i. e._, "when I was no longer there to contradict them."
+And so on all through the deposition.
+
+Sometimes the deponent suffered as many a one does now-a-days, in the
+newspaper and other reports, by the mere suppression of the question.
+For instance this is what actually was said:--
+
+_The Alderman._ "Come now, should you have interfered if this soldier
+had had no beard?"
+
+_Manon._ "How can I tell what I _should_ have done?"
+
+Now this was merely a sensible answer to a monstrous question no
+magistrate had a right to put. But, under the condensing process, behold
+her saddled with a volunteer statement of a very damaging character.
+
+Finally she had said, "I am sorry I told, if I am to be hanged for it."
+
+This the old boy condensed ut supra, p. 136, anticipating as far as
+possible the tuneful Sinclair.[A]
+
+Whilst Manon and I were cleaning, she her coming, I my parting, pewter,
+the landlord went down stairs and falling in with our friends drew them
+aside into the bar.
+
+He then addressed Denys with considerable solemnity. "We are old
+acquaintances, and you want not for sagacity: now advise me in a strait.
+My custom is somewhat declining: this girl Manon is the talk of the
+town; see how full the inn is to-night. She doth refuse to be my
+chambermaid. I have half a mind to marry her. What think you? shall I
+say the word?"
+
+Denys in reply merely opened his eyes wide with amazement.
+
+The landlord turned to Gerard with a half-inquiring look.
+
+"Nay, sir," said Gerard. "I am too young to advise my seniors and
+betters."
+
+"No matter. Let us hear your thought."
+
+"Well, sir, it was said of a good wife by the ancients 'bene quae latuit,
+bene vixit,' that is, she is the best wife that is least talked of: but
+here 'male quae patuit' were as near the mark. Therefore, an you bear the
+lass good-will, why not club purses with Denys and me and convey her
+safe home with a dowry? Then mayhap some rustical person in her own
+place may be brought to wive her."
+
+"Why so many words?" said Denys. "This old fox is not the ass he affects
+to be."
+
+"Oh! that is your advice is it?" said the landlord testily. "Well then
+we shall soon know who is the fool, you or me, for I have spoken to her
+as it happens; and what is more she has said Ay, and she is polishing
+the flagons at this moment."
+
+"Oho!" said Denys drily, "'twas an ambuscade. Well, in that case, my
+advice is, run for the notary, tie the noose, and let us three drink the
+bride's health, till we see six sots a-tippling."
+
+"And shall. Ay, now you utter sense."
+
+In ten minutes a civil marriage was effected upstairs before a notary
+and his clerk and our two friends.
+
+In ten minutes more the white hind, dead sick of seclusion, had taken
+her place within the bar, and was serving out liquids, and bustling, and
+her color rising a little.
+
+In six minutes more she soundly rated a careless servant-girl for
+carrying a nipperkin of wine awry and spilling good liquor.
+
+During the evening she received across the bar eight offers of marriage,
+some of them from respectable burghers. Now the landlord and our two
+friends had in perfect innocence ensconced themselves behind a screen to
+drink at their ease the new couple's health. The above comedy was thrown
+in for their entertainment by bounteous fate. They heard the proposals
+made one after another, and uninventive Manon's invariable
+answer--"Serviteur; you are a day after the fair." The landlord chuckled
+and looked good-natured superiority at both his late advisers, with
+their traditional notions that men shun a woman "quae patuit," _i. e._,
+who has become the town talk.
+
+But Denys scarce noticed the spouse's triumph over him, he was so
+occupied with his own over Gerard. At each municipal tender of undying
+affection, he turned almost purple with the effort it cost him not to
+roar with glee; and driving his elbow into the deep-meditating and
+much-puzzled pupil of antiquity, whispered "le peu que sont les hommes."
+
+The next morning Gerard was eager to start, but Denys was under a vow to
+see the murderers of the golden-haired girl executed.
+
+Gerard respected his vow, but avoided his example.
+
+He went to bid the cure farewell instead, and sought and received his
+blessing. About noon the travellers got clear of the town. Just outside
+the south gate they passed the gallows; it had eight tenants: the
+skeleton of Manon's late wept, and now being fast forgotten, lover, and
+the bodies of those who had so nearly taken our travellers' lives. A
+hand was nailed to the beam. And hard by on a huge wheel was clawed the
+dead landlord, with every bone in his body broken to pieces.
+
+Gerard averted his head and hurried by. Denys lingered, and crowed over
+his dead foes. "Times are changed, my lads, since we two sat shaking in
+the cold awaiting you seven to come and cut our throats."
+
+"Fie, Denys! Death squares all reckonings. Prithee pass on without
+another word, if you prize my respect a groat."
+
+To this earnest remonstrance Denys yielded. He even said thoughtfully
+"you have been better brought up than I."
+
+About three in the afternoon they reached a little town with the people
+buzzing in knots. The wolves, starved by the cold, had entered, and
+eaten two grown-up persons over-night, in the main street: so some were
+blaming the eaten; "none but fools or knaves are about after nightfall;"
+others the law for not protecting the town, and others the corporation
+for not enforcing what laws there were.
+
+"Bah! this is nothing to us," said Denys, and was for resuming their
+march.
+
+"Ay, but 'tis," remonstrated Gerard.
+
+"What, are we the pair they ate?"
+
+"No, but we may be the next pair."
+
+"Ay, neighbour," said an ancient man, "'tis the town's fault for not
+obeying the ducal ordinance, which bids every shopkeeper light a lamp
+o'er his door at sunset, and burn it till sunrise."
+
+On this Denys asked him somewhat derisively, "What made him fancy rush
+dips would scare away empty wolves? Why mutton fat is all their joy."
+
+"'Tis not the fat, vain man, but the light. All ill things hate light;
+especially wolves and the imps that lurk, I ween, under their fur.
+Example; Paris city stands in a wood like, and the wolves do howl around
+it all night: yet of late years wolves come but little in the streets.
+For why, in that burgh the watchmen do thunder at each door that is
+dark, and make the weary wight rise and light. 'Tis my son tells me. He
+is a great voyager, my son Nicholas."
+
+In further explanation he assured them that previously to that ordinance
+no city had been worse infested with wolves than Paris; a troop had
+boldly assaulted the town in 1420, and in 1438 they had eaten fourteen
+persons in a single month between Montmartre and the gate St. Antoine,
+and that not a winter month even, but September: and as for the dead,
+which nightly lay in the streets slain in midnight brawls, or
+assassinated, the wolves had used to devour them, and to grub up the
+fresh graves in the churchyards and tear out the bodies.
+
+Here a thoughtful citizen suggested that probably the wolves had been
+bridled of late in Paris, not by candle-lights, but owing to the English
+having been driven out of the kingdom of France. "For those English be
+very wolves themselves for fierceness and greediness." What marvel then
+that under their rule our neighbours of France should be wolf-eaten?
+This logic was too suited to the time and place, not to be received with
+acclamation. But the old man stood his ground. "I grant ye those
+islanders are wolves: but two-legged ones, and little apt to favour
+their four-footed cousins. One greedy thing loveth it another? I trow
+not. By the same token, and this too I have from my boy Nicole, Sir
+Wolf dare not show his nose in London city; though 'tis smaller than
+Paris, and thick woods hard by the north wall, and therein great store
+of deer, and wild boars rife as flies at midsummer."
+
+[Illustration: THEY UNBONNETED AND LOUTED LOW, AND SHE CURTSIED]
+
+"Sir," said Gerard, "you seem conversant with wild beasts, prithee
+advise my comrade here and me: we would not waste time on the road, and
+if we may go forward to the next town with reasonable safety."
+
+"Young man, I trow 'twere an idle risk. It lacks but an hour of dusk,
+and you must pass nigh a wood, where lurk some thousands of these
+half-starved vermin, rank cowards single; but in great bands bold as
+lions. Wherefore I rede you sojourn here the night; and journey on
+betimes. By the dawn the vermin will be tired out with roaring and
+rampaging; and mayhap will have filled their lank bellies with flesh of
+my good neighbours here, the unteachable fools."
+
+Gerard hoped not; and asked could he recommend them to a good inn?
+
+"Humph? there is the 'Tete d'Or.' My granddaughter keeps it. She is a
+mijauree, but not so knavish as most hotel-keepers, and her house
+indifferent clean."
+
+"Hey, for the 'Tete d'Or,'" struck in Denys, decided by his ineradicable
+foible.
+
+On the way to it, Gerard inquired of his companion what "a mijauree"
+was?
+
+Denys laughed at his ignorance. "Not know what a mijauree is? why all
+the world knows that. It is neither more nor less than a mijauree."
+
+As they entered the "Tete d'Or" they met a young lady richly dressed,
+with the velvet chaperon on her head, which was confined by law to the
+nobility. They unbonneted and louted low, and she curtsied, but fixed
+her eye on vacancy the while, which had a curious rather than a genial
+effect. However nobility was not so unassuming in those days as it is
+now. So they were little surprised. But the next minute supper was
+served, and lo! in came this princess and carved the goose.
+
+"Holy St. Bavon," cried Gerard. "'Twas the landlady all the while."
+
+A young woman, cursed with nice white teeth and lovely hands: for
+these beauties being misallied to homely features had turned her head.
+She was a feeble carver, carving not for the sake of others but herself,
+_i. e._, to display her hands. When not carving she was eternally either
+taking a pin out of her head or her body, or else putting a pin into her
+head or her body. To display her teeth, she laughed indifferently at gay
+or grave; and from ear to ear. And she "sat at ease" with her mouth
+ajar.
+
+Now there is an animal in creation of no great general merit; but it has
+the eye of a hawk for affectation. It is called "a boy." And Gerard was
+but a boy still in some things; swift to see, and to loathe,
+affectation. So Denys sat casting sheep's eyes, and Gerard, daggers, at
+one comedian.
+
+Presently, in the midst of her minauderies, she gave a loud shriek and
+bounded out of her chair like hare from form, and ran backwards out of
+the room uttering little screams, and holding her farthingale tight down
+to her ankles with both hands. And, as she scuttled out of the door, a
+mouse scuttled back to the wainscot in a state of equal, and perhaps
+more reasonable, terror. The guests, who had risen in anxiety at the
+principal yell, now stood irresolute awhile, then sat down laughing. The
+tender Denys, to whom a woman's cowardice, being a sexual trait, seemed
+a lovely and pleasant thing, said he would go comfort her and bring her
+back.
+
+"Nay! nay! nay! for pity's sake let her bide," cried Gerard earnestly.
+"Oh blessed mouse! sure some saint sent thee to our aid."
+
+Now at his right hand sat a sturdy middle-aged burgher, whose conduct up
+to date had been cynical. He had never budged, nor even rested his
+knife, at all this fracas. He now turned on Gerard and inquired
+haughtily whether he really thought that "grimaciere" was afraid of a
+mouse.
+
+"Ay. She screamed hearty."
+
+"Where is the coquette that cannot scream to the life? These she
+tavern-keepers do still ape the nobles. Some princess or duchess hath
+lain here a night, that was honestly afeared of a mouse, having been
+brought up to it. And this ape hath seen her, and said, 'I will start at
+a mouse, and make a coil.' She has no more right to start at a mouse,
+than to wear that fur on her bosom, and that velvet on her monkey's
+head. I am of the town, young man, and have known the mijauree all her
+life, and I mind when she was no more afeard of a mouse than she is of a
+man." He added that she was fast emptying the inn with these
+"singeries." "All the world is so sick of her hands, that her very
+kinsfolk will not venture themselves anigh them." He concluded with
+something like a sigh, "The 'Tete d'Or' was a thriving hostelry under my
+old chum her good father; but she is digging its grave tooth and nail."
+
+"Tooth and nail? good! a right merry conceit and a true," said Gerard.
+But the right merry conceit was an inadvertence as pure as snow, and the
+stout burgher went to his grave and never knew what he had done: for
+just then attention was attracted by Denys returning pompously. He
+inspected the apartment minutely, and with a high official air: he also
+looked solemnly under the table; and during the whole inquisition a
+white hand was placed conspicuously on the edge of the open door, and a
+tremulous voice inquired behind it whether the horrid thing was quite
+gone.
+
+"The enemy has retreated, bag and baggage," said Denys: and handed in
+the trembling fair, who, sitting down, apologized to her guests for her
+foolish fears, with so much earnestness, grace, and seeming
+self-contempt, that, but for a sour grin on his neighbour's face, Gerard
+would have been taken in as all the other strangers were. Dinner ended,
+the young landlady begged an Augustine friar at her right hand to say
+grace. He delivered a longish one. The moment he began, she clapped her
+white hands piously together, and held them up joined for mortals to
+admire; 'tis an excellent pose for taper white fingers; and cast her
+eyes upward towards heaven, and felt as thankful to it as a magpie does
+while cutting off with your thimble.
+
+After supper the two friends went to the street-door and eyed the
+market-place. The mistress joined them, and pointed out the town hall,
+the borough jail, St. Catherine's church, &c. This was courteous, to say
+the least. But the true cause soon revealed itself; the fair hand was
+poked right under their eyes every time an object was indicated; and
+Gerard eyed it like a basilisk, and longed for a bunch of nettles. The
+sun set, and the travellers, few in number, drew round the great roaring
+fire, and, omitting to go on the spit, were frozen behind though roasted
+in front. For if the German stoves were oppressively hot, the French
+salles a manger were bitterly cold, and above all stormy. In Germany men
+sat bareheaded round the stove, and took off their upper clothes, but in
+Burgundy they kept on their hats, and put on their warmest furs to sit
+round the great open chimney-places, at which the external air rushed
+furiously from door and ill-fitting window. However it seems their
+mediaeval backs were broad enough to bear it: for they made themselves
+not only comfortable but merry, and broke harmless jests over each other
+in turn. For instance Denys's new shoes, though not in direct
+communication, had this day exploded with twin-like sympathy and
+unanimity. "Where do you buy your shoon, soldier?" asked one.
+
+Denys looked askant at Gerard, and not liking the theme, shook it off.
+"I gather 'em off the trees by the road-side," said he surlily.
+
+"Then you gathered these too ripe," said the hostess, who was only a
+fool externally.
+
+"Ay, rotten ripe," observed another, inspecting them.
+
+Gerard said nothing, but pointed the circular satire by pantomime. He
+slily put out both his feet, one after another, under Denys's eye, with
+their German shoes, on which a hundred leagues of travel had produced no
+effect. They seemed hewn out of a rock.
+
+At this "I'll twist the smooth varlet's neck that sold me mine," shouted
+Denys, in huge wrath, and confirmed the threat with singular oaths
+peculiar to the mediaeval military. The landlady put her fingers in her
+ears, thereby exhibiting the hand in a fresh attitude. "Tell me when he
+has done his orisons, somebody," said she mincingly. And after that they
+fell to telling stories.
+
+Gerard, when his turn came, told the adventure of Denys and Gerard at
+the inn in Domfront, and so well, that the hearers were rapt into sweet
+oblivion of the very existence of mijauree and hands. But this made her
+very uneasy, and she had recourse to her grand coup. This misdirected
+genius had for a twelvemonth past practised yawning, and could do it now
+at any moment so naturally as to set all creation gaping, could all
+creation have seen her. By this means she got in all her charms. For
+first she showed her teeth, then, out of good breeding, you know, closed
+her mouth with three taper fingers. So the moment Gerard's story got too
+interesting and absorbing, she turned to and made yawns, and "croix sur
+la bouche."
+
+This was all very fine: but Gerard was an artist, and artists are
+chilled by gaping auditors. He bore up against the yawns a long time:
+but finding they came from a bottomless reservoir, lost both heart and
+temper, and suddenly rising in mid narrative, said, "But I weary our
+hostess, and I am tired myself: so good night!" whipped a candle off the
+dresser, whispered Denys, "I cannot stand her," and marched to bed in a
+moment.
+
+The mijauree coloured and bit her lips. She had not intended her by-play
+for Gerard's eye: and she saw in a moment she had been rude, and silly,
+and publicly rebuked. She sat with cheek on fire, and a little natural
+water in her eyes, and looked ten times comelier and more womanly, and
+interesting than she had done all day. The desertion of the best
+narrator broke up the party, and the unassuming Denys approached the
+meditating mijauree, and invited her in the most flattering terms, to
+gamble with him. She started from her reverie, looked him down into the
+earth's centre with chilling dignity, and consented, for she remembered
+all in a moment what a show of hands gambling admitted.
+
+The soldier and the mijauree rattled the dice. In which sport she was so
+taken up with her hands, that she forgot to cheat, and Denys won "ecu au
+soleil" of her. She fumbled slowly with her purse, partly because her
+sex do not burn to pay debts of honour: partly to admire the play of her
+little knuckles peeping between their soft white cushions. Denys
+proposed a compromise. "Three silver franks I win of you, fair hostess.
+Give me now three kisses of this white hand, and we'll e'en cry quits."
+
+"You are malapert," said the lady with a toss of her head; "besides they
+are so dirty. See! they are like ink:" and, to convince him, she put
+them out to him and turned them up and down. They were no dirtier than
+cream fresh from the cow. And she knew it: she was eternally washing and
+scenting them.
+
+Denys read the objection like the observant warrior he was, seized them
+and mumbled them.
+
+Finding him so appreciative of her charm, she said timidly, "Will you do
+me a kindness, good soldier?"
+
+"A thousand, fair hostess an you will."
+
+"Nay, I ask but one. 'Tis to tell thy comrade I was right sorry to lose
+his most thrilling story, and I hope he will tell me the rest to-morrow
+morning. Meantime I shall not sleep for thinking on't. Wilt tell him
+that--to pleasure me?"
+
+"Ay, I'll tell the young savage. But he is not worthy of your
+condescension, sweet hostess. He would rather be aside a man than a
+woman any day."
+
+"So would--ahem. He is right: the young women of the day are not worthy
+of _him_, 'un tas des mijaurees.' He has a good, honest, and right
+comely face. Any way I would not guest of mine should think me
+unmannerly, not for all the world. Wilt keep faith with me and tell
+him?"
+
+"On this fair hand I swear it: and thus I seal the pledge."
+
+"There; no need to melt the wax, though. Now go to bed. And tell him ere
+you sleep."
+
+The perverse toad (I thank thee, Marion, for teaching me that word) was
+inclined to bestow her slight affections upon Gerard. Not that she was
+inflammable: far less so than many that passed for prudes in the town.
+But Gerard possessed a triple attraction that has ensnared coquettes in
+all ages. 1. He was very handsome. 2. He did not admire her the least.
+3. He had given her a good slap in the face.
+
+Denys woke Gerard and gave the message. Gerard was not enchanted. "Dost
+wake a tired man to tell him that? Am I to be pestered with 'mijaurees'
+by night as well as day?"
+
+"But I tell thee, novice, thou hast conquered her: trust to my
+experience: her voice sank to melodious whispers: and the cunning jade
+did in a manner bribe me to carry thee her challenge to Love's lists:
+for so I read her message."
+
+Denys then, assuming the senior and the man of the world, told Gerard
+the time was come to show him how a soldier understood friendship and
+camaraderie. Italy was now out of the question. Fate had provided
+better; and the blind jade Fortune had smiled on merit for once. The
+"Head of Gold" had been a prosperous inn, would be again with a man at
+_its_ head. A good general laid far-sighted plans; but was always ready
+to abandon them, should some brilliant advantage offer; and to reap the
+full harvest of the unforeseen: 'twas chiefly by this trait great
+leaders defeated little ones; for these latter could do nothing not cut
+and dried beforehand.
+
+"Sorry friendship, that would marry me to a mijauree," interposed Gerard
+yawning.
+
+"Comrade, be reasonable; 'tis not the friskiest sheep that falls down
+the cliff. All creatures must have their flings soon, or late; and why
+not a woman? What more frivolous than a kitten? what graver than a
+cat?"
+
+"Hast a good eye for nature, Denys," said Gerard, "that I proclaim."
+
+"A better for thine interest, boy. Trust then to me; these little doves
+they are my study day and night; happy the man whose wife taketh her
+fling before wedlock; and trippeth up the altar-steps instead of down
+'em. Marriage it always changeth them for better or else for worse. Why,
+Gerard, she is honest when all is done: and he is no man, nor half a
+man, that cannot mould any honest lass like a bit of warm wax, and she
+aye aside him at bed and board. I tell thee in one month thou wilt make
+of this coquette the matron the most sober in the town, and of all its
+wives the one most docile, and submissive. Why she is half tamed
+already. Nine in ten meek and mild ones had gently hated thee like
+poison all their lives, for wounding of their hidden pride. But she for
+an affront proffers affection. By Joshua his bugle a generous lass, and
+void of petty malice. When thou wast gone she sat a thinking and spoke
+not. A sure sign of love in one of her sex: for of all things else they
+speak ere they think. Also her voice did sink exceedingly low in
+discoursing of thee, and murmured sweetly; another infallible sign. The
+bolt hath struck and wrankles in her; oh be joyful! Art silent? I see;
+'tis settled. I shall go alone to Remiremont, alone and sad. But,
+pillage and poleaxes! what care I for that, since my dear comrade will
+stay here, landlord of the 'Tete d'Or,' and safe from all storms of
+life? Wilt think of me, Gerard, now and then by thy warm fire, of me
+camped on some windy heath, or lying in wet trenches or wounded on the
+field and far from comfort? Nay" (and this he said in a manner truly
+noble), "not comfortless. For cold, or wet, or bleeding, 'twill still
+warm my heart to lie on my back and think that I have placed my dear
+friend, and comrade true, in the 'Tete d'Or,' far from a soldier's
+ills."
+
+"I let you run on, dear Denys," said Gerard softly, "because at each
+word you show me the treasure of a good heart. But now bethink thee, my
+troth is plighted there where my heart it clingeth. You so leal, would
+you make me disloyal?"
+
+"Perdition seize me, but I forgot that," said Denys.
+
+"No more then, but hie thee to bed, good Denys. Next to Margaret I love
+thee best on earth, and value thy 'coeur d'or' far more than a dozen
+of these 'Tetes d'Or.' So prithee call me at the first blush of
+rosy-fingered morn, and let's away ere the woman with the hands be
+stirring."
+
+They rose with the dawn, and broke their fast by the kitchen fire.
+
+Denys inquired of the girl whether the mistress was about.
+
+"Nay: but she hath risen from her bed: by the same token I am carrying
+her this to clean her withal;" and she filled a mug with boiling water
+and took it upstairs.
+
+"Behold," said Gerard, "the very elements must be warmed to suit her
+skin; what had the saints said, which still chose the coldest pool?
+Away, ere she come down and catch us."
+
+They paid the score, and left the "Tete d'Or," while its mistress was
+washing her hands.
+
+FOOTNOTE:
+
+[A] Sinclair was a singer; and complained to the manager that in the
+operatic play of Rob Roy he had a multitude of mere words to utter
+between the songs. 'Cut, my boy, cut!' said the manager. On this vox et
+p. n. cut Scott, and doubtless many of his cuts would not have
+discredited the condensers of evidence. But only one of his
+master-strokes has reached posterity. His melodious organs had been
+taxed with this sentence: "Rashleigh is my cousin; but, for what reason
+I cannot divine, he is my bitterest enemy." This he condensed and
+delivered thus:--"Rashleigh is my cousin, but for what reason I cannot
+divine."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXVIII
+
+
+OUTSIDE the town they found the snow fresh trampled by innumerable
+wolves every foot of the road.
+
+"We did well to take the old man's advice Denys."
+
+"Ay did we. For now I think on't I did hear them last night a-scurrying
+under our window and howling and whining for man's flesh in yon
+market-place. But no fat burgher did pity the poor vagabones, and drop
+out o' window."
+
+Gerard smiled, but with an air of abstraction.
+
+And they plodded on in silence.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+"What dost meditate so profoundly?"
+
+"Thy goodness."
+
+Denys was anything but pleased at this answer. Amongst his oddities you
+may have observed that he could stand a great deal of real impertinence,
+he was so good-humoured. But would fire up now and then where not even
+the shadow of a ground for anger existed.
+
+"A civil question merits a civil reply," said he very drily.
+
+"Alas, I meant no other," said Gerard.
+
+"Then why pretend you were thinking of my goodness, when you know I have
+no goodness under my skin."
+
+"Had another said this, I had answered 'thou liest.' But to thee I say:
+'hast no eye for men's qualities, but only for women's.' And, once more,
+I do defy thy unreasonable choler, and say I was thinking of thy
+goodness of overnight. Wouldst have wedded me to the 'Tete d'Or,' or
+rather to the 'tete de veau doree,' and left thyself solitary."
+
+"Oh, are ye there, lad?" said Denys recovering his good-humour in a
+moment. "Well, but to speak sooth, I meant that not for goodness; but
+for friendship and true fellowship, no more. And let me tell you, my
+young master, my conscience it pricketh me even now for letting you turn
+your back thus on fortune and peaceful days. A truer friend than I had
+ta'en and somewhat hamstrung thee. Then hadst thou been fain to lie
+smarting at the 'Tete d'Or' a month or so: yon skittish lass had nursed
+thee tenderly, and all had been well. Blade I had in hand to do't, but,
+remembering how thou hatest pain though it be but a scratch, my craven
+heart it failed me at the pinch." And Denys wore a look of humble
+apology for his lack of virtuous resolution when the path of duty lay so
+clear.
+
+Gerard raised his eyebrows with astonishment at this monstrous but
+thoroughly characteristic revelation; however this new and delicate
+point of friendship was never discussed; viz., whether one ought in all
+love to cut the tendon Achilles of one's friend. For an incident
+interposed.
+
+"Here cometh one in our rear a-riding on his neighbour's mule," shouted
+Denys.
+
+Gerard turned round. "And how know ye 'tis not his own, pray?"
+
+"Oh blind! Because he rides it with no discretion."
+
+And in truth the man came galloping like a fury. But what astonished the
+friends most was that on reaching them the rustic rider's eyes opened
+saucer-like, and he drew the rein so suddenly and powerfully, that the
+mule stuck out her fore legs, and went sliding between the pedestrians
+like a four-legged table on casters.
+
+"I trow ye are from the 'Tete d'Or.'" They assented. "Which of ye is the
+younger?"
+
+"He that was born the later," said Denys winking at his companion.
+
+"Gramercy for the news."
+
+"Come, divine then!"
+
+"And shall. Thy beard is ripe; thy fellow's is green; he shall be the
+younger; here, youngster." And he held him out a paper packet. "Ye left
+this at the 'Tete d'Or': and our mistress sends it ye."
+
+"Nay, good fellow, methinks I left nought." And Gerard felt his pouch,
+etc.
+
+"Would ye make our burgess a liar," said the rustic reproachfully: "and
+shall I have no pourboire?" (still more reproachfully); "and came ventre
+a terre."
+
+"Nay, thou shalt have pourboire," and he gave him a small coin.
+
+"A la bonne heure," cried the clown, and his feature beamed with
+disproportionate joy. "The Virgin go with ye; come up, Jenny!" and back
+he went "stomach to earth," as his nation is pleased to call it.
+
+Gerard undid the packet: it was about six inches square, and inside it
+he found another packet, which contained a packet, and so on. At the
+fourth he hurled the whole thing into the snow. Denys took it out and
+rebuked his petulance. He excused himself on the ground of hating
+affectation.
+
+Denys attested "'The great toe of the little daughter of Herodias' there
+was no affectation here, but only woman's good wit. Doubtless the wraps
+contained something which out of delicacy, or her sex's lovely cunning,
+she would not her hind should see her bestow on a young man; thy garter,
+to wit."
+
+"I wear none."
+
+"Her own then; or a lock of her hair. What is this? A piece of raw silk
+fresh from the worm. Well of all the love tokens!"
+
+"Now who but thee ever dreamed that she is so naught as send me love
+tokens? I saw no harm in her--barring her hands."
+
+"Stay, here is something hard lurking in this soft nest. Come forth I
+say, little nestling! Saints and pikestaves! look at this!"
+
+It was a gold ring, with a great amethyst glowing and sparkling, full
+coloured, but pure as crystal.
+
+"How lovely!" said Gerard, innocently.
+
+"And here is something writ: read it thou! I read not so glib as some;
+when I know not the matter beforehand."
+
+Gerard took the paper. "'Tis a posy: and fairly enough writ." He read
+the lines, blushing like a girl. They were very naive, and may be thus
+Englished:--
+
+    "Youth, with thee my heart is fledde,
+    Come back to the 'golden Hedde!'
+    Wilt not? yet this token keepe
+    Of her wh[)o] d[=oe]th thy goeing weepe.
+    Gyf the world prove harsh and cold,
+    Come back to 'the Hedde of gold.'"
+
+"The little dove!" purred Denys.
+
+"The great owl! To go and risk her good name thus. However, thank Heaven
+she has played this prank with an honest lad that will ne'er expose her
+folly. But oh, the perverseness! Could she not bestow her nauseousness
+on thee?" Denys sighed and shrugged. "On thee that art as ripe for folly
+as herself?"
+
+Denys confessed that his young friend had harped his very thought. 'Twas
+passing strange to him that a damsel with eyes in her head should pass
+by a man, and bestow her affections on a boy. Still he could not but
+recognize in this the bounty of Nature. Boys were human beings after
+all, and, but for this occasional caprice of women, their lot would be
+too terrible; they would be out of the sun altogether, blighted, and
+never come to anything: since only the fair could make a man out of such
+unpromising materials as a boy. Gerard interrupted this flattering
+discourse to beg the warrior-philosopher's acceptance of the lady's
+ring. He refused it flatly, and insisted on Gerard going back to the
+"Tete d'Or" at once, ring and all, like a man, and not letting a poor
+girl hold out her arms to him in vain.
+
+"Her hands you mean."
+
+"Her hand, with the 'Tete d'Or' in it."
+
+Failing in this he was for putting the ring on his friend's finger.
+Gerard declined. "I wear a ring already."
+
+"What that sorry gimcrack? Why 'tis pewter, or tin at best: and this
+virgin gold, forbye the jewel."
+
+"Ay, but 'twas Margaret gave me this one: and I value it above rubies.
+I'll neither part with it nor give it a rival:" and he kissed the base
+metal, and bade it fear nought.
+
+"I see the owl hath sent her ring to a goose," said Denys, sorrowfully.
+However he prevailed on Gerard to fasten it inside his bonnet. To this
+indeed the lad consented very readily. For sovereign qualities were
+universally ascribed to certain jewels; and the amethyst ranked high
+among these precious talismans.
+
+When this was disposed of, Gerard earnestly requested his friend to let
+the matter drop, since speaking of the other sex to him made him pine so
+for Margaret, and almost unmanned him with the thought that each step
+was taking him farther from her. "I am no general lover, Denys. There is
+room in my heart for one sweetheart, and for one friend. I am far from
+my dear mistress: and my friend, a few leagues more and I must lose him
+too. Oh let me drink thy friendship pure while I may, and not dilute
+with any of these stupid females."
+
+"And shalt, honey-pot, and shalt," said Denys, kindly. "But as to my
+leaving thee at Remiremont, reckon thou not on that! For" (three
+consecutive oaths) "if I do. Nay, I shall propose to thee to stay
+forty-eight hours there while I kiss my mother and sisters, and the
+females generally, and on go you and I together to the sea."
+
+"Denys! Denys!"
+
+"Denys not me! 'Tis settled. Gainsay me not! or I'll go with thee to
+Rome. Why not? his holiness the Pope hath ever some little merry
+pleasant war toward, and a Burgundian soldier is still welcome in his
+ranks."
+
+On this Gerard opened his heart. "Denys, ere I fell in with thee, I used
+often to halt on the road, unable to go farther: my puny heart so pulled
+me back: and then, after a short prayer to the saints for aid, would I
+rise and drag my most unwilling body onward. But since I joined company
+with thee, great is my courage. I have found the saying of the ancients
+true, that better is a bright comrade on the weary road than a horse
+litter; and, dear brother, when I do think of what we have done and
+suffered together! Savedst my life from the bear, and from yet more
+savage thieves; and even poor I did make shift to draw thee out of
+Rhine, and somehow loved thee double from that hour. How many ties
+tender and strong between us! Had I my will, I'd never, never, never,
+never, part with my Denys on this side the grave. Well-a-day! God his
+will be done."
+
+"No, my will shall be done this time," shouted Denys. "Le bon Dieu has
+bigger fish to fry than you or me. I'll go with thee to Rome. There is
+my hand on it."
+
+"Think what you say! 'Tis impossible. 'Tis too selfish of me."
+
+"I tell thee, 'tis settled. No power can change me. At Remiremont I
+borrow ten pieces of my uncle, and on we go: 'tis fixed; irrevocable as
+fate."
+
+They shook hands over it. Then Gerard said nothing, for his heart was
+too full: but he ran twice round his companion as he walked, then danced
+backwards in front of him, and finally took his hand, and so on they
+went hand-in-hand like sweethearts, till a company of mounted soldiers,
+about fifty in number, rose to sight on the brow of a hill.
+
+"See the banner of Burgundy," said Denys, joyfully. "I shall look out
+for a comrade among these."
+
+"How gorgeous is the standard in the sun," said Gerard; "and how brave
+are the leaders with velvet and feathers, and steel breastplates like
+glassy mirrors!"
+
+When they came near enough to distinguish faces, Denys uttered an
+exclamation: "Why 'tis the Bastard of Burgundy, as I live. Nay, then;
+there is fighting a foot since he is out; a gallant leader, Gerard,
+rates his life no higher than a private soldier's, and a soldier's no
+higher than a tomtit's; and that is the captain for me."
+
+"And see Denys, the very mules with their great brass frontlets and
+trappings seem proud to carry them; no wonder men itch to be soldiers;"
+and in the midst of this innocent admiration the troop came up with
+them.
+
+"Halt," cried a stentorian voice. The troop halted. The Bastard of
+Burgundy bent his brow gloomily on Denys: "How now, arbalestrier, how
+comes it thy face is turned southward, when every good hand and heart is
+hurrying northward?"
+
+Denys replied respectfully that he was going on leave, after some years
+of service, to see his kindred at Remiremont.
+
+"Good. But this not the time for't, the duchy is disturbed. Ho! bring
+that dead soldier's mule to the front; and thou mount her and forward
+with us to Flanders."
+
+"So please your highness," said Denys, firmly, "that may not be. My home
+is close at hand. I have not seen it these three years and, above all, I
+have this poor youth in charge; whom I may not, cannot leave, till I see
+him shipped for Rome."
+
+"Dost bandy words with me?" said the chief, with amazement turning fast
+to wrath. "Art weary o' thy life? Let go the youth's hand, and into the
+saddle without more idle words."
+
+Denys made no reply: but he held Gerard's hand the tighter, and looked
+defiance.
+
+At this the bastard roared, "Jarnac, dismount six of thy archers, and
+shoot me this whitelivered cur dead where he stands--for an example."
+
+The young Count de Jarnac, second in command, gave the order, and the
+men dismounted to execute it.
+
+"Strip him naked," said the bastard, in the cold tone of military
+business, "and put his arms and accoutrements on the spare mule. We'll
+may be find some clown worthier to wear them."
+
+Denys groaned aloud, "Am I to be shamed as well as slain?"
+
+"Oh, nay! nay! nay!" cried Gerard, awaking from the stupor into which
+this thunderbolt of tyranny had thrown him. "He shall go with you on the
+instant. I'd liever part with him for ever than see a hair of his dear
+head harmed. Oh sir, oh, my lord, give a poor boy but a minute to bid
+his only friend farewell! he will go with you. I swear he shall go with
+you."
+
+The stern leader nodded a cold contemptuous assent. "Thou, Jarnac, stay
+with them, and bring him on alive or dead.--Forward!" And he resumed his
+march, followed by all the band but the young count and six archers, one
+of whom held the spare mule.
+
+Denys and Gerard gazed at one another haggardly. Oh! what a look!
+
+And after this mute interchange of anguish, they spoke hurriedly, for
+the moments were flying by.
+
+"Thou goest to Holland: thou knowest where she bides. Tell her all. She
+will be kind to thee for my sake."
+
+"Oh, sorry tale that I shall carry her! For God's sake go back to the
+'Tete d'Or.' I am mad."
+
+"Hush! Let me think: have I nought to say to thee, Denys? my head! my
+head!"
+
+"Ah! I have it. Make for the Rhine, Gerard! Strasbourg. 'Tis but a step.
+And down the current to Rotterdam. Margaret is there: I go thither. I'll
+tell her thou art coming. We shall all be together."
+
+"My lads, haste ye, or you will get us into trouble," said the count
+firmly, but not harshly now.
+
+"Oh, sir, one moment! one little moment!" panted Gerard.
+
+"Cursed be the land I was born in; cursed be the race of man; and he
+that made them what they are," screamed Denys.
+
+"Hush! Denys, hush! blaspheme not! oh, God, forgive him, he wots not
+what he says. Be patient, Denys,--be patient! though we meet no more on
+earth, let us meet in a better world, where no blasphemer may enter. To
+my heart, lost friend; for what are words now?" He held out his arms,
+and they locked one another in a close embrace. They kissed one another
+again and again, speechless, and the tears rained down their cheeks. And
+the Count Jarnac looked on amazed, but the rougher soldiers, to whom
+comrade was a sacred name, looked on with some pity in their hard faces.
+Then at a signal from Jarnac, with kind force and words of rude
+consolation, they almost lifted Denys on to the mule; and putting him in
+the middle of them, spurred after their leader. And Gerard ran wildly
+after (for the lane turned), to see the very last of him; and the last
+glimpse he caught, Denys was rocking to and fro on his mule, and tearing
+his hair out. But at this sight something rose in Gerard's throat so
+high, so high, he could run no more nor breathe, but gasped, and leaned
+against the snow-clad hedge, seizing it, and choking piteously.
+
+[Illustration: THE CONSTANT LOVER LAY SILENT ON THE SNOW]
+
+The thorns ran into his hand.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+After a bitter struggle he got his breath again: and now began to see
+his own misfortune. Yet not all at once to realize it, so sudden and
+numbing was the stroke. He staggered on, but scarce feeling or caring
+whither he was going: and every now and then he stopped, and his arms
+fell and his head sank on his chest: and he stood motionless: then he
+said to himself, "Can this thing be? This must be a dream. 'Tis scarce
+five minutes since we were so happy, walking handed, faring to Rome
+together, and we admired them and their gay banners and helmets--oh
+hearts of hell!"
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+All nature seemed to stare now as lonely as himself. Not a creature in
+sight. No colour but white. He, the ghost of his former self, wandered
+alone among the ghosts of trees, and fields, and hedges. Desolate!
+desolate! desolate! All was desolate.
+
+He knelt and gathered a little snow. "Nay, I dream not; for this is
+snow: cold as the world's heart. It is bloody, too: what may that mean?
+Fool! 'tis from thy hand. I mind not the wound. Ay, I see: thorns.
+Welcome! kindly foes: I felt ye not, ye ran not into my heart. Ye are
+not cruel like men."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+He had risen, and was dragging his leaden limbs along, when he heard
+horses' feet and gay voices behind him. He turned with a joyful but wild
+hope that the soldiers had relented and were bringing Denys back. But
+no: it was a gay cavalcade. A gentleman of rank and his favourites in
+velvet and furs and feathers; and four or five armed retainers in buff
+jerkins.
+
+They swept gaily by.
+
+Gerard never looked at them after they were gone by: certain gay shadows
+had come and passed: that was all. He was like one in a dream. But he
+was rudely wakened: suddenly a voice in front of him cried harshly,
+"Stand and deliver!" and there were three of the gentleman's servants in
+front of him. They had ridden back to rob him.
+
+"How, ye false knaves," said he quite calmly: "would ye shame your noble
+master? He will hang ye to the nearest tree:" and with these words he
+drew his sword doggedly, and set his back to the hedge.
+
+One of the men instantly levelled his petronel at him.
+
+But another, less sanguinary, interposed. "Be not so hasty! And be not
+thou so mad! Look yonder!"
+
+Gerard looked, and scarce a hundred yards off the nobleman and his
+friends had halted, and sat on their horses, looking at the lawless act,
+too proud to do their own dirty work, but not too proud to reap the
+fruit, and watch lest their agents should rob them of another man's
+money.
+
+The milder servant then, a good-natured fellow, showed Gerard resistance
+was vain; reminded him common thieves often took the life as well as the
+purse, and assured him it cost a mint to be a gentleman; his master had
+lost money at play overnight, and was going to visit his leman, and so
+must take money where he saw it.
+
+"Therefore, good youth, consider that we rob not for ourselves, and
+deliver us that fat purse at thy girdle without more ado, nor put us to
+the pain of slitting thy throat and taking it all the same."
+
+"This knave is right," said Gerard calmly, aloud but to himself. "I
+ought not to fling away my life; Margaret would be so sorry. Take then
+the poor man's purse to the rich man's pouch; and with it this; tell
+him, I pray the Holy Trinity each coin in it may burn his hand, and
+freeze his heart, and blast his soul for ever. Begone and leave me to my
+sorrow!" He flung them the purse.
+
+They rode away muttering; for his words pricked them a little; a very
+little: and he staggered on, penniless now as well as friendless, till
+he came to the edge of a wood. Then, though his heart could hardly feel
+this second blow, his judgment did; and he began to ask himself what was
+the use going further? He sat down on the hard road, and ran his nails
+into his hair and tried to think for the best; a task all the more
+difficult that a strange drowsiness was stealing over him. Rome he could
+never reach without money. Denys had said "go to Strasbourg, and down
+the Rhine home." He would obey Denys. But how get to Strasbourg without
+money?
+
+Then suddenly seemed to ring in his ears--
+
+    "Gyf the world prove harsh and cold,
+    Come back to the hedde of gold."
+
+"And if I do I must go as her servant; I who am Margaret's. I am
+a-weary, a-weary. I will sleep, and dream all is as it was. Ah me, how
+happy were we an hour agone, we little knew how happy. There is a house:
+the owner well to do. What if I told him my wrong, and prayed his aid to
+retrieve my purse, and so to Rhine? Fool! is he not a man, like the
+rest? He would scorn me and trample me lower. Denys cursed the race of
+men. That will I never: but oh, I 'gin to loathe and dread them. Nay,
+here will I lie till sunset: then darkling creep into this rich man's
+barn, and take by stealth a draught of milk or a handful o' grain, to
+keep body and soul together. God, who hath seen the rich rob me, will
+peradventure forgive me. They say 'tis ill sleeping on the snow. Death
+steals on such sleepers with muffled feet and honey breath. But what can
+I? I am a-weary, a-weary. Shall this be the wood where lie the wolves
+yon old man spoke of? I must e'en trust them: they are not men; and I am
+so a-weary."
+
+He crawled to the road-side, and stretched out his limbs on the snow,
+with a deep sigh.
+
+    "Ah tear not thine hair so! teareth my heart to see thee.
+    "Mar--garet. Never see me more. Poor Mar--ga--ret."
+
+And the too tender heart was still.
+
+And the constant lover, and friend of antique mould, lay silent on the
+snow; in peril from the weather, in peril from wild beasts, in peril
+from hunger, friendless and penniless, in a strange land, and not half
+way to Rome.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXIX
+
+
+RUDE travel is enticing to us English. And so are its records; even
+though the adventurer be no pilgrim of love. And antique friendship has
+at least the interest of a fossil. Still, as the true centre of this
+story is in Holland, it is full time to return thither, and to those
+ordinary personages and incidents, whereof life has been mainly composed
+in all ages.
+
+Jorian Ketel came to Peter's house to claim Margaret's promise; but
+Margaret was ill in bed, and Peter, on hearing his errand, affronted him
+and warned him off the premises, and one or two that stood by were for
+ducking him; for both father and daughter were favourites, and the whole
+story was in every mouth, and the Sevenbergens in that state of hot,
+undiscriminating, irritation which accompanies popular sympathy.
+
+So Jorian Ketel went off in dudgeon, and repented him of his good deed.
+This sort of penitence is not rare, and has the merit of being sincere.
+Dierich Brower, who was discovered at "The Three Kings," making a
+chatterbox drunk in order to worm out of him the whereabouts of Martin
+Wittenhaagen, was actually taken and flung into a horse-pond, and
+threatened with worse usage, should he ever show his face in the burgh
+again; and finally, municipal jealousy being roused, the burgomaster of
+Sevenbergen sent a formal missive to the burgomaster of Tergou,
+reminding him he had overstepped the law, and requesting him to apply to
+the authorities of Sevenbergen on any future occasion when he might have
+a complaint, real or imaginary, against any of its townsfolk.
+
+The wily Ghysbrecht, suppressing his rage at this remonstrance, sent
+back a civil message to say that the person he had followed to
+Sevenbergen was a Tergovan, one Gerard, and that he had stolen the town
+records: that Gerard having escaped into foreign parts, and probably
+taken the documents with him, the whole matter was at an end.
+
+Thus he made a virtue of necessity. But in reality his calmness was but
+a veil: baffled at Sevenbergen, he turned his views elsewhere; he set
+his emissaries to learn from the family at Tergou whither Gerard had
+fled, and "to his infinite surprise" they did not know. This added to
+his uneasiness. It made him fear Gerard was only lurking in the
+neighborhood: he would make a certain discovery, and would come back and
+take a terrible revenge. From this time Dierich and others that were
+about him noticed a change for the worse in Ghysbrecht Van Swieten. He
+became a moody, irritable man. A dread lay on him. His eyes cast furtive
+glances, like one who expects a blow, and knows not from what quarter it
+is to come. Making others wretched had not made him happy. It seldom
+does.
+
+The little family at Tergou, which, but for his violent interference,
+might in time have cemented its difference without banishing spem gregis
+to a distant land, wore still the same outward features, but within was
+no longer the simple happy family this tale opened with. Little Kate
+knew the share Cornelis and Sybrandt had in banishing Gerard, and
+though, for fear of making more mischief still, she never told her
+mother, yet there were times she shuddered at the bare sight of them,
+and blushed at their hypocritical regrets. Catherine, with a woman's
+vigilance, noticed this, and with a woman's subtlety said nothing, but
+quietly pondered it, and went on watching for more. The black sheep
+themselves, in their efforts to partake in the general gloom and sorrow,
+succeeded so far as to impose upon their father and Giles: but the
+demure satisfaction that lay at their bottom could not escape these
+feminine eyes--
+
+    "That, noting all, seem'd nought to note."
+
+Thus mistrust and suspicion sat at the table, poor substitutes for
+Gerard's intelligent face, that had brightened the whole circle,
+unobserved till it was gone. As for the old hosier, his pride had been
+wounded by his son's disobedience, and so he bore stiffly up, and did
+his best never to mention Gerard's name; but underneath his Spartan
+cloak Nature might be seen tugging at his heartstrings. One anxiety he
+never affected to conceal. "If I but knew where the boy is, and that his
+life and health are in no danger, small would be my care," would he say;
+and then a deep sigh would follow. I cannot help thinking that if Gerard
+had opened the door just then, and walked in, there would have been many
+tears and embraces for him, and few reproaches, or none.
+
+One thing took the old couple quite by surprise--publicity. Ere Gerard
+had been gone a week, his adventures were in every mouth; and, to make
+matters worse, the popular sympathy declared itself warmly on the side
+of the lovers, and against Gerard's cruel parents, and that old
+busy-body the burgomaster, "who must put his nose into a business that
+nowise concerned him."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+"Mother," said Kate, "it is all over the town that Margaret is down with
+a fever--a burning fever; her father fears her sadly."
+
+"Margaret? what Margaret?" inquired Catherine, with a treacherous
+assumption of calmness and indifference.
+
+"Oh, mother! whom should I mean? Why Gerard's Margaret."
+
+"Gerard's Margaret," screamed Catherine; "how dare you say such a word
+to me? And I rede you never mention that hussy's name in this house,
+that she has laid bare. She is the ruin of my poor boy, the flower of
+all my flock. She is the cause that he is not a holy priest in the midst
+of us, but is roaming the world, and I a desolate broken-hearted mother.
+There, do not cry, my girl, I do ill to speak harsh to you. But, oh,
+Kate! you know not what passes in a mother's heart. I bear up before you
+all; it behoves me swallow my fears: but at night I see him in my dreams
+and still some trouble or other near him: sometimes he is torn by wild
+beasts; other times he is in the hands of robbers, and their cruel
+knives uplifted to strike his poor pale face, that one should think
+would move a stone. Oh! when I remember that, while I sit here in
+comfort, perhaps my poor boy lies dead in some savage place: and all
+along of that girl: there, her very name is ratsbane to me. I tremble
+all over when I hear it."
+
+"I'll not say anything, nor do anything to grieve you worse, mother,"
+said Kate tenderly; but she sighed.
+
+She whose name was so fiercely interdicted in this house, was much
+spoken of, and even pitied, elsewhere. All Sevenbergen was sorry for
+her, and the young men and maidens cast many a pitying glance, as they
+passed, at the little window where the beauty of the village lay "dying
+for love." In this familiar phrase they underrated her spirit and
+unselfishness. Gerard was not dead, and she was too loyal herself to
+doubt his constancy. Her father was dear to her and helpless; and, but
+for bodily weakness, all her love for Gerard would not have kept her
+from doing her duties, though she might have gone about them with
+drooping head and heavy heart. But physical and mental excitement had
+brought on an attack of fever so violent, that nothing but youth and
+constitution saved her. The malady left her at last, but in that
+terrible state of bodily weakness in which the patient feels life a
+burden.
+
+Then it is that love and friendship by the bedside are mortal angels
+with comfort in their voices, and healing in their palms.
+
+But this poor girl had to come back to life and vigour how she could.
+Many days she lay alone, and the heavy hours rolled like leaden waves
+over her. In her enfeebled state existence seemed a burden, and life a
+thing gone by. She could not try her best to get well. Gerard was gone.
+She had not him to get well for. Often she lay for hours quite still,
+with the tears welling gently out of her eyes.
+
+One day, waking from an uneasy slumber, she found two women in her room.
+One was a servant, the other by the deep fur on her collar and sleeves
+was a person of consideration: a narrow band of silvery hair, being
+spared by her coiffure, showed her to be past the age when women of
+sense conceal their years. The looks of both were kind and friendly.
+Margaret tried to raise herself in the bed, but the old lady placed a
+hand very gently on her.
+
+"Lie still, sweetheart; we come not here to put you about, but to
+comfort you, God willing. Now cheer up a bit, and tell us, first, who
+think you we are?"
+
+"Nay, madam, I know you, though I never saw you before: you are the
+demoiselle Van Eyck, and this is Reicht Heynes. Gerard has oft spoken of
+you, and of your goodness to him. Madam, he has no friend like you near
+him now," and at this thought she lay back and the tears welled out of
+her eyes in a moment.
+
+The good-natured Reicht Heynes began to cry for company; but her
+mistress scolded her. "Well, you are a pretty one for a sick-room," said
+she: and she put out a world of innocent art to cheer the patient: and
+not without some little success. An old woman, that has seen life and
+all its troubles, is a sovereign blessing by a sorrowful young woman's
+side. She knows what to say, and what to avoid. She knows how to soothe
+her and interest her. Ere she had been there a hour, she had Margaret's
+head lying on her shoulder instead of on the pillow, and Margaret's soft
+eyes dwelling on her with gentle gratitude.
+
+"Ah! this is hair," said the old lady, running her fingers through it.
+"Come and look at it, Reicht!"
+
+Reicht came and handled it, and praised it unaffectedly. The poor girl
+that owned it was not quite out of the reach of flattery; owning
+doubtless to not being dead.
+
+"In sooth, madam, I did use to think it hideous: but _he_ praised it,
+and ever since then I have been almost vain of it, saints forgive me.
+You know how foolish those are that love."
+
+"They are greater fools that don't," said the old lady, sharply.
+
+Margaret opened her lovely eyes, and looked at her for her meaning.
+
+This was only the first of many visits. In fact either Margaret Van Eyck
+or Reicht came nearly every day until their patient was convalescent:
+and she improved rapidly under their hands. Reicht attributed this
+principally to certain nourishing dishes she prepared in Peter's
+kitchen: but Margaret herself thought more of the kind words and eyes
+that kept telling her she had friends to live for.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Martin Wittenhaagen went straight to Rotterdam, to take the bull by the
+horns. The bull was a biped, with a crown for horns. It was Philip the
+Good, duke of this, earl of that, lord of the other. Arrived at
+Rotterdam, Martin found the court was at Ghent. To Ghent he went, and
+sought an audience, but was put off and baffled by lacqueys and pages.
+So he threw himself in his sovereign's way out hunting, and, contrary to
+all court precedents, commenced the conversation--by roaring rustily for
+mercy.
+
+"Why, where is the peril, man?" said the duke, looking all round and
+laughing.
+
+"Grace for an old soldier hunted down by burghers!"
+
+Now kings differ in character like other folk; but there is one trait
+they have in common; they are mightily inclined to be affable to men of
+very low estate. These do not vie with them in anything whatever, so
+jealousy cannot creep in; and they amuse them by their bluntness and
+novelty, and refresh the poor things with a touch of nature--a rarity in
+courts. So Philip the Good reined in his horse and gave Martin almost a
+_tete-a-tete_, and Martin reminded him of a certain battle-field where
+he had received an arrow intended for his sovereign. The duke remembered
+the incident perfectly, and was graciously pleased to take a cheerful
+view of it. He could afford to, not having been the one hit. Then Martin
+told his majesty of Gerard's first capture in the church, his
+imprisonment in the tower, and the manoeuvre by which they got him
+out, and all the details of the hunt; and, whether he told it better
+than I have, or the duke had not heard so many good stories as you have,
+certain it is that sovereign got so wrapt up in it, that, when a number
+of courtiers came galloping up and interrupted Martin, he swore like a
+costermonger, and threatened, only half in jest, to cut off the next
+head that should come between him and a good story: and when Martin had
+done, he cried out:--
+
+"St. Luke! what sport goeth on in this mine earldom, ay! in my own
+woods, and I see it not. You base fellows have all the luck." And he was
+indignant at the partiality of Fortune. "Lo you now! this was a
+man-hunt," said he. "_I_ never had the luck to be at a man-hunt."
+
+"My luck was none so great," replied Martin bluntly; "I was on the wrong
+side of the dogs' noses."
+
+"Ah! so you were: I forgot that." And royalty was more reconciled to its
+lot. "What would you then?"
+
+"A free pardon, your highness, for myself and Gerard."
+
+"For what?"
+
+"For prison-breaking."
+
+"Go to: the bird will fly from the cage. 'Tis instinct. Besides, coop a
+young man up for loving a young woman? These burgomasters must be void
+of common sense. What else?"
+
+"For striking down the burgomaster."
+
+"Oh, the hunted boar will turn to bay. 'Tis his right: and I hold him
+less than man that grudges it him. What else?"
+
+"For killing of the bloodhounds."
+
+The duke's countenance fell.
+
+"'Twas their life or mine," said Martin eagerly.
+
+"Ay! but I can't have my bloodhounds, my beautiful bloodhounds,
+sacrificed to----"
+
+"No, no, no! They were not your dogs."
+
+"Whose dogs, then?"
+
+"The ranger's."
+
+"Oh. Well, I am very sorry for him, but, as I was saying, I can't have
+my old soldiers sacrificed to his bloodhounds. Thou shalt have thy free
+pardon."
+
+"And poor Gerard."
+
+"And poor Gerard too, for thy sake. And more, tell thou this
+burgomaster his doings mislike me: this is to set up for a king, not a
+burgomaster. I'll have no kings in Holland but one. Bid him be more
+humble: or by St. Jude I'll hang him before his own door, as I hanged
+the burgomaster of what's the name, some town or other in Flanders it
+was: no, 'twas somewhere in Brabant--no matter--I hanged him, I remember
+that much--for oppressing poor folk."
+
+The duke then beckoned his chancellor, a pursy old fellow that rode like
+a sack, and bade him write out a free pardon for Martin and one Gerard.
+
+This precious document was drawn up in form, and signed next day, and
+Martin hastened home with it.
+
+Margaret had left her bed some days, and was sitting pale and pensive by
+the fireside, when he burst in, waving the parchment, and crying, "A
+free pardon, girl, for Gerard as well as me! Send for him back when you
+will; all the burgomasters on earth daren't lay a finger on him."
+
+She flushed all over with joy, and her hands trembled with eagerness as
+she took the parchment and devoured it with her eyes, and kissed it
+again and again, and flung her arms round Martin's neck, and kissed
+_him_. When she was calmer, she told him Heaven had raised her up a
+friend in the dame Van Eyck. "And I would fain consult her on this good
+news: but I have not strength to walk so far."
+
+"What need to walk? There is my mule."
+
+"Your mule, Martin?"
+
+The old soldier or professional pillager laughed, and confessed he had
+got so used to her, that he forgot at times Ghysbrecht had a prior
+claim. To-morrow he would turn her into the burgomaster's yard, but
+to-night she should carry Margaret to Tergou.
+
+It was nearly dusk; so Margaret ventured, and about seven in the evening
+she astonished and gladdened her new but ardent friend, by arriving at
+her house with unwonted roses on her cheeks, and Gerard's pardon in her
+bosom.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XL
+
+
+SOME are old in heart at forty, some are young at eighty. Margaret Van
+Eyck's heart was an evergreen. She loved her young namesake with
+youthful ardour. Nor was this new sentiment a mere caprice: she was
+quick at reading character, and saw in Margaret Brandt that which in one
+of her own sex goes far with an intelligent woman; genuineness. But,
+besides her own sterling qualities, Margaret had from the first a potent
+ally in the old artist's bosom.
+
+Human nature.
+
+Strange as it may appear to the unobservant, our hearts warm more
+readily to those we have benefited than to our benefactors. Some of the
+Greek philosophers noticed this; but the British Homer has stamped it in
+immortal lines:--
+
+    "I heard, and thought how side by side
+    We two had stemmed the battle's tide
+    In many a well-debated field,
+    Where Bertram's breast was Philip's shield.
+    I thought on Darien's deserts pale,
+    Where Death bestrides the evening gale,
+    How o'er my friend my cloak I threw,
+    And fenceless faced the deadly dew.
+    I thought on Quariana's cliff,
+    Where, rescued from our foundering skiff,
+    Through the white breakers' wrath I bore
+    Exhausted Mortram to the shore;
+    And when his side an arrow found,
+    I sucked the Indian's venom'd wound.
+    These thoughts like torrents rushed along
+    To sweep away my purpose strong."
+
+Observe! this assassin's hand is stayed by memory, not of benefits
+received, but benefits conferred.
+
+Now Margaret Van Eyck had been wonderfully kind to Margaret Brandt; had
+broken through her own habits to go and see her; had nursed her, and
+soothed her, and petted her, and cured her more than all the medicine in
+the world. So her heart opened to the recipient of her goodness, and she
+loved her now far more tenderly than she had ever loved Gerard, though,
+in truth, it was purely out of regard for Gerard she had visited her in
+the first instance.
+
+When, therefore, she saw the roses on Margaret's cheek, and read the bit
+of parchment that had brought them there, she gave up her own views
+without a murmur.
+
+"Sweetheart," said she, "I did desire he should stay in Italy five or
+six years, and come back rich, and, above all, an artist. But your
+happiness is before all, and I see you cannot live without him, so we
+must have him home as fast as may be."
+
+"Ah, madam! you see my very thoughts." And the young woman hung her head
+a moment and blushed. "But how to let him know, madam? That passes my
+skill. He is gone to Italy; but what part, that I know not. Stay! he
+named the cities he should visit. Florence was one, and Rome. But
+then--"
+
+Finally, being a sensible girl, she divined that a letter, addressed "My
+Gerard--Italy," might chance to miscarry, and she looked imploringly at
+her friend for counsel.
+
+"You are come to the right place, and at the right time," said the old
+lady. "Here was this Hans Memling with me to-day; he is going to Italy,
+girl, no later than next week, 'to improve his hand,' he says. Not
+before 'twas needed, I do assure you."
+
+"But how is he to find my Gerard?"
+
+"Why, he knows your Gerard, child. They have supped here more than once,
+and were like hand and glove. Now, as his business is the same as
+Gerard's--"
+
+"What! he is a painter then?"
+
+"He passes for one. He will visit the same places as Gerard, and, soon
+or late, he must fall in with him. Wherefore, get you a long letter
+written, and copy out this pardon into it, and I'll answer for the
+messenger. In six months at farthest Gerard shall get it; and when he
+shall get it, then will he kiss it, and put it in his bosom, and come
+flying home. What are you smiling at? And now what makes your cheeks so
+red? And what you are smothering me for, I cannot think. Yes! happy days
+are coming to my little pearl."
+
+Meantime, Martin sat in the kitchen, with the black-jack before him and
+Reicht Heynes spinning beside him: and, wow! but she pumped him that
+night.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+This Hans Memling was an old pupil of Jan Van Eyck and his sister. He
+was a painter, notwithstanding Margaret's sneer, and a good soul enough,
+with one fault. He loved the "nipperkin, canakin, and the brown bowl"
+more than they deserve. This singular penchant kept him from amassing
+fortune, and was the cause that he often came to Margaret Van Eyck for a
+meal, and sometimes for a groat. But this gave her a claim on him, and
+she knew he would not trifle with any commission she should intrust to
+him.
+
+The letter was duly written, and left with Margaret Van Eyck; and, the
+following week, sure enough, Hans Memling returned from Flanders.
+Margaret Van Eyck gave him the letter, and a piece of gold towards his
+travelling expenses. He seemed in a hurry to be off.
+
+"All the better," said the old artist; "he will be the sooner in Italy."
+
+But as there are horses who burn and rage to start, and after the first
+yard or two want the whip, so all this hurry cooled into inaction when
+Hans got as far as the principal hostelry of Tergou, and saw two of his
+boon companions sitting in the bay window. He went in for a parting
+glass with them; but when he offered to pay, they would not hear of it.
+No; he was going a long journey; they would treat him; everybody must
+treat him, the landlord and all.
+
+It resulted from this treatment that his tongue got as loose as if the
+wine had been oil; and he confided to the convivial crew that he was
+going to show the Italians how to paint: next he sang his exploits in
+battle, for he had handled a pike; and his amorous successes with
+females, not present to oppose their version of the incidents. In short,
+"plenus rimarum erat: huc illuc diffluebat:" and among the miscellaneous
+matters that oozed out, he must blab that he was intrusted with a letter
+to a townsman of theirs, one Gerard, a good fellow: he added "you are
+all good fellows:" and, to impress his eulogy, slapped Sybrandt on the
+back so heartily, as to drive the breath out of his body.
+
+Sybrandt got round the table to avoid this muscular approval; but
+listened to every word, and learned for the first time that Gerard was
+gone to Italy. However, to make sure, he affected to doubt it.
+
+"My brother Gerard is never in Italy."
+
+"Ye lie, ye cur," roared Hans, taking instantly the irascible turn, and
+not being clear enough to see that he, who now sat opposite him, was the
+same he had praised, and hit, when beside him. "If he is ten times your
+brother, he is in Italy. What call ye this? There, read me that
+superscription!" and he flung down a letter on the table.
+
+Sybrandt took it up, and examined it gravely; but eventually laid it
+down, with the remark, that he could not read. However one of the
+company, by some immense fortuity, could read; and, proud of so rare an
+accomplishment, took it, and read it out: "To Gerard Eliassoen, of
+Tergou. These by the hand of the trusty Hans Memling, with all speed."
+
+"'Tis excellently well writ," said the reader, examining every letter.
+
+"Ay!" said Hans bombastically "and small wonder: 'tis writ by a famous
+hand; by Margaret, sister of Jan Van Eyck. Blessed and honoured be his
+memory! She is an old friend of mine, is Margaret Van Eyck."
+
+Miscellaneous Hans then diverged into forty topics.
+
+Sybrandt stole out of the company, and went in search of Cornelis.
+
+They put their heads together over the news: Italy was an immense
+distance off. If they could only keep him there?
+
+"Keep him there? Nothing would keep him long from his Margaret."
+
+"Curse her!" said Sybrandt. "Why didn't she die when she was about it?"
+
+"_She_ die? She would outlive the pest to vex us." And Cornelis was
+wroth at her selfishness in not dying, to oblige.
+
+These two black sheep kept putting their heads together, and tainting
+each other worse and worse, till at last their corrupt hearts conceived
+a plan for keeping Gerard in Italy all his life, and so securing his
+share of their father's substance.
+
+But when they had planned it they were no nearer the execution; for that
+required talent: so iniquity came to a standstill. But presently, as if
+Satan had come between the two heads, and whispered into the right ear
+of one and the left of the other simultaneously, they both burst out
+
+"THE BURGOMASTER!"
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+They went to Ghysbrecht Van Swieten, and he received them at once: for
+the man who is under the torture of suspense catches eagerly at
+knowledge. Certainty is often painful, but seldom, like suspense,
+intolerable.
+
+"You have news of Gerard?" said he eagerly.
+
+Then they told about the letter and Hans Memling. He listened with
+restless eye. "Who writ the letter?"
+
+"Margaret Van Eyck," was the reply: for they naturally thought the
+contents were by the same hand as the superscription.
+
+"Are ye sure?" And he went to a drawer and drew out a paper written by
+Margaret Van Eyck while treating with the burgh for her house. "Was it
+writ like this?"
+
+"Yes. 'Tis the same writing," said Sybrandt, boldly.
+
+"Good. And now what would ye of me?" said Ghysbrecht, with beating
+heart, but a carelessness so well feigned that it staggered them. They
+fumbled with their bonnets, and stammered and spoke a word or two, then
+hesitated and beat about the bush, and let out by degrees that they
+wanted a letter written, to say something that might keep Gerard in
+Italy: and this letter they proposed to substitute in Hans Memling's
+wallet for the one he carried. While these fumbled with their bonnets
+and their iniquity, and vacillated between respect for a burgomaster,
+and suspicion that this one was as great rogue as themselves, and,
+somehow or other, on their side against Gerard, pros and cons were
+coursing one another to and fro in the keen old man's spirit. Vengeance
+said let Gerard come back and feel the weight of the law. Prudence said
+keep him a thousand miles off. But then prudence said also, why do dirty
+work on a doubtful chance? Why put it in the power of these two rogues
+to tarnish your name? Finally, his strong persuasion that Gerard was in
+possession of a secret by means of which he could wound him to the
+quick, coupled with his caution, found words thus: "It is my duty to aid
+the citizens that cannot write. But for their matter I will not be
+responsible. Tell me, then, what I shall write."
+
+"Something about this Margaret."
+
+"Ay, ay! that she is false, that she is married to another, I'll go
+bail."
+
+"Nay, burgomaster, nay! not for all the world!" cried Sybrandt; "Gerard
+would not believe it, or but half, and then he would come back to see.
+No; say that she is dead."
+
+"Dead! what at her age? will he credit that?"
+
+"Sooner than the other. Why she _was nearly_ dead; so it is not to say a
+downright lie, after all."
+
+"Humph? And you think that will keep him in Italy?"
+
+"We are sure of it, are we not, Cornelis?"
+
+"Ay," said Cornelis, "our Gerard will never leave Italy now he is there.
+It was always his dream to get there. He would come back for his
+Margaret, but not for us. What cares he for us? He despises his own
+family; always did."
+
+"This would be a bitter pill to him," said the old hypocrite. "It will
+be for his good in the end," replied the young one.
+
+"What avails Famine wedding Thirst?" said Cornelis.
+
+"And the grief you are preparing for him so coolly?" Ghysbrecht spoke
+sarcastically, but tasted his own vengeance all the time.
+
+"Oh, a lie is not like a blow with a curtal axe. It hacks no flesh, and
+breaks no bones."
+
+"A curtal axe?" said Sybrandt; "no, nor even like a stroke with a
+cudgel." And he shot a sly envenomed glance at the burgomaster's broken
+nose.
+
+Ghysbrecht's face darkened with ire when this adder's tongue struck his
+wound. But it told, as intended: the old man bristled with hate.
+
+"Well," said he, "tell me what to write for you, and I must write it:
+but, take notice, you bear the blame if aught turns amiss. Not the hand
+which writes, but the tongue which dictates, doth the deed."
+
+The brothers assented warmly, sneering within. Ghysbrecht then drew his
+inkhorn towards him, and laid the specimen of Margaret Van Eyck's
+writing before him, and made some inquiries as to the size and shape of
+the letter; when an unlooked-for interruption occurred; Jorian Ketel
+burst hastily into the room, and looked vexed at not finding him alone.
+
+"Thou seest I have matter on hand, good fellow."
+
+"Ay; but this is grave. I bring good news; but 'tis not for every ear."
+
+The burgomaster rose, and drew Jorian aside into the embrasure of his
+deep window, and then the brothers heard them converse in low but eager
+tones. It ended by Ghysbrecht sending Jorian out to saddle his mule. He
+then addressed the black sheep with a sudden coldness that amazed them:
+
+"I prize the peace of households; but this is not a thing to be done in
+a hurry: we will see about, we will see."
+
+"But, burgomaster, the man will be gone. It will be too late."
+
+"Where is he?"
+
+"At the hostelry, drinking."
+
+"Well, keep him drinking! We will see, we will see." And he sent them
+off discomfited.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+To explain all this we must retrograde a step. This very morning then,
+Margaret Brandt had met Jorian Ketel near her own door. He passed her
+with a scowl. This struck her, and she remembered him.
+
+"Stay," said she. "Yes! it is the good man who saved him. Oh! why have
+you not been near me since? And why have you not come for the
+parchments? Was it not true about the hundred crowns?"
+
+Jorian gave a snort: but, seeing her face that looked so candid, began
+to think there might be some mistake. He told her he had come, and how
+he had been received.
+
+"Alas!" said she, "I knew nought of this. I lay at death's door." She
+then invited him to follow her, and took him into the garden and showed
+him the spot where the parchments were buried. "Martin was for taking
+them up, but I would not let him. _He_ put them there: and I said none
+should move them but you, who had earned them so well of him and me."
+
+"Give me a spade!" cried Jorian, eagerly. "But stay! No; he is a
+suspicious man. You are sure they are there still?"
+
+"I will openly take the blame if human hand hath touched them."
+
+"Then keep them but two hours more, I prithee, good Margaret," said
+Jorian, and ran off to the Stadthouse of Tergou a joyful man.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The burgomaster jogged along towards Sevenbergen, with Jorian striding
+beside him, giving him assurance that in an hour's time the missing
+parchments would be in his hand.
+
+"Ah, master!" said he, "lucky for us it wasn't a thief that took them."
+
+"Not a thief? not a thief? what call you him, then?"
+
+"Well, saving your presence, I call him a jackdaw. This is jackdaw's
+work, if ever there was; 'take the thing you are least in need of, and
+hide it'--that's a jackdaw. I should know," added Jorian, oracularly,
+"for I was brought up along with a chough. He and I were born the same
+year, but he cut his teeth long before me, and, wow! but my life was a
+burden for years all along of him. If you had but a hole in your hose no
+bigger than a groat, in went his beak like a gimlet; and, for stealing,
+Gerard all over. What he wanted least, and any poor Christian wanted
+most, that went first. Mother was a notable woman, so, if she did but
+look round, away flew her thimble. Father lived by cordwaining, so about
+sunrise Jack went diligently off with his awl, his wax, and his twine.
+After that, make your bread how you could! One day I heard my mother
+tell him to his face he was enough to corrupt half a dozen other
+children; and he only cocked his eye at her, and next minute away with
+the nurseling shoe off his very foot. Now this Gerard is tarred with the
+same stick. The parchments are no more use to him than a thimble or an
+awl to Jack. He took 'em out of pure mischief and hid them, and you
+would never have found them but for me."
+
+"I believe you are right," said Ghysbrecht, "and I have vexed myself
+more than need."
+
+When they came to Peter's gate he felt uneasy.
+
+"I wish it had been anywhere but here."
+
+Jorian reassured him.
+
+"The girl is honest and friendly," said he. "She had nothing to do with
+taking them, I'll be sworn:" and he led him into the garden. "There,
+master, if a face is to be believed, here they lie; and, see, the mould
+_is_ loose."
+
+He ran for a spade which was stuck up in the ground at some distance,
+and soon went to work and uncovered a parchment. Ghysbrecht saw it and
+thrust him aside and went down on his knees and tore it out of the hole.
+His hands trembled and his face shone. He threw out parchment after
+parchment, and Jorian dusted them and cleaned them and shook them. Now,
+when Ghysbrecht had thrown out a great many, his face began to darken
+and lengthen, and, when he came to the last, he put his hands to his
+temples and seemed to be all amazed.
+
+"What mystery lies here?" he gasped. "Are fiends mocking me? Dig deeper!
+There _must_ be another."
+
+Jorian drove the spade in and threw out quantities of hard mould. In
+vain. And even while he dug, his master's mood had changed.
+
+"Treason! treachery!" he cried. "You knew of this."
+
+"Knew what, master, in Heaven's name?"
+
+"Caitiff, you knew there was another one worth all these twice told."
+
+"'Tis false," cried Jorian, made suspicious by the other's suspicion.
+"'Tis a trick to rob me of my hundred crowns. Oh! I know you,
+burgomaster." And Jorian was ready to whimper.
+
+A mellow voice fell on them both like oil upon the waves. "No, good man,
+it is not false, nor yet is it quite true: there was another parchment."
+
+"There, there, there! Where is it?"
+
+"But," continued Margaret calmly, "it was not a town record (so you have
+gained your hundred crowns, good man): it was but a private deed between
+the burgomaster here and my grandfather Flor----"
+
+"Hush, hush!"
+
+"--is Brandt."
+
+"Where is it, girl? that is all we want to know."
+
+"Have patience, and I shall tell you." Gerard read the title of it, and
+he said, "This is as much yours as the burgomaster's," and he put it
+apart, to read it with me at his leisure."
+
+"It is in the house, then?" said the burgomaster, recovering his
+calmness.
+
+"No, sir," said Margaret, bravely, "it is not." Then, in a voice that
+faltered suddenly, "You hunted--my poor Gerard--so hard--and so
+close--that you gave him--no time--to think of aught--but his life--and
+his grief.--The parchment was in his bosom, and he hath ta'en it with
+him."
+
+"Whither, whither?"
+
+"Ask me no more, sir. What right is yours to question me thus? It was
+for _your_ sake, good man, I put force upon my heart, and came out here,
+and bore to speak at all to this hard old man. For, when I think of the
+misery he has brought on _him_ and me, the sight of him is more than I
+can bear:" and she gave an involuntary shudder, and went slowly in, with
+her hand to her head, crying bitterly.
+
+Remorse for the past, and dread of the future--the slow, but, as he now
+felt, the inevitable future--avarice, and fear, all tugged in one short
+moment at Ghysbrecht's tough heart. He hung his head, and his arms fell
+listless by his sides. A coarse chuckle made him start round, and there
+stood Martin Wittenhaagen leaning on his bow, and sneering from ear to
+ear. At sight of the man and his grinning face, Ghysbrecht's worst
+passions awoke.
+
+"Ho! attach him, seize him, traitor and thief!" cried he. "Dog, thou
+shalt pay for all."
+
+Martin, without a word, calmly thrust the duke's pardon under
+Ghysbrecht's nose. He looked, and had not a word to say. Martin followed
+up his advantage.
+
+"The duke and I are soldiers. He won't let you greasy burghers trample
+on an old comrade. He bade me carry you a message too."
+
+"The duke send a message to me?"
+
+"Ay! I told him of your masterful doings, of your imprisoning Gerard for
+loving a girl; and says he, 'Tell him this is to be a king, not a
+burgomaster. I'll have no kings in Holland but one. Bid him be more
+humble, or I'll hang him at his own door'" (Ghysbrecht trembled. He
+thought the duke capable of the deed) "'as I hanged the burgomaster of
+Thingembob.' The duke could not mind which of you he had hung, or in
+what part; such trifles stick not in a soldier's memory, but he was sure
+he had hanged one of you for grinding poor folk, 'and I'm the man to
+hang another,' quoth the good duke."
+
+These repeated insults from so mean a man, coupled with his
+invulnerability, shielded as he was by the duke, drove the choleric old
+man into a fit of impotent fury: he shook his fist at the soldier, and
+tried to threaten him, but could not speak for the rage and
+mortification that choked him: then he gave a sort of screech, and
+coiled himself up in eye and form like a rattle-snake about to strike;
+and spat furiously upon Martin's doublet.
+
+The thick-skinned soldier treated this ebullition with genuine contempt.
+"Here's a venomous old toad! he knows a kick from this foot would send
+him to his last home; and he wants me to cheat the gallows. But I have
+slain too many men in fair fight to lift limb against anything less than
+a man: and this I count no man; what is it, in Heaven's name? an old
+goat's-skin bag full o' rotten bones."
+
+"My mule! my mule!" screamed Ghysbrecht.
+
+Jorian helped the old man up trembling in every joint. Once in the
+saddle, he seemed to gather in a moment unnatural vigour; and the figure
+that went flying to Tergou was truly weirdlike and terrible: so old and
+wizened the face; so white and reverend the streaming hair; so baleful
+the eye; so fierce the fury which shook the bent frame that went
+spurring like mad; while the quavering voice yelled, "I'll make their
+hearts ache.--I'll make their hearts ache.--I'll make their hearts
+ache.--I'll make their hearts ache. All of them. All!--all!--all!"
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The black sheep sat disconsolate amidst the convivial crew, and eyed
+Hans Memling's wallet. For more ease he had taken it off, and flung it
+on the table. How readily they could have slipped out that letter and
+put in another. For the first time in their lives they were sorry they
+had not learned to write, like their brother.
+
+And now Hans began to talk of going, and the brothers agreed in a
+whisper to abandon their project for the time. They had scarcely
+resolved this, when Dierich Brower stood suddenly in the doorway, and
+gave them a wink.
+
+They went out to him. "Come to the burgomaster with all speed," said he.
+
+They found Ghysbrecht seated at a table, pale and agitated. Before him
+lay Margaret Van Eyck's handwriting. "I have written what you desired,"
+said he. "Now for the superscription. What were the words? did ye see?"
+
+"We cannot read," said Cornelis.
+
+"Then is all this labour lost," cried Ghysbrecht angrily. "Dolts!"
+
+"Nay, but," said Sybrandt, "I heard the words read, and I have not lost
+them. They were, 'To Gerard Eliassoen, these by the hand of the trusty
+Hans Memling with all speed.'"
+
+"'Tis well. Now, how was the letter folded? how big was it?"
+
+"Longer than that one, and not so long as this."
+
+"'Tis well. Where is he?"
+
+"At the hostelry."
+
+"Come, then, take you this groat, and treat him. Then ask to see the
+letter, and put this in place of it. Come to me with the other letter."
+
+The brothers assented, took the letter, and went to the hostelry.
+
+They had not been gone a minute, when Dierich Brower issued from the
+Stadthouse, and followed them. He had his orders not to let them out of
+his sight till the true letter was in his master's hands. He watched
+outside the hostelry.
+
+He had not long to wait. They came out almost immediately, with downcast
+looks. Dierich made up to them.
+
+"Too late!" they cried; "too late! He is gone."
+
+"Gone? How long?"
+
+"Scarce five minutes. Cursed chance!"
+
+"You must go back to the burgomaster at once," said Dierich Brower.
+
+"To what end?"
+
+"No matter; come:" and he hurried them to the Stadthouse.
+
+Ghysbrecht Van Swieten was not the man to accept a defeat. "Well," said
+he, on hearing the ill news, "suppose he is gone. Is he mounted?"
+
+"No."
+
+"Then what hinders you to come up with him?"
+
+"But what avails coming up with him? there are no hostelries on the road
+he is gone."
+
+"Fools!" said Ghysbrecht, "is there no way of emptying a man's pockets
+but liquor and sleight of hand?"
+
+A meaning look, that passed between Ghysbrecht and Dierich, aided the
+brothers' comprehension. They changed colour, and lost all zeal for the
+business.
+
+"No! no! we don't hate our brother. We won't get ourselves hanged to
+spite him," said Sybrandt; "that would be a fool's trick."
+
+"Hanged?" cried Ghysbrecht. "Am I not the burgomaster? How can ye be
+hanged? I see how 'tis: ye fear to tackle one man, being two: hearts of
+hare, that ye are! O! why cannot I be young again? I'd do it
+single-handed."
+
+The old man now threw off all disguise, and showed them his heart was in
+this deed. He then flattered and besought, and jeered them alternately,
+but he found no eloquence could move them to an action, however
+dishonourable, which was attended with danger. At last he opened a
+drawer, and showed them a pile of silver coins.
+
+"Change but those letters for me," he said, "and each of you shall
+thrust one hand into this drawer, and take away as many of them as you
+can hold."
+
+The effect was magical. Their eyes glittered with desire. Their whole
+bodies seemed to swell, and rise into male energy.
+
+"Swear it, then," said Sybrandt.
+
+"I swear it."
+
+"No; on the crucifix."
+
+Ghysbrecht swore upon the crucifix.
+
+The next minute the brothers were on the road, in pursuit of Hans
+Memling. They came in sight of him about two leagues from Tergou: but
+though they knew he had no weapon but his staff, they were too prudent
+to venture on him in daylight; so they fell back.
+
+But being now three leagues and more from the town, and on a grassy
+road,--sun down, moon not yet up,--honest Hans suddenly found himself
+attacked before and behind at once by men with uplifted knives, who
+cried in loud though somewhat shaky voices, "Stand and deliver!"
+
+The attack was so sudden, and so well planned, that Hans was dismayed.
+"Slay me not, good fellows," he cried: "I am but a poor man, and ye
+shall have my all."
+
+"So be it then. Live! But empty thy wallet."
+
+"There is nought in my wallet, good friends, but one letter."
+
+"That we shall see," said Sybrandt, who was the one in front. "Well: it
+is a letter."
+
+"Take it not from me, I pray you. 'Tis worth nought, and the good dame
+would fret that writ it."
+
+"There," said Sybrandt, "take back thy letter: and now empty thy pouch.
+Come! tarry not!"
+
+But by this time Hans had recovered his confusion: and, from a certain
+flutter in Sybrandt, and hard breathing of Cornelis, aided by an
+indescribable consciousness, felt sure the pair he had to deal with were
+no heroes. He pretended to fumble for his money: then suddenly thrust
+his staff fiercely into Sybrandt's face, and drove him staggering, and
+lent Cornelis a back-handed slash on the ear that sent him twirling like
+a weather-cock in March: then whirled his weapon over his head and
+danced about the road like a figure on springs, shouting "Come on, ye
+thieving loons! Come on!"
+
+It was a plain invitation: yet they misunderstood it so utterly as to
+take to their heels, with Hans after them, he shouting "Stop thieves!"
+and they howling with fear and pain as they ran.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XLI
+
+
+DENYS, placed in the middle of his companions, lest he should be so mad
+as attempt escape, was carried off in an agony of grief and remorse. For
+his sake Gerard had abandoned the German route to Rome; and what was his
+reward? left all alone in the centre of Burgundy. This was the thought
+which maddened Denys most, and made him now rave at heaven and earth,
+now fall into a gloomy silence so savage and sinister that it was deemed
+prudent to disarm him. They caught up their leader just outside the
+town, and the whole cavalcade drew up and baited at the "Tete d'Or."
+
+The young landlady, though much occupied with the count, and still more
+with the Bastard, caught sight of Denys, and asked him somewhat
+anxiously what had become of his young companion?
+
+Denys, with a burst of grief, told her all, and prayed her to send after
+Gerard. "Now he is parted from me, he will maybe listen to my rede,"
+said he; "poor wretch he loves not solitude."
+
+The landlady gave a toss of her head. "I trow I have been somewhat
+over-kind already," said she, and turned rather red.
+
+"You will not?"
+
+"Not I."
+
+"Then,"--and he poured a volley of curses and abuse upon her.
+
+She turned her back upon him, and went off whimpering, and saying she
+was not used to be cursed at; and ordered her hind to saddle two mules.
+
+Denys went north with his troop, mute and drooping over his saddle, and,
+quite unknown to him, that veracious young lady made an equestrian
+toilet in only forty minutes, she being really in a hurry, and spurred
+away with her servant in the opposite direction.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+At dark, after a long march, the Bastard and his men reached "the White
+Hart;" their arrival caused a prodigious bustle, and it was some time
+before Manon discovered her old friend among so many. When she did, she
+showed it only by heightened colour. She did not claim the acquaintance.
+The poor soul was already beginning to scorn.
+
+    "The base degrees by which she did ascend."
+
+Denys saw, but could not smile. The inn reminded him too much of Gerard.
+
+Ere the night closed the wind changed. She looked into the room and
+beckoned him with her finger. He rose sulkily, and his guards with him.
+
+"Nay, I would speak a word to thee in private." She drew him to a corner
+of the room, and there asked him under her breath, would he do her a
+kindness.
+
+He answered out loud, "No, he would not, he was not in the vein to do
+kindnesses to man or woman. If he did a kindness it should be to a dog:
+and not that if he could help it."
+
+"Alas, good archer, I did you one eftsoons, you and your pretty
+comrade," said Manon, humbly.
+
+"You did, dame, you did; well then, for his sake--what is't to do?"
+
+"Thou knowest my story. I had been unfortunate. Now I am worshipful. But
+a woman did cast him in my teeth this day. And so 'twill be ever while
+he hangs there. I would have him ta'en down; well-a-day!"
+
+"With all my heart."
+
+"And none dare I ask but thee. Wilt do't?"
+
+"Not I, even were I not a prisoner."
+
+On this stern refusal the tender Manon sighed, and clasped her palms
+together despondently. Denys told her she need not fret. There were
+soldiers of a lower stamp, who would not make two bites of such a
+cherry. It was a mere matter of money; if she could find two angels, he
+would find two soldiers to do the dirty work of the "White Hart."
+
+This was not very palatable. However, reflecting that soldiers were
+birds of passage, drinking here to-night, knocked on the head there
+to-morrow, she said, softly, "Send them out to me. But prithee, tell
+them that 'tis for one that is my friend; let them not think 'tis for
+me. I should sink into th' earth; times are changed."
+
+Denys found warriors glad to win an angel apiece so easily. He sent them
+out, and instantly dismissing the subject with contempt, sat brooding on
+his lost friend.
+
+Manon and the warriors soon came to a general understanding. But what
+were they to do with the body when taken down? She murmured, "The river
+is nigh the--the--place."
+
+"Fling him in, eh?"
+
+"Nay, nay; be not so cruel! Could ye not put him--gently--in--with
+somewhat weighty?"
+
+She must have been thinking on the subject in detail; for she was not
+one to whom ideas came quickly.
+
+All was speedily agreed, except the time of payment. The mail-clad
+itched for it, and sought it in advance. Manon demurred to that.
+
+What, did she doubt their word? then let her come along with them, or
+watch them at a distance.
+
+"Me?" said Manon, with horror. "I would liever die than see it done."
+
+"Which yet you would have done."
+
+"Ay, for sore is my need. Times are changed." She had already forgotten
+her precept to Denys.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+An hour later the disagreeable relic of caterpillar existence ceased to
+canker the worshipful matron's public life, and the grim eyes of the
+past to cast malignant glances down into a white hind's clover field.
+
+Total. She made the landlord an average wife, and a prime house-dog, and
+outlived everybody.
+
+Her troops, when they returned from executing with mediaeval naivete the
+precept "Off wi' the auld love," received a shock. They found the
+market-place black with groups; it had been empty an hour ago.
+Conscience smote them. This came of meddling with the dead. However, the
+bolder of the two, encouraged by the darkness, stole forward alone, and
+slily mingled with a group: he soon returned to his companion, saying,
+in a tone of reproach not strictly reasonable,
+
+"Ye born fool, it is only a miracle."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XLII
+
+
+LETTERS of fire on the church wall had just inquired, with an appearance
+of genuine curiosity, why there was no mass for the duke in this time of
+trouble. The supernatural expostulation had been seen by many, and had
+gradually faded, leaving the spectators glued there gaping. The upshot
+was, that the corporation, not choosing to be behind the angelic powers
+in loyalty to a temporal sovereign, invested freely in masses. By this
+an old friend of ours, the cure, profited in hard cash; for which he had
+a very pretty taste. But for this I would not of course have detained
+you over so trite an occurrence as a miracle.
+
+Denys begged for his arms, "Why disgrace him as well as break his
+heart?"
+
+"Then swear on the cross of thy sword not to leave the Bastard's service
+until the sedition shall be put down." He yielded to necessity, and
+delivered three volleys of oaths, and recovered his arms and liberty.
+
+The troops halted at "The Three Fish," and Marion at sight of him cried
+out, "I'm out of luck; who would have thought to see you again?" then
+seeing he was sad, and rather hurt than amused at this blunt jest, she
+asked him what was amiss? He told her. She took a bright view of the
+case. Gerard was too handsome and well-behaved to come to harm. The
+women too would always be on his side. Moreover, it was clear that
+things must either go well or ill with him. In the former case he would
+strike in with some good company going to Rome; in the latter, he would
+return home, perhaps be there before his friend; "for you have a trifle
+of fighting to do in Flanders by all accounts." She then brought him his
+gold pieces, and steadily refused to accept one, though he urged her
+again and again. Denys was somewhat convinced by her argument, because
+she concurred with his own wishes, and was also cheered a little by
+finding her so honest. It made him think a little better of that world
+in which his poor little friend was walking alone.
+
+Foot-soldiers in small bodies down to twos and threes were already on
+the road, making lazily towards Flanders, many of them penniless, but
+passed from town to town by the bailiffs, with orders for food and
+lodging on the innkeepers.
+
+Anthony of Burgundy overtook numbers of these, and gathered them under
+his standard, so that he entered Flanders at the head of six hundred
+men. On crossing the frontier he was met by his brother Baldwyn, with
+men, arms, and provisions; he organized his whole force and marched on
+in battle array through several towns, not only without impediment, but
+with great acclamations. This loyalty called forth comments not
+altogether gracious.
+
+"This rebellion of ours is a bite," growled a soldier called Simon, who
+had elected himself Denys's comrade.
+
+Denys said nothing, but made a little vow to St. Mars to shoot this
+Anthony of Burgundy dead, should the rebellion, that had cost him
+Gerard, prove no rebellion.
+
+That afternoon they came in sight of a strongly fortified town; and a
+whisper went through the little army that this was a disaffected place.
+
+But, when they came in sight, the great gate stood open, and the towers
+that flanked it on each side were manned with a single sentinel apiece.
+So the advancing force somewhat broke their array and marched
+carelessly.
+
+When they were within a furlong, the draw-bridge across the moat rose
+slowly and creaking till it stood vertical against the fort, and, the
+very moment it settled into this warlike attitude, down rattled the
+portcullis at the gate, and the towers and curtains bristled with lances
+and cross-bows.
+
+A stern hum ran through the Bastard's front rank and spread to the rear.
+
+"Halt!" cried he. The word went down the line, and they halted. "Herald
+to the gate!" A pursuivant spurred out of the ranks, and, halting twenty
+yards from the gate, raised his bugle with his herald's flag hanging
+down round it, and blew a summons. A tall figure in brazen armour
+appeared over the gate. A few fiery words passed between him and the
+herald, which were not audible, but their import clear, for the herald
+blew a single keen and threatening note at the walls, and came galloping
+back with war in his face. The Bastard moved out of the line to meet
+him, and their heads had not been together two seconds ere he turned in
+his saddle and shouted, "Pioneers, to the van!" and in a moment hedges
+were levelled, and the force took the field and encamped just out of
+shot from the walls; and away went mounted officers flying south, east,
+and west, to the friendly towns, for catapults, palisades, mantelets,
+raw hides, tar barrels, carpenters, provisions, and all the materials
+for a siege.
+
+The bright perspective mightily cheered one drooping soldier. At the
+first clang of the portcullis his eyes brightened and his temple
+flushed; and when the herald came back with battle in his eye he saw it
+in a moment, and for the first time this many days cried, "Courage, tout
+le monde, le diable est mort."
+
+If that great warrior heard, how he must have grinned!
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XLIII
+
+
+THE besiegers encamped a furlong from the walls and made roads; kept
+their pikemen in camp ready for an assault when practicable; and sent
+forward their sappers, pioneers, catapultiers, and cross-bowmen. These
+opened a siege by filling the moat, and mining, or breaching the wall,
+etc. And, as much of their work had to be done under close fire of
+arrows, quarels, bolts, stones, and little rocks, the above artists "had
+need of a hundred eyes," and acted in concert with a vigilance, and an
+amount of individual intelligence, daring and skill, that made a siege
+very interesting, and even amusing; to lookers on.
+
+The first thing they did was to advance their carpenters behind rolling
+mantelets, to erect a stockade high and strong on the very edge of the
+moat. Some lives were lost at this, but not many; for a strong force of
+cross-bowmen, including Denys, rolled their mantelets up and shot over
+the workmen's heads at every besieged who showed his nose, and at every
+loophole, arrow-slit, or other aperture, which commanded the particular
+spot the carpenters happened to be upon. Covered by their condensed
+fire, these soon raised a high palisade between them and the ordinary
+missiles from the pierced masonry.
+
+But the besieged expected this, and ran out at night their hoards, or
+wooden penthouses on the top of the curtains. The curtains were built
+with square holes near the top to receive the beams, that supported
+these structures, the true defence of mediaeval forts, from which the
+besieged delivered their missiles with far more freedom and variety of
+range than they could shoot through the oblique but immovable loopholes
+of the curtain, or even through the sloping crenelets of the higher
+towers. On this the besiegers brought up mangonels, and set them hurling
+huge stones at these wood works and battering them to pieces.
+Contemporaneously they built a triangular wooden tower as high as the
+curtain, and kept it ready for use, and just out of shot.
+
+This was a terrible sight to the besieged. These wooden towers had taken
+many a town. They began to mine underneath that part of the moat the
+tower stood frowning at; and made other preparations to give it a warm
+reception. The besiegers also mined, but at another part, their object
+being to get under the square barbican and throw it down. All this time
+Denys was behind his mantelet with another arbalestrier, protecting the
+workmen and making some excellent shots. These ended by earning him the
+esteem of an unseen archer, who every now and then sent a winged
+compliment quivering into his mantelet. One came and struck within an
+inch of the narrow slit through which Denys was squinting at the moment.
+"Peste," cried he, "you shoot well, my friend. Come forth and receive my
+congratulations! Shall merit such as thine hide its head? Comrade, it is
+one of those cursed Englishmen, with his half ell shaft. I'll not die
+till I've had a shot at London wall."
+
+On the besiegers' side was a figure that soon attracted great notice by
+promenading under fire. It was a tall knight, clad in complete brass,
+and carrying a light but prodigiously long lance with which he directed
+the movements of the besieged. And, when any disaster befell the
+besiegers, this long knight and his tall lance were pretty sure to be
+concerned in it.
+
+My young reader will say, "Why did not Denys shoot him?"
+
+Denys did shoot him; every day of his life: other arbalestriers shot
+him; archers shot him. Everybody shot him. He was there to be shot,
+apparently. But the abomination was, he did not mind being shot. Nay,
+worse, he got at last so demoralized as not to seem to know when he was
+shot. He walked his battlements under fire, as some stout skipper paces
+his deck in a suit of Flushing, calmly oblivious of the April drops that
+fall on his woolen armour. At last the besiegers got spiteful, and would
+not waste any more good steel on him; but cursed him and his impervious
+coat of mail.
+
+He took these missiles like the rest.
+
+Gunpowder has spoiled war. War was always detrimental to the solid
+interests of mankind. But in old times it was good for something: it
+painted well, sang divinely, furnished Iliads. But invisible butchery,
+under a pall of smoke a furlong thick, who is any the better for that?
+Poet with his note-book may repeat, "Suave etiam belli certamina magna
+tueri;" but the sentiment is hollow and savours of cuckoo. You can't
+tueri anything but a horrid row. He didn't say "Suave etiam ingentem
+caliginem tueri per campos instructam."
+
+They managed better in the middle ages.
+
+This siege was a small affair: but, such as it was, a writer or minstrel
+could see it; and turn an honest penny by singing it; so far then the
+sport was reasonable, and served an end.
+
+It was a bright day, clear, but not quite frosty. The efforts of the
+besieging force were concentrated against a space of about two hundred
+and fifty yards, containing two curtains, and two towers, one of which
+was the square barbican, the other had a pointed roof that was built to
+overlap, resting on a stone machicolade, and by this means a row of
+dangerous crenelets between the roof and the masonry grinned down at the
+nearer assailants, and looked not very unlike the grinders of a modern
+frigate with each port nearly closed. The curtains were overlapped with
+pent-houses somewhat shattered by the mangonels, trebuchets, and other
+slinging engines of the besiegers. On the besiegers' edge of the moat
+was what seemed at first sight a gigantic arsenal, longer than it was
+broad, peopled by human ants, and full of busy, honest industry, and
+displaying all the various mechanical science of the age in full
+operation. Here the lever at work, there the winch and pulley, here the
+balance, there the capstan. Everywhere heaps of stones, and piles of
+fascines, mantelets, and rows of fire-barrels. Mantelets rolling, the
+hammer tapping all day, horses and carts in endless succession rattling
+up with materials. Only, on looking closer into the hive of industry,
+you might observe that arrows were constantly flying to and fro, that
+the cranes did not tenderly deposit their masses of stone, but flung
+them with an indifference to property, though on scientific principles,
+and that among the tubs full of arrows, and the tar-barrels and the
+beams, the fagots, and other utensils, here and there a workman or a
+soldier lay flatter than is usual in limited naps, and something more or
+less feathered stuck in them, and blood, and other essentials, oozed
+out.
+
+At the edge of the moat opposite the wooden tower, a strong penthouse
+which they called "a cat" might be seen stealing towards the curtain,
+and gradually filling up the moat with fascines and rubbish, which the
+workmen flung out at its mouth. It was advanced by two sets of ropes
+passing round pulleys, and each worked by a windlass at some distance
+from the cat. The knight burnt the first cat by flinging blazing
+tar-barrels on it. So the besiegers made the roof of this one very
+steep, and covered it with raw hides, and the tar-barrels could not harm
+it. Then the knight made signs with his spear, and a little trebuchet
+behind the walls began dropping stones just clear of the wall into the
+moat, and at last they got the range, and a stone went clean through the
+roof of the cat, and made an ugly hole.
+
+Baldwyn of Burgundy saw this, and losing his temper, ordered the great
+catapult that was battering the wood-work of the curtain opposite it to
+be turned and levelled slantwise at this invulnerable knight. Denys and
+his Englishman went to dinner. These two worthies being eternally on the
+watch for one another had made a sort of distant acquaintance, and
+conversed by signs, especially on a topic that in peace or war maintains
+the same importance. Sometimes Denys would put a piece of bread on the
+top of his mantelet, and then the archer would hang something of the
+kind out by a string; or the order of invitation would be reversed. Any
+way they always managed to dine together.
+
+And now the engineers proceeded to the unusual step of slinging
+fifty-pound stones at an individual.
+
+This catapult was a scientific, simple, and beautiful engine, and very
+effective in vertical fire at the short ranges of the period.
+
+Imagine a fir-tree cut down, and set to turn round a horizontal axis on
+lofty uprights, but not in equilibrio; three-fourths of the tree being
+on the hither side. At the shorter and thicker end of the tree was
+fastened a weight of half a ton. This butt end just before the discharge
+pointed towards the enemy. By means of a powerful winch the long
+tapering portion of the tree was forced down to the very ground; and
+fastened by a bolt; and the stone placed in a sling attached to the
+tree's nose. But this process of course raised the butt end with its
+huge weight high in the air, and kept it there struggling in vain to
+come down. The bolt was now drawn; Gravity, an institution which
+flourished even then, resumed its sway, the short end swung furiously
+down, the long end went as furiously round up, and at its highest
+elevation flung the huge stone out of the sling with a tremendous jerk.
+In this case the huge mass so flung missed the knight, but came down
+near him on the penthouse, and went through it like paper, making an
+awful gap in roof and floor. Through the latter fell out two inanimate
+objects, the stone itself and the mangled body of a besieger it had
+struck. They fell down the high curtain side, down, down, and struck
+almost together the sullen waters of the moat, which closed bubbling on
+them, and kept both the stone and the bone two hundred years, till
+cannon mocked those oft perturbed waters, and civilization dried them.
+
+"Aha! a good shot," cried Baldwyn of Burgundy.
+
+The tall knight retired. The besiegers hooted him.
+
+He reappeared on the platform of the barbican, his helmet being just
+visible above the parapet. He seemed very busy, and soon an enormous
+Turkish catapult made its appearance on the platform, and aided by the
+elevation at which it was planted, flung a twenty-pound stone two
+hundred and forty yards in the air; it bounded after that, and knocked
+some dirt into the Lord Anthony's eye, and made him swear. The next
+stone struck a horse that was bringing up a sheaf of arrows in a cart,
+bowled the horse over dead like a rabbit, and spilt the cart. It was
+then turned at the besiegers' wooden tower, supposed to be out of shot.
+Sir Turk slung stones cut with sharp edges on purpose, and struck it
+repeatedly, and broke it in several places. The besiegers turned two of
+their slinging engines on this monster, and kept constantly slinging
+smaller stones on to the platform of the barbican, and killed two of the
+engineers. But the Turk disdained to retort. He flung a forty-pound
+stone on to the besiegers' great catapult, and hitting it in the
+neighbourhood of the axis, knocked the whole structure to pieces and
+sent the engineers skipping and yelling.
+
+In the afternoon, as Simon was running back to his mantelet from a
+palisade where he had been shooting at the besieged, Denys, peeping
+through his slit, saw the poor fellow suddenly stare and hold out his
+arms, then roll on his face, and a feathered arrow protruded from his
+back. The archer showed himself a moment to enjoy his skill. It was the
+Englishman. Denys, already prepared, shot his bolt and the murderous
+archer staggered away wounded. But poor Simon never moved. His wars were
+over.
+
+"I am unlucky in my comrades," said Denys.
+
+The next morning an unwelcome sight greeted the besieged. The cat was
+covered with mattresses and raw hides, and fast filling up the moat. The
+knight stoned it, but in vain; flung burning tar-barrels on it, but in
+vain. Then with his own hands he let down by a rope a bag of burning
+sulphur and pitch, and stunk them out. But Baldwyn, armed like a
+lobster, ran, and bounding on the roof, cut the string, and the work
+went on. Then the knight sent fresh engineers into the mine, and
+undermined the place and underpinned it with beams, and covered the
+beams thickly with grease and tar.
+
+At break of day the moat was filled, and the wooden tower began to move
+on its wheels towards a part of the curtain on which two catapults were
+already playing to breach the hoards, and clear the way. There was
+something awful and magical in its approach without visible agency, for
+it was driven by internal rollers worked by leverage. On the top was a
+platform, where stood the first assailing party protected in front by
+the drawbridge of the turret, which stood vertical till lowered on to
+the wall; but better protected by full suits of armour. The besieged
+slung at the tower, and struck it often, but in vain. It was well
+defended with mattresses and hides, and presently was at the edge of the
+moat. The knight bade fire the mine underneath it.
+
+Then the Turkish engine flung a stone of half a hundredweight right
+amongst the knights and carried two away with it off the tower on to the
+plain. One lay and writhed: the other neither moved nor spake.
+
+And now the besieging catapults flung blazing tar-barrels, and fired the
+hoards on both sides, and the assailants ran up the ladders behind the
+tower, and lowered the drawbridge on to the battered curtain, while the
+catapults in concert flung tar-barrels and fired the adjoining works to
+dislodge the defenders. The armed men on the platform sprang on the
+bridge, led by Baldwyn. The invulnerable knight and his men-at-arms met
+them, and a fearful combat ensued, in which many a figure was seen to
+fall headlong down off the narrow bridge. But fresh besiegers kept
+swarming up behind the tower, and the besieged were driven off the
+bridge.
+
+Another minute, and the town was taken, but so well had the firing of
+the mine been timed, that just at this instant the underpinners gave
+way, and the tower suddenly sank away from the walls tearing the
+drawbridge clear and pouring the soldiers off it against the masonry and
+on to the dry moat. The besieged uttered a fierce shout and in a moment
+surrounded Baldwyn and his fellows; but strange to say offered them
+quarter. While a party disarmed and disposed of these, others fired the
+turret in fifty places with a sort of hand grenades. At this work who so
+busy as the tall knight. He put fire-bags on his long spear, and thrust
+them into the doomed structure late so terrible. To do this he was
+obliged to stand on a projecting beam of the shattered hoard, holding on
+by the hand of a pikeman to steady himself. This provoked Denys, he ran
+out from his mantelet, hoping to escape notice in the confusion, and
+levelling his cross-bow missed the knight clean, but sent his bolt into
+the brain of the pikeman, and the tall knight fell heavily from the wall
+lance and all. Denys gazed wonderstruck: and, in that unlucky moment
+suddenly he felt his arm hot, then cold, and there was an English arrow
+skewering it.
+
+This episode was unnoticed in a much greater matter. The knight, his
+armour glittering in the morning sun, fell headlong, but, turning as he
+neared the water, struck it with a slap that sounded a mile off.
+
+None ever thought to see him again. But he fell at the edge of the
+fascines on which the turret stood all cocked on one side, and his spear
+stuck into them under water, and by a mighty effort he got to the side,
+but could not get out. Anthony sent a dozen knights with a white flag to
+take him prisoner. He submitted like a lamb, but said nothing.
+
+He was taken to Anthony's tent.
+
+That worthy laughed at first at the sight of his muddy armour. But
+presently, frowning, said, "I marvel, sir, that so good a knight as you
+should know his devoir so ill as turn rebel, and give us all this
+trouble."
+
+"I am nun--nun--nun--nun--nun--no knight."
+
+"What, then?"
+
+"A hosier."
+
+"A what? Then thy armour shall be stripped off, and thou shalt be tied
+to a stake in front of the works, and riddled with arrows for a warning
+to traitors."
+
+"N--n--n--n--no! duda--duda--duda--duda--don't do that."
+
+"Why not?"
+
+"Tuta--tuta--tuta--townsfolk will--h--h--h--hang t'other
+buba--buba--buba--buba--bastard."
+
+"What, whom?"
+
+"Your bub--bub--bub--brother Baldwyn."
+
+"What, have yon knaves ta'en him?"
+
+The warlike hosier nodded.
+
+"Hang the fool!" said Anthony peevishly.
+
+The warlike hosier watched his eye, and, doffing his helmet took out of
+the lining an intercepted letter from the duke, bidding the said Anthony
+come to court immediately, as he was to represent the court of Burgundy
+at the court of England: was to go over and receive the English king's
+sister and conduct her to her bridegroom the Earl of Charolois. The
+mission was one very soothing to Anthony's pride, and also to his love
+of pleasure. For Edward the Fourth held the gayest and most luxurious
+court in Europe. The sly hosier saw he longed to be off, and said,
+"We'll gega--gega--gega--gega--give ye a thousand angels to raise the
+siege."
+
+"And Baldwyn?"
+
+"I'll gega--gega--gega--gega--go and send him with the money."
+
+It was now dinner-time; and, a flag of truce being hoisted on both
+sides, the sham knight and the true one dined together and came to a
+friendly understanding.
+
+"But what is your grievance, my good friend?"
+
+"Tuta--tuta--tuta-tuta--too much taxes."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Denys on finding the arrow in his right arm, turned his back, which was
+protected by a long shield, and walked sulkily into camp. He was met by
+the Comte de Jarnac, who had seen his brilliant shot, and finding him
+wounded into the bargain, gave him a handful of broad pieces.
+
+"Hast got the better of thy grief, arbalestrier, methinks."
+
+"My grief, yes; but not my love. As soon as ever I have put down this
+rebellion, I go to Holland, and there I shall meet with him."
+
+This event was nearer than Denys thought. He was relieved from service
+next day, and, though his wound was no trifle, set out with a stout
+heart to rejoin his friend in Holland.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XLIV
+
+
+A CHANGE came over Margaret Brandt. She went about her household duties
+like one in a dream. If Peter did but speak a little quickly to her, she
+started and fixed two terrified eyes on him. She went less often to her
+friend Margaret Van Eyck, and was ill at her ease when there. Instead of
+meeting her warm old friend's caresses, she used to receive them passive
+and trembling, and sometimes almost shrink from them. But the most
+extraordinary thing was, she never would go outside her own house in
+daylight. When she went to Tergou it was after dusk, and she returned
+before daybreak. She would not even go to matins. At last Peter,
+unobservant as he was, noticed it, and asked her the reason.
+
+"The folk all look at me so."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+One day, Margaret Van Eyck asked her what was the matter. A scared look
+and a flood of tears were all the reply: the old lady expostulated
+gently. "What, sweetheart, afraid to confide your sorrows to me?"
+
+"I have no sorrows, madam, but of my own making. I am kinder treated
+than I deserve; especially in this house."
+
+"Then why not come oftener, my dear?"
+
+"I come oftener than I deserve:" and she sighed deeply.
+
+"There, Reicht is bawling for you," said Margaret Van Eyck; "go
+child!--what on earth can it be?"
+
+Turning possibilities over in her mind, she thought Margaret must be
+mortified at the contempt with which she was treated by Gerard's family.
+"I will take them to task for it, at least such of them as are women;"
+and, the very next day, she put on her hood and cloak, and, followed by
+Reicht, went to the hosier's house. Catherine received her with much
+respect, and thanked her with tears for her kindness to Gerard. But
+when, encouraged by this, her visitor diverged to Margaret Brandt,
+Catherine's eyes dried, and her lips turned to half the size, and she
+looked as only obstinate, ignorant women can look. When they put on this
+cast of features, you might as well attempt to soften or convince a
+brick wall. Margaret Van Eyck tried, but all in vain. So then, not
+being herself used to be thwarted, she got provoked, and at last went
+out hastily with an abrupt and mutilated curtsy, which Catherine
+returned with an air rather of defiance than obeisance. Outside the door
+Margaret Van Eyck found Reicht conversing with a pale girl on crutches.
+Margaret Van Eyck was pushing by them with heightened colour, and a
+scornful toss intended for the whole family, when suddenly a little
+delicate hand glided timidly into hers, and looking round she saw two
+dove-like eyes, with the water in them, that sought hers gratefully, and
+at the same time, imploringly. The old lady read this wonderful look,
+complex as it was, and down went her choler. She stooped and kissed
+Kate's brow. "I see," said she. "Mind, then, I leave it to you."
+Returned home, she said,--"I have been to a house to-day, where I have
+seen a very common thing and a very uncommon thing: I have seen a
+stupid, obstinate woman, and I have seen an angel in the flesh, with a
+face--if I had it here I'd take down my brushes once more, and try and
+paint it."
+
+Little Kate did not belie the good opinion so hastily formed of her. She
+waited a better opportunity, and told her mother what she had learned
+from Reicht Heynes, that Margaret had shed her very blood for Gerard in
+the wood.
+
+"See, mother, how she loves him."
+
+"Who would not love him?"
+
+"Oh, mother, think of it! Poor thing."
+
+"Ay, wench. She has her own trouble, no doubt, as well as we ours. I
+can't abide the sight of blood, let alone my own."
+
+This was a point gained; but when Kate tried to follow it up she was
+stopped short.
+
+About a month after this a soldier of the Dalgetty tribe, returning from
+service in Burgundy, brought a letter one evening to the hosier's house.
+He was away on business: but the rest of the family sat at supper. The
+soldier laid the letter on the table by Catherine, and, refusing all
+guerdon for bringing it, went off to Sevenbergen.
+
+The letter was unfolded and spread out: and curiously enough, though not
+one of them could read, they could all tell it was Gerard's handwriting.
+
+"And your father must be away," cried Catherine. "Are ye not ashamed of
+yourselves? not one that can read your brother's letter?"
+
+But although the words were to them what hieroglyphics are to us, there
+was something in the letter they could read. There is an art can speak
+without words: unfettered by the penman's limits, it can steal through
+the eye into the heart and brain, alike of the learned and unlearned:
+and it can cross a frontier or a sea, yet lose nothing. It is at the
+mercy of no translator: for it writes an universal language.
+
+When, therefore, they saw this,
+
+[Illustration]
+
+which Gerard had drawn with his pencil between the two short paragraphs,
+of which his letter consisted, they read it, and it went straight to
+their hearts.
+
+Gerard was bidding them farewell.
+
+As they gazed on that simple sketch, in every turn and line of which
+they recognized his manner, Gerard seemed present, and bidding them
+farewell.
+
+The women wept over it till they could see it no longer.
+
+Giles said, "Poor Gerard!" in a lower voice than seemed to belong to
+him.
+
+Even Cornelis and Sybrandt felt a momentary remorse, and sat silent and
+gloomy.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+But how to get the words read to them. They were loth to show their
+ignorance and their emotion to a stranger.
+
+"The Dame Van Eyck?" said Kate, timidly.
+
+"And so I will, Kate. She has a good heart. She loves Gerard, too. She
+will be glad to hear of him. I was short with her when she came here:
+but I will make my submission, and then she will tell me what my poor
+child says to me."
+
+She was soon at Margaret Van Eyck's house. Reicht took her into a room,
+and said, "Bide a minute; she is at her orisons."
+
+There was a young woman in the room seated pensively by the stove; but
+she rose and courteously made way for the visitor.
+
+"Thank you, young lady; the winter nights are cold, and your stove is a
+treat." Catherine then, while warming her hands, inspected her companion
+furtively from head to foot, both inclusive. The young person wore an
+ordinary wimple, but her gown was trimmed with fur, which was, in those
+days, almost a sign of superior rank or wealth. But what most struck
+Catherine was the candour and modesty of the face. She felt sure of
+sympathy from so good a countenance, and began to gossip.
+
+"Now, what think you brings me here, young lady? It is a letter: a
+letter from my poor boy that is far away in some savage part or other.
+And I take shame to say that none of us can read it. I wonder whether
+you can read?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Can ye, now? It is much to your credit, my dear. I dare say she won't
+be long; but every minute is an hour to a poor longing mother."
+
+"I will read it to you."
+
+"Bless you, my dear; bless you!"
+
+In her unfeigned eagerness she never noticed the suppressed eagerness,
+with which the hand was slowly put out to take the letter. She did not
+see the tremor with which the fingers closed on it.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+"Come then, read it to me, prithee. I am wearying for it."
+
+"The first words are, 'To my honoured parents.'"
+
+"Ay! and he always did honour us, poor soul."
+
+"'God and the saints have you in his holy keeping, and bless you by
+night and by day. Your one harsh deed is forgotten; your years of love
+remembered.'"
+
+Catherine laid her hand on her bosom, and sank back in her chair with
+one long sob.
+
+"Then comes this, madam. It doth speak for itself; 'a long farewell.'"
+
+"Ay, go on: bless you, girl; you give me sorry comfort. Still 'tis
+comfort."
+
+"'To my brothers Cornelis and Sybrandt:--Be content; you will see me no
+more!'"
+
+"What does that mean? Ah."
+
+"'To my sister Kate. Little angel of my father's house. Be kind to
+_her_--' Ah!"
+
+"That is Margaret Brandt, my dear,--his sweetheart, poor soul. I've not
+been kind to her, my dear. Forgive me, Gerard!"
+
+"'--for poor Gerard's sake: since grief to her is death--to--me----'
+Ah!" And nature, resenting the poor girl's struggle for unnatural
+composure, suddenly gave way, and she sank from her chair and lay
+insensible, with the letter in her hand, and her head on Catherine's
+knees.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XLV
+
+
+EXPERIENCED women are not frightened when a woman faints, nor do they
+hastily attribute it to anything but physical causes, which they have
+often seen produce it. Catherine bustled about; laid the girl down with
+her head on the floor quite flat, opened the window, and unloosed her
+dress as she lay. Not till she had done all this did she step to the
+door and say, rather loudly:
+
+"Come here, if you please."
+
+Margaret Van Eyck and Reicht came and found Margaret lying quite flat,
+and Catherine beating her hands.
+
+"Oh, my poor girl! What have you done to her?"
+
+"Me?" said Catherine, angrily.
+
+"What has happened, then?"
+
+"Nothing, madam; nothing more than is natural in her situation."
+
+Margaret Van Eyck coloured with ire.
+
+"You do well to speak so coolly," said she, "you that are the cause of
+her situation."
+
+"That I am not," said Catherine, bluntly, "nor any woman born."
+
+"What? was it not you and your husband that kept them apart: and now he
+is gone to Italy all alone. Situation indeed? You have broken her heart
+amongst you."
+
+"Why, madam? Who is it then? in Heaven's name? to hear you one would
+think this was my Gerard's lass. But that can't be. This fur never cost
+less than five crowns the ell; besides, this young gentlewoman is a
+wife; or ought to be."
+
+"Of course she ought. And who is the cause she is none? Who came between
+them at the very altar?"
+
+"God forgive them, whoever it was," said Catherine, gravely: "me it was
+not, nor my man."
+
+"Well," said the other, a little softened, "now you have seen her
+perhaps you will not be quite so bitter against her, madam. She is
+coming to, thank Heaven."
+
+"Me bitter against her?" said Catherine: "no; that is all over. Poor
+soul! trouble behind her and trouble afore her; and to think of my
+setting her, of all living women, to read Gerard's letter to me. Ay, and
+that was what made her go off, I'll be sworn. She is coming to. What,
+sweetheart? be not afeard, none are here but friends."
+
+They seated her in an easy chair. As the colour was creeping back to her
+face and lips, Catherine drew Margaret Van Eyck aside.
+
+"Is she staying with you, if you please?"
+
+"No, madam."
+
+"I wouldn't let her go back to Sevenbergen to-night, then."
+
+"That is as she pleases. She still refuses to bide the night."
+
+"Ay, but you are older than she is; you can make her. There, she is
+beginning to notice." Catherine then put her mouth to Margaret Van
+Eyck's ear for half a moment; it did not seem time enough to whisper a
+word, far less a sentence. But on some topics females can flash
+communication to female like lightning, or thought itself.
+
+The old lady started, and whispered back.
+
+"It's false! it is a calumny! it is monstrous! Look at her face. It is
+blasphemy to accuse such a face."
+
+"Tut! tut! tut!" said the other, "you might as well say this is not my
+hand. I ought to know; and I tell ye it is _so_."
+
+Then much to Margaret Van Eyck's surprise she went up to the girl, and,
+taking her round the neck, kissed her warmly. "I suffered for Gerard,
+and you shed your blood for him I do hear: his own words show me I have
+been to blame, the very words you have read to me. Ay, Gerard, my child,
+I have held aloof from her. But I'll make it up to her, once I begin.
+You are my daughter from this hour."
+
+Another warm embrace sealed this hasty compact, and the woman of impulse
+was gone.
+
+Margaret lay back in her chair, and a feeble smile stole over her face.
+Gerard's mother had kissed her and called her daughter; but the next
+moment she saw her old friend looking at her with a vexed air.
+
+"I wonder you let that woman kiss you."
+
+"His mother!" murmured Margaret, half reproachfully.
+
+"Mother, or no mother, you would not let her touch you if you knew what
+she whispered in my ear about you."
+
+"About me?" said Margaret, faintly.
+
+"Ay, about you whom she never saw till to-night." The old lady was
+proceeding, with some hesitation and choice of language, to make
+Margaret share her indignation, when an unlooked-for interruption closed
+her lips.
+
+The young woman slid from her chair to her knees, and began to pray
+piteously to her for pardon. From the words and the manner of her
+penitence a bystander would have gathered she had inflicted some cruel
+wrong, some intolerable insult, upon her venerable friend.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XLVI
+
+
+THE little party at the hosier's house sat at table discussing the
+recent event, when their mother returned, and, casting a piercing glance
+all round the little circle, laid the letter flat on the table. She
+repeated every word of it by memory, following the lines with her
+finger, to cheat herself and hearers into the notion that she could read
+the words or nearly. Then, suddenly lifting her head, she cast another
+keen look on Cornelis and Sybrandt: their eyes fell.
+
+On this the storm that had long been brewing burst on their heads.
+
+Catherine seemed to swell like an angry hen ruffling her feathers, and
+out of her mouth came a Rhone and Saone of wisdom and twaddle, of great
+and mean invective, such as no male that ever was born could utter in
+one current; and not many women.
+
+The following is a fair though a small sample of her words: only they
+were uttered all in one breath:--
+
+"I have long had my doubts that you blew the flame betwixt Gerard and
+your father, and set that old rogue, Ghysbrecht, on. And now here are
+Gerard's own written words to prove it. You have driven your own flesh
+and blood into a far land, and robbed the mother that bore you of her
+darling, the pride of her eye, the joy of her heart. But you are all of
+a piece from end to end. When you were all boys together, my others were
+a comfort; but you were a curse: mischievous and sly; and took a woman
+half a day to keep your clothes whole: for why? work wears cloth, but
+play cuts it. With the beard comes prudence: but none came to you: still
+the last to go to bed, and the last to leave it; and why? because
+honesty goes to bed early, and industry rises betimes; where there are
+two lie-abeds in a house there are a pair of ne'er-do-weels. Often I've
+sat and looked at your ways, and wondered where ye came from: ye don't
+take after your father, and ye are no more like me than a wasp is to an
+ant; sure ye were changed in the cradle, or the cuckoo dropped ye on my
+floor: for ye have not our hands, nor our hearts: of all my blood none
+but you ever jeered them that God afflicted; but often when my back was
+turned I've heard you mock at Giles, because he is not so big as some;
+and at my lily Kate, because she is not so strong as a Flanders mare.
+After that rob a church an you will! for you can be no worse in His eyes
+that made both Kate and Giles, and in mine that suffered for them, poor
+darlings, as I did for you, you paltry, unfeeling, treasonable curs! No,
+I will not hush, my daughter; they have filled the cup too full. It
+takes a deal to turn a mother's heart against the sons she has nursed
+upon her knees; and many is the time I have winked and wouldn't see too
+much, and bitten my tongue, lest their father should know them as I do;
+he would have put them to the door that moment. But now they have filled
+the cup too full. And where got ye all this money? For this last month
+you have been rolling in it. You never wrought for it. I wish I may
+never hear from other mouths how ye got it. It is since that night you
+were out so late, and _your_ head came back so swelled, Cornelis. Sloth
+and greed are ill mated, my masters. Lovers of money must sweat or
+steal. Well, if you robbed any poor soul of it, it was some woman, I'll
+go bail; for a man would drive you with his naked hand. No matter; it
+is good for one thing. It has shown me how you will guide our gear if
+ever it comes to be yourn. I have watched you, my lads, this while. You
+have spent a groat to-day between you. And I spend scarce a groat a
+week, and keep you all, good _and_ bad. No! give up waiting for the
+shoes that will maybe walk behind your coffin; for this shop and this
+house shall never be yourn. Gerard is our heir: poor Gerard whom you
+have banished and done your best to kill; after that never call me
+mother again! But you have made him tenfold dearer to me. My poor lost
+boy! I shall soon see him again; shall hold him in my arms, and set him
+on my knees. Ay, you may stare! You are too crafty, and yet not crafty
+enow. You cut the stalk away; but you left the seed--the seed that shall
+outgrow you, and outlive you. Margaret Brandt is quick, and it is
+Gerard's, and what is Gerard's is mine; and I have prayed the saints it
+may be a boy: and it will--it must. Kate, when I found it was so, my
+bowels yearned over her child unborn as if it had been my own. He is our
+heir. He will outlive us. You will not: for a bad heart in a carcass is
+like the worm in a nut, soon brings the body to dust. So, Kate, take
+down Gerard's bib and tucker that are in the drawer you wot of, and one
+of these days we will carry them to Sevenbergen. We will borrow Peter
+Buyskens' cart, and go comfort Gerard's wife under her burden. She is
+his wife. Who is Ghysbrecht Van Swieten? Can he come between a couple
+and the altar, and sunder those that God and the priest make one? She is
+my daughter, and I am as proud of her as I am of you, Kate, almost; and
+as for _you_, keep out of my way awhile: for you are like the black dog
+in my eyes."
+
+Cornelis and Sybrandt took the hint and slunk out, aching with remorse,
+and impenitence, and hate. They avoided her eye as much as ever they
+could: and for many days she never spoke a word good, bad, or
+indifferent, to either of them. Liberaverat animum suum.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XLVII
+
+
+CATHERINE was a good housewife who seldom left home for a day, and then
+one thing or another always went amiss. She was keenly conscious of
+this, and, watching for a slack tide in things domestic, put off her
+visit to Sevenbergen from day to day, and one afternoon that it really
+could have been managed Peter Buyskens' mule was out of the way.
+
+At last, one day Eli asked her before all the family, whether it was
+true she had thought of visiting Margaret Brandt.
+
+"Ay, my man."
+
+"Then I do forbid you."
+
+"Oh, do you?"
+
+"I do."
+
+"Then there is no more to be said, I suppose," said she, colouring.
+
+"Not a word," replied Eli, sternly.
+
+When she was alone with her daughter she was very severe, not upon Eli,
+but upon herself.
+
+"Behoved me rather go thither like a cat at a robin. But this was me all
+over. I am like a silly hen that can lay no egg without cackling, and
+convening all the house to rob her on't. Next time you and I are after
+aught the least amiss, let's do't in Heaven's name then and there, and
+not take time to think about it, far less talk; so then, if they take us
+to task we can say, alack we knew nought; we thought no ill; now, who'd
+ever? and so forth. For two pins I'd go thither in all their teeth."
+
+Defiance so wild and picturesque staggered Kate. "Nay, mother; with
+patience father will come round."
+
+"And so will Michaelmas; but when? and I was so bent on you seeing the
+girl. Then we could have put our heads together about her. Say what they
+will, there is no judging body or beast but by the eye. And were I to
+have fifty more sons I'd ne'er thwart one of them's fancy, till such
+time as I had clapped my eyes upon her and seen Quicksands: say you, I
+should have thought of that before condemning Gerard his fancy: but
+there, life is a school, and the lesson ne'er done; we put down one
+fault and take up t'other, and so go blundering here, and blundering
+there, till we blunder into our graves, and there's an end of us."
+
+"Mother," said Kate, timidly.
+
+"Well, what is a-coming now? no good news though, by the look of you.
+What on earth can make the poor wench so scared?"
+
+"An avowal she hath to make," faltered Kate, faintly.
+
+"Now, there is a noble word for ye," said Catherine, proudly. "Our
+Gerard taught thee that, I'll go bail. Come then, out with thy vowel."
+
+"Well then, sooth to say, I have seen her."
+
+"Anan?"
+
+"And spoken with her to boot."
+
+"And never told me? After this marvels are dirt."
+
+"Mother, you were so hot against her. I waited till I could tell you
+without angering you worse."
+
+"Ay," said Catherine, half sadly, half bitterly, "like mother like
+daughter: cowardice it is our bane. The others I whiles buffet; or how
+would the house fare? but did you, Kate, ever have harsh word or look
+from your poor mother, that you----. Nay, I will not have ye cry, girl;
+ten to one ye had your reason; so rise up, brave heart, and tell me all,
+better late than ne'er; and first and foremost when ever, and how ever,
+wond you to Sevenbergen wi' your poor crutches, and I not know?"
+
+"I never was there in my life; and, mammy dear, to say that I ne'er
+wished to see her that I will not, but I ne'er went, nor sought to see
+her."
+
+"There, now," said Catherine, disputatively, "said I not 'twas all
+unlike my girl to seek her unbeknown to me. Come now, for I'm all agog."
+
+"Then thus 'twas. It came to my ears, no matter how, and prithee, good
+mother, on my knees ne'er ask me how, that Gerard was a prisoner in the
+Stadthouse tower."
+
+"Ah!"
+
+"By father's behest as 'twas pretended."
+
+Catherine uttered a sigh that was almost a moan. "Blacker than I
+thought," she muttered, faintly.
+
+"Giles and I went out at night to bid him be of good cheer. And there at
+the tower foot was a brave lass, quite strange to me I vow, on the same
+errand."
+
+"Lookee there now, Kate."
+
+"At first we did properly frighten one another, through the place his
+bad name, and our poor heads being so full o' divels, and we whitened a
+bit in moonshine. But next moment, quo' I 'You are Margaret:' 'And you
+are Kate,' quo' she. Think on't!"
+
+"Did one ever?--'Twas Gerard! He will have been talking backwards and
+forrards of thee to her, and her to thee."
+
+In return for this, Kate bestowed on Catherine one of the prettiest
+presents in nature--the composite kiss: _i. e._, she imprinted on her
+cheek a single kiss, which said--
+
+1. Quite correct.
+
+2. Good, clever mother, for guessing so right and quick.
+
+3. How sweet for us twain to be of one mind again after never having
+been otherwise.
+
+4. Etc.
+
+"Now then, speak thy mind, child, Gerard is not here. Alas, what am I
+saying? would to Heaven he were."
+
+"Well then, mother, she is comely, and wrongs her picture but little."
+
+"Eh, dear; hark to young folk! I am for good acts, not good looks. Loves
+she my boy as he did ought to be loved?"
+
+"Sevenbergen is farther from the Stadthouse than we are," said Kate,
+thoughtfully; "yet she was there afore me."
+
+Catherine nodded intelligence.
+
+"Nay, more, she had got him out ere I came. Ay, down from the captives'
+tower."
+
+Catherine shook her head incredulously. "The highest tower for miles! It
+is not feasible."
+
+"'Tis sooth though. She and an old man she brought found means and wit
+to send him up a rope. There 'twas dangling from his prison, and our
+Giles went up it. When first I saw it hang, I said, 'This is glamour.'
+But when the frank lass's arms came round me, and her bosom did beat on
+mine, and her cheeks wet, then said I, ''Tis not glamour: 'tis love.'
+For she is not like me, but lusty and able; and, dear heart, even I,
+poor frail creature, do feel sometimes as I could move the world for
+them I love: I love _you_, mother. And she loves Gerard."
+
+"God bless her for't! God bless her!"
+
+"But."
+
+"But what, lamb?"
+
+"Her love, is it for very certain honest? 'Tis most strange; but that
+very thing, which hath warmed your heart, hath somewhat cooled mine
+towards her; poor soul. She is no wife, you know mother when all is
+done."
+
+"Humph! They have stood at th' altar together."
+
+"Ay, but they went as they came, maid and bachelor."
+
+"The parson, saith he so?"
+
+"Nay, for that I know not."
+
+"Then I'll take no man's word but his in such a tangled skein." After
+some reflection she added, "Natheless art right, girl; I'll to
+Sevenbergen alone. A wife I am but not a slave. We are all in the dark
+here. And she holds the clue. I must question her, and no one by; least
+of all you. I'll not take my lily to a house wi' a spot, no, not to a
+palace o' gold and silver."
+
+The more Catherine pondered this conversation, the more she felt drawn
+towards Margaret, and moreover "she was all agog" with curiosity, a
+potent passion with us all, and nearly omnipotent with those, who, like
+Catherine, do not slake it with reading. At last, one fine day, after
+dinner, she whispered to Kate, "Keep the house from going to pieces, an
+ye can;" and donned her best kirtle and hood, and her scarlet clocked
+hose and her new shoes, and trudged briskly off to Sevenbergen,
+troubling no man's mule.
+
+When she got there she inquired where Margaret Brandt lived. The first
+person she asked shook his head, and said, "The name is strange to me."
+She went a little farther and asked a girl of about fifteen who was
+standing at a door: "Father," said the girl, speaking into the house,
+"here is another after that magician's daughter." The man came out and
+told Catherine Peter Brandt's cottage was just outside the town on the
+east side. "You may see the chimney hence:" and he pointed it out to
+her. "But you will not find them there, nother father nor daughter; they
+have left the town this week, bless you."
+
+"Say not so, good man, and me walken all the way from Tergou."
+
+"From Tergou? then you must ha' met the soldier."
+
+"What soldier? ay, I did meet a soldier."
+
+"Well, then, yon soldier was here seeking that selfsame Margaret."
+
+"Ay, and warn't a mad with us because she was gone?" put in the girl.
+"His long beard and her cheek are no strangers, I warrant."
+
+"Say no more than ye know," said Catherine, sharply. "You are young to
+take to slandering your elders. Stay! tell me more about this soldier,
+good man."
+
+"Nay, I know no more than that he came hither seeking Margaret Brandt,
+and I told him she and her father had made a moonlight flit on't this
+day sennight, and that some thought the devil had flown away with them,
+being magicians. 'And,' says he, 'the devil fly away with thee for thy
+ill news:' that was my thanks. 'But I doubt 'tis a lie,' said he. 'An
+you think so,' said I, 'go and see.' 'I will,' said he, and burst out
+wi' a hantle o' gibberish: my wife thinks 'twas curses: and hied him to
+the cottage. Presently back a comes, and sings t'other tune. 'You were
+right and I was wrong,' says he, and shoves a silver coin in my hand.
+Show it the wife, some of ye; then she'll believe me; I have been called
+a liar once to-day."
+
+"It needs not," said Catherine, inspecting the coin all the same.
+
+"And he seemed quiet and sad-like, didn't he now, wench?"
+
+"That a did," said the young woman warmly; "and, dame, he was just as
+pretty a man as ever I clapped eyes on. Cheeks like a rose, and shining
+beard, and eyes in his head like sloes."
+
+"I saw he was well bearded," said Catherine; "but, for the rest, at my
+age I scan them not as when I was young and foolish. But he seemed right
+civil: doffed his bonnet to me as I had been a queen, and I did drop him
+my best reverence, for manners beget manners. But little I wist he had
+been her light o' love, and most likely the----Who bakes for this town?"
+
+The man, not being acquainted with her, opened his eyes at this
+transition, swift and smooth.
+
+"Well, dame, there be two; John Bush and Eric Donaldson, they both bide
+in this street."
+
+"Then, God be with you, good people" said she, and proceeded: but her
+sprightly foot came flat on the ground now, and no longer struck it with
+little jerks and cocking heel. She asked the bakers whether Peter Brandt
+had gone away in their debt. Bush said they were not customers.
+Donaldson said "not a stiver: his daughter had come round and paid him
+the very night they went. Didn't believe they owed a copper in the
+town." So Catherine got all the information of that kind she wanted with
+very little trouble.
+
+"Can you tell me what sort this Margaret was?" said she, as she turned
+to go.
+
+"Well, somewhat too reserved for my taste. I like a chatty
+customer--when I'm not too busy. But she bore a high character for being
+a good daughter."
+
+"'Tis no small praise. A well-looking lass I am told?"
+
+"Why, whence come you, wyfe?"
+
+"From Tergou."
+
+"Oh, ay. Well you shall judge: the lads clept her 'the beauty of
+Sevenbergen;' the lasses did scout it merrily, and terribly pulled her
+to pieces, and found so many faults no two could agree where the fault
+lay."
+
+"That is enough," said Catherine. "I see, the bakers are no fools in
+Sevenbergen, and the young women no shallower than in other burghs."
+
+She bought a manchet of bread, partly out of sympathy and justice (she
+kept a shop), partly to show her household how much better bread she
+gave them daily; and returned to Tergou dejected.
+
+Kate met her outside the town with beaming eyes.
+
+"Well, Kate lass; it is a happy thing I went; I am heart-broken. Gerard
+has been sore abused. The child is none of ourn, nor the mother from
+this hour."
+
+"Alas, mother, I fathom not your meaning."
+
+"Ask me no more, girl, but never mention her name to me again. That is
+all."
+
+Kate acquiesced with a humble sigh, and they went home together.
+
+They found a soldier seated tranquilly by their fire. The moment they
+entered the door, he rose, and saluted them civilly. They stood and
+looked at him, Kate with some little surprise, but Catherine with a
+great deal, and with rising indignation.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XLVIII
+
+
+"WHAT makes you here?" was Catherine's greeting.
+
+"I came to seek after Margaret."
+
+"Well, we know no such person."
+
+"Say not so, dame; sure you know her by name, Margaret Brandt."
+
+"We have heard of her for that matter--to our cost."
+
+"Come, dame, prithee tell me at least where she bides."
+
+"I know not where she bides, and care not."
+
+Denys felt sure this was a deliberate untruth. He bit his lip. "Well, I
+looked to find myself in an enemy's country at this Tergou; but maybe if
+ye knew all ye would not be so dour."
+
+"I do know all," replied Catherine bitterly. "This morn I knew nought."
+Then suddenly setting her arms akimbo she told him with a raised voice
+and flashing eyes she wondered at his cheek sitting down by that hearth
+of all hearths in the world.
+
+"May Satan fly away with your hearth to the lake of fire and brimstone,"
+shouted Denys, who could speak Flemish fluently. "Your own servant bade
+me sit there till you came, else I had ne'er troubled your hearth. My
+malison on it, and on the churlish roof-tree that greets an unoffending
+stranger this way," and he strode scowling to the door.
+
+"Oh! oh!" ejaculated Catherine frightened, and also a little
+conscience-stricken; and the virago sat suddenly down and burst into
+tears. Her daughter followed suit quietly, but without loss of time.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+A shrewd writer, now unhappily lost to us, has somewhere the following
+dialogue:--
+
+_She._] "I feel all a woman's weakness."
+
+_He._] "Then you are invincible."
+
+Denys, by anticipation, confirmed that valuable statement; he stood at
+the door looking ruefully at the havoc his thunderbolt of eloquence had
+made.
+
+"Nay, wife," said he, "weep not neither for a soldier's hasty word. I
+mean not all I said. Why your house is your own, and what right in it
+have I? There now, I'll go."
+
+"What is to do?" said a grave manly voice. It was Eli; he had come in
+from the shop.
+
+"Here is a ruffian been a-scolding of your womenfolk and making them
+cry," explained Denys.
+
+"Little Kate, what is't? for ruffians do not use to call themselves
+ruffians," said Eli the sensible.
+
+Ere she could explain, "Hold your tongue, girl," said Catherine; "Muriel
+bade him sat down, and I knew not that, and wyted on him; and he was
+going and leaving his malison on us, root and branch. I was never so
+becursed in all my days, oh! oh! oh!"
+
+"You were both somewhat to blame; both you and he," said Eli calmly.
+"However, what the servant says the master should still stand to. We
+keep not open house, but yet we are not poor enough to grudge a seat at
+our hearth in a cold day to a wayfarer with an honest face, and as, I
+think, a wounded man. So, end all malice, and sit ye down!"
+
+"Wounded?" cried mother and daughter in a breath.
+
+"Think you a soldier slings his arm for sport?"
+
+"Nay, 'tis but an arrow," said Denys cheerfully.
+
+"But an arrow?" said Kate with concentrated horror. "Where were our
+eyes, mother?"
+
+"Nay, in good sooth, a trifle. Which however I will pray mesdames to
+accept as an excuse for my vivacity. 'Tis these little foolish trifling
+wounds that fret a man, worthy sir. Why, look ye now, sweeter temper
+than our Gerard never breathed, yet, when the bear did but strike a
+piece no bigger than a crown out of his calf, he turned so hot and
+choleric y'had said he was no son of yours, but got by the good knight
+Sir John Pepper on his wife dame Mustard; who is this? a dwarf? your
+servant, master Giles."
+
+"Your servant, soldier," roared the new-comer. Denys started. He had not
+counted on exchanging greetings with a petard.
+
+Denys's words had surprised his hosts, but hardly more than their
+deportment now did him. They all three came creeping up to where he sat,
+and looked down into him with their lips parted, as if he had been some
+strange phenomenon.
+
+And growing agitation succeeded to amazement.
+
+"Now hush!" said Eli, "let none speak but I. Young man," said he
+solemnly, "in God's name who are you, that know us though we know you
+not, and that shake our hearts speaking to us of--the absent--our poor
+rebellious son: whom Heaven forgive and bless?"
+
+"What, master," said Denys lowering his voice, "hath he not writ to you?
+hath he not told you of me, Denys of Burgundy?"
+
+"He hath writ, but three lines, and named not Denys of Burgundy, nor any
+stranger."
+
+"Ay, I mind the long letter was to his sweetheart, this Margaret, and
+she has decamped, plague take her, and how I am to find her Heaven
+knows."
+
+"What, she is not your sweetheart, then?"
+
+"Who, dame? an't please you."
+
+"Why, Margaret Brandt."
+
+"How can my comrade's sweetheart be mine? I know her not from Noah's
+niece; how should I? I never saw her."
+
+"Whist with this idle chat, Kate," said Eli impatiently, "and let the
+young man answer me. How came you to know Gerard, our son? Prithee now
+think on a parent's cares, and answer me straightforward, like a soldier
+as thou art."
+
+"And shall. I was paid off at Flushing, and started for Burgundy. On the
+German frontier I lay at the same inn with Gerard. I fancied him. I said
+'Be my comrade.' He was loth at first: consented presently. Many a weary
+league we trode together. Never were truer comrades: never will be while
+earth shall last. First I left my route a bit to be with him: then he
+his to be with me. We talked of Sevenbergen, and Tergou, a thousand
+times; and of all in this house. We had our troubles on the road: but
+battling them together made them light. I saved his life from a bear; he
+mine in the Rhine: for he swims like a duck and I like a hod o' bricks;
+and one another's lives at an inn in Burgundy, where we two held a room
+for a good hour against seven cutthroats, and crippled one and slew two;
+and your son did his devoir like a man, and met the stoutest champion I
+ever countered, and spitted him like a sucking-pig. Else I had not been
+here. But just, when all was fair, and I was to see him safe aboard ship
+for Rome, if not to Rome itself, met us that son of a ---- the Lord
+Anthony of Burgundy, and his men, making for Flanders, then in
+insurrection, tore us by force apart, took me where I got some broad
+pieces in hand, and a broad arrow in my shoulder, and left my poor
+Gerard lonesome. At that sad parting, soldier though I be, these eyes
+did rain salt scalding tears, and so did his, poor soul. His last word
+to me was 'Go comfort Margaret!' so here I be. Mine to him was 'Think no
+more of Rome. Make for Rhine, and down stream home.' Now say, for you
+know best, did I advise him well or ill?"
+
+"Soldier, take my hand," said Eli. "God bless thee! God bless thee!" and
+his lip quivered. It was all his reply, but more eloquent than many
+words.
+
+Catherine did not answer at all, but she darted from the room and bade
+Muriel bring the best that was in the house, and returned with wood in
+both arms, and heaped the fire, and took out a snow-white cloth from the
+press, and was going in a great hurry to lay it for Gerard's friend,
+when suddenly she sat down and all the power ebbed rapidly out of her
+body.
+
+"Father!" cried Kate, whose eye was as quick as her affection. Denys
+started up; but Eli waived him back and flung a little water sharply in
+his wife's face. This did her instant good. She gasped, "So sudden. My
+poor boy!" Eli whispered Denys, "Take no notice! she thinks of him night
+and day." They pretended not to observe her, and she shook it off, and
+bustled and laid the cloth with her own hands; but, as she smoothed it,
+her hands trembled and a tear or two stole down her cheeks.
+
+They could not make enough of Denys. They stuffed him, and crammed him:
+and then gathered round him and kept filling his glass in turn, while by
+that genial blaze of fire and ruby wine and eager eyes he told all that
+I have related, and a vast number of minor details which an artist,
+however minute, omits.
+
+But how different the effect on my readers and on this small circle! To
+them the interest was already made before the first word came from his
+lips. It was all about Gerard, and he, who sat there telling it them,
+was warm from Gerard and an actor with him in all these scenes.
+
+The flesh and blood around that fire quivered for their severed member,
+hearing its struggles and perils.
+
+I shall ask my readers to recall to memory all they can of Gerard's
+journey with Denys, and in their mind's eye to see those very matters
+told by his comrade to an exile's father, all stoic outside, all father
+within, and to two poor women, an exile's mother and a sister, who were
+all love and pity and tender anxiety both outside and in. Now would you
+mind closing this book for a minute and making an effort to realize all
+this? It will save us so much repetition.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Then you will not be surprised when I tell you that after a while Giles
+came softly and curled himself up before the fire, and lay gazing at the
+speaker with a reverence almost canine; and that, when the rough soldier
+had unconsciously but thoroughly betrayed his better qualities, and
+above all his rare affection for Gerard, Kate, though timorous as a
+bird, stole her little hand into the warrior's huge brown palm, where it
+lay an instant like a teaspoonful of cream spilt on a platter, then
+nipped the ball of his thumb and served for a Kardiometer. In other
+words Fate is just even to rival story-tellers, and balances matters.
+Denys had to pay a tax to his audience which I have not. Whenever Gerard
+was in too much danger, the female faces became so white, and their poor
+little throats gurgled so, he was obliged in common humanity to spoil
+his recital. Suspense is the soul of narrative, and thus dealt
+Rough-and-Tender of Burgundy with his best suspenses. "Now, dame, take
+not on till ye hear the end: Ma'amselle, let not your cheek blanch so,
+courage! it looks ugly: but you shall hear how we wond through. Had he
+miscarried, and I at hand, would I be alive?"
+
+And I called Kate's little hand a Kardiometer, or heart-measurer,
+because it graduated emotion, and pinched by scale. At its best it was
+by no means a high-pressure engine. But all is relative. Denys soon
+learned the tender gamut; and when to water the suspense, and extract
+the thrill as far as possible. On one occasion only he cannily
+indemnified his narrative for this drawback. Falling personally into the
+Rhine, and sinking, he got pinched, he Denys, to his surprise and
+satisfaction. "Oho!" thought he, and on the principle of the anatomists,
+"experimentum in corpore vili," kept himself a quarter of an hour under
+water; under pressure all the time. And even when Gerard had got hold of
+him, he was loth to leave the river, so, less conscientious than I was,
+swam with Gerard to the east bank first, and was about to land, but
+detected the officers, and their intent, chaffed them a little space,
+treading water, then turned and swam wearily all across, and at last was
+obliged to get out, for very shame, or else acknowledge himself a pike;
+so permitted himself to land, exhausted: and the pressure relaxed.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+It was eleven o'clock, an unheard-of hour, but they took no note of time
+this night; and Denys had still much to tell them, when the door was
+opened quietly, and in stole Cornelis and Sybrandt looking hang-dog.
+They had this night been drinking the very last drop of their mysterious
+funds.
+
+Catherine feared her husband would rebuke them before Denys: but he only
+looked sadly at them, and motioned them to sit down quietly.
+
+Denys it was who seemed discomposed. He knitted his brows and eyed them
+thoughtfully and rather gloomily. Then turned to Catherine. "What say
+you, dame? the rest tomorrow? for I am somewhat weary and it waxes
+late."
+
+"So be it," said Eli. But when Denys rose to go to his inn, he was
+instantly stopped by Catherine.
+
+"And think you to lie from this house? Gerard's room has been got ready
+for you hours agone: the sheets I'll not say much for, seeing I spun the
+flax and wove the web."
+
+"Then would I lie in them blindfold," was the gallant reply.
+
+"Ah, dame, our poor Gerard was the one for fine linen. He could hardly
+forgive the honest Germans their coarse flax, and, whene'er my traitors
+of countrymen did amiss, a would excuse them saying, 'Well, well; bonnes
+toiles sont en Bourgogne:' that means 'there be good lenten cloths in
+Burgundy.' But indeed he beat all for bywords and cleanliness."
+
+"Oh Eli! Eli! doth not our son come back to us at each word?"
+
+"Ay. Buss me, my poor Kate. You and I know all that passeth in each
+other's hearts this night. None other can, but God."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XLIX
+
+
+DENYS took an opportunity next day, and told mother and daughter the
+rest, excusing himself characteristically for not letting Cornelis and
+Sybrandt hear of it. "It is not for me to blacken them: they come of a
+good stock. But Gerard looks on them as no friends of his in this
+matter; and I'm Gerard's comrade; and it is a rule with us soldiers not
+to tell the enemy aught; but lies."
+
+Catherine sighed, but made no answer.
+
+The adventures he related cost them a tumult of agitation and grief, and
+sore they wept at the parting of the friends, which, even now, Denys
+could not tell without faltering. But at last all merged in the joyful
+hope and expectation of Gerard's speedy return. In this Denys
+confidently shared; but reminded them that was no reason why he should
+neglect his friend's wishes and last words. In fact should Gerard return
+next week, and no Margaret to be found, what sort of figure should he
+cut?
+
+Catherine had never felt so kindly towards the truant Margaret as now:
+and she was fully as anxious to find her, and be kind to her before
+Gerard's return as Denys was: but she could not agree with him that
+anything was to be gained by leaving this neighbourhood to search for
+her. "She must have told somebody whither she was going. It is not as
+though they were dishonest folk flying the country: they owe not a
+stiver in Sevenbergen: and dear heart, Denys, you can't hunt all Holland
+for her."
+
+"Can I not?" said Denys grimly. "That we shall see." He added, after
+some reflection, that they must divide their forces: she stay here with
+eyes and ears wide open, and he ransack every town in Holland for her,
+if need be. "But she will not be many leagues from here. They be three.
+Three fly not so fast, nor far, as one."
+
+"That is sense," said Catherine. But she insisted on his going first to
+the demoiselle Van Eyck. "She and our Margaret were bosom friends. She
+knows where the girl is gone, if she will but tell us." Denys was for
+going to her that instant, so Catherine, in a turn of the hand, made
+herself one shade neater, and took him with her.
+
+She was received graciously by the old lady sitting in a richly
+furnished room; and opened her business. The tapestry dropped out of
+Margaret Van Eyck's hands. "Gone? Gone from Sevenbergen and not told me:
+the thankless girl."
+
+This turn greatly surprised the visitors. "What you knew not? when was
+she here last?"
+
+"Maybe ten days agone. I had ta'en out my brushes, after so many years,
+to paint her portrait. I did not do it though; for reasons."
+
+Catherine remarked it was "a most strange thing she should go away bag
+and baggage like this, without with your leave or by your leave, why, or
+wherefore. Was ever aught so untoward; just when all our hearts are warm
+to her: and here is Gerard's mate come from the ends o' the earth with
+comfort for her from Gerard, and can't find her, and Gerard himself
+expected. What to do I know not. But sure she is not parted like this
+without a reason. Can ye not give us the clue, my good demoiselle?
+Prithee now."
+
+"I have it not to give," said the elder lady, rather peevishly.
+
+"Then I can," said Reicht Heynes, showing herself in the doorway, with
+colour somewhat heightened.
+
+"So you have been hearkening all the time, eh?"
+
+"What are my ears for, mistress?"
+
+"True. Well throw us the light of thy wisdom on this dark matter."
+
+"There is no darkness that I see," said Reicht. "And the clue, why an'
+ye call't a two-plye twine, and the ends on't in this room e'en now,
+ye'll not be far out. Oh, mistress, I wonder at you sitting there
+pretending."
+
+"Marry, come up!" and the mistress's cheek was now nearly as red as the
+servant's. "So 'twas I drove the foolish girl away."
+
+"You did your share, mistress. What sort of greeting gave you her last
+time she came? Think you she could miss to notice it, and she all
+friendless? And you said, 'I have altered my mind about painting of
+you,' says you, a turning up your nose at her."
+
+"I did not turn up my nose. It is not shaped like yours for looking
+heavenward."
+
+"Oh, all our nosen can follow our heartys bent, for that matter. Poor
+soul. She did come into the kitchen to me. 'I am not to be painted now,'
+said she, and the tears in her eyes. She said no more. But I knew well
+what she did mean. I had seen ye."
+
+"Well," said Margaret Van Eyck, "I do confess so much, and I make you
+the judge, madam. Know that these young girls can do nothing of their
+own heads, but are most apt at mimicking aught their sweethearts do. Now
+your Gerard is reasonably handy at many things, and among the rest at
+the illuminator's craft. And Margaret she is his pupil, and a patient
+one: what marvel? having a woman's eye for colour, and eke a lover to
+ape. 'Tis a trick I despise at heart: for by it the great art of colour,
+which should be royal, aspiring, and free, becomes a poor slave to the
+petty crafts of writing and printing, and is fettered, imprisoned, and
+made little, body and soul, to match the littleness of books, and go to
+church in a rich fool's pocket. Natheless affection rules us all, and,
+when the poor wench would bring me her thorn leaves, and lilies, and
+ivy, and dewberries, and ladybirds, and butterfly grubs, and all the
+scum of nature--stuck fast in gold-leaf like wasps in a honey-pot, and,
+withal her diurnal book, showing she had pored an hundred, or an hundred
+and fifty, or two hundred, hours over each singular page, certes I was
+wroth that an immortal soul and many hours of labour, and much manual
+skill, should be flung away on Nature's trash, leaves, insects, grubs,
+and on barren letters: but, having bowels, I did perforce restrain, and,
+as it were, dam my better feelings, and looked kindly at the work to see
+how it might be bettered: and said I, 'Sith Heaven for our sins hath
+doomed us to spend time, and soul, and colour, on great letters and
+little beetles, omitting such small fry as saints and heroes, their acts
+and passions, why not present the scum naturally?' I told her 'the
+grapes I saw, walking abroad, did hang i' the air, not stick in a wall:
+and even these insects,' quo' I, 'and Nature her slime in general, pass
+not their noxious lives wedged miserably in metal prisons like flies in
+honey-pots and glue-pots, but do crawl or hover at large, infesting
+air.' 'Ah! my dear friend,' says she, 'I see now whither you drive: but
+this ground is gold; whereon we may not shade.' 'Who says so?' quoth I.
+'All teachers of this craft,' says she: and (to make an end o' me at
+once, I trow) 'Gerard himself!' 'That for Gerard himself,' quoth I, 'and
+all the gang; gi'e me a brush!'
+
+"Then chose I, to shade her fruit and reptiles, a colour false in
+nature, but true relatively to that monstrous ground of glaring gold;
+and in five minutes out came a bunch of raspberries, stalk and all, and
+a'most flew in your mouth: likewise a butterfly grub she had so truly
+presented as might turn the stoutest stomach. My lady she flings her
+arms round my neck, and says she, 'Oh!'"
+
+"Did she now?"
+
+"The little love!" observed Denys, succeeding at last in wedging in a
+word.
+
+Margaret Van Eyck stared at him; and then smiled. She went on to tell
+them how from step to step she had been led on to promise to resume the
+art she had laid aside with a sigh when her brothers died, and to paint
+the Madonna once more--with Margaret for model. Incidentally she even
+revealed how girls are turned into saints. "'Thy hair is adorable,' said
+I. 'Why, 'tis red,' quo' she. 'Ay,' quoth I, 'but what a red! how brown!
+how glossy! most hair is not worth a straw to us painters: thine the
+artist's very hue. But thy violet eyes, which smack of earth, being now
+languid for lack of one Gerard, now full of fire in hopes of the same
+Gerard, these will I lift to heaven in fixed and holy meditation, and
+thy nose, which doth already somewhat aspire that way (though not so
+piously as Reicht's), will I debase a trifle, and somewhat enfeeble thy
+chin.'"
+
+"Enfeeble her chin? Alack! what may that mean? Ye go beyond me,
+mistress."
+
+"'Tis a resolute chin. Not a jot too resolute for this wicked world:
+but, when ye come to a Madonna? No thank you."
+
+"Well I never. A resolute chin."
+
+_Denys._] "The darling!"
+
+"And now comes the rub. When you told me she was--the way she is, it
+gave me a shock: I dropped my brushes. Was I going to turn a girl, that
+couldn't keep her lover at a distance, into the Virgin Mary, at my time
+of life? I love the poor ninny still. But I adore our blessed Lady. Say
+you, 'a painter must not be peevish in such matters.' Well, most
+painters are men: and men are fine fellows. They can do aught. Their
+saints and virgins are neither more nor less than their lemans, saving
+your presence. But know that for this very reason half their craft is
+lost on me, which find beneath their angels' white wings the very
+trollops I have seen flaunting it on the streets, bejewelled like Paynim
+idols, and put on like the queens in a pack o' cards. And I am not a
+fine fellow, but only a woman, and my painting is but one half craft,
+and t'other half devotion. So now you may read me. 'Twas foolish, maybe,
+but I could not help it: yet am I sorry." And the old lady ended
+despondently a discourse which she had commenced in a mighty defiant
+tone.
+
+"Well, you know, dame," observed Catherine, "you must think it would go
+to the poor girl's heart, and she so fond of ye?"
+
+Margaret Van Eyck only sighed.
+
+The Frisian girl, after biting her lips impatiently a little while,
+turned upon Catherine. "Why, dame, think you 'twas for that alone
+Margaret and Peter hath left Sevenberg? Nay."
+
+"For what else, then?"
+
+"What else? Why because Gerard's people slight her so cruel. Who would
+bide among hard-hearted folk that ha' driven her lad t'Italy, and, now
+he is gone, relent not, but face it out, and ne'er come anigh her that
+is left?"
+
+"Reicht, I was going."
+
+"Oh, ay, going, and going, and going. Ye should ha' said less or else
+done more. But with your words you did uplift her heart and let it down
+wi' your deeds. 'They have never been,' said the poor thing to me, with
+such a sigh. Ay, here is _one_ can feel for her: for I too am far from
+my friends, and often, when first I came to Holland, I did use to take a
+hearty cry all to myself. But ten times liever would I be Reicht Heynes
+with nought but the leagues atween me and all my kith, than be as she is
+i' the midst of them that ought to warm to her, and yet to fare as
+lonesome as I."
+
+"Alack, Reicht, I did go but yestreen, and had gone before, but one
+plaguy thing or t'other did still come and hinder me."
+
+"Mistress, did aught hinder ye to eat your dinner any one of those days?
+I trow not. And had your heart been as good towards your own flesh and
+blood, as 'twas towards your flesher's meat, nought had prevailed to
+keep you from her that sat lonely, a watching the road for you and
+comfort, wi' your child's child a beating 'neath her bosom."
+
+Here this rude young woman was interrupted by an incident not uncommon
+in a domestic's bright existence. The Van Eyck had been nettled by the
+attack on her, but with due tact had gone into ambush. She now sprang
+out of it. "Since you disrespect my guests, seek another place!"
+
+"With all my heart," said Reicht stoutly.
+
+"Nay, mistress," put in the good-natured Catherine. "True folk will
+still speak out. Her tongue is a stinger." Here the water came into the
+speaker's eyes by way of confirmation. "But better she said it than
+thought it. So now 'twon't rankle in her. And, part with her for me,
+that shall ye not. Beshrew the wench, she kens she is a good servant,
+and takes advantage. We poor wretches which keep house must still pay
+'em tax for value. I had a good servant once, when I was a young 'oman.
+Eh dear, how she did grind me down into the dust. In the end, by
+Heaven's mercy, she married the baker, and I was my own woman again.
+'So,' said I, 'no more good servants shall come hither, a hectoring o'
+me.' I just get a fool and learn her: and whenever she knoweth her right
+hand from her left, she sauceth me: then out I bundle her neck and crop,
+and take another dunce in her place. Dear heart, 'tis wearisome,
+teaching a string of fools by ones; but there--I am mistress:" here she
+forgot that she was defending Reicht, and turning rather spitefully upon
+her, added, "and you be mistress here, I trow."
+
+"No more than that stool," said the Van Eyck, loftily. "She is neither
+mistress nor servant: but Gone. She is dismissed the house, and there's
+an end of _her_. What did ye not hear me turn the saucy baggage off?"
+
+"Ay, ay. We all heard ye," said Reicht, with vast indifference.
+
+"Then hear me!" said Denys, solemnly.
+
+They all went round like things on wheels, and fastened their eyes on
+him.
+
+"Ay, let us hear what the man says," urged the hostess. "Men are fine
+fellows; with their great hoarse voices."
+
+"Mistress Reicht," said Denys, with great dignity and ceremony, indeed
+so great as to verge on the absurd, "you are turned off. If on a slight
+acquaintance I might advise, I'd say, since you are a servant no more,
+be a mistress, a queen."
+
+"Easier said than done," replied Reicht bluntly.
+
+"Not a jot. You see here one who is a man, though but half an
+arbalestrier, owing to that devilish Englishman's arrow, in whose
+carcass I have, however, left a like token, which is a comfort. I have
+twenty gold pieces" (he showed them) "and a stout arm. In another week
+or so I shall have twain. Marriage is not a habit of mine: but I
+capitulate to so many virtues. You are beautiful, good hearted, and
+outspoken, and above all, you take the part of my she-comrade. Be then
+an arbalestriesse!"
+
+"And what the dickens is that?" inquired Reicht.
+
+"I mean, be the wife, mistress, and queen, of Denys of Burgundy here
+present!"
+
+A dead silence fell on all.
+
+It did not last long though: and was followed by a burst of unreasonable
+indignation.
+
+_Catherine._] "Well, did you ever?"
+
+_Margaret._] "Never in all my born days."
+
+_Catherine._] "Before our very faces."
+
+_Margaret._] "Of all the absurdity, and insolence of this ridiculous
+sex----"
+
+Here Denys observed somewhat drily, that the female to whom he had
+addressed himself was mute; and the others, on whose eloquence there was
+no immediate demand, were fluent: on this the voices stopped, and the
+eyes turned pivot-like upon Reicht.
+
+She took a sly glance from under her lashes at her military assailant,
+and said, "I mean to take a good look at any man ere I leap into his
+arms."
+
+Denys drew himself up majestically. "Then look your fill, and leap
+away."
+
+This proposal led to a new and most unexpected result. A long white
+finger was extended by the Van Eyck in a line with the speaker's eye,
+and an agitated voice bade him stand, in the name of all the saints.
+"You are beautiful, so," cried she. "You are inspired--with folly. What
+matters that? you are inspired. I must take off your head." And in a
+moment she was at work with her pencil. "Come out, hussy," she screamed
+to Reicht; "more in front of him, and keep the fool inspired and
+beautiful. Oh, why had I not this maniac for my good centurion? They
+went and brought me a brute with a low forehead and a shapeless beard."
+
+Catherine stood and looked with utter amazement at this pantomime, and
+secretly resolved that her venerable hostess had been a disguised
+lunatic all this time, and was now busy throwing off the mask. As for
+Reicht, she was unhappy and cross. She had left her caldron in a
+precarious state, and made no scruple to say so, and that duties so
+grave as hers left her no "time to waste a playing the statee and the
+fool all at one time." Her mistress in reply reminded her that it was
+possible to be rude and rebellious to one's poor old, affectionate,
+desolate mistress, without being utterly heartless, and savage; and a
+trampler on arts.
+
+On this Reicht stopped, and pouted, and looked like a little basilisk at
+the inspired model who caused her woe. He retorted with unshaken
+admiration. The situation was at last dissolved by the artist's wrist
+becoming cramped from disuse; this was not, however, until she had made
+a rough but noble sketch. "I can work no more at present," said she,
+sorrowfully.
+
+"Then, mistress, I may go and mind my pot?"
+
+"Ay, ay, go to your pot! And get into it, do; you will find your soul in
+it: so then you will all be together."
+
+"Well, but Reicht," said Catherine, laughing, "she turned you off."
+
+"Boo, boo, boo!" said Reicht, contemptuously. "When she wants to get rid
+of me, let her turn herself off and die. I am sure she is old enough
+for't. But take your time, mistress; if you are in no hurry, no more am
+I. When that day doth come, 'twill take a man to dry my eyes: and if you
+should be in the same mind then, soldier, you can say so; and if you are
+not, why, 'twill be all one to Reicht Heynes."
+
+And the plain speaker went her way. But her words did not fall to the
+ground. Neither of her female hearers could disguise from herself that
+this blunt girl, solitary herself, had probably read Margaret Brandt
+aright, and that she had gone away from Sevenbergen broken hearted.
+
+Catherine and Denys bade the Van Eyck adieu, and that same afternoon
+Denys set out on a wild goose chase. His plan, like all great things,
+was simple. He should go to a hundred towns and villages, and ask in
+each after an old physician with a fair daughter, and an old long-bow
+soldier. He should inquire of the burgomasters about all new-comers, and
+should go to the fountains and watch the women and girls as they came
+with their pitchers for water.
+
+And away he went, and was months and months on the tramp and could not
+find her.
+
+Happily, this chivalrous feat of friendship was in some degree its own
+reward.
+
+Those, who sit at home blindfolded by self-conceit, and think camel or
+man out of the depths of their inner consciousness, alas! their
+ignorance, will tell you that in the intervals of war and danger, peace
+and tranquil life acquire their true value and satisfy the heroic mind.
+But those, who look before they babble or scribble, will see, and say,
+that men, who risk their lives habitually, thirst for exciting pleasures
+between the acts of danger, and not for innocent tranquillity.
+
+To this Denys was no exception. His whole military life had been half
+Sparta, half Capua. And he was too good a soldier, and too good a
+libertine, to have ever mixed either habit with the other. But now for
+the first time he found himself mixed; at peace and yet on duty; for he
+took this latter view of his wild goose chase, luckily. So all these
+months he was a demi-Spartan; sober, prudent, vigilant, indomitable; and
+happy, though constantly disappointed, as might have been expected. He
+flirted gigantically on the road; but wasted no time about it. Nor in
+these his wanderings did he tell a single female that "marriage was not
+one of his habits, etc."
+
+And so we leave him on the tramp, "Pilgrim of Friendship," as his poor
+comrade was of Love.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER L
+
+
+THE good-hearted Catherine was not happy. Not that she reproached
+herself very deeply for not having gone quickly enough to Sevenbergen,
+whither she was not bound to go at all--except on the score of having
+excited false hopes in Margaret. But she was in dismay when she
+reflected that Gerard must reach home in another month at farthest, more
+likely in a week. And how should she tell him she had not even kept an
+eye upon his betrothed? Then there was the uncertainty as to the girl's
+fate: and this uncertainty sometimes took a sickening form.
+
+"Oh, Kate," she groaned, "if she should have gone and made herself
+away."
+
+"Mother, she would never be so wicked."
+
+"Ah, my lass, you know not what hasty fools young lasses be, that have
+no mothers to keep 'em straight. They will fling themselves into the
+water for a man that the next man they meet would ha' cured 'em of in a
+week. I have known 'em to jump in like brass one moment and scream for
+help in the next. Couldn't know their own minds ye see even such a
+trifle as yon. And then there's times when their bodies ail like no
+other living creatures ever I could hear of, and that strings up their
+feelings so, the patience, that belongs to them at other times beyond
+all living souls barring an ass, seems all to jump out of 'em at one
+turn, and into the water they go. Therefore, I say that men are
+monsters."
+
+"Mother!"
+
+"Monsters, and no less, to go making such heaps o' canals just to tempt
+the poor women in. They know we shall not cut our throats, hating the
+sight of blood, and rating our skins a hantle higher nor our lives; and
+as for hanging, while she is fixing of the nail and a making of the
+noose she has time t'alter her mind. But a jump into a canal is no more
+than into bed; and the water it does all the lave, will ye, nill ye.
+Why, look at me, the mother o' nine, wasn't I agog to make a hole in our
+canal for the nonce?"
+
+"Nay, mother, I'll never believe it of you."
+
+"Ye may, though. 'Twas in the first year of our keeping house together.
+Eli hadn't found out my weak stitches then, nor I his; so we made a
+rent, pulling contrariwise; had a quarrel. So then I ran crying, to tell
+some gabbling fool like myself what I had no business to tell out o'
+doors except to the saints, and there was one of our precious canals in
+the way; do they take us for teal? Oh, how tempting it did look! Says I
+to myself, 'Sith he has let me go out of his door quarrelled, he shall
+see me drowned next, and then he will change his key. He will blubber a
+good one, and I shall look down from heaven' (I forgot I should be in
+t'other part), 'and see him take on, and, oh, but that will be sweet!'
+and I was all a tiptoe and going in, only just then I thought I
+wouldn't. I had got a new gown a-making, for one thing, and hard upon
+finished. So I went home instead, and what was Eli's first word? 'Let
+yon flea stick i' the wall, my lass,' says he. 'Not a word of all I said
+t' anger thee was sooth, but this: 'I love thee.' These were his very
+words, I minded 'em, being the first quarrel. So I flung my arms about
+his neck and sobbed a bit, and thought o' the canal; and he was no
+colder to me than I to him, being a man and a young one: and so then
+that was better than lying in the water; and spoiling my wedding kirtle
+and my fine new shoon, old John Bush made 'em, that was uncle to him
+keeps the shop now. And what was my grief to hers?"
+
+Little Kate hoped that Margaret loved her father too much to think of
+leaving him so at his age. "He is father and mother and all to her, you
+know."
+
+"Nay, Kate, they do forget all these things in a moment o' despair, when
+the very sky seems black above them. I place more faith in him that is
+unborn, than on him that is ripe for the grave, to keep her out o'
+mischief. For certes it do go sore against us to die when there's a
+little innocent a-pulling at our hearts to let un live, and feeding at
+our very veins."
+
+"Well, then, keep up a good heart, mother." She added, that very likely
+all these fears were exaggerated. She ended by solemnly entreating her
+mother at all events not to persist in naming the sex of Margaret's
+infant. It was so unlucky, all the gossips told her; "dear heart, as if
+there were not as many girls born as boys."
+
+This reflection, though not unreasonable, was met with clamour.
+
+"Have you the cruelty to threaten me with a girl!!? I want no more
+girls, while I have you. What use would a lass be to me? Can I set her
+on my knee and see my Gerard again as I can a boy? I tell thee 'tis all
+settled."
+
+"How may that be?"
+
+"In my mind. And if I am to be disappointed i' the end, t'isn't for you
+to disappoint me beforehand, telling me it is not to be a child, but
+only a girl."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+All these anxieties, and, if I may be permitted, without disrespect to
+the dead, to add, all this twaddle, that accompanied them, were shortly
+suspended by an incident that struck nearer home; made Tergou furiously
+jealous of Catherine, and Catherine weep. And, if my reader is fond of
+wasting his time, as some novel readers are, he cannot do it more
+effectually than by guessing what could produce results so incongruous.
+
+Marched up to Eli's door a pageant brave to the eye of sense, and to the
+vulgar judgment noble, but, to the philosophic, pitiable more or less.
+
+It looked one animal, a centaur: but on severe analysis proved two. The
+human half was sadly bedizened with those two metals, to clothe his
+carcass with which and line his pouch, man has now and then disposed of
+his soul: still the horse was the vainer brute of the two; he was far
+worse beflounced, bebonneted, and bemantled, than any fair lady regnante
+crinolina. For the man, under the colour of a warming-pan, retained
+Nature's outline. But it was "subaudi equum!" Scarce a pennyweight of
+honest horseflesh to be seen. Our crinoline spares the noble parts of
+woman, and makes but the baser parts gigantic (why this preference?):
+but this poor animal from stem to stern was swamped in finery. His ears
+were hid in great sheaths of white linen tipped with silver and blue.
+His body swaddled in stiff gorgeous cloths descending to the ground,
+except just in front, where they left him room to mince. His tail,
+though dear to memory, no doubt, was lost to sight, being tucked in
+heaven knows how. Only his eyes shone out like goggles, through two
+holes pierced in the wall of haberdashery, and his little front hoofs
+peeped in and out like rats.
+
+Yet did this compound, gorgeous and irrational, represent power;
+absolute power: it came straight from a tournament at the duke's court,
+which being on a progress, lay last night at a neighboring town--to
+execute the behests of royalty.
+
+"What ho!" cried the upper half, and on Eli emerging, with his wife
+behind him, saluted them. "Peace be with you, good people. Rejoice! I am
+come for your dwarf."
+
+Eli looked amazed, and said nothing. But Catherine screamed over his
+shoulder, "You have mistook your road, good man; here abides no dwarf."
+
+"Nay, wife, he means our Giles, who is somewhat small of stature: why
+gainsay what gainsayed may not be?"
+
+"Ay!" cried the pageant, "that is he, and discourseth like the big
+tabor."
+
+"His breast is sound for that matter," said Catherine, sharply.
+
+"And prompt with his fists though at long odds."
+
+"Else how would the poor thing keep his head in such a world as this?"
+
+"'Tis well said, dame. Art as ready with thy weapon as he; art his
+mother, likely. So bring him forth and that presently. See, they lead a
+stunted mule for him. The duke hath need of him; sore need; we are clean
+out o' dwarven; and tigercats; which may not be, whiles earth them
+yieldeth. Our last hop o' my thumb tumbled down the well t'other day."
+
+"And think you I'll let my darling go to such an ill-guided house as
+yon, where the reckless trollops of servants close not the well mouth,
+but leave it open to trap innocents like wolven?"
+
+The representative of autocracy lost patience at this unwonted
+opposition, and with stern look and voice bade her bethink her whether
+it was the better of the two; "to have your abortion at court fed like a
+bishop and put on like a prince, or to have all your heads stricken off
+and borne on poles, with the bell-man crying, 'Behold the heads of hardy
+rebels, which having by good luck a misbegotten son, did traitorously
+grudge him to the duke, who is the true father of all his folk, little
+or mickle?'"
+
+"Nay," said Eli, sadly, "miscall us not. We be true folk, and neither
+rebels nor traitors. But 'tis sudden, and the poor lad is our true flesh
+and blood, and hath of late given proof of more sense than heretofore."
+
+"Avails not threatening our lives," whimpered Catherine, "we grudge him
+not to the duke: but in sooth he cannot go: his linen is all in holes.
+So there is an end."
+
+But the male mind resisted this crusher.
+
+"Think you the duke will not find linen, and cloth of gold to boot? None
+so brave, none so affected, at court, as our monsters, big or wee."
+
+How long the dispute might have lasted, before the iron arguments of
+despotism achieved the inevitable victory, I know not; but it was cut
+short by a party whom neither disputant had deigned to consult.
+
+The bone of contention walked out of the house, and sided with monarchy.
+
+"If my folk are mad, I am not," he roared. "I'll go with you, and on the
+instant."
+
+At this Catherine set up a piteous cry. She saw another of her brood
+escaping from under her wing into some unknown element. Giles was not
+quite insensible to her distress so simple yet so eloquent. He said,
+"Nay take not on, mother! Why 'tis a godsend. And I am sick of this ever
+since Gerard left it."
+
+"Ah, cruel Giles! Should ye not rather say she is bereaved of Gerard:
+the more need of you to stay aside her and comfort her!"
+
+"Oh! I am not going to Rome. Not such a fool I shall never be farther
+than Rotterdam: and I'll often come and see you; and, if I like not the
+place, who shall keep me there? Not all the dukes in Christendom."
+
+"Good sense lies in little bulk," said the emissary approvingly.
+"Therefore, master Giles, buss the old folk, and thank them for
+misbegetting of thee, and--ho! you--bring hither his mule!"
+
+One of his retinue brought up the dwarf mule. Giles refused it with
+scorn. And, on being asked the reason, said it was not just. "What would
+ye throw all into one scale? Put muckle to muckle, and little to wee?
+Besides I hate and scorn small things. I'll go on the highest horse
+here, or not at all."
+
+The pursuivant eyed him attentively a moment. He then adopted a
+courteous manner. "I shall study your will in all things reasonable.
+(Dismount, Eric, yours is the highest horse.) And if you would halt in
+the town an hour or so, while you bid them farewell, say but the word,
+and your pleasure shall be my delight."
+
+Giles reflected.
+
+"Master," said he, "if we wait a month 'twill be still the same: my
+mother is a good soul, but her body is bigger than her spirit. We shall
+not part without a tear or two, and the quicker 'tis done the fewer; so,
+bring yon horse to me."
+
+Catherine threw her apron over her face and sobbed. The high horse was
+brought, and Giles was for swarming up his tail, like a rope; but one of
+the servants cried out hastily "forbear, for he kicketh." "I'll kick
+him," said Giles. "Bring him close beneath this window, and I'll learn
+you all how to mount a horse which kicketh, and will not be clomb by the
+tail, the staircase of an horse." And he dashed into the house and
+almost immediately reappeared at an upper window with a rope in his
+hand. He fastened an end somehow and holding the other descended as
+swift and smooth as an oiled thunderbolt in a groove; and lighted
+astride his high horse as unperceived by that animal as a fly settling
+on him.
+
+The official lifted his hands to heaven in mawkish admiration. "I have
+gotten a pearl," thought he; "and wow but this will be a good day's work
+for me."
+
+"Come, father, come, mother, buss me, and bless me, and off I go."
+
+Eli gave him his blessing, and bade him be honest and true, and a credit
+to his folk. Catherine could not speak, but clung to him with many sobs
+and embraces; and even through the mist of tears her eye detected in a
+moment a little rent in his sleeve he had made getting out of window,
+and she whipped out her needle and mended it then and there, and her
+tears fell on his arm the while, unheeded--except by those unfleshly
+eyes, with which they say the very air is thronged.
+
+And so the dwarf mounted the high horse, and rode away complacent, with
+the old hand laying the court butter on his back with a trowel. Little
+recked Perpusillus of two poor silly females that sat by the bereaved
+hearth, rocking themselves, and weeping, and discussing all his virtues,
+and how his mind had opened lately, and blind as two beetles to his
+faults, who rode away from them jocund and bold,
+
+Ingentes animos angusto pectore versans.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Arrived at court he speedily became a great favourite.
+
+One strange propensity of his electrified the palace: but, on account of
+his small size, and for variety's sake, and as a monster, he was
+indulged on it. In a word he was let speak the truth.
+
+It is an unpopular thing.
+
+He made it an intolerable one.
+
+Bawled it.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER LI
+
+
+MARGARET BRANDT had always held herself apart from Sevenbergen; and her
+reserve had passed for pride; this had come to her ears, and she knew
+many hearts were swelling with jealousy and malevolence. How would they
+triumph over her when her condition could no longer be concealed! This
+thought gnawed her night and day. For some time it had made her bury
+herself in the house, and shun daylight even on those rare occasions
+when she went abroad.
+
+Not that in her secret heart and conscience she mistook her moral
+situation, as my unlearned readers have done perhaps. Though not
+acquainted with the nice distinctions of the contemporary law, she knew
+that betrothal was a marriage contract, and could no more be legally
+broken on either side than any other compact written and witnessed: and
+that marriage with another party than the betrothed had been formally
+annulled both by Church and State; and that betrothed couples often came
+together without any further ceremony, and their children were
+legitimate.
+
+But what weighed down her simple mediaeval mind was this: that very
+contract of betrothal was not forthcoming. Instead of her keeping it,
+Gerard had got it, and Gerard was far, far away. She hated and despised
+herself for the miserable oversight, which had placed her at the mercy
+of false opinion.
+
+For though she had never heard of Horace's famous couplet _Segnius
+irritant_, &c., she was Horatian by the plain, hard, positive
+intelligence, which strange to say characterizes the judgment of her
+sex, when feeling happens not to blind it altogether. She gauged the
+understanding of the world to a T. Her marriage lines being out of
+sight, and in Italy, would never prevail to balance her visible
+pregnancy, and the sight of her child when born. What sort of a tale was
+this to stop slanderous tongues? "I have got my marriage lines, but I
+cannot show them you." What woman would believe her? or even pretend to
+believe her? And, as she was in reality one of the most modest girls in
+Holland, it was women's good opinion she wanted, not men's.
+
+Even barefaced slander attacks her sex at a great advantage; but here
+was slander with a face of truth. "The strong-minded woman" had not yet
+been invented; and Margaret, though by nature and by having been early
+made mistress of a family, she was resolute in some respects, was weak
+as water in others, and weakest of all in this. Like all the elite of
+her sex she was a poor little leaf trembling at each gust of the world's
+opinion, true or false. Much misery may be contained in few words; I
+doubt if pages of description from any man's pen could make any human
+creature, except virtuous women (and these need no such aid) realize the
+anguish of a virtuous woman foreseeing herself paraded as a frail one.
+Had she been frail at heart, she might have brazened it out. But she had
+not that advantage. She was really pure as snow, and saw the pitch
+coming nearer her and nearer. The poor girl sat listless hours at a
+time, and moaned with inner anguish. And often, when her father was
+talking to her and she giving mechanical replies, suddenly her cheek
+would burn like fire, and the old man would wonder what he had said to
+discompose her. Nothing. His words were less than air to her. It was the
+ever present dread sent the colour of shame into her burning cheek, no
+matter what she seemed to be talking and thinking about. But both shame
+and fear rose to a climax when she came back that night from Margaret
+Van Eyck's. Her condition was discovered, and by persons of her own sex.
+The old artist, secluded like herself, might not betray her: but
+Catherine, a gossip in the centre of a family, and a thick
+neighbourhood? One spark of hope remained. Catherine had spoken kindly,
+even lovingly. The situation admitted no half course. Gerard's mother
+thus roused must either be her best friend or worst enemy. She waited
+then in racking anxiety to hear more. No word came. She gave up hope.
+Catherine was not going to be her friend. Then she would expose her,
+since she had no strong and kindly feeling to balance the natural love
+of babbling.
+
+Then it was, the wish to fly from this neighbourhood began to grow and
+gnaw upon her, till it became a wild and passionate desire. But how
+persuade her father to this? Old people cling to places. He was very old
+and infirm to change his abode. There was no course but to make him her
+confidant; better so than to run away from him: and she felt that would
+be the alternative. And now between her uncontrollable desire to fly and
+hide, and her invincible aversion to speak out to a man, even to her
+father, she vibrated in a suspense full of lively torture. And presently
+betwixt these two came in one day the fatal thought "end all!" Things
+foolishly worded are not always foolish; one of poor Catherine's
+bugbears, these numerous canals, did sorely tempt this poor fluctuating
+girl. She stood on the bank one afternoon, and eyed the calm deep water.
+It seemed an image of repose, and she was so harassed. No more trouble.
+No more fear of shame. If Gerard had not loved her, I doubt she had
+ended there.
+
+As it was, she kneeled by the waterside, and prayed fervently to God to
+keep such wicked thoughts from her. "Oh! selfish wretch," said she, "to
+leave thy father. Oh wicked wretch to kill thy child, and make thy poor
+Gerard lose all his pain and peril undertaken for thy sight. I will tell
+father all, ay ere this sun shall set." And she went home with eager
+haste lest her good resolution should ooze out ere she got there.
+
+Now in matters domestic the learned Peter was simple as a child, and
+Margaret from the age of sixteen had governed the house gently but
+absolutely. It was therefore a strange thing in this house, the
+faltering irresolute way in which its young but despotic mistress
+addressed that person, who in a domestic sense was less important than
+Martin Wittenhaagen, or even than the little girl, who came in the
+morning and for a pittance washed the vessels, &c., and went home at
+night.
+
+"Father, I would speak to thee."
+
+"Speak on, girl."
+
+"Wilt listen to me? And--and--not--and try to excuse my faults."
+
+"We have all our faults, Margaret, thou no more than the rest of us; but
+fewer, unless parental feeling blinds me."
+
+"Alas, no, father: I am a poor foolish girl, that would fain do well,
+but have done ill, most ill, most unwisely: and now must bear the shame.
+But, father, I love you, with all my faults, and will not you forgive my
+folly, and still love your motherless girl?"
+
+"That ye may count on," said Peter, cheerfully.
+
+"Oh, well, smile not. For then how can I speak and make you sad?"
+
+"Why, what is the matter?"
+
+"Father, disgrace is coming on this house: it is at the door. And I the
+culprit. Oh, father, turn your head away. I--I--father, I have let
+Gerard take away my marriage lines."
+
+"Is that all? 'Twas an oversight."
+
+"'Twas the deed of a mad woman. But woe is me! that is not the worst."
+
+Peter interrupted her. "The youth is honest, and loves you dear. You are
+young. What is a year or two to you? Gerard will assuredly come back and
+keep troth."
+
+"And meantime, know you what is coming?"
+
+"Not I, except that I shall be gone first for one."
+
+"Worse than that. There is worse pain than death. Nay, for pity's sake,
+turn away your head, father."
+
+"Foolish wench!" muttered Peter, but turned his head.
+
+She trembled violently, and with her cheeks on fire began to falter out,
+"I did look on Gerard as my husband--we being betrothed--and he was in
+so sore danger, and I thought I had killed him, and I-- Oh, if you were
+but my mother I might find courage: you would question me. But you say
+not a word."
+
+"Why, Margaret, what is all this coil about? and why are thy cheeks
+crimson, speaking to no stranger but to thy old father?"
+
+"Why are my cheeks on fire? Because--because--Father, kill me! send me
+to heaven! bid Martin shoot me with his arrow! And then the gossips will
+come and tell you why I blush so this day. And then, when I am dead, I
+hope you will love your girl again for her mother's sake."
+
+"Give me thy hand, mistress," said Peter, a little sternly.
+
+She put it out to him trembling. He took it gently, and began with some
+anxiety in his face to feel her pulse.
+
+"Alas, nay!" said she. "'Tis my soul that burns, not my body with fever.
+I cannot, will not, bide in Sevenbergen." And she wrung her hands
+impatiently.
+
+"Be calm now," said the old man, soothingly, "nor torment thyself for
+nought. Not bide in Sevenbergen? What need to bide a day, as it vexes
+thee, and puts thee in a fever: for fevered thou art, deny it not."
+
+"What!" cried Margaret, "would you yield to go hence, and--and ask no
+reason but my longing to be gone?" and, suddenly throwing herself on her
+knees beside him, in a fervour of supplication she clutched his sleeve,
+and then his arm, and then his shoulder, while imploring him to quit
+this place, and not ask her why. "Alas! what needs it? You will soon see
+it. And I could never say it. I would liever die."
+
+"Foolish child! Who seeks thy girlish secrets? Is it I, whose life hath
+been spent in searching Nature's? And, for leaving Sevenbergen, what is
+there to keep me in it, thee unwilling? Is there respect for me here, or
+gratitude? Am I not yclept quacksalver by those that come not near me,
+and wizard by those I heal? And give they not the guerdon and the honour
+they deny me, to the empirics that slaughter them? Besides, what is't to
+me where we sojourn? Choose thou that, as did thy mother before thee."
+
+Margaret embraced him tenderly, and wept upon his shoulder.
+
+She was respited.
+
+Yet as she wept, respited, she almost wished she had had the courage to
+tell him.
+
+After a while nothing would content him but her taking a medicament he
+went and brought her. She took it submissively, to please him. It was
+the least she could do. It was a composing draught, and though
+administered under an error, and a common one, did her more good than
+harm: she awoke calmed by a long sleep, and that very day began her
+preparations.
+
+Next week they went to Rotterdam, bag and baggage, and lodged above a
+tailor's shop in the Brede-Kirk Straet.
+
+Only one person in Tergou knew whither they were gone.
+
+The Burgomaster.
+
+He locked the information in his own breast.
+
+The use he made of it ere long, my reader will not easily divine: for he
+did not divine it himself.
+
+But time will show.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER LII
+
+
+AMONG strangers Margaret Brandt was comparatively happy. And soon a new
+and unexpected cause of content arose. A civic dignitary being ill, and
+fanciful in proportion, went from doctor to doctor; and having arrived
+at Death's door, sent for Peter. Peter found him bled and purged to
+nothing. He flung a battalion of bottles out of the window, and left it
+open; beat up yolks of eggs in neat Schiedam, and administered it in
+small doses: followed this up by meat stewed in red wine and water,
+shredding into both mild febrifugal herbs, that did no harm. Finally,
+his patient got about again, looking something between a man and a
+pillow-case, and being a voluble dignitary, spread Peter's fame in every
+street; and that artist, who had long merited a reputation in vain, made
+one rapidly by luck. Things looked bright. The old man's pride was
+cheered at last, and his purse began to fill. He spent much of his gain,
+however, in sovereign herbs and choice drugs, and would have so invested
+them all, but Margaret white-mailed a part. The victory came too late.
+Its happy excitement was fatal.
+
+One evening, in bidding her good-night, his voice seemed rather
+inarticulate.
+
+The next morning he was found speechless, and only just sensible.
+
+Margaret, who had been for years her father's attentive pupil, saw at
+once that he had had a paralytic stroke. But not trusting to herself,
+she ran for a doctor. One of those, who, obstructed by Peter, had not
+killed the civic dignitary, came, and cheerfully confirmed her views. He
+was for bleeding the patient. She declined. "He was always against
+blooding," said she, "especially the old." Peter lived, but was never
+the same man again. His memory became much affected, and of course he
+was not to be trusted to prescribe: and several patients had come, and
+one or two, that were bent on being cured by the new doctor and no
+other, awaited his convalescence. Misery stared her in the face. She
+resolved to go for advice and comfort to her cousin William Johnson,
+from whom she had hitherto kept aloof out of pride and poverty. She
+found him and his servant sitting in the same room, and neither of them
+the better for liquor. Mastering all signs of surprise, she gave her
+greetings, and presently told him she had come to talk on a family
+matter, and with this glanced quietly at the servant by way of hint. The
+woman took it, but not as expected.
+
+"Oh, you can speak before me, can she not, my old man?"
+
+At this familiarity Margaret turned very red, and said,--
+
+"I cry your mercy, mistress. I knew not my cousin had fallen into the
+custom of this town. Well, I must take a fitter opportunity"; and she
+rose to go.
+
+"I wot not what ye mean by custom o' the town," said the woman, bouncing
+up. "But this I know: 'tis the part of a faithful servant to keep her
+master from being preyed on by his beggarly kin."
+
+Margaret retorted: "Ye are too modest, mistress. Ye are no servant. Your
+speech betrays you. 'Tis not till the ape hath mounted the tree that she
+shows her tail so plain. Nay, there sits the servant; God help him! And
+while so it is, fear not thou his kin will ever be so poor in spirit, as
+come where the likes of you can flout their dole." And casting one look
+of mute reproach at her cousin for being so little of a man as to sit
+passive and silent all this time, she turned and went haughtily out; nor
+would she shed a single tear till she got home and thought of it. And
+now here were two men to be lodged and fed by one pregnant girl; and
+another mouth coming into the world.
+
+But this last, though the most helpless of all, was their best friend.
+
+Nature was strong in Margaret Brandt; that same nature which makes the
+brutes, the birds and the insects, so cunning at providing food and
+shelter for their progeny yet to come.
+
+Stimulated by nature she sat and brooded, and brooded, and thought, and
+thought, how to be beforehand with destitution. Ay, though she had still
+five gold pieces left, she saw starvation coming with inevitable foot.
+
+Her sex, when, deviating from custom, it thinks with male intensity,
+thinks just as much to the purpose as we do. She rose, bade Martin move
+Peter to another room, made her own very neat and clean, polished the
+glass globe, and suspended it from the ceiling, dusted the crocodile and
+nailed him to the outside wall: and, after duly instructing Martin, set
+him to play the lounging sentinel about the street door, and tell the
+crocodile-bitten that a great, and aged, and learned alchymist abode
+there, who in his moments of recreation would sometimes amuse himself by
+curing mortal diseases.
+
+Patients soon came, and were received by Margaret, and demanded to see
+the leech. "That might not be. He was deep in his studies, searching for
+the grand elixir, and not princes could have speech of him. They must
+tell her their symptoms, and return in two hours." And, oh! mysterious
+powers! when they did return, the drug or draught was always ready for
+them. Sometimes, when it was a worshipful patient, she would carefully
+scan his face, and feeling both pulse and skin, as well as hearing his
+story, would go softly with it to Peter's room; and there think and ask
+herself how her father, whose system she had long quietly observed,
+would have treated the case. Then she would write an illegible scrawl
+with a cabalistic letter, and bring it down, reverentially, and show it
+the patient, and "Could he read that?" Then it would be either "I am no
+reader," or, with admiration, "Nay mistress, nought can I make on't."
+
+"Ay, but I can. 'Tis sovereign. Look on thyself as cured!" If she had
+the materials by her, and she was too good an economist not to favour
+somewhat those medicines she had in her own stock, she would sometimes
+let the patient see her compound it, often and anxiously consulting the
+sacred prescription lest great Science should suffer in her hands. And
+so she would send them away relieved of cash, but with their pockets
+full of medicine, and minds full of faith, and humbugged to their
+heart's content. _Populus vult decipi._ And when they were gone, she
+would take down two little boxes Gerard had made her; and on one of
+these she had written _To-day_, and on the other _To-morrow_, and put
+the smaller coins into "To-day," and the larger into "To-morrow," along
+with such of her gold pieces as had survived the journey from
+Sevenbergen, and the expenses of housekeeping in a strange place. And so
+she met current expenses, and laid by for the rainy day she saw coming,
+and mixed drugs with simples, and vice with virtue. On this last score
+her conscience pricked her sore, and after each day's comedy, she knelt
+down and prayed God to forgive her "for the sake of her child." But lo
+and behold cure after cure was reported to her: so then her conscience
+began to harden. Martin Wittenhaagen had of late been a dead weight on
+her hands. Like most men who have endured great hardships, he had
+stiffened rather suddenly. But, though less supple, he was as strong as
+ever, and at his own pace could have carried the doctor herself round
+Rotterdam city. He carried her slops instead.
+
+In this new business he showed the qualities of a soldier: unreasoning
+obedience, punctuality, accuracy, despatch and drunkenness.
+
+He fell among "good fellows"; the blackguards plied him with Schiedam;
+he babbled, he bragged.
+
+Doctor Margaret had risen very high in his estimation. All this
+brandishing of a crocodile for a standard, and setting a dotard in
+ambush, and getting rid of slops, and taking good money in exchange,
+struck him not as Science but something far superior, Strategy. And he
+boasted in his cups and before a mixed company how "me and my General we
+are a biting of the burghers."
+
+When this revelation had had time to leaven the city, his General,
+Doctor Margaret, received a call from the constables: they took her,
+trembling and begging subordinate machines to forgive her, before the
+burgomaster; and by his side stood real physicians, a terrible row, in
+long robes and square caps, accusing her of practising unlawfully on the
+bodies of the duke's lieges. At first she was too frightened to say a
+word. Novice like, the very name of "Law" paralyzed her. But being
+questioned closely, but not so harshly as if she had been ugly, she told
+the truth; she had long been her father's pupil, and had but followed
+his system, and she had cured many; "and it is not for myself in very
+deed, sirs, but I have two poor helpless honest men at home upon my
+hands, and how else can I keep them? Ah, good sirs, let a poor girl make
+her bread honestly; ye hinder them not to make it idly and shamefully:
+and oh, sirs, ye are husbands, ye are fathers; ye cannot but see I have
+reason to work and provide as best I may"; and ere this woman's appeal
+had left her lips, she would have given the world to recall it, and
+stood with one hand upon her heart and one before her face, hiding it,
+but not the tears that trickled underneath it. All which went to the
+wrong address. Perhaps a female bailiff might have yielded to such
+arguments, and bade her practise medicine, and break law, till such time
+as her child should be weaned, and no longer.
+
+"What have we to do with that," said the burgomaster, "save and except
+that if thou wilt pledge thyself to break the law no more, I will remit
+the imprisonment, and exact but the fine."
+
+On this Doctor Margaret clasped her hands together, and vowed most
+pentitently never, never, never, to cure body or beast again; and being
+dismissed with the constables to pay the fine, she turned at the door,
+and curtsied, poor soul, and thanked the gentlemen for their
+forbearance.
+
+And to pay the fine the "to-morrow box" must be opened on the instant;
+and with excess of caution she had gone and nailed it up, that no slight
+temptation might prevail to open it. And now she could not draw the
+nails, and the constables grew impatient, and doubted its contents, and
+said, "Let us break it for you." But she would not let them. "Ye will
+break it worse than I shall." And she took a hammer, and struck too
+faintly, and lost all strength for a minute, and wept hysterically; and
+at last she broke it, and a little cry broke from her when it broke: and
+she paid the fine, and it took all her unlawful gains and two gold
+pieces to boot; and, when the men were gone, she drew the broken pieces
+of the box, and what little money they had left her, all together on the
+table, and her arms went round them, and her rich hair escaped and fell
+down all loose, and she bowed her forehead on the wreck, and sobbed, "My
+love's box it is broken, and my heart withal"; and so remained. And
+Martin Wittenhaagen came in, and she could not lift her head, but sighed
+out to him what had befallen her, ending, "My love his box is broken,
+and so mine heart is broken."
+
+And Martin was not so sad as wroth. Some traitor had betrayed him. What
+stony heart had told and brought her to this pass? Whoever it was should
+feel his arrow's point. The curious attitude in which he must deliver
+the shaft never occurred to him.
+
+"Idle chat! idle chat!" moaned Margaret, without lifting her brow from
+the table. "When you have slain all the gossips in this town, can we eat
+them? Tell me how to keep you all, or prithee hold thy peace, and let
+the saints get leave to whisper me." Martin held his tongue, and cast
+uneasy glances at his defeated General.
+
+Towards evening she rose, and washed her face and did up her hair, and
+doggedly bade Martin take down the crocodile, and put out a basket
+instead.
+
+"I can get up linen better than they seem to do it in this street," said
+she, "and you must carry it in the basket."
+
+"That will I for thy sake," said the soldier.
+
+"Good Martin! forgive me that I spake shrewishly to thee."
+
+Even while they were talking came a male for advice. Margaret told it
+the mayor had interfered and forbidden her to sell drugs. "But," said
+she, "I will gladly iron and starch your linen for you, and--I will come
+and fetch it from your house."
+
+"Are ye mad, young woman?" said the male. "I come for a leech, and ye
+proffer me a washerwoman;" and it went out in dudgeon.
+
+"There is a stupid creature," said Margaret sadly.
+
+Presently came a female to tell the symptoms of her sick child. Margaret
+stopped it.
+
+"We are forbidden by the bailiff to sell drugs. But I will gladly wash,
+iron, and starch your linen for you--and--I will come and fetch it from
+your house."
+
+"Oh, ay," said the female. "Well, I have some smocks and ruffs foul.
+Come for them; and when you _are_ there, you can look at the boy"; and
+it told her where it lived, and when its husband would be out; yet it
+was rather fond of its husband than not.
+
+An introduction is an introduction. And two or three patients, out of
+all those who came and were denied medicine, made Doctor Margaret their
+washerwoman.
+
+"Now, Martin, you must help. I'll no more cats than can slay mice."
+
+"Mistress, the stomach is not a wanting for't, but the head-piece, worse
+luck."
+
+"Oh! I mean not the starching and ironing; that takes a woman and a
+handy one. But the bare washing; a man can surely contrive that. Why, a
+mule has wit enough in's head to do't with his hoofs, an ye could drive
+him into the tub. Come, off doublet, and try."
+
+"I am your man," said the brave old soldier, stripping for the unwonted
+toil. "I'll risk my arm in soapsuds, an' you will risk your glory."
+
+"My what?"
+
+"Your glory and honour as a--washerwoman."
+
+"Gramercy! if you are man enough to bring me half-washed linen t'iron, I
+am woman enough to fling't back i' the suds."
+
+And so the brave girl, and the brave soldier, worked with a will, and
+kept the wolf from the door. More they could not do. Margaret had
+repaired "the to-morrow box," and, as she leaned over the glue, her
+tears mixed with it, and she cemented her exiled lover's box with them,
+at which a smile is allowable, but an intelligent smile tipped with
+pity, please, and not the empty guffaw of the nineteenth-century-jackass,
+burlesquing Bibles, and making fun of all things except fun. But when
+mended it stood unreplenished.
+
+They kept the weekly rent paid, and the pot boiling, but no more.
+
+And now came a concatenation. Recommended from one to another, Margaret
+washed for the mayor. And bringing home the clean linen one day she
+heard in the kitchen that his worship's only daughter was stricken with
+disease, and not like to live. Poor Margaret could not help
+cross-questioning, and a female servant gave her such of the symptoms as
+she had observed. But they were too general. However, one gossip would
+add one fact, and another another. And Margaret pondered them all.
+
+At last one day she met the mayor himself. He recognized her directly.
+"Why, you are the unlicensed doctor." "I was," said she, "but now I'm
+your worship's washerwoman." The dignitary coloured, and said that was
+rather a come down.
+
+"Nay, I bear no malice; for your worship might have been harder. Rather
+would I do you a good turn. Sir, you have a sick daughter. Let me see
+her."
+
+The mayor shook his head. "That cannot be. The law I do enforce on
+others I may not break myself." Margaret opened her eyes.
+
+"Alack, sir, I seek no guerdon now for curing folk; why, I am a
+washerwoman. I trow one may heal all the world, an if one will but let
+the world starve one in return." "That is no more than just," said the
+mayor: he added, "an ye make no trade on't; there is no offence." "Then
+let me see her."
+
+"What avails it? The learnedst leeches in Rotterdam have all seen her,
+and bettered her nought. Her ill is inscrutable. One skilled wight saith
+spleen; another, liver; another, blood; another, stomach; and another,
+that she is possessed: and, in very truth, she seems to have a demon;
+shunneth all company; pineth alone; eateth no more victuals than might
+diet a sparrow. Speaketh seldom, nor hearkens them that speak, and
+weareth thinner and paler and nearer and nearer the grave, well-a-day."
+"Sir," said Margaret, "an if you take your velvet doublet to half a
+dozen of shops in Rotterdam, and speer is this fine or sorry velvet, and
+worth how much the ell, those six traders will eye it and feel it, and
+all be in one story to a letter. And why? Because they know their trade.
+And your leeches are all in different stories. Why? Because they know
+not their trade. I have heard my father say each is enamoured of some
+one evil, and seeth it with his bat's eyn in every patient. Had they
+stayed at home, and ne'er seen your daughter, they had answered all the
+same, spleen, blood, stomach, lungs, liver, lunacy, or, as they call it,
+possession. Let me see her. We are of a sex, and that is much." And when
+he still hesitated, "Saints of Heaven!" cried she, giving way to the
+irritability of a breeding woman, "is this how men love their own flesh
+and blood? Her mother had ta'en me in her arms ere this, and carried me
+to the sick room." And two violet eyes flashed fire.
+
+"Come with me," said the mayor, hastily.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+"Mistress, I have brought thee a new doctor."
+
+The person addressed, a pale young girl of eighteen, gave a contemptuous
+wrench of her shoulder, and turned more decidedly to the fire she was
+sitting over.
+
+Margaret came softly and sat beside her. "But 'tis one that will not
+torment you."
+
+"A woman!" exclaimed the young lady, with surprise and some contempt.
+
+"Tell her your symptoms."
+
+"What for? You will be no wiser."
+
+"You will be none the worse."
+
+"Well, I have no stomach for food, and no heart for anything. Now cure
+me, and go."
+
+"Patience awhile! Your food, is it tasteless like in your mouth?"
+
+"Ay. How knew you that?"
+
+"Nay, I knew it not till you did tell me. I trow you would be better for
+a little good company."
+
+"I trow not. What is their silly chat to me?"
+
+Here Margaret requested the father to leave them alone: and in his
+absence put some practical questions. Then she reflected.
+
+"When you wake i' the morning you find yourself quiver, as one may say?"
+
+"Nay. Ay. How knew you that?"
+
+"Shall I dose you, or shall I but tease you a bit with my 'silly chat'?"
+
+"Which you will."
+
+"Then I will tell you a story. 'Tis about two true lovers."
+
+"I hate to hear of lovers," said the girl; "nevertheless canst tell me,
+'twill be less nauseous than your physic--maybe."
+
+Margaret then told her a love story. The maiden was a girl called
+Ursel, and the youth one Conrad; she an old physician's daughter, he the
+son of a hosier at Tergou. She told their adventures, their troubles,
+their sad condition. She told it from the female point of view, and in a
+sweet and winning and earnest voice, that by degrees soon laid hold of
+this sullen heart, and held it breathless; and when she broke it off her
+patient was much disappointed.
+
+"Nay, nay, I must hear the end. I will hear it."
+
+"Ye cannot, for I know it not; none knoweth that but God."
+
+"Ah, your Ursel was a jewel of worth," said the girl earnestly. "Would
+she were here."
+
+"Instead of her that is here."
+
+"I say not that;" and she blushed a little.
+
+"You do but think it."
+
+"Thought is free. Whether or no, an she were here, I'd give her a buss,
+poor thing."
+
+"Then give it me, for I am she."
+
+"Nay, nay, that I'll be sworn y' are not."
+
+"Say not so; in very truth I am she. And prithee, sweet mistress, go not
+from your word, but give me the buss ye promised me, and with a good
+heart, for oh, my own heart lies heavy: heavy as thine, sweet mistress."
+
+The young gentlewoman rose and put her arms round Margaret's neck and
+kissed her. "I am woe for you," she sighed. "You are a good soul; you
+have done me good--a little." (A gulp came in her throat.) "Come again!
+come often!"
+
+Margaret did come again, and talked with her, and gently, but keenly,
+watched what topics interested her, and found there was but one. Then
+she said to the mayor, "I know your daughter's trouble, and 'tis
+curable."
+
+"What is't? the blood?"
+
+"Nay."
+
+"The stomach?"
+
+"Nay."
+
+"The liver?"
+
+"Nay."
+
+"The foul fiend?"
+
+"Nay."
+
+"What then?"
+
+"Love."
+
+"Love? stuff, impossible! She is but a child; she never stirs abroad
+unguarded. She never hath from a child."
+
+"All the better; then we shall not have far to look for him."
+
+"I trow not. I shall but command her to tell me the catiff's name, that
+hath by magic arts ensnared her young affections."
+
+"Oh, how foolish be the wise!" said Margaret; "what, would ye go and put
+her on her guard? Nay, let us work by art first; and if that fails, then
+'twill still be time for violence and folly."
+
+Margaret then with some difficulty prevailed on the mayor to take
+advantage of its being Saturday, and pay all his people their salaries
+in his daughter's presence and hers.
+
+It was done: some fifteen people entered the room, and received their
+pay with a kind word from their employer. Then Margaret, who had sat
+close to the patient all the time, rose and went out. The mayor followed
+her.
+
+"Sir, how call you yon black haired lad?"
+
+"That is Ulrich, my clerk."
+
+"Well then, 'tis he."
+
+"Now heaven forbid! a lad I took out of the streets."
+
+"Well, but your worship is an understanding man. You took him not up
+without some merit of his."
+
+"Merit? not a jot. I liked the looks of the brat, that was all."
+
+"Was that no merit? He pleased the father's eye. And now he hath pleased
+the daughter's. That has oft been seen since Adam."
+
+"How know ye 'tis he?"
+
+"I held her hand, and with my finger did lightly touch her wrist; and,
+when the others came and went, 'twas as if dogs and cats had fared in
+and out. But at this Ulrich's coming her pulse did leap, and her eyes
+shine; and, when he went, she did sink back and sigh; and 'twas to be
+seen the sun had gone out of the room for her. Nay, burgomaster, look
+not on me so scared: no witch nor magician I, but a poor girl that hath
+been docile, and so bettered herself by a great neglected leech's art
+and learning. I tell ye all this hath been done before, thousands of
+years ere we were born. Now bide thou there till I come to thee, and
+prithee, prithee, spoil not good work wi' meddling." She then went back
+and asked her patient for a lock of her hair.
+
+"Take it," said she, more listlessly than ever.
+
+"Why, 'tis a lass of marble. How long do you count to be like that,
+mistress?"
+
+"Till I am in my grave, sweet Peggy."
+
+"Who knows? may be in ten minutes you will be altogether as hot."
+
+She ran into the shop, but speedily returned to the mayor and said,
+"Good news! He fancies her and more than a little. Now how is't to be?
+Will you marry your child, or bury her, for there is no third way, sith
+shame and love they do rend her virgin heart to death."
+
+The dignitary decided for the more cheerful rite, but not without a
+struggle; and, with its marks on his face, he accompanied Margaret to
+his daughter. But as men are seldom in a hurry to drink their wormwood,
+he stood silent. So Doctor Margaret said cheerfully, "Mistress, your
+lock is gone, I have sold it."
+
+"And who was so mad as to buy such a thing?" inquired the young lady,
+scornfully.
+
+"Oh, a black haired laddie wi' white teeth. They call him Ulrich."
+
+The pale face reddened directly--brow and all.
+
+"Says he, 'Oh, sweet mistress, give it me.' I had told them all whose
+'twas. 'Nay,' said I, 'selling is my livelihood, not giving.' So he
+offered me this, he offered me that, but nought less would I take than
+his next quarter's wages."
+
+"Cruel," murmured the girl, scarce audibly.
+
+"Why, you are in one tale with your father. Says he to me when I told
+him, 'Oh, an he loves her hair so well, 'tis odd but he loves the rest
+of her. Well,' quoth he, ''tis an honest lad, and a' shall have her,
+gien she will but leave her sulks and consent.' So, what say ye,
+mistress will you be married to Ulrich, or buried i' the kirkyard?"
+
+"Father? father!"
+
+"'Tis so, girl, speak thy mind."
+
+"I--will--obey--my father--in all things," stammered the poor girl,
+trying hard to maintain the advantageous position in which Margaret had
+placed her. But nature, and the joy and surprise, were too strong even
+for a virgin's bashful cunning. She cast an eloquent look on them both,
+and sank at her father's knees, and begged his pardon, with many sobs
+for having doubted his tenderness.
+
+He raised her in his arms, and took her, radiant through her tears with
+joy, and returning life, and filial love, to his breast; and the pair
+passed a truly sacred moment, and the dignitary was as happy as he
+thought to be miserable: so hard is it for mortals to foresee. And they
+looked round for Margaret, but she had stolen away softly.
+
+The young girl searched the house for her.
+
+"Where is she hid? Where on earth is she?"
+
+Where was she? why in her own house dressing meat for her two old
+children, and crying bitterly the while at the living picture of
+happiness she had just created.
+
+"Well-a-day, the odds between her lot and mine; well-a-day!"
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Next time she met the dignitary, he hemm'd and hawed, and remarked what
+a pity it was the law forbade him to pay her who had cured his daughter.
+"However, when all is done, 'twas not art, 'twas but woman's wit."
+
+"Nought but that, burgomaster," said Margaret, bitterly. "Pay the men of
+art for not curing her: all the guerdon I seek, that cured her, is this;
+go not and give your foul linen away from me by way of thanks."
+
+"Why should I?" inquired he.
+
+"Marry, because there be fools about ye will tell ye she that hath wit
+to cure dark diseases, cannot have wit to take dirt out o' rags; so
+pledge me your faith."
+
+The dignitary promised pompously, and felt all the patron.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Something must be done to fill "to-morrow's box." She hawked her initial
+letters and her illuminated vellums all about the town. Printing had by
+this time dealt caligraphy in black and white a terrible blow in Holland
+and Germany. But some copies of the printed books were usually
+illuminated and lettered. The printers offered Margaret prices for work
+in these two kinds.
+
+"I'll think on't," said she.
+
+She took down her diurnal book, and calculated that the price of an
+hour's work on those arts would be about one fifth what she got for an
+hour at the tub and mangle. "I'll starve first," said she; "what, pay a
+craft and a mystery five times less than a handicraft!"
+
+Martin, carrying the dry clothes-basket, got treated, and drunk. This
+time he babbled her whole story. The girls got hold of it and gibed her
+at the fountain.
+
+All she had gone through was light to her, compared with the pins and
+bodkins her own sex drove into her heart, whenever she came near the
+merry crew with her pitcher, and that was every day. Each sex has its
+form of cruelty; man's is more brutal and terrible; but shallow women,
+that have neither read nor suffered, have an unmuscular barbarity of
+their own (where no feeling of sex steps in to overpower it). This
+defect, intellectual perhaps rather than moral, has been mitigated in
+our day by books, especially by able works of fiction; for there are two
+roads to that highest effort of intelligence, Pity; Experience of
+sorrows, and Imagination, by which alone we realize the grief we never
+felt. In the fifteenth century girls with pitchers had but one;
+Experience; and at sixteen years of age or so, that road had scarce been
+trodden. These girls persisted that Margaret was deserted by her lover.
+And to be deserted was a crime. [They had not been deserted yet.] Not a
+word against the Gerard they had created out of their own heads. For his
+imaginary crime they fell foul of the supposed victim. Sometimes they
+affronted her to her face. Oftener they talked at her backwards and
+forwards with a subtle skill, and a perseverence which, "oh, that they
+had bestowed on the arts," as poor Ague Cheek says.
+
+Now Margaret was brave, and a coward; brave to battle difficulties and
+ill fortune; brave to shed her own blood for those she loved. Fortitude
+she had. But she had no true fighting courage. She was a powerful young
+woman, rather tall, full, and symmetrical; yet had one of those slips of
+girls slapped her face, the poor fool's hands would have dropped
+powerless, or gone to her own eyes instead of her adversary's. Nor was
+she even a match for so many tongues; and, besides, what could she say?
+She knew nothing of these girls, except that somehow they had found out
+her sorrows, and hated her; only she thought to herself they must be
+very happy, or they would not be so hard on her.
+
+So she took their taunts in silence; and all her struggle was not to let
+them see their power to make her writhe within.
+
+Here came in her fortitude; and she received their blows with
+well-feigned, icy, hauteur. They slapped a statue.
+
+But one day, when her spirits were weak, as happens at times to females
+in her condition, a dozen assailants followed suit so admirably, that
+her whole sex seemed to the dispirited one to be against her, and she
+lost heart, and the tears began to run silently at each fresh stab.
+
+On this their triumph knew no bounds, and they followed her half way
+home casting barbed speeches.
+
+After that exposure of weakness the statue could be assumed no more. So
+then she would stand timidly aloof out of tongue-shot, till her young
+tyrants' pitchers were all filled, and they gone; and then creep up with
+hers. And one day she waited so long that the fount had ceased to flow.
+So the next day she was obliged to face the phalanx, or her house go
+dry. She drew near slowly, but with the less tremor, that she saw a man
+at the well talking to them. He would distract their attention, and,
+besides, they would keep their foul tongues quiet if only to blind the
+male to their real character. This conjecture, though shrewd, was
+erroneous. They could not all flirt with that one man: so the outsiders
+indemnified themselves by talking at her the very moment she came up.
+
+"Any news from foreign parts, Jacqueline?"
+
+"None for me, Martha. My lad goes no farther from me than the town
+wall."
+
+"I can't say as much," says a third.
+
+"But if he goes t' Italy I have got another ready to take the fool's
+place."
+
+"He'll not go thither, lass. They go not so far till they are sick of us
+that bide in Holland."
+
+Surprise, and indignation, and the presence of a man, gave Margaret a
+moment's fighting courage. "Oh, flout me not, and show your ill nature
+before the very soldier. In Heaven's name, what ill did I ever to ye;
+what harsh word cast back, for all you have flung on me, a desolate
+stranger in your cruel town, that ye flout me for my bereavement and my
+poor lad's most unwilling banishment? Hearts of flesh would surely pity
+us both, for that ye cast in my teeth these many days, ye brows of
+brass, ye bosoms of stone."
+
+They stared at this novelty, resistance; and ere they could recover and
+make mincemeat of her, she put her pitcher quietly down, and threw her
+coarse apron over her head, and stood there grieving, her short-lived
+spirit oozing fast. "Hallo!" cried the soldier, "why, what is your ill?"
+She made no reply. But a little girl, who had long secretly hated the
+big ones, squeaked out, "They did flout her, they are aye flouting her:
+she may not come nigh the fountain for fear o' them, and 'tis a black
+shame."
+
+"Who spoke to her? Not I for one."
+
+"Nor I. I would not bemean myself so far."
+
+The man laughed heartily at this display of dignity. "Come, wife," said
+he, "never lower thy flag to such light skirmishers as these. Hast a
+tongue i' thy head as well as they."
+
+"Alack, good soldier, I was not bred to bandy foul terms."
+
+"Well, but hast a better arm than these. Why not take 'em by twos across
+thy knee, and skelp 'em till they cry Meculpee?"
+
+"Nay, I would not hurt their bodies for all their cruel hearts."
+
+"Then ye must e'en laugh at them, wife. What! a woman grown, and not see
+why mesdames give tongue? You are a buxom wife; they are a bundle of
+thread-papers. You are fair and fresh: they have all the Dutch rim under
+their bright eyes, that comes of dwelling in eternal swamps. There lies
+your crime. Come, gie me thy pitcher, and, if they flout me, shalt see
+me scrub 'em all wi' my beard till they squeak holy mother." The pitcher
+was soon filled, and the soldier put it in Margaret's hand. She murmured
+"Thank you kindly, brave soldier."
+
+He patted her on the shoulder. "Come, courage, brave wife; the divell is
+dead!" She let the heavy pitcher fall on his foot directly. He cursed
+horribly, and hopped in a circle, saying, "No, the Thief's alive and has
+broken my great toe."
+
+The apron came down, and there was a lovely face all flushed with
+emotion, and two beaming eyes in front of him, and two hands held out
+clasped.
+
+"Nay, nay, 'tis nought," said he, good-humouredly, mistaking.
+
+"Denys?"
+
+"Well?--But--Hallo! How know you my name is--"
+
+"Denys of Burgundy!"
+
+"Why, odsbodikins! I know you not, and you know me."
+
+"By Gerard's letter. Cross-bow! beard! handsome! The divell is dead."
+
+"Sword of Goliah! this must be she. Red hair, violet eyes, lovely face.
+But I took ye for a married wife, seeing ye--"
+
+"Tell me my name," said she quickly.
+
+"Margaret Brandt."
+
+"Gerard? Where is he? Is he in life? Is he well? Is he come? Why is he
+not here? Where have ye left him? Oh, tell me! prithee, prithee,
+prithee, tell me!"
+
+"Ay, ay, but not here. Oh, ye are all curiosity now, mesdames, eh? Lass,
+I have been three months a-foot travelling all Holland to find ye, and
+here you are. Oh, be joyful!" and he flung his cap in the air, and
+seizing both her hands kissed them ardently. "Ah, my pretty she-comrade,
+I have found thee at last. I knew I should. Shalt be flouted no more.
+I'll twist your necks at the first word, ye little trollops. And I have
+got fifteen gold angels left for thee, and our Gerard will soon be here.
+Shalt wet thy purple eyes no more."
+
+But the fair eyes were wet even now, looking kindly and gratefully at
+the friend that had dropped among her foes as if from heaven: Gerard's
+comrade. "Prithee come home with me, good, kind Denys. I cannot speak of
+him before these." They went off together, followed by a chorus. "She
+has gotten a man. She has gotten a man at last. Hoo! hoo! hoo!"
+
+Margaret quickened her steps; but Denys took down his crossbow and
+pretended to shoot them all dead: they fled quadrivious, shrieking.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER LIII
+
+
+THE reader already knows how much these two had to tell one another. It
+was a sweet yet bitter day for Margaret, since it brought her a true
+friend, and ill news: for now first she learned that Gerard was all
+alone in that strange land. She could not think with Denys that he would
+come home; indeed he would have arrived before this.
+
+Denys was a balm. He called her his she-comrade, and was always cheering
+her up with his formula and hilarities, and she petted him and made much
+of him, and feebly hectored it over him as well as over Martin, and
+would not let him eat a single meal out of her house, and forbade him to
+use naughty words. "It spoils you, Denys. Good lack, to hear such ugly
+words come forth so comely a head: forbear, or I shall be angry: so be
+civil." Whereupon Denys was upon his good behaviour, and ludicrous the
+struggle between his native politeness and his acquired ruffianism. And
+as it never rains but it pours, other persons now solicited Margaret's
+friendship. She had written to Margaret Van Eyck a humble letter telling
+her she knew she was no longer the favourite she had been, and would
+keep her distance; but could not forget her benefactress's past
+kindness. She then told her briefly how many ways she had battled for a
+living, and, in conclusion, begged earnestly that her residence might
+not be betrayed, "least of all to his people. I do hate them, they drove
+him from me. And, even when he was gone, their hearts turned not to me
+as they would an if they had repented their cruelty to him."
+
+The Van Eyck was perplexed. At last she made a confidante of Reicht. The
+secret ran through Reicht, as through a cylinder, to Catherine.
+
+"Ay, and is she turned that bitter against us?" said that good woman.
+"She stole our son from us, and now she hates us for not running into
+her arms. Natheless it is a blessing she is alive and no farther away
+than Rotterdam."
+
+The English princess now Countess Charolois, made a stately progress
+through the northern states of the duchy, accompanied by her
+step-daughter the young heiress of Burgundy, Marie de Bourgogne. Then
+the old duke, the most magnificent prince in Europe, put out his
+splendour. Troops of dazzling knights, and bevies of fair ladies
+gorgeously attired, attended the two princesses; and minstrels,
+jongleurs, or storytellers, bards, musicians, actors, tumblers, followed
+in the train; and there were fencing, dancing, and joy in every town
+they shone on. Giles, a court favourite, sent a timely message to
+Tergou, inviting all his people to meet the pageant at Rotterdam.
+
+They agreed to take a holiday for once in a way, and setting their
+married daughter to keep the shop, came to Rotterdam. But to two of
+them, not the great folk, but little Giles, was the main attraction.
+They had been in Rotterdam some days, when Denys met Catherine
+accidentally in the street, and after a warm greeting on both sides,
+bade her rejoice, for he had found the she-comrade, and crowed; but
+Catherine cooled him by showing him how much earlier he would have found
+her by staying quietly at Tergou, than by vagabondizing it all over
+Holland. "And being found, what the better are we? her heart is set dead
+against us now."
+
+"Oh let that flea stick, come you with me to her house."
+
+No, she would not go where she was sure of an ill welcome. "Them that
+come unbidden sit unseated." No, let Denys be mediator, and bring the
+parties to a good understanding. He undertook the office at once, and
+with great pomp and confidence. He trotted off to Margaret and said,
+"She-comrade, I met this day a friend of thine."
+
+"Thou didst look into the Rotter then, and see thyself."
+
+"Nay, 'twas a female, and one that seeks thy regard; 'twas Catherine,
+Gerard's mother."
+
+"Oh, was it?" said Margaret; "then you may tell her she comes too late.
+There was a time I longed and longed for her; but she held aloof in my
+hour of most need, so now we will be as we ha' been."
+
+Denys tried to shake this resolution. He coaxed her, but she was bitter
+and sullen, and not to be coaxed. Then he scolded her well; then, at
+that she went into hysterics.
+
+He was frightened at this result of his eloquence, and being off his
+guard allowed himself to be entrapped into a solemn promise never to
+recur to the subject. He went back to Catherine crestfallen, and told
+her. She fired up and told the family how his overtures had been
+received. Then they fired up; it became a feud and burned fiercer every
+day. Little Kate alone made some excuses for Margaret.
+
+The very next day another visitor came to Margaret, and found the
+military enslaved and degraded, Martin up to his elbows in soapsuds, and
+Denys ironing very clumsily, and Margaret plaiting ruffs, but with a
+mistress's eye on her raw levies. To these there entered an old man,
+venerable at first sight, but on nearer view keen and wizened.
+
+"Ah," cried Margaret. Then swiftly turned her back on him and hid her
+face with invincible repugnance. "Oh, that man! that man!"
+
+"Nay, fear me not," said Ghysbrecht; "I come on a friend's errand. I
+bring ye a letter from foreign parts."
+
+"Mock me not, old man," and she turned slowly round.
+
+"Nay, see," and he held out an enormous letter. Margaret darted on it,
+and held it with trembling hands and glistening eyes. It was Gerard's
+handwriting.
+
+"Oh, thank you, sir, bless you for this. I forgive you all the ill you
+ever wrought me." And she pressed the letter to her bosom with one hand,
+and glided swiftly from the room with it.
+
+As she did not come back, Ghysbrecht went away, but not without a scowl
+at Martin. Margaret was hours alone with her letter.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER LIV
+
+
+WHEN she came down again she was a changed woman. Her eyes were wet, but
+calm, and all her bitterness and excitement charmed away.
+
+"Denys," said she, softly, "I have got my orders. I am to read my
+lover's letter to his folk."
+
+"Ye will never do that?"
+
+"Ay will I."
+
+"I see there is something in the letter has softened ye towards them."
+
+"Not a jot, Denys, not a jot. But an I hated them like poison I would
+not disobey my love. Denys, 'tis so sweet to obey, and sweetest of all
+to obey one who is far, far away and cannot enforce my duty, but must
+trust my love for my obedience. Ah, Gerard, my darling, at hand I might
+have slighted thy commands, misliking thy folk as I have cause to do;
+but now, didst bid me go into the raging sea and read thy sweet letter
+to the sharks there I'd go. Therefore, Denys, tell his mother I have got
+a letter, and if she and hers would hear it, I am their servant, let
+them say their hour, and I'll seat them as best I can, and welcome them
+as best I may."
+
+Denys went off to Catherine with this good news. He found the family at
+dinner, and told them there was a long letter from Gerard. Then in the
+midst of the joy this caused, he said, "And her heart is softened, and
+she will read it to you herself; you are to choose your own time."
+
+"What, does she think there are none can read but her?" asked Catherine.
+"Let her send the letter and we will read it."
+
+"Nay, but mother," objected little Kate; "mayhap she cannot bear to part
+it from her hand; she loves him dearly."
+
+"What, thinks she we shall steal it?"
+
+Cornelis suggested that she would fain wedge herself into the family by
+means of this letter.
+
+Denys cast a look of scorn on the speaker. "There spoke a bad heart,"
+said he. "La Camarade hates you all like poison. Oh, mistake me not,
+dame; I defend her not, but so 'tis; yet maugre her spleen at a word
+from Gerard she proffers to read you his letter with her own pretty
+mouth, and hath a voice like honey--sure 'tis a fair proffer."
+
+"'Tis so, mine honest soldier," said the father of the family, "and
+merits a civil reply, therefore hold your whisht ye that be women, and I
+shall answer her. Tell her I, his father, setting aside all past
+grudges, do for this grace thank her, and, would she have double thanks,
+let her send my son's letter by thy faithful hand, the which will I read
+to his flesh and blood, and will then to her so surely and faithfully
+return, as I am Eli a Dierich a William a Luke, free burgher of Tergou,
+like my forbears, and, like them, a man of my word."
+
+"Ay, and a man who is better than his word," cried Catherine; "the only
+one I ever did foregather."
+
+"Hold thy peace, wife."
+
+"Art a man of sense, Eli, a dirk, a chose, a chose,"[B] shouted Denys.
+"The she-comrade will be right glad to obey Gerard and yet not face you
+all, whom she hates as wormwood, saving your presence. Bless ye, the
+world hath changed, she is all submission to-day: 'Obedience is honey,'
+quoth she; and in sooth 'tis a sweetmeat she cannot but savour, eating
+so little on't, for what with her fair face, and her mellow tongue; and
+what wi' flying in fits and terrifying us that be soldiers to death, and
+we thwart her; and what wi' chiding us one while, and petting us like
+lambs t'other, she hath made two of the crawlingest slaves ever you saw
+out of two honest swashbucklers. I be the ironing ruffian, t' other
+washes."
+
+"What next?"
+
+"What next? why whenever the brat is in the world I shall rock cradle,
+and t' other knave will wash tucker and bib. So, then, I'll go fetch
+the letter on the instant. Ye will let me bide and hear it read, will ye
+not?"
+
+"Else our hearts were black as coal," said Catherine.
+
+So Denys went for the letter. He came back crestfallen. "She will not
+let it out of her hand neither to me nor you, nor any he or she that
+lives."
+
+"I knew she would not," said Cornelis.
+
+"Whisht! whisht!" said Eli, "and let Denys tell his story."
+
+"'Nay,' said I, 'but be ruled by me.' 'Not I,' quoth she. 'Well but,'
+quoth I, 'that same honey Obedience ye spake of.' 'You are a fool,' says
+she; 'obedience to Gerard is sweet, but obedience to any other body, who
+ever said that was sweet?'"
+
+"At last she seemed to soften a bit, and did give me a written paper for
+you, mademoiselle. Here 'tis."
+
+"For me?" said little Kate, colouring.
+
+"Give that here!" said Eli, and he scanned the writing, and said almost
+in a whisper, "These be words from the letter. Hearken!
+
+"'And, sweetheart, an' if these lines should travel safe to thee, make
+thou trial of my people's hearts withal. Maybe they are somewhat turned
+toward me, being far away. If 'tis so, they will show it to thee, since
+now to me they may not. Read, then, this letter! But I do strictly
+forbid thee to let it from thy hands; and if they still hold aloof from
+thee, why then say nought, but let them think me dead. Obey me in this;
+for, if thou dost disrespect my judgment and my will in this thou lovest
+me not.'"
+
+There was a silence, and Gerard's words copied by Margaret were handed
+round and inspected.
+
+"Well," said Catherine, "that is another matter. But methinks 'tis for
+her to come to us, not we to her."
+
+"Alas, mother! what odds does that make?"
+
+"Much," said Eli. "Tell her we are over many to come to her, and bid her
+hither, the sooner the better."
+
+When Denys was gone, Eli owned it was a bitter pill to him. "When that
+lass shall cross my threshold, all the mischief and misery she hath made
+here will seem to come in adoors in one heap. But what could I do, wife?
+We _must_ hear the news of Gerard. I saw that in thine eyes, and felt it
+in my own heart. And she is backed by our undutiful but still beloved
+son, and so is she stronger than we, and brings our noses down to the
+grindstone, the sly, cruel, jade. But never heed. We will hear the
+letter: and then let her go unblessed, as she came unwelcome."
+
+"Make your mind easy," said Catherine. "She will not come at all." And a
+tone of regret was visible.
+
+Shortly after Richart, who had been hourly expected, arrived from
+Amsterdam grave and dignified in his burgher's robe and gold chain,
+ruff, and furred cap, and was received not with affection only, but
+respect; for he had risen a step higher than his parents, and such steps
+were marked in mediaeval society almost as visibly as those in their
+staircases.
+
+Admitted in due course to the family council, he showed plainly, though
+not discourteously, that his pride was deeply wounded by their having
+deigned to treat with Margaret Brandt. "I see the temptation," said he.
+"But which of us hath not at times to wish one way and do another?"
+
+This threw a considerable chill over the old people. So little Kate put
+in a word. "Vex not thyself, dear Richart. Mother says she will not
+come."
+
+"All the better, sweetheart. I fear me, if she do, I shall hie me back
+to Amsterdam."
+
+Here Denys popped his head in at the door, and said "She will be here at
+three on the great dial."
+
+They all looked at one another in silence.
+
+FOOTNOTE:
+
+[B] Anglice, a Thing-em-bob.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER LV
+
+
+"NAY, Richart," said Catherine at last, "for Heaven's sake let not this
+one sorry wench set us all by the ears: hath she not made ill blood
+enough already?"
+
+"In very deed she hath. Fear me not, good mother. Let her come and read
+the letter of the poor boy she hath by devilish arts bewitched, and then
+let her go. Give me your words to show her no countenance beyond decent
+and constrained civility: less we may not, being in our own house; and I
+will say no more." On this understanding they awaited the foe. She, for
+her part, prepared for the interview in a spirit little less hostile.
+
+When Denys brought word they would not come to her, but would receive
+her, her lip curled, and she bade him observe how in them every feeling,
+however small, was larger than the love for Gerard. "Well," said she,
+"I have not that excuse; so why mimic the pretty burgher's pride, the
+pride of all unlettered folk? I will go to them for Gerard's sake. Oh,
+how I loathe them!"
+
+Thus poor good-natured Denys was bringing into one house the materials
+of an explosion.
+
+Margaret made her toilet in the same spirit that a knight of her day
+dressed for battle--he to parry blows, and she to parry glances--glances
+of contempt at her poverty, or of irony at her extravagance. Her kirtle
+was of English cloth, dark blue, and her farthingale and hose of the
+same material, but a glossy roan, or claret colour. Not an inch of
+pretentious fur about her, but plain snowy linen wrist-bands, and
+curiously-plaited linen from the bosom of the kirtle up to the
+commencement of the throat; it did not encircle her throat, but framed
+it, being square, not round. Her front hair still peeped in two waves
+much after the fashion which Mary Queen of Scots revived a century
+later; but instead of the silver net, which would have ill become her
+present condition, the rest of her head was covered with a very small
+tight-fitting hood of dark blue cloth, hemmed with silver. Her shoes
+were red; but the roan petticoat and hose prepared the spectator's mind
+for the shock, and they set off the arched instep and shapely foot.
+
+Beauty knew its business then as now.
+
+And with all this she kept her enemies waiting, though it was three by
+the dial.
+
+At last she started, attended by her he-comrade. And when they were half
+way, she stopped and said thoughtfully, "Denys!"
+
+"Well, she-general?"
+
+"I must go home" (piteously).
+
+"What have ye left somewhat behind?"
+
+"Ay."
+
+"What?"
+
+"My courage. Oh! oh! oh!"
+
+"Nay, nay, be brave, she-general. I shall be with you."
+
+"Ay, but wilt keep close to me when I be there?"
+
+Denys promised, and she resumed her march, but gingerly.
+
+Meantime, they were all assembled, and waiting for her with a strange
+mixture of feelings.
+
+Mortification, curiosity, panting affection, aversion to her who came to
+gratify those feelings, yet another curiosity to see what she was like,
+and what there was in her to bewitch Gerard, and make so much mischief.
+
+At last Denys came alone, and whispered, "The she-comrade is without."
+
+"Fetch her in," said Eli. "Now whist, all of ye. None speak to her but
+I."
+
+They all turned their eyes to the door in dead silence.
+
+A little muttering was heard outside; Denys's rough organ, and a woman's
+soft and mellow voice.
+
+Presently that stopped; and then the door opened slowly, and Margaret
+Brandt, dressed as I have described, and somewhat pale, but calm and
+lovely, stood on the threshold, looking straight before her.
+
+They all rose but Kate, and remained mute and staring.
+
+"Be seated, mistress," said Eli, gravely, and motioned to a seat that
+had been set apart for her.
+
+She inclined her head, and crossed the apartment; and in so doing her
+condition was very visible, not only in her shape, but in her languor.
+
+Cornelis and Sybrandt hated her for it. Richart thought it spoiled her
+beauty.
+
+It softened the women somewhat.
+
+She took her letter out of her bosom, and kissed it as if she had been
+alone; then disposed herself to read it with the air of one who knew she
+was there for that single purpose.
+
+But, as she began, she noticed they had seated her all by herself like a
+leper. She looked at Denys, and putting her hand down by her side, made
+him a swift furtive motion to come by her.
+
+He went with an obedient start as if she had cried "March!" and stood at
+her shoulder like a sentinel; but this zealous manner of doing it
+revealed to the company that he had been ordered thither; and at that
+she coloured. And now she began to read her Gerard, their Gerard, to
+their eager ears, in a mellow, but clear voice, so soft, so earnest, so
+thrilling, her very soul seemed to cling about each precious sound. It
+was a voice as of a woman's bosom set speaking by Heaven itself.
+
+"I do nothing doubt, my Margaret, that long ere this shall meet thy
+beloved eyes, Denys, my most dear friend, will have sought thee out, and
+told thee the manner of our unlooked-for and most tearful parting.
+Therefore I will e'en begin at that most doleful day. What befell him
+after, poor faithful soul, fain, fain would I hear, but may not. But I
+pray for him day and night next after thee, dearest. Friend more stanch
+and loving had not David in Jonathan than I in him. Be good to him for
+poor Gerard's sake."
+
+At these words, which came quite unexpectedly to him, Denys leaned his
+head on Margaret's high chair, and groaned aloud.
+
+She turned quickly as she sat, and found his hand, and pressed it.
+
+And so the sweetheart and the friend held hands while the sweetheart
+read.
+
+"I went forward all dizzied, like one in an ill dream; and presently a
+gentleman came up with his servants, all on horseback, and had like to
+have rid o'er me. And he drew rein at the brow of the hill, and sent his
+armed men back to rob me. They robbed me civilly enough; and took my
+purse and the last copper, and rid gaily away. I wandered stupid on, a
+friendless pauper."
+
+There was a general sigh, followed by an oath from Denys.
+
+"Presently a strange dimness came o'er me, I lay down to sleep on the
+snow. 'Twas ill done, and with store of wolves hard by. Had I loved thee
+as thou dost deserve, I had shown more manhood. But oh, sweet love, the
+drowsiness that did crawl o'er me desolate, and benumb me, was more than
+nature. And so I slept; and but that God was better to us, than I to
+thee or to myself, from that sleep I ne'er had waked; so all do say. I
+had slept an hour or two, as I supposed, but no more, when a hand did
+shake me rudely. I awoke to my troubles. And there stood a servant girl
+in her holiday suit. 'Are ye mad,' quoth she, in seeming choler, 'to
+sleep in snow, and under wolves' nosen? Art weary o' life, and not long
+weaned? Come, now,' said she, more kindly, 'get up like a good lad'; so
+I did rise up. 'Are ye rich, or are ye poor?' But I stared at her as one
+amazed. 'Why 'tis easy of reply,' quoth she. 'Are ye rich, or are ye
+poor?' Then I gave a great, loud cry; that she did start back. 'Am I
+rich, or am I poor? Had ye asked me an hour agone, I had said I am rich.
+But now I am so poor as sure earth beareth on her bosom none poorer. An
+hour agone I was rich in a friend, rich in money, rich in hope and
+spirits of youth; but now the Bastard of Burgundy hath taken my friend
+and another gentleman my purse; and I can neither go forward to Rome nor
+back to her I left in Holland. I am poorest of the poor.' 'Alack!' said
+the wench. 'Natheless, an ye had been rich ye might ha' lain down again
+in the snow for any use I had for ye; and then I trow ye had soon fared
+out o' this world as bare as ye came into 't. But, being poor, you are
+our man: so come wi' me.' Then I went because she bade me, and because I
+recked not now whither I went. And she took me to a fine house hard by,
+and into a noble dining-hall hung with black: and there was set a table
+with many dishes, and but one plate and one chair. 'Fall to!' said she,
+in a whisper. 'What, alone?' said I. 'Alone? And which of us, think ye,
+would eat out of the same dish with ye? Are we robbers o' the dead?'
+Then she speered where I was born. 'At Tergou,' said I. Says she, 'And,
+when a gentleman dies in that country, serve they not the dead man's
+dinner up as usual, till he be in the ground, and set some poor man down
+to it?' I told her nay. 'She blushed for us then. Here they were better
+Christians.' So I behoved to sit down. But small was my heart for meat.
+Then this kind lass sat by me and poured me out wine; and, tasting it,
+it cut me to the heart Denys was not there to drink with me. He doth so
+love good wine, and women good, bad, or indifferent. The rich, strong
+wine curled round my sick heart; and that day first I did seem to
+glimpse why folk in trouble run to drink so. She made me eat of every
+dish. ''Twas unlucky to pass one. Nought was here but her master's
+_daily_ dinner.' 'He had a good stomach, then,' said I. 'Ay, lad, and a
+good heart. Leastways, so we all say now he is dead; but, being alive,
+no word on't e'er heard I.' So I did eat as a bird; nibbling of every
+dish. And she hearing me sigh, and seeing me like to choke at the food,
+took pity and bade me be of good cheer. I should sup and lie there that
+night. And she went to the hind, and he gave me a right good bed; and I
+told him all, and asked him would the law give me back my purse. 'Law!'
+quoth he; 'law there was none for the poor in Burgundy. Why, 'twas the
+cousin of the Lady of the Manor, he that had robbed me. He knew the wild
+spark. The matter must be judged before the lady; and she was quite
+young, and far more like to hang me for slandering her cousin, and a
+gentleman, and a handsome man, than to make him give me back my own.
+Inside the liberties of a town a poor man might now and then see the
+face of justice; but out among the grand seigneurs and dames--never.' So
+I said, 'I'll sit down robbed rather than seek justice and find
+gallows.' They were all most kind to me next day; and the girl
+proffered me money from her small wage to help me towards Rhine."
+
+"Oh, then, he is coming home! he is coming home!' shouted Denys,
+interrupting the reader. She shook her head gently at him, by way of
+reproof.
+
+"I beg pardon, all the company," said he stiffly.
+
+"'Twas a sore temptation; but, being a servant, my stomach rose against
+it. 'Nay, nay,' said I. She told me I was wrong. ''Twas pride out o'
+place; poor folk should help one another; or who on earth would?' I said
+if I could do aught in return 'twere well; but for a free gift, nay: I
+was over much beholden already. Should I write a letter for her? 'Nay,
+he is in the house at present,' said she. 'Should I draw her picture,
+and so earn my money? 'What, can ye?' said she. I told her I could try;
+and her habit would well become a picture. So she was agog to be limned,
+and give it her lad. And I set her to stand in a good light, and soon
+made sketches two, whereof I send thee one, coloured at odd hours. The
+other I did most hastily, and with little conscience daub, for which may
+Heaven forgive me; but time was short. They, poor things, knew no
+better, and were most proud and joyous; and, both kissing me after their
+country fashion, 'twas the hind that was her sweetheart, they did bid me
+God-speed; and I towards Rhine."
+
+Margaret paused here, and gave Denys the coloured drawing to hand round.
+It was eagerly examined by the females on account of the costume, which
+differed in some respects from that of a Dutch domestic: the hair was in
+a tight linen bag, a yellow half kerchief crossed her head from ear to
+ear, but threw out a rectangular point that descended the centre of her
+forehead, and it met in two more points over her bosom. She wore a red
+kirtle with long sleeves, kilted very high in front, and showing a green
+farthingale and a great red leather purse hanging down over it; red
+stockings, yellow leathern shoes, ahead of her age; for they were
+low-quartered and square-toed, secured by a strap buckling over the
+instep, which was not uncommon, and was perhaps the rude germ of the
+diamond buckle to come.
+
+Margaret continued:--
+
+"But, oh! how I missed my Denys at every step! often I sat down on the
+road and groaned. And in the afternoon it chanced that I did so set me
+down where two roads met, and with heavy head in hand, and heavy heart,
+did think of thee, my poor sweetheart, and of my lost friend, and of the
+little house at Tergou, where they all loved me once; though now it is
+turned to hate."
+
+_Catherine._] "Alas! that he will think so."
+
+_Eli._] "Whist! wife!"
+
+"And I did sigh loud, and often. And me sighing so, one came carolling
+like a bird adown t'other road. 'Ay, chirp and chirp,' cried I,
+bitterly. 'Thou hast not lost sweetheart, and friend, thy father's
+hearth, thy mother's smile, and every penny in the world.' And at last
+he did so carol, and carol, I jumped up in ire to get away from his most
+jarring mirth. But, ere I fled from it, I looked down the path to see
+what could make a man so light hearted in this weary world; and lo! the
+songster was a humpbacked cripple, with a bloody bandage o'er his eye,
+and both legs gone at the knee."
+
+"He! he! he! he! he!" went Sybrandt, laughing and cackling.
+
+Margaret's eyes flashed: she began to fold the letter up.
+
+"Nay, lass," said Eli, "heed him not! Thou unmannerly cur, offer't but
+again and I put thee to the door."
+
+"Why, what was there to gibe at, Sybrandt?" remonstrated Catherine, more
+mildly. "Is not our Kate afflicted? and is she not the most content of
+us all, and singeth like a merle at times between her pains? But I am as
+bad as thou; prithee read on, lass, and stop our gabble wi' somewhat
+worth the hearkening."
+
+"Then, said I, 'may this thing be?' And I took myself to task. 'Gerard,
+son of Eli, dost thou well to bemoan thy lot, that hast youth and
+health; and here comes the wreck of nature on crutches, praising God's
+goodness with singing like a mavis?'"
+
+_Catherine._] "There you see."
+
+_Eli._] "Whist, dame, whist!"
+
+"And whenever he saw me, he left carolling and presently hobbled up and
+chanted, 'Charity, for love of Heaven, sweet master, charity,' with a
+whine as piteous as wind at keyhole. 'Alack, poor soul,' said I,
+'charity is in my heart, but not my purse; I am poor as thou.' Then he
+believed me none, and to melt me undid his sleeve, and showed a sore
+wound on his arm, and said he: 'Poor cripple though I be, I am like to
+lose this eye to boot, look else.' I saw and groaned for him, and to
+excuse myself let him wot how I have been robbed of my last copper.
+Thereat he left whining all in a moment, and said, in a big manly voice,
+'Then I'll e'en take a rest. Here, youngster, pull thou this strap:
+nay, fear not!' I pulled, and down came a stout pair of legs out of his
+back; and half his hump had melted away, and the wound in his eye no
+deeper than the bandage."
+
+"Oh!" ejaculated Margaret's hearers, in a body.
+
+"Whereat, seeing me astounded, he laughed in my face, and told me I was
+not worth gulling, and offered me his protection. 'My face was
+prophetic,' he said. 'Of what?' said I. 'Marry,' said he, 'that its
+owner will starve in this thievish land.' Travel teaches e'en the young
+wisdom. Time was I had turned and fled this impostor as a pestilence;
+but now I listened patiently to pick up crumbs of counsel. And well I
+did: for nature and his adventurous life had crammed the poor knave with
+shrewdness and knowledge of the homelier sort--a child was I beside him.
+When he had turned me inside out, said he, 'Didst well to leave France
+and make for Germany; but think not of Holland again. Nay, on to
+Augsburg and Nurnberg, the Paradise of craftsmen: thence to Venice, an
+thou wilt. But thou wilt never bide in Italy nor any other land, having
+once tasted the great German cities. Why there is but one honest country
+in Europe, and that is Germany; and since thou art honest, and since I
+am a vagabone, Germany was made for us twain.' I bade him make that
+good: how might one country fit true men and knaves? 'Why, thou novice,'
+said he, 'because in an honest land are fewer knaves to bite the honest
+man, and many honest men for the knave to bite. I was in luck, being
+honest, to have fallen in with a friendly sharp. Be my pal,' said he. 'I
+go to Nurnberg, we will reach it with full pouches. I'll learn ye the
+cul de bois, and the cul de jatte, and how to maund, and chant, and
+patter, and to raise swellings, and paint sores and ulcers on thy body
+would take in the divell.' I told him, shivering, I'd liever die than
+shame myself and my folk so."
+
+_Eli._] "Good lad! good lad!"
+
+"Why what shame was it for such as I to turn beggar? Beggary was an
+ancient and most honourable mystery. What did holy monks, and bishops,
+and kings, when they would win Heaven's smile? why, wash the feet of
+beggars, those favourites of the saints. 'The saints were no fools,' he
+told me. Then he did put out his foot. 'Look at that, that was washed by
+the greatest king alive, Louis of France, the last holy Thursday that
+was. And the next day, Friday, clapped in the stocks by the warden of a
+petty hamlet,' So I told him my foot should walk between such high
+honour and such low disgrace, on the safe path of honesty, please God.
+Well then, since I had not spirit to beg, he would indulge my
+perversity. I should work under him, he be the head, I the fingers. And
+with that he set himself up like a judge, on a heap of dust by the
+road's side, and questioned me strictly what I could do. I began to say
+I was strong and willing. 'Bah!' said he, 'so is an ox. Say, what canst
+do that Sir Ox cannot?' I could write; I had won a prize for it. 'Canst
+write as fast as the printers?' quo' he, jeering. 'What else?' I could
+paint. 'That was better.' I was like to tear my hair to hear him say so,
+and me going to Rome to write. I could twang the psaltery a bit. 'That
+was well. Could I tell stories?' Ay, by the score. 'Then,' said he, 'I
+hire you from this moment.' 'What to do?' said I. 'Nought crooked, Sir
+Candour,' says he. 'I will feed thee all the way and find thee work; and
+take half thine earnings, no more.' 'Agreed,' said I, and gave my hand
+on it. 'Now, servant,' said he, 'we will dine. But ye need not stand
+behind my chair, for two reasons, first I ha' got no chair, and, next,
+good fellowship likes me better than state.' And out of his wallet he
+brought flesh, fowl, and pastry, a good dozen of spices lapped in flax
+paper, and wine fit for a king. Ne'er feasted I better than out of this
+beggar's wallet, now my master. When we had well eaten I was for going
+on. 'But,' said he, 'servants should not drive their masters too hard,
+especially after feeding, for then the body is for repose, and the mind
+turns to contemplation;' and he lay on his back gazing calmly at the
+sky, and presently wondered whether there were any beggars up there. I
+told him I knew but of one; called Lazarus. 'Could he do the cul de
+jatte better than I?' said he, and looked quite jealous like. I told him
+nay; Lazarus was honest, though a beggar, and fed daily of the crumbs
+fal'n from a rich man's table, and the dogs licked his sores. 'Servant,'
+quo' he, 'I spy a foul fault in thee. Thou liest without discretion: now
+the end of lying being to gull, this is no better than fumbling with the
+divell's tail. I pray Heaven thou mayest prove to paint better than thou
+cuttest whids, or I am done out of a dinner. No beggar eats crumbs, but
+only the fat of the land; and dogs lick not a beggar's sores, being made
+with spearwort, or ratsbane, or biting acids, from all which dogs, and
+even pigs, abhor. My sores are made after my proper receipt; but no dog
+would lick e'en them twice. I have made a scurvy bargain: art a cozening
+knave. I doubt, as well as a nincompoop.' I deigned no reply to this
+bundle of lies, which did accuse heavenly truth of falsehood for not
+being in a tale with him. He rose and we took the road; and presently we
+came to a place where were two little wayside inns, scarce a furlong
+apart. 'Halt,' said my master. 'Their armories are sore faded--all the
+better. Go thou in; shun the master; board the wife; and flatter her inn
+sky high, all but the armories, and offer to colour them dirt cheap.' So
+I went in and told the wife I was a painter, and would revive her
+armories cheap; but she sent me away with a rebuff. I to my master. He
+groaned. 'Ye are all fingers and no tongue,' said he; 'I have made a
+scurvy bargain. Come and hear me patter and flatter.' Between the two
+inns was a high hedge. He goes behind it a minute and comes out a decent
+tradesman. We went on to the other inn, and then I heard him praise it
+so fulsome as the very wife did blush. 'But,' says he, 'there is one
+little, little fault; your armories are dull and faded. Say but the
+word, and for a silver franc my apprentice here, the cunningest e'er I
+had, shall make them bright as ever.' Whilst she hesitated, the rogue
+told her he had done it to a little inn hard by, and now the inn's face
+was like the starry firmament. "D'ye hear that, my man?' cries she, 'The
+Three Frogs' have been and painted up their armories: shall 'The Four
+Hedgehogs' be outshone by them?" So I painted, and my master stood by
+like a lord, advising me how to do, and winking to me to heed him none,
+and I got a silver franc. And he took me back to 'The Three Frogs,' and
+on the way put me on a beard and disguised me, and flattered 'The Three
+Frogs,' and told them how he had adorned 'The Four Hedgehogs,' and into
+the net jumped the three poor simple frogs, and I earned another silver
+franc. Then we went on and he found his crutches, and sent me forward,
+and showed his 'cicatrices d'emprunt,' as he called them, and all his
+infirmities, at 'The Four Hedgehogs,' and got both food and money.
+'Come, share and share,' quoth he: so I gave him one franc. 'I have made
+a good bargain,' said he. 'Art a master limner, but takest too much
+time.' So I let him know that in matters of honest craft things could
+not be done quick and well. 'Then do them quick,' quoth he. And he told
+me my name was Bon Bec; and I might call him Cul de Jatte, because that
+was his lay at our first meeting. And at the next town my master, Cul
+de Jatte, bought me a psaltery, and sat himself up again by the roadside
+in state like him that erst judged Marsyas and Apollo, piping for vain
+glory. So I played a strain. 'Indifferent well, harmonious Bon Bec,'
+said he, haughtily. 'Now tune thy pipes.' So I did sing a sweet strain
+the good monks taught me; and singing it reminded poor Bon Bec, Gerard
+erst, of his young days and home, and brought the water to mine een.
+But, looking up, my master's visage was as the face of a little boy
+whipt soundly, or sipping foulest medicine. 'Zounds, stop that
+belly-ache blether,' quoth he, 'that will ne'er wile a stiver out o'
+peasants' purses; 'twill but sour the nurses' milk, and gar the kine
+jump into rivers to be out of earshot on't. What, false knave, did I buy
+thee a fire new psaltery to be minded o' my latter end withal? Hearken!
+these be the songs that glad the heart, and fill the minstrel's purse.'
+And he sung so blasphemous a stave, and eke so obscene, as I drew away
+from him a space that the lightning might not spoil the new psaltery.
+However, none came, being winter, and then I said, 'Master, the Lord is
+debonair. Held I the thunder yon ribaldry had been thy last, thou foul
+mouthed wretch.'
+
+"'Why, Bon Bec, what is to do?' quoth he. 'I have made an ill bargain.
+Oh, perverse heart, that turneth from doctrine.' So I bade him keep his
+breath to cool his broth, ne'er would I shame my folk with singing
+ribald songs. 'Then,' says he, sulkily, 'the first fire we light by the
+way side, clap thou on the music-box! so 'twill make our pot boil for
+the nonce; but with your
+
+    Good people, let us peak and pine,
+    Cut tristful mugs, and miaul and whine
+    Thorough our nosen chaunts divine
+
+never, never, never. Ye might as well go through Lorraine crying,
+Mulleygrubs, Mulleygrubs, who'll buy my Mulleygrubs?' So we fared on,
+bad friends. But I took a thought, and prayed him hum me one of his
+naughty ditties again. Then he brightened, and broke forth into ribaldry
+like a nightingale. Finger in ears stuffed I. 'No words; nought but the
+bare melody.' For oh, Margaret, note the sly malice of the Evil One!
+Still to the scurviest matter he weddeth the tunablest ditties."
+
+_Catherine._] "That is true as Holy Writ."
+
+_Sybrandt._] "How know you that, mother?"
+
+_Cornelis._] "He! he! he!"
+
+_Eli._] "Whisht, ye uneasy wights, and let me hear the boy. He is wiser
+than ye; wiser than his years."
+
+"'What tomfoolery is this?' said he; yet he yielded to me, and soon I
+garnered three of his melodies; but I would not let Cul de Jatte wot the
+thing I meditated. 'Show not fools nor bairns unfinished work,' saith
+the byword. And by this time 'twas night, and a little town at hand,
+where we went each to his inn; for my master would not yield to put off
+his rags and other sores till morning; nor I to enter an inn with a
+tatterdemalion. So we were to meet on the road at peep of day. And,
+indeed, we still lodged apart, meeting at morn and parting at eve,
+outside each town we lay at. And waking at midnight and cogitating, good
+thoughts came down to me, and sudden my heart was enlightened. I called
+to mind that my Margaret had withstood the taking of the burgomaster's
+purse. ''Tis theft,' said you; 'disguise it how ye will.' But I must be
+wiser than my betters: and now that which I had as good as stolen,
+others had stolen from me. As it came so it was gone. Then I said,
+'Heaven is not cruel, but just;' and I vowed a vow, to repay our
+burgomaster every shilling an I could. And I went forth in the morning
+sad, but hopeful. I felt lighter for the purse being gone. My master was
+at the gate becrutched. I told him I'd liever have seen him in another
+disguise. 'Beggars must not be choosers,' said he. However, soon he bade
+me untruss him, for he felt sadly. His head swam. I told him, forcefully
+to deform nature thus could scarce be wholesome. He answered none; but
+looked scared, and hand on head. By-and-by he gave a groan, and rolled
+on the ground like a ball, and writhed sore. I was scared, and wist not
+what to do, but went to lift him; but his trouble rose higher and
+higher, he gnashed his teeth fearfully, and the foam did fly from his
+lips; and presently his body bended itself like a bow, and jerked and
+bounded many times into the air. I exorcised him; it but made him worse.
+There was water in a ditch hard by, not very clear; but, the poor
+creature struggling between life and death, I filled my hat withal, and
+came flying to souse him. Then my lord laughed in my face. 'Come, Bon
+Bec, by thy white gills, I have not forgotten my trade.' I stood with
+watery hat in hand, glaring. 'Could this be feigning?' 'What else?' said
+he. 'Why, a real fit is the sorriest thing; but a stroke with a feather
+compared with mine. Art still betters nature.' 'But look, e'en now blood
+trickleth from your nose,' said I. 'Ay, ay, pricked my nostrils with a
+straw.' 'But ye foamed at the lips.' 'Oh, a little soap makes a mickle
+foam.' And he drew out a morsel like a bean from his mouth. 'Thank thy
+stars, Bon Bec,' says he, 'for leading thee to a worthy master. Each day
+his lesson. To-morrow we will study the cul de bois and other branches.
+To-day, own me prince of demoniacs, and indeed of all good fellows.'
+Then, being puffed up, he forgot yesterday's grudge, and discoursed me
+freely of beggars; and gave me, who eftsoons thought a beggar was a
+beggar, and there an end, the names and qualities of full thirty sorts
+of masterful and crafty mendicants in France and Germany, and England;
+his three provinces; for so the poor, proud knave yclept those kingdoms
+three; wherein his throne it was the stocks I ween. And outside the next
+village one had gone to dinner, and left his wheel-barrow. So says he,
+'I'll tie myself in a knot, and shalt wheel me through; and what with my
+crippledom and thy piety, a-wheeling of thy poor old dad, we'll bleed
+the bumpkins of a dacha-saltee.' I did refuse. I would work for him; but
+no hand would have in begging. 'And wheeling an "asker" in a barrow, is
+not that work?' said he; 'then fling yon muckle stone in to boot: stay,
+I'll soil it a bit, and swear it is a chip of the holy sepulchre; and
+you wheeled us both from Jerusalem.' Said I, 'Wheeling a pair o' lies,
+one stony, one fleshly, may be work, and hard work, but honest work 'tis
+not. 'Tis fumbling with his tail you wot of. And,' said I, 'master, next
+time you go to tempt me to knavery, speak not to me of my poor old dad.'
+Said I, 'you have minded me of my real father's face, the truest man in
+Holland. He and I are ill friends now, worse luck. But though I offend
+him, shame him I never will.' Dear Margaret, with this knave saying,
+'your poor old dad,' it had gone to my heart like a knife. ''Tis well,'
+said my master, gloomily; 'I have made a bad bargain.' Presently he
+halts, and eyes a tree by the wayside. 'Go spell me what is writ on yon
+tree.' So I went, and there was nought but a long square drawn in
+outline. I told him so. 'So much for thy monkish lore,' quoth he. A
+little farther, and he sent me to read a wall. There was nought but a
+circle scratched on the stone with a point of nail or knife, and in the
+circle two dots. I said so. Then said he, 'Bon Bec, that square was a
+warning. Some good Truand left it, that came through this village
+faring west; that means "dangerous." The circle with the two dots was
+writ by another of our brotherhood; and it signifies as how the writer,
+soit Rollin Trapu, soit Triboulet, soit Catin Cul de Bois, or what not,
+was _becked_ for _asking_ here, and lay two months in Starabin.' Then he
+broke forth, 'Talk of your little snivelling books that go in pouch.
+Three books have I, France, England, and Germany; and they are writ all
+over in one tongue, that my brethren of all countries understand; and
+that is what I call learning. So sith here they whip sores, and imprison
+infirmities, I to my tiring room.' And he popped behind the hedge, and
+came back worshipful. We passed through the village, and I sat me down
+on the stocks, and even as the barber's apprentice whets his razor on a
+block, so did I flesh my psaltery on this village, fearing great cities.
+I tuned it, and coursed up and down the wires nimbly with my two wooden
+strikers; and then chanted loud and clear, as I had heard the minstrels
+of the country,
+
+    'QUI VEUT OUIR QUI VEUT SAVOIR,'
+
+some trash, I mind not what. And soon the villagers, male and female,
+thronged about me; thereat I left singing, and recited them to the
+psaltery a short but right merry tale out of 'the lives of the saints,'
+which it is my handbook of pleasant figments: and this ended, instantly
+struck up and whistled one of Cul de Jatte's devil's ditties, and played
+it on the psaltery to boot. Thou knowest Heaven hath bestowed on me a
+rare whistle, both for compass and tune. And with me whistling bright
+and full this sprightly air, and making the wires slow when the tune did
+gallop, and tripping when the tune did amble, or I did stop and shake on
+one note like a lark i' the air, they were like to eat me; but looking
+round, lo! my master had given way to his itch, and there was his hat on
+the ground, and copper pouring in. I deemed it cruel to whistle the
+bread out of poverty's pouch; so broke off and away; yet could not get
+clear so swift, but both men and women did slobber me sore, and smelled
+all of garlic. 'There, master,' said I, 'I call that cleaving the divell
+in twain and keeping his white half.' Said he, 'Bon Bec, I have made a
+good bargain.' Then he bade me stay where I was while he went to the
+Holy Land. I stayed, and he leaped the churchyard dike, and the sexton
+was digging a grave, and my master chaffered with him, and came back
+with a knuckle bone. But, why he clept a churchyard Holy Land, that I
+learned not then, but after dinner. I was colouring the armories of a
+little inn; and he sat by me most peaceable, a cutting, and filing, and
+polishing bones, sedately; so I speered was not honest work sweet? 'As
+rain water,' said he, mocking. 'What was he a making?' 'A pair of bones
+to play on with thee; and with the refuse a St. Anthony's thumb and a
+St. Martin's little finger, for the devout.' The vagabone! And now,
+sweet Margaret, thou seest our manner of life faring Rhineward. I with
+the two arts I had least prized or counted on for bread was welcome
+everywhere; too poor now to fear robbers, yet able to keep both master
+and man on the road. For at night I often made a portraiture of the
+innkeeper or his dame, and so went richer from an inn; the which it is
+the lot of few. But my master despised this even way of life. 'I love
+ups and downs,' said he. And certes he lacked them not. One day he would
+gather more than I in three; another, to hear his tale, it had rained
+kicks all day in lieu of 'saltees,' and that is pennies. Yet even then
+at heart he despised me for a poor, mechanical soul, and scorned my
+arts, extolling his own, the art of feigning.
+
+"Natheless, at odd times was he ill at his ease. Going through the town
+of Aix, we came upon a beggar walking, fast by one hand to a cart-tail,
+and the hangman a lashing his bare bloody back. He, stout knave, so
+whipt, did not a jot relent; but I did wince at every stroke; and my
+master hung his head.
+
+"'Soon or late, Bon Bec,' quoth he. 'Soon or late.' I seeing his haggard
+face knew what he meaned. And at a town whose name hath slipped me, but
+'twas on a fair river, as we came to the foot of the bridge, he halted
+and shuddered. 'Why, what is the coil,' said I? 'Oh, blind,' said he,
+'they are justifying there.' So nought would serve him but take a boat,
+and cross the river by water. But 'twas out of the frying-pan, as the
+word goeth. For the boatmen had scarce told us the matter, and that it
+was a man and a woman for stealing glazed windows out of housen, and
+that the man was hanged at daybreak, and the quean to be drowned, when
+lo; they did fling her off the bridge, and fell in the water not far
+from us. And oh! Margaret, the deadly splash! It ringeth in mine ears
+even now. But worse was coming; for, though tied, she came up and cried
+'help help!' and I, forgetting all, and hearing a woman's voice cry
+'help!' was for leaping in to save her, and had surely done it, but the
+boatmen and Cul de Jatte clung round me, and in a moment the bourreau's
+man, that waited in a boat, came and entangled his hooked pole in her
+long hair, and so thrust her down and ended her. Oh! if the saints
+answered so our cries for help! And poor Cul de Jatte groaned, and I sat
+sobbing and beat my breast and cried, 'Of what hath God made men's
+hearts?'"
+
+The reader stopped, and the tears trickled down her cheeks. Gerard
+crying in Lorraine made her cry at Rotterdam. The leagues were no more
+to her heart than the breadth of a room.
+
+Eli, softened by many touches in the letter, and by the reader's womanly
+graces, said kindly enough, "Take thy time, lass. And methinks some of
+ye might find her a creepie to rest her foot, and she so near her own
+trouble."
+
+"I'd do more for her than that an I durst," said Catherine. "Here,
+Cornelis," and she held out her little wooden stool, and that worthy,
+who hated Margaret worse than ever, had to take the creepie and put it
+carefully under her foot.
+
+"You are very kind, dame," she faltered. "I will read on; 'tis all I can
+do for you in turn."
+
+"Thus seeing my master ashy and sore shaken, I deemed this horrible
+tragic act came timeously to warn him, so I strove sore to turn him from
+his ill ways, discoursing of sinners and their lethal end. 'Too late!'
+said he, 'too late!' and gnashed his teeth. Then I told him 'too late'
+was the divell's favourite whisper in repentant ears. Said I--
+
+    "'The Lord is debonair,
+    Let sinners nought despair.'
+
+'Too late!' said he, and gnashed his teeth, and writhed his face, as
+though vipers were biting his inward parts. But, dear heart, his was a
+mind like running water. Ere we cleared the town he was carolling, and
+outside the gate hung the other culprit from the bough of a little tree,
+and scarce a yard above the ground. And that stayed my vagabone's music.
+But, ere we had gone another furlong, he feigned to have dropped his
+rosary, and ran back, with no good intent, as you shall hear. I strolled
+on very slowly, and often halting, and presently he came stumping up on
+one leg, and that bandaged. I asked him how he could contrive that, for
+'twas masterly done. 'Oh, that was his mystery. Would I know that I
+must join the brotherhood.' And presently we did pass a narrow lane, and
+at the mouth on't espied a written stone, telling beggars by a word like
+a wee pitchfork to go that way. ''Tis yon farm-house,' said he: 'bide
+thou at hand.' And he went to the house, and came back with money, food,
+and wine. 'This lad did the business,' said he, slapping his one leg
+proudly. Then he undid the bandage, and with prideful face showed me a
+hole in his calf you could have put your neef in. Had I been strange to
+his tricks, here was a leg had drawn my last penny. Presently another
+farm-house by the road. He made for it. I stood and asked myself should
+I run away and leave him, not to be shamed in my own despite by him?
+But, while I doubted, there was a great noise, and my master well
+cudgelled by the farmer and his men, and came towards me hobbling and
+holloaing; for the peasants had layed on heartily. But more trouble was
+at his heels. Some mischievous wight loosed a dog as big as a jackass
+colt, and came roaring after him, and downed him momently. I deeming the
+poor rogue's death certain, and him least fit to die, drew my sword and
+ran shouting. But, ere I could come near, the muckle dog had torn away
+his bad leg, and ran growling to his lair with it; and Cul de Jatte
+slipped his knot, and came running like a lapwing, with his hair on end,
+and so striking with both crutches before and behind at unreal dogs as
+'twas like a windmill crazed. He fled adown the road. I followed
+leisurely, and found him at dinner. 'Curse the quiens,' said he. And not
+a word all dinner-time but 'curse the quiens!'
+
+"I said I must know who they were before I would curse them.
+
+"'Quiens? why that was dogs. And I knew not even that much? He had made
+a bad bargain.' 'Well, well,' said he; 'to-morrow we shall be in
+Germany. There the folk are music-bitten, and they molest not beggars,
+unless they fake to boot, and then they drown us out of hand that
+moment, curse 'em!' We came to Strasburgh. And I looked down Rhine with
+longing heart. The stream how swift! It seemed running to clip
+Sevenbergen to its soft bosom. With but a piece of timber and an oar, I
+might drift at my ease to thee, sleeping yet gliding still. 'Twas a sore
+temptation. But the fear of an ill welcome from my folk, and of the
+neighbours' sneers, and the hope of coming back to thee victorious, not,
+as now I must, defeated and shamed, and thee with me, it did withhold
+me; and so, with many sighs, and often turning of the head to look on
+beloved Rhine, I turned sorrowful face and heavy heart towards
+Augsburg."
+
+"Alas, dame, alas. Good master Eli, forgive me! But I ne'er can win over
+this part all at one time. It taketh my breath away. Well-a-day! Why did
+he not listen to his heart? Had he not gone through peril enow, sorrow
+enow? Well-a-day! well-a-day!"
+
+The letter dropped from her hand, and she drooped like a wounded lily.
+
+Then there was a clatter on the floor, and it was little Kate going on
+her crutches, with flushed face, and eyes full of pity, to console her.
+"Water, mother," she cried. "I am afeard she shall swoon."
+
+"Nay, nay, fear me not," said Margaret, feebly. "I will not be so
+troublesome. Thy good will it maketh me stouter hearted, sweet mistress
+Kate. For, if thou carest how I fare, sure Heaven is not against me."
+
+_Catherine._] "D'ye hear that, my man?"
+
+_Eli._] "Ay, wife, I hear; and mark to boot."
+
+Little Kate went back to her place, and Margaret read on. "The Germans
+are fonder of armorials than the French. So I found work every day. And,
+whiles I wrought, my master would leave me, and doff his raiment and don
+his rags, and other infirmities, and cozen the world, which he did clepe
+it 'plucking of the goose:' this done, would meet me and demand half my
+earnings; and with restless piercing eye ask me would I be so base as
+cheat my poor master by making three parts in lieu of two, till I
+threatened to lend him a cuff to boot in requital of his suspicion; and
+thenceforth took his due, with feigned confidence in my good faith, the
+which his dancing eye belied. Early in Germany we had a quarrel. I had
+seen him buy a skull of a jailer's wife, and mighty zealous a polishing
+it. Thought I, 'How can he carry yon memento, and not repent, seeing
+where ends his way?' Presently I did catch him selling it to a woman for
+the head of St. Barnabas, with a tale had cozened an Ebrew. So I
+snatched it out of their hands, and trundled it into the ditch. 'How,
+thou impious knave,' said I, 'wouldst sell for a saint the skull of some
+dead thief, thy brother.' He slunk away. But shallow she did crawl after
+the skull, and with apron reverently dust it for Barnabas, and it
+Barabbas; and so home with it. Said I, 'non vult anser velli, sed
+populus vult decipi.'"
+
+_Catherine._] "Oh, the goodly Latin!"
+
+_Eli._] "What meaneth it?"
+
+_Catherine._] "Nay, I know not; but 'tis Latin: is not that enow? He was
+the flower of the flock."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+"Then I to him, 'Take now thy psaltery, and part we here, for art a
+walking prison, a walking hell.' But lo! my master fell on his knees,
+and begged me for pity's sake not turn him off. 'What would become of
+him? He did so love honesty.' 'Thou love honesty?' said I. 'Ay,' said
+he, 'not to enact it; the saints forbid. But to look on. 'Tis so fair a
+thing to look on. Alas, good Bon Bec,' said he; 'hadst starved
+peradventure but for me. Kick not down thy ladder! Call ye that just?
+Nay, calm thy choler! Have pity on me! I must have a pal: and how could
+I bear one like myself after one so simple as thou? He might cut my
+throat for the money that is hid in my belt. 'Tis not much; 'tis not
+much. With thee I walk at mine ease; with a sharp I dare not go before
+in a narrow way. Alas! forgive me. Now I know where in thy bonnet lurks
+the bee, I will ware his sting; I will but pluck the secular goose.' 'So
+be it,' said I. 'And example was contagious: he should be a true man by
+then we reached Nurnberg. 'Twas a long way to Nurnberg.' Seeing him so
+humble, I said, 'Well, doff rags, and make thyself decent; 'twill help
+me forget what thou art.' And he did so; and we sat down to our
+nonemete. Presently came by a reverend palmer with hat stuck round with
+cockle shells from Holy Land, and great rosary of beads like eggs of
+teal, and sandals for shoes. And he leaned aweary on his long staff, and
+offered us a shell apiece. My master would none. But I to set him a
+better example, took one, and for it gave the poor pilgrim two batzen,
+and had his blessing. And he was scarce gone, when we heard savage
+cries, and came a sorry sight, one leading a wild woman in a chain, all
+rags, and howling like a wolf. And when they came nigh us, she fell to
+tearing her rags to threads. The man sought an alms of us, and told us
+his hard case. 'Twas his wife, stark raving mad; and he could not work
+in the fields, and leave her in his house to fire it, nor cure her could
+he without the Saintys help, and had vowed six pounds of wax to St.
+Anthony to heal her, and so was fain beg of charitable folk for the
+money. And now she espied us, and flew at me with her long nails, and I
+was cold with fear, so devilish showed her face and rolling eyes and
+nails like birdys talons. But he with the chain checked her sudden, and
+with his whip did cruelly lash her for it, that I cried 'Forbear!
+forbear! She knoweth not what she doth;' and gave him a batz. And being
+gone, said I, 'Master of those twain I know not which is the more
+pitiable.' And he laughed in my face. 'Behold thy justice, Bon Bec,'
+said he. 'Thou railest on thy poor, good, within-an-ace-of-honest,
+master, and bestowest alms on a "vopper."' 'Vopper,' said I; 'what is a
+vopper? 'Why a trull that feigns madness. That was one of us, that sham
+maniac, and wow but she did it clumsily. I blushed for her and thee.
+Also gavest two batzen for a shell from Holy Land, that came no farther
+than Normandy. I have culled them myself on that coast by scores, and
+sold them to pilgrims true and pilgrims false, to gull flats like thee
+withal.' 'What!' said I; 'that reverend man?' 'One of us!' cried Cul de
+Jatte; 'one of us! In France we call them "Coquillarts," but here
+"Calmierers." Railest on me for selling a false relic now and then, and
+wastest thy earnings on such as sell nought else. I tell thee, Bon Bec,'
+said he, 'there is not one true relic on earth's face. The saints died a
+thousand years agone, and their bones mixed with the dust; but the trade
+in relics, it is of yesterday; and there are forty thousand tramps in
+Europe live by it; selling relics of forty or fifty bodies; oh,
+threadbare lie! And of the true Cross enow to build Cologne Minster. Why
+then may not poor Cul de Jatte turn his penny with the crowd? Art but a
+scurvy tyrannical servant to let thy poor master from his share of the
+swag with your whorson pilgrims, palmers, and friars, black, grey, and
+crutched; for all these are of our brotherhood, and of our art, only
+masters they, and we but poor apprentices, in guile.' For his tongue was
+an ell and a half.
+
+"'A truce to thy irreverend sophistries,' said I, 'and say what company
+is this a-coming.' 'Bohemians,' cried he. 'Ay, ay, this shall be the
+rest of the band.' With that came along so motley a crew as never your
+eyes beheld, dear Margaret. Marched at their head one with a banner on a
+steel-pointed lance, and girded with a great long sword, and in velvet
+doublet and leathern jerkin, the which stuffs ne'er saw I wedded afore
+on mortal flesh, and a gay feather in his lordly cap, and a couple of
+dead fowls at his back, the which, an the spark had come by honestly, I
+am much mistook. Him followed wives and babes on two lean horses, whose
+flanks still rattled like parchment drum, being beaten by kettles and
+caldrons. Next an armed man a-riding of a horse, which drew a cart full
+of females and children: and in it, sitting backwards, a lusty lazy
+knave, lance in hand, with his luxurious feet raised on a holy water
+pail, that lay along, and therein a cat, new kittened, sat glowing o'er
+her brood, and sparks for eyes. And the cart-horse cavalier had on his
+shoulders a round bundle, and thereon did perch a cock and crowed with
+zeal, poor ruffler, proud of his brave feathers as the rest, and haply
+with more reason, being his own. And on an ass another wife and new-born
+child; and one poor quean a-foot scarce dragged herself along, so near
+her time was she, yet held two little ones by the hand, and helplessly
+helped them on the road. And the little folk were just a farce; some
+rode sticks, with horses' heads, between their legs, which pranced and
+caracoled, and soon wearied the riders so sore, they stood stock still
+and wept, which cavaliers were presently taken into cart and cuffed. And
+one more grave, lost in a man's hat and feather, walked in Egyptian
+darkness, handed by a girl; another had the great saucepan on his back,
+and a tremendous three-footed clay pot sat on his head and shoulders,
+swallowing him so as he too went darkling led by his sweetheart three
+foot high. When they were gone by, and we had both laughed lustily, said
+I, 'Natheless, master, my bowels they yearn for one of that tawdry band,
+even for the poor wife so near the down-lying, scarce able to drag
+herself, yet still, poor soul, helping the weaker on the way.'"
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+_Catherine._] "Nay, nay, Margaret. Why, wench, pluck up heart. Certes
+thou art no Bohemian."
+
+_Kate._] "Nay, mother, 'tis not that, I trow, but her father. And, dear
+heart, why take notice to put her to the blush?"
+
+_Richart._] "So I say."
+
+"And he derided me. 'Why that is a "biltreger,"' said he, 'and you waste
+your bowels on a pillow, or so forth.' I told him he lied. 'Time would
+show,' said he, 'wait till they camp.' And rising after meat and
+meditation, and travelling forward, we found them camped between two
+great trees on a common by the wayside; and they had lighted a great
+fire, and on it was their caldron; and, one of the trees slanting o'er
+the fire, a kid hung down by a chain from the tree-fork to the fire, and
+in the fork was wedged an urchin turning still the chain to keep the
+meat from burning, and a gay spark with a feather in his cap cut up a
+sheep; and another had spitted a leg of it on a wooden stake; and a
+woman ended chanticleer's pride with wringing of his neck. And under the
+other tree four ruffers played at cards and quarrelled, and no word sans
+oath; and of these lewd gamblers one had cockles in his hat, and was my
+reverend pilgrim. And a female, young and comely, and dressed like a
+butterfly, sat and mended a heap of dirty rags. And Cul de Jatte said,
+'Yon is the "vopper," 'and I looked incredulous and looked again, and it
+was so, and at her feet sat he that had so late lashed her; but I ween
+he had wist where to strike, or woe betide him; and she did now oppress
+him sore, and made him thread her very needle, the which he did with all
+humility; so was their comedy turned seamy side without: and Cul de
+Jatte told me 'twas still so with 'voppers' and their men in camp; they
+would don their bravery though but for an hour, and, with their tinsel,
+empire, and the man durst not the least gainsay the 'vopper,' or she
+would turn him off at these times, as I my master, and take another
+tyrant more submissive. And my master chuckled over me. Natheless we
+soon espied a wife set with her back against the tree, and her hair
+down, and her face white, and by her side a wench held up to her eye a
+new-born babe, with words of cheer, and the rough fellow, her husband,
+did bring her hot wine in a cup, and bade her take courage. And, just
+o'er the place she sat, they had pinned from bough to bough of those
+neighbouring trees two shawls, and blankets two, together, to keep the
+drizzle off her. And so had another poor little rogue come into the
+world: and by her own particular folk tended gipsywise, but of the
+roasters, and boilers, and voppers, and gamblers, no more noticed, no
+not for a single moment, than sheep which droppeth her lamb in a field,
+by travellers upon the way. Then said I, 'What of thy foul suspicions,
+master? over-knavery blinds the eye as well as over-simplicity.' And he
+laughed and said, 'Triumph, Bon Bec, triumph. The chances were nine in
+ten against thee.' Then I did pity her, to be in a crowd at such a time;
+but he rebuked me. 'I should pity rather your queens and royal
+duchesses, which by law are condemned to groan in a crowd of nobles and
+courtiers, and do writhe with shame as well as sorrow, being come of
+decent mothers, whereas these gipsy women have no more shame under their
+skins than a wolf ruth, or a hare valour. And, Bon Bec,' quoth he, 'I
+espy in thee a lamentable fault. Wastest thy bowels. Wilt have none left
+for thy poor good master which doeth thy will by night and day.' Then
+we came forward; and he talked with the men in some strange Hebrew cant
+whereof no word knew I; and the poor knaves bade us welcome and denied
+us nought. With them, and all they had, 'twas lightly come and lightly
+go; and when we left them my master said to me, 'This is thy first
+lesson, but to-night we shall lie at Hansburgh. Come with me to the
+"rotboss" there, and I'll show thee all our folk and their lays, and
+especially "the lossners," "the dutzers," "the schleppers," "the
+gickisses," "the schwanfelders," whom in England we call "shivering
+Jemmies," "the suentvegers," "the schwiegers," "the joners," "the
+sessel-degers," "the gensscherers," in France "marcandiers or rifodes,"
+"the veranerins," "the stabulers," with a few foreigners like ourselves,
+such as "pietres," "francmitoux," "polissons," "malingreux," "traters,"
+"rufflers," "whipjalks," "dommerars," "glymmerars," "jarkmen,"
+"patricos," "swadders," "autem morts," "walking morts,"'--'Enow,' cried
+I, stopping him, 'art as gleesome as the Evil one a counting of his
+imps. I'll jot down in my tablet all these caitiffs and their accursed
+names, for knowledge is knowledge. But go among them, alive or dead,
+that will I not with my good will. Moreover,' said I, 'what need? since
+I have a companion in thee who is all the knaves on earth in one?' and
+thought to abash him; but his face shone with pride, and hand on breast
+he did bow low to me. 'If thy wit be scant, good Bon Bec, thy manners
+are a charm. I have made a good bargain.' So he to the 'rotboss,' and I
+to a decent inn, and sketched the landlord's daughter by candle-light,
+and started at morn batzen three the richer, but could not find my
+master, so loitered slowly on, and presently met him coming west for me,
+and cursing the quiens. Why so? Because he could blind the culls but not
+the quiens. At last I prevailed on him to leave cursing and canting, and
+tell me his adventure. Said he, 'I sat outside the gate of yon
+monastery, full of sores, which I showed the passers-by. Oh, Bon Bec,
+beautifuller sores you never saw: and it rained coppers in my hat.
+Presently the monks came home from some procession, and the convent dogs
+ran out to meet them, curse the quiens!' 'What, did they fall on thee
+and bite thee, poor soul?' 'Worse, worse, dear Bon Bec. Had they bitten
+me I had earned silver. But the great idiots, being, as I think,
+puppies, or little better, fell on me where I sat, downed me, and fell a
+licking my sores among them. As thou, false knave, didst swear the
+whelps in heaven licked the sores of Lazybones, a beggar of old.' 'Nay,
+nay,' said I, 'I said no such thing. But tell me, since they bit thee
+not, but sportfully licked thee, what harm?' 'What harm, noodle, why the
+sores came off.' 'How could that be?' 'How could aught else be? and them
+just fresh put on. Did I think he was so weak as bite holes in his flesh
+with ratsbane? Nay, he was an artist, a painter like his servant, and
+had put on sores made of pig's blood, rye meal, and glue. So when the
+folk saw my sores go on tongues of puppies, they laughed, and I saw cord
+or sack before me. So up I jumped, and shouted, "a miracle! a miracle!
+The very dogs of this holy convent be holy, and have cured me. Good
+fathers," cried I, "whose day is this?" "St. Isidore's," said one. "St.
+Isidore," cried I, in a sort of rapture. "Why, St. Isidore is my patron
+saint: so that accounts." And the simple folk swallowed my miracle as
+those accursed quiens my wounds. But the monks took me inside and shut
+the gate, and put their heads together; but I have a quick ear, and one
+did say "caret miraculo monasterium," which is Greek patter I trow,
+leastways it is no beggar's cant. Finally they bade the lay-brethren
+give me a hiding, and take me out a back way and put me on the road, and
+threatened me did I come back to the town to hand me to the magistrate
+and have me drowned for a plain impostor. "Profit now by the Church's
+grace," said they, "and mend thy ways." So forward, Bon Bec, for my life
+is not sure nigh hand this town.' As he went he worked his shoulders,
+'Wow but the brethren laid on. And what means yon piece of monk's cant,
+I wonder?' So I told him the words meant 'the monastery is in want of a
+miracle,' but the application thereof was dark to me. 'Dark,' cried he,
+'dark as noon. Why it means they are going to work the miracle, my
+miracle, and gather all the grain I sowed. Therefore these blows on
+their benefactor's shoulders; therefore is he that wrought their scurvy
+miracle driven forth with stripes and threats. Oh, cozening knaves!'
+Said I, 'becomes you to complain of guile.' 'Alas, Bon Bec,' said he, 'I
+but outwit the simple; but these monks would pluck Lucifer of his wing
+feathers.' And went a league bemoaning himself that he was not
+convent-bred like his servant. 'He would put it to more profit;' and
+railing on quiens. 'And as for those monks, there was one Above.'
+'Certes,' said I, 'there is one Above. What then?' 'Who will call those
+shavelings to compt, one day,' quoth he. 'And all deceitful men,' said
+I. At one that afternoon I got armories to paint: so my master took the
+yellow jaundice and went begging through the town, and with his oily
+tongue, and saffron-water face, did fill his hat. Now in all the towns
+are certain licensed beggars, and one of these was an old favourite with
+the townsfolk: had his station at St. Martin's porch, the greatest
+church: a blind man: they called him blind Hans. He saw my master
+drawing coppers on the other side of the street, and knew him by his
+tricks for an impostor, so sent and warned the constables, and I met my
+master in the constables' hands, and going to his trial in the town
+hall. I followed and many more; and he was none abashed, neither by the
+pomp of justice, nor memory of his misdeeds, but demanded his accuser
+like a trumpet. And blind Hans's boy came forward, but was sifted
+narrowly by my master, and stammered, and faltered, and owned he had
+seen nothing, but only carried blind Hans's tale to the chief constable.
+'This is but hearsay,' said my master. 'Lo ye now, here standeth
+Misfortune backbit by Envy. But stand thou forth, blind Envy, and vent
+thine own lie.' And blind Hans behoved to stand forth, sore against his
+will. Him did my master so press with questions, and so pinch and
+torture, asking him again and again, how, being blind, he could see all
+that befell, and some that befell not, across a way; and why, an he
+could not see, he came there holding up his perjured hand, and maligning
+the misfortunate, that at last he groaned aloud and would utter no word
+more. And an alderman said, 'In sooth, Hans, ye are to blame: hast cast
+more dirt of suspicion on thyself than on him." But the burgomaster, a
+wondrous fat man, and methinks of his fat some had gotten into his head,
+checked him and said, 'Nay, Hans we know this many years, and, be he
+blind or not, he hath passed for blind so long, 'tis all one. Back to
+thy porch, good Hans, and let the strange varlet leave the town
+incontinent on pain of whipping.' Then my master winked to me; but there
+rose a civic officer in his gown of state and golden chain, a Dignity
+with us lightly prized, and even shunned of some, but in Germany and
+France much courted, save by condemned malefactors; to wit the hangman;
+and says he, 'An't please you, first let us see why he weareth his hair
+so thick and low.' And his man went and lifted Cul de Jatte's hair, and
+lo the upper gristle of both ears was gone. 'How is this, knave?' quoth
+the burgomaster. My master said, carelessly, he minded not precisely:
+his had been a life of misfortunes and losses. 'When a poor soul has
+lost use of his leg, noble sirs, these more trivial woes rest lightly in
+his memory.' When he found this would not serve his turn, he named two
+famous battles, in each of which he had lost half an ear, a fighting
+like a true man against traitors and rebels. But the hangman showed them
+the two cuts were made at one time, and by measurement. ''Tis no
+bungling soldier's work, my masters,' said he, ''tis ourn.' Then the
+burgomaster gave judgment: 'The present charge is not proven against
+thee; but, an thou beest not guilty now, thou hast been at other times,
+witness thine ears. Wherefore I send thee to prison for one month, and
+to give a florin towards the new hall of the guilds now a building, and
+to be whipt out of the town, and pay the hangman's fee for the same.'
+And all the aldermen approved, and my master was haled to prison with
+one look of anguish. It did strike my bosom. I tried to get speech of
+him, but the jailer denied me. But lingering near the jail I heard a
+whistle, and there was Cul de Jatte at a narrow window twenty feet from
+earth. I went under, and he asked me what made I there? I told him I was
+loth to go forward and not bid him farewell. He seemed quite amazed; but
+soon his suspicious soul got the better. That was not all mine errand. I
+told him not all: the psaltery: 'Well, what of that?' 'Twas not mine,
+but his; I would pay him the price of it. 'Then throw me a rix dollar,'
+said he. I counted out my coins, and they came to a rix dollar and two
+batzen. I threw him up his money in three throws, and when he had got it
+all he said, softly, 'Bon Bec.' 'Master,' said I. Then the poor rogue
+was greatly moved. 'I thought ye had been mocking me,' said he; 'oh, Bon
+Bec, Bon Bec, if I had found the world like thee at starting I had put
+my wit to better use, and I had not lain here.' Then he whimpered out,
+'I gave not quite a rix dollar for the jingler;' and threw me back that
+he had gone to cheat me of; honest for once, and over late; and so, with
+many sighs, bade me Godspeed. Thus did my master, after often baffling
+men's justice, fall by their injustice; for his lost ears proved not his
+guilt only, but of that guilt the bitter punishment: so the account was
+even; yet they for his chastisement did chastise him. Natheless he was a
+parlous rogue. Yet he holp to make a man of me. Thanks to his good wit I
+went forward richer far with my psaltery and brush, than with yon as
+good as stolen purse; for that must have run dry in time, like a big
+trough, but these a little fountain."
+
+_Richart._] "How pregnant his reflections be; and but a curly pated lad
+when last I saw him. Asking your pardon, mistress. Prithee read on."
+
+"One day I walked alone, and, sooth to say, light hearted, for mine
+honest Denys sweetened the air on the way; but poor Cul de Jatte
+poisoned it. The next day, passing a grand house, out came on prancing
+steeds a gentleman in brave attire and two servants; they overtook me.
+The gentleman bade me halt. I laughed in my sleeve; for a few batzen
+were all my store. He bade me doff my doublet and jerkin. Then I
+chuckled no more. 'Bethink you, my lord,' said I, ''tis winter. How may
+a poor fellow go bare and live?' So he told me I shot mine arrow wide of
+his thought; and off with his own gay jerkin, richly furred, and doublet
+to match, and held them forth to me. Then a servant let me know it was a
+penance. 'His lordship had had the ill luck to slay his cousin in their
+cups.' Down to my shoes he changed with me; and set me on his horse like
+a popinjay, and fared by my side in my worn weeds, with my psaltery on
+his back. And said he, 'Now, good youth, thou art Count Detstein; and I,
+late count, thy Servant. Play thy part well, and help me save my
+blood-stained soul! Be haughty and choleric, as any noble; and I will be
+as humble as I may.' I said I would do my best to play the noble. But
+what should I call him? He bade me call him nought but Servant. That
+would mortify him most, he wist. We rode on a long way in silence: for I
+was meditating this strange chance, that from a beggar's servant had
+made me master to a count, and also cudgelling my brains how best I
+might play the master, without being run through the body all at one
+time like his cousin. For I mistrusted sore my spark's humility; your
+German nobles being, to my knowledge, proud as Lucifer, and choleric as
+fire. As for the servants, they did slily grin to one another to see
+their master so humbled--"
+
+"_Ah! what is that?_"
+
+A lump, as of lead, had just bounced against the door, and the latch was
+fumbled with unsuccessfully. Another bounce, and the door swung inwards
+with Giles arrayed in cloth of gold sticking to it like a wasp. He
+landed on the floor and was embraced; but, on learning what was going
+on, trumpeted that he would much liever hear of Gerard than gossip.
+
+Sybrandt pointed to a diminutive chair.
+
+Giles showed his sense of this civility by tearing the said Sybrandt out
+of a very big one, and there ensconced himself gorgeous and glowing.
+Sybrandt had to wedge himself into the one, which was too small for the
+magnificent dwarf's soul, and Margaret resumed. But as this part of the
+letter was occupied with notices of places, all which my reader probably
+knows, and, if not, can find handled at large in a dozen well-known
+books, from Munster to Murray, I skip the topography, and hasten to that
+part where it occurred to him to throw his letter into a journal. The
+personal narrative that intervened may be thus condensed.
+
+He spoke but little at first to his new companions, but listened to pick
+up their characters. Neither his noble Servant nor his servants could
+read or write; and as he often made entries in his tablets, he impressed
+them with some awe. One of his entries was "Le peu que sont les hommes."
+For he found the surly innkeepers licked the very ground before him now;
+nor did a soul suspect the hosier's son in the count's feathers, nor the
+count in the minstrel's weeds. This seems to have surprised him; for he
+enlarged on it with the naivete and pomposity of youth. At one place,
+being humbly requested to present the inn with his armorial bearings, he
+consented loftily; but painted them himself, to mine host's wonder, who
+thought he lowered himself by handling brush. The true count stood
+grinning by, and held the paint-pot, while the sham count painted a
+shield with three red herrings rampant under a sort of Maltese cross
+made with two ell-measures. At first his plebeian servants were
+insolent. But this coming to the notice of his noble one, he forgot what
+he was doing penance for, and drew his sword to cut off their ears,
+heads included. But Gerard interposed and saved them, and rebuked the
+count severely. And finally they all understood one another, and the
+superior mind obtained its natural influence. He played the barbarous
+noble of that day vilely. For his heart would not let him be either
+tyrannical or cold. Here were three human beings. He tried to make them
+all happier than he was; held them ravished with stories, and songs, and
+set Herr Penitent & Co. dancing, with his whistle and psaltery. For his
+own convenience he made them ride and tie, and thus pushed rapidly
+through the country, travelling generally fifteen leagues a day.
+
+
+
+
+DIARY
+
+
+"THIS first of January I observed a young man of the country to meet a
+strange maiden, and kissed his hand, and then held it out to her. She
+took it with a smile, and lo! acquaintance made; and babbled like old
+friends. Greetings so pretty and delicate I ne'er did see. Yet were they
+both of the baser sort. So the next lass I saw a coming, I said to my
+servant lord, 'For further penance bow thy pride; go meet yon base-born
+girl; kiss thy homicidal hand, and give it her, and hold her in
+discourse as best ye may.' And my noble Servant said, humbly, 'I shall
+obey my lord.' And we drew rein and watched while he went forward,
+kissed his hand and held it out to her. Forthwith she took it smiling,
+and was most affable with him, and he with her. Presently came up a band
+of her companions. So this time I bade him doff his bonnet to them, as
+though they were empresses; and he did so. And lo! the lasses drew up as
+stiff as hedge-stakes, and moved not nor spake."
+
+_Denys._] "Aie! aie! aie! Pardon, the company."
+
+"This surprised me none; for so they did discountenance poor Denys. And
+that whole day I wore in experimenting these German lasses; and 'twas
+still the same. An' ye doff bonnet to them they stiffen into statues;
+distance for distance. But accost them with honest freedom, and with
+that customary, and, though rustical, most gracious proffer, of the
+kissed hand, and they withhold neither their hands in turn nor their
+acquaintance in an honest way. Seeing which I vexed myself that Denys
+was not with us to prattle with them; he is so fond of women." ("Are you
+fond of _women_, Denys?") And the reader opened two great violet eyes
+upon him with gentle surprise.
+
+_Denys._] "Ahem! He says so, she-comrade. By Hannibal's helmet 'tis
+their fault, not mine. They _will_ have such soft voices, and white
+skins, and sunny hair, and dark blue eyes, and--"
+
+_Margaret._] (Reading suddenly.) "Which their affability I put to profit
+thus. I asked them how they made shift to grow roses in yule? For know,
+dear Margaret, that throughout Germany the baser sort of lasses wear for
+head-dress nought but a 'crantz,' or wreath of roses, encircling their
+bare hair, as laurel Caesar's; and though of the worshipful scorned, yet
+is braver, I wist, to your eye and mine which painters be, though sorry
+ones, than the gorgeous, uncouth, mechanical head-gear of the time, and
+adorns, not hides her hair, that goodly ornament fitted to her head by
+craft divine. So the good lasses, being questioned close, did let me
+know, the rose-buds are cut in summer and laid then in great clay pots,
+thus ordered:--first bay salt, then a row of buds, and over that row bay
+salt sprinkled; then another row of buds placed crosswise; for they say
+it is death to the buds to touch one another; and so on, buds and salt
+in layers. Then each pot is covered and soldered tight, and kept in cool
+cellar. And on Saturday night the master of the house, or mistress, if
+master be none, opens a pot, and doles the rose-buds out to every female
+in the house, high or low, withouten grudge; then solders it up again.
+And such, as of these buds would full-blown roses make, put them in warm
+water a little space, or else in the stove, and then with tiny brush and
+soft, wetted in Rhenish wine, do coax them till they ope their folds.
+And some perfume them with rose-water. For, alack, their smell it is
+fled with the summer; and only their fair bodyes lie withouten soul, in
+tomb of clay, awaiting resurrection.
+
+"And some with the roses and buds mix nutmegs gilded, but not by my good
+will; for gold, brave in itself, cheek by jowl with roses, is but yellow
+earth. And it does the eye's heart good to see these fair heads of hair
+come, blooming with roses, over snowy roads, and by snow capt hedges,
+setting winter's beauty by the side of summer's glory. For what so fair
+as winter's lilies, snow yclept, and what so brave as roses? And
+shouldst have had a picture here, but for their superstition. Leaned a
+lass in Sunday garb, cross ankled, against her cottage corner, whose low
+roof was snowclad, and with her crantz did seem a summer flower
+sprouting from winter's bosom. I drew rein, and out pencil and brush to
+limn her for thee. But the simpleton, fearing the evil eye, or glamour,
+claps both hands to her face and flies panic-stricken. But, indeed, they
+are not more superstitious than the Sevenbergen folk, which take thy
+father for a magician. Yet softly, sith at this moment I profit by this
+darkness of their minds; for, at first sitting down to write this diary,
+I could frame nor thought nor word, so harried and deaved was I with
+noise of mechanical persons, and hoarse laughter at dull jests of one
+of these parti-coloured 'fools,' which are so rife in Germany. But, oh,
+sorry wit, that is driven to the poor resource of pointed ear-caps, and
+a green and yellow body. True wit, methinks, is of the mind. We met in
+Burgundy an honest wench, though over free for my palate, a chambermaid,
+had made havoc of all these zanies, droll by brute force. Oh, Digressor!
+Well then, I to be rid of roaring rusticalls, and mindless jests, put my
+finger in a glass and drew on the table a great watery circle; whereat
+the rusticalls did look askant, like venison at a cat; and in that
+circle a smaller circle. The rusticalls held their peace; and besides
+these circles cabalistical, I laid down on the table solemnly yon
+parchment deed I had out of your house. The rusticalls held their
+breath. Then did I look as glum as might be, and muttered slowly thus:
+'Videamus--quam diu tu fictus morio--vosque veri stulti--audebitis--in
+hac aula morari, strepitantes ita--et olentes--ut dulcissimae nequeam
+miser scribere.' They shook like aspens, and stole away on tiptoe one by
+one at first, then in a rush and jostling, and left me alone; and most
+scared of all was the fool: never earned jester fairer his ass's ears.
+So rubbed I their foible, who first rubbed mine; for of all a
+traveller's foes I dread those giants twain, Sir Noise, and eke Sir
+Stench. The saints and martyrs forgive my peevishness. Thus I write to
+thee in balmy peace, and tell thee trivial things scarce worth ink, also
+how I love thee, which there was no need to tell, for well thou knowest
+it. And, oh, dear Margaret, looking on their roses, which grew in
+summer, but blow in winter, I see the picture of our true affection;
+born it was in smiles and bliss, but soon adversity beset us sore with
+many a bitter blast. Yet our love hath lost no leaf, thank God, but
+blossoms full and fair as ever, proof against frowns, and jibes, and
+prison, and banishment, as those sweet German flowers a blooming in
+winter's snow.
+
+"_January 2nd._--My servant, the count, finding me curious, took me to
+the stables of the prince that rules this part. In the first court was a
+horse-bath, adorned with twenty-two pillars, graven with the prince's
+arms; and also the horse-leech's shop, so furnished as a rich apothecary
+might envy. The stable is a fair quadrangle, whereof three sides filled
+with horses of all nations. Before each horse's nose was a glazed
+window, with a green curtain to be drawn at pleasure, and at his tail a
+thick wooden pillar with a brazen shield, whence by turning of a pipe he
+is watered, and serves too for a cupboard to keep his comb and rubbing
+clothes. Each rack was iron, and each manger shining copper, and each
+nag covered with a scarlet mantle, and above him his bridle and saddle
+hung, ready to gallop forth in a minute; and not less than two hundred
+horses, whereof twelve score of foreign breed. And we returned to our
+inn full of admiration, and the two varlets said sorrowfully, 'Why were
+we born with two legs?' And one of the grooms that was civil and had of
+me trinkgeld, stood now at his cottage-door and asked us in. There we
+found his wife and children of all ages, from five to eighteen, and had
+but one room to bide and sleep in, a thing pestiferous and most uncivil.
+Then I asked my Servant, knew he this prince? Ay, did he, and had often
+drunk with him in a marble chamber above the stable, where, for table,
+was a curious and artificial rock, and the drinking vessels hang on its
+pinnacles, and at the hottest of the engagement a statue of a horseman
+in bronze came forth bearing a bowl of liquor, and he that sat nearest
+behoved to drain it. ''Tis well,' said I: 'now for thy penance, whisper
+thou in yon prince's ear, that God hath given him his people freely, and
+not sought a price for them as for horses. And pray him look inside the
+huts at his horse-palace door, and bethink himself it is well to house
+his horses, and stable his folk.' Said he, ''Twill give sore offence.'
+'But,' said I, 'ye must do it discreetly and choose your time.' So he
+promised. And riding on we heard plaintive cries. 'Alas,' said I, 'some
+sore mischance hath befallen some poor soul: what may it be?' And we
+rode up, and lo! it was a wedding feast, and the guests were plying the
+business of drinking sad and silent, but ever and anon cried loud and
+dolefully, 'Seyte frolich! Be merry.'
+
+"_January 3._--Yesterday between Nurnberg and Augsburg we parted
+company. I gave my lord, late Servant, back, his brave clothes for mine,
+but his horse he made me keep, and five gold pieces, and said he was
+still my debtor, his penance it had been slight along of me, but
+profitable. But his best word was this: 'I see 'tis more noble to be
+loved than feared.' And then he did so praise me as I blush to put on
+paper; yet, poor fool, would fain thou couldst hear his words, but from
+some other pen than mine. And the servants did heartily grasp my hand,
+and wish me good luck. And riding apace, yet could I not reach Augsburg
+till the gates were closed; but it mattered little, for this Augsburg it
+is an enchanted city. For a small coin one took me a long way round to
+a famous postern called der Einlasse. Here stood two guardians, like
+statues. To them I gave my name and business. They nodded me leave to
+knock; I knocked; and the iron gate opened with a great noise and hollow
+rattling of a chain, but no hand seen nor chain; and he, who drew the
+hidden chain, sits a butt's length from the gate; and I rode in, and the
+gate closed with a clang after me. I found myself in a great building
+with a bridge at my feet. This I rode over and presently came to a
+porter's lodge, where one asked me again my name and business, then rang
+a bell, and a great portcullis that barred the way began to rise, drawn
+by a wheel overhead, and no hand seen. Behind the portcullis was a thick
+oaken door studded with steel. It opened without hand, and I rode into a
+hall as dark as pitch. Trembling there a while, a door opened and showed
+me a smaller hall lighted. I rode into it: a tin goblet came down from
+the ceiling by a little chain: I put two batzen into it, and it went up
+again. Being gone, another thick door creaked and opened, and I rid
+through. It closed on me with a tremendous clang, and behold me in
+Augsburg city. I lay at an inn called 'The Three Moors,' over an hundred
+years old; and, this morning, according to my way of viewing towns to
+learn their compass and shape, I mounted the highest tower I could find,
+and setting my dial at my foot surveyed the beautiful city: whole
+streets of palaces, and churches tiled with copper burnished like gold;
+and the house fronts gaily painted and all glazed, and the glass so
+clean and burnished as 'tis most resplendent and rare; and I, now first
+seeing a great citie, did crow with delight, and like a cock on his
+ladder, and at the tower foot was taken into custody for a spy; for
+whilst I watched the city the watchman had watched me. The burgomaster
+received me courteously and heard my story; then rebuked he the
+officers. 'Could ye not question him yourselves, or read in his face?
+This is to make our city stink in stranger's report.' Then he told me my
+curiosity was of a commendable sort: and seeing I was a craftsman and
+inquisitive, bade his clerk take me among the guilds. God bless the city
+where the very burgomaster is cut of Solomon's cloth!
+
+"_January 5._--Dear Margaret, it is a noble city, and a kind mother to
+arts. Here they cut in wood and ivory, that 'tis like spiders' work, and
+paint on glass, and sing angelical harmonies. Writing of books is quite
+gone by; here be six printers. Yet was I offered a bountiful wage to
+write fairly a merchant's accounts, one Fugger, a grand and wealthy
+trader, and hath store of ships, yet his father was but a poor weaver.
+But here in commerce, her very garden, men swell like mushrooms. And he
+bought my horse of me, and abated me not a jot, which way of dealing is
+not known in Holland. But, oh, Margaret, the workmen of all the guilds
+are so kind and brotherly to one another, and to me. Here, methinks, I
+have found the true German mind, loyal, frank, and kindly, somewhat
+choleric withal, but nought revengeful. Each mechanic wears a sword. The
+very weavers at the loom sit girded with their weapons, and all Germans
+on too slight occasion draw them and fight; but no treachery: challenge
+first, then draw, and with the edge only, mostly the face, not with Sir
+Point; for if in these combats one thrust at his adversary and hurt him,
+'tis called ein schelemstucke, a heinous act; both men and women turn
+their backs on him, and even the judges punish thrusts bitterly, but
+pass over cuts. Hence in Germany be good store of scarred faces, three
+in five at least, and in France scarce more than one in three.
+
+"But in arts mechanical no citizens may compare with these. Fountains in
+every street that play to heaven, and in the gardens seeming trees,
+which being approached, one standing afar touches a spring, and every
+twig shoots water, and souses the guests to their host's much
+delectation. Big culverins of war they cast with no more ado than our
+folk horse-shoes, and have done this fourscore years. All stuffs they
+weave, and linen fine as ours at home, or nearly, which elsewhere in
+Europe vainly shall you seek. Sir Printing Press--sore foe to poor
+Gerard, but to other humans beneficial--plieth by night and day, and
+casteth goodly words like sower afield; while I, poor fool, can but sow
+them as I saw women in France sow rye, dribbling it in the furrow grain
+by grain. And of their strange mechanical skill take two examples. For
+ending of exemplary rogues they have a figure like a woman, seven feet
+high, and called Jung Frau; but lo a spring is touched, she seizeth the
+poor wretch with iron arms, and opening herself hales him inside her,
+and there pierces him through and through with two score lances.
+Secondly, in all great houses the spit is turned not by a scrubby boy,
+but by smoke. Ay, mayst well admire, and judge me a lying knave. These
+cunning Germans do set in the chimney a little windmill, and the smoke
+struggling to wend past, turns it, and from the mill a wire runs
+through the wall and turns the spit on wheels; beholding which I doffed
+my bonnet to the men of Augsburg, for who but these had ere devised to
+bind ye so dark and subtle a knave as Sir Smoke, and set him to roast
+Dame Pullet?
+
+"This day, January 8, with three craftsmen of the town, I painted a pack
+of cards. They were for a senator in a hurry. I the diamonds. My queen
+came forth with eyes like spring violets, hair a golden brown, and
+witching smile. My fellow-craftsmen saw her, and put their arms round my
+neck and hailed me master. Oh, noble Germans! No jealousy of a
+brother-workman: no sour looks at a stranger: and would have me spend
+Sunday with them after matins; and the merchant paid me so richly, as I
+was ashamed to take the guerdon: and I to my inn, and tried to paint the
+queen of diamonds for poor Gerard; but no, she would not come like
+again. Luck will not be bespoke. Oh, happy rich man that hath got her!
+Fie! fie! Happy Gerard, that shall have herself one day, and keep house
+with her at Augsburg.
+
+"_January 8._--With my fellows, and one Veit Stoss, a wood-carver, and
+one Hafnagel, of the goldsmiths' guild, and their wives and lasses, to
+Hafnagel's cousin, a senator of this free city, and his stupendious
+wine-vessel. It is ribbed like a ship, and hath been eighteen months in
+hand, and finished but now, and holds a hundred and fifty hogsheads, and
+standeth not, but lieth; yet even so ye get not on his back withouten
+ladders two, of thirty steps. And we sat about the miraculous mass, and
+drank Rhenish from it, drawn by a little artificial pump, and the lasses
+pinned their crantzes to it, and we danced round it, and the senator
+danced on its back, but with drinking of so many garausses, lost his
+footing and fell off, glass in hand, and broke an arm and a leg in the
+midst of us. So scurvily ended our drinking bout for this time.
+
+"_January 10._--This day started for Venice with a company of merchants,
+and among them him who had desired me for his scrivener; and so we are
+now agreed, I to write at night the letters he shall dict, and other
+matters, he to feed and lodge me on the road. We be many and armed, and
+soldiers with us to boot, so fear not the thieves which men say lie on
+the borders of Italy. But an if I find the printing press at Venice I
+trow I shall not go on to Rome, for man may not vie with iron.
+
+"Imprimit una dies quantum non scribitur anno. And, dearest, something
+tells me you and I shall end our days at Augsburg, whence going, I shall
+leave it all I can--my blessing.
+
+"_January 12._--My master affecteth me much, and now maketh me sit with
+him in his horse-litter. A grave good man, of all respected, but sad for
+loss of a dear daughter, and loveth my psaltery: not giddy-paced
+ditties, but holy harmonies such as Cul de Jatte made wry mouths at. So
+many men, so many minds. But cooped in horse-litter and at night,
+writing his letters, my journal halteth.
+
+"_January 14._--When not attending on my good merchant, I consort with
+such of our company as are Italians, for 'tis to Italy I wend, and I am
+ill seen in Italian tongue. A courteous and a subtle people, at meat
+delicate feeders, and cleanly: love not to put their left hand in the
+dish. They say Venice is the garden of Lombardy, Lombardy the garden of
+Italy, Italy of the world.
+
+"_January 16._--Strong ways and steep, and the mountain girls so girded
+up, as from their armpits to their waist is but a handful. Of all the
+garbs I yet have seen the most unlovely.
+
+"_January 18._--In the midst of life we are in death. Oh! dear Margaret,
+I thought I had lost thee. Here I lie in pain and dole, and shall write
+thee that, which read you it in a romance ye should cry 'most
+improbable!' And so still wondering that I am alive to write it, and
+thanking for it God and the saints, this is what befell thy Gerard.
+Yestreen I wearied of being shut up in litter, and of the mule's slow
+pace, and so went forward; and being, I know not why, strangely full of
+spirit and hope, as I have heard befall some men when on trouble's
+brink, seemed to tread on air, and soon outdistanced them all. Presently
+I came to two roads; and took the larger: I should have taken the
+smaller. After travelling a good half-hour I found my error and
+returned, and deeming my company had long passed by, pushed bravely on,
+but I could not overtake them; and small wonder, as you shall hear. Then
+I was anxious, and ran, but bare was the road of those I sought, and
+night came down, and the wild beasts afoot, and I bemoaned my folly,
+also I was hungered. The moon rose clear and bright exceedingly, and
+presently, a little way off the road, I saw a tall wind-mill. 'Come,'
+said I, 'mayhap the miller will take ruth on me.' Near the mill was a
+haystack, and scattered about were store of little barrels, but lo, they
+were not flour-barrels but tar-barrels, one or two, and the rest of
+spirits, Brant vein and Schiedam; I knew them momently, having seen the
+like in Holland. I knocked at the mill door, but none answered. I
+lifted the latch and the door opened inwards. I went in, and gladly, for
+the night was fine but cold, and a rime on the trees, which were a kind
+of lofty sycamores. There was a stove, but black; I lighted it with some
+of the hay and wood, for there was a great pile of wood outside: and, I
+know not how, I went to sleep. Not long had I slept, I trow, when
+hearing a noise I awoke, and there were a dozen men around me, with wild
+faces, and long black hair, and black sparkling eyes."
+
+_Catherine._] "Oh, my poor boy! those blackhaired ones do still scare me
+to look on."
+
+"I made my excuses in such Italian as I knew, and eking out by signs.
+They grinned. 'I had lost my company.' They grinned. I was an hungered.
+Still they grinned, and spoke to one another in a tongue I knew not. At
+last one gave me a piece of bread and a tin mug of wine, as I thought,
+but it was spirits neat. I made a wry face, and asked for water: then
+these wild men laughed a horrible laugh. I thought to fly, but, looking
+towards the door, it was bolted with two enormous bolts of iron, and now
+first, as I ate my bread, I saw it was all guarded too, and ribbed with
+iron. My blood curdled within me, and yet I could not tell thee why; but
+hadst thou seen the faces, wild, stupid, and ruthless. I mumbled my
+bread, not to let them see I feared them; but oh, it cost me to swallow
+it and keep it in me. Then it whirled in my brain, was there no way to
+escape? Said I, 'They will not let me forth by the door; these be
+smugglers or robbers.' So I feigned drowsiness, and taking out two
+batzen said, 'Good men, for our Lady's grace let me lie on a bed and
+sleep, for I am faint with travel.' They nodded and grinned their
+horrible grin, and bade one light a lanthorn and lead me. He took me up
+a winding staircase, up, up, and I saw no windows, but the wooden walls
+were pierced like a barbican tower, and methinks for the same purpose,
+and through these slits I got glimpses of the sky, and thought, 'Shall I
+e'er see thee again?' He took me to the very top of the mill, and there
+was a room with a heap of straw in one corner, and many empty barrels,
+and by the wall a truckle bed. He pointed to it, and went down stairs
+heavily, taking the light, for in this room was a great window, and the
+moon came in bright. I looked out to see, and lo it was so high that
+even the mill sails at their highest came not up to my window by some
+feet, but turned very slow and stately underneath, for wind there was
+scarce a breath: and the trees seemed silver filagree made by angel
+craftsmen. My hope of flight was gone.
+
+"But now, those wild faces being out of sight, I smiled at my fears:
+what an if they were ill men, would it profit them to hurt me?
+Natheless, for caution against surprise, I would put the bed against the
+door. I went to move it, but could not. It was free at the head, but at
+the foot fast clamped with iron to the floor. So I flung my psaltery on
+the bed, but for myself made a layer of straw at the door, so as none
+could open on me unawares. And I laid my sword ready to my hand. And
+said my prayers for thee and me, and turned to sleep.
+
+"Below they drank and made merry. And hearing this gave me confidence.
+Said I, 'Out of sight, out of mind. Another hour and the good Schiedam
+will make them forget that I am here.' And so I composed myself to
+sleep. And for some time could not for the boisterous mirth below. At
+last I dropped off. How long I slept I knew not; but I woke with a
+start: the noise had ceased below, and the sudden silence woke me. And
+scarce was I awake, when sudden the truckle bed was gone with a loud
+clang all but the feet, and the floor yawned, and I heard my psaltery
+fall and break to atoms deep, deep below the very floor of the mill. It
+had fallen into a well. And so had I done, lying where it lay."
+
+Margaret shuddered and put her face in her hands. But speedily resumed.
+
+"I lay stupefied at first. Then horror fell on me and I rose, but stood
+rooted there, shaking from head to foot. At last I found myself looking
+down into that fearsome gap, and my very hair did bristle as I peered.
+And then, I remember, I turned quite calm, and made up my mind to die
+sword in hand. For I saw no man must know this their bloody secret and
+live. And I said 'Poor Margaret!' And I took out of my bosom, where they
+lie ever, our marriage lines, and kissed them again and again. And I
+pinned them to my shirt again, that they might lie in one grave with me,
+if die I must. And I thought 'All our love and hopes to end thus!'"
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+_Eli._] "Whist all! Their marriage lines? Give her time! But no word. I
+can bear no chat. My poor lad!"
+
+During the long pause that ensued Catherine leaned forward and passed
+something adroitly from her own lap under her daughter's apron who sat
+next her.
+
+"Presently thinking, all in a whirl, of all that ever passed between us,
+and taking leave of all those pleasant hours, I called to mind how one
+day at Sevenbergen thou taughtest me to make a rope of straw. Mindst
+thou? The moment memory brought that happy day back to me, I cried out
+very loud: 'Margaret gives me a chance for life even here.' I woke from
+my lethargy. I seized on the straw and twisted it eagerly, as thou didst
+teach me, but my fingers trembled and delayed the task. Whiles I wrought
+I heard a door open below. That was a terrible moment. Even as I twisted
+my rope I got to the window and looked down at the great arms of the
+mill coming slowly up, then passing, then turning less slowly down, as
+it seemed; and I thought 'They go not as when there is wind: yet, slow
+or fast, what man rid ever on such steed as these, and lived? Yet, said
+I, 'better trust to them and God, than to ill men.' And I prayed to him
+whom even the wind obeyeth.
+
+"Dear Margaret, I fastened my rope, and let myself gently down, and
+fixed my eye on that huge arm of the mill, which then was creeping up to
+me, and went to spring on to it. But my heart failed me at the pinch.
+And methought it was near enow. And it passed calm and awful by. I
+watched for another; they were three. And after a little while one crept
+up slower than the rest methought. And I with my foot thrust myself in
+good time somewhat out from the wall, and crying aloud 'Margaret!' did
+grip with all my soul the wood work of the sail, and that moment was
+swimming in the air."
+
+_Giles._] "WELL DONE! WELL DONE!"
+
+"Motion I felt little; but the stars seemed to go round the sky, and
+then the grass came up to me nearer and nearer, and when the hoary grass
+was quite close I was sent rolling along it as if hurled from a
+catapult, and got up breathless, and every point and tie about me
+broken. I rose, but fell down again in agony. I had but one leg I could
+stand on."
+
+_Catherine._] "Eh! dear! his leg is broke, my boy's leg is broke."
+
+"And, e'en as I lay groaning, I heard a sound like thunder. It was the
+assassins running up the stairs. The crazy old mill shook under them.
+They must have found I had not fallen into their bloody trap, and were
+running to despatch me. Margaret, I felt no fear, for I had now no hope.
+I could neither run, nor hide; so wild the place, so bright the moon. I
+struggled up all agony and revenge, more like some wounded wild beast
+than your Gerard. Leaning on my sword hilt I hobbled round; and swift as
+lightning, or vengeance, I heaped a great pile of their hay and wood at
+the mill door; then drove my dagger into a barrel of their smuggled
+spirits, and flung it on; then out with my tinder and lighted the pile.
+'This will bring true men round my dead body,' said I. 'Aha!' I cried,
+'think you I'll die alone, cowards, assassins! reckless fiends!' and at
+each word on went a barrel pierced. But, oh, Margaret! the fire fed by
+the spirits surprised me: it shot up and singed my very hair, it went
+roaring up the side of the mill, swift as falls the lightning: and I
+yelled and laughed in my torture and despair, and pierced more barrels,
+and the very tar-barrels, and flung them on. The fire roared like a lion
+for its prey, and voices answered it inside from the top of the mill,
+and the feet came thundering down, and I stood as near that awful fire
+as I could with uplifted sword to slay and be slain. The bolt was drawn.
+A tar-barrel caught fire. The door was opened. What followed? Not the
+men came out, but the fire rushed in at them like a living death, and
+the first I thought to fight with was blackened and crumpled on the
+floor like a leaf. One fearsome yell, and dumb for ever. The feet ran up
+again, but fewer. I heard them hack with their swords a little way up,
+at the mill's wooden sides; but they had no time to hew their way out:
+the fire and reek were at their heels, and the smoke burst out at every
+loophole, and oozed blue in the moonlight through each crevice. I
+hobbled back, racked with pain and fury. There were white faces up at my
+window. They saw me. They cursed me. I cursed them back and shook my
+naked sword: 'Come down the road I came,' I cried. 'But ye must come one
+by one, and, as ye come, ye die upon this steel.' Some cursed at that,
+but others wailed. For I had them all at deadly vantage. And doubtless
+with my smoke-grimed face and fiendish rage I looked a demon. And now
+there was a steady roar inside the mill. The flame was going up it as
+furnace up its chimney. The mill caught fire. Fire glimmered through it.
+Tongues of flame darted through each loophole and shot sparks and fiery
+flakes into the night. One of the assassins leaped on to the sail, as I
+had done. In his hurry he missed his grasp and fell at my feet, and
+bounded from the hard ground like a ball, and never spoke, nor moved
+again. And the rest screamed like women, and with their despair came
+back to me both ruth for them and hope of life for myself. And the fire
+gnawed through the mill in places, and shot forth showers of great flat
+sparks like flakes of fiery snow; and the sails caught fire one after
+another; and I became a man again and staggered away terror-stricken,
+leaning on my sword, from the sight of my revenge, and with great bodily
+pain crawled back to the road. And, dear Margaret, the rimy trees were
+now all like pyramids of golden filagree, and lace, cobweb fine, in the
+red firelight. Oh! most beautiful! And a poor wretch got entangled in
+the burning sails, and whirled round screaming, and lost hold at the
+wrong time, and hurled like stone from mangonel high into the air; then
+a dull thump; it was his carcass striking the earth. The next moment
+there was a loud crash. The mill fell in on its destroyer, and a million
+great sparks flew up, and the sails fell over the burning wreck, and at
+that a million more sparks flew up, and the ground was strewn with
+burning wood and men. I prayed God forgive me, and kneeling with my back
+to that fiery shambles, I saw lights on the road; a welcome sight. It
+was a company coming towards me, and scarce two furlongs off. I hobbled
+towards them. Ere I had gone far I heard a swift step behind me. I
+turned. One had escaped; how escaped, who can divine? His sword shone in
+the moonlight. I feared him, methought the ghost of all those dead sat
+on that glittering glaive. I put my other foot to the ground, maugre the
+anguish, and fled towards the torches, moaning with pain, and shouting
+for aid. But what could I do? He gained on me. Behooved me turn and
+fight. Denys had taught me sword play in sport. I wheeled, our swords
+clashed. His clothes they smelled all singed. I cut swiftly upward with
+supple hand, and his dangled bleeding at the wrist, and his sword fell;
+it tinkled on the ground. I raised my sword to hew him should he stoop
+for't. He stood and cursed me. He drew his dagger with his left; I
+opposed my point and dared him with my eye to close. A great shout arose
+behind me from true men's throats. He started. He spat at me in his
+rage, then gnashed his teeth and fled blaspheming. I turned and saw
+torches close at hand. Lo, they fell to dancing up and down methought,
+and the next--moment--all--was--dark. I had--_ah_!"
+
+_Catherine._] "Here, help! water! Stand aloof, you that be men!"
+
+Margaret had fainted away.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER LVI
+
+
+WHEN she recovered, her head was on Catherine's arm, and the honest half
+of the family she had invaded like a foe stood round her uttering rough
+homely words of encouragement, especially Giles, who roared at her that
+she was not to take on like that. "Gerard was alive and well, or he
+could not have writ this letter, the biggest mankind had seen as yet,
+and," as he thought, "the beautifulest, and most moving, and smallest
+writ."
+
+"Ay, good Master Giles," sighed Margaret feebly, "he _was_ alive. But
+how know I what hath since befallen him? Oh, why left he Holland to go
+among strangers fierce as lions? And why did I not drive him from me
+sooner than part him from his own flesh and blood? Forgive me, you that
+are his mother!"
+
+And she gently removed Catherine's arm, and made a feeble attempt to
+slide off the chair on to her knees, which, after a brief struggle with
+superior force ended in her finding herself on Catherine's bosom. Then
+Margaret held out the letter to Eli, and said faintly but sweetly, "I
+will trust it from my hand now. In sooth, I am little fit to read any
+more--and--and--loth to leave my comfort:" and she wreathed her other
+arm round Catherine's neck.
+
+"Read thou, Richart," said Eli; "thine eyes be younger than mine."
+
+Richart took the letter. "Well," said he, "such writing saw I never. A
+writeth with a needle's point; and clear to boot. Why is he not in my
+counting-house at Amsterdam instead of vagabonding it out yonder?"
+
+"When I came to myself I was seated in the litter, and my good merchant
+holding of my hand. I babbled I know not what, and then shuddered awhile
+in silence. He put a horn of wine to my lips."
+
+_Catherine._] "Bless him! bless him!"
+
+_Eli._] "Whist!"
+
+"And I told him what had befallen. He would see my leg. It was sprained
+sore, and swelled at the ankle; and all my points were broken, as I
+could scarce keep up my hose; and I said, 'Sir, I shall be but a burden
+to you, I doubt, and can make you no harmony now; my poor psaltery it is
+broken;' and I did grieve over my broken music, companion of so many
+weary leagues. But he patted me on the cheek, and bade me not fret; also
+he did put up my leg on a pillow, and tended me like a kind father.
+
+"_January 14._--I sit all day in the litter, for we are pushing forward
+with haste, and at night the good kind merchant sendeth me to bed, and
+will not let me work. Strange! whene'er I fall in with men like fiends,
+then the next moment God still sendeth me some good man or woman, lest I
+should turn away from human kind. Oh, Margaret! how strangely mixed they
+be, and how old I am by what I was three months agone! And lo! if good
+Master Fugger hath not been and bought me a psaltery."
+
+_Catherine._] "Eli, my man, an yon merchant comes our way let us buy a
+hundred ells of cloth of him, and not higgle."
+
+_Eli._] "That will I, take your oath on't!"
+
+While Richart prepared to read, Kate looked at her mother, and with a
+faint blush drew out the piece of work from under her apron, and sewed,
+with head depressed a little more than necessary. On this her mother
+drew a piece of work out of her pocket, and sewed too, while Richart
+read. Both the specimens these sweet surreptitious creatures now first
+exposed to observation were babies' caps, and more than half finished,
+which told a tale. Horror! they were like little monk's cowls in shape
+and delicacy.
+
+"_January 12._--Laid up in the litter, and as good as blind, but,
+halting to bait, Lombardy plains burst on me. Oh, Margaret! a land
+flowing with milk and honey; all sloping plains, goodly rivers, jocund
+meadows, delectable orchards, and blooming gardens; and, though winter,
+looks warmer than poor beloved Holland at midsummer, and makes the
+wanderer's face to shine and his heart to leap for joy to see earth so
+kind and smiling. Here be vines, cedars, olives, and cattle plenty, but
+three goats to a sheep. The draught oxen wear white linen on their
+necks, and standing by dark green olive-trees each one is a picture, and
+the folk, especially women wear delicate strawen hats with flowers and
+leaves fairly imitated in silk, with silver mixed. This day we crossed a
+river prettily in a chained ferry boat. On either bank was a windlass,
+and a single man by turning of it drew our whole company to his shore,
+whereat I did admire, being a stranger. Passed over with us some country
+folk. And, an old woman looking at a young wench, she did hide her face
+with her hand, and held her crucifix out like knight his sword in
+tournay, dreading the evil eye.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+"_January 15._--Safe at Venice. A place whose strange and passing beauty
+is well known to thee by report of our mariners. Dost mind too how Peter
+would oft fill our ears withal, we handed beneath the table, and he
+still discoursing of this sea-enthroned and peerless citie, in shape a
+bow, and its great canal and palaces on piles, and its watery ways plied
+by scores of gilded boats; and that market-place of nations, orbis, non
+urbis, forum, St. Mark his place? And his statue with the peerless
+jewels in his eyes, and the lion at his gate? But I, lying at my window
+in pain, may see none of these beauties as yet, but only a street,
+fairly paced, which is dull, and houses with oiled paper and linen, in
+lieu of glass, which is rude; and the passers-by, their habits and their
+gestures, wherein they are superfluous. Therefore, not to miss my daily
+comfort of whispering to thee, I will e'en turn mine eyes inward, and
+bind my sheaves of wisdom reaped by travel. For I love thee so, that no
+treasure pleases me not shared with thee; and what treasure so good and
+enduring as knowledge? This then have I, Sir Footsore, learned, that
+each nation hath its proper wisdom, and its proper folly; and, methinks,
+could a great king, or duke, tramp like me, and see with his own eyes,
+he might pick the flowers, and eschew the weeds of nations, and go home
+and set his own folk on Wisdom's hill. The Germans in the north were
+churlish, but frank and honest; in the south, kindly and honest too.
+Their general blot is drunkenness, the which they carry even to mislike
+and contempt of sober men. They say commonly, 'Kanstu niecht sauffen und
+fressen so kanstu kienem hern wol dienen.' In England, the vulgar sort
+drink as deep, but the worshipful hold excess in this a reproach, and
+drink a health or two for courtesy, not gluttony, and still sugar the
+wine. In their cups the Germans use little mirth, or discourse, but ply
+the business sadly crying, 'Seyte frolich!' The best of their drunken
+sport is 'Kurlemurlehuff,' a way of drinking with touching deftly of the
+glass the beard, the table, in due turn, intermixed with whistlings and
+snappings of the finger so curiously ordered as 'tis a labour of
+Hercules, but to the beholder right pleasant and mirthful. Their topers,
+by advice of German leeches, sleep with pebbles in their mouths. For, as
+of a boiling pot the lid must be set ajar, so with these fleshly
+wine-pots, to vent the heat of their inward parts: spite of which many
+die suddenly from drink; but 'tis a matter of religion to slur it, and
+gloze it, and charge some innocent disease therewith. Yet 'tis more a
+custom than very nature, for their women come among the tipplers, and do
+but stand a moment, and, as it were, kiss the wine-cup; and are indeed
+most temperate in eating and drinking, and, of all women, modest and
+virtuous, and true spouses and friends to their mates; far before our
+Holland lasses, that being maids, put the question to the men, and being
+wived, do lord it over them. Why, there is a wife in Tergou, not far
+from our door. One came to the house and sought her man. Says she,
+'You'll not find him: he asked my leave to go abroad this afternoon, and
+I did give it him.'"
+
+_Catherine._] "'Tis sooth! 'tis sooth! 'Twas Beck Hulse, Jonah's wife.
+This comes of a woman wedding a boy."
+
+"In the south where wine is, the gentry drink themselves bare; but not
+in the north: for with beer a noble shall sooner burst his body than
+melt his lands. They are quarrelsome, but 'tis the liquor, not the mind;
+for they are none revengeful. And when they have made a bad bargain
+drunk, they stand to it sober. They keep their windows bright: and judge
+a man by his clothes. Whatever fruit or grain or herb grows by the
+roadside, gather and eat. The owner seeing you shall say, 'Art welcome,
+honest man.' But an ye pluck a wayside grape, your very life is in
+jeopardy. 'Tis eating of that Heaven gave to be drunken. The French are
+much fairer spoken, and not nigh so true hearted. Sweet words cost them
+nought. They call it 'payer en blanche.'"
+
+_Denys._] "Les coquins! ha! ha!"
+
+"Natheless, courtesy is in their hearts, ay, in their very blood. They
+say commonly, 'Give yourself the trouble of sitting down.' And such
+straws of speech show how blows the wind. Also at a public show, if you
+would leave your seat, yet not lose it, tie but your napkin round the
+bench, and no French man or women will sit here; but rather keep the
+place for you."
+
+_Catherine._] "Gramercy! that _is_ manners. France for me!"
+
+Denys rose and placed his hand gracefully to his breastplate.
+
+"Natheless, they say things in sport which are not courteous, but
+shocking. 'Le diable t'emporte!' 'Allez au diable!' and so forth. But I
+trow they mean not such dreadful wishes: custom belike. Moderate in
+drinking, and mix water with their wine, and sing and dance over their
+cups, and are then enchanting company. They are curious not to drink in
+another man's cup. In war the English gain the better of them in the
+field; but the French are their masters in attack and defence of cities;
+witness Orleans, where they besieged their besiegers, and hashed them
+sore with their double and treble culverines; and many other sieges in
+this our century. More than all nations they flatter their women, and
+despise them. No She may be their sovereign ruler. Also they often hang
+their female malefactors, instead of drowning them decently, as other
+nations use. The furniture in their inns is walnut, in Germany only
+deal. French windows are ill. The lower half is of wood, and opens: the
+upper half is of glass, but fixed; so that the servant cannot come at it
+to clean it. The German windows are all glass, and movable and shine far
+and near like diamonds. In France many mean houses are not glazed at
+all. Once I saw a Frenchman pass a church without unbonneting. This I
+ne'er witnessed in Holland, Germany, or Italy. At many inns they show
+the traveller his sheets to give him assurance they are clean, and warm
+them at the fire before him; a laudable custom. They receive him kindly
+and like a guest; they mostly cheat him, and whiles cut his throat. They
+plead in excuse hard and tyrannous laws. And true it is their law
+thrusteth its nose into every platter, and its finger into every pie. In
+France worshipful men wear their hats and their furs indoors, and go
+abroad lighter clad. In Germany they don hat and furred cloak to go
+abroad; but sit bareheaded and light clad round the stove.
+
+"The French intermix not the men and women folk in assemblies, as we
+Hollanders use. Round their preachers the women sit on their heels in
+rows, and the men stand behind them. Their harvests are rye, and flax,
+and wine. Three mules shall you see to one horse, and whole flocks of
+sheep as black as coal.
+
+"In Germany the snails be red. I lie not. The French buy minstrelsy, but
+breed jests, and make their own mirth. The Germans foster their set
+fools, with ear-caps, which move them to laughter by simulating madness;
+a calamity that asks pity, not laughter. In this particular I deem that
+lighter nation wiser than the graver German. What sayest thou? Alas!
+canst not answer me now.
+
+"In Germany the petty laws are wondrous wise and just. Those against
+criminals, bloody. In France bloodier still; and executed a trifle more
+cruelly there. Here the wheel is common, and the fiery stake; and under
+this king they drown men by the score in Paris river, Seine yclept. But
+the English are as peremptory in hanging and drowning for a light fault;
+so travellers report. Finally, a true-hearted Frenchman, when ye chance
+on one, is a man as near perfect as earth affords; and such a man is my
+Denys, spite of his foul mouth."
+
+_Denys._] "My foul mouth! Is that so writ, Master Richart?"
+
+_Richart._] "Ay, in sooth; see else."
+
+_Denys._] (Inspecting the letter gravely.) "I read not the letter so."
+
+_Richart._] "How then?"
+
+_Denys._] "Humph! ahem! why just the contrary." He added: "'Tis kittle
+work perusing of these black scratches men are agreed to take for words.
+And I trow 'tis still by guess you clerks do go, worthy sir. My foul
+mouth? This the first time e'er I heard on't. Eh, mesdames?"
+
+But the females did not seize the opportunity he gave them, and burst
+into a loud and general disclaimer. Margaret blushed and said nothing;
+the other two bent silently over their work with something very like a
+sly smile. Denys inspected their countenances long and carefully. And
+the perusal was so satisfactory, that he turned with a tone of injured,
+but patient, innocence, and bade Richart read on.
+
+"The Italians are a polished and subtle people. They judge a man, not by
+his habits, but his speech and gesture. Here Sir Chough may by no means
+pass for falcon gentle, as did I in Germany, pranked in my noble
+servant's feathers. Wisest of all nations in their singular temperance
+of food and drink. Most foolish of all to search strangers coming into
+their borders, and stay them from bringing much money in. They should
+rather invite it, and, like other nations, let the traveller from taking
+of it out. Also here in Venice the dames turn their black hair yellow by
+the sun and art, to be wiser than Him who made them. Ye enter no Italian
+town without a bill of health, though now is no plague in Europe. This
+peevishness is for extortion's sake. The inn-keepers cringe and fawn,
+and cheat, and, in country places, murder you. Yet will they give you
+clean sheets by paying therefor. Delicate in eating, and abhor from
+putting their hand in the plate; sooner they will apply a crust or what
+not. They do even tell of a cardinal at Rome, which armeth his guest's
+left hand with a little bifurcal dagger to hold the meat, while his
+knife cutteth it. But methinks this, too, is to be wiser than Him, who
+made the hand so supple and prehensile."
+
+_Eli._] "I am of your mind, my lad."
+
+"They are sore troubled with the itch. And ointment for it, unguento per
+la rogna, is cried at every corner of Venice. From this my window I saw
+an urchin sell it to three several dames in silken trains, and to two
+velvet knights."
+
+_Catherine._] "Italy, my lass, I rede ye wash your body i' the tub o'
+Sundays; and then ye can put your hand i' the plate o' Thursday
+withouten offence."
+
+"Their bread is lovely white. Their meats they spoil with sprinkling
+cheese over them; O perversity! Their salt is black; without a lie. In
+commerce these Venetians are masters of the earth and sea; and govern
+their territories wisely. Only one flaw I find; the same I once heard a
+learned friar cast up against Plato his republic: to wit, that here
+women are encouraged to venal frailty, and do pay a tax to the State,
+which, not content with silk and spice, and other rich and honest
+freights, good store, must trade in sin. Twenty thousand of these
+Jezabels there be in Venice and Candia, and about, pampered and honoured
+for bringing strangers to the city, and many live in princely palaces of
+their own. But herein methinks the politic signors of Venice forget what
+King David saith, 'Except the Lord keep the citie, the watchman waketh
+but in vain.' Also, in religion, they hang their cloth according to the
+wind, siding now with the Pope, now with the Turk; but ay with the god
+of traders, mammon hight. Shall flower so cankered bloom to the world's
+end? But since I speak of flowers, this none may deny them, that they
+are most cunning in making roses and gilliflowers to blow unseasonably.
+In summer they nip certain of the budding roses and water them not. Then
+in winter they dig round these discouraged plants, and put in cloves;
+and so with great art rear sweet-scented roses, and bring them to market
+in January. And did first learn this art of a cow. Buds she grazed in
+summer, and they sprouted at yule. Women have sat in the doctors' chairs
+at their colleges. But she that sat in St. Peter's was a German. Italy
+too, for artful fountains and figures that move by water and enact life.
+And next for fountains is Augsburg, where they harness the foul knave
+Smoke to good Sir Spit, and he turneth stout Master Roast. But lest any
+one place should vaunt, two towns there be in Europe, which, scorning
+giddy fountains, bring water tame in pipes to every burgher's door, and
+he filleth his vessels with but turning of a cock. One is London, so
+watered this many a year by pipes of a league from Paddington, a
+neighbouring city; and the other is the fair town of Lubeck. Also the
+fierce English are reported to me wise in that they will not share their
+land and flocks with wolves; but have fairly driven those marauders into
+their mountains. But neither in France, nor Germany, nor Italy, is a
+wayfarer's life safe from the vagabones after sundown. I can hear of no
+glazed house in all Venice; but only oiled linen and paper; and, behind
+these barbarian eyelets, a wooden jalosy. Their name for a cowardly
+assassin is 'a brave man,' and for an harlot, 'a courteous person,'
+which is as much as to say that a woman's worst vice, and a man's worst
+vice, are virtues. But I pray God for little Holland that there an
+assassin may be yclept an assassin, and an harlot an harlot, till
+domesday; and then gloze foul faults with silken names who can!"
+
+_Eli._] (With a sigh.) "He should have been a priest, saving your
+presence, my poor lass."
+
+"Go to, peevish writer; art tied smarting by the leg, and may not see
+the beauties of Venice. So thy pen kicketh all around like a wicked
+mule.
+
+"_January 16._--Sweetheart, I must be brief and tell thee but a part of
+that I have seen, for this day my journal ends. To-night it sails for
+thee, and I, unhappy, not with it, but to-morrow, in another ship, to
+Rome.
+
+"Dear Margaret, I took a hand-litter, and was carried to St. Mark his
+church. Outside it, towards the market-place, is a noble gallery, and
+above it four famous horses, cut in brass by the ancient Romans, and
+seem all moving, and at the very next step must needs leap down on the
+beholder. About the church are six hundred pillars of marble, porphyry,
+and ophites. Inside is a treasure greater than either at St. Denys, or
+Loretto, or Toledo. Here a jewelled pitcher given the seigniory by a
+Persian king, also the ducal cap blazing with jewels, and on its crown a
+diamond and a chrysolite, each as big as an almond; two golden crowns
+and twelve golden stomachers studded with jewels, from Constantinople;
+item, a monstrous sapphire; item, a great diamond given by a French
+king; item, a prodigious carbuncle; item, three unicorns' horns. But
+what are these compared with the sacred relics?
+
+"Dear Margaret, I stood and saw the brazen chest that holds the body of
+St. Mark the Evangelist. I saw with these eyes, and handled, his ring
+and his gospel written with his own hand, and all my travels seemed
+light: for who am I that I should see such things? Dear Margaret, his
+sacred body was first brought from Alexandria by merchants in 810, and
+then not prized as now; for between 829, when this church was builded,
+and 1094, the very place where it lay was forgotten. Then holy priests
+fasted and prayed many days seeking for light, and lo the Evangelist's
+body brake at midnight through the marble and stood before them. They
+fell to the earth: but in the morning found the crevice the sacred body
+had burst through, and peering through it saw him lie. Then they took
+and laid him in his chest beneath the altar, and carefully put back the
+stone with its miraculous crevice, which crevice I saw, and shall gape
+for a monument while the world lasts. After that they showed me the
+Virgin's chair, it is of stone; also her picture, painted by St. Luke,
+very dark, and the features now scarce visible. This picture, in time of
+drought, they carry in procession, and brings the rain. I wish I had not
+seen it. Item, two pieces of marble spotted with John the Baptist's
+blood; item, a piece of the true cross and of the pillar to which Christ
+was tied; item, the rock struck by Moses, and wet to this hour; also a
+stone Christ sat on, preaching at Tyre; but some say it is the one the
+patriarch Jacob laid his head on, and I hold with them, by reason our
+Lord never preached at Tyre. Going hence they showed me the state
+nursery for the children of those aphrodisian dames, their favourites.
+Here in the outer wall was a broad niche, and if they bring them so
+little as they can squeeze them through it alive, the bairn falls into a
+net inside, and the state takes charge of it, but if too big, their
+mothers must even take them home again, with whom abiding 'tis like to
+be mali corvi mali ovum. Coming out of the church we met them carrying
+in a corpse, with the feet and face bare. This I then first learned is
+Venetian custom, and sure no other town will ever rob them of it, nor of
+this that follows. On a great porphyry slab in the piazza were three
+ghastly heads rotting and tainting the air, and in their hot summers
+like to take vengeance with breeding of a plague. These were traitors to
+the state, and a heavy price--two thousand ducats--being put on each
+head, their friends had slain them and brought all three to the slab,
+and so sold blood of others and their own faith. No state buys heads so
+many nor pays half so high a price for that sorry merchandise. But what
+I most admired was to see over against the duke's palace a fair gallows
+in alabaster, reared express to hang him, and no other, for the least
+treason to the state; and there it stands in his eye whispering him
+memento mori. I pondered, and owned these signors my masters, who will
+let no man, not even their sovereign, be above the common weal. Hard by,
+on a wall, the workmen were just finishing, by order of the seigniory,
+the stone effigy of a tragical and enormous act enacted last year, yet
+on the wall looks innocent. Here two gentlefolks whisper together, and
+there other twain, their swords by their side. Four brethren were they,
+which did on either side conspire to poison the other two, and so halve
+their land in lieu of quartering it; and at a mutual banquet these twain
+drugged the wine, and those twain envenomed a marchpane, to such good
+purpose, that the same afternoon lay four 'brave men' around one table
+grovelling in mortal agony, and cursing of one another and themselves,
+and so concluded miserably, and the land, for which they had lost their
+immortal souls went into another family. And why not? it could not go
+into a worse.
+
+"But O sovereign wisdom of bywords! how true they put the finger on each
+nation's, or particular's, fault.
+
+    Quand Italie sera sans poison
+    Et France sans trahison
+    Et l'Angleterre sans guerre,
+    Lors sera le monde sans terre."
+
+Richart explained this to Catherine, then proceeded: "And after this
+they took me to the quay, and presently I espied among the masts one
+garlanded with amaranth flowers. 'Take me thither,' said I, and I let my
+guide know the custom of our Dutch skippers to hoist flowers to the
+masthead when they are courting a maid. Oft had I scoffed at this
+saying. 'So then his wooing is the earth's concern.' But now, so far
+from the Rotter, that bunch at a masthead made my heart leap with
+assurance of a countryman. They carried me, and oh, Margaret! on the
+stern of that Dutch hoy, was writ in muckle letters,
+
+    RICHART ELIASSOEN, AMSTERDAM.
+
+'Put me down,' I said: 'for our Lady's sake put me down.' I sat on the
+bank and looked, scarce believing my eyes, and looked, and presently
+fell to crying, till I could see the words no more. Ah me, how they went
+to my heart, those bare letters in a foreign land. Dear Richart! good
+kind brother Richart! often I have sat on his knee and rid on his back.
+Kisses many he has given me, unkind word from him had I never. And there
+was his name on his own ship, and his face and all his grave, but good
+and gentle ways, came back to me, and I sobbed vehemently, and cried
+aloud, 'Why, why is not brother Richart here, and not his name only?' I
+spake in Dutch, for my heart was too full to hold their foreign tongues,
+and--"
+
+_Eli._] "Well, Richart, go on lad, prithee go on. Is this a place to
+halt at?"
+
+_Richart._] "Father, with my duty to you, it is easy to say go on, but
+think ye I am not flesh and blood? The poor boy's--simple grief and
+brotherly love coming--so sudden--on me, they go through my heart and--I
+cannot go on: sink me if I can even see the words, 'tis writ so fine."
+
+_Denys._] "Courage, good Master Richart! Take your time. Here are more
+eyne wet than yours. Ah, little comrade! would God thou wert here, and I
+at Venice for thee."
+
+_Richart._] "Poor little curly-headed lad, what had he done that we have
+driven him so far?"
+
+"That is what I would fain know," said Catherine, drily, then fell to
+weeping and rocking herself, with her apron over her head.
+
+"Kind dame, good friends," said Margaret, trembling, "let me tell you
+how the letter ends. The skipper hearing our Gerard speak his grief in
+Dutch, accosted him, and spake comfortably to him; and after a while our
+Gerard found breath to say he was worthy Master Richart's brother.
+Thereat was the good skipper all agog to serve him."
+
+_Richart._] "So! so! skipper! Master Richart aforesaid will be at thy
+wedding and bring's purse to boot."
+
+_Margaret._] "Sir, he told Gerard of his consort that was to sail that
+very night for Rotterdam; and dear Gerard had to go home and finish his
+letter and bring it to the ship. And the rest, it is but his poor dear
+words of love to me, the which, an't please you, I think shame to hear
+them read aloud, and ends with the lines I sent to Mistress Kate, and
+_they_ would sound so harsh _now_ and ungrateful."
+
+The pleading tone, as much as the words, prevailed, and Richart said he
+would read no more aloud, but run his eye over it for his own brotherly
+satisfaction. She blushed and looked uneasy, but made no reply.
+
+"Eli," said Catherine, still sobbing a little, "tell me, for our Lady's
+sake, how our poor boy is to live at that nasty Rome. He is gone there
+to write, but here be his own words to prove writing avails nought; a
+had died o' hunger by the way but for paint-brush and psaltery.
+Well-a-day!"
+
+"Well," said Eli, "he has got brush and music still. Besides, so many
+men so many minds. Writing, thof it had no sale in other parts, may be
+merchandise at Rome."
+
+"Father," said little Kate, "have I your good leave to put in my word
+'twixt mother and you?"
+
+"And welcome, little heart."
+
+"Then, seems to me painting and music, close at hand, be stronger than
+writing, but being distant, nought to compare; for see what glamour
+written paper hath done here but now. Our Gerard, writing at Venice,
+hath verily put his hand into this room at Rotterdam, and turned all our
+hearts. Ay, dear dear Gerard, methinks thy spirit hath rid hither on
+these thy paper wings; and oh! dear father, why not do as we should do
+were he here in the body?"
+
+"Kate," said Eli, "fear not; Richart and I will give him glamour for
+glamour. We will write him a letter, and send it to Rome by a sure hand
+with money, and bid him home on the instant."
+
+Cornelis and Sybrandt exchanged a gloomy look.
+
+"Ah, good father! And meantime?"
+
+"Well, meantime?"
+
+"Dear father, dear mother, what can we do to pleasure the absent, but be
+kind to his poor lass; and her own trouble afore her?"
+
+"'Tis well!" said Eli; "but I am older than thou." Then he turned
+gravely to Margaret: "Wilt answer me a question, my pretty mistress?"
+
+"If I may, sir," faltered Margaret.
+
+"What are these marriage lines Gerard speaks of in the letter?"
+
+"Our marriage lines, sir. His and mine. Know you not we are betrothed?"
+
+"Before witnesses?"
+
+"Ay, sure. My poor father and Martin Wittenhaagen."
+
+"This is the first I ever heard of it. How came they in his hands? They
+should be in yours."
+
+"Alas, sir, the more is my grief; but I ne'er doubted him: and he said
+it was a comfort to him to have them in his bosom."
+
+"Y'are a very foolish lass."
+
+"Indeed I was, sir. But trouble teaches the simple."
+
+"'Tis a good answer. Well, foolish or no, y'are honest. I had shown ye
+more respect at first, but I thought y'had been his leman, and that is
+the truth."
+
+"God forbid, sir! Denys, methinks 'tis time for us to go. Give me my
+letter, sir!"
+
+"Bide ye! bide ye! be not so hot, for a word! Natheless, wife, methinks
+her red cheek becomes her."
+
+"Better than it did you to give it her, my man."
+
+"Softly, wife, softly. I am not counted an unjust man thof I be somewhat
+slow."
+
+Here Richart broke in. "Why, mistress, did ye shed your blood for our
+Gerard?"
+
+"Not I, sir. But maybe I would."
+
+"Nay, nay. But he says you did. Speak sooth, now!"
+
+"Alas! I know not what ye mean. I rede ye believe not all that my poor
+lad says of me. Love makes him blind."
+
+"Traitress!" cried Denys. "Let not her throw dust in thine eyes, Master
+Richart. Old Martin tells me--ye need not make signals to me,
+she-comrade; I am as blind as love. Martin tells me she cut her arm, and
+let her blood flow, and smeared her heels when Gerard was hunted by the
+bloodhounds, to turn the scent from her lad."
+
+"Well, and if I did, 'twas my own, and spilled for the good of my own,"
+said Margaret, defiantly. But, Catherine suddenly clasping her, she
+began to cry at having found a bosom to cry on, of one who would have
+also shed her blood for Gerard in danger.
+
+Eli rose from his chair. "Wife," said he, solemnly, "you will set
+another chair at our table for every meal: also another plate and knife.
+They will be for Margaret and Peter. She will come when she likes, and
+stay away when she pleases. None may take her place at my left hand.
+Such as can welcome her are welcome to me. Such as cannot, I force them
+not to bide with me. The world is wide and free. Within my walls I am
+master, and my son's betrothed is welcome."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Catherine bustled out to prepare supper. Eli and Richart sat down and
+concocted a letter to bring Gerard home. Richart promised it should go
+by sea to Rome that very week. Sybrandt and Cornelis exchanged a gloomy
+wink, and stole out. Margaret, seeing Giles deep in meditation, for the
+dwarf's intelligence had taken giant strides, asked him to bring her the
+letter. "You have heard but half, good Master Giles," said she. "Shall I
+read you the rest?"
+
+"I shall be much beholden to you," shouted the courtier.
+
+She gave him her stool: curiosity bowed his pride to sit on it: and
+Margaret murmured the first part of the letter into his ear very low,
+not to disturb Eli and Richart. And, to do this, she leaned forward and
+put her lovely face cheek by jowl with Giles's hideous one: a strange
+contrast, and worth a painter's while to try and represent. And in this
+attitude Catherine found her, and all the mother warmed towards her, and
+she exchanged an eloquent glance with little Kate.
+
+The latter smiled, and sewed, with drooping lashes.
+
+"Get him home on the instant," roared Giles. "I'll make a man of him. I
+can do aught with the duke."
+
+"Hear the boy!" said Catherine, half comically, half proudly.
+
+"We hear him," said Richart: "a mostly makes himself heard when a do
+speak."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+_Sybrandt._] "Which will get to him first?"
+
+_Cornelis._] (Gloomily.) "Who can tell?"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER LVII
+
+
+ABOUT two months before this scene in Eli's home, the natives of a
+little maritime place between Naples and Rome might be seen flocking to
+the sea beach, with eyes cast seaward at a ship, that laboured against a
+stiff gale blowing dead on the shore.
+
+At times she seemed likely to weather the danger, and then the
+spectators congratulated her aloud: at others the wind and sea drove her
+visibly nearer, and the lookers-on were not without a secret
+satisfaction they would not have owned even to themselves.
+
+    Non quia vexari quemquam est jucunda voluptas
+    Sed quibus ipse malis careas quia cernere suave est.
+
+And the poor ship, though not scientifically built for sailing, was
+admirably constructed for going ashore, with her extravagant poop that
+caught the wind, and her lines like a cocked hat reversed. To those on
+the beach that battered labouring frame of wood seemed alive, and
+struggling against death with a panting heart. But could they have been
+transferred to her deck they would have seen she had not one beating
+heart but many, and not one nature but a score were coming out clear in
+that fearful hour.
+
+The mariners stumbled wildly about the deck, handling the ropes as each
+thought fit, and cursing and praying alternately.
+
+The passengers were huddled together round the mast, some sitting, some
+kneeling, some lying prostrate, and grasping the bulwarks as the vessel
+rolled and pitched in the mighty waves. One comely young man, whose ashy
+cheek, but compressed lips, showed how hard terror was battling in him
+with self-respect, stood a little apart, holding tight by a shroud, and
+wincing at each sea. It was the ill-fated Gerard. Meantime prayers and
+vows rose from the trembling throng amidships, and, to hear them, it
+seemed there were almost as many gods about as men and women. The
+sailors, indeed, relied on a single goddess. They varied her titles
+only, calling on her as "Queen of Heaven," "Star of the Sea," "Mistress
+of the World," "Haven of Safety." But among the landsmen Polytheism
+raged. Even those who by some strange chance hit on the same divinity
+did not hit on the same edition of that divinity. An English merchant
+vowed a heap of gold to our lady of Walsingham. But a Genoese merchant
+vowed a silver collar of four pounds to our lady of Loretto; and a
+Tuscan noble promised ten pounds of wax lights to our lady of Ravenna;
+and with a similar rage for diversity they pledged themselves, not on
+the true Cross, but on the true Cross in this, that, or the other,
+modern city.
+
+Suddenly a more powerful gust than usual catching the sail at a
+disadvantage, the rotten shrouds gave way, and the sail was torn out
+with a loud crack and went down the wind smaller and smaller, blacker
+and blacker, and fluttered into the sea, half a mile off, like a sheet
+of paper; and, ere the helmsman could put the ship's head before the
+wind, a wave caught her on the quarter and drenched the poor wretches to
+the bone, and gave them a foretaste of chill death. Then one vowed aloud
+to turn Carthusian monk, if St. Thomas would save him. Another would go
+a pilgrim to Compostella, bareheaded, barefooted, with nothing but a
+coat of mail on his naked skin, if St. James would save him. Others
+invoked Thomas, Dominic, Denys, and, above all, Catherine of Sienna.
+
+Two petty Neapolitan traders stood shivering.
+
+One shouted at the top of his voice, "I vow to St. Christopher at Paris
+a waxen image of his own weight, if I win safe to land."
+
+On this the other nudged him, and said, "Brother, brother, take heed
+what you vow. Why, if you sell all you have in the world by public
+auction, 'twill not buy his weight in wax."
+
+"Hold your tongue, you fool," said the vociferator. Then in a whisper,
+
+"Think ye I am in earnest? Let me but win safe to land, I'll not give
+him a rush dip."
+
+Others lay flat and prayed to the sea. "O most merciful sea! O sea most
+generous! O bountiful sea! O beautiful sea! be gentle, be kind, preserve
+us in this hour of peril."
+
+And others wailed and moaned in mere animal terror each time the
+ill-fated ship rolled or pitched more terribly than usual; and she was
+now a mere plaything in the arms of the tremendous waves.
+
+A Roman woman of the humbler class sat with her child at her half-bared
+breast, silent amid that wailing throng: her cheek ashy pale; her eye
+calm; and her lips moved at times in silent prayer, but she neither
+wept, nor lamented, nor bargained with the gods. Whenever the ship
+seemed really gone under their feet, and bearded men squeaked, she
+kissed her child; but that was all. And so she sat patient, and suckled
+him in death's jaws; for why should he lose any joy she could give him;
+moribundo? Ay, there I do believe, sat Antiquity among those mediaevals.
+Sixteen hundred years had not tainted the old Roman blood in her veins;
+and the instinct of a race she had perhaps scarce heard of taught her to
+die with decent dignity.
+
+A gigantic friar stood on the poop with feet apart, like the Colossus of
+Rhodes, not so much defying, as ignoring, the peril that surrounded him.
+He recited verses from the canticles with a loud, unwavering voice; and
+invited the passengers to confess to him. Some did so on their knees,
+and he heard them, and laid his hands on them, and absolved them as if
+he had been in a snug sacristy, instead of a perishing ship. Gerard got
+nearer and nearer to him, by the instinct that takes the wavering to the
+side of the impregnable. And, in truth, the courage of heroes facing
+fleshly odds might have paled by the side of that gigantic friar, and
+his still more gigantic composure. Thus, even here, two were found who
+maintained the dignity of our race: a woman, tender, yet heroic, and a
+monk steeled by religion against mortal fears.
+
+And now, the sail being gone, the sailors cut down the useless mast a
+foot above the board, and it fell with its remaining hamper over the
+ship's side. This seemed to relieve her a little.
+
+But now the hull, no longer impelled by canvas, could not keep ahead of
+the sea. It struck her again and again on the poop, and the tremendous
+blows seemed given by a rocky mountain, not by a liquid.
+
+The captain left the helm and came amidships pale as death. "Lighten
+her," he cried. "Fling all overboard, or we shall founder ere we strike,
+and lose the one little chance we have of life." While the sailors were
+executing this order, the captain, pale himself, and surrounded by pale
+faces that demanded to know their fate, was talking as unlike an English
+skipper in like peril as can well be imagined. "Friends," said he, "last
+night, when all was fair, too fair, alas! there came a globe of fire
+close to the ship. When a pair of them come it is good luck, and nought
+can drown her that voyage. We mariners call these fiery globes Castor
+and Pollux. But if Castor come without Pollux, or Pollux without
+Castor, she is doomed. Therefore, like good Christians, prepare to die."
+
+These words were received with a loud wail.
+
+To a trembling inquiry how long they had to prepare, the captain
+replied, "She may, or may not, last half an hour; over that, impossible;
+she leaks like a sieve; bustle, men, lighten her."
+
+The poor passengers seized on everything that was on deck and flung it
+overboard. Presently they laid hold of a heavy sack; an old man was
+lying on it, sea sick. They lugged it from under him. It rattled. Two of
+them drew it to the side; up started the owner, and, with an unearthly
+shriek, pounced on it. "Holy Moses! what would you do? 'Tis my all; 'tis
+the whole fruits of my journey; silver candlesticks, silver plates,
+brooches, hanaps--"
+
+"Let go, thou hoary villain," cried the others, "shall all our lives be
+lost for thy ill-gotten gear?" "Fling him in with it," cried one; "'tis
+this Ebrew we Christian men are drowned for." Numbers soon wrenched it
+from him and heaved it over the side. It splashed into the waves. Then
+its owner uttered one cry of anguish, and stood glaring, his white hair
+streaming in the wind, and was going to leap after it, and would, had it
+floated. But it sank, and was gone for ever; and he staggered to and
+fro, tearing his hair, and cursed them and the ship, and the sea, and
+all the powers of heaven and hell alike.
+
+And now the captain cried out: "See, there is a church in sight. Steer
+for that church, mate, and you, friends, pray to the saint, who'er he
+be."
+
+So they steered for the church and prayed to the unknown god it was
+named after. A tremendous sea pooped them, broke the rudder, and jammed
+it immovable, and flooded the deck.
+
+Then wild with superstitious terror some of them came round Gerard.
+"Here is the cause of all," they cried. "He has never invoked a single
+saint. He is a heathen; here is a pagan aboard."
+
+"Alas, good friends, say not so," said Gerard, his teeth chattering with
+cold and fear. "Rather call these heathens, that lie a praying to the
+sea. Friends, I do honour the saints,--but I dare not pray to them
+now,--there is no time--(oh!) what avail me Dominic, and Thomas and
+Catherine? Nearer God's throne than these St. Peter sitteth; and, if I
+pray to him, it's odd, but I shall be drowned ere he has time to plead
+my cause with God. Oh! oh! oh! I must need go straight to him that made
+the sea, and the saints, and me. Our father, which art in heaven, save
+these poor souls and me that cry for the bare life! Oh sweet Jesus,
+pitiful Jesus, that didst walk Genezaret when Peter sank, and wept for
+Lazarus dead when the apostles' eyes were dry, oh save poor Gerard--for
+dear Margaret's sake!"
+
+At this moment the sailors were seen preparing to desert the sinking
+ship in the little boat, which even at that epoch every ship carried;
+then there was a rush of egotists; and thirty souls crowded into it.
+Remained behind three who were bewildered, and two who were paralyzed,
+with terror. The paralyzed sat like heaps of wet rags, the bewildered
+ones ran to and fro, and saw the thirty egotists put off, but made no
+attempt to join them: only kept running to and fro, and wringing their
+hands. Besides these there was one on his knees praying over the wooden
+statue of the Virgin Mary, as large as life, which the sailors had
+reverently detached from the mast. It washed about the deck, as the
+water came slushing in from the sea, and pouring out at the scuppers;
+and this poor soul kept following it on his knees, with his hands
+clasped at it, and the water playing with it, And there was the Jew,
+palsied, but not by fear. He was no longer capable of so petty a
+passion. He sat cross-legged, bemoaning his bag, and, whenever the spray
+lashed him, shook his fist at where it came from, and cursed the
+Nazarenes, and their gods, and their devils, and their ships, and their
+waters, to all eternity.
+
+And the gigantic Dominican, having shriven the whole ship, stood calmly
+communing with his own spirit. And the Roman woman sat pale and patient,
+only drawing her child closer to her bosom as death came nearer.
+
+Gerard saw this and it awakened his manhood. "See! see!" he said, "they
+have ta'en the boat and left the poor woman and her child to perish."
+
+His heart soon set his wit working.
+
+"Wife, I'll save thee yet, please God." And he ran to find a cask or a
+plank to float her. There was none.
+
+Then his eye fell on the wooden image of the Virgin. He caught it up in
+his arms, and, heedless of a wail that issued from its worshipper, like
+a child robbed of its toy, ran aft with it. "Come, wife," he cried.
+"I'll lash thee and the child to this. 'Tis sore worm eaten; but 'twill
+serve."
+
+She turned her great dark eye on him and said a single word:
+
+"Thyself?"
+
+But with wonderful magnanimity and tenderness.
+
+"I am a man, and have no child to take care of."
+
+"Ah!" said she, and his words seemed to animate her face with a desire
+to live. He lashed the image to her side. Then with the hope of life she
+lost something of her heroic calm; not much: her body trembled a little,
+but not her eye.
+
+The ship was now so low in the water that by using an oar as a lever he
+could slide her into the waves.
+
+"Come," said he, "while yet there is time."
+
+She turned her great Roman eyes, wet now, upon him. "Poor youth!--God
+forgive me!--My child!" And he launched her on the surge, and with his
+oar kept her from being battered against the ship.
+
+A heavy hand fell on him; a deep sonorous voice sounded in his ear:
+"'Tis well. Now come with me."
+
+It was the gigantic friar.
+
+Gerard turned, and the friar took two strides, and laid hold of the
+broken mast. Gerard did the same, obeying him instinctively. Between
+them, after a prodigious effort, they hoisted up the remainder of the
+mast, and carried it off. "Fling it in," said the friar, "and follow
+it." They flung it in; but one of the bewildered passengers had run
+after them, and jumped first and got on one end. Gerard seized the
+other, the friar the middle.
+
+It was a terrible situation. The mast rose and plunged with each wave
+like a kicking horse, and the spray flogged their faces mercilessly, and
+blinded them; to help knock them off.
+
+Presently was heard a long grating noise ahead. The ship had struck: and
+soon after, she being stationary now, they were hurled against her with
+tremendous force. Their companion's head struck against the upper part
+of the broken rudder with a horrible crack, and was smashed like a
+cocoa-nut by a sledge-hammer. He sunk directly, leaving no trace but a
+red stain on the water, and a white clot on the jagged rudder, and a
+death cry ringing in their ears, as they drifted clear under the lee of
+the black hull. The friar uttered a short Latin prayer for the safety of
+his soul, and took his place composedly. They rolled along [Greek:
+hyp' ek thanatoio]; one moment they saw nothing, and seemed down in a
+mere basin of watery hills: the next they caught glimpses of the shore
+speckled bright with people, who kept throwing up their arms with wild
+Italian gestures to encourage them, and the black boat driving bottom
+upwards, and between it and them the woman rising and falling like
+themselves. She had come across a paddle, and was holding her child
+tight with her left arm, and paddling gallantly with her right.
+
+[Illustration: THE BLACK BOAT DRIVING BOTTOM UPWARD]
+
+When they had tumbled along thus a long time, suddenly the friar said
+quietly: "I touched the ground."
+
+"Impossible, father," said Gerard, "we are more than a hundred yards
+from shore. Prithee, prithee, leave not our faithful mast."
+
+"My son," said the friar, "you speak prudently. But know that I have
+business of holy Church on hand, and may not waste time floating when I
+can walk, in her service. There, I felt it with my toes again; see the
+benefit of wearing sandals, and not shoon. Again: and sandy. Thy stature
+is less than mine: keep to the mast! I walk." He left the mast
+accordingly, and extending his powerful arms, rushed through the water.
+Gerard soon followed him. At each overpowering wave the monk stood like
+a tower, and, closing his mouth, threw his head back to encounter it,
+and was entirely lost under it awhile: then emerged and ploughed lustily
+on. At last they came close to the shore; but the suction outward
+baffled all their attempts to land. Then the natives sent stout
+fishermen into the sea, holding by long spears in a triple chain: and so
+dragged them ashore.
+
+The friar shook himself, bestowed a short paternal benediction on the
+natives, and went on to Rome, with eyes bent on earth, according to his
+rule, and without pausing. He did not even cast a glance back upon that
+sea, which had so nearly engulfed him, but had no power to harm him,
+without his master's leave.
+
+While he stalks on alone to Rome without looking back, I who am not in
+the service of holy Church, stop a moment to say that the reader and I
+were within six inches of this giant once before: but we escaped him
+that time. Now, I fear, we are in for him. Gerard grasped every hand
+upon the beach. They brought him to an enormous fire and with a delicacy
+he would hardly have encountered in the north, left him to dry himself
+alone: on this he took out of his bosom a parchment, and a paper, and
+dried them carefully. When this was done to his mind, and not till then,
+he consented to put on a fisherman's dress and leave his own by the
+fire, and went down to the beach. What he saw may be briefly related.
+
+The captain stuck by the ship, not so much from gallantry, as from a
+conviction that it was idle to resist Castor or Pollux, whichever it was
+that had come for him in a ball of fire.
+
+Nevertheless the sea broke up the ship and swept the poop, captain and
+all, clear of the rest, and took him safe ashore. Gerard had a principal
+hand in pulling him out of the water. The disconsolate Hebrew landed on
+another fragment, and on touching earth offered a reward for his bag,
+which excited little sympathy, but some amusement. Two more were saved
+on pieces of the wreck. The thirty egotists came ashore, but one at a
+time, and dead; one breathed still. Him the natives, with excellent
+intentions, took to a hot fire. So then he too retired from this
+shifting scene.
+
+As Gerard stood by the sea, watching, with horror and curiosity mixed,
+his late companions washed ashore, a hand was laid lightly on his
+shoulder. He turned. It was the Roman matron, burning with womanly
+gratitude. She took his hand gently, and raising it slowly to her lips,
+kissed it; but so nobly, she seemed to be conferring an honour on one
+deserving hand. Then, with face all beaming and moist eyes, she held her
+child up and made him kiss his preserver.
+
+Gerard kissed the child: more than once. He was fond of children. But he
+said nothing. He was much moved; for she did not speak at all, except
+with her eyes, and glowing cheeks, and noble antique gesture, so large
+and stately. Perhaps she was right. Gratitude is not a thing of words.
+It was an ancient Roman matron thanking a modern from her heart of
+hearts.
+
+Next day, towards afternoon, Gerard--twice as old as last year, thrice
+as learned in human ways, a boy no more, but a man who had shed blood in
+self-defense, and grazed the grave by land and sea--reached the eternal
+city; _post tot naufragia tutus_.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER LVIII
+
+
+GERARD took a modest lodging on the west bank of the Tiber, and every
+day went forth in search of work, taking a specimen round to every shop
+he could hear of that executed such commissions.
+
+They received him coldly. "We make our letter somewhat thinner than
+this," said one. "How dark your ink is," said another. But the main cry
+was, "What avails this? Scant is the Latin writ here now. Can ye not
+write Greek?"
+
+"Ay, but not nigh so well as Latin."
+
+"Then you shall never make your bread at Rome."
+
+Gerard borrowed a beautiful Greek manuscript at a high price, and went
+home with a sad hole in his purse, but none in his courage.
+
+In a fortnight he had made vast progress with the Greek character; so
+then, to lose no time, he used to work at it till noon, and hunt
+customers the rest of the day.
+
+When he carried round a better Greek specimen than any they possessed,
+the traders informed him that Greek and Latin were alike unsalable; the
+city was thronged with works from all Europe. He should have come last
+year.
+
+Gerard bought a psaltery.
+
+His landlady, pleased with his looks and manners, used often to speak a
+kind word in passing. One day she made him dine with her, and somewhat
+to his surprise asked him what had dashed his spirits. He told her. She
+gave him her reading of the matter. "Those sly traders," she would be
+bound, "had writers in their pay for whose work they received a noble
+price and paid a sorry one. So no wonder they blow cold on you. Methinks
+you write too well. How know I that? say you. Marry--marry, because you
+lock not your door, like the churl Pietro, and women will be curious.
+Ay, ay, you write too well for _them_."
+
+Gerard asked an explanation.
+
+"Why," said she, "your good work might put out the eyes of that they are
+selling."
+
+Gerard sighed. "Alas! dame, you read folk on the ill side, and you so
+kind and frank yourself."
+
+"My dear little heart, these Romans are a subtle race. Me? I am a
+Siennese, thanks to the Virgin."
+
+"My mistake was leaving Augsburg," said Gerard.
+
+"Augsburg?" said she, haughtily; "is that a place to even to Rome? I
+never heard of it for my part."
+
+She then assured him that he should make his fortune in spite of the
+booksellers. "Seeing thee a stranger, they lie to thee without sense or
+discretion. Why all the world knows that our great folk are bitten with
+the writing spider this many years, and pour out their money like water,
+and turn good land and houses into writ sheepskins to keep in a chest or
+a cupboard. God help them, and send them safe through this fury, as he
+hath through a heap of others; and in sooth hath been somewhat less
+cutting and stabbing among rival factions, and vindictive eating of
+their opposites' livers, minced and fried, since Scribbling came in. Why
+_I_ can tell you two. There is his eminence Cardinal Bassarion, and his
+holiness the Pope himself. There be a pair could keep a score such as
+thee a writing night and day. But I'll speak to Teresa; she hears the
+gossip of the court."
+
+The next day she told him she had seen Teresa, and had heard of five
+more signors who were bitten with the writing spider. Gerard took down
+their names, and bought parchment, and busied himself for some days in
+preparing specimens. He left one, with his name and address, at each of
+these signors' doors, and hopefully awaited the result.
+
+There was none.
+
+Day after day passed and left him heartsick.
+
+And strange to say this was just the time when Margaret was fighting so
+hard against odds to feed her male dependents at Rotterdam, and arrested
+for curing without a licence instead of killing with one.
+
+Gerard saw ruin staring him in the face.
+
+He spent the afternoons picking up canzonets and mastering them. He laid
+in playing cards to colour, and struck off a meal per day.
+
+This last stroke of genius got him into fresh trouble.
+
+In these "camere locande" the landlady dressed all the meals, though the
+lodgers bought the provisions. So Gerard's hostess speedily detected
+him, and asked him if he was not ashamed of himself: by which brusque
+opening, having made him blush and look scared, she pacified herself
+all in a moment, and appealed to his good sense whether Adversity was a
+thing to be overcome on an empty stomach.
+
+"Patienza, my lad! times will mend, meantime I will feed you for the
+love of heaven" (Italian for "gratis").
+
+"Nay, hostess," said Gerard, "my purse is not yet quite void, and it
+would add to my trouble an if true folk should lose their due by me."
+
+"Why you are as mad as your neighbour Pietro, with his one bad picture."
+
+"Why, how know you 'tis a bad picture?"
+
+"Because nobody will buy it. There is one that hath no gift. He will
+have to don casque and glaive, and carry his panel for a shield."
+
+Gerard pricked up his ears at this: so she told him more. Pietro had
+come from Florence with money in his purse, and an unfinished picture;
+had taken her one unfurnished room, opposite Gerard's, and furnished it
+neatly. When his picture was finished, he received visitors and had
+offers for it: these, though in her opinion liberal ones, he had refused
+so disdainfully as to make enemies of his customers. Since then he had
+often taken it out with him to try and sell, but had always brought it
+back; and, the last month, she had seen one movable after another go out
+of his room, and now he wore but one suit, and lay at night on a great
+chest. She had found this out only by peeping through the keyhole, for
+he locked the door most vigilantly whenever he went out. "Is he afraid
+we shall steal his chest, or his picture that no soul in all Rome is
+weak enough to buy?"
+
+"Nay, sweet hostess, see you not 'tis his poverty he would screen from
+view?"
+
+"And the more fool he! Are all our hearts as ill as his? A might give us
+a trial first any way."
+
+"How you speak of him. Why his case is mine; and your countryman to
+boot."
+
+"Oh, we Siennese love strangers. His case yours? nay 'tis just the
+contrary. You are the comeliest youth ever lodged in this house; hair
+like gold; he is a dark sour-visaged loon. Besides you know how to take
+a woman on her better side; but not he. Natheless I wish he would not
+starve to death in my house, to get me a bad name. Any way, one
+starveling is enough in any house. You are far from home, and it is for
+me, which am the mistress here, to number your meals--for me and the
+Dutch wife, your mother, that is far away: we two women shall settle
+that matter. Mind thou thine own business, being a man, and leave
+cooking and the like to us, that are in the world for little else that I
+see but to roast fowls, and suckle men at starting, and sweep their
+grown-up cobwebs."
+
+"Dear kind dame, in sooth you do often put me in mind of my mother that
+is far away."
+
+"All the better; I'll put you more in mind of her before I have done
+with you." And the honest soul beamed with pleasure.
+
+Gerard not being an egotist, nor blinded by female partialities, saw his
+own grief in poor proud Pietro; and the more he thought of it, the more
+he resolved to share his humble means with that unlucky artist; Pietro's
+sympathy would repay him. He tried to waylay him: but without success.
+
+One day he heard a groaning in the room. He knocked at the door, but
+received no answer. He knocked again. A surly voice bade him enter.
+
+He obeyed somewhat timidly, and entered a garret furnished with a chair,
+a picture, face to wall, an iron basin, an easel, and a long chest, on
+which was coiled a haggard young man with a wonderfully bright eye.
+Anything more like a coiled cobra ripe for striking the first comer was
+never seen.
+
+"Good Signor Pietro," said Gerard, "forgive me that, weary of my own
+solitude, I intrude on yours; but I am your nighest neighbour in this
+house, and methinks your brother in fortune. I am an artist too."
+
+"You are a painter? Welcome, signor. Sit down on my bed."
+
+And Pietro jumped off and waved him into the vacant throne with a
+magnificent demonstration of courtesy.
+
+Gerard bowed, and smiled; but hesitated a little. "I may not call myself
+a painter. I am a writer, a caligraph. I copy Greek and Latin
+manuscripts, when I can get them to copy."
+
+"And you call that an artist?"
+
+"Without offense to your superior merit, Signor Pietro."
+
+"No offence, stranger, none. Only, me seemeth an artist is one who
+thinks and paints his thought. Now a caligraph but draws in black and
+white the thoughts of another."
+
+"'Tis well distinguished, signor. But then, a writer can write the
+thoughts of the great ancients, and matters of pure reason, such as no
+man may paint: ay, and the thoughts of God, which angels could not
+paint. But let that pass. I am a painter as well; but a sorry one."
+
+"The better thy luck. They will buy thy work in Rome."
+
+"But seeking to commend myself to one of thy eminence, I thought it well
+rather to call myself a capable writer than a scurvy painter."
+
+At this moment a step was heard on the stair.
+
+"Ah! 'tis the good dame," cried Gerard. "What ho! hostess, I am here in
+conversation with Signor Pietro. I dare say he will let me have my
+humble dinner here."
+
+The Italian bowed gravely.
+
+The landlady brought in Gerard's dinner smoking and savory. She put the
+dish down on the bed with a face divested of all expression, and went.
+
+Gerard fell to. But ere he had eaten many mouthfuls he stopped, and
+said: "I am an ill-mannered churl, Signor Pietro. I ne'er eat to my
+mind, when I eat alone. For our Lady's sake put a spoon into this ragout
+with me; 'tis not unsavoury, I promise you."
+
+Pietro fixed his glittering eye on him.
+
+"What, good youth, thou a stranger, and offerest me thy dinner?"
+
+"Why, see, there is more than one can eat."
+
+"Well, I accept," said Pietro: and took the dish with some appearance of
+calmness, and flung the contents out of the window.
+
+Then he turned trembling with mortification and ire, and said: "Let that
+teach thee to offer alms to an artist thou knowest not, master writer."
+
+Gerard's face flushed with anger, and it cost him a bitter struggle not
+to box this high-souled creature's ears. And then to go and destroy good
+food! His mother's milk curdled in his veins with horror at such
+impiety. Finally, pity at Pietro's petulance and egotism, and a touch of
+respect for poverty-struck pride, prevailed.
+
+However he said coldly, "Likely what thou hast done might pass in a
+novel of thy countryman, Signor Boccaccio; but 'twas not honest."
+
+"Make that good!" said the painter sullenly.
+
+"I offered thee half my dinner; no more. But thou hast ta'en it all.
+Hadst a right to throw away thy share, but not mine. Pride is well, but
+justice is better."
+
+Pietro stared, then reflected.
+
+"'Tis well. I took thee for a fool, so transparent was thine artifice.
+Forgive me! And prithee leave me! Thou seest how 'tis with me. The world
+hath soured me. I hate mankind. I was not always so. Once more excuse
+that my discourtesy, and fare thee well!"
+
+Gerard sighed and made for the door.
+
+But suddenly a thought struck him. "Signor Pietro," said he, "we
+Dutchmen are hard bargainers. We are the lads 'een eij scheeren,' that
+is 'to shave an egg.' Therefore, I, for my lost dinner, do claim to
+feast mine eyes on your picture, whose face is toward the wall."
+
+"Nay, nay," said the painter hastily, "ask me not that; I have already
+misconducted myself enough towards thee. I would not shed thy blood."
+
+"Saints forbid! My blood?"
+
+"Stranger," said Pietro sullenly, "irritated by repeated insults to my
+picture, which is my child, my heart, I did in a moment of rage make a
+solemn vow to drive my dagger into the next one that should flout it,
+and the labour and love that I have given to it."
+
+"What, are all to be slain that will not praise this picture?" and he
+looked at its back with curiosity.
+
+"Nay, nay: if you would but look at it, and hold your parrot tongues.
+But you will be talking. So I have turned it to the wall for ever. Would
+I were dead, and buried in it for my coffin!"
+
+Gerard reflected.
+
+"I accept the conditions. Show me the picture! I can but hold my peace."
+
+Pietro went and turned its face, and put it in the best light the room
+afforded, and coiled himself again on his chest, with his eye, and
+stiletto, glittering.
+
+The picture represented the Virgin and Christ, flying through the air in
+a sort of cloud of shadowy cherubic faces; underneath was a landscape,
+forty or fifty miles in extent, and a purple sky above.
+
+Gerard stood and looked at it in silence. Then he stepped close, and
+looked. Then he retired as far off as he could, and looked; but said not
+a word.
+
+When he had been at this game half an hour, Pietro cried out querulously
+and somewhat inconsistently: "Well, have you not a word to say about
+it?"
+
+Gerard started. "I cry your mercy; I forgot there were three of us here.
+Ay, I have much to say." And he drew his sword.
+
+"Alas! alas!" cried Pietro, jumping in terror from his lair. "What
+wouldst thou?"
+
+"Marry, defend myself against thy bodkin, signor; and at due odds,
+being, as aforesaid, a Dutchman. Therefore, hold aloof, while I deliver
+judgment, or I will pin thee to the wall like a cockchafer."
+
+"Oh! is that all," said Pietro greatly relieved. "I feared you were
+going to stab my poor picture with your sword, stabbed already by so
+many foul tongues."
+
+Gerard "pursued criticism under difficulties." Put himself in a position
+of defence, with his sword's point covering Pietro, and one eye glancing
+aside at the picture. "First, signor, I would have you know that, in the
+mixing of certain colours, and in the preparation of your oil, you
+Italians are far behind us Flemings. But let that flea stick. For as
+small as I am, I can show you certain secrets of the Van Eycks, that you
+will put to marvellous profit in your next picture. Meantime I see in
+this one the great qualities of your nation. Verily, ye are _solis
+filii_. If we have colour, you have imagination. Mother of heaven! an he
+hath not flung his immortal soul upon the panel. One thing I go by is
+this; it makes other pictures I once admired seem drossy, earth-born
+things. The drapery here is somewhat short and stiff. Why not let it
+float freely, the figures being in air and motion?"
+
+"I will! I will!" cried Pietro eagerly. "I will do anything for those
+who will but see what I _have_ done."
+
+"Humph! This landscape it enlightens me. Henceforth I scorn those little
+huddled landscapes that did erst content me. Here is Nature's very face:
+a spacious plain, each distance marked, and every tree, house, figure,
+field and river smaller and less plain, by exquisite gradation, till
+vision itself melts into distance. O beautiful! And the cunning rogue
+hath hung his celestial figure in air out of the way of his little world
+below. Here, floating saints beneath heaven's purple canopy. There, far
+down, earth and her busy hives. And they let you take this painted
+poetry, this blooming hymn, through the streets of Rome and bring it
+home unsold. But I tell thee in Ghent or Bruges, or even in Rotterdam,
+they would tear it out of thy hands. But 'tis a common saying that a
+stranger's eye sees clearest. Courage, Pietro Vanucci! I reverence thee,
+and, though myself a scurvy painter, do forgive thee for being a great
+one. Forgive thee? I thank God for thee and such rare men as thou art;
+and bow the knee to thee in just homage. Thy picture is immortal, and
+thou, that hast but a chest to sit on, art a king in thy most royal art.
+Viva, il maestro! Viva!"
+
+At this unexpected burst the painter, with all the abandon of his
+nation, flung himself on Gerard's neck. "They said it was a maniac's
+dream," he sobbed.
+
+"Maniacs themselves! no, idiots!" shouted Gerard.
+
+"Generous stranger! I will hate men no more since the world hath such as
+thee. I was a viper to fling thy poor dinner away; a wretch, a monster."
+
+"Well, monster, wilt be gentle now, and sup with me?"
+
+"Ah! that I will. Whither goest thou?"
+
+"To order supper on the instant. We will have the picture for third
+man."
+
+"I will invite it whiles thou art gone. My poor picture, child of my
+heart."
+
+"Ah! master; 'twill look on many a supper after the worms have eaten you
+and me."
+
+"I hope so," said Pietro.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER LIX
+
+
+ABOUT a week after this the two friends sat working together, but not in
+the same spirit. Pietro dashed fitfully at his, and did wonders in a few
+minutes, and then did nothing, except abuse it; then presently resumed
+it in a fury, to lay it down with a groan. Through all which kept calmly
+working, calmly smiling, the canny Dutchman.
+
+To be plain, Gerard, who never had a friend he did not master, had put
+his Onagra in harness. The friends were painting playing cards to boil
+the pot.
+
+When done, the indignant master took up his picture to make his daily
+tour in search of a customer.
+
+Gerard begged him to take the cards as well, and try and sell them. He
+looked all the rattlesnake, but eventually embraced Gerard in the
+Italian fashion, and took them, after first drying the last finished
+ones in the sun, which was now powerful in that happy clime.
+
+Gerard, left alone, executed a Greek letter or two, and then mended a
+little rent in his hose. His landlady found him thus employed, and
+inquired ironically whether there were no women in the house.
+
+"When you have done that," said she, "come and talk to Teresa, my friend
+I spoke to thee of, that hath a husband not good for much, which brags
+his acquaintance with the great."
+
+Gerard went down, and who should Teresa be but the Roman matron.
+
+"Ah, madama," said he, "is it you? The good dame told me not that. And
+the little fair-haired boy, is he well? is he none the worse for his
+voyage in that strange boat?"
+
+"He is well," said the matron.
+
+"Why, what are you two talking about?" said the landlady, staring at
+them both in turn; "and why tremble you so, Teresa mia?"
+
+"He saved my child's life," said Teresa, making an effort to compose
+herself.
+
+"What, my lodger? and he never told me a word of that. Art not ashamed
+to look me in the face?"
+
+"Alas! speak not harshly to him," said the matron. She then turned to
+her friend and poured out a glowing description of Gerard's conduct,
+during which Gerard stood blushing like a girl, and scarce recognizing
+his own performance, gratitude painted it so fair.
+
+"And to think thou shouldst ask me to serve thy lodger, of whom I knew
+nought but that he had thy good word, O Fiammina: and that was enough
+for me. Dear youth, in serving thee I serve myself."
+
+Then ensued an eager description, by the two women, of what had been
+done, and what should be done, to penetrate the thick wall of fees,
+commissions, and chicanery, which stood between the patrons of art and
+an unknown artist in the Eternal city.
+
+Teresa smiled sadly at Gerard's simplicity in leaving specimens of his
+skill at the doors of the great.
+
+"What!" said she, "without promising the servants a share--without even
+feeing them, to let the signors see thy merchandize! As well have flung
+it into Tiber."
+
+"Well-a-day!" sighed Gerard. "Then how is an artist to find a patron?
+for artists are poor, not rich."
+
+"By going to some city nobler and not so greedy as this," said Teresa.
+"La corte Romana non vuol' pecora senza lana."
+
+She fell into thought, and said she would come again to-morrow.
+
+The landlady felicitated Gerard. "Teresa has got something in her head,"
+said she.
+
+Teresa was scarce gone when Pietro returned with his picture, looking
+black as thunder. Gerard exchanged a glance with the landlady, and
+followed him up stairs to console him.
+
+"What, have they let thee bring home thy masterpiece?"
+
+"As heretofore."
+
+"More fools they, then."
+
+"That is not the worst."
+
+"Why, what is the matter?"
+
+"They have bought the cards," yelled Pietro, and hammered the air
+furiously right and left.
+
+"All the better," said Gerard cheerfully.
+
+"They flew at me for them. They were enraptured with them. They tried to
+conceal their longing for them, but could not. I saw, I feigned, I
+pillaged; curse the boobies."
+
+And he flung down a dozen small silver coins on the floor and jumped on
+them, and danced on them with basilisk eyes, and then kicked them
+assiduously, and sent them spinning and flying, and running all abroad.
+Down went Gerard on his knees and followed the maltreated innocents
+directly, and transferred them tenderly to his purse.
+
+"Shouldst rather smile at their ignorance, and put it to profit," said
+he.
+
+"And so I will," said Pietro, with concentrated indignation. "The
+brutes! We will paint a pack a day; we will set the whole city gambling
+and ruining itself, while we live like princes on its vices and
+stupidity. There was one of the queens, though, I had fain have kept
+back. 'Twas you limned her, brother. She had lovely red-brown hair and
+sapphire eyes, and above all, soul."
+
+"Pietro," said Gerard, softly, "I painted that one from my heart."
+
+The quick-witted Italian nodded, and his eyes twinkled.
+
+"You love her so well, yet leave her."
+
+"Pietro, it is because I love her so dear that I have wandered all this
+dreary road."
+
+This interesting colloquy was interrupted by the landlady crying from
+below, "Come down, you are wanted." He went down, and there was Teresa
+again.
+
+"Come with me, Ser Gerard."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER LX
+
+
+GERARD walked silently beside Teresa, wondering in his own mind, after
+the manner of artists, what she was going to do with him; instead of
+asking her. So at last she told him of her own accord. A friend had
+informed her of a working goldsmith's wife who wanted a writer. "Her
+shop is hard by; you will not have far to go."
+
+Accordingly they soon arrived at the goldsmith's wife.
+
+"Madama," said Teresa, "Leonora tells me you want a writer: I have
+brought you a beautiful one, he saved my child at sea. Prithee look on
+him with favour."
+
+The goldsmith's wife complied in one sense. She fixed her eyes on
+Gerard's comely face, and could hardly take them off again. But her
+reply was unsatisfactory. "Nay, I have no use for a writer. Ah! I mind
+now, it is my gossip, Claelia, the sausage-maker, wants one; she told me,
+and I told Leonora."
+
+Teresa made a courteous speech and withdrew.
+
+Claelia lived at some distance, and when they reached her house she was
+out. Teresa said calmly, "I will await her return," and sat so still,
+and dignified, and statuesque, that Gerard was beginning furtively to
+draw her, when Claelia returned.
+
+"Madama, I hear from the goldsmith's wife, the excellent Olympia, that
+you need a writer" (here she took Gerard by the hand and led him
+forward); "I have brought you a beautiful one, he saved my child from
+the cruel waves. For our Lady's sake look with favour on him."
+
+"My good dame, my fair Ser," said Claelia, "I have no use for a writer;
+but now you remind me, it was my friend Appia Claudia asked me for one
+but the other day. She is a tailor, lives in the Via Lepida."
+
+Teresa retired calmly.
+
+"Madama," said Gerard, "this is likely to be a tedious business for
+you."
+
+Teresa opened her eyes.
+
+"What was ever done without a little patience?" She added mildly, "We
+will knock at every door at Rome but you shall have justice."
+
+"But madama, I think we are dogged. I noticed a man that follows us,
+sometimes afar, sometimes close."
+
+"I have seen it," said Teresa, coldly: but her cheek coloured faintly.
+"It is my poor Lodovico."
+
+She stopped and turned, and beckoned with her finger.
+
+A figure approached them somewhat unwillingly.
+
+When he came up, she gazed him full in the face, and he looked sheepish.
+
+"Lodovico mio," said she, "know this young Ser, of whom I have so often
+spoken to thee. Know him and love him, for he it was who saved thy wife
+and child."
+
+At these last words Lodovico, who had been bowing and grinning
+artificially, suddenly changed to an expression of heartfelt gratitude,
+and embraced Gerard warmly.
+
+Yet somehow there was something in the man's original manner, and his
+having followed his wife by stealth, that made Gerard uncomfortable
+under this caress. However he said, "We shall have your company, Ser
+Lodovico?"
+
+"No, signor," replied Lodovico, "I go not on that side Tiber."
+
+"Addio, then," said Teresa, significantly.
+
+"When shall you return home, Teresa mia?"
+
+"When I have done mine errand, Lodovico."
+
+They pursued their way in silence. Teresa now wore a sad and almost
+gloomy air.
+
+To be brief, Appia Claudia was merciful, and did not send them over
+Tiber again, but only a hundred yards down the street to Lucretia, who
+kept the glove shop; she it was wanted a writer: but what for Appia
+Claudia could not conceive. Lucretia was a merry little dame, who
+received them heartily enough, and told them she wanted no writer, kept
+all her accounts in her head. "It was for my confessor, Father Colonna;
+he is mad after them."
+
+"I have heard of his excellency," said Teresa.
+
+"Who has not?"
+
+"But, good dame, he is a friar; he has made vow of poverty. I cannot let
+the young man write and not be paid. He saved my child at sea."
+
+"Did he now?" And Lucretia cast an approving look on Gerard. "Well, make
+your mind easy; a Colonna never wants for money. The good father has
+only to say the word, and the princes of his race will pour a thousand
+crowns into his lap. And such a confessor, dame! the best in Rome. His
+head is leagues and leagues away all the while; he never heeds what you
+are saying. Why I think no more of confessing my sins to him than of
+telling them to that wall. Once, to try him, I confessed, along with the
+rest, as how I had killed my lodger's little girl and baked her in a
+pie. Well, when my voice left off confessing, he started out of his
+dream, and says he, a mustering up a gloom, 'My erring sister, say three
+paternosters and three ave Marias kneeling, and eat no butter nor eggs
+next Wednesday, and pax vobiscum!' and off a went with his hands behind
+him, looking as if there was no such thing as me in the world."
+
+Teresa waited patiently, then calmly brought this discursive lady back
+to the point: "Would she be so kind as go with this good youth to the
+friar and speak for him?"
+
+"Alack! how can I leave my shop? And what need? His door is aye open to
+writers, and painters, and scholars, and all such cattle. Why, one day
+he would not receive the Duke d'Urbino, because a learned Greek was
+closeted with him, and the friar's head and his so close together over a
+dusty parchment just come in from Greece, as you could put one cowl over
+the pair. His wench Onesta told me. She mostly looks in here for a chat
+when she goes an errand."
+
+"This is the man for thee, my friend," said Teresa.
+
+"All you have to do," continued Lucretia, "is to go to his lodgings (my
+boy shall show them you), and tell Onesta you come from me, and you are
+a writer, and she will take you up to him. If you put a piece of silver
+in the wench's hand, 'twill do you no harm: that stands to reason."
+
+"I have silver," said Teresa, warmly.
+
+"But stay," said Lucretia, "mind one thing. What the young man saieth he
+can do, that he must be able to do, or let him shun the good friar like
+poison. He is a very wild beast against all bunglers. Why, 'twas but
+t'other day, one brought him an ill-carved crucifix. Says he: 'Is this
+how you present 'Salvator Mundi?' who died for you in mortal agony; and
+you go and grudge him careful work. This slovenly gimcrack, a crucifix?
+But that it is a crucifix of some sort, and I am a holy man, I'd dust
+your jacket with your crucifix,' says he. Onesta heard every word
+through the keyhole; so mind."
+
+"Have no fears, madama," said Teresa, loftily. "I will answer for his
+ability; he saved my child."
+
+Gerard was not subtle enough to appreciate this conclusion: and was so
+far from sharing Teresa's confidence that he begged a respite. He would
+rather not go to the friar to-day: would not to-morrow do as well?
+
+"Here is a coward for ye," said Lucretia.
+
+"No, he is not a coward," said Teresa, firing up. "He is modest."
+
+"I am afraid of this high-born, fastidious friar," said Gerard.
+"Consider, he has seen the handywork of all the writers in Italy, dear
+dame Teresa; if you would but let me prepare a better piece of work than
+yet I have done, and then to-morrow I will face him with it."
+
+"I consent," said Teresa.
+
+They walked home together.
+
+Not far from his own lodging was a shop that sold vellum. There was a
+beautiful white skin in the window. Gerard looked at it wistfully; but
+he knew he could not pay for it; so he went on rather hastily. However,
+he soon made up his mind where to get vellum: and, parting with Teresa
+at his own door, ran hastily up stairs, and took the bond he had brought
+all the way from Sevenbergen, and laid it with a sigh on the table. He
+then prepared with his chemicals to erase the old writing; but, as this
+was his last chance of reading it, he now overcame his deadly repugnance
+to bad writing, and proceeded to decipher the deed in spite of its
+detestable contractions. It appeared by this deed that Ghysbrecht Van
+Swieten was to advance some money to Floris Brandt on a piece of land,
+and was to repay himself out of the rent.
+
+On this Gerard felt it would be imprudent and improper to destroy the
+deed. On the contrary he vowed to decipher every word, at his leisure.
+He went down stairs, determined to buy a small piece of vellum with his
+half of the card money.
+
+At the bottom of the stairs he found the landlady and Teresa talking. At
+sight of him the former cried: "Here he is. You are caught, donna mia.
+See what she has bought you!" And whipped out from under her apron the
+very skin of vellum Gerard had longed for.
+
+"Why, dame! why, donna Teresa!" And he was speechless, with pleasure and
+astonishment.
+
+"Dear donna Teresa, there is not a skin in all Rome like it. How ever
+came you to hit on this one? 'Tis glamour."
+
+"Alas, dear boy, did not thine eye rest on it with desire? and didst
+thou not sigh in turning away from it? And was it for Teresa to let thee
+want the thing after that?"
+
+"What sagacity! what goodness, madama! Oh, dame, I never thought I
+should possess this. What did you pay for it?"
+
+"I forget. Addio, Fiammina. Addio, Ser Gerard. Be happy, be prosperous,
+as you are good." And the Roman matron glided away, while Gerard was
+hesitating, and thinking how to offer to pay so stately a creature for
+her purchase.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The next day in the afternoon he went to Lucretia, and her boy took him
+to Fra Colonna's lodgings. He announced his business and feed Onesta,
+and she took him up to the friar. Gerard entered with a beating heart.
+The room, a large one, was strewed and heaped with objects of art,
+antiquity, and learning, lying about in rich profusion, and confusion.
+Manuscripts, pictures, carvings in wood and ivory, musical instruments;
+and in this glorious chaos sat the friar, poring intently over an
+Arabian manuscript.
+
+He looked up a little peevishly at the interruption. Onesta whispered in
+his ear.
+
+"Very well," said he. "Let him be seated. Stay; young man, show me how
+you write!" And he threw Gerard a piece of paper, and pointed to an
+inkhorn.
+
+"So please you, reverend father," said Gerard, "my hand, it trembleth
+too much at this moment; but last night I wrote a vellum page of Greek,
+and the Latin version by its side, to show the various character."
+
+"Show it me!"
+
+Gerard brought the work to him in fear and trembling; then stood,
+heart-sick, awaiting his verdict.
+
+When it came it staggered him. For the verdict was, a Dominican falling
+on his neck.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER LXI
+
+
+HAPPY the man who has two chain-cables; Merit, and Women.
+
+Oh that I, like Gerard, had a "chaine des dames" to pull up by.
+
+I would be prose laureat, or professor of the spasmodic, or something,
+in no time. En attendant, I will sketch the Fra Colonna.
+
+The true revivers of ancient learning and philosophy, were two writers
+of fiction--Petrarch, and Boccaccio.
+
+Their labours were not crowned with great, public, and immediate
+success; but they sowed the good seed; and it never perished, but
+quickened in the soil, awaiting sunshine.
+
+From their day Italy was never without a native scholar or two, versed
+in Greek; and each learned Greek who landed there was received
+fraternally. The fourteenth century, ere its close, saw the birth of
+Poggio, Valla, and the elder Guarino: and early in the fifteenth
+Florence under Cosmo de Medici was a nest of Platonists. These, headed
+by Gemistus Pletho, a born Greek, began about A. D. 1440, to write down
+Aristotle. For few minds are big enough to be just to great A without
+being unjust to capital B.
+
+Theodore Gaza defended that great man with moderation; George of
+Trebizond with acerbity, and retorted on Plato. Then Cardinal Bessarion,
+another born Greek, resisted the said George, and his idol, in a tract
+"Adversus calumniatorem Platonis."
+
+Pugnacity, whether wise or not, is a form of vitality. Born without
+controversial bile in so zealous an epoch, Francesco Colonna, a young
+nobleman of Florence, lived for the arts. At twenty he turned Dominican
+friar. His object was quiet study. He retired from idle company, and
+faction fights, the humming and the stinging of the human hive, to St.
+Dominic and the Nine Muses.
+
+An eager student of languages, pictures, statues, chronology, coins, and
+monumental inscriptions. These last loosened his faith in popular
+histories.
+
+He travelled many years in the East, and returned laden with spoils:
+master of several choice MSS., and versed in Greek and Latin, Hebrew and
+Syriac. He found his country had not stood still. Other lettered princes
+besides Cosmo had sprung up. Alfonso King of Naples, Nicolas d'Este,
+Lionel d'Este, &c. Above all, his old friend Thomas of Sarzana had been
+made pope, and had lent a mighty impulse to letters; had accumulated
+5,000 MSS. in the library of the Vatican, and had set Poggio to
+translate Diodorus Siculus and Xenophon's Cyropaedia, Laurentius Valla to
+translate Herodotus and Thucydides, Theodore Gaza, Theophrastus; George
+of Trebizond, Eusebius, and certain treatises of Plato, etc., etc.
+
+The monk found Plato and Aristotle under armistice, but Poggio and Valla
+at loggerheads over verbs and nouns, and on fire with odium
+philologicum. All this was heaven; and he settled down in his native
+land, his life a rosy dream. None so happy as the versatile, provided
+they have not their bread to make by it. And Fra Colonna was
+Versatility. He knew seven or eight languages, and a little mathematics;
+could write a bit, paint a bit, model a bit, sing a bit, strum a bit;
+and could relish superior excellence in all these branches. For this
+last trait he deserved to be as happy as he was. For, gauge the
+intellects of your acquaintances, and you will find but few whose minds
+are neither deaf, nor blind, nor dead to some great art or science,
+
+    "And wisdom at one entrance quite shut out."
+
+And such of them as are conceited as well as stupid, shall even parade,
+instead of blushing for, the holes in their intellects.
+
+A zealot in art, the friar was a sceptic in religion.
+
+In every age there are a few men, who hold the opinions of another age;
+past or future. Being a lump of simplicity, his scepticism was as naif
+as his enthusiasm. He affected to look on the religious ceremonies of
+his day as his models, the heathen philosophers, regarded the worship of
+gods and departed heroes: mummeries good for the populace. But here his
+mind drew unconsciously a droll distinction. Whatever Christian ceremony
+his learning taught him was of purely pagan origin, that he respected,
+out of respect for antiquity; though had he, with his turn of mind, been
+a pagan and its cotemporary, he would have scorned it from his
+philosophic heights.
+
+Fra Colonna was charmed with his new artist, and, having the run of half
+the palaces in Rome, sounded his praises so, that he was soon called
+upon to resign him. He told Gerard what great princes wanted him. "But I
+am so happy with you, father," objected Gerard. "Fiddlestick about being
+happy with me," said Fra Colonna, "you must not be happy; you must be a
+man of the world; the grand lesson I impress on the young is be a man of
+the world. Now these Montesini can pay you three times as much as I can,
+and they shall too--by Jupiter."
+
+And the friar clapped a terrific price on Gerard's pen. It was acceded
+to without a murmur. Much higher prices were going for _copying_, than
+_authorship_ ever obtained for centuries under the printing press.
+
+Gerard had three hundred crowns for Aristotle's treatise on rhetoric.
+
+The great are mighty sweet upon all their pets, while the fancy lasts:
+and in the rage for Greek MSS. the handsome writer soon became a pet,
+and nobles of both sexes caressed him like a lap dog. It would have
+turned a vain fellow's head; but the canny Dutchman saw the steel hand
+beneath the velvet glove, and did not presume. Nevertheless it was a
+proud day for him, when he found himself seated with Fra Colonna at the
+table of his present employer, Cardinal Bessarion. They were about a
+mile from the top of that table; but, never mind, there they were; and
+Gerard had the advantage of seeing roast pheasants dished up with all
+their feathers as if they had just flown out of a coppice instead of off
+the spit: also chickens cooked in bottles, and tender as peaches. But
+the grand novelty was the napkins, surpassingly fine, and folded into
+cocked hats, and birds' wings, and fans, etc., instead of lying flat.
+This electrified Gerard: though my readers have seen the dazzling
+phenomenon without tumbling backwards chair and all.
+
+After dinner the tables were split in pieces, and carried away, and lo
+under each was another table spread with sweetmeats. The signoras, and
+signorinas, fell upon them and gormandized; but the signors eyed them
+with reasonable suspicion.
+
+"But, dear father," objected Gerard, "I see not the bifurcal daggers,
+with which men say his excellency armeth the left hand of a man."
+
+"Nay, 'tis the Cardinal Orsini which hath invented yon peevish
+instrument for his guests to fumble their meat withal. One, being in
+haste, did skewer his tongue to his palate with it I hear; O tempora, O
+mores! The ancients, reclining godlike at their feasts, how have they
+spurned such pedantries."
+
+As soon as the ladies had disported themselves among the sugar-plums,
+the tables were suddenly removed, and the guests sat in a row against
+the wall. Then came in, ducking and scraping, two ecclesiastics with
+lutes, and kneeled at the cardinal's feet and there sang the service of
+the day; then retired with a deep obeisance: in answer to which the
+cardinal fingered his skull cap as our late Iron Duke his hat: the
+company dispersed, and Gerard had dined with a cardinal, and one that
+had thrice just missed being pope.
+
+But greater honour was in store.
+
+One day the cardinal sent for him, and after praising the beauty of his
+work took him in his coach to the Vatican: and up a private stair to a
+luxurious little room, with a great oriel window. Here were inkstands,
+sloping frames for writing on, and all the instruments of art. The
+cardinal whispered a courtier, and presently the Pope's private
+secretary appeared with a glorious grimy old MS. of Plutarch's Lives.
+And soon Gerard was seated alone copying it, awestruck, yet half
+delighted at the thought that his holiness would handle his work and
+read it.
+
+The papal inkstands were all glorious externally; but within the ink was
+vile. But Gerard carried ever good ink, home-made, in a dirty little
+inkhorn: he prayed on his knees for a firm and skilful hand, and set to
+work.
+
+One side of his room was nearly occupied by a massive curtain divided in
+the centre: but its ample folds overlapped. After a while, Gerard felt
+drawn to peep through that curtain. He resisted the impulse. It
+returned. It overpowered him. He left Plutarch; stole across the matted
+floor; took the folds of the curtain, and gently gathered them up with
+his fingers, and putting his nose through the chink ran it against a
+cold steel halbert. Two soldiers armed cap-a-pie, were holding their
+glittering weapons crossed in a triangle. Gerard drew swiftly back: but
+in that instant he heard the soft murmur of voices and saw a group of
+persons cringing before some hidden figure.
+
+He never repeated his attempt to pry through the guarded curtain; but
+often eyed it. Every hour or so an ecclesiastic peeped in, eyed him,
+chilled him, and exit. All this was gloomy and mechanical. But the next
+day a gentleman, richly armed, bounced in, and glared at him. "What is
+toward here?" said he.
+
+Gerard told him he was writing out Plutarch, with the help of the
+saints. The spark said he did not know the signor in question. Gerard
+explained the circumstances of time and space, that had deprived the
+Signor Plutarch of the advantage of the spark's conversation.
+
+"Oh! one of those old dead Greeks they keep such a coil about."
+
+"Ay, signor, one of them, who, being dead, yet live."
+
+"I understand you not, young man," said the noble, with all the dignity
+of ignorance. "What did the old fellow write? Love stories?" and his
+eyes sparkled: "merry tales like Boccaccio."
+
+"Nay lives of heroes, and sages."
+
+"Soldiers, and popes?"
+
+"Soldiers, and princes."
+
+"Wilt read me of them some day?"
+
+"And willingly, signor. But what would they say who employ me, were I to
+break off work?"
+
+"Oh never heed that; know you not who I am? I am Jacques Bonaventura,
+nephew to his holiness the Pope, and captain of his guards. And I came
+here to look after my fellows. I trow they have turned them out of their
+room for you." Signor Bonaventura then hurried away. This lively
+companion however having acquired a habit of running into that little
+room, and finding Gerard good company, often looked in on him, and
+chatted ephemeralities while Gerard wrote the immortal lives.
+
+One day he came a changed, and moody man, and threw himself into a
+chair, crying "Ah, traitress! traitress!" Gerard inquired what was his
+ill? "Traitress! traitress!" was the reply. Whereupon Gerard wrote
+Plutarch. Then says Bonaventura "I am melancholy; and for our Lady's
+sake read me a story out of Ser Plutarcho, to sooth my bile: in all
+that Greek is there nought about lovers betrayed?"
+
+Gerard read him the life of Alexander. He got excited, marched about the
+room, and embracing the reader, vowed to shun "soft delights," that bed
+of nettles, and follow glory.
+
+Who so happy now as Gerard? His art was honoured, and fabulous prices
+paid for it; in a year or two he should return by sea to Holland, with
+good store of money, and set up with his beloved Margaret in Bruges, or
+Antwerp, or dear Augsburg, and end their days in peace, and love, and
+healthy, happy labour. His heart never strayed an instant from her.
+
+In his prosperity he did not forget poor Pietro. He took the Fra Colonna
+to see his picture. The friar inspected it severely and closely, fell on
+the artist's neck, and carried the picture to one of the Colonnas, who
+gave a noble price for it.
+
+Pietro descended to the first floor; and lived like a gentleman.
+
+But Gerard remained in his garret. To increase his expenses would have
+been to postpone his return to Margaret. Luxury had no charms for the
+single-hearted one, when opposed to love.
+
+Jacques Bonaventura made him acquainted with other gay young fellows.
+They loved him, and sought to entice him into vice, and other expenses.
+But he begged humbly to be excused. So he escaped that temptation. But a
+greater was behind.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER LXII
+
+
+FRA COLONNA had the run of the Pope's library, and sometimes left off
+work at the same hour and walked the city with Gerard; on which
+occasions the happy artist saw all things en beau, and was wrapped up in
+the grandeur of Rome and its churches, palaces, and ruins.
+
+The friar granted the ruins, but threw cold water on the rest.
+
+"This place Rome? It is but the tomb of mighty Rome." He showed Gerard
+that twenty or thirty feet of the old triumphal arches were underground,
+and that the modern streets ran over ancient palaces; and over the tops
+of columns; and coupling this with the comparatively narrow limits of
+the modern city, and the gigantic vestiges of antiquity that peeped
+above ground here and there, he uttered a somewhat remarkable simile.
+"I tell thee this village they call Rome is but as one of those
+swallows' nests ye shall see built on the eaves of a decayed abbey."
+
+"Old Rome must indeed have been fair then," said Gerard.
+
+"Judge for yourself, my son; you see the great sewer, the work of the
+Romans in their very childhood, and shall outlast Vesuvius. You see the
+fragments of the Temple of Peace. How would you look could you see also
+the Capitol with its five-and-twenty temples? Do but note this Monte
+Savello: what is it, an it please you, but the ruins of the ancient
+theatre of Marcellus? and as for Testacio, one of the highest hills in
+modern Rome, it is but an ancient dust heap; the women of old Rome flung
+their broken pots and pans there, and lo; a mountain.
+
+    'Ex pede Herculem; ex ungue leonem.'"
+
+Gerard listened respectfully, but when the holy friar proceeded by
+analogy to imply that the moral superiority of the heathen Romans was
+proportionally grand, he resisted stoutly. "Has then the world lost by
+Christ his coming?" said he; but blushed, for he felt himself
+reproaching his benefactor.
+
+"Saints forbid!" said the friar. "'Twere heresy to say so." And, having
+made this direct concession, he proceeded gradually to evade it by
+subtle circumlocution, and reached the forbidden door by the spiral back
+staircase. In the midst of all which they came to a church with a knot
+of persons in the porch. A demon was being exorcised within. Now Fra
+Colonna had a way of uttering a curious sort of little moan, when things
+Zeno or Epicurus would not have swallowed were presented to him as
+facts. This moan conveyed to such, as had often heard it, not only
+strong dissent, but pity for human credulity, ignorance, and error,
+especially of course when it blinded men to the merits of Pagandom.
+
+The friar moaned, and said, "Then come away."
+
+"Nay, father, prithee! prithee! I ne'er saw a divell cast out."
+
+The friar accompanied Gerard into the church, but had a good shrug
+first. There they found the demoniac forced down on his knees before the
+altar with a scarf tied round his neck, by which the officiating priest
+held him like a dog in a chain.
+
+Not many persons were present, for fame had put forth that the last
+demon cast out in that church went no farther than into one of the
+company: "as a cony ferreted out of one burrow runs to the next."
+
+When Gerard and the friar came up the priest seemed to think there were
+now spectators enough; and began.
+
+He faced the demoniac, breviary in hand, and first set himself to learn
+the individual's name with whom he had to deal.
+
+"Come out, Ashtaroth. Oho! it is not you then. Come out, Belial. Come
+out, Tatzi. Come out, Eza. No: he trembles not. Come out, Azymoth. Come
+out, Feriander. Come out, Foletho. Come out, Astyma. Come out, Nebul.
+Aha! what, have I found ye? 'tis thou, thou reptile; at thine old
+tricks. Let us pray!--
+
+"Oh Lord, we pray thee to drive the foul fiend Nebul out of this thy
+creature: out of his hair, and his eyes, out of his nose, out of his
+mouth, out of his ears, out of his gums, out of his teeth, out of his
+shoulders, out of his arms, legs, loins, stomach, bowels, thighs, knees,
+calves, feet, ankles, fingernails, toe-nails, and soul. Amen."
+
+The priest then rose from his knees, and turning to the company said,
+with quiet geniality, "Gentles, we have here as obstinate a divell as
+you may see in a summer day." Then, facing the patient, he spoke to him
+with great rigour, sometimes addressing the man, and sometimes the
+fiend, and they answered him in turn through the same mouth, now saying
+that they hated those holy names the priest kept uttering, and now
+complaining they did feel so bad in their inside.
+
+It was the priest who first confounded the victim and the culprit in
+idea, by pitching into the former, cuffing him soundly, kicking him, and
+spitting repeatedly in his face. Then he took a candle and lighted it,
+and turned it down, and burned it till it burned his fingers; when he
+dropped it double quick. Then took the custodial; and showed the patient
+the Corpus Domini within. Then burned another candle as before, but more
+cautiously: then spoke civilly to the demoniac in his human character,
+dismissed him, and received the compliments of the company.
+
+"Good father," said Gerard, "how you have their names by heart. Our
+northern priests have no such exquisite knowledge of the hellish
+squadrons."
+
+"Ay, young man, here we know all their names, and eke their ways, the
+reptiles. This Nebul is a bitter hard one to hunt out."
+
+He then told the company in the most affable way several of his
+experiences; concluding with his feat of yesterday, when he drove a
+great hulking fiend out of a woman by her mouth, leaving behind him
+certain nails, and pins, and a tuft of his own hair, and cried out in a
+voice of anguish, ''Tis not thou that conquers me. See that stone on the
+window sill. Know that the angel Gabriel coming down to earth once
+lighted on that stone: 'tis that has done my business.'"
+
+The friar moaned. "And you believed him?"
+
+"Certes! who, but an infidel had discredited a revelation so precise?"
+
+"What, believe the father of lies? That is pushing credulity beyond the
+age."
+
+"Oh, a liar does not always lie."
+
+"Ay doth he whenever he tells an improbable story to begin, and shows
+you a holy relic; arms you against the satanic host. Fiends (if any) be
+not so simple. Shouldst have answered him out of antiquity--
+
+    Timeo Danaos et dona ferentes.
+
+Some blackguard chopped his wife's head off on that stone, young man;
+you take my word for it." And the friar hurried Gerard away.
+
+"Alack, father, I fear you abashed the good priest."
+
+"Ay, by Pollux," said the friar, with a chuckle; "I blistered him with a
+single touch of 'Socratic interrogation.' What modern can parry the
+weapons of antiquity?"
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+One afternoon, when Gerard had finished his day's work, a fine lacquey
+came and demanded his attendance at the palace Cesarini. He went and was
+ushered into a noble apartment; there was a girl seated in it, working
+on a tapestry. She rose and left the room, and said she would let her
+mistress know.
+
+A good hour did Gerard cool his heels in that great room, and at last he
+began to fret. "These nobles think nothing of a poor fellow's time."
+However, just as he was making up his mind to slip out, and go about his
+business, the door opened, and a superb beauty entered the room followed
+by two maids. It was the young princess of the house of Cesarini. She
+came in talking rather loudly and haughtily to her dependents, but at
+sight of Gerard lowered her voice to a very feminine tone, and said,
+"Are you the writer, messer?"
+
+"I am, signora."
+
+"'Tis well." She then seated herself; Gerard and her maids remained
+standing.
+
+"What is your name, good youth?"
+
+"Gerard, signora."
+
+"Gerard? body of Bacchus! is that the name of a human creature?"
+
+"It is a Dutch name, signora. I was born at Tergou, in Holland."
+
+"A harsh name, girls, for so well-favoured a youth; what say you?"
+
+The maids assented warmly.
+
+"What did I send for him for?" inquired the lady, with lofty languor.
+"Ah, I remember. Be seated, Ser Gerardo, and write me a letter to Ercole
+Orsini, my lover; at least he says so."
+
+Gerard seated himself, took out paper and ink, and looked up to the
+princess for instructions.
+
+She, seated on a much higher chair, almost a throne, looked down at him
+with eyes equally inquiring.
+
+"Well, Gerardo."
+
+"I am ready, your excellence."
+
+"Write, then."
+
+"I but await the words."
+
+"And who, think you, is to provide _them_?"
+
+"Who but your grace, whose letter it is to be."
+
+"Gramercy! what, you writers, find you not the words? What avails your
+art without the words? I doubt you are an impostor, Gerardo."
+
+"Nay, signora, I am none. I might make shift to put your highness's
+speech into grammar, as well as writing. But I cannot interpret your
+silence. Therefore speak what is in your heart, and I will empaper it
+before your eyes."
+
+"But there is nothing in my heart. And sometimes I think I have got no
+heart."
+
+"What is in your mind, then?"
+
+"But there is nothing in my mind; nor my head neither."
+
+"Then why write at all?"
+
+"Why, indeed? That is the first word of sense either you or I have
+spoken, Gerardo. Pestilence seize him! why writeth he not first? then I
+could say nay to this, and ay to that, withouten headache. Also is it a
+lady's part to say the first word?"
+
+"No, signora: the last."
+
+"It is well spoken, Gerardo. Ha! ha! Shalt have a gold piece for thy
+wit. Give me my purse!" And she paid him for the article on the nail a
+la moyen age. Money never yet chilled zeal. Gerard, after getting a gold
+piece so cheap, felt bound to pull her out of her difficulty; if the wit
+of man might achieve it. "Signorina," said he, "these things are only
+hard because folk attempt too much, are artificial and labour phrases.
+Do but figure to yourself the signor you love--"
+
+"I love him not."
+
+"Well, then, the signor you love not--seated at this table, and dict to
+me just what you would say to him."
+
+"Well if he sat there I should say, 'Go away.'"
+
+Gerard, who was flourishing his pen by way of preparation, laid it down
+with a groan.
+
+"And when he was gone," said Floretta, "your highness would say, 'Come
+back.'"
+
+"Like enough, wench. Now silence, all, and let me think. He pestered me
+to write, and I promised; so mine honour is engaged. What lie shall I
+tell the Gerardo to tell the fool?" and she turned her head away from
+them and fell into deep thought, with her noble chin resting on her
+white hand, half clenched.
+
+She was so lovely and statuesque, and looked so inspired with thoughts
+celestial, as she sat thus, impregnating herself with mendacity, that
+Gerard forgot all, except art, and proceeded eagerly to transfer that
+exquisite profile to paper.
+
+He had very nearly finished when the fair statue turned brusquely round
+and looked at him.
+
+"Nay, signora," said he, a little peevishly, "for Heaven's sake change
+not your posture; 'twas perfect. See, you are nearly finished."
+
+All eyes were instantly on the work, and all tongues active. "How like!
+and done in a minute: nay, methinks her highness's chin is not quite
+so--"
+
+"Oh, a touch will make that right."
+
+"What a pity 'tis not coloured. I'm all for colours. Hang black and
+white! And her highness hath such a lovely skin. Take away her skin, and
+half her beauty is lost."
+
+"Peace. Can you colour, Ser Gerardo?"
+
+"Ay, signorina. I am a poor hand at oils; there shines my friend Pietro:
+but in this small way I can tint you to the life, if you have time to
+waste on such vanity."
+
+"Call you this vanity? And for time, it hangs on me like lead. Send for
+your colours now,--quick,--this moment,--for love of all the saints."
+
+"Nay, signorina, I must prepare them. I could come at the same time
+to-morrow."
+
+"So be it. And you, Floretta, see that he be admitted at all hours.
+Alack! leave my head! leave my head!"
+
+"Forgive me, signora; I thought to prepare it at home to receive the
+colours. But I will leave it. And now let us despatch the letter."
+
+"What letter?"
+
+"To the Signor Orsini."
+
+"And shall I waste my _time_ on such _vanity_ as writing letters--and to
+that empty creature, to whom I am as indifferent as the moon? Nay, not
+indifferent, for I have just discovered my real sentiments, I hate him
+and despise him. Girls, I here forbid you once for all to mention that
+signor's name to me again; else I'll whip you till the blood comes. You
+know how I can lay on when I'm roused."
+
+"We do. We do."
+
+"Then provoke me not to it;" and her eye flashed daggers, and she turned
+to Gerard all instantaneous honey. "Addio, il Gerar-do." And Gerard
+bowed himself out of this velvet tiger's den.
+
+He came next day and coloured her; and next he was set to make a
+portrait of her on a large scale; and then a full-length figure; and he
+was obliged to set apart two hours in the afternoon for drawing and
+painting this princess, whose beauty and vanity were prodigious, and
+candidates for a portrait of her numerous. Here the thriving Gerard
+found a new and fruitful source of income.
+
+Margaret seemed nearer and nearer.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+It was Holy Thursday. No work this day. Fra Colonna and Gerard sat in a
+window and saw the religious processions. Their number and pious ardour
+thrilled Gerard with the devotion that now seemed to animate the whole
+people, lately bent on earthly joys.
+
+Presently the Pope came pacing majestically at the head of his
+cardinals, in a red hat, white cloak, a capuchin of red velvet, and
+riding a lovely white Neapolitan barb, caparisoned with red velvet
+fringed and tasselled with gold; a hundred horsemen, armed cap-a-pie,
+rode behind him with their lances erected, the butt-end resting on the
+man's thigh. The cardinals went uncovered, all but one, de Medicis, who
+rode close to the Pope and conversed with him as with an equal. At every
+fifteen steps the Pope stopped a single moment, and gave the people his
+blessing, then on again.
+
+Gerard and the friar now came down, and threading some bystreets reached
+the portico of one of the seven churches. It was hung with black, and
+soon the Pope and cardinals, who had entered the church by another door,
+issued forth, and stood with torches on the steps, separated by barriers
+from the people; then a canon read a Latin Bull, excommunicating several
+persons by name, especially such princes as were keeping the Church out
+of any of her temporal possessions.
+
+At this awful ceremony Gerard trembled, and so did the people. But two
+of the cardinals spoiled the effect by laughing unreservedly the whole
+time.
+
+When this was ended, the black cloth was removed, and revealed a gay
+panoply; and the Pope blessed the people, and ended by throwing his
+torch among them; so did two cardinals. Instantly there was a scramble
+for the torches: they were fought for, and torn in pieces by the
+candidates, so devoutly that small fragments were gained at the price of
+black eyes, bloody noses, and burnt fingers; in which hurtling his
+holiness and suite withdrew in peace.
+
+And now there was a cry, and the crowd rushed to a square where was a
+large, open stage: several priests were upon it praying. They rose, and
+with great ceremony donned red gloves. Then one of their number kneeled,
+and with signs of the lowest reverence drew forth from a shrine a square
+frame, like that of a mirror, and inside was as it were the impression
+of a face.
+
+It was the Verum icon, or true impression of our Saviour's face, taken
+at the very moment of his most mortal agony for us. Received as it was
+without a grain of doubt, imagine how it moved every Christian heart.
+
+The people threw themselves on their faces when the priest raised it on
+high; and cries of pity were in every mouth, and tears in almost every
+eye. After a while the people rose, and then the priests went round the
+platform, showing it for a single moment to the nearest; and at each
+sight loud cries of pity and devotion burst forth.
+
+Soon after this the friends fell in with a procession of _Flagellants_
+flogging their bare shoulders till the blood ran streaming down; but
+without a sign of pain in their faces, and many of them laughing and
+jesting as they lashed. The bystanders out of pity offered them wine;
+they took it, but few drank it, they generally used it to free the tails
+of the cat, which were hard with clotted blood, and make the next stroke
+more effective. Most of them were boys, and a young woman took pity on
+one fair urchin. "Alas! dear child," said she, "why wound thy white skin
+so?" "Basta," said he, laughing, "'tis for your sins I do it, not for
+mine."
+
+"Hear you that?" said the friar. "Show me the whip that can whip the
+vanity out of man's heart! The young monkey; how knoweth he that
+stranger is a sinner more than he?"
+
+"Father," said Gerard, "surely this is not to our Lord's mind. He was so
+pitiful."
+
+"Our Lord?" said the friar, crossing himself. "What has he to do with
+this? This was a custom in Rome six hundred years before he was born.
+The boys used to go through the streets at the Lupercalia, flogging
+themselves. And the married women used to shove in, and try and get a
+blow from the monkeys' scourges; for these blows conferred
+fruitfulness--in those days. A foolish trick this flagellation; but
+interesting to the bystander; reminds him of the grand old heathen. We
+are so prone to forget all we owe them."
+
+Next they got into one of the seven churches, and saw the Pope give the
+mass. The ceremony was imposing, but again spoiled by the inconsistent
+conduct of the cardinals, and other prelates, who sat about the altar
+with their hats on, chattering all through the mass like a flock of
+geese.
+
+The eucharist in both kinds was tasted by an official before the Pope
+would venture on it: and this surprised Gerard beyond measure. "Who is
+that base man? and what doth he there?"
+
+"Oh, that is 'The Preguste,' and he tastes the eucharist by way of
+precaution. This is the country for poison; and none fall oftener by it
+than the poor Popes."
+
+"Alas! so I have heard; but after the miraculous change of the bread and
+wine to Christ his body and blood, poison cannot remain; gone is the
+bread with all its properties and accidents; gone is the wine."
+
+"So says faith; but experience tells another tale. Scores have died in
+Italy poisoned in the host."
+
+"And I tell you, father, that were both bread and wine charged with
+direst poison before his holiness had consecrated them, yet after
+consecration I would take them both withouten fear."
+
+"So would I, but for the fine arts."
+
+"What mean you?"
+
+"Marry, that I would be as ready to leave the world as thou, were it not
+for those arts, which beautify existence here below, and make it dear to
+men of sense and education. No: so long as the Nine Muses strew my path
+with roses of learning and art, me may Apollo inspire with wisdom and
+caution, that knowing the wiles of my countrymen, I may eat poison
+neither at God's altar nor at a friend's table, since, wherever I eat it
+or drink it, it will assuredly cut short my mortal thread; and I am
+writing a book--heart and soul in it--'The Dream of Polifilo,' the man
+of many arts. So name not poison to me till that is finished and
+copied."
+
+And now the great bells of St. John Lateran's were rung with a clash at
+short intervals, and the people hurried thither to see the heads of St.
+Peter and St. Paul.
+
+Gerard and the friar got a good place in the church, and there was a
+great curtain, and, after long and breathless expectation of the people,
+this curtain was drawn by jerks, and at a height of about thirty feet
+were two human heads with bearded faces that seemed alive. They were
+shown no longer than the time to say an Ave Maria, and then the curtain
+drawn. But they were shown in this fashion three times. St. Peter's
+complexion was pale, his face oval, his beard gray and forked; his head
+crowned with a papal mitre. St. Paul was dark skinned, with a thick,
+square beard; his face also and head were more square and massive, and
+full of resolution.
+
+Gerard was awe-struck. The friar approved after his fashion.
+
+"This exhibition of the 'imagines,' or waxen effigies of heroes and
+demigods, is a venerable custom, and inciteth the vulgar to virtue by
+great and visible examples."
+
+"Waxen images? What, are they not the apostles themselves, embalmed, or
+the like?"
+
+The friar moaned.
+
+"They did not exist in the year 800. The great old Roman families always
+produced at their funerals a series of these 'imagines,' thereby tying
+past and present history together, and showing the populace the features
+of far-famed worthies. I can conceive nothing more thrilling or
+instructive. But then the effigies were portraits made during life or at
+the hour of death. These of St. Paul and St. Peter are moulded out of
+pure fancy."
+
+"Ah! say not so, father."
+
+"But the worst is, this humour of showing them up on a shelf, and half
+in the dark, and by snatches, and with the poor mountebank trick of a
+drawn curtain.
+
+    Quodcunque ostendis mihi sic incredulus odi.
+
+Enough; the men of this day are not the men of old. Let us have done
+with these new-fangled mummeries, and go among the Pope's books; there
+we shall find the wisdom we shall vainly hunt in the streets of modern
+Rome."
+
+And, this idea having once taken root, the good friar plunged and tore
+through the crowd, and looked neither to the right hand nor to the left,
+till he had escaped the glories of the holy week, which had brought
+fifty thousand strangers to Rome; and had got nice and quiet among the
+dead in the library of the Vatican.
+
+Presently, going into Gerard's room, he found a hot dispute afoot,
+between him and Jacques Bonaventura. That spark had come in, all steel
+from head to toe; doffed helmet, puffed, and railed most scornfully on a
+ridiculous ceremony, at which he and his soldiers had been compelled to
+attend the Pope; to wit the blessing of the beasts of burden.
+
+Gerard said it was not ridiculous; nothing a Pope did could be
+ridiculous.
+
+The argument grew warm, and the friar stood grimly neuter, waiting like
+the stork that ate the frog and the mouse at the close of their combat,
+to grind them both between the jaws of antiquity: when lo, the curtain
+was gently drawn, and there stood a venerable old man in a purple skull
+cap, with a beard like white floss silk, looking at them with a kind
+though feeble smile.
+
+"Happy youth," said he, "that can heat itself over such matters."
+
+They all fell on their knees. It was the Pope.
+
+"Nay, rise, my children," said he, almost peevishly. "I came not into
+this corner to be in state. How goes Plutarch?"
+
+Gerard brought his work, and kneeling on one knee presented it to his
+holiness, who had seated himself, the others standing.
+
+His holiness inspected it with interest. "'Tis excellently writ," said
+he.
+
+Gerard's heart beat with delight.
+
+"Ah! this Plutarch, he had a wondrous art, Francesco. How each character
+standeth out alive on his page: how full of nature each, yet how unlike
+his fellow!"
+
+_Jacques Bonaventura._] "Give me the signor Boccaccio."
+
+_His Holiness._] "An excellent narrator, Capitano, and writeth exquisite
+Italian. But in spirit a thought too monotonous. Monks and nuns were
+never all unchaste: one or two such stories were right pleasant and
+diverting; but five score paint his time falsely, and sadden the heart
+of such as love mankind. Moreover he hath no skill at characters. Now
+this Greek is supreme in that great art: he carveth them with pen: and
+turning his page, see into how real and great a world we enter of war,
+and policy, and business, and love in its own place: for with him, as in
+the great world, men are not all running after a wench. With this great
+open field compare me not the narrow garden of Boccaccio, and his little
+mill-round of dishonest pleasures."
+
+"Your holiness, they say, hath not disdained to write a novel."
+
+"My holiness hath done more foolish things than one, whereof it repents
+too late. When I wrote novels I little thought to be head of the
+Church."
+
+"I search in vain for a copy of it to add to my poor library."
+
+"It is well. Then the strict orders I gave four years ago to destroy
+every copy in Italy, have been well discharged. However, for your
+comfort, on my being made Pope, some fool turned it into French: so that
+you may read it, at the price of exile."
+
+"Reduced to this strait we throw ourselves on your holiness's
+generosity. Vouchsafe to give us your infallible judgment on it!"
+
+"Gently, gently, good Francesco. A Pope's novels are not matters of
+faith. I can but give you my sincere impression. Well then the work in
+question had, as far as I remember, all the vices of Boccaccio, without
+his choice Italian."
+
+_Fra Colonna._] "Your holiness is known for slighting AEneas Silvius as
+other men never slighted him. I did him injustice to make you his judge.
+Perhaps your holiness will decide more justly between these two
+boys--about blessing the beasts."
+
+The Pope demurred. In speaking of Plutarch he had brightened up for a
+moment, and his eye had even flashed; but his general manner was as
+unlike what youthful females expect in a Pope as you can conceive. I can
+only describe it in French. Le gentilhomme blase. A high bred, and
+highly cultivated gentleman, who had done, and said, and seen, and known
+everything, and whose body was nearly worn out. But double languor seem
+to seize him at the father's proposal.
+
+"My poor Francesco," said he "bethink thee that I have had a life of
+controversy, and am sick on't, sick as death. Plutarch drew me to this
+calm retreat; not divinity."
+
+"Nay, but, your holiness, for moderating of strife between two hot young
+bloods.
+
+    '[Greek: Makarioi hoi eirenopoioi].'"
+
+"And know you nature so ill, as to think either of these high-mettled
+youths will reck what a poor old Pope saith?"
+
+"Oh! your holiness," broke in Gerard, blushing and gasping, "sure, here
+is one who will treasure your words all his life as words from Heaven."
+
+"In that case," said the Pope, "I am fairly caught. As Francesco here
+would say--
+
+    '[Greek: ouk estin hostis est' aner eleutheros].'
+
+I came to taste that eloquent heathen, dear to me e'en as to thee, thou
+paynim monk; and I must talk divinity, or something next door to it. But
+the youth hath a good, and a winning face, and writeth Greek like an
+angel. Well then, my children, to comprehend the ways of the Church, we
+should still rise a little above the earth, since the Church is between
+heaven and earth, and interprets betwixt them.
+
+"The question is then, not how vulgar men feel, but how the common
+Creator of man and beast doth feel, towards the lower animals. This, if
+we are too proud to search for it in the lessons of the Church, the
+next best thing is to go to the most ancient history of men and
+animals."
+
+_Colonna._] "Herodotus."
+
+"Nay, nay; in this matter Herodotus is but a mushroom. Finely were we
+sped for ancient history, if we depended on your Greeks, who did but
+write on the last leaf of that great book, Antiquity."
+
+The friar groaned. Here was a Pope uttering heresy against his demigods.
+
+"'Tis the Vulgate I speak of. A history that handles matters three
+thousand years before him pedants call 'the Father of History.'"
+
+_Colonna._] "Oh! the Vulgate? I cry your holiness mercy. How you
+frightened me. I quite forgot the Vulgate."
+
+"Forgot it? art sure thou ever readst it, Francesco mio?"
+
+"Not quite, your holiness. 'Tis a pleasure I have long promised myself,
+the first vacant moment. Hitherto these grand old heathen have left me
+small time for recreation."
+
+_His Holiness._] "First then you will find in Genesis that God, having
+created the animals, drew a holy pleasure, undefinable by us, from
+contemplating of their beauty. Was it wonderful? See their myriad forms;
+their lovely hair, and eyes, their grace, and of some the power and
+majesty; the colour of others, brighter than roses, or rubies. And when,
+for man's sin, not their own, they were destroyed, yet were two of each
+kind spared.
+
+"And when the ark and its trembling inmates tumbled solitary on the
+world of water, then, saith the word, 'God remembered Noah, _and the
+cattle that were with him in the ark_.'
+
+"Thereafter God did write his rainbow in the sky as a bond that earth
+should be flooded no more; and between whom the bond? between God and
+man, nay: between God and man, _and every living creature of all flesh_;
+or my memory fails me with age. In Exodus God commanded that the cattle
+should share the sweet blessing of the one day's rest. Moreover he
+forbade to muzzle the ox that trod out the corn. 'Nay let the poor
+overwrought soul snatch a mouthful as he goes his toilsome round: the
+bulk of the grain shall still be for man.' Ye will object perchance that
+St. Paul, commenting this, saith rudely, 'Doth God care for oxen?'
+Verily, had I been Peter, instead of the humblest of his successors, I
+had answered him. 'Drop thy theatrical poets, Paul, and read the
+scriptures: then shalt thou know whether God careth only for men and
+sparrows, or for all his creatures. O Paul,' had I made bold to say,
+'think not to learn God by looking into Paul's heart, nor any heart of
+man, but study that which he hath revealed concerning himself.'
+
+"Thrice he forbade the Jews to boil the kid in his mother's milk; not
+that this is cruelty, but want of thought and gentle sentiments, and so
+paves the way for downright cruelty. A prophet riding on an ass did meet
+an angel. Which of these two, Paulo judice, had seen the heavenly
+spirit? marry, the prophet. But it was not so. The man, his vision
+cloyed with sin, saw nought. The poor despised creature saw all. Nor is
+this recorded as miraculous. Poor proud things, we overrate ourselves.
+The angel had slain the prophet and spared the ass, but for that
+creature's clearer vision of essences divine. He said so, methinks. But
+in sooth I read it many years agone. Why did God spare repentant
+Nineveh? Because in that city were sixty thousand children, _besides
+much cattle_.
+
+"Profane history and vulgar experience add their mite of witness. The
+cruel to animals end in cruelty to man; and strange and violent deaths,
+marked with retribution's bloody finger, have in all ages fallen from
+heaven on such as wantonly harm innocent beasts. This I myself have
+seen. All this duly weighed, and seeing that, despite this Francesco's
+friends, the Stoics, who in their vanity say the creatures all subsist
+for man's comfort, there be snakes and scorpions which kill 'Dominum
+terrae' with a nip, musquitoes which eat him piecemeal, and tigers and
+sharks, which crack him like an almond, we do well to be grateful to
+these true, faithful, patient four-footed friends, which, in lieu of
+powdering us, put forth their strength to relieve our toils, and do feed
+us like mothers from their gentle dugs.
+
+"Methinks then the Church is never more divine than in this benediction
+of our four-footed friends, which has revolted yon great theological
+authority, the captain of the Pope's guards; since here she inculcates
+humility and gratitude, and rises towards the level of the mind divine,
+and interprets God to man, God the creator, parent, and friend, of man
+and beast.
+
+"But all this, young Gentles you will please to receive, not as
+delivered by the Pope ex cathedra, but uttered carelessly, in a free
+hour, by an aged clergyman. On that score you will perhaps do well to
+entertain it with some little consideration. For old age must surely
+bring a man somewhat, in return for his digestion (his "dura puerorum
+ilia," eh, Francesco), which it carries away."
+
+Such was the purport of the Pope's discourse; but the manner high-bred,
+languid, kindly, and free from all tone of dictation. He seemed to be
+gently probing the matter in concert with his hearers, not playing Sir
+Oracle. At the bottom of all which was doubtless a slight touch of
+humbug, but the humbug that embellishes life; and all sense of it was
+lost in the subtle Italian grace of the thing.
+
+"I seem to hear the oracle of Delphi," said Fra Colonna,
+enthusiastically.
+
+"I call that good sense," shouted Jacques Bonaventura.
+
+"Oh, captain, good sense!" said Gerard, with a deep and tender reproach.
+
+The Pope smiled on Gerard. "Cavil not at words; that was an unheard-of
+concession from a rival theologian."
+
+He then asked for all Gerard's work, and took it away in his hand. But,
+before going, he gently pulled Fra Colonna's ear, and asked him whether
+he remembered when they were school-fellows together, and robbed the
+Virgin by the roadside of the money dropped into her box. "You took a
+flat stick and applied birdlime to the top, and drew the money out
+through the chink, you rogue," said his holiness, severely.
+
+"To every signor his own honour," replied Fra Colonna. "It was your
+holiness's good wit invented the manoeuvre. I was but the humble
+instrument."
+
+"It is well. Doubtless you know 'twas sacrilege."
+
+"Of the first water: but I did it in such good company, it troubles me
+not."
+
+"Humph! I have not even that poor consolation. What did we spend it in,
+dost mind?"
+
+"Can your holiness ask? Why, sugar-plums."
+
+"What, all on't?"
+
+"Every doit."
+
+"These are delightful reminiscences, my Francesco. Alas! I am getting
+old. I shall not be here long. And I am sorry for it, for thy sake. They
+will go and burn thee when I am gone. Art far more a heretic than Huss,
+whom I saw burned with these eyes; and oh, he died like a martyr."
+
+"Ay, your holiness: but I believe in the Pope; and Huss did not."
+
+"Fox! They will not burn thee; wood is too dear. Adieu, old playmate;
+adieu, young gentlemen; an old man's blessing be on you."
+
+That afternoon the Pope's secretary brought Gerard a little bag: in it
+were several gold pieces.
+
+He added them to his store.
+
+Margaret seemed nearer and nearer.
+
+For some time past, too, it appeared as if the fairies had watched over
+him. Baskets of choice provisions and fruits were brought to his door by
+porters, who knew not who had employed them, or affected ignorance; and
+one day came a jewel in a letter, but no words.
+
+At this point the suspicions of his landlady broke out. "This is none of
+thy patrons, silly boy; this is some lady that hath fallen in love with
+thy sweet face. Marry, I blame her not."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER LXIII
+
+
+THE Princess Claelia ordered a full-length portrait of herself. Gerard
+advised her to employ his friend Pietro Vanucci.
+
+But she declined. "'Twill be time to put a slight on the Gerardo, when
+his work discontents me." Then Gerard, who knew he was an excellent
+draughtsman, but not so good a colourist, begged her to stand to him as
+a Roman statue. He showed her how closely he could mimic marble on
+paper. She consented at first; but demurred when this enthusiast
+explained to her that she must wear the tunic, toga, and sandals of the
+ancients.
+
+"Why, I had as lieve be presented in my smock," said she, with mediaeval
+frankness.
+
+"Alack! signorina," said Gerard, "you have surely never noted the
+ancient habit; so free, so ample, so simple, yet so noble; and most
+becoming your highness, to whom Heaven hath given the Roman features,
+and eke a shapely arm and hand, hid in modern guise."
+
+"What, can you flatter, like the rest, Gerardo? Well, give me time to
+think on't. Come o' Saturday, and then I will say ay or nay."
+
+The respite thus gained was passed in making the tunic and toga, &c.,
+and trying them on in her chamber, to see whether they suited her style
+of beauty well enough to compensate their being a thousand years out of
+date.
+
+Gerard, hurrying along to this interview, was suddenly arrested, and
+rooted to earth at a shop window.
+
+His quick eye had discerned in that window a copy of Lactantius, lying
+open. "That is fairly writ, any way," thought he.
+
+He eyed it a moment more with all his eyes.
+
+It was not written at all. It was printed.
+
+Gerard groaned. "I am sped; mine enemy is at the door. The press is in
+Rome."
+
+He went into the shop, and, affecting nonchalance, inquired how long the
+printing-press had been in Rome. The man said he believed there was no
+such thing in the city. "Oh, the Lactantius; that was printed on the top
+of the Apennines."
+
+"What, did the printing-press fall down there out o' the moon?"
+
+"Nay, messer," said the trader, laughing, "it shot up there out of
+Germany. See the title-page!"
+
+Gerard took the Lactantius eagerly, and saw the following:--
+
+    Opera et impensis Sweynheim et Pannartz
+            Alumnorum Joannis Fust.
+        Impressum Subiacis. A.D. 1465.
+
+"Will ye buy, messer? See how fair and even be the letters. Few are left
+can write like that; and scarce a quarter of the price."
+
+"I would fain have it," said Gerard, sadly; "but my heart will not let
+me. Know that I am a caligraph, and these disciples of Fust run after me
+round the world a-taking the bread out of my mouth. But I wish them no
+ill. Heaven forbid!" And he hurried from the shop.
+
+"Dear Margaret," said he to himself, "we must lose no time; we must make
+our hay while shines the sun. One month more and an avalanche of
+printer's type shall roll down on Rome from those Apennines, and lay us
+waste that writers be."
+
+And he almost ran to the princess Claelia.
+
+He was ushered into an apartment new to him. It was not very large, but
+most luxurious; a fountain played in the centre, and the floor was
+covered with the skins of panthers, dressed with the hair, so that no
+footfall could be heard. The room was an antechamber to the princess's
+boudoir, for on one side there was no door, but an ample curtain of
+gorgeous tapestry.
+
+Here Gerard was left alone till he became quite uneasy, and doubted
+whether the maid had not shown him to the wrong place.
+
+These doubts were agreeably dissipated.
+
+A light step came swiftly behind the curtain; it parted in the middle,
+and there stood a figure the heathens might have worshipped. It was not
+quite Venus, nor quite Minerva; but between the two; nobler than Venus,
+more womanly than Jupiter's daughter. Toga, tunic, sandals; nothing was
+modern. And as for beauty, that is of all times.
+
+Gerard started up, and all the artist in him flushed with pleasure.
+
+"Oh!" he cried, innocently, and gazed in rapture.
+
+This added the last charm to his model: a light blush tinted her cheeks,
+and her eyes brightened, and her mouth smiled with delicious complacency
+at this genuine tribute to her charms.
+
+When they had looked at one another so some time, and she saw Gerard's
+eloquence was confined to ejaculating and gazing, she spoke. "Well,
+Gerardo, thou seest I have made myself an antique monster for thee."
+
+"A monster? I doubt Fra Colonna would fall down and adore your highness,
+seeing you so habited."
+
+"Nay, I care not to be adored by an old man. I would liever be loved by
+a young one: of my own choosing."
+
+Gerard took out his pencils, arranged his canvas, which he had covered
+with stout paper, and set to work; and so absorbed was he that he had no
+mercy on his model. At last, after near an hour in one posture,
+"Gerardo," said she, faintly, "I can stand so no more, even for thee."
+
+"Sit down and rest awhile, signora."
+
+"I thank thee," said she; and sinking into a chair turned pale and
+sighed.
+
+Gerard was alarmed, and saw also he had been inconsiderate. He took
+water from the fountain and was about to throw it in her face; but she
+put up a white hand deprecatingly: "Nay, hold it to my brow with thine
+hand; prithee, do not fling it at me!"
+
+Gerard timidly and hesitating applied his wet hand to her brow.
+
+"Ah!" she sighed, "that is reviving. Again."
+
+He applied it again. She thanked him, and asked him to ring a little
+hand-bell on the table. He did so, and a maid came, and was sent to
+Floretta with orders to bring a large fan.
+
+Floretta speedily came with the fan.
+
+She no sooner came near the princess, than that lady's high-bred
+nostrils suddenly expanded like a blood horse's. "Wretch!" said she; and
+rising up with a sudden return to vigour, seized Floretta with her left
+hand, twisted it in her hair, and with the right hand boxed her ears
+severely three times.
+
+Floretta screamed and blubbered; but obtained no mercy.
+
+The antique toga left quite disengaged a bare arm, that now seemed as
+powerful as it was beautiful: it rose and fell like the piston of a
+modern steam-engine, and heavy slaps resounded one after another on
+Floretta's shoulders; the last one drove her sobbing and screaming
+through the curtain, and there she was heard crying bitterly for some
+time after.
+
+"Saints of heaven!" cried Gerard, "what is amiss? what hath she done?"
+
+"She knows right well. 'Tis not the first time. The nasty toad! I'll
+learn her to come to me stinking of the musk-cat."
+
+"Alas! signora, 'twas a small fault, methinks."
+
+"A small fault? Nay, 'twas a foul fault." She added with an amazing
+sudden descent to humility and sweetness, "Are you wroth with me for
+beating her, Gerar-do?"
+
+"Signora, it ill becomes me to school you; but methinks such as Heaven
+appoints to govern others should govern themselves."
+
+"That is true, Gerardo. How wise you are, to be so young." She then
+called the other maid, and gave her a little purse. "Take that to
+Floretta, and tell her 'the Gerardo' hath interceded for her; and so I
+must needs forgive her. There, Gerardo."
+
+Gerard coloured all over at the compliment; but not knowing how to turn
+a phrase equal to the occasion, asked her if he should resume her
+picture.
+
+"Not yet; beating that hussy hath somewhat breathed me. I'll sit awhile,
+and you shall talk to me. I know you can talk, an it pleases you, as
+rarely as you draw."
+
+"That were easily done."
+
+"Do it then, Gerardo."
+
+Gerard was taken aback.
+
+"But, signora, I know not what to say. This is sudden."
+
+"Say your real mind. Say you wish you were anywhere but here."
+
+"Nay, signora, that would not be sooth. I wish one thing though."
+
+"Ay, and what is that?" said she, gently.
+
+"I wish I could have drawn you as you were beating that poor lass. You
+were awful, yet lovely. Oh, what a subject for a Pythoness!"
+
+"Alas! he thinks but of his art. And why keep such a coil about my
+beauty, Gerardo? You are far fairer than I am. You are more like Apollo
+than I to Venus. Also, you have lovely hair, and lovely eyes--but you
+know not what to do with them."
+
+"Ay, do I. To draw you, signora."
+
+"Ah, yes; you can see my features with them; but you cannot see what any
+Roman gallant had seen long ago in your place. Yet sure you must have
+noted how welcome you are to me, Gerardo?"
+
+"I can see your highness is always passing kind to me; a poor stranger
+like me."
+
+"No, I am not, Gerardo. I have often been cold to you; rude sometimes;
+and you are so simple you see not the cause. Alas! I feared for my own
+heart. I feared to be your slave. I who have hitherto made slaves. Ah!
+Gerardo, I am unhappy. Ever since you came here I have lived upon your
+visits. The day you are to come I am bright. The other days I am
+listless, and wish them fled. You are not like the Roman gallants. You
+make me hate them. You are ten times braver to my eye; and you are wise
+and scholarly, and never flatter and lie. I scorn a man that lies.
+Gerar-do; teach me thy magic; teach me to make thee as happy by my side
+as I am still by thine."
+
+As she poured out these strange words, the princess's mellow voice sunk
+almost to a whisper, and trembled with half-suppressed passion, and her
+white hand stole timidly yet earnestly down Gerard's arm, till it rested
+like a soft bird upon his wrist, and as ready to fly away at a word.
+
+Destitute of vanity and experience, wrapped up in his Margaret and his
+art, Gerard had not seen this revelation coming, though it had come by
+regular and visible gradations.
+
+He blushed all over. His innocent admiration of the regal beauty that
+besieged him, did not for a moment displace the absent Margaret's image.
+Yet it was regal beauty, and wooing with a grace and tenderness he had
+never even figured in imagination. How to check her without wounding
+her?
+
+He blushed and trembled.
+
+The siren saw, and encouraged him. "Poor Gerardo," she murmured, "fear
+not; none shall ever harm thee under my wing. Wilt not speak to me,
+Gerar-do mio?"
+
+"Signora!" muttered Gerard, deprecatingly.
+
+At this moment his eye, lowered in his confusion, fell on the shapely
+white arm and delicate hand that curled round his elbow like a tender
+vine, and it flashed across him how he had just seen that lovely limb
+employed on Floretta.
+
+He trembled and blushed.
+
+"Alas!" said the princess, "I scare him. Am I then so very terrible? Is
+it my Roman robe? I'll doff it, and habit me as when thou first camest
+to me. Mindest thou? 'Twas to write a letter to yon barren knight Ecole
+d'Orsini. Shall I tell thee? 'twas the sight of thee, and thy pretty
+ways, and thy wise words, made me hate him on the instant. I liked the
+fool well enough before; or wist I liked him. Tell me now how many times
+hast thou been here since then. Ah! thou knowest not; lovest me not, I
+doubt, as I love thee. Eighteen times, Gerardo. And each time dearer to
+me. The day thou comest not 'tis night not day, to Claelia. Alas! I speak
+for both. Cruel boy, am I not worth a word? Hast every day a princess at
+thy feet? Nay, prithee, prithee, speak to me, Gerar-do."
+
+"Signora," faltered Gerard, "what can I say, that were not better left
+unsaid? Oh evil day that ever I came here."
+
+"Ah! say not so. 'Twas the brightest day ever shone on me; or indeed on
+thee. I'll make thee confess so much ere long, ungrateful one."
+
+"Your highness," began Gerard, in a low, pleading voice.
+
+"Call me Claelia, Gerar-do."
+
+"Signora, I am too young and too little wise to know how I ought to
+speak to you, so as not to seem blind nor yet ungrateful. But this I
+know, I were both naught and ungrateful, and the worst foe e'er you had,
+did I take advantage of this mad fancy. Sure some ill spirit hath had
+leave to afflict you withal. For 'tis all unnatural that a princess
+adorned with every grace should abase her affections on a churl."
+
+The princess withdrew her hand slowly from Gerard's wrist.
+
+Yet as it passed lightly over his arm it seemed to linger a moment at
+parting.
+
+"You fear the daggers of my kinsmen," said she, half sadly, half
+contemptuously.
+
+"No more than I fear the bodkins of your women," said Gerard, haughtily.
+"But I fear God and the saints, and my own conscience."
+
+"The truth, Gerardo, the truth! Hypocrisy sits awkwardly on thee.
+Princesses, while they are young, are not despised for love of God, but
+of some other woman. Tell me whom thou lovest: and if she is worthy thee
+I will forgive thee."
+
+"No she in Italy, upon my soul."
+
+"Ah! there is one somewhere, then. Where? where?"
+
+"In Holland, my native country."
+
+"Ah! Marie de Bourgoyne is fair, they say. Yet she is but a child."
+
+"Princess, she I love is not noble. She is as I am. Nor is she so fair
+as thou. Yet is she fair; and linked to my heart for ever by her
+virtues, and by all the dangers and griefs we have borne together, and
+for one another. Forgive me; but I would not wrong my Margaret for all
+the highest dames in Italy."
+
+The slighted beauty started to her feet, and stood opposite him, as
+beautiful, but far more terrible than when she slapped Floretta, for
+then her cheeks were red, but now they were pale, and her eyes full of
+concentrated fury.
+
+"This to my face, unmannered wretch," she cried. "Was I born to be
+insulted, as well as scorned, by such as thou? Beware! We nobles brook
+no rivals. Bethink thee whether is better, the love of a Cesarini, or
+her hate: for after all I have said and done to thee, it must be love or
+hate between us and to the death. Choose now!"
+
+He looked up at her with wonder and awe, as she stood towering over him
+in her Roman toga, offering this strange alternative.
+
+He seemed to have affronted a goddess of antiquity; he a poor puny
+mortal.
+
+He sighed deeply, but spoke not.
+
+[Illustration: THE SLIGHTED BEAUTY STARTED TO HER FEET]
+
+Perhaps something in his deep and patient sigh touched a tender chord in
+that ungoverned creature; or perhaps the time had come for one passion
+to ebb and another to flow. The princess sank languidly into a seat, and
+the tears began to steal rapidly down her cheeks.
+
+"Alas! alas!" said Gerard. "Weep not, sweet lady; your tears they do
+accuse me, and I am like to weep for company. My kind patron; be
+yourself! you will live to see how much better a friend I was to you
+than I seemed."
+
+"I see it now, Gerardo," said the princess. "Friend is the word: the
+only word can ever pass between us twain. I was mad. Any other man had
+ta'en advantage of my folly. You must teach me to be your friend and
+nothing more."
+
+Gerard hailed this proposition with joy; and told her out of Cicero how
+godlike a thing was friendship, and how much better and rarer and more
+lasting than love: to prove to her he was capable of it, he even told
+her about Denys and himself.
+
+She listened with her eyes half shut, watching his words to fathom his
+character, and learn his weak point.
+
+At last, she addressed him calmly thus: "Leave me now, Gerardo; and come
+as usual to-morrow. You will find your lesson well bestowed." She held
+out her hand to him: he kissed it; and went away pondering deeply this
+strange interview, and wondering whether he had done prudently or not.
+
+The next day he was received with marked distance, and the princess
+stood before him literally like a statue, and after a very short
+sitting, excused herself and dismissed him. Gerard felt the chilling
+difference: but said to himself, "She is wise." So she was in her way.
+
+The next day, he found the princess waiting for him surrounded by young
+nobles flattering her to the skies. She and they treated him like a dog
+that could do one little trick they could not. The cavaliers in
+particular criticised his work with a mass of ignorance and insolence
+combined that made his cheeks burn.
+
+The princess watched his face demurely with half-closed eyes, at each
+sting the insects gave him: and, when they had fled, had her doors
+closed against every one of them for their pains.
+
+The next day Gerard found her alone: cold, and silent. After standing
+to him so some time, she said, "You treated my company with less respect
+than became you."
+
+"Did I, signora?"
+
+"Did you? you fired up at the comments they did you the honour to make
+on your work."
+
+"Nay, I said nought," observed Gerard.
+
+"Oh, high looks speak as plain as high words. Your cheeks were red as
+blood."
+
+"I was nettled a moment at seeing so much ignorance and ill-nature
+together."
+
+"Now it is me, their hostess, you affront."
+
+"Forgive me, signora, and acquit me of design. It would ill become me to
+affront the kindest patron and friend I have in Rome--but one."
+
+"How humble we are all of a sudden. In sooth, Ser Gerardo, you are a
+capital feigner. You can insult or truckle at will."
+
+"Truckle? to whom?"
+
+"To me, for one; to one, whom you affronted for a base-born girl like
+yourself: but whose patronage you claim all the same."
+
+Gerard rose, and put his hand to his heart. "These are biting words,
+signora. Have I really deserved them?"
+
+"Oh, what are words to an adventurer like you? cold steel is all you
+fear."
+
+"I am no swashbuckler, yet I have met steel with steel: and methinks I
+had rather face your kinsmen's swords than your cruel tongue, lady. Why
+do you use me so?"
+
+"Gerar-do, for no good reason, but because I am wayward, and shrewish,
+and curst, and because everybody admires me but you."
+
+"I admire you too, signora. Your friends may flatter you more; but
+believe me they have not the eye to see half your charms. Their babble
+yesterday showed me that. None admire you more truly, or wish you
+better, than the poor artist, who might not be your lover, but hoped to
+be your friend: but no, I see that may not be between one so high as
+you, and one so low as I."
+
+"Ay! but it shall, Gerardo," said the princess, eagerly. "I will not be
+so curst. Tell me now where abides thy Margaret; and I will give thee a
+present for her; and on that you and I will be friends."
+
+"She is the daughter of a physician called Peter, and they bide at
+Sevenbergen; ah me shall I e'er see it again?"
+
+"'Tis well. Now go." And she dismissed him somewhat abruptly.
+
+Poor Gerard. He began to wade in deep waters when he encountered this
+Italian princess; callida et calida solis filia. He resolved to go no
+more when once he had finished her likeness. Indeed he now regretted
+having undertaken so long and laborious a task.
+
+This resolution was shaken for a moment by his next reception, which was
+all gentleness and kindness.
+
+After standing to him some time in her toga, she said she was fatigued,
+and wanted his assistance in another way: would he teach her to draw a
+little? He sat down beside her, and taught her to make easy lines. He
+found her wonderfully apt. He said so.
+
+"I had a teacher before thee, Gerar-do. Ay, and one as handsome as
+thyself." She then went to a drawer, and brought out several heads drawn
+with a complete ignorance of the art, but with great patience and
+natural talent. They were all heads of Gerard, and full of spirit: and
+really not unlike. One was his very image.
+
+"There," said she. "Now thou seest who was my teacher."
+
+"Not I, signora."
+
+"What, know you not who teaches us women to do all things? 'Tis love,
+Gerar-do. Love made me draw because thou drawest, Gerar-do. Love prints
+thine image in my bosom. My fingers touch the pen, and love supplies the
+want of art, and lo! thy beloved features lie upon the paper."
+
+Gerard opened his eyes with astonishment at this return to an
+interdicted topic. "Oh, signora, you promised me to be friends and
+nothing more."
+
+She laughed in his face. "How simple you are; who believes a woman
+promising nonsense, impossibilities? Friendship, foolish boy, who ever
+built that temple on red ashes? Nay, Gerardo," she added gloomily,
+"between thee and me it must be love or hate."
+
+"Which you will, signora," said Gerard, firmly. "But for me I will
+neither love nor hate you; but with your permission I will leave you."
+And he rose abruptly.
+
+She rose too pale as death, and said, "Ere thou leavest me so, know thy
+fate; outside that door are armed men who wait to slay thee at a word
+from me."
+
+"But you will not speak that word, signora."
+
+"That word I will speak. Nay, more, I shall noise it abroad it was for
+proffering brutal love to me thou wert slain; and I will send a special
+messenger to Sevenbergen: a cunning messenger, well taught his lesson.
+Thy Margaret shall know thee dead, and think thee faithless; now, go to
+thy grave; a dog's. For a man thou art not."
+
+Gerard turned pale, and stood dumbstricken. "God have mercy on us both."
+
+"Nay, have thou mercy on her, and on thyself. She will never know in
+Holland what thou dost in Rome; unless I be driven to tell her my tale.
+Come, yield thee, Gerar-do mio: what will it cost thee to say thou
+lovest me? I ask thee but to feign it handsomely. Thou art young: die
+not for the poor pleasure of denying a lady what--the shadow of a heart.
+Who will shed a tear for thee? I tell thee men will laugh, not weep,
+over thy tombstone--ah!" She ended in a little scream, for Gerard threw
+himself in a moment at her feet, and poured out in one torrent of
+eloquence the story of his love and Margaret's. How he had been
+imprisoned, hunted with bloodhounds for her, driven to exile for her;
+how she had shed her blood for him, and now pined at home. How he had
+walked through Europe, environed by perils, torn by savage brutes,
+attacked by furious men, with sword and axe and trap, robbed,
+shipwrecked for her.
+
+The princess trembled, and tried to get away from him: but he held her
+robe, he clung to her, he made her hear his pitiful story and
+Margaret's; he caught her hand, and clasped it between both his, and his
+tears fell fast on her hand, as he implored her to think on all the woes
+of the true lovers she would part; and what but remorse, swift and
+lasting, could come of so deep a love betrayed, and so false a love
+feigned, with mutual hatred lurking at the bottom.
+
+In such moments none ever resisted Gerard.
+
+The princess, after in vain trying to get away from him, for she felt
+his power over her, began to waver, and sigh, and her bosom to rise and
+fall tumultuously, and her fiery eyes to fill.
+
+"You conquer me," she sobbed. "You, or my better angel. Leave Rome!"
+
+"I will, I will."
+
+"If you breath a word of my folly, it will be your last."
+
+"Think not so poorly of me. You are my benefactress once more. Is it for
+me to slander you?"
+
+"Go! I will send you the means. I know myself; if you cross my path
+again, I shall kill you. Addio; my heart is broken."
+
+She touched her bell. "Floretta," she said, in a choked voice, "take him
+safe out of the house through my chamber and by the side poster."
+
+He turned at the door; she was leaning with one hand on a chair, crying,
+with averted head. Then he thought only of her kindness, and ran back
+and kissed her robe. She never moved.
+
+Once clear of the house he darted home, thanking Heaven for his escape,
+soul and body.
+
+"Landlady," said he, "there is one would pick a quarrel with me. What is
+to be done?"
+
+"Strike him first, and at vantage! Get behind him; and then draw."
+
+"Alas, I lack your Italian courage. To be serious, 'tis a noble."
+
+"Oh, holy saints, that is another matter. Change thy lodging awhile, and
+keep snug; and alter the fashion of thy habits."
+
+She then took him to her own niece, who let lodgings at some little
+distance, and installed him there.
+
+He had little to do now, and no princess to draw, so he set himself
+resolutely to read that deed of Floris Brandt, from which he had
+hitherto been driven by the abominably bad writing. He mastered it, and
+saw at once that the loan on this land must have been paid over and over
+again by the rents, and that Ghysbrecht was keeping Peter Brandt out of
+his own.
+
+"Fool! not to have read this before," he cried. He hired a horse and
+rode down to the nearest port. A vessel was to sail for Amsterdam in
+four days.
+
+He took a passage; and paid a small sum to secure it.
+
+"The land is too full of cut-throats for me," said he; "and 'tis lovely
+fair weather for the sea. Our Dutch skippers are not shipwrecked like
+these bungling Italians."
+
+When he returned home there sat his old landlady with her eyes
+sparkling.
+
+"You are in luck, my young master," said she. "All the fish run to your
+net this day methinks. See what a lacquey hath brought to our house!
+This bill and this bag."
+
+Gerard broke the seals, and found it full of silver crowns. The letter
+contained a mere slip of paper with this line, cut out of some MS.--"La
+lingua non ha osso, ma fa rompere il dosso."
+
+"Fear me not!" said Gerard, aloud. "I'll keep mine between my teeth."
+
+"What is that?"
+
+"Oh, nothing. Am I not happy, dame? I am going back to my sweetheart
+with money in one pocket, and land in the other." And he fell to dancing
+around her.
+
+"Well," said she, "I trow nothing could make you happier."
+
+"Nothing, except to be there."
+
+"Well, that is a pity, for I thought to make you a little happier with a
+letter from Holland."
+
+"A letter? for me? where? how? who brought it? Oh, dame!"
+
+"A stranger; a painter, with a reddish face and an outlandish name;
+Anselmin, I trow."
+
+"Hans Memling? a friend of mine. God bless him!"
+
+"Ay, that is it; Anselmin. He could scarce speak a word, but a had the
+wit to name thee: and a puts the letter down, and a nods and smiles, and
+I nods and smiles, and gives him a pint o'wine, and it went down him
+like a spoonful."
+
+"That is Hans, honest Hans. Oh, dame, I am in luck to-day: but I deserve
+it. For, I care not if I tell you, I have just overcome a great
+temptation for dear Margaret's sake."
+
+"Who is she?"
+
+"Nay, I'd have my tongue cut out sooner than betray her, but oh it _was_
+a temptation. Gratitude pushing me wrong, Beauty almost divine pulling
+me wrong: curses, reproaches, and, hardest of all to resist, gentle
+tears from eyes used to command. Sure some saint helped me; Anthony
+belike. But my reward is come."
+
+"Ay, is it, lad; and no farther off than my pocket. Come out, Gerard's
+reward," and she brought a letter out of her capacious pocket.
+
+Gerard threw his arm around her neck and hugged her. "My best friend,"
+said he, "my second mother, I'll read it to you."
+
+"Ay, do, do."
+
+"Alas! it is not from Margaret. This is not her hand." And he turned it
+about.
+
+"Alack; but may be her bill is within. The lasses are aye for gliding in
+their bills under cover of another hand."
+
+"True. Whose hand is this? sure I have seen it. I trow 'tis my dear
+friend the demoiselle VanEyck. Oh, then Margaret's bill _will_ be
+inside." He tore it open. "Nay, 'tis all in one writing. 'Gerard, my
+well beloved son,' (she never called me that before that I mind) 'this
+letter brings thee heavy news from one would liever send thee joyful
+tidings. Know that Margaret Brandt died in these arms on Thursday
+sennight last.' (What does the doting old woman mean by that?) 'The last
+word on her lips was "Gerard:" she said "Tell him I prayed for him at my
+last hour: and bid him pray for me." She died very comfortable, and I
+saw her laid in the earth, for her father was useless, as you shall
+know. So no more at present from her that is with sorrowing heart thy
+loving friend and servant,
+
+    'MARGARET VANEYCK.'
+
+"Ay, that is her signature sure enough. Now what d'ye think of that,
+dame?" cried Gerard, with a grating laugh. "There is a pretty letter to
+send to a poor fellow so far from home. But it is Reicht Heynes I blame
+for humouring the old woman and letting her do it; as for the old woman
+herself, she dotes, she has lost her head, she is fourscore. Oh, my
+heart, I'm choking. For all that she ought to be locked up, or her hands
+tied. Say this had come to a fool; say I was idiot enough to believe
+this; know ye what I should do? run to the top of the highest church
+tower in Rome and fling myself off it, cursing Heaven. Woman! woman!
+what are you doing?" And he seized her rudely by the shoulder. "What are
+ye weeping for?" he cried in a voice all unlike his own, and loud and
+hoarse as a raven. "Would ye scald me to death with your tears? She
+believes it. She believes it. Ah! ah! ah! ah! ah! ah!--Then there is no
+God."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The poor woman sighed and rocked herself. "And must I be the one to
+bring it thee all smiling and smirking? I could kill myself for't. Death
+spares none," she sobbed. "Death spares none."
+
+Gerard staggered against the window sill. "But He is master of death,"
+he groaned. "Or they have taught me a lie. I begin to fear there is no
+God, and the saints are but dead bones, and hell is master of the world.
+My pretty Margaret; my sweet, my loving Margaret. The best daughter, the
+truest lover! the pride of Holland! the darling of the world! It is a
+lie. Where is this caitiff Hans? I'll hunt him round the town. I'll cram
+his murdering falsehood down his throat."
+
+And he seized his hat and ran furiously about the streets for hours.
+
+Towards sunset he came back white as a ghost. He had not found Memling:
+but his poor mind had had time to realize the woman's simple words, that
+Death spares none.
+
+He crept into the house bent, and feeble as an old man, and refused all
+food. Nor would he speak, but sat, white, with great staring eyes,
+muttering at intervals "there is no God."
+
+Alarmed both on his account and on her own (for he looked a desperate
+maniac), his landlady ran for her aunt.
+
+The good dame came, and the two women, braver together, sat one on each
+side of him, and tried to soothe him with kind and consoling voices. But
+he heeded them no more than the chairs they sat on. Then the younger
+held a crucifix out before him, to aid her. "Maria, mother of heaven,
+comfort him," they sighed. But he sat glaring, deaf to all external
+sounds.
+
+Presently, without any warning, he jumped up, struck the crucifix rudely
+out of his way with a curse and made a headlong dash at the door. The
+poor women shrieked. But, ere he reached the door, something seemed to
+them to draw him up straight by his hair, and twirl him round like a
+top. He whirled twice around with arms extended; then fell like a dead
+log upon the floor, with blood trickling from his nostrils and ears.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER LXIV
+
+
+GERARD returned to consciousness and to despair.
+
+On the second day he was raving with fever on the brain. On a table hard
+by lay his rich auburn hair, long as a woman's.
+
+The deadlier symptoms succeeded one another rapidly.
+
+On the fifth day his leech retired and gave him up.
+
+On the sunset of that same day he fell into a deep sleep.
+
+Some said he would wake only to die.
+
+But an old gossip, whose opinion carried weight (she had been a
+professional nurse), declared that his youth might save him yet could he
+sleep twelve hours.
+
+On this his old landlady cleared the room and watched him alone. She
+vowed a wax candle to the Virgin for every hour he should sleep.
+
+He slept twelve hours.
+
+The good soul rejoiced, and thanked the Virgin on her knees.
+
+He slept twenty-four hours.
+
+His kind nurse began to doubt. At the thirtieth hour she sent for the
+woman of art. "Thirty hours! shall we wake him?"
+
+The other inspected him closely for some time.
+
+"His breath is even, his hand moist. I know there be learned leeches
+would wake him, to look at his tongue, and be none the wiser; but we
+that be women should have the sense to let bon Nature alone. When did
+sleep ever harm the racked brain or the torn heart?"
+
+When he had been forty-eight hours asleep, it got wind, and they had
+much ado to keep the curious out. But they admitted only Fra Colonna and
+his friend the gigantic Fra Jerome.
+
+These two relieved the women, and sat silent; the former eyeing his
+young friend with tears in his eyes, the latter with beads in his hand
+looked as calmly on him, as he had on the sea when Gerard and he
+encountered it hand to hand.
+
+At last, I think it was about the sixtieth hour of this strange sleep,
+the landlady touched Fra Colonna with her elbow. He looked. Gerard had
+opened his eyes as gently as if he had been but dozing.
+
+He stared.
+
+He drew himself up a little in bed.
+
+He put his hand to his head, and found his hair was gone.
+
+He noticed his friend Colonna, and smiled with pleasure. But in the
+middle of smiling his face stopped, and was convulsed in a moment with
+anguish unspeakable, and he uttered a loud cry, and turned his face to
+the wall.
+
+His good landlady wept at this. She had known what it is to awake
+bereaved.
+
+Fra Jerome recited canticles, and prayers from his breviary.
+
+Gerard rolled himself in the bed-clothes.
+
+Fra Colonna went to him, and, whimpering, reminded him that all was not
+lost. The divine muses were immortal. He must transfer his affection to
+them; they would never betray him nor fail him like creatures of clay.
+The good, simple father then hurried away; for he was overcome by his
+emotion.
+
+Fra Jerome remained behind. "Young man," said he, "the Muses exist but
+in the brains of pagans and visionaries. The Church alone gives repose
+to the heart on earth, and happiness to the soul hereafter. Hath earth
+deceived thee, hath passion broken thy heart after tearing it, the
+Church opens her arms: consecrate thy gifts to her! The Church is peace
+of mind."
+
+He spoke these words solemnly at the door, and was gone as soon as they
+were uttered.
+
+"The Church!" cried Gerard, rising furiously and shaking his fist after
+the friar. "Malediction on the Church! But for the Church I should not
+lie broken here, and she lie cold, cold, cold, in Holland. O my
+Margaret! O my darling! my darling! And I must run from thee the few
+months thou hadst to live. Cruel! cruel! The monsters, they let her die.
+Death comes not without some signs. These the blind, selfish wretches
+saw not, or recked not; but I had seen them, I that love her. Oh, had I
+been there, I had saved her, I had saved her. Idiot! idiot! to leave her
+for a moment."
+
+He wept bitterly a long time.
+
+Then, suddenly bursting into rage again, he cried vehemently, "The
+Church! for whose sake I was driven from her; my malison be on the
+Church! and the hypocrites that name it to my broken heart. Accursed be
+the world! Ghysbrecht lives; Margaret dies. Thieves, murderers, harlots,
+live for ever. Only angels die. Curse life! Curse death! and whosoever
+made them what they are!"
+
+The friar did not hear these mad and wicked words; but only the yell of
+rage with which they were flung after him.
+
+It was as well. For, if he had heard them, he would have had his late
+shipmate burned in the forum with as little hesitation as he would have
+roasted a kid.
+
+His old landlady, who had accompanied Fra Colonna down the stair, heard
+the raised voice, and returned in some anxiety.
+
+She found Gerard putting on his clothes, and crying.
+
+She remonstrated.
+
+"What avails my lying here?" said he gloomily. "Can I find here that
+which I seek?"
+
+"Saints preserve us! Is he distraught again? What seek ye?"
+
+"Oblivion."
+
+"Oblivion, my little heart? Oh, but y' are young to talk so."
+
+"Young or old, what else have I to live for?"
+
+He put on his best clothes.
+
+The good dame remonstrated. "My pretty Gerard, know that it is Tuesday,
+not Sunday."
+
+"Oh, Tuesday is it? I thought it had been Saturday."
+
+"Nay, thou has slept long. Thou never wearest thy brave clothes on
+working days. Consider."
+
+"What I did, when she lived, I did. Now I shall do whatever erst I did
+not. The past is the past. There lies my hair, and with it my way of
+life. I have served one Master as well as I could. You see my reward.
+Now I'll serve another, and give him a fair trial too."
+
+"Alas!" sighed the woman, turning pale, "what mean these dark words? and
+what new master is this whose service thou wouldst try?"
+
+"SATAN."
+
+And with this horrible declaration on his lips the miserable creature
+walked out with his cap and feather set jauntily on one side, and feeble
+limbs, and a sinister face pale as ashes, and all drawn down as if by
+age.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER LXV
+
+
+A DARK cloud fell on a noble mind.
+
+His pure and unrivalled love for Margaret had been his polar star. It
+was quenched, and he drifted on the gloomy sea of no hope.
+
+Nor was he a prey to despair alone, but to exasperation at all his
+self-denial, fortitude, perils, virtue, wasted and worse than wasted;
+for it kept burning and stinging him, that, had he stayed lazily,
+selfishly, at home, he should have saved his Margaret's life.
+
+These two poisons, raging together in his young blood, maddened and
+demoralized him. He rushed fiercely into pleasure. And in those days,
+even more than now, pleasure was vice.
+
+Wine, women, gambling, whatever could procure him an hour's excitement
+and a moment's oblivion. He plunged into these things, as men tired of
+life have rushed among the enemy's bullets.
+
+The large sums he had put by for Margaret gave him ample means for
+debauchery, and he was soon the leader of those loose companions he had
+hitherto kept at a distance.
+
+His heart deteriorated along with his morals.
+
+He sulked with his old landlady for thrusting gentle advice and warning
+on him; and finally removed to another part of the town, to be clear of
+remonstrance, and reminiscences. When he had carried this game on some
+time, his hand became less steady, and he could no longer write to
+satisfy himself. Moreover his patience declined as the habits of
+pleasure grew on him. So he gave up that art, and took likenesses in
+colours.
+
+But this he neglected whenever the idle rakes, his companions, came for
+him.
+
+And so he dived in foul waters, seeking that sorry oyster-shell,
+Oblivion.
+
+It is not my business to paint at full length the scenes of coarse vice,
+in which this unhappy young man now played a part. But it is my business
+to impress the broad truth, that he was a rake, a debauchee, and a
+drunkard, and one of the wildest, loosest, and wickedest young men in
+Rome.
+
+They are no lovers of truth, nor of mankind, who conceal or slur the
+wickedness of the good, and so by their want of candour rob despondent
+sinners of hope.
+
+Enough, the man was not born to do things by halves. And he was not
+vicious by halves.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+His humble female friends often gossiped about him. His old landlady
+told Teresa he was going to the bad, and prayed her to try and find out
+where he was.
+
+Teresa told her husband Lodovico his sad story, and bade him look about
+and see if he could discover the young man's present abode. "Shouldst
+remember his face, Lodovico mio?"
+
+"Teresa, a man in my way of life never forgets a face, least of all a
+benefactor's. But thou knowest I seldom go abroad by daylight."
+
+Teresa sighed. "And how long is it to be so, Lodovico?"
+
+"Till some cavalier passes his sword through me. They will not let a
+poor fellow like me take to any honest trade."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Pietro Vanucci was one of those who bear prosperity worse than
+adversity.
+
+Having been ignominiously ejected for late hours by their old landlady,
+and meeting Gerard in the street, he greeted him warmly and soon after
+took up his quarters in the same house.
+
+He brought with him a lad called Andrea, who ground his colours, and was
+his pupil, and also his model, being a youth of rare beauty, and as
+sharp as a needle.
+
+Pietro had not quite forgotten old times, and professed a warm
+friendship for Gerard.
+
+Gerard, in whom all warmth of sentiment seemed extinct, submitted coldly
+to the other's friendship.
+
+And a fine acquaintance it was. This Pietro was not only a libertine,
+but half a misanthrope, and an open infidel.
+
+And so they ran in couples, with mighty little in common. O rare
+phenomenon!
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+One day, when Gerard had undermined his health, and taken the bloom off
+his beauty, and run through most of his money, Vanucci got up a gay
+party to mount the Tiber in a boat drawn by buffaloes. Lorenzo de'
+Medici had imported these creatures into Florence about three years
+before. But they were new in Rome, and nothing would content this beggar
+on horseback, Vanucci, but being drawn by the brutes up the Tiber.
+
+Each libertine was to bring a lady; and she must be handsome, or he be
+fined. But the one, that should contribute the loveliest, was to be
+crowned with laurel, and voted a public benefactor. Such was their
+reading of "Vir bonus est quis?" They got a splendid galley, and twelve
+buffaloes. And all the libertines and their female accomplices assembled
+by degrees at the place of embarkation. But no Gerard.
+
+They waited for him some time, at first patiently, then impatiently.
+
+Vanucci excused him. "I heard him say he had forgotten to provide
+himself with a fardingale. Comrades, the good lad is hunting for a
+beauty fit to take rank among these peerless dames. Consider the
+difficulty, ladies, and be patient!"
+
+At last Gerard was seen at some distance with a female in his hand.
+
+"She is long enough," said one of her sex; criticizing her from afar.
+
+"Gemini! what step she takes," said another; "Oh! it is wise to hurry
+into good company," was Pietro's excuse.
+
+But when the pair came up, satire was choked.
+
+Gerard's companion was a peerless beauty; she extinguished the
+boat-load, as stars the rising sun. Tall, but not too tall; and straight
+as a dart, yet supple as a young panther. Her face a perfect oval, her
+forehead white, her cheeks a rich olive with the eloquent blood mantling
+below; and her glorious eyes fringed with long thick silken eyelashes,
+that seemed made to sweep up sensitive hearts by the half-dozen. Saucy
+red lips, and teeth of the whitest ivory.
+
+The women were visibly depressed by this wretched sight; the men in
+ecstasies; they received her with loud shouts and waving of caps, and
+one enthusiast even went down on his knees upon the boat's gunwale, and
+hailed her of origin divine. But his chere amie pulling his hair for
+it--and the goddess giving him a little kick--cotemporaneously, he lay
+supine: and the peerless creature frisked over his body without deigning
+him a look, and took her seat at the prow. Pietro Vanucci sat in a sort
+of collapse, glaring at her, and gaping with his mouth open like a dying
+cod-fish.
+
+The drover spoke to the buffaloes, the ropes tightened, and they moved
+up stream.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+"What think ye of this new beef, mesdames?"
+
+"We ne'er saw monsters so vilely ill-favoured; with their nasty horns
+that make one afeard, and their foul nostrils cast up into the air.
+Holes be they; not nostrils."
+
+"Signorina, the beeves are a present from Florence the beautiful. Would
+ye look a gift beef i' the nose?"
+
+"They are so dull," objected a lively lady. "I went up Tiber twice as
+fast last time with but five mules and an ass."
+
+"Nay, that is soon mended," cried a gallant, and jumping ashore he drew
+his sword, and despite the remonstrances of the drivers, went down the
+dozen buffaloes goading them.
+
+They snorted and whisked their tails and went no faster, at which the
+boat-load laughed loud and long; finally he goaded a patriarch bull, who
+turned instantly on the sword, sent his long horns clean through the
+spark, and with a furious jerk of his prodigious neck sent him flying
+over his head into the air. He described a bold parabola and fell
+sitting, and unconsciously waving his glittering blade, into the yellow
+Tiber. The laughing ladies screamed and wrung their hands, all but
+Gerard's fair. She uttered something very like an oath, and seizing the
+helm steered the boat out, and the gallant came up sputtering, gripped
+the gunwale, and was drawn in dripping.
+
+He glared round him confusedly. "I understand not that," said he a
+little peevishly; puzzled, and therefore it would seem, discontented. At
+which, finding he was by some strange accident not slain, his doublet
+being perforated, instead of his body, they began to laugh again louder
+than ever.
+
+"What are ye cackling at?" remonstrated the spark. "I desire to know how
+'tis that one moment a gentleman is out yonder a pricking of African
+beef, and the next moment--"
+
+_Gerard's lady._] "Disporting in his native stream."
+
+"Tell him not, a soul of ye," cried Vanucci. "Let him find out 's own
+riddle."
+
+"Confound ye all. I might puzzle my brains till doomsday, I should ne'er
+find it out. Also, where is my sword?"
+
+_Gerard's lady._] "Ask Tiber! Your best way, signor, will be to do it
+over again: and, in a word, keep pricking of Afric's beef, till your
+mind receives light. So shall you comprehend the matter by degrees as
+lawyers mount heaven, and buffaloes Tiber."
+
+Here a chevalier remarked that the last speaker transcended the sons of
+Adam as much in wit as she did the daughters of Eve in beauty.
+
+At which, and indeed at all their compliments, the conduct of Pietro
+Vanucci was peculiar. That signor had left off staring, and gaping
+bewildered: and now sat coiled up snakelike, on a bench, his mouth
+muffled, and two bright eyes fixed on the lady, and twinkling and
+scintillating most comically.
+
+He did not appear to interest or amuse her in return. Her glorious eyes
+and eyelashes swept him calmly at times, but scarce distinguished him
+from the benches and things.
+
+Presently the unanimity of the party suffered a momentary check.
+
+[Illustration: "AHA! LADIES," SAID SHE, "HERE IS A RIVAL AN YE WILL"]
+
+Mortified by the attention the cavaliers paid to Gerard's companion, the
+ladies began to pick her to pieces sotto voce, and audibly.
+
+The lovely girl then showed that, if rich in beauty, she was poor in
+feminine tact. Instead of revenging herself like a true woman through
+the men, she permitted herself to overhear, and openly retaliate on her
+detractors.
+
+"There is not one of you that wears Nature's colours," said she. "Look
+here," and she pointed rudely in one's face. "This is the beauty that is
+to be bought in every shop. Here is cerussa, here is stibium, and here
+purpurissum. Oh I know the articles: bless you, I use them every
+day--but not on my face, no thank you."
+
+Here Vanucci's eyes twinkled themselves nearly out of sight.
+
+"Why your lips are coloured, and the very veins in your forehead: not a
+charm but would come off with a wet towel. And look at your great coarse
+black hair like a horse's tail, drugged and stained to look like tow.
+And then your bodies are as false as your heads and your cheeks, and
+your hearts I trow. Look at your padded bosoms, and your wooden heeled
+chopines to raise your little stunted limbs up and deceive the world.
+Skinny dwarfs ye are, cushioned and stiltified into great fat giants.
+Aha, mesdames, well is it said of you, grande--di legni: grosse--di
+straci: rosse--di bettito: bianche--di calcina."
+
+This drew out a rejoinder. "Avaunt, vulgar toad, telling the men
+everything. Your coarse, ruddy cheeks are your own, and your little
+handful of African hair. But who is padded more? Why you are shaped like
+a fireshovel."
+
+"Ye lie, malapert."
+
+"Oh the well educated young person! Where didst pick her up, Ser
+Gerard?"
+
+"Hold thy peace, Marcia," said Gerard, awakened by the raised trebles
+from a gloomy reverie. "Be not so insolent! The grave shall close over
+thy beauty as it hath over fairer than thee."
+
+"They began," said Marcia petulantly.
+
+"Then be thou the first to leave off."
+
+"At thy request, my friend." She then whispered Gerard, "It was only to
+make you laugh: you are distraught, you are sad. Judge whether I care
+for the quips of these little fools, or the admiration of these big
+fools. Dear Signor Gerard, would I were what they take me for? You
+should not be so sad." Gerard sighed deeply; and shook his head. But,
+touched by the earnest young tones, caressed the jet black locks, much
+as one strokes the head of an affectionate dog.
+
+At this moment a galley drifting slowly down stream got entangled for an
+instant in their ropes: for, the river turning suddenly, they had shot
+out into the stream: and this galley came between them and the bank. In
+it a lady of great beauty was seated under a canopy with gallants and
+dependents standing behind her.
+
+Gerard looked up at the interruption. It was the princess Claelia.
+
+He coloured and withdrew his hand from Marcia's head.
+
+Marcia was all admiration. "Aha! ladies," said she, "here is a rival an'
+ye will. Those cheeks were coloured by Nature--like mine."
+
+"Peace, child! peace!" said Gerard. "Make not too free with the great."
+
+"Why, she heard me not. Oh, Ser Gerard, what a lovely creature!"
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Two of the females had been for some time past putting their heads
+together and casting glances at Marcia.
+
+One of them now addressed her.
+
+"Signorina, do you love almonds?"
+
+The speaker had a lapful of them.
+
+"Yes, I love them; when I can get them," said Marcia, pettishly, and
+eyeing the fruit with ill-concealed desire; "but yours is not the hand
+to give me any, I trow."
+
+"You are much mistook," said the other. "Here, catch!"
+
+And suddenly threw a double handful into Marcia's lap.
+
+Marcia brought her knees together by an irresistible instinct.
+
+"Aha! you are caught, my lad," cried she of the nuts. "'Tis a man; or a
+boy. A woman still parteth her knees to catch the nuts the surer in her
+apron; but a man closeth his for fear they shall fall between his hose.
+Confess now, didst never wear fardingale ere to-day."
+
+"Give me another handful, sweetheart, and I'll tell thee."
+
+"There! I said he was too handsome for a woman."
+
+"Ser Gerard, they have found me out," observed the Epicaene, calmly
+cracking an almond.
+
+The libertines vowed it was impossible, and all glared at the goddess
+like a battery. But Vanucci struck in, and reminded the gaping gazers of
+a recent controversy, in which they had, with an unanimity not often
+found among dunces, laughed Gerard and him to scorn, for saying that men
+were as beautiful as women in a true artist's eye.
+
+"Where are ye now? This is my boy Andrea. And you have all been down on
+your knees to him. Ha! ha! But oh, my little ladies, when he lectured
+you and flung your stibium, your cerussa, and your purpurissum back in
+your faces, 'tis then I was like to burst; a grinds my colours. Ha! ha!
+he! he! he! ho!"
+
+"The little impostor! Duck him!"
+
+"What for, signors?" cried Andrea, in dismay, and lost his rich
+carnation.
+
+But the females collected round him, and vowed nobody should harm a hair
+of his head.
+
+"The dear child! How well his pretty little saucy ways become him."
+
+"Oh, what eyes! and teeth!"
+
+"And what eyebrows and hair!"
+
+"And what lashes!"
+
+"And what a nose!"
+
+"The sweetest little ear in the world!"
+
+"And what health! Touch but his cheek with a pin the blood should
+squirt."
+
+"Who would be so cruel?"
+
+"He is a rosebud washed in dew."
+
+And they revenged themselves for their beaux' admiration of her by
+lavishing all their tenderness on him.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+But one there was who was still among these butterflies but no longer of
+them.
+
+The sight of the Princess Claelia had torn open his wound.
+
+Scarce three months ago he had declined the love of that peerless
+creature; a love illicit and insane; but at least refined. How much
+lower had he fallen now.
+
+How happy he must have been, when the blandishments of Claelia, that
+might have melted an anchorite, could not tempt him from the path of
+loyalty!
+
+Now what was he? He had blushed at her seeing him in such company. Yet
+it was his daily company.
+
+He hung over the boat in moody silence.
+
+And from that hour another phase of his misery began; and grew upon him.
+
+Some wretched fools try to drown care in drink.
+
+The fumes of intoxication vanish; the inevitable care remains, and must
+be faced at last--with an aching head, a disordered stomach, and spirits
+artificially depressed.
+
+Gerard's conduct had been of a piece with these maniacs'. To survive his
+terrible blow he needed all his forces; his virtue, his health, his
+habits of labour, and the calm sleep that is labour's satellite; above
+all, his piety.
+
+Yet all these balms to wounded hearts he flung away, and trusted to
+moral intoxication.
+
+Its brief fumes fled; the bereaved heart lay still heavy as lead within
+his bosom; but now the dark vulture Remorse sat upon it rending it.
+
+Broken health; means wasted; innocence fled; Margaret parted from him by
+another gulf wider than the grave!
+
+The hot fit of despair passed away.
+
+The cold fit of despair came on.
+
+Then this miserable young man spurned his gay companions, and all the
+world.
+
+He wandered alone. He drank wine alone to stupefy himself; and paralyze
+a moment the dark foes to man that preyed upon his soul. He wandered
+alone amidst the temples of old Rome, and lay stony-eyed, woe-begone,
+among their ruins, worse wrecked than they.
+
+Last of all came the climax, to which solitude, that gloomy yet
+fascinating foe of minds diseased, pushes the hopeless.
+
+He wandered alone at night by dark streams, and eyed them, and eyed
+them, with decreasing repugnance. There glided peace; perhaps
+annihilation.
+
+What else was left him?
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+These dark spells have been broken by kind words, by loving and cheerful
+voices.
+
+The humblest friend the afflicted one possesses may speak, or look, or
+smile, a sunbeam between him and that worst madness Gerard now brooded.
+
+Where was Teresa? Where his hearty, kind, old landlady?
+
+They would see with their homely but swift intelligence; they would see
+and save.
+
+No: they knew not where he was, or whither he was gliding.
+
+And is there no mortal eye upon the poor wretch, and the dark road he is
+going?
+
+Yes: one eye there is upon him; watching his every movement; following
+him abroad; tracking him home.
+
+And that eye is the eye of an enemy.
+
+An enemy to the death.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER LXVI
+
+
+IN an apartment richly furnished, the floor covered with striped and
+spotted skins of animals, a lady sat with her arms extended before her,
+and her hands half clenched. The agitation of her face corresponded with
+this attitude: she was pale and red by turns; and her foot restless.
+
+Presently the curtain was drawn by a domestic.
+
+The lady's brow flushed.
+
+The maid said, in an awe-struck whisper, "Altezza, the man is here."
+
+The lady bade her admit him, and snatched up a little black mask and put
+it on; and in a moment her colour was gone, and the contrast between her
+black mask and her marble cheeks was strange and fearful.
+
+A man entered bowing and scraping. It was such a figure as crowds seem
+made of; short hair, roundish head, plain, but decent clothes; features
+neither comely nor forbidding. Nothing to remark in him but a singularly
+restless eye.
+
+After a profusion of bows he stood opposite the lady, and awaited her
+pleasure.
+
+"They have told you for what you are wanted."
+
+"Yes, signora."
+
+"Did those who spoke to you agree as to what you are to receive?"
+
+"Yes, signora. 'Tis the full price; and purchases the greater vendetta:
+unless of your benevolence you choose to content yourself with the
+lesser."
+
+"I understand you not," said the lady.
+
+"Ah; this is the signora's first. The lesser vendetta, lady, is the
+death of the body only. We watch our man come out of a church; or take
+him in an innocent hour; and so deal with him. In the greater vendetta
+we watch him, and catch him hot from some unrepented sin, and so slay
+his soul as well as his body. But this vendetta is not so run upon now
+as it was a few years ago."
+
+"Man, silence me his tongue, and let his treasonable heart beat no more.
+But his soul I have no feud with."
+
+"So be it, signora. He who spoke to me knew not the man, nor his name,
+nor his abode. From whom shall I learn these?"
+
+"From myself."
+
+At this the man, with the first symptoms of anxiety he had shown,
+entreated her to be cautious, and particular in this part of the
+business.
+
+"Fear me not," said she. "Listen. It is a young man, tall of stature,
+and auburn hair, and dark-blue eyes, and an honest face, would deceive a
+saint. He lives in the Via Claudia, at the corner house; the glover's.
+In that house there lodge but three males: he, and a painter short of
+stature and dark visaged, and a young, slim boy. He that hath betrayed
+me is a stranger, fair; and taller than thou art."
+
+The bravo listened with all his ears. "It is enough," said he. "Stay,
+signora, haunteth he any secret place where I may deal with him?"
+
+"My spy doth report me he hath of late frequented the banks of Tiber
+after dusk; doubtless to meet his light o' love, who calls me her rival;
+even there slay him! and let my rival come and find him; the smooth,
+heartless, insolent traitor."
+
+"Be calm, signora. He will betray no more ladies."
+
+"I know not that. He weareth a sword, and can use it. He is young and
+resolute."
+
+"Neither will avail him."
+
+"Are ye so sure of your hand? What are your weapons?"
+
+The bravo showed her a steel gauntlet. "We strike with such force we
+needs must guard our hand. This is our mallet." He then undid his
+doublet, and gave her a glimpse of a coat of mail beneath, and finally
+laid his glittering stiletto on the table with a flourish.
+
+The lady shuddered at first, but presently took it up in her white hand
+and tried its point against her finger.
+
+"Beware, madam," said the bravo.
+
+"What, is it poisoned?"
+
+"Saints forbid! We steal no lives. We take them with steel point, not
+drugs. But 'tis newly ground, and I feared for the signora's white
+skin."
+
+"His skin is as white as mine," said she, with a sudden gleam of pity.
+It lasted but a moment. "But his heart is black as soot. Say, do I not
+well to remove a traitor that slanders me?"
+
+"The signora will settle that with her confessor. I am but a tool in
+noble hands; like my stiletto."
+
+The princess appeared not to hear the speaker. "Oh, how I could have
+loved him; to the death; as now I hate him. Fool! he will learn to
+trifle with princes; to spurn them and fawn on them and prefer the scum
+of the town to them, and make them a by-word." She looked up; "why
+loiter'st thou here? haste thee, revenge me."
+
+"It is customary to pay half the price beforehand, signora."
+
+"Ah I forgot; thy revenge is bought. Here is more than half," and she
+pushed a bag across the table to him. "When the blow is struck, come for
+the rest."
+
+"You will soon see me again, signora."
+
+And he retired bowing and scraping.
+
+The princess, burning with jealousy, mortified pride, and dread of
+exposure (for till she knew Gerard no public stain had fallen on her),
+sat where he left her, masked, with her arms straight out before her,
+and the nails of her clenched hand nipping the table.
+
+So sat the fabled sphynx: so sits a tigress.
+
+Yet there crept a chill upon her now that the assassin was gone. And
+moody misgivings heaved within her, precursors of vain remorse. Gerard
+and Margaret were before their age. This was your true mediaeval. Proud,
+amorous, vindictive, generous, foolish, cunning, impulsive,
+unprincipled: and ignorant as dirt.
+
+Power is the curse of such a creature.
+
+Forced to do her own crimes, the weakness of her nerves would have
+balanced the violence of her passions, and her bark been worse than her
+bite. But power gives a feeble, furious, woman, male instruments. And
+the effect is as terrible as the combination is unnatural.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+In this instance it whetted an assassin's dagger for a poor forlorn
+wretch just meditating suicide.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER LXVII
+
+
+IT happened, two days after the scene I have endeavoured to describe,
+that Gerard, wandering through one of the meanest streets of Rome, was
+overtaken by a thunderstorm, and entered a low hostelry. He called for
+wine, and, the rain continuing, soon drank himself into a half-stupid
+condition, and dozed with his head on his hands and his hands upon the
+table.
+
+In course of time the room began to fill and the noise of the rude
+guests to wake him.
+
+Then it was he became conscious of two figures near him conversing in a
+low voice.
+
+One was a pardoner. The other by his dress, clean but modest, might have
+passed for a decent tradesman: but the way he had slouched his hat over
+his brows so as to hide all his face except his beard, showed he was one
+of those who shun the eye of honest men, and of the law. The pair were
+driving a bargain in the sin market. And by an arrangement not uncommon
+at that date, the crime to be forgiven was yet to be committed--under
+the celestial contract.
+
+He of the slouched hat was complaining of the price pardons had reached.
+"If they go up any higher we poor fellows shall be shut out of heaven
+altogether."
+
+The pardoner denied the charge flatly. "Indulgences were never cheaper
+to good husbandmen."
+
+The other inquired "Who were they?"
+
+"Why such as sin by the market, like reasonable creatures. But if your
+will be so perverse as go and pick out a crime the Pope hath set his
+face against, blame yourself, not me?"
+
+Then, to prove that crime of one sort or another was within the means of
+all, but the very scum of society, he read out the scale from a written
+parchment.
+
+It was a curious list: but not one that could be printed in this book.
+And to mutilate it would be to misrepresent it. It is to be found in any
+great library. Suffice it to say, that murder of a layman was much
+cheaper than many crimes my lay readers would deem light by comparison.
+
+This told; and by a little trifling concession on each side, the bargain
+was closed, the money handed over, and the aspirant to heaven's favour
+forgiven beforehand for removing 1 layman. The price for disposing of a
+clerk bore no proportion.
+
+The word assassination was never once uttered by either merchant.
+
+All this buzzed in Gerard's ear. But he never lifted his head from the
+table; only listened stupidly.
+
+However, when the parties rose and separated, he half raised his head
+and eyed with a scowl the retiring figure of the purchaser.
+
+"If Margaret was alive," muttered he, "I'd take thee by the throat and
+throttle thee, thou cowardly stabber. But she is dead; dead; dead. Die
+all the world; 'tis nought to me: so that I die among the first."
+
+When he got home there was a man in a slouched hat walking briskly to
+and fro on the opposite side of the way.
+
+"Why there is that cur again," thought Gerard.
+
+But in his state of mind, the circumstance made no impression whatever
+on him.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER LXVIII
+
+
+TWO nights after this Pietro Vanucci and Andrea sat waiting supper for
+Gerard.
+
+The former grew peevish. It was past nine o'clock. At last he sent
+Andrea to Gerard's room on the desperate chance of his having come in
+unobserved. Andrea shrugged his shoulders and went.
+
+He returned without Gerard, but with a slip of paper. Andrea could not
+read, as scholars in his day and charity boys in ours understand the
+art; but he had a quick eye, and had learned how the words Pietro
+Vanucci looked on paper.
+
+"That is for you, I trow," said he, proud of his intelligence.
+
+Pietro snatched it, and read it to Andrea, with his satirical comments.
+
+"'Dear Pietro, dear Andrea, life is too great a burden.'
+
+"_So 'tis, my lad; but that is no reason for being abroad at
+supper-time. Supper is not a burden._
+
+"'Wear my habits!'
+
+"_Said the poplar to the juniper bush._
+
+"'And thou, Andrea, mine amethyst ring; and me in both your hearts, a
+month or two.'
+
+"_Why, Andrea?_
+
+"'For my body, ere this ye read, it will lie in Tiber. Trouble not to
+look for it. 'Tis not worth the pains. Oh unhappy day that it was born;
+oh happy night that rids me of it.
+
+                                       "'Adieu! adieu!
+                                         "'The broken-hearted Gerard.'
+
+"Here is a sorry jest of the peevish rogue," said Pietro. But his pale
+cheek and chattering teeth belied his words. Andrea filled the house
+with his cries.
+
+"Oh, miserable day! O, calamity of calamities! Gerard, my friend, my
+sweet patron! Help! help! He is killing himself! Oh, good people, help
+me save him!" And after alarming all the house he ran into the street,
+bareheaded, imploring all good Christians to help him save his friend.
+
+A number of persons soon collected.
+
+But poor Andrea could not animate their sluggishness. Go down to the
+river? No. It was not their business. What part of the river? It was a
+wild goose chase.
+
+It was not lucky to go down to the river after sunset. Too many ghosts
+walked those banks all night.
+
+A lacquey, however, who had been standing some time opposite the house,
+said he would go with Andrea; and this turned three or four of the
+younger ones.
+
+The little band took the way to the river.
+
+The lacquey questioned Andrea.
+
+Andrea, sobbing, told him about the letter, and Gerard's moody ways of
+late.
+
+That lacquey was a spy of the Princess Claelia.
+
+Their Italian tongues went fast till they neared the Tiber.
+
+But the moment they felt the air from the river, and the smell of the
+stream in the calm spring night, they were dead silent.
+
+The moon shone calm and clear in a cloudless sky. Their feet sounded
+loud and ominous. Their tongues were hushed.
+
+Presently hurrying round a corner they met a man. He stopped irresolute
+at sight of them.
+
+The man was bareheaded, and his dripping hair glistened in the
+moonlight: and at the next step they saw his clothes were drenched with
+water.
+
+"Here he is," cried one of the young men, unacquainted with Gerard's
+face and figure.
+
+The stranger turned instantly and fled.
+
+They ran after him might and main, Andrea leading, and the princess's
+lacquey next.
+
+Andrea gained on him: but in a moment he twisted up a narrow alley.
+Andrea shot by, unable to check himself; and the pursuers soon found
+themselves in a labyrinth in which it was vain to pursue a quick-footed
+fugitive who knew every inch of it, and could now only be followed by
+the ear.
+
+They returned to their companions, and found them standing on the spot
+where the man had stood, and utterly confounded. For Pietro had assured
+them that the fugitive had neither the features nor the stature of
+Gerard.
+
+"Are ye verily sure?" said they. "He had been in the river. Why, in the
+saints' names, fled he at our approach?"
+
+Then said Vanucci, "Friends, methinks this has nought to do with him we
+seek. What shall we do, Andrea?"
+
+Here the lacquey put in his word. "Let us track him to the water's side,
+to make sure. See, he hath come dripping all the way."
+
+This advice was approved, and with very little difficulty they tracked
+the man's course.
+
+But soon they encountered a new enigma.
+
+They had gone scarcely fifty yards ere the drops turned away from the
+river, and took them to the gate of a large gloomy building. It was a
+monastery.
+
+They stood irresolute before it, and gazed at the dark pile. It seemed
+to them to hide some horrible mystery.
+
+But presently Andrea gave a shout. "Here be the drops again," cried he.
+"And this road leadeth to the river."
+
+They resumed the chase; and soon it became clear the drops were now
+leading them home. The track became wetter and wetter, and took them to
+the Tiber's edge. And there on the bank a bucketful appeared to have
+been discharged from the stream.
+
+At first they shouted, and thought they had made a discovery; but
+reflection showed them it amounted to nothing. Certainly a man had been
+in the water, and had got out of it in safety: but that man was not
+Gerard. One said he knew a fisherman hard by that had nets and drags.
+They found the fisher and paid him liberally to sink nets in the river
+below the place, and to drag it above and below; and promised him gold
+should he find the body. Then they ran vainly up and down the river,
+which flowed so calm and voiceless, holding this and a thousand more
+strange secrets. Suddenly Andrea, with a cry of hope, ran back to the
+house.
+
+He returned in less than half an hour.
+
+"No," he groaned, and wrung his hands.
+
+"What is the hour?" asked the lacquey.
+
+"Four hours past midnight."
+
+"My pretty lad," said the lacquey, solemnly, "say a mass for thy
+friend's soul: for he is not among living men."
+
+The morning broke. Worn out with fatigue, Andrea and Pietro went home,
+heart sick.
+
+The days rolled on, mute as the Tiber as to Gerard's fate.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER LXIX
+
+
+IT would indeed have been strange if with such barren data as they
+possessed, those men could have read the handwriting on the river's
+bank.
+
+For there on that spot an event had just occurred, which, take it
+altogether, was perhaps without a parallel in the history of mankind,
+and may remain so to the end of time.
+
+But it shall be told in a very few words, partly by me, partly by an
+actor in the scene.
+
+Gerard, then, after writing his brief adieu to Pietro and Andrea, had
+stolen down to the river at nightfall.
+
+He had taken his measures with a dogged resolution not uncommon in those
+who are bent on self-destruction. He filled his pockets with all the
+silver and copper he possessed, that he might sink the surer; and, so
+provided, hurried to a part of the stream that he had seen was little
+frequented.
+
+There are some, especially women, who look about to make sure there is
+somebody at hand.
+
+But this resolute wretch looked about him to make sure there was nobody.
+
+And, to his annoyance, he observed a single figure leaning against the
+corner of an alley. So he affected to stroll carelessly away; but
+returned to the spot.
+
+Lo! the same figure emerged from a side street and loitered about.
+
+"Can he be watching me? Can he know what I am here for?" thought Gerard.
+"Impossible."
+
+He went briskly off, walked along a street or two, made a detour, and
+came back.
+
+The man had vanished. But, lo! on Gerard looking all round, to make
+sure, there he was a few yards behind, apparently fastening his shoe.
+
+Gerard saw he was watched, and at this moment observed in the moonlight
+a steel gauntlet in his sentinel's hand.
+
+Then he knew it was an assassin.
+
+Strange to say, it never occurred to him that his was the life aimed at.
+To be sure he was not aware he had an enemy in the world.
+
+He turned and walked up to the bravo. "My good friend," said he,
+eagerly, "sell me thine arm! a single stroke! See, here is all I have:"
+and he forced his money into the bravo's hands. "Oh, prithee! prithee!
+do one good deed, and rid me of my hateful life!" and even while
+speaking he undid his doublet, and bared his bosom.
+
+The man stared in his face.
+
+"Why do ye hesitate?" shrieked Gerard. "Have ye no bowels? Is it so much
+pains to lift your arm and fall it? Is it because I am poor, and can't
+give ye gold? Useless wretch, canst only strike a man behind; not look
+one in the face. There, then, do but turn thy head and hold thy tongue!"
+
+And with a snarl of contempt he ran from him, and flung himself into the
+water.
+
+"Margaret!"
+
+At the heavy plunge of his body in the stream the bravo seemed to
+recover from a stupor. He ran to the bank, and with a strange cry the
+assassin plunged in after the self-destroyer.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+What followed will be related by the assassin.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER LXX
+
+
+A WOMAN has her own troubles, as a man has his.
+
+And we male writers seldom do more than indicate the griefs of the other
+sex. The intelligence of the female reader must come to our aid, and
+fill up our cold outlines. So have I indicated, rather than described,
+what Margaret Brandt went through up to that eventful day, when she
+entered Eli's house an enemy, read her sweetheart's letter, and remained
+a friend.
+
+And now a woman's greatest trial drew near, and Gerard far away.
+
+She availed herself but little of Eli's sudden favour: for this reserve
+she had always a plausible reason ready; and never hinted at the true
+one, which was this; there were two men in that house at sight of whom
+she shuddered with instinctive antipathy and dread. She had read
+wickedness and hatred in their faces, and mysterious signals of secret
+intelligence. She preferred to receive Catherine and her daughter at
+home. The former went to see her every day, and was wrapped up in the
+expected event.
+
+Catherine was one of those females whose office is to multiply, and rear
+the multiplied: who, when at last they consent to leave off pelting one
+out of every room in the house with babies, hover about the fair
+scourges that are still in full swing, and do so cluck, they seem to
+multiply by proxy. It was in this spirit she entreated Eli to let her
+stay at Rotterdam while he went back to Tergou.
+
+"The poor lass hath not a soul about her, that knows anything about
+anything. What avail a pair o' soldiers? Why that sort o' cattle should
+be putten out o' doors the first, at such an a time."
+
+Need I say that this was a great comfort to Margaret.
+
+Poor soul, she was full of anxiety as the time drew near.
+
+She should die; and Gerard away.
+
+But things balance themselves. Her poverty, and her father's
+helplessness, which had cost her such a struggle, stood her in good
+stead now.
+
+Adversity's iron hand had forced her to battle the lassitude that
+overpowers the rich of her sex, and to be for ever on her feet, working.
+She kept this up to the last by Catherine's advice.
+
+And so it was, that one fine evening just at sunset, she lay weak as
+water, but safe; with a little face by her side, and the heaven of
+maternity opening on her.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+"Why dost weep, sweetheart? All of a sudden?"
+
+"He is not here to see it."
+
+"Ah, well, lass, he will be here ere 'tis weaned. Meantime, God hath
+been as good to thee as to e'er a woman born: and do but bethink thee it
+might have been a girl; didn't my very own Kate threaten me with one:
+and here we have got the bonniest boy in Holland, and a rare heavy one,
+the saints be praised for't."
+
+"Ay, mother, I am but a sorry, ungrateful wretch to weep. If only Gerard
+were here to see it. 'Tis strange; I bore him well enow to be away from
+me in my sorrow; but, oh, it doth seem so hard he should not share my
+joy. Prithee, prithee, come to me, Gerard! dear, dear, Gerard!" And she
+stretched out her feeble arms.
+
+Catherine bustled about, but avoided Margaret's eyes; for she could not
+restrain her own tears at hearing her own absent child thus earnestly
+addressed.
+
+Presently, turning round, she found Margaret looking at her with a
+singular expression. "Heard you nought?"
+
+"No, my lamb. What?"
+
+"I did cry on Gerard, but now."
+
+"Ay, ay, sure I heard that."
+
+"Well, he answered me."
+
+"Tush, girl: say not that."
+
+"Mother, as sure as I lie here, with his boy by my side, his voice came
+back to me, 'Margaret!' So. Yet methought 'twas not his _happy_ voice.
+But that might be the distance. All voices go off sad like at a
+distance. Why art not happy, sweetheart? and I so happy this night?
+Mother, I seem never to have felt a pain or known a care." And her sweet
+eyes turned and gloated on the little face in silence.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+That very night Gerard flung himself into the Tiber. And, that very hour
+she heard him speak her name, he cried aloud in death's jaws and
+despair's.
+
+"Margaret!"
+
+Account for it those who can. I cannot.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER LXXI
+
+
+IN the guest chamber of a Dominican convent lay a single stranger,
+exhausted by successive and violent fits of nausea, which had at last
+subsided, leaving him almost as weak as Margaret lay that night in
+Holland.
+
+A huge wood fire burned on the hearth, and beside it hung the patient's
+clothes.
+
+A gigantic friar sat by his bedside reading pious collects aloud from
+his breviary.
+
+The patient at times eyed him, and seemed to listen: at others closed
+his eyes and moaned.
+
+The monk kneeled down with his face touching the ground and prayed for
+him: then rose and bade him farewell. "Day breaks," said he, "I must
+prepare for matins."
+
+"Good Father Jerome, before you go, how came I hither?"
+
+"By the hand of heaven. You flung away God's gift. He bestowed it on you
+again. Think on it! Hast tried the world, and found its gall. Now try
+the church! The church is peace. Pax vobiscum."
+
+He was gone. Gerard lay back, meditating and wondering, till weak and
+wearied he fell into a doze.
+
+When he awoke again he found a new nurse seated beside him. It was a
+layman, with an eye as small and restless as Friar Jerome's was calm and
+majestic.
+
+The man inquired earnestly how he felt.
+
+"Very, very weak. Where have I seen you before, Messer?"
+
+"None the worse for my gauntlet?" inquired the other with considerable
+anxiety; "I was fain to strike you withal, or both you and I should be
+at the bottom of Tiber."
+
+Gerard stared at him. "What, 'twas you saved me? How?"
+
+"Well, signor, I was by the banks of Tiber on--on--an errand, no matter
+what. You came to me and begged hard for a dagger stroke. But ere I
+could oblige you, ay, even as you spoke to me, I knew you for the signor
+that saved my wife and child upon the sea."
+
+"It _is_ Teresa's husband. And an assassin?!!?"
+
+"At your service. Well, Ser Gerard, the next thing was, you flung
+yourself into Tiber, and bade me hold aloof."
+
+"I remember that."
+
+"Had it been any but you, believe me I had obeyed you, and not wagged a
+finger. Men are my foes. They may all hang on one rope, or drown in one
+river for me. But when thou, sinking in Tiber, didst cry 'Margaret!'"
+
+"Ah!"
+
+"My heart it cried 'Teresa!' How could I go home and look her in the
+face, did I let thee die, and by the very death thou savedst her from?
+So in I went; and luckily for us both I swim like a duck. You, seeing me
+near, and being bent on destruction, tried to grip me, and so end us
+both. But I swam round thee, and (receive my excuses) so buffeted thee
+on the nape of the neck with my steel glove; that thou lost sense, and I
+with much ado, the stream being strong, did draw thy body to land, but
+insensible and full of water. Then I took thee on my back and made for
+my own home. 'Teresa will nurse him, and be pleased with me,' thought I.
+But, hard by this monastery, a holy friar, the biggest e'er I saw, met
+us and asked the matter. So I told him. He looked hard at thee. 'I know
+the face,' quoth he. ''Tis one Gerard, a fair youth from Holland.' 'The
+same,' quo' I. Then said his reverence, 'He hath friends among our
+brethren. Leave him with us! Charity, it is our office.'
+
+"Also he told me they of the convent had better means to tend thee than
+I had. And that was true enow. So I just bargained to be let in to see
+thee once a day, and here thou art."
+
+And the miscreant cast a strange look of affection and interest upon
+Gerard.
+
+Gerard did not respond to it. He felt as if a snake were in the room. He
+closed his eyes.
+
+"Ah thou wouldst sleep," said the miscreant eagerly. "I go."
+
+And he retired on tiptoe with a promise to come every day.
+
+Gerard lay with his eyes closed: not asleep, but deeply pondering.
+
+Saved from death by an assassin!
+
+Was not this the finger of Heaven?
+
+Of that Heaven he had insulted, cursed, and defied.
+
+He shuddered at his blasphemies. He tried to pray.
+
+He found he could utter prayers. But he could not pray.
+
+[Illustration: SOON GERARD WAS AT FATHER ANSELM'S KNEES]
+
+"I am doomed eternally," he cried, "doomed, doomed."
+
+The organ of the convent church burst on his ear in rich and solemn
+harmony.
+
+Then rose the voices of the choir chanting a full service.
+
+Among them was one that seemed to hover above the others, and tower
+towards heaven; a sweet boy's voice, full, pure, angelic.
+
+He closed his eyes and listened. The days of his own boyhood flowed back
+upon him in those sweet, pious harmonies. No earthly dross there, no
+foul, fierce, passions, rending and corrupting the soul.
+
+Peace; peace; sweet, balmy, peace.
+
+"Ay," he sighed, "the Church is peace of mind. Till I left her bosom I
+ne'er knew sorrow, nor sin."
+
+And the poor torn, worn, creature, wept.
+
+And, even as he wept, there beamed on him the sweet and reverend face of
+one he had never thought to see again. It was the face of Father Anselm.
+
+The good father had only reached the convent the night before last.
+Gerard recognized him in a moment, and cried to him, "Oh Father Anselm,
+you cured my wounded body in Juliers; now cure my hurt soul in Rome!
+Alas, you cannot."
+
+Anselm sat down by the bedside, and, putting a gentle hand on his head,
+first calmed him with a soothing word or two.
+
+He then (for he had learned how Gerard came there) spoke to him kindly
+but solemnly, and made him feel his crime, and urged him to repentance,
+and gratitude to that Divine Power which had thwarted his will to save
+his soul.
+
+"Come, my son," said he, "first purge thy bosom of its load."
+
+"Ah, father," said Gerard, "in Juliers I could; then I was innocent; but
+now, impious monster that I am, I dare not confess to you."
+
+"Why not, my son? Thinkest thou I have not sinned against Heaven in my
+time, and deeply? oh how deeply! Come, poor laden soul, pour forth thy
+grief, pour forth thy faults, hold back nought! Lie not oppressed and
+crushed by hidden sins."
+
+And soon Gerard was at Father Anselm's knees confessing his every sin
+with sighs and groans of penitence.
+
+"Thy sins are great," said Anselm. "Thy temptation also was great,
+terribly great. I must consult our good prior."
+
+The good Anselm kissed his brow, and left him to consult the superior as
+to his penance.
+
+And, lo! Gerard could pray now.
+
+And he prayed with all his heart.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The phase, through which this remarkable mind now passed, may be summed
+in a word--Penitence.
+
+He turned with terror and aversion from the world, and begged
+passionately to remain in the convent. To him, convent nurtured, it was
+like a bird returning wounded, wearied, to its gentle nest.
+
+He passed his noviciate in prayer, and mortification, and pious reading,
+and meditation.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The Princess Claelia's spy went home and told her that Gerard was
+certainly dead, the manner of his death unknown at present.
+
+She seemed literally stunned.
+
+When, after a long time, she found breath to speak at all, it was to
+bemoan her lot, cursed with such ready tools. "So soon," she sighed;
+"see how swift these monsters are to do ill deeds. They come to us in
+our hot blood, and first tempt us with their venal daggers, then enact
+the mortal deeds we ne'er had thought on but for them."
+
+Ere many hours had passed, her pity for Gerard and hatred of his
+murderer had risen to fever heat; which with this fool was blood heat.
+
+"Poor soul! I cannot call thee back to life. But he shall never live
+that traitorously slew thee."
+
+And she put armed men in ambush, and kept them on guard all day, ready,
+when Ludovico should come for his money, to fall on him in a certain
+antechamber and hack him to pieces.
+
+"Strike at his head," said she, "for he weareth a privy coat of mail;
+and if he goes hence alive your own heads shall answer it."
+
+And so she sat weeping her victim, and pulling the strings of machines
+to shed the blood of a second for having been her machine to kill the
+first.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER LXXII
+
+
+ONE of the novice Gerard's self-imposed penances was to receive Ludovico
+kindly, feeling secretly as to a slimy serpent.
+
+Never was self-denial better bestowed: and, like most rational penances,
+it soon became no penance at all. At first the pride and complacency,
+with which the assassin gazed on the one life he had saved, was perhaps
+as ludicrous as pathetic; but it is a great thing to open a good door in
+a heart. One good thing follows another through the aperture. Finding it
+so sweet to save life, the miscreant went on to be averse to taking it;
+and from that to remorse; and from remorse to something very like
+penitence. And here Teresa co-operated by threatening, not for the first
+time, to leave him unless he would consent to lead an honest life. The
+good fathers of the convent lent their aid, and Ludovico and Teresa were
+sent by sea to Leghorn, where Teresa had friends, and the assassin
+settled down and became a porter.
+
+He found it miserably dull work at first: and said so.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+But methinks this dull life of plodding labour was better for him, than
+the brief excitement of being hewn in pieces by the Princess Claelia's
+myrmidons. His exile saved the unconscious penitent from that fate; and
+the princess, balked of her revenge, took to brooding, and fell into a
+profound melancholy; dismissed her confessor, and took a new one with a
+great reputation for piety, to whom she confided what she called her
+griefs. The new confessor was no other than Fra Jerome. She could not
+have fallen into better hands.
+
+He heard her grimly out. Then took her and shook the delusions out of
+her as roughly as if she had been a kitchen-maid. For, to do this hard
+monk justice, on the path of duty he feared the anger of princes as
+little as he did the sea. He showed her in a few words, all thunder and
+lightning, that she was the criminal of criminals.
+
+"Thou art the devil, that with thy money hath tempted one man to slay
+his fellow, and then, blinded with self-love, instead of blaming and
+punishing thyself, art thirsting for more blood of guilty men, but not
+so guilty as thou."
+
+At first she resisted, and told him she was not used to be taken to task
+by her confessors. But he overpowered her, and so threatened her with
+the Church's curse here and hereafter, and so tore the scales off her
+eyes, and thundered at her, and crushed her, that she sank down and
+grovelled with remorse and terror at the feet of the gigantic Boanerges.
+
+"Oh, holy father, have pity on a poor weak woman, and help me save my
+guilty soul. I was benighted for want of ghostly counsel like thine,
+good father. I waken as from a dream."
+
+"Doff thy jewels," said Fra Jerome, sternly.
+
+"I will. I will."
+
+"Doff thy silk and velvet: and, in humbler garb than wears thy meanest
+servant, wend thou instant to Loretto."
+
+"I will," said the princess, faintly.
+
+"No shoes: but a bare sandal."
+
+"No, father."
+
+"Wash the feet of pilgrims both going and coming; and to such of them as
+be holy friars tell thy sin, and abide their admonition."
+
+"Oh, holy father, let me wear my mask."
+
+"Humph!"
+
+"Oh, mercy! Bethink thee! My features are known through Italy."
+
+"Ay. Beauty is a curse to most of ye. Well, thou mayst mask thine eyes;
+no more."
+
+On this concession she seized his hand, and was about to kiss it; but he
+snatched it rudely from her.
+
+"What would ye do? That hand handled the eucharist but an hour agone: is
+it fit for such as thou to touch it?"
+
+"Ah, no. But oh, go not without giving your penitent daughter your
+blessing."
+
+"Time enow to ask it when you come back from Loretto."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Thus that marvellous occurrence by Tiber's banks left its mark on all
+the actors, as prodigies are said to do. The assassin, softened by
+saving the life he was paid to take, turned from the stiletto to the
+porter's knot. The princess went barefoot to Loretto, weeping her crime
+and washing the feet of base born men.
+
+And Gerard, carried from the Tiber into that convent a suicide, now
+passed for a young saint within its walls.
+
+Loving but experienced eyes were on him.
+
+Upon a shorter probation than usual he was admitted to priests' orders.
+
+And soon after took the monastic vows, and became a friar of St.
+Dominic.
+
+Dying to the world, the monk parted with the very name by which he had
+lived in it, and so broke the last link of association with earthly
+feelings.
+
+Here Gerard ended, and Brother Clement began.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER LXXIII
+
+
+"AS is the race of leaves so is that of man." And a great man budded
+unnoticed in a tailor's house at Rotterdam this year, and a large man
+dropped to earth with great eclat.
+
+Philip Duke of Burgundy, Earl of Holland, etc., etc., lay sick at
+Bruges. Now paupers got sick and got well as Nature pleased: but woe
+betided the rich in an age when, for one Mr. Malady killed, three fell
+by Dr. Remedy.
+
+The duke's complaint, nameless then, is now diphtheria. It is, and was,
+a very weakening malady, and the duke was old; so altogether Dr. Remedy
+bled him.
+
+The duke turned very cold: wonderful!
+
+Then Dr. Remedy had recourse to the arcana of science.
+
+"Ho! This is grave. Flay me an ape incontinent, and clap him to the
+duke's breast!"
+
+Officers of state ran septemvious, seeking an ape to counteract the
+bloodthirsty tomfoolery of the human species.
+
+Perdition! The duke was out of apes. There were buffaloes, lizards,
+Turks, leopards; any unreasonable beast but the right one.
+
+"Why, there used to be an ape about," said one. "If I stand here I saw
+him."
+
+So there used; but the mastiff had mangled the sprightly creature for
+stealing his supper: and so fulfilled the human precept, "Soyez de votre
+siecle!"
+
+In this emergency the seneschal cast his despairing eyes around; and not
+in vain. A hopeful light shot into them.
+
+"Here is _this_," said he, sotto voce. "Surely _this_ will serve; 'tis
+altogether apelike, doublet and hose apart."
+
+"Nay," said the chancellor, peevishly, "the Princess Marie would hang
+us. She doteth on _this_."
+
+Now _this_ was our friend Giles, strutting, all unconscious, in cloth of
+gold.
+
+Then Dr. Remedy grew impatient, and bade flay a dog.
+
+"A dog is next best to an ape; only it must be a dog all of one colour."
+
+So they flayed a liver-coloured dog, and clapped it, yet palpitating, to
+their sovereign's breast: and he died.
+
+Philip the Good, thus scientifically disposed of, left thirty-one
+children: of whom one, somehow or another, was legitimate; and reigned
+in his stead.
+
+The good duke provided for nineteen out of the other thirty; the rest
+shifted for themselves.
+
+According to the Flemish chronicle the deceased prince was descended
+from the kings of Troy through Thierry of Aquitaine, and Chilperic,
+Pharamond, &c., the old kings of Franconia.
+
+But this in reality was no distinction. Not a prince of his day have I
+been able to discover who did not come down from Troy. "Priam" was
+mediaeval for "Adam."
+
+The good duke's body was carried into Burgundy, and laid in a noble
+mausoleum of black marble at Dijon.
+
+Holland rang with his death; and little dreamed that anything as famous
+was born in her territory that year. That judgment has been long
+reversed. Men gaze at the tailor's house, where the great birth of the
+fifteenth century took place. In what house the good duke died "no one
+knows and no one cares," as the song says.
+
+And why?
+
+Dukes Philip the Good come and go, and leave mankind not a halfpenny
+wiser, nor better, nor other, than they found it. But when, once in
+three hundred years, such a child is born to the world as Margaret's
+son, lo! a human torch lighted by fire from heaven; and "FIAT LUX"
+thunders from pole to pole.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER LXXIV
+
+The Cloister
+
+
+THE Dominicans, or preaching friars, once the most powerful order in
+Europe, were now on the wane; their rivals and bitter enemies, the
+Franciscans, were overpowering them throughout Europe; even in England,
+a rich and religious country, where, under the name of the Black Friars,
+they had once been paramount.
+
+Therefore the sagacious men, who watched and directed the interests of
+the order, were never so anxious to incorporate able and zealous sons,
+and send them forth to win back the world.
+
+The zeal and accomplishments of Clement, especially his rare mastery of
+language (for he spoke Latin, Italian, French, high and low Dutch) soon
+transpired, and he was destined to travel and preach in England,
+corresponding with the Roman centre.
+
+But Jerome, who had the superior's ear, obstructed this design.
+
+"Clement," said he, "has the milk of the world still in his veins, its
+feelings, its weaknesses; let not his new-born zeal and his humility
+tempt us to forego our ancient wisdom. Try him first, and temper him,
+lest one day we find ourselves leaning on a reed for a staff."
+
+"It is well advised," said the prior. "Take him in hand thyself."
+
+Then Jerome, following the ancient wisdom, took Clement and tried him.
+
+One day he brought him to a field where the young men amused themselves
+at the games of the day; he knew this to be a haunt of Clement's late
+friends.
+
+And sure enough ere long Pietro Vanucci and Andrea passed by them, and
+cast a careless glance on the two friars. They did not recognize their
+dead friend in a shaven monk.
+
+Clement gave a very little start, and then lowered his eyes and said a
+pater noster.
+
+"Would ye not speak with them, brother?" said Jerome, trying him.
+
+"No, brother: yet was it good for me to see them. They remind me of the
+sins I can never repent enough."
+
+"It is well," said Jerome, and he made a cold report in Clement's
+favour.
+
+Then Jerome took Clement to many death-beds. And then into noisome
+dungeons; places where the darkness was appalling, and the stench
+loathsome, pestilential; and men looking like wild beasts lay coiled in
+rags and filth and despair. It tried his body hard; but the soul
+collected all its powers to comfort such poor wretches there as were not
+past comfort. And Clement shone in that trial. Jerome reported that
+Clement's spirit was willing, but his flesh was weak.
+
+"Good!" said Anselm; "his flesh is weak, but his spirit is willing."
+
+But there was a greater trial in store.
+
+I will describe it as it was seen by others.
+
+One morning a principal street in Rome was crowded, and even the avenues
+blocked up with heads. It was an execution. No common crime had been
+done, and on no vulgar victim.
+
+The governor of Rome had been found in his bed at daybreak,
+_slaughtered_. His hand, raised probably in self-defence, lay by his
+side severed at the wrist; his throat was cut, and his temples bruised
+with some blunt instrument. The murder had been traced to his servant,
+and was to be expiated in kind this very morning.
+
+Italian executions were not cruel in general. But this murder was
+thought to call for exact and bloody retribution.
+
+The criminal was brought to the house of the murdered man, and fastened
+for half an hour to its wall. After this foretaste of legal vengeance
+his left hand was struck off, like his victim's. A new killed fowl was
+cut open and fastened round the bleeding stump; with what view I really
+don't know; but, by the look of it, some mare's nest of the poor dear
+doctors; and the murderer, thus mutilated and bandaged, was hurried to
+the scaffold; and there a young friar was most earnest and affectionate
+in praying with him, and for him, and holding the crucifix close to his
+eyes.
+
+Presently the executioner pulled the friar roughly on one side, and in a
+moment felled the culprit with a heavy mallet, and falling on him, cut
+his throat from ear to ear.
+
+There was a cry of horror from the crowd.
+
+The young friar swooned away.
+
+A gigantic monk strode forward, and carried him off like a child.
+
+Brother Clement went back to the convent sadly discouraged. He confessed
+to the prior, with tears of regret.
+
+"Courage, son Clement," said the prior. "A Dominican is not made in a
+day. Thou shalt have another trial. And I forbid thee to go to it
+fasting." Clement bowed his head in token of obedience. He had not long
+to wait. A robber was brought to the scaffold; a monster of villainy and
+cruelty, who had killed men in pure wantonness, after robbing them.
+Clement passed his last night in prison with him, accompanied him to the
+scaffold, and then prayed with him and for him so earnestly that the
+hardened ruffian shed tears and embraced him. Clement embraced him too,
+though his flesh quivered with repugnance; and held the crucifix
+earnestly before his eyes. The man was garotted, and Clement lost sight
+of the crowd, and prayed loud and earnestly while that dark spirit was
+passing from earth. He was no sooner dead than the hangman raised his
+hatchet and quartered the body on the spot. And, oh, mysterious heart of
+man! the people, who had seen the living body robbed of life with
+indifference, almost with satisfaction, uttered a piteous cry at each
+stroke of the axe upon his corpse that could feel nought. Clement too
+shuddered then, but stood firm, like one of those rocks that vibrate but
+cannot be thrown down. But suddenly Jerome's voice sounded in his ear.
+
+"Brother Clement, get thee on that cart and preach to the people. Nay,
+quickly! strike with all thy force on all this iron, while yet 'tis hot,
+and souls are to be saved."
+
+Clement's colour came and went; and he breathed hard. But he obeyed, and
+with ill-assured step mounted the cart, and preached his first sermon to
+the first crowd he had ever faced. Oh, that sea of heads! His throat
+seemed parched, his heart thumped, his voice trembled.
+
+By-and-by the greatness of the occasion, the sight of the eager upturned
+faces, and his own heart full of zeal, fired the pale monk. He told them
+this robber's history, warm from his own lips in the prison, and showed
+his hearers by that example the gradations of folly and crime, and
+warned them solemnly not to put foot on the first round of that fatal
+ladder. And as alternately he thundered against the shedders of blood,
+and moved the crowd to charity and pity, his tremors left him, and he
+felt all strung up like a lute, and gifted with an unsuspected force;
+he was master of that listening crowd, could feel their very pulse,
+could play sacred melodies on them as on his psaltery. Sobs and groans
+attested his power over the mob already excited by the tragedy before
+them. Jerome stared like one who goes to light a stick; and fires a
+rocket. After a while Clement caught his look of astonishment, and
+seeing no approbation in it, broke suddenly off, and joined him.
+
+"It was my first endeavour," said he, apologetically. "Your behest came
+on me like a thunderbolt. Was I?--Did I?--Oh, correct me and aid me with
+your experience, brother Jerome."
+
+"Humph!" said Jerome, doubtfully. He added, rather sullenly after long
+reflection, "Give the glory to God, brother Clement; my opinion is thou
+art an orator born."
+
+He reported the same at headquarters, half reluctantly. For he was an
+honest friar though a disagreeable one.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+One Julio Antonelli was accused of sacrilege; three witnesses swore they
+saw him come out of the church whence the candlesticks were stolen, and
+at the very time. Other witnesses proved an alibi for him as positively.
+Neither testimony could be shaken. In this doubt Antonelli was permitted
+the trial by water, hot or cold. By the hot trial he must put his bare
+arm into boiling water, fourteen inches deep, and take out a pebble; by
+the cold trial his body must be let down into eight feet of water. The
+clergy, who thought him innocent, recommended the hot water trial,
+which, to those whom they favoured, was not so terrible as it sounded.
+But the poor wretch had not the nerve, and chose the cold ordeal. And
+this gave Jerome another opportunity of steeling Clement. Antonelli took
+the sacrament, and then was stripped naked on the banks of the Tiber,
+and tied hand and foot, to prevent those struggles by which a man,
+throwing his arms out of the water, sinks his body.
+
+He was then let down gently into the stream, and floated a moment, with
+just his hair above water. A simultaneous roar from the crowd on each
+bank proclaimed him guilty. But the next moment the ropes, which
+happened to be new, got wet, and he settled down. Another roar
+proclaimed his innocence. They left him at the bottom of the river the
+appointed time, rather more than half a minute, then drew him up,
+gurgling, and gasping, and screaming for mercy; and, after the
+appointed prayers, dismissed him, cleared of the charge.
+
+During the experiment Clement prayed earnestly on the bank. When it was
+over he thanked God in a loud but slightly quavering voice.
+
+By-and-by he asked Jerome whether the man ought not to be compensated.
+
+"For what?"
+
+"For the pain, the dread, the suffocation. Poor soul, he liveth, but
+hath tasted all the bitterness of death. Yet he had done no ill."
+
+"He is rewarded enough in that he is cleared of his fault."
+
+"But, being innocent of that fault, yet hath he drunk Death's cup,
+though not to the dregs; and his accusers, less innocent than he, do
+suffer nought."
+
+Jerome replied, somewhat sternly:
+
+"It is not in this world men are really punished, brother Clement.
+Unhappy they who sin yet suffer not. And happy they who suffer such ills
+as earth hath power to inflict; 'tis counted to them above, ay, and a
+hundredfold."
+
+Clement bowed his head submissively.
+
+"May thy good words not fall to the ground, but take root in my heart,
+brother Jerome."
+
+But the severest trial Clement underwent at Jerome's hands was
+unpremeditated. It came about thus. Jerome, in an indulgent moment, went
+with him to Fra Colonna, and there "The Dream of Polifilo" lay on the
+table just copied fairly. The poor author, in the pride of his heart,
+pointed out a master-stroke in it.
+
+"For ages," said he, "fools have been lavishing poetic praise and
+amorous compliment on mortal women, mere creatures of earth, smacking
+palpably of their origin; Sirens at the windows, where our Roman women
+in particular have by lifelong study learned the wily art to show their
+one good feature, though but an ear or an eyelash, at a jalosy, and hide
+all the rest; Magpies at the door, Capre n' i giardini, Angeli in
+Strada, Sante in chiesa, Diavoli in casa. Then come I and ransack the
+minstrels' lines for amorous turns, not forgetting those which Petrarch
+wasted on that French jilt Laura, the slyest of them all; and I lay you
+the whole bundle of spice at the feet of the only females worthy amorous
+incense; to wit, the Nine Muses."
+
+"By which goodly stratagem," said Jerome, who had been turning the pages
+all this time, "you, a friar of St. Dominic, have produced an obscene
+book." And he dashed Polifilo on the table.
+
+"Obscene? thou discourteous monk!" And the author ran round the table,
+snatched Polifilo away, locked him up, and, trembling with
+mortification, said, "My Gerard, pshaw! brother What's-his-name, had not
+found Polifilo obscene. Puris omnia pura."
+
+"Such as read your Polifilo--Heaven grant they may be few!--will find
+him what I find him."
+
+Poor Colonna gulped down this bitter pill as he might; and had he not
+been in his own lodgings, and a high born gentleman as well as a
+scholar, there might have been a vulgar quarrel. As it was, he made a
+great effort, and turned the conversation to a beautiful chrysolite the
+Cardinal Colonna had lent him; and, while Clement handled it, enlarged
+on its moral virtues: for he went the whole length of his age as a
+worshipper of jewels. But Jerome did not, and expostulated with him for
+believing that one dead stone could confer valour on its wearer, another
+chastity, another safety from poison, another temperance.
+
+"The experience of ages proves they do," said Colonna. "As to the last
+virtue you have named, there sits a living proof. This Gerard--I beg
+your pardon, brother Thingemy--comes from the north, where men drink
+like fishes; yet was he ever most abstemious. And why? Carried an
+amethyst, the clearest and fullest coloured e'er I saw on any but noble
+finger. Where, in Heaven's name, is thine amethyst? Show it this
+unbeliever!"
+
+"And 'twas that amethyst made the boy temperate?" asked Jerome,
+ironically.
+
+"Certainly. Why, what is the derivation and meaning of amethyst? [Greek:
+a] negative, and [Greek: methyo] to tipple. Go to, names are but the
+signs of things. A stone is not called [Greek: amethystos] for two
+thousand years out of mere sport, and abuse of language."
+
+He then went through the prime jewels, illustrating their moral
+properties, especially of the ruby, the sapphire, the emerald, and the
+opal, by anecdotes out of grave historians.
+
+"These be old wives' fables," said Jerome, contemptuously. "Was ever
+such credulity as thine?"
+
+Now credulity is a reproach sceptics have often the ill-luck to incur:
+but it mortifies them none the less for that.
+
+The believer in stones writhed under it, and dropped the subject. Then
+Jerome, mistaking his silence, exhorted him to go a step farther, and
+give up from this day his vain pagan lore, and study the lives of the
+saints. "Blot out these heathen superstitions from thy mind, brother, as
+Christianity hath blotted them from the earth."
+
+And in this strain he proceeded, repeating, incautiously, some current
+but loose theological statements. Then the smarting Polifilo revenged
+himself. He flew out, and hurled a mountain of crude, miscellaneous lore
+upon Jerome, of which partly for want of time, partly for lack of
+learning, I can reproduce but a few fragments.
+
+"The heathen blotted out? Why they hold four-fifths of the world. And
+what have we Christians invented without their aid? painting? sculpture?
+these are heathen arts, and we but pigmies at them. What modern mind can
+conceive and grave so god-like forms as did the chief Athenian
+sculptors, and the Libyan Licas, and Dinocrates of Macedon, and Scopas,
+Timotheus, Leochares, and Briaxis; Chares, Lysippus, and the immortal
+three of Rhodes, that wrought Laocoon from a single block? What prince
+hath the genius to turn mountains into statues, as was done at Bagistan,
+and projected at Athos? what town the soul to plant a colossus of brass
+in the sea, for the tallest ships to sail in and out between his legs?
+Is it architecture we have invented? Why here too we are but children.
+Can we match for pure design the Parthenon, with its clusters of double
+and single Doric columns? (I do adore the Doric when the scale is
+large), and, for grandeur and finish, the theatres of Greece and Rome,
+or the prodigious temples of Egypt, up to whose portals men walked
+awe-struck through avenues a mile long of sphinxes, each as big as a
+Venetian palace. And all these prodigies of porphyry cut and polished
+like crystal, not rough hewn as in our puny structures. Even now their
+polished columns and pilasters lie o'erthrown and broken, o'ergrown with
+acanthus and myrtle, but sparkling still, and flouting the slovenly art
+of modern workmen. Is it sewers, aqueducts, viaducts?
+
+"Why we have lost the art of making a road--lost it with the world's
+greatest models under our very eye. Is it sepulchres of the dead? Why no
+Christian nation has ever erected a tomb, the sight of which does not
+set a scholar laughing. Do but think of the Mausoleum, and the Pyramids,
+and the monstrous sepulchres of the Indus and Ganges, which outside are
+mountains, and within are mines of precious stones. Ah, you have not
+seen the East, Jerome, or you could not decry the heathen."
+
+Jerome observed that these were mere material things. True greatness was
+in the soul.
+
+"Well then," replied Colonna, "in the world of mind, what have we
+discovered? Is it geometry? Is it logic? Nay, we are all pupils of
+Euclid and Aristotle. Is it written characters, an invention almost
+divine? We no more invented it than Cadmus did. Is it poetry? Homer hath
+never been approached by us, nor hath Virgil, nor Horace. Is it tragedy
+or comedy? Why poets, actors, theatres, all fell to dust at our touch.
+Have we succeeded in reviving them? Would you compare our little
+miserable mysteries and moralities, all frigid personification and dog
+Latin, with the glories of a Greek play (on the decoration of which a
+hundred thousand crowns had been spent) performed inside a marble
+miracle, the audience a seated city, and the poet a Sophocles?
+
+"What then have we invented? Is it monotheism? Why the learned and
+philosophical among the Greeks and Romans held it; even their more
+enlightened poets were monotheists in their sleeves.
+
+    '[Greek: Zeus estin ouranos, Zeus te ge Zeus toi panta],'
+
+saith the Greek, and Lucan echoes him:
+
+    'Jupiter est quod cunque vides quo cunque moveris.'
+
+"Their vulgar were polytheists; and what are ours? We have not invented
+'invocation of the saints.' Our sancti answer to their Daemones and Divi,
+and the heathen used to pray their Divi or deified mortals to intercede
+with the higher divinity; but the ruder minds among them, incapable of
+nice distinctions, worshipped those lesser gods they should have but
+invoked. And so do the mob of Christians in our day, following the
+heathen vulgar by unbroken tradition. For in holy writ is no polytheism
+of any sort or kind.
+
+"We have not invented so much as a form, or variety, of polytheism. The
+pagan vulgar worshipped all sorts of deified mortals, and each had his
+favourite, to whom he prayed ten times for once to the Omnipotent. Our
+vulgar worship canonized mortals, and each has his favourite, to whom he
+prays ten times for once to God. Call you that invention? Invention is
+confined to the East. Among the ancient vulgar only the mariners were
+monotheists; they worshipped Venus; called her 'Stella maris,' and
+'Regina caelorum.' Among our vulgar only the mariners are monotheists;
+they worship the Virgin Mary, and call her 'the Star of the Sea,' and
+'the Queen of Heaven.' Call you theirs a new religion? An old doublet
+with a new button. Our vulgar make images, and adore them, which is
+absurd; for adoration is the homage due from a creature to its creator;
+now here man is the creator; so the statues ought to worship him, and
+would, if they had brains enough to justify a rat in worshipping _them_.
+But even this abuse, though childish enough to be modern, is ancient.
+The pagan vulgar in these parts made their images, then knelt before
+them, adorned them with flowers, offered incense to them, lighted tapers
+before them, carried them in procession, and made pilgrimages to them
+just to the smallest tittle as we their imitators do."
+
+Jerome here broke in impatiently, and reminded him that the images the
+most revered in Christendom were made by no mortal hand, but had dropt
+from heaven.
+
+"Ay," cried Colonna, "such are the tutelary images of most great Italian
+towns. I have examined nineteen of them, and made draughts of them. If
+they came from the sky, our worst sculptors are our angels. But my mind
+is easy on that score. Ungainly statue, or villanous daub fell never yet
+from heaven to smuggle the bread out of capable workmen's mouths. All
+this is Pagan, and arose thus. The Trojans had oriental imaginations,
+and feigned that their Palladium, a wooden statue three cubits long,
+fell down from heaven. The Greeks took this fib home among the spoils of
+Troy, and soon it rained statues on all the Grecian cities, and their
+Latin apes. And one of these Palladia gave St. Paul trouble at Ephesus;
+'twas a statue of Diana that fell down from Jupiter: credat qui credere
+possit."
+
+"What would you cast your profane doubts on that picture of our blessed
+Lady, which scarce a century agone hung lustrous in the air over this
+very city, and was taken down by the Pope and bestowed in St. Peter's
+Church?"
+
+"I have no profane doubts on the matter, Jerome. This is the story of
+Numa's shield, revived by theologians with an itch for fiction, but no
+talent that way; not being orientals. The 'ancile,' or sacred shield of
+Numa hung lustrous in the air over this very city, till that pious
+prince took it down and hung it in the temple of Jupiter. Be just,
+swallow both stories or neither. The 'Bocca della Verita' passes for a
+statue of the Virgin, and convicted a woman of perjury the other day; it
+is in reality an image of the goddess Rhea, and the modern figment is
+one of its ancient traditions; swallow both or neither.
+
+    'Qui Bavium non odit amet tua carmina, Mavi.'
+
+"But indeed we owe all our Palladiuncula, and all our speaking, nodding,
+winking, sweating, bleeding statues to these poor abused heathens: the
+Athenian statues all sweated before the battle of Chaeronea, so did the
+Roman statues during Tully's consulship, viz., the statue of Victory at
+Capua, of Mars at Rome, and of Apollo outside the gates. The Palladium
+itself was brought to Italy by AEneas, and after keeping quiet three
+centuries, made an observation in Vesta's Temple: a trivial one, I fear,
+since it hath not survived; Juno's statue at Veii assented with a nod to
+go to Rome. Anthony's statue on Mount Alban bled from every vein in its
+marble, before the fight of Actium. Others cured diseases: as that of
+Pelichus, derided by Lucian; for the wiser among the heathen believed in
+sweating marble, weeping wood, and bleeding brass--as I do. Of all our
+marks and dents made in stone by soft substances, this saint's knee, and
+that saint's finger, and t'other's head, the original is heathen. Thus
+the foot-prints of Hercules were shown on a rock in Scythia. Castor and
+Pollux fighting on white horses for Rome against the Latians, left the
+prints of their hoofs on a rock at Regillum. A temple was built to them
+on the spot, and the marks were to be seen in Tully's day. You may see
+near Venice a great stone cut nearly in half by St. George's sword. This
+he ne'er had done but for the old Roman who cut the whetstone in two
+with his razor.
+
+    'Qui Bavium non odit amet tua carmina, Mavi.'
+
+"Kissing of images, and the Pope's toe, is Eastern Paganism. The
+Egyptians had it of the Assyrians, the Greeks of the Egyptians, the
+Romans of the Greeks, and we of the Romans, whose Pontifex Maximus had
+his toe kissed under the Empire. The Druids kissed their High Priest's
+toe a thousand years B. C. The Mussulmans, who like you, profess to
+abhor Heathenism, kiss the stone of the Caaba: a Pagan practice.
+
+"The Priests of Baal kissed their idols so.
+
+"Tully tells us of a fair image of Hercules at Agrigentum, whose chin
+was worn by kissing. The lower parts of the statue we call Peter are
+Jupiter. The toe is sore worn, but not all by Christian mouths. The
+heathen vulgar laid their lips there first, for many a year, and ours
+have but followed them, as monkeys their masters. And that is why, down
+with the poor heathen! Pereant qui ante nos nostra fecerint.
+
+"Our infant baptism is Persian, with the font, and the signing of the
+child's brow. Our throwing three handfuls of earth on the coffin, and
+saying dust to dust, is Egyptian.
+
+"Our incense is Oriental, Roman, Pagan; and the early Fathers of the
+Church regarded it with superstitious horror, and died for refusing to
+handle it. Our holy water is Pagan, and all its uses. See, here is a
+Pagan aspersorium. Could you tell it from one of ours? It stood in the
+same part of their temples, and was used in ordinary worship as ours,
+and in extraordinary purifications. They called it Aqua lustralis. Their
+vulgar, like ours, thought drops of it falling on the body would wash
+out sin; and their men of sense, like ours, smiled or sighed at such
+credulity. What saith Ovid of this folly, which hath outlived him?
+
+    'Ah nimium faciles, qui tristia crimina coedis
+    Fluminea tolli posse putetis aqua.'
+
+Thou seest the heathen were not _all_ fools. No more are we. Not _all_."
+
+Fra Colonna uttered all this with such volubility, that his hearers
+could not edge in a word of remonstrance; and not being interrupted in
+praising his favourites, he recovered his good humour, without any
+diminution of his volubility.
+
+"We celebrate the miraculous Conception of the Virgin on the 2nd of
+February. The old Romans celebrated the miraculous Conception of Juno on
+the 2nd of February. Our feast of All Saints is on the 2nd of November.
+The Festum Dei Mortis was on the 2nd of November. Our Candlemas is also
+an old Roman feast: neither the date nor the ceremony altered one
+tittle. The patrician ladies carried candles about the city that night
+as our signoras do now. At the gate of San Croce our courtezans keep a
+feast on the 20th August. Ask them why! The little noodles cannot tell
+you. On that very spot stood the Temple of Venus. Her building is gone;
+but her rite remains. Did we discover Purgatory? On the contrary, all we
+really know about it is from two treatises of Plato, the Gorgias and the
+Phaedo, and the sixth book of Virgil's AEneid."
+
+"I take it from a holier source: St. Gregory": said Jerome, sternly.
+
+"Like enough," replied Colonna, drily. "But St. Gregory was not so nice;
+he took it from Virgil. Some souls, saith Gregory, are purged by fire,
+others by water, others by air.
+
+"Says Virgil:--
+
+              'Aliae panduntur inanes,
+    Suspensae ad ventos, aliis sub gurgite vasto
+    Infectum eluitur scelus, aut exuritur igni.'
+
+But peradventure, you think Pope Gregory I. lived before Virgil, and
+Virgil versified him.
+
+"But the doctrine is Eastern, and as much older than Plato as Plato than
+Gregory. Our prayers for the dead came from Asia with AEneas. Ovid tells,
+that when he prayed for the soul of Anchises, the custom was strange in
+Italy.
+
+    'Hunc morem AEnaeas, pietatis idoneus auctor
+    Attulit in terras, juste Latine, tuas.'
+
+The 'Biblicae Sortes,' which I have seen consulted on the altar, are a
+parody on the 'Sortes Virgilianae.' Our numerous altars in one church are
+heathen: the Jews, who are monotheists, have but one altar in a church.
+But the Pagans had many, being polytheists. In the temple of Paphian
+Venus were a hundred of them. 'Centum que Sabaeo thure calent arae.' Our
+altars and our hundred lights around St. Peter's tomb are Pagan. 'Centum
+aras posuit vigilemque sacraverat ignem.' We invent nothing, not even
+numerically. Our very Devil is the god Pan: horns and hoofs and all; but
+blackened. For we cannot draw; we can but daub the figures of Antiquity
+with a little sorry paint or soot. Our Moses hath stolen the horns of
+Ammon; our Wolfgang the hook of Saturn; and Janus bore the keys of
+heaven before St. Peter. All our really old Italian bronzes of the
+Virgin and Child are Venuses and Cupids. So is the wooden statue, that
+stands hard by this house, of Pope Joan and the child she is said to
+have brought forth there in the middle of a procession. Idiots! are
+new-born children thirteen years old? And that boy is not a day
+younger. Cupid! Cupid! Cupid! And since you accuse me of credulity, know
+that to my mind that Papess is full as mythological, born of froth, and
+every way unreal, as the goddess who passes for her in the next street,
+or as the saints you call St. Baccho and St. Quirina: or St. Oracte,
+which is a dunce-like corruption of Mount Soracte, or St. Amphibolus, an
+English saint, which is a dunce-like corruption of the cloak worn by
+their St. Alban, or as the Spanish saint, St. Viar, which words on his
+tombstone, written thus: 'S. Viar,' prove him no saint, but a good old
+nameless heathen, and 'praefectus Viarum,' or overseer of roads (would he
+were back to earth, and paganizing of our Christian roads!), or as our
+St. Veronica of Benasco, which Veronica is a dunce-like corruption of
+the 'Vera icon,' which this saint brought into the church. I wish it may
+not be as unreal as the donor, or as the eleven thousand virgins of
+Cologne, who were but a couple."
+
+Clement interrupted him to inquire what he meant. "I have spoken with
+those who have seen their bones."
+
+"What of eleven thousand virgins all collected in one place and at one
+time? Do but bethink thee, Clement. Not one of the great Eastern cities
+of antiquity could collect eleven thousand Pagan virgins at one time,
+far less a puny Western city. Eleven thousand _Christian virgins_ in a
+little, wee Paynim city!
+
+    'Quod cunque ostendis mihi sic incredulus odi.'
+
+The simple sooth is this. The martyrs were two: the Breton princess
+herself, falsely called British, and her maid Onesimilla, which is a
+Greek name, Onesima, diminished. This some fool did mispronounce undecim
+mille, eleven thousand: loose tongue found credulous ears, and so one
+fool made many; eleven thousand of _them_, an you will. And you charge
+me with credulity, Jerome? and bid me read the lives of the saints.
+Well, I have read them: and many a dear old Pagan acquaintance I found
+there. The best fictions in the book are Oriental, and are known to have
+been current in Persia and Arabia eight hundred years and more before
+the dates the Church assigns to them as facts. As for the true Western
+figments, they lack the Oriental plausibility. Think you I am credulous
+enough to believe that St. Ida joined a decapitated head to its body?
+that Cuthbert's carcass directed his bearers where to go, and where to
+stop; that a city was eaten up of rats to punish one Hatto for
+comparing the poor to mice; that angels have a little horn in their
+foreheads, and that this was seen and recorded at the time by St.
+Veronica of Benasco, who never existed, and hath left us this
+information and a miraculous handkercher? For my part, I think the
+holiest woman the world ere saw must have an existence ere she can have
+a handkercher, or an eye to take unicorns for angels. Think you I
+believe that a brace of lions turned sextons and helped Anthony bury
+Paul of Thebes? that Patrick, a Scotch saint, stuck a goat's beard on
+all the descendants of one that offended him? that certain thieves,
+having stolen the convent ram, and denying it, St. Pol de Leon bade the
+ram bear witness, and straight the mutton bleated in the thief's belly?
+Would you have me give up the skilful figments of antiquity for such old
+wives' fables as these? The ancients lied about animals, too: but then
+they lied logically; we unreasonably. Do but compare Ephis and his lion,
+or, better still, Androcles and his lion, with Anthony and his two
+lions. Both the pagan lions do what lions never did; but at least they
+act in character. A lion with a bone in his throat, or a thorn in his
+foot, could not do better than be civil to a man. But Anthony's lions
+are asses in a lion's skin. What leonine motive could they have in
+turning sextons? A lion's business is to make corpses, not inter them."
+He added with a sigh, "Our lies are as inferior to the lies of the
+ancients as our statues, and for the same reason; we do not study nature
+as they did. We are imitatores, servum pecus. Believe you 'the lives of
+the saints;' that Paul the Theban was the first hermit, and Anthony the
+first Caenobite? Why, Pythagoras was an Eremite, and under ground for
+seven years: and his daughter was an abbess. Monks and hermits were in
+the East long before Moses, and neither old Greece nor Rome was ever
+without them. As for St. Francis and his snowballs, he did but mimic
+Diogenes, who, naked, embraced statues on which snow had fallen. The
+folly without the poetry. Ape of an ape--for Diogenes was but a mimic
+therein of the Brahmins and Indian gymnosophists. Natheless, the
+children of this Francis bid fair to pelt us out of the church with
+their snowballs. Tell me now, Clement, what habit is lovelier than the
+vestments of our priests? Well, we owe them all to Numa Pompilius,
+except the girdle and the stole, which are judaical. As for the amice
+and the albe, they retain the very names they bore in Numa's day. The
+'pelt' worn by the canons comes from primeval Paganism. 'Tis a relic of
+those rude times when the sacrificing priest wore the skins of the
+beasts with the fur outward. Strip off thy black gown, Jerome, thy
+girdle and cowl, for they come to us all three from the Pagan ladies.
+Let thy hair grow like Absalom's, Jerome! for the tonsure is as Pagan as
+the Muses."
+
+"Take care what thou sayest," said Jerome, sternly. "We know the very
+year in which the church did first ordain it."
+
+"But not invent it, Jerome. The Brahmins wore it a few thousand years
+ere that. From them it came through the Assyrians to the priests of Isis
+in Egypt, and afterwards of Serapis at Athens. The late Pope (the saints
+be good to him) once told me the tonsure was forbidden by God to the
+Levites in the Pentateuch. If so, this was because of the Egyptian
+priests wearing it. I trust to his holiness. I am no biblical scholar.
+The Latin of thy namesake Jerome is a barrier I cannot overleap. 'Dixit
+ad me Dominus Deus. Dixi ad Dominum Deum.' No, thank you, holy Jerome; I
+can stand a good deal, but I cannot stand thy Latin. Nay; give me the
+New Testament! 'Tis not the Greek of Xenophon; but 'tis Greek. And there
+be heathen sayings in it too. For St. Paul was not so spiteful against
+them as thou. When the heathen said a good thing that suited his matter,
+by Jupiter he just took it, and mixed it to all eternity with the
+inspired text."
+
+"Come forth, Clement, come forth!" said Jerome, rising; "and thou,
+profane monk, know that but for the powerful house that upholds thee,
+thy accursed heresy should go no farther, for I would have thee burned
+at the stake." And he strode out white with indignation.
+
+Colonna's reception of this threat did credit to him as an enthusiast.
+He ran and hallowed joyfully after Jerome. "And _that_ is Pagan. Burning
+of men's bodies for the opinions of their souls is a purely Pagan
+custom--as Pagan as incense, holy water, a hundred altars in one church,
+the tonsure, the cardinal's, or flamen's hat, the word Pope, the----"
+
+Here Jerome slammed the door.
+
+But ere they could get clear of the house a jalosy was flung open, and
+the Paynim monk came out head and shoulders, and overhung the street,
+shouting--
+
+    "'Affecti suppliciis Christiani, genus hominum
+    Novae superstitionis ac maleficae.'"
+
+And having delivered this parting blow? he felt a great triumphant joy,
+and strode exultant to and fro; and not attending with his usual care to
+the fair way (for his room could only be threaded by little paths
+wriggling among the antiquities), tripped over the beak of an Egyptian
+stork, and rolled upon a regiment of Armenian gods, which he found tough
+in argument though small in stature.
+
+"You will go no more to that heretical monk," said Jerome to Clement.
+
+Clement sighed. "Shall we leave him and not try to correct him? Make
+allowance for heat of discourse! He was nettled. His words are worse
+than his acts. Oh! 'tis a pure and charitable soul."
+
+"So are all arch-heretics. Satan does not tempt them like other men.
+Rather he makes them more moral, to give their teaching weight. Fra
+Colonna cannot be corrected; his family is all-powerful in Rome. Pray we
+the saints he blasphemes to enlighten him. 'Twill not be the first time
+they have returned good for evil. Meantime thou art forbidden to consort
+with him. From this day go alone through the city! Confess and absolve
+sinners! exorcise demons! comfort the sick! terrify the impenitent!
+preach wherever men are gathered and occasion serves! and hold no
+converse with the Fra Colonna!"
+
+Clement bowed his head.
+
+Then the prior, at Jerome's request, had the young friar watched. And
+one day the spy returned with the news that brother Clement had passed
+by the Fra Colonna's lodging, and had stopped a little while in the
+street and then gone on, but with his hand to his eyes, and slowly.
+
+This report Jerome took to the prior. The prior asked his opinion, and
+also Anselm's, who was then taking leave of him on his return to
+Juliers.
+
+_Jerome._] "Humph! He obeyed, but with regret, ay, with childish
+repining."
+
+_Anselm._] "He shed a natural tear at turning his back on a friend and a
+benefactor. But he obeyed."
+
+Now Anselm was one of your gentle irresistibles. He had at times a mild
+ascendant even over Jerome.
+
+"Worthy brother Anselm," said Jerome, "Clement is weak to the very bone.
+He will disappoint thee. He will do nothing _great_, either for the
+Church or for our holy order. Yet he is an orator, and hath drunken of
+the spirit of St. Dominic. Fly him, then, with a string."
+
+That same day it was announced to Clement that he was to go to England
+immediately with brother Jerome.
+
+Clement folded his hands on his breast, and bowed his head in calm
+submission.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER LXXV
+
+The Hearth
+
+
+A CATHERINE is not an unmixed good in a strange house. The governing
+power is strong in her. She has scarce crossed the threshold ere the
+utensils seem to brighten; the hearth to sweep itself; the windows to
+let in more light; and the soul of an enormous cricket to animate the
+dwelling-place. But this cricket is a Busy Body. And that is a
+tremendous character. It has no discrimination. It sets everything to
+rights, and everybody. Now many things are the better for being set to
+rights. But everything is not. Everything is the one thing that won't
+stand being set to rights; except in that calm and cool retreat, the
+grave.
+
+Catherine altered the position of every chair and table in Margaret's
+house; and perhaps for the better.
+
+But she must go farther and upset the live furniture.
+
+When Margaret's time was close at hand, Catherine treacherously invited
+the aid of Denys and Martin: and, on the poor simple-minded fellows
+asking her earnestly what service they could be, she told them they
+might make themselves comparatively useful by going for a little walk.
+So far so good. But she intimated further that should the promenade
+extend into the middle of next week all the better. This was not
+ingratiating.
+
+The subsequent conduct of the strong under the yoke of the weak might
+have propitiated a she-bear with three cubs, one sickly. They generally
+slipped out of the house at daybreak: and stole in like thieves at
+night: and if by any chance they were at home, they went about like cats
+on a wall tipped with broken glass, and wearing awe-struck visages, and
+a general air of subjugation and depression.
+
+But all would not do. Their very presence was ill timed: and jarred upon
+Catherine's nerves.
+
+Did instinct whisper, a pair of depopulators had no business in a house
+with multipliers twain?
+
+The breastplate is no armour against a female tongue: and Catherine ran
+infinite pins and needles of speech into them. In a word, when Margaret
+came down stairs, she found the kitchen swept of heroes.
+
+Martin, old and stiff, had retreated no farther than the street, and
+with the honours of war: for he had carried off his baggage, a stool:
+and sat on it in the air.
+
+Margaret saw he was out in the sun: but was not aware he was a fixture
+in that luminary. She asked for Denys. "Good, kind Denys; he will be
+right pleased to see me about again."
+
+Catherine, wiping a bowl with now superfluous vigour, told her Denys was
+gone to his friends in Burgundy. "And high time. Hasn't been anigh them
+this three years, by all accounts."
+
+"What, gone without bidding me farewell?" said Margaret, opening two
+tender eyes like full-blown violets.
+
+Catherine reddened. For this new view of the matter set her conscience
+pricking her.
+
+But she gave a little toss, and said, "Oh, you were asleep at the time:
+and I would not have you wakened."
+
+"Poor Denys," said Margaret: and the dew gathered visibly on the open
+violets.
+
+Catherine saw out of the corner of her eye, and without taking a bit of
+open notice, slipped off and lavished hospitality and tenderness on the
+surviving depopulator.
+
+It was sudden; and Martin old and stiff in more ways than one.
+
+"No, thank you, dame. I have got used to out o' doors. And I love not
+changing and changing. I meddle wi' nobody here: and nobody meddles wi'
+me."
+
+"Oh, you nasty, cross, old wretch!" screamed Catherine, passing in a
+moment from treacle to sharpest vinegar. And she flounced back into the
+house.
+
+On calm reflection she had a little cry. Then she half reconciled
+herself to her conduct by vowing to be so kind Margaret should never
+miss her plagues of soldiers. But, feeling still a little uneasy, she
+dispersed all regrets by a process at once simple and sovereign.
+
+She took and washed the child.
+
+From head to foot she washed him in tepid water: and heroes, and their
+wrongs, became as dust in an ocean--of soap and water.
+
+While this celestial ceremony proceeded, Margaret could not keep quiet.
+She hovered round the fortunate performer. She must have an apparent
+hand in it, if not a real. She put her finger into the water--to pave
+the way for her boy, I suppose; for she could not have deceived herself
+so far as to think Catherine would allow her to settle the temperature.
+During the ablution she kneeled down opposite the little Gerard, and
+prattled to him with amazing fluency; taking care, however, not to
+articulate like grown-up people; for, how could a cherub understand
+_their_ ridiculous pronunciation?
+
+"I wish you could wash out THAT," said she, fixing her eyes on the
+little boy's hand.
+
+"What?"
+
+"What, have you not noticed? on his little finger."
+
+Granny looked, and there was a little brown mole.
+
+"Eh! but this is wonderful!" she cried. "Nature, my lass, y' are strong;
+and meddlesome to boot. Hast noticed such a mark on some one else. Tell
+the truth, girl!"
+
+"What, on _him_? Nay, mother, not I."
+
+"Well then he has; and on the very spot. And you never noticed that
+much. But, dear heart, I forgot; you han't known him from child to man
+as I have. I have had him hundreds o' times on my knees, the same as
+this, and washed him from top to toe in lu-warm water." And she swelled
+with conscious superiority; and Margaret looked meekly up to her as a
+woman beyond competition.
+
+Catherine looked down from her dizzy height, and moralized. She differed
+from other busy-bodies in this, that she now and then reflected: not
+deeply; or of course I should take care not to print it.
+
+"It is strange," said she, "how things come round and about. Life is but
+a whirligig. Leastways, we poor women, _our_ lives are cut upon one
+pattern. Wasn't I for washing out my Gerard's mole in his young days?
+'Oh, fie! her's a foul blot,' quo' I; and scrubbed away at it I did till
+I made the poor wight cry; so then I thought 'twas time to give over.
+And now says you to me, 'Mother,' says you, 'do try and wash yon out o'
+my Gerard's finger,' says you. Think on't!"
+
+"Wash it out?" cried Margaret; "I wouldn't for all the world. Why it is
+the sweetest bit in his little darling body. I'll kiss it morn and night
+till he, that owned it first, comes back to us three. Oh, bless you, my
+jewel of gold and silver, for being marked like your own daddy to
+comfort me."
+
+And she kissed little Gerard's little mole; but she could not stop
+there; she presently had him sprawling on her lap, and kissed his back
+all over again and again, and seemed to worry him as wolf a lamb;
+Catherine looking on and smiling. She had seen a good many of these
+savage onslaughts in her day.
+
+And this little sketch indicates the tenor of Margaret's life for
+several months. One or two small things occurred to her during that
+time, which must be told; but I reserve them, since one string will
+serve for many glass beads. But, while her boy's father was passing
+through those fearful tempests of the soul ending in the dead monastic
+calm, her life might fairly be summed in one great blissful word--
+
+Maternity.
+
+You, who know what lies in that word, enlarge my little sketch, and see
+the young mother nursing and washing, and dressing and undressing, and
+crowing and gambolling with her first-born; then swifter than lightning
+dart your eye into Italy, and see the cold cloister; and the monks
+passing like ghosts, eyes down, hands meekly crossed over bosoms dead to
+earthly feelings.
+
+One of these cowled ghosts is he, whose return, full of love and youth,
+and joy, that radiant young mother awaits.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+In the valley of Grindelwald the traveller has on one side the
+perpendicular Alps, all rock, ice, and everlasting snow, towering above
+the clouds, and piercing to the sky; on his other hand little every-day
+slopes, but green as emeralds, and studded with cows, and pretty cots,
+and life; whereas those lofty neighbours stand leafless, lifeless,
+inhuman, sublime. Elsewhere sweet commonplaces of nature are apt to pass
+unnoticed; but, fronting the grim Alps, they soothe, and even gently
+strike, the mind by contrast with their tremendous opposites. Such, in
+their way, are the two halves of this story, rightfully looked at; on
+the Italian side rugged adventure, strong passion, blasphemy, vice,
+penitence, pure ice, holy snow, soaring direct at heaven. On the Dutch
+side, all on a humble scale and womanish, but ever green. And as a
+pathway parts the ice towers of Grindelwald, aspiring to the sky, from
+its little sunny braes, so here is but a page between "the Cloister and
+the Hearth."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER LXXVI
+
+The Cloister
+
+
+THE new pope favoured the Dominican order. The convent received a
+message from the Vatican, requiring a capable friar to teach at the
+university of Basle. Now Clement was the very monk for this: well versed
+in languages, and in his worldly days had attended the lectures of
+Guarini the younger. His visit to England was therefore postponed,
+though not resigned; and meantime he was sent to Basle: but not being
+wanted there for three months, he was to preach on the road.
+
+He passed out of the northern gate with his eyes lowered, and the whole
+man wrapped in pious contemplation.
+
+Oh, if we could paint a mind and its story, what a walking fresco was
+this bare-footed friar!
+
+Hopeful, happy love, bereavement, despair, impiety, vice, suicide,
+remorse, religious despondency, penitence, death to the world,
+resignation.
+
+And all in twelve short months.
+
+And now the traveller was on foot again. But all was changed: no
+perilous adventures now. The very thieves and robbers bowed to the
+ground before him, and, instead of robbing him, forced stolen money on
+him, and begged his prayers.
+
+This journey therefore furnished few picturesque incidents. I have,
+however, some readers to think of, who care little for melodrama, and
+expect a quiet peep at what passes inside a man. To such students things
+undramatic are often vocal, denoting the progress of a mind.
+
+The first Sunday of Clement's journey was marked by this. He prayed for
+the soul of Margaret. He had never done so before. Not that her eternal
+welfare was not dearer to him than anything on earth. It was his
+humility. The terrible impieties that burst from him on the news of her
+death horrified my well-disposed readers; but not as on reflection they
+horrified him who had uttered them. For a long time during his novitiate
+he was oppressed with religious despair. He thought he must have
+committed that sin against the Holy Spirit which dooms the soul for
+ever. By degrees that dark cloud cleared away, Anselmo juvante: but deep
+self-abasement remained. He felt his own salvation insecure, and
+moreover thought it would be mocking Heaven, should he, the deeply
+stained, pray for a soul so innocent, comparatively, as Margaret's. So
+he used to coax good Anselm and another kindly monk to pray for her.
+They did not refuse, nor do it by halves. In general the good old monks
+(and there were good, bad, and indifferent, in every convent) had a pure
+and tender affection for their younger brethren, which, in truth, was
+not of this world.
+
+Clement then, having preached on Sunday morning in a small Italian town,
+and being mightily carried onward, was greatly encouraged; and that day
+a balmy sense of God's forgiveness and love descended on him. And he
+prayed for the welfare of Margaret's soul. And from that hour this
+became his daily habit, and the one purified tie, that by memory
+connected his heart with earth.
+
+For his family were to him as if they had never been.
+
+The Church would not share with earth. Nor could even the Church cure
+the great love without annihilating the smaller ones.
+
+During most of this journey Clement rarely felt any spring of life
+within him, but when he was in the pulpit. The other exceptions were,
+when he happened to relieve some fellow-creature.
+
+A young man was tarantula bitten, or perhaps, like many more, fancied
+it. Fancy or reality, he had been for two days without sleep, and in
+most extraordinary convulsions, leaping, twisting, and beating the
+walls. The village musicians had only excited him worse with their
+music. Exhaustion and death followed the disease, when it gained such a
+head. Clement passed by and learned what was the matter. He sent for a
+psaltery, and tried the patient with soothing melodies; but, if the
+other tunes maddened him, Clement's seem to crush him. He groaned and
+moaned under them, and grovelled on the floor. At last the friar
+observed that at intervals his lips kept going. He applied his ear, and
+found the patient was whispering a tune; and a very singular one, that
+had no existence. He learned this tune, and played it. The patient's
+face brightened amazingly. He marched about the room on the light
+fantastic toe enjoying it; and when Clement's fingers ached nearly off
+with playing it, he had the satisfaction of seeing the young man sink
+complacently to sleep to this lullaby, the strange creation of his own
+mind; for it seems he was no musician, and never composed a tune before
+or after. This sleep saved his life. And Clement, after teaching the
+tune to another, in case it should be wanted again, went forward with
+his heart a little warmer. On another occasion he found a mob haling a
+decently-dressed man along, who struggled and vociferated, but in a
+strange language. This person had walked into their town erect and
+sprightly, waving a mulberry branch over his head. Thereupon the natives
+first gazed stupidly, not believing their eyes, then pounced on him and
+dragged him before the podesta.
+
+Clement went with them: but on the way drew quietly near the prisoner
+and spoke to him in Italian; no answer. In French; German; Dutch; no
+assets. Then the man tried Clement in tolerable Latin, but with a
+sharpish accent. He said he was an Englishman, and, oppressed with the
+heat of Italy, had taken a bough off the nearest tree, to save his head.
+"In my country anybody is welcome to what grows on the highway. Confound
+the fools; I am ready to pay for it. But here is all Italy up in arms
+about a twig and a handful of leaves."
+
+The pig-headed podesta would have sent the dogged islander to prison:
+but Clement mediated, and with some difficulty made the prisoner
+comprehend that silkworms, and by consequence mulberry leaves, were
+sacred, being under the wing of the Sovereign, and his source of income;
+and urged on the podesta that ignorance of his mulberry laws was natural
+in a distant country, where the very tree perhaps was unknown. The
+opinionative islander turned the still vibrating scale by pulling out a
+long purse and repeating his original theory, that the whole question
+was mercantile. "Quid damni?" said he. "Dic; et cito solvam." The
+podesta snuffed the gold: fined him a ducat for the duke; about the
+value of the whole tree: and pouched the coin.
+
+The Englishman shook off his ire the moment he was liberated, and
+laughed heartily at the whole thing: but was very grateful to Clement.
+
+"You are too good for this hole of a country, father," said he. "Come to
+England! That is the only place in the world. I was an uneasy fool to
+leave it, and wander among mulberries and their idiots. I am a Kentish
+squire, and educated at Cambridge University. My name it is Rolfe, my
+place Betshanger. The man and the house are both at your service. Come
+over and stay till domesday. We sit down forty to dinner every day at
+Betshanger. One more or one less at the board will not be seen. You
+shall end your days with me and my heirs if you will. Come now! What an
+Englishman says he means." And he gave him a great hearty grip of the
+hand to confirm it.
+
+"I will visit thee some day, my son," said Clement: "but not to weary
+thy hospitality."
+
+The Englishman then begged Clement to shrive him. "I know not what will
+become of my soul," said he. "I live like a heathen since I left
+England."
+
+Clement consented gladly, and soon the islander was on his knees to him
+by the road-side, confessing the last month's sins.
+
+Finding him so pious a son of the Church, Clement let him know he was
+really coming to England. He then asked him whether it was true that
+country was overrun with Lollards and Wickliffites.
+
+The other coloured up a little. "There be black sheep in every land,"
+said he. Then after some reflection he said, gravely, "Holy father, hear
+the truth about these heretics. None are better disposed towards holy
+Church than we English. But we are ourselves, and by ourselves. We love
+our own ways, and, above all, our own tongue. The Norman could conquer
+our billhooks, but not our tongues; and hard they tried it for many a
+long year by law and proclamation. Our good foreign priests utter God to
+plain English folk in Latin, or in some French or Italian lingo, like
+the bleating of a sheep. Then come the fox Wickliff and his crew, and
+read him out of his own book in plain English, that all men's hearts
+warm to. Who can withstand this? God forgive me, I believe the English
+would turn deaf ears to St. Peter himself, spoke he not to them in the
+tongue their mothers sowed in their ears and their hearts along with
+mothers' kisses." He added hastily, "I say not this for myself; I am
+Cambridge bred; and good words come not amiss to me in Latin; but for
+the people in general. Clavis ad corda Anglorum est lingua materna."
+
+"My son," said Clement, "blessed be the hour I met thee; for thy words
+are sober and wise. But, alas! how shall I learn your English tongue? No
+book have I."
+
+"I would give you my book of hours, father. 'Tis in English and Latin,
+cheek by jowl. But, then, what would become of my poor soul, wanting my
+'hours' in a strange land? Stay, you are a holy man, and I am an honest
+one; let us make a bargain; you to pray for me every day for two months,
+and I to give you my book of hours. Here it is. What say you to that?"
+And his eyes sparkled, and he was all on fire with mercantility.
+
+Clement smiled gently at this trait: and quietly detached a MS. from his
+girdle, and showed him that it was in Latin and Italian.
+
+"See, my son," said he, "Heaven hath foreseen our several needs, and
+given us the means to satisfy them: let us change books; and, my dear
+son, I will give thee my poor prayers and welcome, not sell them thee. I
+love not religious bargains."
+
+The islander was delighted. "So shall I learn the Italian tongue without
+risk to my eternal weal. Near is my purse, but nearer is my soul."
+
+He forced money on Clement. In vain the friar told him it was contrary
+to his vow to carry more of that than was barely necessary.
+
+"Lay it out for the good of the Church and of my soul," said the
+islander. "I ask you not to keep it, but take it you must and shall."
+And he grasped Clement's hand warmly again: and Clement kissed him on
+the brow, and blessed him, and they went each his way.
+
+About a mile from where they parted, Clement found two tired wayfarers
+lying in the deep shade of a great chestnut-tree, one of a thick grove
+the road skirted. Near the men was a little cart, and in it a
+printing-press, rude and clumsy as a vine-press. A jaded mule was
+harnessed to the cart.
+
+And so Clement stood face to face with his old enemy.
+
+And as he eyed it, and the honest, blue-eyed faces of the wearied
+craftsmen, he looked back as on a dream at the bitterness he had once
+felt towards this machine. He looked kindly down on them, and said,
+softly,
+
+"Sweynheim!"
+
+The men started to their feet.
+
+"Pannartz!"
+
+They scuttled into the wood, and were seen no more.
+
+Clement was amazed, and stood puzzling himself.
+
+Presently a face peeped from behind a tree.
+
+Clement addressed it. "What fear ye?"
+
+A quavering voice replied, "Say, rather, by what magic you, a stranger,
+can call us by our names! I never clapt eyes on you till now."
+
+"O superstition! I know ye, as all good workmen are known--by your
+works. Come hither and I will tell ye."
+
+They advanced gingerly from different sides; each regulating his advance
+by the other's.
+
+"My children," said Clement, "I saw a Lactantius in Rome, printed by
+Sweynheim and Pannartz, disciples of Fust."
+
+"D'ye hear that, Pannartz? our work has gotten to Rome already."
+
+"By your blue eyes and flaxen hair I wist ye were Germans: and the
+printing-press spoke for itself. Who then should ye be but Fust's
+disciples, Pannartz and Sweynheim?"
+
+The honest Germans were now astonished that they had suspected magic in
+so simple a matter.
+
+"The good father hath his wits about him, that is all," said Pannartz.
+
+"Ay," said Sweynheim, "and with those wits would he could tell us how to
+get this tired beast to the next town."
+
+"Yea," said Sweynheim, "and where to find money to pay for his meat and
+ours when we get there."
+
+"I will try," said Clement. "Free the mule of the cart, and of all
+harness but the bare halter."
+
+This was done, and the animal immediately lay down and rolled on his
+back in the dust like a kitten. Whilst he was thus employed, Clement
+assured them he would rise up a new mule. "His Creator hath taught him
+this art to refresh himself, which the nobler horse knoweth not. Now,
+with regard to money, know that a worthy Englishman hath intrusted me
+with a certain sum to bestow in charity. To whom can I better give a
+stranger's money than to strangers? Take it, then, and be kind to some
+Englishman or other stranger in his need; and may all nations learn to
+love one another one day."
+
+The tears stood in the honest workmen's eyes. They took the money with
+heartfelt thanks.
+
+"It is your nation we are bound to thank and bless, good Father, if we
+but knew it."
+
+"My nation is the Church."
+
+Clement was then for bidding them farewell, but the honest fellows
+implored him to wait a little; they had no silver nor gold, but they had
+something they could give their benefactor. They took the press out of
+the cart, and, while Clement fed the mule, they bustled about, now on
+the white hot road, now in the deep cool shade, now half in and half
+out, and presently printed a quarto sheet of eight pages, which was
+already set up. They had not type enough to print two sheets at a time.
+When, after the slower preliminaries, the printed sheet was pulled all
+in a moment, Clement was amazed in turn.
+
+"What are all these words really fast upon the paper?" said he. "Is it
+verily certain they will not go as swiftly as they came? And _you_ took
+_me_ for a magician! 'Tis 'Augustine de civitate Dei.' My sons, you
+carry here the very wings of knowledge. Oh, never abuse this great
+craft! Print no ill books! They would fly abroad countless as locusts,
+and lay waste men's souls."
+
+The workmen said they would sooner put their hands under the screw than
+so abuse their goodly craft.
+
+And so they parted.
+
+There is nothing but meeting and parting in this world.
+
+At a town in Tuscany the holy friar had a sudden and strange rencontre
+with the past. He fell in with one of those motley assemblages of
+patricians and plebeians, piety and profligacy, "a company of pilgrims";
+a subject too well painted by others for me to go and daub.
+
+They were in an immense barn belonging to the inn. Clement, dusty and
+wearied, and no lover of idle gossip, sat in a corner studying the
+Englishman's hours, and making them out as much by his own Dutch as by
+the Latin version.
+
+Presently a servant brought a bucket half full of water, and put it down
+at his feet. A female servant followed with two towels. And then a woman
+came forward, and, crossing herself, kneeled down without a word at the
+bucket-side, removed her sleeves entirely, and motioned to him to put
+his feet into the water. It was some lady of rank doing penance. She
+wore a mask scarce an inch broad, but effectual. Moreover, she handled
+the friar's feet more delicately than those do who are born to such
+offices.
+
+These penances were not uncommon; and Clement, though he had little
+faith in this form of contrition, received the services of the incognita
+as a matter of course. But presently she sighed deeply, and, with her
+heartfelt sigh and her head bent low over her menial office, she seemed
+so bowed with penitence, that he pitied her and said, calmly but gently,
+"Can I aught for your soul's weal, my daughter?"
+
+She shook her head with a faint sob. "Nought, holy father, nought: only
+to hear the sin of her who is most unworthy to touch thy holy feet. 'Tis
+part of my penance to tell sinless men how vile I am."
+
+"Speak, my daughter."
+
+"Father," said the lady, bending lower and lower, "these hands of mine
+look white, but they are stained with blood,--the blood of the man I
+loved. Alas! you withdraw your foot. Ah me! What shall I do? All holy
+things shrink from me."
+
+"Culpa mea! culpa mea!" said Clement eagerly. "My daughter, it was an
+unworthy movement of earthly weakness, for which _I_ shall do penance.
+Judge not the Church by her feebler servants. Not her foot, but her
+bosom, is offered to thee, repenting truly. Take courage, then, and
+purge thy conscience of his load."
+
+On this the lady, in a trembling whisper, and hurriedly, and cringing a
+little, as if she feared the Church would strike her bodily for what she
+had done, made this confession.
+
+"He was a stranger, and base-born, but beautiful as Spring, and wise
+beyond his years. I loved him. I had not the prudence to conceal my
+love. Nobles courted me. I ne'er thought one of humble birth could
+reject me. I showed him my heart; oh, shame of my sex! He drew back; yet
+he admired me: but innocently. He loved another: and he was constant. I
+resorted to a woman's wiles. They availed not. I borrowed the wickedness
+of men, and threatened his life, and to tell his true lover he died
+false to her. Ah! you shrink; your foot trembles. Am I not a monster?
+Then he wept and prayed to me for mercy; then my good angel helped me; I
+bade him leave Rome. Gerard, Gerard, why did you not obey me? I thought
+he was gone. But two months after this I met him. Never shall I forget
+it. I was descending the Tiber in my galley, when he came up it with a
+gay company, and at his side a woman beautiful as an angel, but bold and
+bad. That woman claimed me aloud for her rival. Traitor and hypocrite,
+he had exposed me to her, and to all the loose tongues in Rome. In
+terror and revenge I hired--a bravo. When he was gone on his bloody
+errand, I wavered too late. The dagger I had hired struck. He never came
+back to his lodgings. He was dead. Alas! perhaps he was not so much to
+blame: none have ever cast his name in my teeth. His poor body is not
+found: or I should kiss its wounds; and slay myself upon it. All around
+his very name seems silent as the grave, to which this murderous hand
+has sent him." (Clement's eyes were drawn by her movement. He recognized
+her shapely arm, and soft white hand.) "And oh! he was so young to die.
+A poor thoughtless boy, that had fallen a victim to that bad woman's
+arts, and she had made him tell her everything. Monster of cruelty, what
+penance can avail me? Oh, holy father, what shall I do?"
+
+Clement's lips moved in prayer, but he was silent. He could not see his
+duty clear.
+
+Then she took his feet and began to dry them. She rested his foot upon
+her soft arm, and pressed it with the towel so gently she seemed
+incapable of hurting a fly. Yet her lips had just told another story,
+and a true one.
+
+While Clement was still praying for wisdom, a tear fell upon his foot.
+It decided him. "My daughter," said he, "I myself have been a great
+sinner."
+
+"You, father?"
+
+"I; quite as great a sinner as thou; though not in the same way. The
+devil has gins and snares, as well as traps. But penitence softened my
+impious heart, and then gratitude remoulded it. Therefore, seeing you
+penitent, I hope you can be grateful to Him, who has been more merciful
+to you than you have to your fellow-creature. Daughter, the Church sends
+you comfort."
+
+"Comfort to me? ah! never! unless it can raise my victim from the dead."
+
+"Take this crucifix in thy hand, fix thine eyes on it, and listen to
+me," was all the reply.
+
+"Yes, father; but let me thoroughly dry your feet first: 'tis ill
+sitting in wet feet: and you are the holiest man of all whose feet I
+have washed. I know it by your voice."
+
+"Woman, I am not. As for my feet, they can wait their turn. Obey thou
+me!"
+
+"Yes, father," said the lady, humbly. But with a woman's evasive
+pertinacity she wreathed one towel swiftly round the foot she was
+drying, and placed his other foot on the dry napkin; then obeyed his
+command.
+
+And, as she bowed over the crucifix, the low, solemn, tones of the friar
+fell upon her ear, and his words soon made her whole body quiver with
+various emotions, in quick succession.
+
+"My daughter, he you murdered--in intent--was one Gerard, a Hollander.
+He loved a creature, as man should love none but their Redeemer and his
+Church. Heaven chastised him. A letter came to Rome. She was dead."
+
+"Poor Gerard! Poor Margaret!" moaned the penitent.
+
+Clement's voice faltered at this a moment. But soon, by a strong effort,
+he recovered all his calmness.
+
+"His feeble nature yielded, body and soul, to the blow. He was stricken
+down with fever. He revived only to rebel against Heaven. He said 'There
+is no God.'"
+
+"Poor, poor, Gerard!"
+
+"Poor Gerard? thou feeble, foolish woman! Nay, wicked, impious Gerard.
+He plunged into vice, and soiled his eternal jewel: those you met him
+with were his daily companions: but know, rash creature, that the
+seeming woman you took to be his leman was but a boy, dressed in woman's
+habits to flout the others, a fair boy called Andrea. What that Andrea
+said to thee I know not; but be sure neither he, _nor any layman_, knows
+thy folly. This Gerard, rebel against Heaven, was no traitor to thee,
+unworthy."
+
+The lady moaned like one in bodily agony, and the crucifix began to
+tremble in her trembling hands.
+
+"Courage!" said Clement. "Comfort is at hand.
+
+"From crime he fell into despair, and, bent on destroying his soul, he
+stood one night by Tiber, resolved on suicide. He saw one watching him.
+It was a bravo."
+
+"Holy saints!"
+
+"He begged the bravo to despatch him; he offered him all his money, to
+slay him body and soul. The bravo would not. Then this desperate
+sinner, not softened even by that refusal, flung himself into Tiber."
+
+"Ah!"
+
+"And the assassin saved his life. Thou hadst chosen for the task
+Lodovico, husband of Teresa, whom this Gerard had saved at sea, her and
+her infant child."
+
+"He lives! he lives! he lives! I am faint."
+
+The friar took the crucifix from her hands, fearing it might fall. A
+shower of tears relieved her. The friar gave her time; then continued,
+calmly. "Ay, he lives; thanks to thee and thy wickedness, guided to his
+eternal good by an almighty and all-merciful hand. Thou art his greatest
+earthly benefactor."
+
+"Where is he? where? where?"
+
+"What is that to thee?"
+
+"Only to see him alive. To beg him on my knees forgive me. I swear to
+you I will never presume again to--How could I? He knows all. Oh, shame!
+Father, _does_ he know?"
+
+"All."
+
+"Then never will I meet his eye; I should sink into the earth. But I
+would repair my crime. I would watch his life unseen. He shall rise in
+the world, whence I so nearly thrust him, poor soul; the Caesare, my
+family, are all-powerful in Rome; and I am near their head."
+
+"My daughter," said Clement, coldly, "he you call Gerard needs nothing
+man can do for him. Saved by a miracle from double death, he has left
+the world, and taken refuge from sin and folly in the bosom of the
+Church."
+
+"A priest?"
+
+"A priest, and a friar."
+
+"A friar? Then you are not his confessor? Yet you know all. That gentle
+voice!"
+
+She raised her head slowly, and peered at him through her mask.
+
+The next moment she uttered a faint shriek, and lay with her brow upon
+his bare feet.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER LXXVII
+
+
+CLEMENT sighed. He began to doubt whether he had taken the wisest course
+with a creature so passionate.
+
+But young as he was, he had already learned many lessons of
+ecclesiastical wisdom. For one thing he had been taught to pause: _i.
+e._, in certain difficulties, neither to do nor say anything, until the
+matter should clear itself a little.
+
+He therefore held his peace and prayed for wisdom.
+
+All he did was gently to withdraw his foot.
+
+But his penitent flung her arms round it with a piteous cry, and held
+convulsively, and wept over it.
+
+And now the agony of shame, as well as penitence, she was in, showed
+itself by the bright red that crept over her very throat, as she lay
+quivering at his feet.
+
+"My daughter," said Clement gently, "take courage. Torment thyself no
+more about this Gerard, who is not. As for me, I am brother Clement,
+whom Heaven hath sent to thee this day to comfort thee, and help thee
+save thy soul. Thou hast made me thy confessor. I claim, then, thine
+obedience."
+
+"Oh, yes," sobbed the penitent.
+
+"Leave this pilgrimage, and instant return to Rome. Penitence abroad is
+little worth. There where we live lie the temptations we must defeat, or
+perish; not fly in search of others more showy, but less lethal. Easy to
+wash the feet of strangers, masked ourselves. Hard to be merely meek and
+charitable with those about us."
+
+"I'll never, never, lay finger on her again."
+
+"Nay, I speak not of servants only, but of dependents, kinsmen, friends.
+This be thy penance; the last thing at night, and the first thing after
+matins, call to mind thy sin, and God his goodness; and so be humble,
+and gentle to the faults of those around thee. The world it courts the
+rich; but seek thou the poor: not beggars; these for the most are
+neither honest nor truly poor. But rather find out those who blush to
+seek thee, yet need thee sore. Giving to them shalt lend to Heaven.
+Marry a good son of the Church."
+
+"Me? I will never marry."
+
+"Thou wilt marry within the year. I do entreat and command thee to
+marry one that feareth God. For thou art very clay. Mated ill thou shalt
+be nought. But wedding a worthy husband thou mayest, Dei gratia, live a
+pious princess; ay, and die a saint."
+
+"I?"
+
+"Thou."
+
+He then desired her to rise and go about the good work he had set her.
+
+She rose to her knees, and, removing her mask, cast an eloquent look
+upon him, then lowered her eyes meekly.
+
+"I will obey you as I would an angel. How happy I am, yet unhappy; for
+oh my heart tells me I shall never look on you again. I will not go till
+I have dried your feet."
+
+"It needs not. I have excused thee this bootless penance."
+
+"'Tis no penance to me. Ah! you do not forgive me, if you will not let
+me dry your poor feet."
+
+"So be it then," said Clement, resignedly; and thought to himself
+"Levius quid foemina."
+
+But these weak creatures, that gravitate towards the small, as heavenly
+bodies towards the great, have yet their own flashes of angelic
+intelligence.
+
+When the princess had dried the friar's feet, she looked at him with
+tears in her beautiful eyes, and murmured with singular tenderness and
+goodness--
+
+"I will have masses said for her soul. May I?" she added timidly.
+
+This brought a faint blush into the monk's cheek, and moistened his cold
+blue eye. It came so suddenly from one he was just rating so low.
+
+"It is a gracious thought," he said. "Do as thou wilt: often such acts
+fall back on the doer like blessed dew. I am thy confessor; not hers;
+thine is the soul I must now do my all to save, or woe be to my own. My
+daughter, my dear daughter, I see good and ill angels fighting for thy
+soul this day, ay, this moment; oh, fight thou on thine own side. Doth
+thou remember all I bade thee?"
+
+"Remember!" said the princess. "Sweet saint, each syllable of thine is
+graved in my heart."
+
+"But one word more then. Pray much to Christ, and little to his saints."
+
+"I will."
+
+"And that is the best word I have light to say to thee. So part we on
+it. Thou to the place becomes thee best, thy father's house: I to my
+holy mother's work."
+
+"Adieu," faltered the princess. "Adieu thou that I have loved too well,
+hated too ill, known and revered too late; forgiving angel adieu--for
+ever."
+
+The monk caught her words, though but faltered in a sigh.
+
+"FOR EVER?" he cried aloud with sudden ardour. "Christians live 'FOR
+EVER,' and love 'FOR EVER,' but they never part 'FOR EVER.' They part,
+as part the earth and sun, to meet more brightly in a little while. You
+and I part here for life. And what is our life? One line in the great
+story of the Church, whose son and daughter we are; one handful in the
+sand of time, one drop in the ocean of 'FOR EVER.' Adieu--for the little
+moment called 'a life!' We part in trouble, we shall meet in peace: we
+part creatures of clay, we shall meet immortal spirits: we part in a
+world of sin and sorrow, we shall meet where all is purity and love
+divine; where no ill passions are, but Christ is, and his saints around
+him clad in white. There, in the turning of an hour-glass, in the
+breaking of a bubble, in the passing of a cloud, she, and thou, and I,
+shall meet again; and sit at the feet of angels and archangels, apostles
+and saints, and beam like them with joy unspeakable, in the light of the
+shadow of God upon his throne, FOR EVER--AND EVER--AND EVER."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+And so they parted. The monk erect, his eyes turned heavenwards and
+glowing with the sacred fire of zeal; the princess slowly retiring and
+turning more than once to cast a lingering glance of awe and tender
+regret on that inspired figure.
+
+She went home subdued, and purified. Clement, in due course, reached
+Basle, and entered on his duties, teaching in the University, and
+preaching in the town and neighbourhood. He led a life that can be
+comprised in two words; deep study, and mortification. My reader has
+already a peep into his soul. At Basle he advanced in holy zeal and
+knowledge.
+
+The brethren of his order began to see in him a descendant of the saints
+and martyrs.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER LXXVIII
+
+The Hearth
+
+
+WHEN little Gerard was nearly three months old, a messenger came hot
+from Tergou for Catherine.
+
+"Now just you go back," said she, "and tell them I can't come and I
+won't: they have got Kate." So he departed, and Catherine continued her
+sentence; "there, child, I _must_ go: they are all at sixes and sevens:
+this is the third time of asking; and to-morrow my man would come
+himself and take me home by the ear, with a flea in't." She then
+recapitulated her experiences of infants, and instructed Margaret what
+to do in each coming emergency, and pressed money upon her. Margaret
+declined it with thanks. Catherine insisted, and turned angry. Margaret
+made excuses all so reasonable that Catherine rejected them with calm
+contempt; to her mind they lacked femininity. "Come, out with your
+heart," said she; "and you and me parting; and mayhap shall never see
+one another's face again."
+
+"Oh! mother, say not so."
+
+"Alack, girl, I have seen it so often; 'twill come into my mind now at
+each parting. When I was your age, I never had such a thought. Nay, we
+were all to live for ever then: so out wi' it."
+
+"Well then, mother--I would rather not have told you--your Cornelis must
+say to me, 'So you are come to share with us, eh, mistress?' those were
+his words. I told him I would be very sorry."
+
+"Beshrew his ill tongue! What signifies it? He will never know."
+
+"Most likely he would sooner or later. But, whether or no, I will take
+no grudge bounty from any family; unless I saw my child starving, and
+then Heaven only knows what I might do. Nay, mother, give me but thy
+love--I do prize that above silver, and they grudge me not that, by all
+I can find--for not a stiver of money will I take out of your house."
+
+"You are a foolish lass. Why, were it me, I'd take it just to spite
+him."
+
+"No, you would not. You and I are apples off one tree."
+
+Catherine yielded with a good grace; and, when the actual parting came,
+embraces and tears burst forth on both sides.
+
+[Illustration: MARGARET HAD MOMENTS OF BLISS]
+
+When she was gone the child cried a good deal; and all attempts to
+pacify him failing, Margaret suspected a pin, and, searching between his
+clothes and his skin, found a gold angel incommoding his backbone.
+
+"There now, Gerard," said she to the babe; "I _thought_ granny gave in
+rather _sudden_."
+
+She took the coin and wrapped it in a piece of linen, and laid it at the
+bottom of her box, bidding the infant observe she could be at times as
+resolute as granny herself.
+
+Catherine told Eli of Margaret's foolish pride, and how she had baffled
+it. Eli said Margaret was right, and she was wrong. Catherine tossed her
+head. Eli pondered.
+
+Margaret was not without domestic anxieties. She had still two men to
+feed, and could not work so hard as she had done. She had enough to do
+to keep the house, and the child, and cook for them all. But she had a
+little money laid by, and she used to tell her child his father would be
+home to help them before it was spent. And with these bright hopes, and
+that treasury of bliss, her boy, she spent some happy months.
+
+Time wore on: and no Gerard came; and, stranger still, no news of him.
+
+Then her mind was disquieted, and, contrary to her nature, which was
+practical, she was often lost in sad reverie; and sighed in silence.
+And, while her heart was troubled, her money was melting. And so it was,
+that one day she found the cupboard empty, and looked in her dependents'
+faces; and, at the sight of them, her bosom was all pity; and she
+appealed to the baby whether she could let grandfather and poor old
+Martin want a meal; and went and took out Catherine's angel. As she
+unfolded the linen a tear of gentle mortification fell on it. She sent
+Martin out to change it. While he was gone a Frenchman came with one of
+the dealers in illuminated work, who had offered her so poor a price. He
+told her he was employed by his sovereign to collect masterpieces for
+her book of hours. Then she showed him the two best things she had; and
+he was charmed with one of them, viz., the flowers and raspberries and
+creeping things, which Margaret Van Eyck had shaded. He offered her
+an unheard-of price. "Nay, flout not my need, good stranger," said she:
+"three mouths there be in this house, and none to fill them but me."
+
+Curious arithmetic! Left out No. 1.
+
+"I flout thee not, fair mistress. My princess charged me strictly, 'Seek
+the best craftsmen; but I will no hard bargains; make them content with
+me, and me with them.'"
+
+The next minute Margaret was on her knees kissing little Gerard in the
+cradle, and showering four gold pieces on him again and again, and
+relating the whole occurrence to him in very broken Dutch.
+
+"And oh what a good princess: wasn't she? We will pray for her, won't
+we, my lambkin; when we are old enough?"
+
+Martin came in furious. "They will not change it. I trow they think I
+stole it."
+
+"I am beholden to thee," said Margaret, hastily, and almost snatched it
+from Martin, and wrapped it up again, and restored it to its
+hiding-place.
+
+Ere these unexpected funds were spent, she got to her ironing and
+starching again. In the midst of which Martin sickened; and died after
+an illness of nine days.
+
+Nearly all of her money went to bury him decently.
+
+He was gone; and there was an empty chair by her fireside. For he had
+preferred the hearth to the sun as soon as the Busybody was gone.
+
+Margaret would not allow anybody to sit in this chair now. Yet whenever
+she let her eye dwell too long on it, vacant, it was sure to cost her a
+tear.
+
+And now there was nobody to carry her linen home. To do it herself she
+must leave little Gerard in charge of a neighbour. But she dared not
+trust such a treasure to mortal; and besides she could not bear him out
+of her sight for hours and hours. So she set inquiries on foot for a boy
+to carry her basket on Saturday and Monday.
+
+A plump, fresh-coloured youth, called Luke Peterson, who looked fifteen,
+but was eighteen, came in, and blushing, and twiddling his bonnet, asked
+her if a man would not serve her turn as well as a boy.
+
+Before he spoke she was saying to herself, "This boy will just do."
+
+But she took the cue, and said, "Nay; but a man will maybe seek more
+than I can well pay."
+
+"Not I," said Luke, warmly. "Why, Mistress Margaret, I am your
+neighbour, and I do very well at the coopering. I can carry your basket
+for you before or after my day's work, and welcome. You have no need to
+pay _me_ anything. 'Tisn't as if we were strangers, ye know."
+
+"Why, Master Luke, I know your face, for that matter; but I cannot call
+to mind that ever a word passed between us."
+
+"Oh yes, you did, Mistress Margaret. What have you forgotten? One day
+you were trying to carry your baby and eke your pitcher full o' water:
+and, quo' I, 'Give me the baby to carry.' 'Nay,' says you, 'I'll give
+you the pitcher, and keep the bairn myself:' and I carried the pitcher
+home, and you took it from me at this door, and you said to me, 'I am
+muckle obliged to you, young man,' with such a sweet voice; not like the
+folk in this street speak to a body."
+
+"I do mind now, Master Luke; and methinks it was the least I could say."
+
+"Well, Mistress Margaret, if you will say as much every time I carry
+your basket, I care not how often I bear it, nor how far."
+
+"Nay, nay," said Margaret, colouring faintly. "I would not put upon good
+nature. You are young, Master Luke, and kindly. Say I give you your
+supper on Saturday night, when you bring the linen home, and your
+dawn-mete o' Monday; would that make us anyways even?"
+
+"As you please; only say not I sought a couple o' diets, I, for such a
+trifle as yon."
+
+With chubby-faced Luke's timely assistance, and the health and strength
+which Heaven gave this poor young woman, to balance her many ills, the
+house went pretty smoothly awhile. But the heart became more and more
+troubled by Gerard's long and now most mysterious silence.
+
+And then that mental torture, Suspense, began to tear her heavy heart
+with his hot pinchers, till she cried often and vehemently, "Oh, that I
+could know the worst."
+
+While she was in this state, one day she heard a heavy step mount the
+stair. She started and trembled. "That is no step that I know. Ill
+tidings!"
+
+The door opened, and an unexpected visitor, Eli, came in, looking grave
+and kind.
+
+Margaret eyed him in silence, and with increasing agitation.
+
+"Girl," said he, "the skipper is come back."
+
+"One word," gasped Margaret, "is he alive?"
+
+"Surely, I hope so. No one has seen him dead."
+
+"Then they must have seen him alive."
+
+"No girl; neither dead nor alive hath he been seen this many months in
+Rome. My daughter Kate thinks he is gone to some other city. She bade me
+tell you her thought."
+
+"Ay, like enough," said Margaret, gloomily; "like enough. My poor babe!"
+
+The old man in a faintest voice asked her for a morsel to eat: he had
+come fasting.
+
+The poor thing pitied him with the surface of her agitated mind, and
+cooked a meal for him, trembling, and scarce knowing what she was about.
+
+Ere he went he laid his hand upon her head, and said, "Be he alive, or
+be he dead, I look on thee as my daughter. Can I do nought for thee this
+day? bethink thee now."
+
+"Ay, old man. Pray for him; and for me!"
+
+Eli sighed, and went sadly and heavily down the stairs.
+
+She listened half stupidly to his retiring footsteps till they ceased.
+Then she sank moaning down by the cradle, and drew little Gerard tight
+to her bosom. "Oh, my poor fatherless boy; my fatherless boy!"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER LXXIX
+
+
+NOT long after this, as the little family at Tergou sat at dinner, Luke
+Peterson burst in on them, covered with dust.
+
+"Good people, Mistress Catherine is wanted instantly at Rotterdam."
+
+"My name is Catherine, young man. Kate, it will be Margaret."
+
+"Ay dame, she said to me, 'Good Luke, hie thee to Tergou, and ask for
+Eli the hosier, and pray his wife Catherine to come to me, for God his
+love.' I didn't wait for daylight."
+
+"Holy saints! He has come home, Kate. Nay, she would sure have said so.
+What on earth can it be?" And she heaped conjecture on conjecture.
+
+"Mayhap the young man can tell us," hazarded Kate, timidly.
+
+"That I can," said Luke. "Why, her babe is a-dying. And she was so
+wrapped up in it!"
+
+Catherine started up: "What is his trouble?"
+
+"Nay, I know not. But it has been peaking and pining worse and worse
+this while."
+
+A furtive glance of satisfaction passed between Cornelis and Sybrandt.
+Luckily for them Catherine did not see it. Her face was turned towards
+her husband. "Now, Eli," cried she, furiously, "if you say a word
+against it, you and I shall quarrel, after all these years."
+
+"Who gainsays thee, foolish woman? Quarrel with your own shadow; while I
+go borrow Peter's mule for ye."
+
+"Bless thee, my good man! Bless thee! Didst never yet fail me at a
+pinch. Now eat your dinners who can, while I go and make ready."
+
+She took Luke back with her in the cart, and, on the way, questioned and
+cross-questioned him, severely, and seductively, by turns, till she had
+turned his mind inside out, what there was of it.
+
+Margaret met her at the door, pale and agitated, and threw her arms
+round her neck, and looked imploringly in her face.
+
+"Come, he is alive, thank God," said Catherine, after scanning her
+eagerly.
+
+She looked at the failing child, and then at the poor hollow-eyed
+mother, alternately. "Lucky you sent for me," said she. "The child is
+poisoned."
+
+"Poisoned! by whom?"
+
+"By you. You have been fretting."
+
+"Nay, indeed, mother. How can I help fretting?"
+
+"Don't tell me, Margaret. A nursing mother has no business to fret. She
+must turn her mind away from her grief to the comfort that lies in her
+lap. Know you not that the child pines if the mother vexes herself? This
+comes of your reading and writing. Those idle crafts befit a man; but
+they keep all useful knowledge out of a woman. The child must be
+weaned."
+
+"Oh, you cruel woman," cried Margaret, vehemently; "I am sorry I sent
+for you. Would you rob me of the only bit of comfort I have in the
+world? A-nursing my Gerard, I forget I am the most unhappy creature
+beneath the sun."
+
+"That you do not," was the retort, "or he would not be the way he is."
+
+"Mother!" said Margaret, imploringly.
+
+"'Tis hard," replied Catherine, relenting. "But bethink thee; would it
+not be harder to look down and see his lovely wee face a-looking up at
+you out of a little coffin?"
+
+"O, Jesu!"
+
+"And how could you face your other troubles with your heart aye full,
+and your lap empty?"
+
+"Oh, mother, I consent to anything. Only save my boy."
+
+"That is a good lass. Trust to me! I do stand by, and see clearer than
+thou."
+
+Unfortunately there was another consent to be gained; the babe's: and he
+was more refractory than his mother.
+
+"There," said Margaret, trying to affect regret at his misbehaviour; "he
+loves me too well."
+
+But Catherine was a match for them both. As she came along she had
+observed a healthy young woman, sitting outside her own door, with an
+infant hard by. She went and told her the case; and would she nurse the
+pining child for the nonce, till she had matters ready to wean him?
+
+The young woman consented with a smile, and popped her child into the
+cradle and came into Margaret's house. She dropped a curtsy, and
+Catherine put the child into her hands. She examined, and pitied it, and
+purred over it, and proceeded to nurse it, just as if it had been her
+own.
+
+Margaret, who had been paralyzed at her assurance, cast a rueful look at
+Catherine, and burst out crying.
+
+The visitor looked up. "What is to do? Wife, ye told me not the mother
+was unwilling."
+
+"She is not: she is only a fool. Never heed her: and you, Margaret, I am
+ashamed of you."
+
+"You are a cruel, hard-hearted woman," sobbed Margaret.
+
+"Them as take in hand to guide the weak, need be hardish. And you will
+excuse me; but you are not my flesh and blood: and your boy is."
+
+After giving this blunt speech time to sink, she added, "Come now, she
+is robbing her own to save yours, and you can think of nothing better
+than bursting out a-blubbering in the woman's face. Out fie, for shame?"
+
+"Nay, wife," said the nurse. "Thank Heaven, I have enough for my own and
+for hers to boot. And prithee wyte not on her! Maybe the troubles o'
+life ha' soured her own milk."
+
+"And her heart into the bargain," said the remorseless Catherine.
+
+Margaret looked her full in the face; and down went her eyes.
+
+"I know I ought to be very grateful to you," sobbed Margaret to the
+nurse: then turned her head and leaned away over the chair, not to
+witness the intolerable sight of another nursing her Gerard, and Gerard
+drawing no distinction between this new mother, and her the banished
+one.
+
+The nurse replied, "You are very welcome, my poor woman. And so are you,
+Mistress Catherine, which are my townswoman, and know it not."
+
+"What, are ye from Tergou? all the better. But I cannot call your face
+to mind."
+
+"Oh, you know not me: my husband and me, we are very humble folk by you.
+But true Eli and his wife are known of all the town; and respected. So I
+am at your call, dame; and at yours, wife; and yours, my pretty poppet;
+night or day."
+
+"There's a woman of the right old sort," said Catherine, as the door
+closed upon her.
+
+"I HATE her. I HATE her. I HATE her," said Margaret, with wonderful
+fervour.
+
+Catherine only laughed at this outburst.
+
+"That is right," said she, "better say it, as set sly and think it. It
+is very natural after all. Come, here is your bundle o' comfort. Take
+and hate that; if ye can:" and she put the child in her lap.
+
+"No, no;" said Margaret, turning her head half away from him: she could
+not for her life turn the other half. "He is not my child now; he is
+hers. I know not why she left him here, for my part. It was very good of
+her not to take him to her house, cradle and all; oh! oh! oh! oh! oh!
+oh! oh! oh!"
+
+"Ah! well, one comfort, _he_ is not dead. This gives me light; some
+other woman has got him away from me; like father, like son; oh! oh! oh!
+oh! oh!"
+
+Catherine was sorry for her, and let her cry in peace. And after that,
+when she wanted Joan's aid, she used to take Gerard out, to give him a
+little fresh air. Margaret never objected; nor expressed the least
+incredulity; but on their return was always in tears.
+
+This connivance was short lived. She was now altogether as eager to wean
+little Gerard. It was done; and he recovered health and vigour: and
+another trouble fell upon him directly: teething. But here Catherine's
+experience was invaluable: and now, in the midst of her grief and
+anxiety about the father, Margaret had moments of bliss, watching the
+son's tiny teeth come through. "Teeth, mother? I call them not teeth,
+but pearls of pearls." And each pearl that peeped and sparkled on his
+red gums, was to her the greatest feat Nature had ever achieved.
+
+Her companion partook the illusion. And, had we told them a field of
+standing corn was equally admirable, Margaret would have changed to a
+reproachful gazelle, and Catherine turned us out of doors; so each
+pearl's arrival was announced with a shriek of triumph by whichever of
+them was the fortunate discoverer.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Catherine gossiped with Joan and learned that she was the wife of Jorian
+Ketel of Tergou, who had been servant to Ghysbrecht Van Swieten, but
+fallen out of favour, and come back to Rotterdam, his native place. His
+friends had got him the place of sexton to the parish, and what with
+that and carpentering, he did pretty well.
+
+Catherine told Joan in return whose child it was she had nursed, and all
+about Margaret and Gerard, and the deep anxiety his silence had plunged
+them in. "Ay," said Joan, "the world is full of trouble." One day she
+said to Catherine, "It's my belief my man knows more about your Gerard
+than anybody in these parts: but he has got to be closer than ever of
+late. Drop in some day just afore sunset, and set him talking. And, for
+our Lady's sake, say not I set you on. The only hiding he ever gave me
+was for babbling his business: and I do not want another. Gramercy! I
+married a man for the comfort of the thing: not to be hided."
+
+Catherine dropped in. Jorian was ready enough to tell her how he had
+befriended her son and perhaps saved his life. But this was no news to
+Catherine: and the moment she began to cross-question him as to whether
+he could guess why her lost boy neither came, nor wrote, he cast a grim
+look at his wife, who received it with a calm air of stolid candour and
+innocent unconsciousness; and his answers became short and sullen. "What
+should he know more than another?" and so on. He added, after a pause,
+"Think you the burgomaster takes such as me into his secrets?"
+
+"Oh, then the burgomaster knows something?" said Catherine, sharply.
+
+"Likely. Who else should?"
+
+"I'll ask him."
+
+"I would."
+
+"And tell him you say he knows."
+
+"That is right, dame. Go make him mine enemy. That is what a poor fellow
+always gets if he says a word to you women." And Jorian from that moment
+shrunk in and became impenetrable as a hedgehog, and almost as prickly.
+
+His conduct caused both the poor women agonies of mind; alarm, and
+irritated curiosity. Ghysbrecht was for some cause Gerard's mortal
+enemy; had stopped his marriage, imprisoned him, hunted him. And here
+was his late servant, who when off his guard had hinted that this enemy
+had the clue to Gerard's silence. After sifting Jorian's every word and
+look, all remained dark and mysterious. Then Catherine told Margaret to
+go herself to him. "You are young; you are fair. You will, maybe, get
+more out of him than I could."
+
+The conjecture was a reasonable one.
+
+Margaret went with her child in her arms and tapped timidly at Jorian's
+door just before sunset. "Come in," said a sturdy voice. She entered,
+and there sat Jorian by the fireside. At sight of her he rose, snorted,
+and burst out of the house. "Is that for me, wife?" inquired Margaret,
+turning very red.
+
+"You must excuse him," replied Joan, rather coldly; "he lays it to your
+door that he is a poor man instead of a rich one. It is something about
+a piece of parchment. There was one missing, and he got nought from the
+burgomaster all along of that one."
+
+"Alas! Gerard took it!"
+
+"Likely. But my man says you should not have let him: you were pledged
+to him to keep them all safe. And, sooth to say, I blame not my Jorian
+for being wroth. 'Tis hard for a poor man to be so near fortune and
+lose it by those he has befriended. However, I tell him another story.
+Says I, 'Folk that are out o' trouble, like you and me, didn't ought to
+be too hard on folk that are in trouble: and she has plenty.' Going
+already? What is all your hurry, mistress?"
+
+"Oh, it is not for me to drive the good man out of his own house."
+
+"Well, let me kiss the bairn afore ye go. He is not in fault any way,
+poor innocent."
+
+Upon this cruel rebuff Margaret came to a resolution, which she did not
+confide even to Catherine.
+
+After six weeks' stay that good woman returned home.
+
+On the child's birthday, which occurred soon after, Margaret did no
+work: but put on her Sunday clothes, and took her boy in her arms and
+went to the church and prayed there long and fervently for Gerard's safe
+return.
+
+That same day and hour Father Clement celebrated a mass and prayed for
+Margaret's departed soul in the minster church at Basle.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER LXXX
+
+
+SOME blackguard or other, I think it was Sybrandt, said, "A lie is not
+like a blow with a curtal axe."
+
+True: for we can predict in some degree the consequences of a stroke
+with any material weapon. But a lie has no bounds at all. The nature of
+the thing is to ramify beyond human calculation.
+
+Often in the every-day world a lie has cost a life, or laid waste two or
+three.
+
+And so, in this story, what tremendous consequences of that one
+heartless falsehood!
+
+Yet the tillers reaped little from it.
+
+The brothers, who invented it merely to have one claimant the less for
+their father's property, saw little Gerard take their brother's place in
+their mother's heart. Nay, more, one day Eli openly proclaimed that,
+Gerard being lost, and probably dead, he had provided by will for little
+Gerard, and also for Margaret, his poor son's widow.
+
+At this the look that passed between the black sheep was a caution to
+traitors. Cornelis had it on his lips to say Gerard was most likely
+alive. But he saw his mother looking at him, and checked himself in
+time.
+
+Ghysbrecht Van Swieten, the other partner in that lie, was now a failing
+man. He saw the period fast approaching when all his wealth would drop
+from his body, and his misdeeds cling to his soul.
+
+Too intelligent to deceive himself entirely, he had never been free from
+gusts of remorse. In taking Gerard's letter to Margaret he had
+compounded. "I cannot give up land and money," said his giant Avarice.
+"I will cause her no unnecessary pain," said his dwarf Conscience.
+
+So, after first tampering with the seal, and finding there was not a
+syllable about the deed, he took it to her with his own hand; and made a
+merit of it to himself: a set-off; and on a scale not uncommon where the
+self-accuser is the judge.
+
+The birth of Margaret's child surprised and shocked him, and put his
+treacherous act in a new light. Should his letter take effect he should
+cause the dishonour of her, who was the daughter of one friend, the
+granddaughter of another, and whose land he was keeping from her too.
+
+These thoughts preying on him at that period of life, when the strength
+of body decays, and the memory of old friends revives, filled him with
+gloomy horrors. Yet he was afraid to confess. For the cure was an honest
+man, and would have made him disgorge. And with him Avarice was an
+ingrained habit, Penitence only a sentiment.
+
+Matters were thus when, one day, returning from the town-hall to his own
+house, he found a woman waiting for him in the vestibule, with a child
+in her arms. She was veiled, and so, concluding she had something to be
+ashamed of, he addressed her magisterially. On this she let down her
+veil and looked him full in the face.
+
+It was Margaret Brandt.
+
+Her sudden appearance and manner startled him, and he could not conceal
+his confusion.
+
+"Where is my Gerard?" cried she, her bosom heaving. "Is he alive?"
+
+"For aught I know," stammered Ghysbrecht. "I hope so, for your sake.
+Prithee come into this room. The servants!"
+
+"Not a step," said Margaret, and she took him by the shoulder, and held
+him with all the energy of an excited woman. "You know the secret of
+that which is breaking my heart. Why does not my Gerard come, nor send
+a line this many months? Answer me, or all the town is like to hear me;
+let alone thy servants. My misery is too great to be sported with."
+
+In vain he persisted he knew nothing about Gerard. She told him those
+who had sent her to him told her another tale. "You do know why he
+neither comes nor sends," said she, firmly.
+
+At this Ghysbrecht turned paler and paler; but he summoned all his
+dignity, and said, "Would you believe those two knaves against a man of
+worship?"
+
+"What two knaves?" said she, keenly.
+
+He stammered, "Said ye not--? There, I am a poor old broken man, whose
+memory is shaken. And you come here, and confuse me so. I know not what
+I say."
+
+"Ay, sir, your memory is shaken, or sure you would not be my enemy. My
+father saved you from the plague, when none other would come anigh you;
+and was ever your friend. My grandfather Floris helped you in your early
+poverty, and loved you, man and boy. Three generations of us you have
+seen; and here is the fourth of us; this is your old friend Peter's
+grandchild, and your old friend Floris his great-grandchild. Look down
+on his innocent face, and think of theirs!"
+
+"Woman, you torture me," sighed Ghysbrecht, and sank upon a bench. But
+she saw her advantage, and kneeled before him, and put the boy on his
+knees. "This fatherless babe is poor Margaret Brandt's, that never did
+you ill, and comes of a race that loved you. Nay, look at his face.
+'Twill melt thee more than any word of mine. Saints of heaven, what can
+a poor desolate girl and her babe have done to wipe out all memory of
+thine own young days, when thou wert guiltless as he is, that now looks
+up in thy face and implores thee to give him back his father?"
+
+And with her arms under the child she held him up higher and higher,
+smiling under the old man's eyes.
+
+He cast a wild look of anguish on the child, and another on the kneeling
+mother, and started up shrieking, "Avaunt, ye pair of adders."
+
+The stung soul gave the old limbs a momentary vigour, and he walked
+rapidly, wringing his hands and clutching at his white hair. "Forget
+those days? I forget all else. Oh, woman, woman, sleeping or waking I
+see but the faces of the dead, I hear but the voices of the dead, and I
+shall soon be among the dead. There, there, what is done is done. I am
+in hell. I am in hell."
+
+And unnatural force ended in prostration.
+
+He staggered, and but for Margaret would have fallen. With her one
+disengaged arm she supported him as well as she could, and cried for
+help.
+
+A couple of servants came running, and carried him away in a state
+bordering on syncope. The last Margaret saw of him was his old furrowed
+face, white and helpless as his hair that hung down over the servant's
+elbow.
+
+"Heaven forgive me," she said. "I doubt I have killed the poor old man."
+
+Then this attempt to penetrate the torturing mystery left it as dark, or
+darker than before. For when she came to ponder every word, her
+suspicion was confirmed that Ghysbrecht did know something about Gerard.
+"And who were the two knaves he thought had done a good deed, and told
+me? Oh, my Gerard, my poor deserted babe, you and I are wading in deep
+waters."
+
+The visit to Tergou took more money than she could well afford: and a
+customer ran away in her debt. She was once more compelled to unfold
+Catherine's angel. But, strange to say, as she came down stairs with it
+in her hand she found some loose silver on the table, with a written
+line--
+
+    _For Gerard His Wife_
+
+She fell with a cry of surprise on the writing: and soon it rose into a
+cry of joy.
+
+"He is alive. He sends me this by some friendly hand."
+
+She kissed the writing again and again, and put it in her bosom.
+
+Time rolled on: and no news of Gerard.
+
+And about every two months a small sum in silver found its way into the
+house. Sometimes it lay on the table. Once it was flung in through the
+bedroom window in a purse. Once it was at the bottom of Luke's basket.
+He had stopped at the public-house to talk to a friend. The giver or his
+agent was never detected. Catherine disowned it. Margaret Van Eyck swore
+she had no hand in it. So did Eli. And Margaret, whenever it came, used
+to say to little Gerard, "Oh, my poor deserted child, you and I are
+wading in deep waters."
+
+She applied at least half this modest, but useful supply, to dressing
+the little Gerard beyond his station in life. "If it does come from
+Gerard, he shall see his boy neat." All the mothers in the street began
+to sneer, especially such as had brats out at elbows.
+
+The months rolled on, and dead sickness of heart succeeded to these
+keener torments. She returned to her first thought: "Gerard must be
+dead. She should never see her boy's father again, nor her marriage
+lines." This last grief, which had been somewhat allayed by Eli and
+Catherine recognizing her betrothal, now revived in full force; others
+would not look so favourably on her story. And often she moaned over her
+boy's illegitimacy. "Is it not enough for us to be bereaved? Must we be
+dishonoured too? Oh, that we had ne'er been born."
+
+A change took place in Peter Brandt. His mind, clouded for nearly two
+years, seemed now to be clearing; he had intervals of intelligence; and
+then he and Margaret used to talk of Gerard till he wandered again. But
+one day, returning after an absence of some hours, Margaret found him
+conversing with Catherine, in a way he had never done since his
+paralytic stroke. "Eh, girl, why must you be out?" said she. "But indeed
+I have told him all; and we have been a-crying together over thy
+troubles."
+
+Margaret stood silent, looking joyfully from one to the other.
+
+Peter smiled on her, and said, "Come, let me bless thee."
+
+She kneeled at his feet, and he blessed her most eloquently. He told her
+she had been all her life the lovingest, truest, and most obedient
+daughter Heaven ever sent to a poor old widowed man. "May thy son be to
+thee what thou hast been to me!"
+
+After this he dozed. Then the females whispered together: and Catherine
+said--"All our talk e'en now was of Gerard. It lies heavy on his mind.
+His poor head must often have listened to us when it seemed quite dark.
+Margaret, he is a very understanding man; he thought of many things: 'He
+may be in prison,' says he, 'or forced to go fighting for some king, or
+sent to Constantinople to copy books there, or gone into the Church
+after all.' He had a bent that way."
+
+"Ah, mother," whispered Margaret, in reply, "he doth but deceive himself
+as we do."
+
+Ere she could finish the sentence, a strange interruption occurred.
+
+A loud voice cried out, "I SEE HIM. I SEE HIM."
+
+And the old man with dilating eyes seemed to be looking right through
+the wall of the house.
+
+"IN A BOAT; on a GREAT RIVER; COMING THIS WAY. Sore disfigured; but I
+knew him. Gone! gone! all dark."
+
+And he sank back, and asked feebly where was Margaret.
+
+"Dear father, I am by thy side. Oh, mother! mother, what is this?"
+
+"I cannot see thee, and but a moment agone I saw all round the world.
+Ay, ay. Well, I am ready. Is this thy hand? Bless thee, my child, bless
+thee! Weep not! The tree is ripe."
+
+The old physician read the signs aright. These calm words were his last.
+The next moment he drooped his head, and gently, placidly, drifted away
+from earth, like an infant sinking to rest. The torch had flashed up,
+before going out.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER LXXXI
+
+
+SHE who had wept for poor old Martin was not likely to bear this blow so
+stoically as the death of the old is apt to be borne. In vain Catherine
+tried to console her with commonplaces; in vain told her it was a happy
+release for him; and that, as he himself had said, the tree was ripe.
+But her worst failure was, when she urged that there were now but two
+mouths to feed: and one care the less.
+
+"Such cares are all the joys I have," said Margaret. "They fill my
+desolate heart, which now seems void as well as waste. Oh, empty chair,
+my bosom it aches to see thee. Poor old man, how could I love him by
+halves, I that did use to sit and look at him and think 'But for me thou
+wouldst die of hunger.' He, so wise, so learned erst, was got to be
+helpless as my own sweet babe, and I loved him as if he had been my
+child instead of my father. Oh, empty chair! Oh, empty heart!
+Well-a-day! well-a-day!"
+
+And the pious tears would not be denied.
+
+Then Catherine held her peace: and hung her head. And one day she made
+this confession, "I speak to thee out o' my head, and not out o' my
+bosom; thou dost well to be deaf to me. Were I in thy place I should
+mourn the old man all one as thou dost."
+
+Then Margaret embraced her, and this bit of true sympathy did her a
+little good. The commonplaces did none.
+
+Then Catherine's bowels yearned over her, and she said, "My poor girl,
+you were not born to live alone. I have got to look on you as my own
+daughter. Waste not thine youth upon my son Gerard. Either he is dead or
+he is a traitor. It cuts my heart to say it; but who can help seeing it?
+Thy father is gone: and I cannot always be aside thee. And here is an
+honest lad that loves thee well this many a day. I'd take him and
+Comfort together. Heaven hath sent us these creatures to torment us and
+comfort us and all; we are just nothing in the world without 'em." Then
+seeing Margaret look utterly perplexed, she went on to say, "Why sure
+you are not so blind as not to see it?"
+
+"What? Who?"
+
+"Who but this Luke Peterson."
+
+"What, our Luke? The boy that carries my basket?"
+
+"Nay, he is over nineteen, and a fine, healthy lad: and I have made
+inquiries for you; and they all do say he is a capable workman and never
+touches a drop; and that is much in a Rotterdam lad, which they are
+mostly half man, half sponge."
+
+Margaret smiled for the first time this many days. "Luke loves dried
+puddings dearly," said she: "and I made them to his mind. 'Tis them he
+comes a-courting here." Then she suddenly turned red. "But if I thought
+he came after your son's wife that is, or ought to be, I'd soon put him
+to the door."
+
+"Nay, nay; for Heaven's sake let me not make mischief. Poor lad! Why,
+girl, Fancy will not be bridled. Bless you, I wormed it out of him near
+a twelvemonth agone."
+
+"Oh, mother, and you _let_ him!?"
+
+"Well, I thought of you. I said to myself, 'If he is fool enough to be
+her slave for nothing, all the better for her. A lone woman is lost
+without a man about her to fetch and carry her little matters.' But now
+my mind is changed, and I think the best use you can put him to is to
+marry him."
+
+"So then his own mother is against him, and would wed me to the first
+comer. Ah, Gerard, thou hast but me; I will not believe thee dead till I
+see thy tomb, nor false till I see thee with another lover in thine
+hand. Foolish boy, I shall ne'er be civil to him again."
+
+Afflicted with the busybody's protection, Luke Peterson met a cold
+reception in the house where he had hitherto found a gentle and kind
+one. And by-and-by, finding himself very little spoken to at all, and
+then sharply and irritably, the great, soft, fellow fell to whimpering,
+and asked Margaret plump if he had done anything to offend her.
+
+"Nothing. I am to blame. I am curst. If you will take my counsel you
+will keep out of my way awhile."
+
+"It is all along of me, Luke," said the busybody.
+
+"You, Mistress Catherine. Why what have I done for you to set her
+against me?"
+
+"Nay, I meant all for the best. I told her I saw you were looking
+towards her through a wedding-ring. But she won't hear of it."
+
+"There was no need to tell her that, wife, she knows I am courting her
+this twelvemonth."
+
+"Not I," said Margaret, "or I should never have opened the street door
+to you."
+
+"Why, I come here every Saturday night. And that is how the lads in
+Rotterdam do court. If we sup with a lass o' Saturdays, that's wooing."
+
+"Oh, that is Rotterdam, is it? Then next time you come let it be
+Thursday, or Friday. For my part I thought you came after my puddings,
+boy."
+
+"I like your puddings well enough. You make them better than mother
+does. But I like you still better than the puddings," said Luke,
+tenderly.
+
+"Then you have seen the last of them. How dare you talk so to another
+man's wife, and him far away?" She ended gently, but very firmly, "You
+need not trouble yourself to come here any more, Luke; I can carry my
+basket myself."
+
+"Oh, very well," said Luke, and after sitting silent and stupid for a
+little while, he rose, and said sadly to Catherine, "Dame, I dare say I
+have got the sack;" and went out.
+
+But the next Saturday Catherine found him seated on the door-step
+blubbering. He told her he had got used to come there, and every other
+place seemed strange. She went in and told Margaret and Margaret sighed
+and said, "Poor Luke, he might come in for her, if he could know his
+place, and treat her like a married wife." On this being communicated to
+Luke, he hesitated. "Pshaw!" said Catherine, "promises are pie-crusts.
+Promise her all the world, sooner than sit outside like a fool, when a
+word will carry you inside. Now you humour her in everything, and then,
+if poor Gerard come not home and claim her, you will be sure to have
+her--in time. A lone woman is aye to be tired out, thou foolish boy."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER LXXXII
+
+The Cloister
+
+
+BROTHER CLEMENT had taught and preached in Basle more than a
+twelvemonth, when one day Jerome stood before him, dusty, with a
+triumphant glance in his eye.
+
+"Give the glory to God, brother Clement; thou canst now wend to England
+with me."
+
+"I am ready, brother Jerome: and, expecting thee these many months, have
+in the intervals of teaching and devotion studied the English tongue
+somewhat closely."
+
+"'Twas well thought of," said Jerome. He then told him he had but
+delayed till he could obtain extraordinary powers from the Pope to
+collect money for the Church's use in England, and to hear confession in
+all the secular monasteries. "So now gird up thy loins and let us go
+forth and deal a good blow for the Church, and against the Franciscans."
+
+The two friars went preaching down the Rhine, for England. In the larger
+places they both preached. At the smaller they often divided, and took
+different sides of the river, and met again at some appointed spot. Both
+were able orators, but in different styles.
+
+Jerome's was noble and impressive, but a little contracted in religious
+topics, and a trifle monotonous in delivery compared with Clement's,
+though in truth not so compared with most preachers.
+
+Clement's was full of variety, and often remarkably colloquial. In its
+general flow tender and gently winning, it curled round the reason and
+the heart. But it always rose with the rising thought; and so at times
+Clement soared as far above Jerome as his level speaking was below him.
+Indeed, in these noble heats he was all that we have read of inspired
+prophet or heathen orator: Vehemens ut procella, excitatus ut torrens,
+incensus ut fulmen, tonabat, fulgurabat, et rapidis eloquentiae fluctibus
+cuncta proruebat et porturbabat.
+
+I would give liberal specimens, but for five objections: it is
+difficult; time is short; I have done it elsewhere; an able imitator
+has since done it better; and similarity, a virtue in peas, is a vice in
+books.
+
+But (not to evade the matter entirely) Clement used secretly to try and
+learn the recent events and the besetting sin of each town he was to
+preach in.
+
+But Jerome the unbending scorned to go out of his way for any people's
+vices. At one great town some leagues from the Rhine, they mounted the
+same pulpit in turn. Jerome preached against vanity in dress, a
+favourite theme of his. He was eloquent and satirical, and the people
+listened with complacency. It was a vice that they were little given to.
+
+Clement preached against drunkenness. It was a besetting sin, and sacred
+from preaching in these parts: for the clergy themselves were infected
+with it, and popular prejudice protected it. Clement dealt it merciless
+blows out of Holy Writ and worldly experience. A crime itself, it was
+the nursing-mother of most crimes, especially theft and murder. He
+reminded them of a parricide that had lately been committed in their
+town by an honest man in liquor, and also how a band of drunkards had
+roasted one of their own comrades alive at a neighbouring village. "Your
+last prince," said he, "is reported to have died of apoplexy, but well
+you know he died of drink: and of your aldermen one perished miserably
+last month dead drunk, suffocated in a puddle. Your children's backs go
+bare that you may fill your bellies with that which makes you the worst
+of beasts, silly as calves, yet fierce as boars; and drive your families
+to need, and your souls to hell. I tell ye your town, ay, and your very
+nation would sink to the bottom of mankind did your women drink as you
+do. And how long will they be temperate, and, contrary to nature, resist
+the example of their husbands and fathers? Vice ne'er yet stood still.
+Ye must amend yourselves or see them come down to your mark. Already in
+Bohemia they drink along with the men. How shows a drunken woman? Would
+you love to see your wives drunken, your mothers drunken?" At this there
+was a shout of horror, for mediaeval audiences had not learned to sit
+mumchance at a moving sermon. "Ah, that comes home to you," cried the
+friar. "What? madmen! think you it doth not more shock the all pure God
+to see a man, his noblest work, turned to a drunken beast, than it can
+shock you creatures of sin and unreason to see a woman turned into a
+thing no better nor worse than yourselves?"
+
+He ended with two pictures; a drunkard's house and family, and a sober
+man's; both so true and dramatic in all their details that the wives
+fell to "ohing" and "ahing," and "Eh, but that is a true word."
+
+This discourse caused quite an uproar. The hearers formed knots: the men
+were indignant; so the women flattered them, and took their part openly
+against the preacher. A married man had a right to a drop: he needed it,
+working for all the family. And for their part they did not care to
+change their men for milksops.
+
+The double faces! That very evening a band of men caught near a hundred
+of them round brother Clement, filling his wallet with the best, and
+offering him the very roses off their heads, and kissing his frock, and
+blessing him "for taking in hand to mend their sots."
+
+Jerome thought this sermon too earthly.
+
+"Drunkenness is not heresy, Clement, that a whole sermon should be
+preached against it."
+
+As they went on he found to his surprise that Clement's sermons sank
+into his hearers deeper than his own; made them listen, think, cry, and
+sometimes even amend their ways. "He hath the art of sinking to their
+peg," thought Jerome. "Yet he can soar high enough at times."
+
+Upon the whole, it puzzled Jerome, who had a secret sense of superiority
+to his tenderer brother. And, after about two hundred miles of it, it
+got to displease him as well as puzzle him. But he tried to check this
+sentiment as petty and unworthy. "Souls differ like locks," said he,
+"and preachers must differ like keys, or the fewer should the Church
+open for God to pass in. And, certes, this novice hath the key to these
+northern souls, being himself a northern man."
+
+And so they came slowly down the Rhine, sometimes drifting a few miles
+on the stream: but in general walking by the banks preaching, and
+teaching, and confessing sinners in the towns and villages; and they
+reached the town of Dusseldorf.
+
+There was the little quay where Gerard and Denys had taken boat up the
+Rhine. The friars landed on it. There were the streets, there was "The
+Silver Lion." Nothing had changed but he, who walked through it
+barefoot, with his heart calm and cold, his hands across his breast, and
+his eyes bent meekly on the ground, a true son of Dominic and holy
+Church.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER LXXXIII
+
+The Hearth
+
+
+"ELI," said Catherine, "answer me one question like a man, and I'll ask
+no more to-day. What is wormwood?"
+
+Eli looked a little helpless at this sudden demand upon his faculties;
+but soon recovered enough to say it was something that tasted main
+bitter.
+
+"That is a fair answer, my man, but not the one I look for."
+
+"Then answer it yourself."
+
+"And shall. Wormwood is--to have two in the house a-doing nought, but
+waiting for thy shoes and mine." Eli groaned. The shaft struck home.
+
+"Methinks waiting for their best friend's coffin, that and nothing to
+do, are enow to make them worse than Nature meant. Why not set them up
+somewhere, to give 'em a chance?"
+
+Eli said he was willing, but afraid they would drink and gamble their
+very shelves away.
+
+"Nay," said Catherine. "Dost take me for a simpleton? Of course I mean
+to watch them at starting, and drive them wi' a loose rein, as the
+saying is."
+
+"Where did you think of? Not here; to divide our own custom."
+
+"Not likely. I say Rotterdam, against the world. Then I could start
+them."
+
+Oh, self-deception! The true motive of all this was to get near little
+Gerard.
+
+After many discussions, and eager promises of amendment on these terms
+from Cornelis and Sybrandt, Catherine went to Rotterdam shop-hunting,
+and took Kate with her; for a change. They soon found one, and in a good
+street: but it was sadly out of order. However they got it cheaper for
+that, and instantly set about brushing it up, fitting proper shelves for
+the business, and making the dwelling house habitable.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Luke Peterson was always asking Margaret what he could do for her. The
+answer used to be in a sad tone, "Nothing, Luke, nothing."
+
+"What you that are so clever, can you think of nothing for me to do for
+you?"
+
+"Nothing, Luke, nothing."
+
+But at last she varied the reply thus: "If you could make something to
+help my sweet sister Kate about."
+
+The slave of love consented joyfully, and soon made Kate a little cart,
+and cushioned it, and yoked himself into it, and at eventide drew her
+out of the town, and along the pleasant boulevard, with Margaret and
+Catherine walking beside. It looked a happier party than it was.
+
+Kate, for one, enjoyed it keenly; for little Gerard was put in her lap,
+and she doted on him: and it was like a cherub carried by a little
+angel, or a rosebud lying in the cup of a lily.
+
+So the vulgar jeered: and asked Luke how a thistle tasted, and if his
+mistress could not afford one with four legs, etc.
+
+Luke did not mind these jeers; but Kate minded them for him.
+
+"Thou hast made the cart for me, good Luke," said she. "'Twas much. I
+did ill to let thee draw me too; we can afford to pay some poor soul for
+that. I love my rides, and to carry little Gerard; but I'd liever ride
+no more than thou be mocked for't."
+
+"Much I care for their tongues," said Luke, "if I did care I'd knock
+their heads together. I shall draw you till my mistress says give over."
+
+"Luke, if you obey Kate, you will oblige me."
+
+"Then I will obey Kate."
+
+An honourable exception to popular humour was Jorian Ketel's wife. "That
+is strength well laid out, to draw the weak. And her prayers will be
+your guerdon: she is not long for this world: she smileth in pain."
+These were the words of Joan.
+
+Singleminded Luke answered that he did not want the poor lass's prayers;
+he did it to please his mistress, Margaret.
+
+After that Luke often pressed Margaret to give him something to
+do--without success.
+
+But one day, as if tired with his importuning, she turned on him, and
+said with a look and accent, I should in vain try to convey--
+
+"Find me my boy's father!"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER LXXXIV
+
+
+"MISTRESS, they all say he is dead."
+
+"Not so. They feed me still with hopes."
+
+"Ay, to your face, but behind your back they all say he is dead."
+
+At this revelation Margaret's tears began to flow.
+
+Luke whimpered for company. He had the body of a man, but the heart of a
+girl.
+
+"Prithee, weep not so, sweet mistress," said he. "I'd bring him back to
+life, an' I could, rather than see thee weep so sore."
+
+Margaret said she thought she was weeping because they were so
+double-tongued with her.
+
+She recovered herself, and laying her hand on his shoulder, said
+solemnly, "Luke, he is not dead. Dying men are known to have a strange
+sight. And listen, Luke! My poor father, when he was a-dying, and I,
+simple fool, was so happy, thinking he was going to get well altogether,
+he said to mother and me--he was sitting in that very chair where you
+are now, and mother was as might be here, and I was yonder making a
+sleeve--said he, 'I see him! I see him!' Just so. Not like a failing man
+at all, but all o' fire. 'Sore disfigured--on a great river--coming this
+way.'
+
+"Ah, Luke, if you were a woman, and had the feeling for me you think you
+have, you would pity me, and find him for me. Take a thought! The father
+of my child!"
+
+"Alack, I would, if I knew how," said Luke. "But how can I?"
+
+"Nay, of course you cannot. I am mad to think it. But, oh, if any one
+really cared for me, they _would_; that is all I know."
+
+Luke reflected in silence for some time.
+
+"The old folk all say dying men can see more than living wights. Let me
+think: for my mind cannot gallop like thine. On a great river? Well, the
+Maas is a great river." He pondered on.
+
+"Coming this way? Then if it 'twas the Maas, he would have been here by
+this time, so 'tis not the Maas. The Rhine is a great river, greater
+than the Maas; and very long. I think it will be the Rhine."
+
+"And so do I, Luke; for Denys bade him come down the Rhine. But even if
+it is, he may turn off before he comes anigh his birthplace. He does not
+pine for me as I for him; that is clear. Luke, do you not think he has
+deserted me?" She wanted him to contradict her; but he said "It looks
+very like it; what a fool he must be!"
+
+"What do we know?" objected Margaret, imploringly.
+
+"Let me think again," said Luke. "I cannot gallop."
+
+The result of this meditation was this. He knew a station about sixty
+miles up the Rhine, where all the public boats put in; and he would go
+to that station, and try and cut the truant off. To be sure he did not
+even know him by sight; but as each boat came in he would mingle with
+the passengers, and ask if one Gerard was there. "And, mistress, if you
+were to give me a bit of a letter to him; for, with us being strangers,
+mayhap a won't believe a word I say."
+
+"Good, kind, thoughtful Luke, I will (how I have undervalued thee!). But
+give me till supper-time to get it writ." At supper she put a letter
+into his hand with a blush: it was a long letter tied round with silk
+after the fashion of the day, and sealed over the knot.
+
+Luke weighed it in his hand, with a shade of discontent, and said to her
+very gravely, "Say your father was not dreaming, and say I have the luck
+to fall in with this man, and say he should turn out a better bit of
+stuff than I think him, and come home to you then and there--what is to
+become o' me?"
+
+Margaret coloured to her very brow. "Oh, Luke, Heaven will reward thee.
+And I shall fall on my knees and bless thee; and I shall love thee all
+my days, sweet Luke; as a mother does her son. I am so old by thee:
+trouble ages the heart. Thou shalt not go: 'tis not fair of me; Love
+maketh us to be all self."
+
+"Humph!" said Luke. "And if," resumed he, in the same grave way, "yon
+scapegrace shall read thy letter, and hear me tell him how thou pinest
+for him, and yet, being a traitor, or a mere idiot, will not turn to
+thee--what shall become of me then? Must I die a bachelor, and thou fare
+lonely to thy grave, neither maid, wife, nor widow?"
+
+Margaret panted with fear and emotion at this terrible piece of good
+sense, and the plain question that followed it. But at last she
+faltered out, "If, which our Lady be merciful to me, and forbid--Oh!"
+
+"Well, mistress?"
+
+"If he should read my letter, and hear thy words--and, sweet Luke, be
+just and tell him what a lovely babe he hath, fatherless, fatherless. Oh
+Luke, can he be so cruel?"
+
+"I trow not: but if?"
+
+"Then he will give thee up my marriage lines, and I shall be an honest
+woman; and a wretched one; and my boy will not be a bastard: and, of
+course, then we _could_ both go into any honest man's house that would
+be troubled with us: and even for thy goodness this day, I will--I
+will--ne'er be so ungrateful as go past thy door to another man's."
+
+"Ay, but will you come in at mine? Answer me that!"
+
+"Oh, ask me not! Some day, perhaps, when my wounds leave bleeding. Alas,
+I'll try. If I don't fling myself and my child into the Maas. Do not go,
+Luke! do not think of going! 'Tis all madness from first to last."
+
+But Luke was as slow to forego an idea as to form one.
+
+His reply showed how fast love was making a man of him. "Well," said he,
+"madness is something any way; and I am tired of doing nothing for thee:
+and I am no great talker. To-morrow, at peep of day, I start. But, hold,
+I have no money. My mother, she takes care of all mine; and I ne'er see
+it again."
+
+Then Margaret took out Catherine's gold angel, which had escaped so
+often, and gave it to Luke; and he set out on his mad errand.
+
+It did not however seem so mad to him as to us. It was a superstitious
+age: and Luke acted on the dying man's dream, or vision, or illusion, or
+whatever it was, much as we should act on respectable information.
+
+But Catherine was downright angry when she heard of it. To send the poor
+lad on such a wild-goose chase! "But you are like a many more girls; and
+mark my words: by the time you have worn that Luke fairly out, and made
+him as sick of you as a dog, you will turn as fond on him as a cow on a
+calf, and 'Too late' will be the cry."
+
+
+The Cloister
+
+The two friars reached Holland from the south just twelve hours after
+Luke started up the Rhine.
+
+Thus, wild-goose chase or not, the parties were nearing each other, and
+rapidly too. For Jerome, unable to preach in low Dutch, now began to
+push on towards the coast, anxious to get to England as soon as
+possible.
+
+And, having the stream with them, the friars would in point of fact have
+missed Luke by passing him in full stream below his station, but for the
+incident which I am about to relate.
+
+About twenty miles above the station Luke was making for, Clement landed
+to preach in a large village; and towards the end of his sermon he
+noticed a grey nun weeping.
+
+He spoke to her kindly, and asked her what was her grief. "Nay," said
+she, "'tis not for myself flow these tears; 'tis for my lost friend. Thy
+words reminded me of what she was, and what she is, poor wretch. But you
+are a Dominican, and I am a Franciscan nun."
+
+"It matters little, my sister, if we are both Christians and if I can
+aid thee in aught."
+
+The nun looked in his face, and said, "These are strange words, but
+methinks they are good; and thy lips are oh most eloquent. I will tell
+thee our grief."
+
+She then let him know that a young nun, the darling of the convent, and
+her bosom friend, had been lured away from her vows, and, after various
+gradations of sin, was actually living in a small inn as chambermaid, in
+reality as a decoy, and was known to be selling her favours to the
+wealthier customers. She added, "Anywhere else we might by kindly
+violence force her away from perdition. But this innkeeper was the
+servant of the fierce baron on the height there, and hath his ear still,
+and he would burn our convent to the ground, were we to take her by
+force."
+
+"Moreover, souls will not be saved by brute force," said Clement.
+
+While they were talking Jerome came up, and Clement persuaded him to lie
+at the convent that night. But when in the morning Clement told him he
+had had a long talk with the abbess, and that she was very sad, and he
+had promised her to try and win back her nun, Jerome objected, and said,
+"It was not their business, and was a waste of time." Clement, however,
+was no longer a mere pupil. He stood firm, and at last they agreed that
+Jerome should go forward, and secure their passage in the next ship for
+England, and Clement be allowed time to make his well-meant but idle
+experiment.
+
+About ten o'clock that day, a figure in a horseman's cloak, and great
+boots to match, and a large flapping felt hat, stood like a statue near
+the auberge, where was the apostate nun, Mary. The friar thus disguised
+was at that moment truly wretched. These ardent natures undertake
+wonders; but are dashed when they come hand to hand with the sickening
+difficulties. But then, as their hearts are steel, though their nerves
+are anything but iron, they turn not back, but panting and dispirited,
+struggle on to the last.
+
+Clement hesitated long at the door, prayed for help and wisdom, and at
+last entered the inn and sat down faint at heart, and with his body in a
+cold perspiration.
+
+But outside he was another man. He called lustily for a cup of wine: it
+was brought him by the landlord. He paid for it with money the convent
+had supplied him: and made a show of drinking it.
+
+"Landlord," said he, "I hear there is a fair chambermaid in thine
+house."
+
+"Ay, stranger, the buxomest in Holland. But she gives not her company to
+all comers; only to good customers."
+
+Friar Clement dangled a massive gold chain in the landlord's sight. He
+laughed, and shouted, "Here, Janet, here is a lover for thee would bind
+thee in chains of gold: and a tall lad into the bargain I promise thee."
+
+"Then I am in double luck," said a female voice: "send him hither."
+
+Clement rose, shuddered, and passed into the room, where Janet was
+seated playing with a piece of work, and laying it down every minute, to
+sing a mutilated fragment of a song. For, in her mode of life, she had
+not the patience to carry anything out.
+
+After a few words of greeting, the disguised visitor asked her if they
+could not be more private somewhere.
+
+"Why not?" said she. And she rose and smiled, and went tripping before
+him. He followed, groaning inwardly, and sore perplexed.
+
+"There," said she. "Have no fear! Nobody ever comes here, but such as
+pay for the privilege."
+
+Clement looked round the room, and prayed silently for wisdom. Then he
+went softly, and closed the window-shutters carefully.
+
+"What on earth is that for?" said Janet in some uneasiness.
+
+"Sweetheart," whispered the visitor, with a mysterious air, "it is that
+God may not see us."
+
+"Madman," said Janet, "think you a wooden shutter can keep out his eye?"
+
+"Nay, I know not. Perchance he has too much on hand to notice us. But I
+would not the saints and angels should see us. Would you?"
+
+"My poor soul, hope not to escape their sight! The only way is not to
+think of them; for if you do, it poisons your cup. For two pins I'd run
+and leave thee. Art pleasant company in sooth."
+
+"After all, girl, so that men see us not, what signify God and the
+saints seeing us? Feel this chain! 'Tis virgin gold. I shall cut two of
+these heavy links off for thee."
+
+"Ah! now thy discourse is to the point." And she handled the chain
+greedily. "Why, 'tis as massy as the chain round the Virgin's neck at
+the conv--" She did not finish the word.
+
+"Whisht! whisht! whisht! 'Tis _it_. And thou shalt have thy share. But
+betray me not."
+
+"Monster!" cried Janet, drawing back from him with repugnance, "what rob
+the blessed Virgin of her chain, and give it to an--"
+
+"You are none," cried Clement, exultingly, "or you had not recked for
+that.--Mary!"
+
+"Ah! ah! ah!"
+
+"Thy patron saint, whose chain this is, sends me to greet thee."
+
+She ran screaming to the window and began to undo the shutters.
+
+Her fingers trembled, and Clement had time to debarass himself of his
+boots, and his hat, before the light streamed in upon him. He then let
+his cloak quietly fall, and stood before her, a Dominican friar, calm
+and majestic as a statue, and held his crucifix towering over her with a
+loving, sad, and solemn look, that somehow relieved her of the physical
+part of fear, but crushed her with religious terror and remorse. She
+crouched and cowered against the wall.
+
+"Mary," said he, gently; "one word! Are you happy?"
+
+"As happy as I shall be in hell."
+
+"And they are not happy at the convent; they weep for you."
+
+"For me?"
+
+"Day and night; above all the Sister Ursula."
+
+"Poor Ursula!" And the strayed nun began to weep herself at the thought
+of her friend.
+
+"The angels weep still more. Wilt not dry all their tears in earth and
+heaven, and save thyself?"
+
+"Ah! would I could: but it is too late."
+
+"Satan avaunt," cried the monk, sternly. "'Tis thy favourite temptation;
+and thou, Mary, listen not to the enemy of man, belying God, and
+whispering despair. I who come to save thee have been a far greater
+sinner than thou. Come, Mary, sin, thou seest, is not so sweet e'en in
+this world, as holiness; and eternity is at the door."
+
+"How can they ever receive me again?"
+
+"'Tis their worthiness thou doubtest now. But in truth they pine for
+thee. 'Twas in pity of their tears that I, a Dominican, undertook this
+task; and broke the rule of my order by entering an inn; and broke it
+again by donning these lay vestments. But all is well done, and quit for
+a light penance, if thou will let us rescue thy soul from this den of
+wolves and bring thee back to thy vows."
+
+The nun gazed at him with tears in her eyes. "And thou a Dominican hast
+done this for a daughter of St. Francis! Why the Franciscans and
+Dominicans hate one another."
+
+"Ay, my daughter; but Francis and Dominic love one another."
+
+The recreant nun seemed struck and affected by this answer.
+
+Clement now reminded her how shocked she had been that the Virgin should
+be robbed of her chain. "But see now," said he, "the convent and the
+Virgin too think ten times more of their poor nun than of golden chains;
+for they freely trusted their chain to me a stranger, that peradventure
+the sight of it might touch their lost Mary and remind her of their
+love." Finally he showed her with such terrible simplicity the end of
+her present course, and on the other hand so revived her dormant
+memories and better feelings, that she kneeled sobbing at his feet, and
+owned she had never known happiness nor peace since she betrayed her
+vows; and said she would go back if he would go with her; but alone she
+dared not, could not: even if she reached the gate she could never
+enter. How could she face the abbess and the sisters? He told her he
+would go with her as joyfully as the shepherd bears a strayed lamb to
+the fold.
+
+But when he urged her to go at once, up sprung a crop of those
+prodigiously petty difficulties that entangle her sex, like silken nets,
+like iron cobwebs.
+
+He quietly swept them aside.
+
+"But how can I walk beside thee in this habit?"
+
+"I have brought the gown and cowl of thy holy order. Hide thy bravery
+with them. And leave thy shoes as I leave these" (pointing to his
+horseman's boots).
+
+She collected her jewels and ornaments.
+
+"What are these for?" inquired Clement.
+
+"To present to the convent, father."
+
+"Their source is too impure."
+
+"But," objected the penitent, "it would be a sin to leave them here.
+They can be sold to feed the poor."
+
+"Mary, fix thine eye on this crucifix, and trample those devilish
+baubles beneath thy feet."
+
+She hesitated; but soon threw them down and trampled on them.
+
+"Now open the window and fling them out on that dung-hill. 'Tis well
+done. So pass the wages of sin from thy hands, its glittering yoke from
+thy neck, its pollution from thy soul. Away, daughter of St. Francis, we
+tarry in this vile place too long." She followed him.
+
+But they were not clear yet.
+
+At first the landlord was so astounded at seeing a black friar and a
+grey nun pass through his kitchen from the inside, that he gaped, and
+muttered "Why, what mummery is this?" But he soon comprehended the
+matter, and whipped in between the fugitives and the door. "What ho!
+Reuben! Carl! Gavin! here is a false friar spiriting away our Janet."
+
+The men came running in with threatening looks. The friar rushed at them
+crucifix in hand. "Forbear," he cried, in a stentorian voice. "She is a
+holy nun returning to her vows. The hand that touches her cowl, or her
+robe, to stay her, it shall wither, his body shall lie unburied, cursed
+by Rome, and his soul shall roast in eternal fire." They shrank back as
+if a flame had met them. "And thou--miserable panderer!--"
+
+He did not end the sentence in words, but seized the man by the neck,
+and, strong as a lion in his moments of hot excitement, whirled him
+furiously from the door and sent him all across the room, pitching
+headforemost on to the stone floor; then tore the door open and carried
+the screaming nun out into the road. "Hush! poor trembler," he gasped;
+"they dare not molest thee on the high road. Away!"
+
+The landlord lay terrified, half stunned, and bleeding: and Mary, though
+she often looked back apprehensively, saw no more of him.
+
+On the road he bade her observe his impetuosity.
+
+"Hitherto," said he, "we have spoken of thy faults: now for mine. My
+choler is ungovernable; furious. It is by the grace of God I am not a
+murderer. I repent the next moment; but a moment too late is all too
+late. Mary, had the churls laid finger on thee, I should have scattered
+their brains with my crucifix. Oh, I know myself, go to; and tremble at
+myself. There lurketh a wild beast beneath this black gown of mine."
+
+"Alas, father," said Mary, "were you other than you are I had been lost.
+To take me from that place needed a man wary as a fox; yet bold as a
+lion."
+
+Clement reflected. "Thus much is certain: God chooseth well his fleshly
+instruments: and with imperfect hearts doeth his perfect work. Glory be
+to God!"
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+When they were near the convent Mary suddenly stopped, and seized the
+friar's arm, and began to cry. He looked at her kindly, and told her she
+had nothing to fear. It would be the happiest day she had ever spent. He
+then made her sit down and compose herself till he should return. He
+entered the convent, and desired to see the abbess.
+
+"My sister, give the glory to God: Mary is at the gate."
+
+The astonishment and delight of the abbess were unbounded. She yielded
+at once to Clement's earnest request that the road of penitence might be
+smoothed at first to this unstable wanderer, and, after some opposition,
+she entered heartily into his views as to her actual reception. To give
+time for their little preparations Clement went slowly back, and
+seating himself by Mary soothed her: and heard her confession.
+
+"The abbess has granted me that you shall propose your own penance."
+
+"It shall be none the lighter," said she.
+
+"I trow not," said he: "but that is future: to-day is given to joy
+alone."
+
+He then led her round the building to the abbess's postern. As they went
+they heard musical instruments and singing.
+
+"'Tis a feast-day," said Mary: "and I come to mar it."
+
+"Hardly," said Clement, smiling; "seeing that you are the queen of the
+fete."
+
+"I, father? what mean you?"
+
+"What, Mary, have you never heard that there is more joy in heaven over
+one sinner that repenteth, than over ninety-nine just persons which need
+no repentance? Now this convent is not heaven; nor the nuns angels; yet
+are there among them some angelic spirits; and these sing and exult at
+thy return. And here methinks comes one of them; for I see her hand
+trembles at the keyhole."
+
+The postern was flung open, and in a moment sister Ursula clung sobbing
+and kissing round her friend's neck. The abbess followed more sedately,
+but little less moved.
+
+Clement bade them farewell. They entreated him to stay: but he told them
+with much regret he could not. He had already tried his good brother
+Jerome's patience, and must hasten to the river: and perhaps sail for
+England to-morrow.
+
+So Mary returned to the fold, and Clement strode briskly on towards the
+Rhine, and England.
+
+This was the man for whom Margaret's boy lay in wait with her letter.
+
+
+The Hearth
+
+And that letter was one of those simple, touching appeals only her sex
+can write to those who have used them cruelly, and they love them. She
+began by telling him of the birth of the little boy, and the comfort he
+had been to her in all the distress of mind his long and strange silence
+had caused her. She described the little Gerard minutely, not forgetting
+the mole on his little finger. "Know you any one that hath the like on
+his? If you only saw him you could not choose but be proud of him; all
+the mothers in the street do envy me: but I the wives; for thou comest
+not to us. My own Gerard, some say thou art dead. But if thou wert dead
+how could I be alive? Others say that thou, whom I love so truly, art
+false. But this will I believe from no lips but thine. My father loved
+thee well; and as he lay a-dying he thought he saw thee on a great
+river, with thy face turned towards thy Margaret, but sore disfigured.
+Is't so, perchance? Have cruel men scarred thy sweet face? or hast thou
+lost one of thy precious limbs? Why then thou hast the more need of me,
+and I shall love thee not worse, alas! thinkest thou a woman's love is
+light as a man's? but better, than I did when I shed those few drops
+from my arm, not worth the tears thou didst shed for them; mindest thou?
+'tis not so very long agone, dear Gerard."
+
+The letter continued in this strain, and concluded without a word of
+reproach or doubt as to his faith and affection. Not that she was free
+from most distressing doubts: but they were not certainties; and to show
+them might turn the scale, and frighten him away from her with fear of
+being scolded. And of this letter she made soft Luke the bearer.
+
+So she was not an angel after all.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Luke mingled with the passengers of two boats, and could hear nothing of
+Gerard Eliassoen. Nor did this surprise him. He was more surprised when,
+at the third attempt, a black friar said to him, somewhat severely, "And
+what would you with him you call Gerard Eliassoen?"
+
+"Why, father, if he is alive I have got a letter for him."
+
+"Humph!" said Jerome. "I am sorry for it. However, the flesh is weak.
+Well, my son, he you seek will be here by the next boat, or the next
+boat after. And if he chooses to answer to that name--After all, I am
+not the keeper of his conscience."
+
+"Good father, one plain word, for Heaven's sake. This Gerard Eliassoen
+of Tergou--is he alive?"
+
+"Humph! Why, certes, he that went by that name is alive."
+
+"Well, then, that is settled," said Luke, drily. But the next moment he
+found it necessary to run out of sight and blubber.
+
+"Oh, why did the Lord make any women?" said he to himself. "I was
+content with the world till I fell in love. Here his little finger is
+more to her than my whole body, and he is not dead. And here I have got
+to give him this." He looked at the letter and dashed it on the ground.
+But he picked it up again with a spiteful snatch, and went to the
+landlord, with tears in his eyes, and begged for work. The landlord
+declined, said he had his own people.
+
+"Oh, I seek not your money," said Luke. "I only want some work to keep
+me from breaking my heart about another man's lass."
+
+"Good lad! good lad!" exploded the landlord; and found him lots of
+barrels to mend--on these terms. And he coopered with fury in the
+interval of the boats coming down the Rhine.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER LXXXV
+
+The Hearth
+
+
+WRITING an earnest letter seldom leaves the mind in _statu quo_.
+Margaret, in hers, vented her energy and her faith in her dying father's
+vision, or illusion; and, when this was done, and Luke gone, she
+wondered at her credulity, and her conscience pricked her about Luke;
+and Catherine came and scolded her, and she paid the price of false
+hopes, and elevation of spirits, by falling into deeper despondency. She
+was found in this state by a stanch friend she had lately made; Joan
+Ketel. This good woman came in radiant with an idea.
+
+"Margaret, I know the cure for thine ill: the hermit of Gouda, a
+wondrous holy man. Why, he can tell what is coming, when he is in the
+mood."
+
+"Ay, I have heard of him," said Margaret hopelessly. Joan with some
+difficulty persuaded her to walk out as far as Gouda, and consult the
+hermit. They took some butter, and eggs, in a basket, and went to his
+cave.
+
+What had made the pair such fast friends? Jorian some six weeks ago fell
+ill of a bowel disease; it began with raging pain; and when this went
+off, leaving him weak, an awkward symptom succeeded; nothing, either
+liquid or solid, would stay in his stomach a minute. The doctor said:
+"He must die if this goes on many hours; therefore, boil thou now a
+chicken with a golden angel in the water, and let him sup that!" Alas!
+Gilt chicken broth shared the fate of the humbler viands, its
+predecessors. Then the cure steeped the thumb of St. Sergius in beef
+broth. Same result. Then Joan ran weeping to Margaret to borrow some
+linen to make his shroud. "Let me see him," said Margaret. She came in
+and felt his pulse. "Ah!" said she, "I doubt they have not gone to the
+root. Open the window! Art stifling him; now change all his linen."
+
+"Alack, woman, what for? Why foul more linen for a dying man?" objected
+the mediaeval wife.
+
+"Do as thou art bid," said Margaret dully, and left the room.
+
+Joan somehow found herself doing as she was bid. Margaret returned with
+her apron full of a flowering herb. She made a decoction, and took it to
+the bedside; and before giving it to the patient, took a spoonful
+herself, and smacked her lips hypocritically. "That is fair," said he
+with a feeble attempt at humour. "Why, 'tis sweet, and now 'tis bitter."
+She engaged him in conversation as soon as he had taken it. This
+bitter-sweet stayed by him. Seeing which she built on it as cards are
+built: mixed a very little schiedam in the third spoonful, and a little
+beaten yolk of egg in the seventh. And so with the patience of her sex
+she coaxed his body out of Death's grasp; and finally, Nature, being
+patted on the back, instead of kicked under the bed, set Jorian Ketel on
+his legs again. But the doctress made them both swear never to tell a
+soul her guilty deed. "They would put me in prison, away from my child."
+
+The simple that saved Jorian was called sweet feverfew. She gathered it
+in his own garden. Her eagle eye had seen it growing out of the window.
+
+Margaret and Joan, then, reached the hermit's cave, and placed their
+present on the little platform. Margaret then applied her mouth to the
+aperture, made for that purpose, and said: "Holy hermit, we bring thee
+butter and eggs of the best: and I a poor deserted girl, wife, yet no
+wife, and mother of the sweetest babe, come to pray thee tell me whether
+he is quick or dead, true to his vows or false."
+
+A faint voice issued from the cave: "Trouble me not with the things of
+earth, but send me a holy friar. I am dying."
+
+"Alas!" cried Margaret. "Is it e'en so, poor soul? Then let us in to
+help thee."
+
+"Saints forbid! Thine is a woman's voice. Send me a holy friar!"
+
+They went back as they came. Joan could not help saying, "Are women imps
+o' darkness then, that they must not come anigh a dying bed?"
+
+But Margaret was too deeply dejected to say anything. Joan applied rough
+consolation. But she was not listened to till she said: "And Jorian will
+speak out ere long; he is just on the boil. He is very grateful to thee,
+believe it."
+
+"Seeing is believing," replied Margaret with quiet bitterness.
+
+"Not but what he thinks you might have saved him with something more out
+o' the common than yon. 'A man of my inches to be cured wi' feverfew,'
+says he. 'Why, if there is a sorry herb,' says he. 'Why, I was thinking
+o' pulling all mine up,' says he. I up and told him remedies were none
+the better for being far-fetched; you and feverfew cured him, when the
+grand medicines came up faster than they went down. So says I, 'You may
+go down on your four bones to feverfew.' But indeed, he is grateful at
+bottom; you are all his thought and all his chat. But he sees Gerard's
+folk coming around ye, and good friends, and he said only last night--"
+
+"Well?"
+
+"He made me vow not to tell ye."
+
+"Prithee, tell me."
+
+"Well, he said: 'An' if I tell what little I know, it won't bring him
+back, and it will set them all by the ears. I wish I had more
+head-piece,' said he, 'I am sore perplexed. But least said is soonest
+mended.' Yon is his favourite word; he comes back to't from a mile off."
+
+Margaret shook her head. "Ay, we are wading in deep waters, my poor babe
+and me."
+
+It was Saturday night: and no Luke.
+
+"Poor Luke!" said Margaret. "It was very good of him to go on such an
+errand."
+
+"He is one out of a hundred," replied Catherine warmly.
+
+"Mother, do you think he would be kind to little Gerard?"
+
+"I am sure he would. So do you be kinder to _him_ when he comes back!
+Will ye now?"
+
+"Ay."
+
+
+The Cloister
+
+Brother Clement, directed by the nuns, avoided a bend in the river, and,
+striding lustily forward, reached a station some miles nearer the coast
+than that where Luke lay in wait for Gerard Eliassoen. And the next
+morning he started early, and was in Rotterdam at noon. He made at once
+for the port, not to keep Jerome waiting.
+
+He observed several monks of his order on the quay; he went to them: but
+Jerome was not amongst them. He asked one of them whether Jerome had
+arrived? "Surely, brother," was the reply.
+
+"Prithee, where is he?"
+
+"Where? Why, there!" said the monk, pointing to a ship in full sail. And
+Clement now noticed that all the monks were looking seaward.
+
+"What, gone without me! Oh Jerome! Jerome!" cried he in a voice of
+anguish. Several of the friars turned round and stared.
+
+"You must be brother Clement," said one of them at length; and on this
+they kissed him and greeted him with brotherly warmth, and gave him a
+letter Jerome had charged them with for him. It was a hasty scrawl. The
+writer told him coldly a ship was about to sail for England, and he was
+loth to lose time. He (Clement) might follow if he pleased, but he would
+do much better to stay behind, and preach to his own country folk. "Give
+the glory to God, brother; you have a wonderful power over Dutch hearts:
+but you are no match for those haughty islanders: you are too tender.
+
+"Know thou that on the way I met one, who asked me for thee under the
+name thou didst bear in the world. Be on thy guard! Let not the world
+catch thee again by any silken net. And remember, Solitude, Fasting, and
+Prayer are the sword, spear, and shield of the soul. Farewell."
+
+Clement was deeply shocked and mortified at this contemptuous desertion,
+and this cold-blooded missive.
+
+He promised the good monks to sleep at the convent, and to preach
+wherever the prior should appoint (for Jerome had raised him to the
+skies as a preacher), and then withdrew abruptly, for he was cut to the
+quick, and wanted to be alone. He asked himself, was there some
+incurable fault in him, repulsive to so true a son of Dominic? Or was
+Jerome himself devoid of that Christian Love which St. Paul had placed
+above Faith itself? Shipwrecked with him, and saved on the same fragment
+of the wreck; his pupil, his penitent, his son in the Church, and now
+for four hundred miles his fellow-traveller in Christ; and to be shaken
+off like dirt, the first opportunity, with harsh and cold disdain. "Why,
+worldly hearts are no colder nor less trusty than this," said he. "The
+only one that ever really loved me lies in a grave hard by. Fly me, fly
+to England, man born without a heart; I will go and pray over a grave at
+Sevenbergen."
+
+Three hours later he passed Peter's cottage. A troop of noisy children
+were playing about the door, and the house had been repaired, and a new
+outhouse added. He turned his head hastily away, not to disturb a
+picture his memory treasured; and went to the churchyard.
+
+He sought among the tombstones for Margaret's. He could not find it. He
+could not believe they had begrudged her a tombstone, so searched the
+churchyard all over again.
+
+"Oh, poverty! stern poverty! Poor soul, thou wert like me; no one was
+left that loved thee, when Gerard was gone."
+
+He went into the church, and after kissing the steps, prayed long and
+earnestly for the soul of her whose resting-place he could not find.
+
+Coming out of the church he saw a very old man looking over the little
+churchyard gate. He went towards him, and asked him did he live in the
+place.
+
+"Four score and twelve years, man and boy. And I come here every day of
+late, holy father, to take a peep. This is where I look to bide ere
+long."
+
+"My son, can you tell me where Margaret lies?"
+
+"Margaret? There's a many Margarets here."
+
+"Margaret Brandt. She was daughter to a learned physician."
+
+"As if I didn't know that," said the old man, pettishly. "But she
+doesn't lie here. Bless you, they left this a longful while ago. Gone in
+a moment, and the house empty. What, is she dead? Margaret a Peter
+dead? Now only think on't. Like enow; like enow. They great towns do
+terribly disagree wi' country folk."
+
+"What great towns, my son?"
+
+"Well 'twas Rotterdam they went to from here, so I heard tell; or was it
+Amsterdam? Nay, I trow 'twas Rotterdam. And gone there to die!"
+
+Clement sighed.
+
+"'Twas not in her face now, that I saw. And I can mostly tell. Alack,
+there was a blooming young flower to be cut off so soon, and an old weed
+like me left standing still. Well, well, she was a May rose yon; dear
+heart, what a winsome smile she had, and--"
+
+"God bless thee, my son," said Clement; "farewell!" and he hurried away.
+
+He reached the convent at sunset, and watched and prayed in the chapel
+for Jerome, and Margaret, till it was long past midnight, and his soul
+had recovered its cold calm.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER LXXXVI
+
+The Hearth
+
+
+THE next day, Sunday, after mass, was a bustling day at Catherine's
+house in the Hoog Straet. The shop was now quite ready, and Cornelis and
+Sybrandt were to open it next day; their names were above the door; also
+their sign, a white lamb sucking a gilt sheep. Eli had come, and brought
+them some more goods from his store to give them a good start. The
+hearts of the parents glowed at what they were doing, and the pair
+themselves walked in the garden together, and agreed they were sick of
+their old life, and it was more pleasant to make money than waste it;
+they vowed to stick to business like wax. Their mother's quick and ever
+watchful ear overheard this resolution through an open window and she
+told Eli. The family supper was to include Margaret and her boy, and be
+a kind of inaugural feast, at which good trade advice was to flow from
+the elders, and good wine to be drunk to the success of the converts to
+Commerce from Agriculture in its unremunerative form,--wild oats. So
+Margaret had come over to help her mother-in-law, and also to shake off
+her own deep languor; and both their faces were as red as the fire.
+Presently in came Joan with a salad from Jorian's garden.
+
+"He cut it for you, Margaret; you are all his chat; I shall be jealous.
+I told him you were to feast to-day. But oh, lass, what a sermon in the
+new kerk! Preaching? I never heard it till this day."
+
+"Would I had been there then," said Margaret; "for I am dried up for
+want of dew from heaven."
+
+"Why, he preacheth again this afternoon. But mayhap you are wanted
+here."
+
+"Not she," said Catherine. "Come, away ye go, if y' are minded."
+
+"Indeed," said Margaret, "methinks I should not be such a damper at
+table if I could come to't warm from a good sermon."
+
+"Then you must be brisk," observed Joan. "See the folk are wending that
+way, and as I live, there goes the holy friar. Oh bless us and save us,
+Margaret; the hermit! We forgot." And this active woman bounded out of
+the house, and ran across the road, and stopped the friar. She returned
+as quickly. "There, I was bent on seeing him nigh hand."
+
+"What said he to thee?"
+
+"Says he, 'My daughter, I will go to him ere sunset, God willing.' The
+sweetest voice. But, oh, my mistresses, what thin cheeks for a young
+man, and great eyes, not far from your colour, Margaret."
+
+"I have a great mind to go hear him," said Margaret. "But my cap is not
+very clean, and they will all be there in their snow-white mutches."
+
+"There, take my handkerchief out of the basket," said Catherine; "you
+cannot have the child, I want him for my poor Kate. It is one of her ill
+days."
+
+Margaret replied by taking the boy upstairs. She found Kate in bed.
+
+"How art thou, sweetheart? Nay, I need not ask. Thou art in sore pain;
+thou smilest so. See, I have brought thee one thou lovest."
+
+"Two, by my way of counting," said Kate, with an angelic smile. She had
+a spasm at that moment would have made some of us roar like bulls.
+
+"What, in your lap?" said Margaret, answering a gesture of the
+suffering girl. "Nay, he is too heavy, and thou in such pain."
+
+"I love him too dear to feel his weight," was the reply.
+
+Margaret took this opportunity, and made her toilet. "I am for the
+kerk," said she, "to hear a beautiful preacher." Kate sighed. "And a
+minute ago, Kate, I was all agog to go: that is the way with me this
+month past; up and down, up and down, like the waves of the Zuyder Zee.
+I'd as lieve stay aside thee; say the word!"
+
+"Nay," said Kate, "prithee go; and bring me back every word. Well-a-day
+that I cannot go myself." And the tears stood in the patient's eyes.
+This decided Margaret, and she kissed Kate, looked under her lashes at
+the boy, and heaved a little sigh.
+
+"I trow I must not," said she. "I never could kiss him a little; and my
+father was dead against waking a child by day or night. When 'tis thy
+pleasure to wake, speak thy aunt Kate the two new words thou hast
+gotten." And she went out, looking lovingly over her shoulder, and shut
+the door inaudibly.
+
+"Joan, you will lend me a hand, and peel these?" said Catherine.
+
+"That I will dame." And the cooking proceeded with silent vigour.
+
+"Now, Joan, them which help me cook and serve the meat, they help me eat
+it; that's a rule."
+
+"There's worse laws in Holland than that. Your will is my pleasure,
+mistress; for my Luke hath got his supper i' the air. He is digging
+to-day, by good luck." (Margaret came down.)
+
+"Eh, woman, yon is an ugly trade. There, she has just washed her face
+and gi'en her hair a turn, and now who is like her? Rotterdam, that for
+you!" and Catherine snapped her fingers at the capital. "Give us a buss,
+hussy! Now mind, Eli won't wait supper for the duke. Wherefore, loiter
+not after your kerk is over."
+
+Joan and she both followed her to the door, and stood at it watching her
+a good way down the street. For among homely housewives going out o'
+doors is half an incident. Catherine commented on the launch; "there,
+Joan, it is almost to me as if I had just started my own daughter for
+kerk, and stood a looking after; the which I've done it manys and manys
+the times. Joan, lass, she won't hear a word against our Gerard; and, be
+he alive, he has used her cruel; that is why my bowels yearn for the
+poor wench. I'm older and wiser than she; and so I'll wed her to yon
+simple Luke, and there an end. What's one grandchild?"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER LXXXVII
+
+The Cloister and The Hearth
+
+
+THE sermon had begun when Margaret entered the great church of St.
+Laurens. It was a huge edifice, far from completed. Churches were not
+built in a year. The side aisles were roofed, but not the mid aisle nor
+the chancel; the pillars and arches were pretty perfect, and some of
+them whitewashed. But only one window in the whole church was glazed;
+the rest were at present great jagged openings in the outer walls.
+
+But to-day all these uncouth imperfections made the church beautiful. It
+was a glorious summer afternoon, and the sunshine came broken into
+marvellous forms through those irregular openings, and played bewitching
+pranks upon so many broken surfaces.
+
+It streamed through the gaping walls, and clove the dark cool side
+aisles with rivers of glory, and dazzled and glowed on the white pillars
+beyond.
+
+And nearly the whole central aisle was chequered with light and shade in
+broken outlines; the shades seeming cooler and more soothing than ever
+shade was, and the light like patches of amber diamond, animated with
+heavenly fire. And above, from west to east the blue sky vaulted the
+lofty aisle, and seemed quite close.
+
+The sunny caps of the women made a sea of white contrasting exquisitely
+with that vivid vault of blue.
+
+For the mid aisle huge as it was, was crammed, yet quite still. The
+words and the mellow, gentle, earnest voice of the preacher held them
+mute.
+
+Margaret stood spell-bound at the beauty, the devotion, "the great
+calm." She got behind a pillar in the north aisle; and there, though she
+could hardly catch a word, a sweet devotional languor crept over her at
+the loveliness of the place and the preacher's musical voice: and balmy
+oil seemed to trickle over the waves in her heart and smooth them. So
+she leaned against the pillar with eyes half closed, and all seemed soft
+and dreamy. She felt it good to be there.
+
+Presently she saw a lady leave an excellent place opposite, to get out
+of the sun, which was indeed pouring on her head from the window.
+Margaret went round softly but swiftly; and was fortunate enough to get
+the place. She was now beside a pillar of the south aisle, and not above
+fifty feet from the preacher. She was at his side, a little behind him,
+but could hear every word.
+
+Her attention however was soon distracted by the shadow of a man's head
+and shoulders bobbing up and down so drolly she had some ado to keep
+from smiling.
+
+Yet it was nothing essentially droll.
+
+It was the sexton digging.
+
+She found that out in a moment by looking behind her, through the
+window, to whence the shadow came.
+
+Now as she was looking at Jorian Ketel digging, suddenly a tone of the
+preacher's voice fell upon her ear and her mind so distinctly, it seemed
+literally to strike her, and make her vibrate inside and out.
+
+Her hand went to her bosom, so strange and sudden was the thrill. Then
+she turned round and looked at the preacher. His back was turned and
+nothing visible but his tonsure. She sighed. That tonsure being all she
+saw, contradicted the tone effectually.
+
+Yet she now leaned a little forward with downcast eyes, hoping for that
+accent again. It did not come. But the whole voice grew strangely upon
+her. It rose and fell as the preacher warmed: and it seemed to waken
+faint echoes of a thousand happy memories. She would not look to dispel
+the melancholy pleasure this voice gave her.
+
+Presently, in the middle of an eloquent period, the preacher stopped.
+
+She almost sighed; a soothing music had ended. Could the sermon be ended
+already? No: she looked around; the people did not move.
+
+A good many faces seemed now to turn her way. She looked behind her
+sharply. There was nothing there.
+
+Startled countenances near her now eyed the preacher. She followed their
+looks; and there, in the pulpit, was a face of a staring corpse. The
+friar's eyes, naturally large, and made larger by the thinness of his
+cheeks, were dilated to supernatural size, and glaring, her way, out of
+a bloodless face.
+
+She cringed and turned fearfully round; for she thought there must be
+some terrible thing near her. No: there was nothing; she was the outside
+figure of the listening crowd.
+
+At this moment the church fell into commotion. Figures got up all over
+the building, and craned forward; agitated faces by hundreds gazed from
+the friar to Margaret, and from Margaret to the friar. The turning to
+and fro of so many caps made a loud rustle. Then came shrieks of nervous
+women, and buzzing of men: and Margaret, seeing so many eyes levelled at
+her, shrank terrified behind the pillar, with one scared, hurried glance
+at the preacher.
+
+Momentary as that glance was, it caught in that stricken face an
+expression that made her shiver.
+
+She turned faint and sat down on a heap of chips the workmen had left,
+and buried her face in her hands. The sermon went on again. She heard
+the sound of it; but not the sense. She tried to think, but her mind was
+in a whirl. Thought would fix itself in no shape but this: that on that
+prodigy-stricken face she had seen a look stamped. And the recollection
+of that look now made her quiver from head to foot.
+
+For that look was "RECOGNITION."
+
+The sermon, after wavering some time, ended in a strain of exalted, nay,
+feverish eloquence, that went far to make the crowd forget the
+preacher's strange pause and ghastly glare.
+
+Margaret mingled hastily with the crowd, and went out of the church with
+them.
+
+They went their ways home. But she turned at the door, and went into the
+churchyard; to Peter's grave. Poor as she was, she had given him a slab
+and a headstone. She sat down on the slab, and kissed it. Then threw her
+apron over her head that no one might distinguish her by her hair.
+
+"Father," she said, "thou hast often heard me say I am wading in deep
+waters; but now I begin to think God only knows the bottom of them. I'll
+follow that friar round the world, but I'll see him at arm's length. And
+he shall tell me why he looked towards me like a dead man wakened: and
+not a soul behind me. Oh father; you often praised me here: speak a word
+for me _there_. For I am wading in deep waters."
+
+Her father's tomb commanded a side view of the church door.
+
+And on that tomb she sat, with her face covered, waylaying the holy
+preacher.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER LXXXVIII
+
+The Cloister and The Hearth
+
+
+THE cool church, chequered with sunbeams and crowned with heavenly
+purple, soothed and charmed father Clement, as it did Margaret; and
+more, it carried his mind direct to the Creator of all good and pure
+delights. Then his eye fell on the great aisle crammed with his
+country-folk; a thousand snowy caps, filigreed with gold. Many a hundred
+leagues he had travelled; but seen nothing like them, except snow. In
+the morning he had thundered: but this sweet afternoon seemed out of
+tune with threats. His bowels yearned over that multitude; and he must
+tell them of God's love: poor souls, they heard almost as little of it
+from the pulpit then a days as the heathen used. He told them the glad
+tidings of salvation. The people hung upon his gentle, earnest tongue.
+
+He was not one of those preachers who keep gyrating in the pulpit like
+the weathercock on the steeple. He moved the hearts of others more than
+his own body. But on the other hand he did not entirely neglect those
+who were in bad places. And presently, warm with this theme, that none
+of all that multitude might miss the joyful tidings of Christ's love, he
+turned him towards the south aisle.
+
+And there, in a stream of sunshine from the window, was the radiant face
+of Margaret Brandt. He gazed at it without emotion. It just benumbed him
+soul and body.
+
+But soon the words died in his throat, and he trembled as he glared at
+it.
+
+There, with her auburn hair bathed in sunbeams, and glittering like the
+gloriola of a saint, and her face glowing doubly, with its own beauty,
+and the sunshine it was set in--stood his dead love.
+
+She was leaning very lightly against a white column. She was listening
+with tender, downcast lashes.
+
+He had seen her listen so to him a hundred times.
+
+There was no change in _her_. This was the blooming Margaret he had
+left: only a shade riper and more lovely.
+
+He stared at her with monstrous eyes and bloodless cheeks.
+
+The people died out of his sight. He heard, as in a dream, a rustling
+and rising all over the church; but could not take his prodigy-stricken
+eyes off that face, all life, and bloom, and beauty, and that wondrous
+auburn hair glistening gloriously in the sun.
+
+He gazed, thinking she must vanish.
+
+She remained.
+
+All in a moment she was looking at him, full.
+
+Her own violet eyes!!
+
+At this he was beside himself, and his lips parted to shriek out her
+name, when she turned her head swiftly, and soon after vanished, but not
+without one more glance, which, though rapid as lightning, encountered
+his, and left her crouching and quivering with her mind in a whirl, and
+him panting and gripping the pulpit convulsively. For this glance of
+hers, though not recognition, was the startled inquiring, nameless,
+indescribable look, that precedes recognition. He made a mighty effort,
+and muttered something nobody could understand: then feebly resumed his
+discourse; and stammered and babbled on a while, till by degrees forcing
+himself, now she was out of sight, to look on it as a vision from the
+other world, he rose into a state of unnatural excitement, and concluded
+in a style of eloquence that electrified the simple; for it bordered on
+rhapsody.
+
+The sermon ended, he sat down on the pulpit stool, terribly shaken. But
+presently an idea very characteristic of the time took possession of
+him. He had sought her grave at Sevenbergen in vain. She had now been
+permitted to appear to him, and show him that she was buried _here_;
+probably hard by that very pillar, where her spirit had showed itself to
+him.
+
+This idea once adopted soon settled on his mind with all the certainty
+of a fact. And he felt he had only to speak to the sexton, (whom to his
+great disgust he had seen working during the sermon) to learn the spot,
+where she was laid.
+
+The church was now quite empty. He came down from the pulpit and stepped
+through an aperture in the south wall onto the grass, and went up to the
+sexton. He knew him in a moment. But Jorian never suspected the poor
+lad, whose life he had saved, in this holy friar. The loss of his
+shapely beard had wonderfully altered the outline of his face. This had
+changed him even more than his tonsure, his short hair sprinkled with
+premature grey, and his cheeks thinned and paled by fasts and
+vigils.[C]
+
+"My son," said friar Clement, softly, "if you keep any memory of those
+whom you lay in the earth, prithee tell me is any Christian buried
+inside the church, near one of the pillars."
+
+"Nay, father," said Jorian, "here in the churchyard lie buried all that
+buried be. Why?"
+
+"No matter. Prithee tell me then where lieth Margaret Brandt."
+
+"Margaret Brandt?" And Jorian stared stupidly at the speaker.
+
+"She died about three years ago, and was buried here."
+
+"Oh, that is another matter," said Jorian; "that was before my time; the
+vicar could tell you, likely; if so be she was a gentlewoman, or at
+least rich enough to pay him his fee."
+
+"Alas, my son, she was poor (and paid a heavy penalty for it); but born
+of decent folk. Her father, Peter, was a learned physician; she came
+hither from Sevenbergen--to die."
+
+When Clement had uttered these words his head sunk upon his breast, and
+he seemed to have no power nor wish to question Jorian more. I doubt
+even if he knew where he was. He was lost in the past.
+
+Jorian put down his spade, and standing upright in the grave, set his
+arms akimbo, and said sulkily, "Are you making a fool of me, holy sir,
+or has some wag been making a fool of you?"
+
+And having relieved his mind thus, he proceeded to dig again, with a
+certain vigour that showed his somewhat irritable temper was ruffled.
+
+Clement gazed at him with a puzzled but gently reproachful eye; for the
+tone was rude, and the words unintelligible.
+
+Good natured, though crusty, Jorian had not thrown up three spadesful
+ere he became ashamed of it himself. "Why what a base churl am I to
+speak thus to thee, holy father; and thou standing there, looking at me
+like a lamb. Aha! I have it; 'tis Peter Brandt's grave, you would fain
+see, not Margaret's. He does lie here; hard by the west door. There;
+I'll show you." And he laid down his spade, and put on his doublet and
+jerkin to go with the friar.
+
+He did not know there was anybody sitting on Peter's tomb. Still less
+that she was watching for this holy friar.
+
+FOOTNOTE:
+
+[C] Pietro Vanucci, and Andrea, did not recognize him without his beard.
+The fact is, that the beard, which has never known a razor, grows in a
+very picturesque and characteristic form, and becomes a feature in the
+face; so that its removal may in some cases be an effectual disguise.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER LXXXIX
+
+
+WHILE Jorian was putting on his doublet and jerkin to go to Peter's
+tomb, his tongue was not idle. "They used to call him a magician out
+Sevenbergen way. And they do say he gave 'em a touch of his trade at
+parting; told 'em he saw Margaret's lad a coming down Rhine in brave
+clothes and store o' money, but his face scarred by foreign glaive, and
+not altogether so many arms and legs as a went away wi'. But, dear
+heart, nought came on't. Margaret is still wearying for her lad; and
+Peter, he lies as quiet as his neighbours, not but what she hath put a
+stone slab over him, to keep him where he is: as you shall see."
+
+He put both hands on the edge of the grave, and was about to raise
+himself out of it, but the friar laid a trembling hand on his shoulder,
+and said in a strange whisper--
+
+"How long since died Peter Brandt?"
+
+"About two months. Why?"
+
+"And his daughter buried him, say you?"
+
+"Nay, I buried him, but she paid the fee and reared the stone. Why?"
+
+"Then--but he had but one daughter; Margaret?"
+
+"No more; leastways, that he owned to."
+
+"Then you think Margaret is--is alive?"
+
+"Think? Why I should be dead else. Riddle me that."
+
+"Alas, how can I? You love her!"
+
+"No more than reason, being a married man and father of four more sturdy
+knaves like myself. Nay, the answer is, she saved my life scarce six
+weeks agone. Now had she been dead she couldn't ha' kept me alive. Bless
+your heart I couldn't keep a thing on my stomach; nor doctors couldn't
+make me. My Joan says, ''Tis time to buy thee a shroud.' 'I dare say, so
+'tis,' says I; 'but try and borrow one first.' In comes my lady, this
+Margaret, which she died three years ago, by your way on't, opens the
+windows, makes 'em shift me where I lay, and cures me in the twinkling
+of a bed post; but wi' what? there pinches the shoe; with the scurviest
+herb, and out of my own garden, too; with sweet feverfew. A herb,
+quotha, 'tis a weed; leastways it was a weed till it cured me; but now
+whene'er I pass my bunch I doff bonnet, and, says I, 'My service t'ye.'
+Why, how now, father, you look wondrous pale, and now you are red; and
+now you are white? Why, what is the matter? What in Heaven's name is the
+matter?"
+
+"The surprise--the joy--the wonder--the fear," gasped Clement.
+
+"Why what is it to thee? Art thou of kin to Margaret Brandt?"
+
+"Nay; but I knew one that loved her well, so well her death nigh killed
+him, body and soul. And yet thou sayest she lives. And I believe thee."
+
+Jorian stared, and after a considerable silence, said very gravely,
+"Father, you have asked me many questions, and I have answered them
+truly; now for our Lady's sake answer me but two. Did you in very sooth
+know one who loved this poor lass? Where?"
+
+Clement was on the point of revealing himself, but he remembered
+Jerome's letter, and shrank from being called by the name he had borne
+in the world.
+
+"I knew him in Italy," said he.
+
+"If you knew him you can tell me his name," said Jorian, cautiously.
+
+"His name was Gerard Eliassoen."
+
+"Oh, but this is strange. Stay, what made thee say Margaret Brandt was
+dead?"
+
+"I was with Gerard when a letter came from Margaret Van Eyck. The letter
+told him she he loved was dead and buried. Let me sit down, for my
+strength fails me. Foul play! Foul play!"
+
+"Father," said Jorian, "I thank Heaven for sending thee to me. Ay, sit
+ye down; ye do look like a ghost; ye fast overmuch to be strong. My mind
+misgives me; methinks I hold the clue to this riddle, and, if I do,
+there be two knaves in this town whose heads I would fain batter to
+pieces as I do this mould"; and he clenched his teeth and raised his
+long spade above his head, and brought it furiously down upon the heap
+several times. "Foul play? You never said a truer word i' your life;
+and, if you know where Gerard is now, lose no time, but show him the
+trap they have laid for him. Mine is but a dull head, but whiles the
+slow hound puzzles out the scent--go to. And I do think you and I ha'
+got hold of two ends o' one stick, and a main foul one."
+
+Jorian then, after some of those useless preliminaries men of his class
+always deal in, came to the point of his story. He had been employed by
+the burgomaster of Tergou to repair the floor of an upper room in his
+house, and, when it was almost done, coming suddenly to fetch away his
+tools, curiosity had been excited by some loud words below, and he had
+lain down on his stomach, and heard the burgomaster talking about a
+letter, which Cornelis and Sybrandt were minded to convey into the place
+of one that a certain Hans Memling was taking to Gerard: "and it seems
+their will was good, but their stomach was small; so to give them
+courage the old man showed them a drawer full of silver, and if they did
+the trick they should each put a hand in, and have all the silver they
+could hold in't. Well, father," continued Jorian, "I thought not much
+on't at the time, except for the bargain itself, _that_ kept me awake
+mostly all night. Think on't! Next morning at peep of day who should I
+see but my masters Cornelis and Sybrandt come out of their house each
+with a black eye. 'Oho,' says I, 'what yon Hans hath put his mark on ye;
+well now I hope that is all you have got for your pains.' Didn't they
+make for the burgomaster's house? I to my hiding-place."
+
+At this part of Jorian's revelation the monk's nostril dilated, and his
+restless eye showed the suspense he was in.
+
+"Well, father," continued Jorian, "the burgomaster brought them into
+that same room. He had a letter in his hand; but I am no scholar;
+however, I have got as many eyes in my head as the Pope hath, and I saw
+the drawer opened, and those two knaves put in each a hand and draw it
+out full. And, saints in glory, how they tried to hold more, and more,
+and more o' yon stuff! And Sybrandt, he had daubed his hand in something
+sticky, I think 'twas glue, and he made shift to carry one or two pieces
+away a sticking to the back of his hand, he! he! he! 'Tis a sin to
+laugh. So you see luck was on the wrong side as usual; they had done the
+trick; but how they did it, that, methinks, will never be known till
+doomsday. Go to, they left their immortal jewels in yon drawer. Well,
+they got a handful of silver for them; the devil had the worst o' yon
+bargain. There, father, that is off my mind; often I longed to tell it
+some one, but I durst not to the women; or Margaret would not have had a
+friend left in the world; for those two black-hearted villains are the
+favourites. 'Tis always so. Have not the old folk just taken a brave new
+shop for them in this very town, in the Hoog Straet? There may you see
+their sign, a gilt sheep and a lambkin; a brace of wolves sucking their
+dam would be nigher the mark. And there the whole family feast this
+day; oh, 'tis a fine world. What, not a word, holy father; you sit there
+like stone, and have not even a curse to bestow on them, the
+stony-hearted miscreants. What, was it not enough the poor lad was all
+alone in a strange land; must his own flesh and blood go and lie away
+the one blessing his enemies had left him? And then think of her pining
+and pining all these years, and sitting at the window looking adown the
+street for Gerard! and so constant, so tender, and true: my wife says
+she is sure no woman ever loved a man truer, than she loves the lad
+those villains have parted from her: and the day never passes but she
+weeps salt tears for him. And, when I think, that, but for those two
+greedy lying knaves, yon winsome lad, whose life I saved, might be by
+her side this day the happiest he in Holland; and the sweet lass, that
+saved my life, might be sitting with her cheek upon her sweetheart's
+shoulder, the happiest she in Holland in place of the saddest; oh, I
+thirst for their blood, the nasty, sneaking, lying, cogging, cowardly,
+heartless, bowelless--how now?!"
+
+The monk started wildly up, livid with fury and despair, and rushed
+headlong from the place with both hands clenched and raised on high. So
+terrible was this inarticulate burst of fury, that Jorian's puny ire
+died out at sight of it, and he stood looking dismayed after the human
+tempest he had launched.
+
+While thus absorbed he felt his arm grasped by a small, tremulous, hand.
+
+It was Margaret Brandt.
+
+He started: her coming there just then seemed so strange.
+
+She had waited long on Peter's tombstone, but the friar did not come. So
+she went into the church to see if he was there still. She could not
+find him.
+
+Presently, going up the south aisle, the gigantic shadow of a friar came
+rapidly along the floor and part of a pillar, and seemed to pass through
+her. She was near screaming: but in a moment remembered Jorian's shadow
+had come in so from the churchyard: and tried to clamber out the nearest
+way. She did so, but with some difficulty; and by that time Clement was
+just disappearing down the street: yet, so expressive at times is the
+body as well as the face, she could see he was greatly agitated. Jorian
+and she looked at one another, and at the wild figure of the distant
+friar.
+
+"Well?" said she to Jorian, trembling.
+
+"Well," said he, "you startled me. How come you here of all people?"
+
+"Is this a time for idle chat? What said he to you? He has been speaking
+to you; deny it not."
+
+"Girl, as I stand here, he asked me, where-about you were buried in this
+churchyard."
+
+"Ah?"
+
+"I told him, nowhere, thank Heaven: you were alive and saving other folk
+from the churchyard."
+
+"Well?"
+
+"Well, the long and the short is, he knew thy Gerard in Italy: and a
+letter came, saying you were dead; and it broke thy poor lad's heart.
+Let me see; who was the letter written by? Oh, by the demoiselle Van
+Eyck. That was _his_ way of it. But I up and told him nay; 'twas neither
+demoiselle nor dame that penned yon lie, but Ghysbrecht Van Swieten, and
+those foul knaves, Cornelis and Sybrandt; these changed the true letter
+for one of their own; I told him as how I saw the whole villainy done,
+through a chink; and now, if I have not been and told you!"
+
+"Oh, cruel! cruel! But he lives. The fear of fears is gone. Thank God!"
+
+"Ay, lass; and as for thine enemies, I have given them a dig. For yon
+friar is friendly to Gerard, and he is gone to Eli's house, methinks.
+For I told him where to find Gerard's enemies and thine, and wow but he
+will give them their lesson. If ever a man was mad with rage, it's yon.
+He turned black and white, and parted like a stone from a sling. Girl,
+there was thunder in his eye and silence on his lips. Made me cold a
+did."
+
+"Oh, Jorian, what have you done?" cried Margaret. "Quick! quick! help me
+thither, for the power is gone all out of my body. You know him not as I
+do. Oh, if you had seen the blow he gave Ghysbrecht; and heard the
+frightful crash! Come, save him from worse mischief. The water is deep
+enow; but not bloody yet; come!"
+
+Her accents were so full of agony that Jorian sprang out of the grave
+and came with her, huddling on his jerkin as he went.
+
+But, as they hurried along, he asked her what on earth she meant? "I
+talk of this friar, and you answer me of Gerard."
+
+"Man, see you not, _this_ is Gerard!"
+
+"This, Gerard? what mean ye?"
+
+"I mean, yon friar is my boy's father. I have waited for him long,
+Jorian. Well, he is come to me at last. And thank God for it. Oh, my
+poor child! Quicker, Jorian, quicker!"
+
+"Why, thou art mad as he. Stay! By St. Bavon, yon _was_ Gerard's face;
+'twas nought like it; yet somehow,--'twas it. Come on! come on! let me
+see the end of this."
+
+"The end? How many of us will live to see that?"
+
+They hurried along in breathless silence, till they reached Hoog Straet.
+
+Then Jorian tried to reassure her. "You are making your own trouble,"
+said he; "who says he has gone thither? more likely to the convent to
+weep and pray, poor soul. Oh, cursed, cursed villains!"
+
+"Did you tell him where those villains bide?"
+
+"Ay, that I did."
+
+"Then quicker, oh Jorian, quicker. I see the house. Thank God and all
+the saints, I shall be in time to calm him. I know what I'll say to him;
+Heaven forgive me! Poor Catherine; 'tis of her I think: she has been a
+mother to me."
+
+The shop was a corner house, with two doors: one in the main street, for
+customers, and a house-door round the corner.
+
+Margaret and Jorian were now within twenty yards of the shop, when they
+heard a roar inside, like as of some wild animal, and the friar burst
+out, white and raging, and went tearing down the street.
+
+Margaret screamed, and sank fainting on Jorian's arm.
+
+Jorian shouted after him, "Stay, Madman, know thy friends."
+
+But he was deaf, and went headlong, shaking his clenched fists high,
+high, in the air.
+
+"Help me in, good Jorian," moaned Margaret, turning suddenly calm. "Let
+me know the worst; and die."
+
+He supported her trembling limbs into the house.
+
+It seemed unnaturally still; not a sound.
+
+Jorian's own heart beat fast.
+
+A door was before him, unlatched. He pushed it softly with his left
+hand, and Margaret and he stood on the threshold.
+
+What they saw there you shall soon know.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XC
+
+
+IT was supper-time. Eli's family were collected round the board;
+Margaret only was missing. To Catherine's surprise Eli said he would
+wait a bit for her.
+
+"Why, I told her you would not wait for the duke."
+
+"She is not the duke: she is a poor, good lass, that hath waited not
+minutes, but years, for a graceless son of mine. You can put the meat on
+the board all the same; then we can fall to, without further loss o'
+time, when she does come."
+
+The smoking dishes smelt so savoury that Eli gave way, "She will come if
+we begin," said he; "they always do. Come, sit ye down, Mistress Joan;
+y'are not here for a slave, I trow, but a guest. There, I hear a quick
+step--off covers, and fall to."
+
+The covers were withdrawn, and the knives brandished. Then burst into
+the room, not the expected Margaret, but a Dominican friar, livid with
+rage.
+
+He was at the table in a moment, in front of Cornelis and Sybrandt,
+threw his tall body over the narrow table, and, with two hands hovering
+above their shrinking heads, like eagles over a quarry, he cursed them
+by name, soul and body, in this world and the next. It was an age
+eloquent in curses: and this curse was so full, so minute, so blighting,
+blasting, withering, and tremendous, that I am afraid to put all the
+words on paper. "Cursed be the lips," he shrieked, "which spoke the lie
+that Margaret was dead; may they rot before the grave, and kiss the
+white-hot iron in hell thereafter; doubly cursed be the hands that
+changed those letters, and be they struck off by the hangman's knife,
+and handle hell-fire for ever; thrice accursed be the cruel hearts that
+did conceive that damned lie, to part true love for ever; may they
+sicken and wither on earth joyless, loveless, hopeless; and wither to
+dust before their time; and burn in eternal fire." He cursed the meat at
+their mouths, and every atom of their bodies, from their hair to the
+soles of their feet. Then turning from the cowering, shuddering pair,
+who had almost hid themselves beneath the table, he tore a letter out of
+his bosom, and flung it down before his father.
+
+"Read that, thou hard old man, that didst imprison thy son, read, and
+see what monsters thou hast brought into the world. The memory of my
+wrongs, and hers, dwell with you all for ever! I will meet you again at
+the judgment day; on earth ye will never see me more."
+
+And in a moment, as he had come, so he was gone, leaving them stiff, and
+cold, and white as statues, round the smoking board.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+And this was the sight that greeted Margaret's eyes and Jorian's--pale
+figures of men and women petrified around the untasted food, as Eastern
+poets feigned.
+
+Margaret glanced her eye round, and gasped out, "Oh, joy! all here; no
+blood hath been shed. Oh, you cruel, cruel men! I thank God he hath not
+slain you."
+
+At sight of her Catherine gave an eloquent scream; then turned her head
+away. But Eli, who had just cast his eye over the false letter, and
+begun to understand it all, seeing the other victim come in at that very
+moment with _her_ wrongs reflected in her sweet, pale face, started to
+his feet in a transport of rage, and shouted, "Stand clear, and let me
+get at the traitors. I'll hang for them." And in a moment he whipped out
+his short sword, and fell upon them.
+
+"Fly!" screamed Margaret. "Fly!"
+
+They slipped howling under the table, and crawled out the other side.
+
+But, ere they could get to the door, the furious old man ran round and
+intercepted them. Catherine only screamed and wrung her hands; your
+notables are generally useless at such a time; and blood would certainly
+have flowed, but Margaret and Jorian seized the fiery old man's arms,
+and held them with all their might, whilst the pair got clear of the
+house; then they let him go; and he went vainly raging after them out
+into the street.
+
+They were a furlong off, running like hares.
+
+He hacked down the board on which their names were written, and brought
+it in doors, and flung it into the chimney-place.
+
+Catherine was sitting rocking herself with her apron over her head. Joan
+had run to her husband. Margaret had her arms round Catherine's neck;
+and, pale and panting, was yet making efforts to comfort her.
+
+But it was not to be done. "O my poor children!" she cried. "O
+miserable mother! 'Tis a mercy Kate was ill upstairs. There, I have
+lived to thank God for that!" she cried, with a fresh burst of sobs. "It
+would have killed her. He had better have stayed in Italy, as come home
+to curse his own flesh and blood, and set us all by the ears."
+
+"Oh, hold your chat, woman," cried Eli, angrily; "you are still on the
+side of the ill-doer. You are cheap served; your weakness made the
+rogues what they are; I was for correcting them in their youth: for sore
+ills, sharp remedies; but you still sided with their faults, and
+undermined me, and baffled wise severity. And you, Margaret, leave
+comforting her that ought rather to comfort you; for what is her hurt to
+yours? But she never had a grain of justice under her skin; and never
+will. So come thou to me; that am thy father from this hour."
+
+This was a command; so she kissed Catherine, and went tottering to him,
+and he put her on a chair beside him, and she laid her feeble head on
+his honest breast: but not a tear: it was too deep for that.
+
+"Poor lamb," said he. After awhile--"Come, good folks," said true Eli,
+in a broken voice, to Jorian and Joan, "we are in a little trouble, as
+you see; but that is no reason you should starve. For our Lady's sake,
+fall to; and add not to my grief the reputation of a churl. What the
+dickens!" added he, with a sudden ghastly attempt at stout-heartedness,
+"the more knaves I have the luck to get shut of, the more my need of
+true men and women, to help me clear the dish, and cheer mine eye with
+honest faces about me where else were gaps. Fall to, I do entreat ye."
+
+Catherine, sobbing, backed his request. Poor, simple, antique,
+hospitable souls! Jorian, whose appetite, especially since his illness,
+was very keen, was for acting on this hospitable invitation; but Joan
+whispered a word in his ear, and he instantly drew back. "Nay, I'll
+touch no meat that holy Church hath cursed."
+
+"In sooth, I forgot," said Eli, apologetically. "My son, who was reared
+at my table, hath cursed my victuals. That seems strange. Well, what God
+wills, man must bow to."
+
+The supper was flung out into the yard.
+
+Jorian took his wife home, and heavy sadness reigned in Eli's house that
+night.
+
+Meantime, where was Clement?
+
+Lying at full length upon the floor of the convent church, with his lips
+upon the lowest step of the altar, in an indescribable state of terror,
+misery, penitence, and self-abasement: through all which struggled
+gleams of joy that Margaret was alive.
+
+Night fell and found him lying there weeping, and praying: and morning
+would have found him there too; but he suddenly remembered that,
+absorbed in his own wrongs and Margaret's, he had committed another sin
+besides intemperate rage. He had neglected a dying man.
+
+He rose instantly, groaning at his accumulated wickedness, and set out
+to repair the omission. The weather had changed; it was raining hard,
+and, when he got clear of the town, he heard the wolves baying; they
+were on foot. But Clement was himself again, or nearly; he thought
+little of danger or discomfort, having a shameful omission of religious
+duty to repair: he went stoutly forward through rain and darkness.
+
+And, as he went, he often beat his breast, and cried, "Mea Culpa! Mea
+Culpa!"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XCI
+
+
+WHAT that sensitive mind, and tender conscience, and loving heart, and
+religious soul, went through even in a few hours, under a situation so
+sudden and tremendous, is perhaps beyond the power of words to paint.
+
+Fancy yourself the man; then put yourself in his place!
+
+Were I to write a volume on it, we should have to come to that at last.
+
+I shall relate his next two overt acts. They indicate his state of mind
+after the first fierce tempest of the soul had subsided.
+
+After spending the night with the dying hermit in giving and receiving
+holy consolations, he set out not for Rotterdam, but for Tergou. He went
+there to confront his fatal enemy the burgomaster, and, by means of that
+parchment, whose history by-the-by was itself a romance, to make him
+disgorge; and give Margaret her own.
+
+Heated and dusty, he stopped at the fountain, and there began to eat his
+black bread and drink of the water. But in the middle of his frugal
+meal a female servant came running, and begged him to come and shrive
+her dying master. He returned the bread to his wallet, and followed her
+without a word.
+
+She took him--to the Stadthouse.
+
+He drew back with a little shudder when he saw her go in.
+
+But he almost instantly recovered himself, and followed her into the
+house, and up the stairs. And there in bed, propped up by pillows, lay
+his deadly enemy, looking already like a corpse.
+
+Clement eyed him a moment from the door, and thought of all--the tower,
+the wood, the letter. Then he said in a low voice, "Pax vobiscum!" He
+trembled a little while he said it.
+
+The sick man welcomed him as eagerly as his weak state permitted. "Thank
+Heaven, thou art come in time to absolve me from my sins, father, and
+pray for my soul, thou and thy brethren."
+
+"My son," said Clement, "before absolution cometh confession. In which
+act there must be no reservation, as thou valuest thy soul's weal.
+Bethink thee, therefore, wherein thou hast most offended God and the
+Church, while I offer up a prayer for wisdom to direct thee."
+
+Clement then kneeled and prayed; and, when he rose from his knees, he
+said to Ghysbrecht, with apparent calmness, "My son, confess thy sins."
+
+"Ah, father," said the sick man, "they are many and great."
+
+"Great then be thy penitence, my son; so shalt thou find God's mercy
+great."
+
+Ghysbrecht put his hands together, and began to confess with every
+appearance of contrition.
+
+He owned he had eaten meat in mid-Lent. He had often absented himself
+from mass on the Lord's day, and saints' day: and had trifled with other
+religious observances, which he enumerated with scrupulous fidelity.
+
+When he had done, the friar said, quietly, "'Tis well, my son. These be
+faults. Now to thy crimes. Thou hadst done better to begin with them."
+
+"Why, father, what crimes lie to my account if these be none?"
+
+"Am I confessing to thee, or thou to me?" said Clement, somewhat
+severely.
+
+"Forgive me, father! Why, surely, I to you. But I know not what you call
+crimes."
+
+"The seven deadly sins, art thou clear of them?"
+
+"Heaven forfend I should be guilty of them. I know them not by name."
+
+"Many do them all that cannot name them. Begin with that one which leads
+to lying, theft, and murder."
+
+"I am quit of that one any way. How call you it?"
+
+"AVARICE, my son."
+
+"Avarice? Oh, as to that, I have been a saving man all my day; but I
+have kept a good table, and not altogether forgotten the poor. But,
+alas, I am a great sinner. Mayhap the next will catch me. What is the
+next?"
+
+"We have not yet done with this one. Bethink thee, the Church is not to
+be trifled with."
+
+"Alas! am I in a condition to trifle with her now? Avarice? Avarice?"
+
+He looked puzzled and innocent.
+
+"Hast thou ever robbed the fatherless?" inquired the friar.
+
+"Me? robbed the fatherless?" gasped Ghysbrecht; "not that I mind."
+
+"Once more, my son, I am forced to tell thee thou art trifling with the
+Church. Miserable man! another evasion, and I leave thee, and fiends
+will straightway gather round thy bed, and tear thee down to the
+bottomless pit."
+
+"Oh, leave me not! leave me not!" shrieked the terrified old man. "The
+Church knows all. I _must_ have robbed the fatherless. I will confess.
+Who shall I begin with? My memory for names is shaken."
+
+The defence was skilful, but in this case failed.
+
+"Hast thou forgotten Floris Brandt?" said Clement stonily.
+
+The sick man reared himself in bed in a pitiable state of terror.
+
+"How knew you that?" said he.
+
+"The Church knows many things," said Clement, coldly, "and by many ways
+that are dark to thee. Miserable impenitent, you called her to your side
+hoping to deceive her. You said 'I will not confess to the cure, but to
+some friar who knows not my misdeeds. So will I cheat the Church on my
+death-bed, and die as I have lived.' But God, kinder to thee than thou
+art to thyself, sent to thee one whom thou couldst not deceive. He has
+tried thee; he was patient with thee, and warned thee not to trifle with
+holy Church; but all is in vain; thou canst not confess; for thou art
+impenitent as a stone. Die, then, as thou hast lived. Methinks I see the
+fiends crowding round the bed for their prey. They wait but for me to
+go. And I go."
+
+He turned his back; but Ghysbrecht, in extremity of terror, caught him
+by the frock. "Oh, holy man, mercy! stay. I will confess all, all. I
+robbed my friend Floris. Alas, would it had ended there; for he lost
+little by me; but I kept the land from Peter his son, and from Margaret,
+Peter's daughter. Yet I was always going to give it back; but I
+couldn't, I couldn't."
+
+"Avarice, my son, avarice. Happy for thee 'tis not too late."
+
+"No. I will leave it her by will. She will not have long to wait for it
+now: not above a month or two at farthest."
+
+"For which month's possession thou wouldst damn thy soul for ever. Thou
+fool!"
+
+The sick man groaned, and prayed the friar to be reasonable. The friar
+firmly, but gently and persuasively, persisted, and with infinite
+patience detached the dying man's gripe from another's property. There
+were times when his patience was tried, and he was on the point of
+thrusting his hand into his bosom and producing the deed, which he had
+brought for that purpose; but after yesterday's outbreak he was on his
+guard against choler; and, to conclude, he conquered his impatience; he
+conquered a personal repugnance to the man, so strong as to make his own
+flesh creep all the time he was struggling with this miser for his soul:
+and at last, without a word about the deed, he won him to make full and
+prompt restitution.
+
+How the restitution was made will be briefly related elsewhere: also
+certain curious effects produced upon Ghysbrecht by it; and when and on
+what terms Ghysbrecht and Clement parted.
+
+I promise to relate two acts of the latter, indicative of his mind.
+
+This is one. The other is told in two words.
+
+As soon as he was quite sure Margaret had her own, and was a rich
+woman--
+
+HE DISAPPEARED.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XCII
+
+
+IT was the day after that terrible scene: the little house in the Hoog
+Straet was like a grave, and none more listless and dejected than
+Catherine, so busy and sprightly by nature. After dinner, her eyes red
+with weeping, she went to the convent to try and soften Gerard, and lay
+the first stone at least of a reconciliation. It was some time before
+she could make the porter understand whom she was seeking. Eventually
+she learned he had left late last night and was not expected back. She
+went sighing with the news to Margaret. She found her sitting idle, like
+one with whom life had lost its savour; she had her boy clasped so tight
+in her arms, as if he was all she had left, and she feared some one
+would take him too. Catherine begged her to come to the Hoog Straet.
+
+"What for?" sighed Margaret. "You cannot but say to yourselves, 'she is
+the cause of all.'"
+
+"Nay, nay," said Catherine, "we are not so ill-hearted, and Eli is so
+fond on you; you will, may be, soften him."
+
+"Oh, if you think I can do any good, I'll come," said Margaret, with a
+weary sigh.
+
+They found Eli and a carpenter putting up another name in place of
+Cornelis's and Sybrandt's and what should that name be but Margaret
+Brandt's.
+
+With all her affection for Margaret this went through poor Catherine
+like a knife. "The bane of one is another's meat," said she.
+
+"Can he make me spend the money unjustly?" replied Margaret, coldly.
+
+"You are a good soul," said Catherine. "Ay, so best, sith he is the
+strongest."
+
+The next day Giles dropped in, and Catherine told the story all in
+favour of the black sheep, and invited his pity for them, anathematized
+by their brother, and turned on the wide world by their father. But
+Giles's prejudices ran the other way; he heard her out, and told her
+bluntly the knaves had got off cheap; they deserved to be hanged at
+Margaret's door into the bargain, and, dismissing them with contempt,
+crowed with delight at the return of his favourite. "I'll show him,"
+said he, "what 'tis to have a brother at court with a heart to serve a
+friend, and a head to point the way."
+
+"Bless thee, Giles," murmured Margaret, softly.
+
+"Thou wast ever his stanch friend, dear Giles," said little Kate; "but
+alack I know not what thou canst do for him now."
+
+Giles had left them, and all was sad and silent again, when a
+well-dressed man opened the door softly and asked was Margaret Brandt
+here.
+
+"D'ye hear, lass? You are wanted," said Catherine, briskly. In her the
+Gossip was indestructible.
+
+"Well, mother," said Margaret, listlessly, "and here I am."
+
+A shuffling of feet was heard at the door, and a colourless, feeble, old
+man was assisted into the room. It was Ghysbrecht Van Swieten. At sight
+of him Catherine shrieked and threw her apron over her head and Margaret
+shuddered violently and turned her head swiftly away not to see him.
+
+A feeble voice issued from the strange visitor's lips, "Good people, a
+dying man hath come to ask your forgiveness."
+
+"Come to look on your work, you mean," said Catherine, taking down her
+apron and bursting out sobbing. "There, there, she is fainting; look to
+her, Eli, quick."
+
+"Nay," said Margaret, in a feeble voice, "the sight of him gave me a
+turn, that is all. Prithee let him say his say; and go; for he is the
+murtherer of me and mine."
+
+"Alas," said Ghysbrecht, "I am too feeble to say it standing, and no one
+biddeth me sit down."
+
+Eli, who had followed him into the house, interfered here, and said half
+sullenly, half apologetically, "Well, burgomaster, 'tis not our wont to
+leave a visitor standing whiles we sit. But, man, man, you have wrought
+us too much ill." And the honest fellow's voice began to shake with
+anger he fought hard to contain, because it was his own house.
+
+Then Ghysbrecht found an advocate in one who seldom spoke in vain in
+that family.
+
+It was little Kate. "Father, mother," said she, "my duty to you, but
+this is not well. Death squares all accounts. And see you not death in
+his face? I shall not live long, good friends: and his time is shorter
+than mine."
+
+Eli made haste and set a chair for their dying enemy with his own hands.
+Ghysbrecht's attendants put him into it. "Go fetch the boxes," said he.
+They brought in two boxes, and then retired, leaving their master alone
+in the family he had so cruelly injured.
+
+Every eye was now bent on him, except Margaret's. He undid the boxes,
+with unsteady fingers, and brought out of one the title-deeds of a
+property at Tergou. "This land and these houses belonged to Floris
+Brandt, and do belong to thee of right, his granddaughter. These I did
+usurp for a debt long since defrayed with interest. These I now restore
+their rightful owner with penitent tears. In this other box are three
+hundred and forty golden angels, being the rent and fines I have
+received from that land more than Floris Brandt's debt to me. I have
+kept compt, still meaning to be just one day; but Avarice withheld me.
+Pray, good people, against temptation! I was not born dishonest: yet you
+see."
+
+"Well, to be sure," cried Catherine. "And you the burgomaster! Hast
+whipt good store of thieves in thy day. However," said she, on second
+thoughts, "'tis better late than never. What, Margaret? art deaf? The
+good man hath brought thee back thine own. Art a rich woman. Alack, what
+a mountain o' gold!"
+
+"Bid him keep land and gold, and give me back my Gerard, that he stole
+from me with his treason;" said Margaret, with her head still averted.
+
+"Alas!" said Ghysbrecht; "would I could. What I can I have done. Is it
+nought? It cost me a sore struggle; and I rose from my last bed to do it
+myself, lest some mischance should come between her and her rights."
+
+"Old man," said Margaret, "since thou, whose idol is pelf, hast done
+this, God and his saints will, as I hope, forgive thee. As for me, I am
+neither saint nor angel, but only a poor woman, whose heart thou hast
+broken. Speak to him, Kate; for I am like the dead."
+
+Kate meditated a little while; and then her soft silvery voice fell like
+a soothing melody upon the air. "My poor sister hath a sorrow that
+riches cannot heal. Give her time, Ghysbrecht; 'tis not in nature she
+should forgive thee all. Her boy is fatherless; and she is neither maid,
+wife, nor widow; and the blow fell but two days syne, that laid her
+heart a bleeding."
+
+A single heavy sob from Margaret was the comment to these words.
+
+"Therefore, give her time! And, ere thou diest, she will forgive thee
+all, ay, even to pleasure me, that haply shall not be long behind thee,
+Ghysbrecht. Meantime, we, whose wounds be sore, but not so deep as
+hers, do pardon thee, a penitent and a dying man; and I, for one, will
+pray for thee from this hour; go in peace!"
+
+Their little oracle had spoken; it was enough. Eli even invited him to
+break a manchet and drink a stoup of wine to give him heart for his
+journey.
+
+But Ghysbrecht declined, and said what he had done was a cordial to him.
+"Man seeth but a little way before him, neighbour. This land I clung so
+to it was a bed of nettles to me all the time. 'Tis gone; and I feel
+happier and livelier like for the loss on't."
+
+He called his men and they lifted him into the litter.
+
+When he was gone Catherine gloated over the money. She had never seen so
+much together, and was almost angry with Margaret, for "sitting out
+there like an image." And she dilated on the advantages of money.
+
+And she teased Margaret till at last she prevailed on her to come and
+look at it.
+
+"Better let her be, mother," said Kate. "How can she relish gold, with a
+heart in her bosom liker lead?" But Catherine persisted.
+
+The result was, Margaret looked down at all her wealth, with wondering
+eyes. Then suddenly wrung her hands and cried with piercing anguish,
+"TOO LATE! TOO LATE!"
+
+And shook off her leaden despondency, only to go into strong hysterics
+over the wealth that came too late to be shared with him she loved.
+
+A little of this gold, a portion of this land, a year or two ago, when
+it was as much her own as now; and Gerard would have never left her side
+for Italy or any other place.
+
+Too late! Too late!
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XCIII
+
+
+NOT many days after this came the news that Margaret Van Eyck was dead
+and buried. By a will she had made a year before, she left all her
+property, after her funeral expenses and certain presents to Reicht
+Heynes, to her dear daughter Margaret Brandt, requesting her to keep
+Reicht as long as unmarried. By this will Margaret inherited a furnished
+house, and pictures and sketches that in the present day would be a
+fortune: among the pictures was one she valued more than a gallery of
+others. It represented "a Betrothal." The solemnity of the ceremony was
+marked in the grave face of the man, and the demure complacency of the
+woman. She was painted almost entirely by Margaret Van Eyck, but the
+rest of the picture by Jan. The accessories were exquisitely finished,
+and remain a marvel of skill to this day. Margaret Brandt sent word to
+Reicht to stay in the house till such time as she could find the heart
+to put foot in it, and miss the face and voice that used to meet her
+there: and to take special care of the picture "in the little cupboard":
+meaning the diptych.
+
+The next thing was, Luke Peterson came home, and heard that Gerard was a
+monk.
+
+He was like to go mad with joy. He came to Margaret and said,
+
+"Never heed, mistress. If he cannot marry you I can."
+
+"You?" said Margaret. "Why, I have seen him."
+
+"But he is a friar."
+
+"He was my husband, and my boy's father long ere he was a friar. And I
+have seen him. I've _seen_ him."
+
+Luke was thoroughly puzzled. "I'll tell you what," said he; "I have got
+a cousin a lawyer. I'll go and ask him whether you are married or
+single."
+
+"Nay, I shall ask my own heart, not a lawyer. So that is your regard for
+me; to go making me the town talk, oh, fie!"
+
+"That is done already without a word from me."
+
+"But not by such as seek my respect. And if you do it, never come nigh
+me again."
+
+"Ay," said Luke, with a sigh, "you are like a dove to all the rest; but
+you are a hard-hearted tyrant to me."
+
+"'Tis your own fault, dear Luke, for wooing me. That is what lets me
+from being as kind to you as I desire. Luke, my bonny lad, listen to me.
+I am rich now; I can make my friends happy, though not myself. Look
+round the street, look round the parish. There is many a quean in it,
+fairer than I twice told, and not spoiled with weeping. Look high; and
+take your choice. Speak you to the lass herself, and I'll speak to the
+mother; they shall not say thee nay; take my word for't."
+
+"I see what ye mean," said Luke, turning very red. "But if I can't have
+your liking, I will none o' your money. I was your servant when you were
+poor as I; and poorer. No: if you would liever be a friar's leman than
+an honest man's wife, you are not the woman I took you for; so part we
+withouten malice: seek you your comfort on yon road, where never a she
+did find it yet, and, for me, I'll live and die a bachelor. Good even,
+mistress."
+
+"Farewell, dear Luke: and God forgive you for saying _that_ to me."
+
+For some days Margaret dreaded, almost as much as she desired, the
+coming interview with Gerard. She said to herself, "I wonder not he
+keeps away a while; for so should I." However he would hear he was a
+father: and the desire to see their boy would overcome everything;
+"And," said the poor girl to herself, "if so be that meeting does not
+kill me, I feel I shall be better after it than I am now."
+
+But when day after day went by, and he was not heard of, a freezing
+suspicion began to crawl and creep towards her mind. What if his absence
+was intentional? What if he had gone to some cold-blooded monks his
+fellows, and they had told him never to see her more? The convent had
+ere this shown itself as merciless to true lovers as the grave itself.
+
+At this thought the very life seemed to die out of her.
+
+And now for the first time deep indignation mingled at times with her
+grief and apprehension. "Can he have ever loved me? To run from me and
+his boy without a word! Why this poor Luke thinks more of me than he
+does."
+
+While her mind was in this state, Giles came roaring, "I've hit the
+clout; OUR GERARD IS VICAR OF GOUDA."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+A very brief sketch of the dwarf's court life will suffice to prepare
+the reader for his own account of this feat. Some months before he went
+to court his intelligence had budded. He himself dated the change from a
+certain 8th of June, when, swinging by one hand along with the week's
+washing on a tight rope in the drying ground, something went crack
+inside his head; and lo! intellectual powers unchained. At court his
+shrewdness and bluntness of speech, coupled with his gigantic voice and
+his small stature, made him a Power: without the last item I fear they
+would have conducted him to that unpopular gymnasium, the gallows. The
+young Duchess of Burgundy, and Marie the heiress apparent, both petted
+him, as great ladies have petted dwarfs in all ages; and the court poet
+melted butter by the six-foot rule, and poured enough of it down his
+back to stew Goliah in. He even amplified, versified, and enfeebled,
+certain rough and ready sentences dictated by Giles.
+
+The centipedal prolixity that resulted went to Eli by letter, thus
+entitled,
+
+    "The high and puissant Princess Marie
+    of Bourgogne her lytel jantilman hys
+    complaynt of y^e Coort, and
+    praise of a rusticall lyfe, versificated, and empapyred
+    by me the lytel jantilman's right lovynge
+    and obsequious servitor, etc.
+
+But the dwarf reached his climax by a happy mixture of mind and muscle;
+thus:
+
+The day before a grand court joust he challenged the duke's giant to a
+trial of strength. This challenge made the gravest grin, and aroused
+expectation.
+
+Giles had a lofty pole planted ready, and at the appointed hour went up
+it like a squirrel, and by strength of arm made a right angle with his
+body, and so remained: then slid down so quickly, that the high and
+puissant princess squeaked, and hid her face in her hands, not to see
+the demise of her pocket-Hercules.
+
+The giant effected only about ten feet, then looked ruefully up and
+ruefully down, and descended, bathed in perspiration, to argue the
+matter.
+
+"It was not the dwarf's greater strength, but his smaller body."
+
+The spectators received this excuse with loud derision. There was the
+fact. The dwarf was great at mounting a pole: the giant only great at
+excuses. In short Giles had gauged their intellects: with his own body
+no doubt.
+
+"Come," said he, "an' ye go to that, I'll wrestle ye, my lad, if so be
+you will let me blindfold your eyne."
+
+The giant, smarting under defeat, and thinking he could surely recover
+it by this means, readily consented.
+
+"Madam," said Giles, "see you yon blind Samson? At a signal from me he
+shall make me a low obeisance, and unbonnet to me."
+
+"How may that be, being blinded?" inquired a maid of honour.
+
+"That is my affair."
+
+"I wager on Giles for one," said the princess.
+
+When several wagers were laid pro and con, Giles hit the giant in the
+bread-basket. He went double (the obeisance), and his bonnet fell off.
+
+The company yelled with delight at this delicate stroke of wit, and
+Giles took to his heels. The giant followed as soon as he could recover
+his breath and tear off his bandage. But it was too late; Giles had
+prepared a little door in the wall, through which he could pass, but not
+a giant, and had coloured it so artfully it looked like wall; this door
+he tore open, and went headlong through, leaving no vestige but this
+posy, written very large upon the reverse of his trick door:
+
+    _Long limbs, big body, wanting wit,
+    By wee and wise is bet and bit._
+
+After this Giles became a Force.
+
+He shall now speak for himself.
+
+Finding Margaret unable to believe the good news, and sceptical as to
+the affairs of holy Church being administered by dwarfs, he narrated as
+follows:
+
+"When the princess sent for me to her bedroom as of custom, to keep her
+out of languor, I came not mirthful nor full of country dicts, as is my
+wont, but dull as lead.
+
+"'Why what aileth thee?' quo' she. 'Art sick?' 'At heart,' quo' I.
+'Alas, he is in love,' quo' she. Whereat five brazen hussies, which they
+call them maids of honour, did giggle loud. 'Not so mad as that,' said
+I, 'seeing what I see at court of women folk.'
+
+"'There, ladies,' quo' the princess, 'best let him a be. 'Tis a liberal
+mannikin, and still giveth more than he taketh of saucy words.'
+
+"'In all sadness,' quo' she, 'what is the matter?'
+
+"I told her I was meditating, and what perplexed me was, that other folk
+could now and then keep their word, but princes never.
+
+"'Heyday,' says she, 'thy shafts fly high this morn.' I told her, 'Ay,
+for they hit the Truth.'
+
+"She said I was as keen as keen; but it became not me to put riddles to
+her, nor her to answer them. 'Stand aloof a bit, mesdames,' said she,
+'and thou speak without fear'; for she saw I was in sad earnest.
+
+"I began to quake a bit; for mind ye, she can doff freedom and don
+dignity quicker than she can slip out of her dressing-gown into kirtle
+of state. But I made my voice so soft as honey; (wherefore smilest?) and
+I said, 'Madam, one evening, a matter of five years agone, as ye sat
+with your mother, the Countess of Charolois, who is now in heaven, worse
+luck, you wi' your lute, and she wi' her tapestry, or the like; do ye
+mind there came in to ye a fair youth--with a letter from a painter
+body, one Margaret Van Eyck?'
+
+"She said she thought she did. 'Was it not a tall youth, exceedingly
+comely?'
+
+"'Ay, madam,' said I; 'he was my brother.'
+
+"'Your brother?' said she, and did eye me like all over. (What dost
+smile at?)
+
+"So I told her all that passed between her and Gerard, and how she was
+for giving him a bishopric; but the good countess said, 'Gently, Marie!
+He is too young;' and with that they did both promise him a living;
+'Yet,' said I, 'he hath been a priest a long while, and no living. Hence
+my bile.'
+
+"'Alas!' said she, ''tis not by my good will. For all this thou hast
+said is sooth; and more, I do remember, my dear mother said to me, "See
+thou to it if I be not here."' So then she cried out 'Ay, dear mother,
+no word of thine shall ever fall to the ground.'
+
+"I seeing her so ripe, said quickly, 'Madam, the Vicar of Gouda died
+last week.' (For when ye seek favours of the great, behoves ye know the
+very thing ye aim at.)
+
+"'Then thy brother is vicar of Gouda,' quo' she, 'so sure as I am
+heiress of Burgundy and the Netherlands. Nay, thank me not, good Giles,'
+quo' she; 'but my good mother. And I do thank thee for giving of me
+somewhat to do for her memory.' And doesn't she fall a weeping for her
+mother? and doesn't that set me off a snivelling for my good brother
+that I love so dear, and to think that a poor little elf like me could
+yet speak in the ear of princes, and make my beautiful brother vicar of
+Gouda; eh, lass, it is a bonny place, and a bonny manse, and hawthorn in
+every bush at spring-tide, and dog-roses and eglantine in every summer
+hedge. I know what the poor fool affects, leave that to me."
+
+The dwarf began his narrative strutting to and fro before Margaret; but
+he ended it in her arms. For she could not contain herself, but caught
+him, and embraced him warmly. "Oh, Giles," she said, blushing, and
+kissing him, "I cannot keep my hands off thee, thy body it is so little,
+and thy heart so great. Thou art his true friend. Bless thee! bless
+thee! bless thee! Now we shall see him again. We have not set eyes on
+him since that terrible day."
+
+"Gramercy, but that is strange," said Giles. "Maybe he is ashamed of
+having cursed those two vagabones, being our own flesh and blood, worse
+luck."
+
+"Think you that is why he hides?" said Margaret, eagerly.
+
+"Ay, if he is hiding at all. However, I'll cry him by bellman."
+
+"Nay, that might much offend him."
+
+"What care I? Is Gouda to go vicarless, and the manse in nettles?"
+
+And, to Margaret's secret satisfaction, Giles had the new vicar cried in
+Rotterdam, and the neighbouring towns. He easily persuaded Margaret
+that, in a day or two, Gerard would be sure to hear, and come to his
+benefice. She went to look at his manse, and thought how comfortable it
+might be made for him, and how dearly she should love to do it.
+
+But the days rolled on, and Gerard came neither to Rotterdam nor Gouda.
+Giles was mortified, Margaret indignant, and very wretched. She said to
+herself, "Thinking me dead, he comes home, and now, because I am alive,
+he goes back to Italy; for that is where he has gone."
+
+Joan advised her to consult the hermit of Gouda.
+
+"Why sure he is dead by this time."
+
+"Yon one, belike. But the cave is never long void; Gouda ne'er wants a
+hermit."
+
+But Margaret declined to go again to Gouda on such an errand. "What can
+he know, shut up in a cave? less than I, belike. Gerard hath gone back
+t' Italy. He hates me for not being dead."
+
+Presently a Tergovian came in with a word from Catherine that
+Ghysbrecht Van Swieten had seen Gerard later than any one else. On this
+Margaret determined to go and see the house and goods that had been left
+her, and take Reicht Heynes home to Rotterdam. And, as may be supposed,
+her steps took her first to Ghysbrecht's house. She found him in his
+garden, seated in a chair with wheels. He greeted her with a feeble
+voice, but cordially; and when she asked him whether it was true he had
+seen Gerard since the fifth of August, he replied, "Gerard, no more, but
+Friar Clement. Ay, I saw him; and blessed be the day he entered my
+house."
+
+He then related in his own words his interview with Clement. He told her
+moreover that the friar had afterwards acknowledged he came to Tergou
+with the missing deed in his bosom on purpose to make him disgorge her
+land; but that finding him disposed towards penitence, he had gone to
+work the other way.
+
+"Was not this a saint; who came to right thee; but must needs save his
+enemy's soul in the doing it?"
+
+To her question, whether he had recognized him, he said, "I ne'er
+suspected such a thing. 'Twas only when he had been three days with me
+that he revealed himself. Listen while I speak my shame and his praise.
+
+"I said to him 'The land is gone home, and my stomach feels lighter; but
+there is another fault that clingeth to me still;' then told I him of
+the letter I had writ at request of his brethren, I whose place it was
+to check them. Said I, 'Yon letter was writ to part true lovers, and,
+the devil aiding, it hath done the foul work. Land and houses I can give
+back; but yon mischief is done for ever.' 'Nay,' quoth he, 'not for
+ever; but for life. Repent it then while thou livest.' 'I shall,' said
+I, 'but how can God forgive it? I would not,' said I, 'were I He.'
+
+"'Yet will He certainly forgive it,' quoth he; 'for He is ten times more
+forgiving than I am; and I forgive thee.' I stared at him; and then he
+said softly, but quavering like, 'Ghysbrecht, look at me closer. I am
+Gerard the son of Eli.' And I looked, and looked, and at last, lo! it
+was Gerard. Verily I had fallen at his feet with shame and contrition;
+but he would not suffer me. 'That became not mine years and his, for a
+particular fault. I say not I forgive thee without a struggle,' said he,
+'not being a saint. But these three days, thou hast spent in penitence,
+I have worn under thy roof in prayer: and I do forgive thee.' Those were
+his very words."
+
+Margaret's tears began to flow; for it was in a broken and contrite
+voice the old man told her this unexpected trait in her Gerard. He
+continued, "And even with that he bade me farewell.
+
+"'My work here is done now,' said he. I had not the heart to stay him;
+for, let him forgive me ever so, the sight of me must be wormwood to
+him. He left me in peace, and may a dying man's blessing wait on him, go
+where he will. Oh, girl, when I think of his wrongs, and thine, and how
+he hath avenged himself by saving this stained soul of mine, my heart is
+broken with remorse, and these old eyes shed tears by night and day."
+
+"Ghysbrecht," said Margaret, weeping, "since he hath forgiven thee, I
+forgive thee too: what is done, is done; and thou hast let me know this
+day that which I had walked the world to hear. But oh, burgomaster, thou
+art an understanding man, now help a poor woman, which hath forgiven
+thee her misery."
+
+She then told him all that had befallen; "And," said she, "they will not
+keep the living for him for ever. He bids fair to lose that, as well as
+break all our hearts."
+
+"Call my servant," cried the burgomaster, with sudden vigour.
+
+He sent him for a table and writing materials, and dictated letters to
+the burgomasters in all the principal towns in Holland, and one to a
+Prussian authority, his friend. His clerk, and Margaret, wrote them, and
+he signed them. "There," said he, "the matter shall be despatched
+throughout Holland by trusty couriers; and as far as Basle in
+Switzerland; and fear not, but we will soon have the vicar of Gouda to
+his village."
+
+She went home animated with fresh hopes, and accusing herself of
+ingratitude to Gerard. "I value my wealth now," said she.
+
+She also made a resolution never to blame his conduct, till she should
+hear from his own lips his reasons.
+
+Not long after her return from Tergou, a fresh disaster befell.
+Catherine, I must premise, had secret interviews with the black sheep,
+the very day after they were expelled; and Cornelis followed her to
+Tergou, and lived there on secret contribution; but Sybrandt chose to
+remain in Rotterdam. Ere Catherine left, she asked Margaret to lend her
+two gold angels; "For," said she, "all mine are spent." Margaret was
+delighted to lend them or give them; but the words were scarce out of
+her mouth, ere she caught a look of regret and distress on Kate's face;
+and she saw directly whither her money was going. She gave Catherine
+the money, and went and shut herself up with her boy. Now this money was
+to last Sybrandt till his mother could make some good excuse for
+visiting Rotterdam again; and then she would bring the idle dog some of
+her own industrious scrapings.
+
+But Sybrandt, having gold in his pocket, thought it inexhaustible; and,
+being now under no shadow of restraint, led the life of a complete sot;
+until one afternoon, in a drunken frolic, he climbed on the roof of the
+stable at the inn he was carousing in, and proceeded to walk along it, a
+feat he had performed many times when sober. But now his unsteady brain
+made his legs unsteady, and he rolled down the roof and fell with a loud
+thwack on to a horizontal paling, where he hung a moment in a
+semicircle: then toppled over and lay silent on the ground, amidst roars
+of laughter from his boon companions.
+
+When they came to pick him up he could not stand; but fell down giggling
+at each attempt.
+
+On this they went staggering and roaring down the street with him, and
+carried him at great risk of another fall, to the shop in the Hoog
+Straet. For he had babbled his own shame all over the place.
+
+As soon as he saw Margaret he hiccupped out, "Here is the doctor that
+cures all hurts; a bonny lass." He also bade her observe he bore her no
+malice, for he was paying her a visit, sore against his will.
+"Wherefore, prithee send away these drunkards; and let you and me have
+t'other glass, to drown all unkindness."
+
+All this time Margaret was pale and red by turns at sight of her enemy
+and at his insolence. But one of the men whispered what had happened,
+and a streaky something in Sybrandt's face arrested her attention.
+
+"And he cannot stand up, say you?"
+
+"A couldn't just now. Try, comrade! Be a man now!"
+
+"I am a better man than thou," roared Sybrandt. "I'll stand up and fight
+ye all for a crown."
+
+He started to his feet, and instantly rolled into his attendant's arms
+with a piteous groan. He then began to curse his boon companions, and
+declare they had stolen away his legs. "He could feel nothing below the
+waist."
+
+"Alas, poor wretch," said Margaret. She turned very gravely to the men,
+and said, "Leave him here. And if you have brought him to this, go on
+your knees; for you have spoiled him for life. He will never walk again:
+his back is broken."
+
+The drunken man caught these words, and the foolish look of intoxication
+fled, and a glare of anguish took its place. "The curse," he groaned;
+"the curse!"
+
+Margaret and Reicht Heynes carried him carefully, and laid him on the
+softest bed.
+
+"I must do as _he_ would do," whispered Margaret. "He was kind to
+Ghysbrecht."
+
+Her opinion was verified. Sybrandt's spine was fatally injured; and he
+lay groaning, and helpless, fed and tended by her he had so deeply
+injured.
+
+The news was sent to Tergou; and Catherine came over.
+
+It was a terrible blow to her. Moreover she accused herself as the
+cause. "Oh, false wife, oh, weak mother," she cried. "I am rightly
+punished for my treason to my poor Eli."
+
+She sat for hours at a time by his bedside rocking herself in silence;
+and was never quite herself again; and the first grey hairs began to
+come in her poor head from that hour.
+
+As for Sybrandt, all his cry was now for Gerard. He used to whine to
+Margaret like a suffering hound, "Oh, sweet Margaret, oh, bonny
+Margaret, for our Lady's sake find Gerard, and bid him take his curse
+off me. Thou art gentle, thou art good; thou wilt entreat for me, and he
+will refuse thee nought." Catherine shared his belief that Gerard could
+cure him, and joined her entreaties to his. Margaret hardly needed this.
+The burgomaster and his agents having failed, she employed her own, and
+spent money like water. And among these agents poor Luke enrolled
+himself. She met him one day looking very thin, and spoke to him
+compassionately. On this he began to blubber, and say he was more
+miserable than ever; he would like to be good friends again upon almost
+any terms.
+
+"Dear heart," said Margaret, sorrowfully, "why can you not say to
+yourself, now I am her little brother, and she is my old, married
+sister, worn down with care? Say so, and I will indulge thee, and pet
+thee, and make thee happier than a prince."
+
+"Well, I will," said Luke savagely, "sooner than keep away from you
+altogether. But above all give me something to do. Perchance I may have
+better luck this time."
+
+"Get me my marrige lines," said Margaret, turning sad and gloomy in a
+moment.
+
+"That is as much as to say, get me _him_! for where they are he is."
+
+"Not so. He may refuse to come nigh me; but certes he will not deny a
+poor woman, who loved him once, her lines of betrothal. How can she go
+without them into any honest man's house?"
+
+"I'll get them you if they are in Holland," said Luke.
+
+"They are as like to be in Rome," replied Margaret.
+
+"Let us begin with Holland," observed Luke, prudently.
+
+The slave of love was furnished with money by his soft tyrant, and
+wandered hither and thither, coopering, and carpentering, and looking
+for Gerard. "I can't be worse if I find the vagabone," said he, "and I
+may be a handle better."
+
+The months rolled on, and Sybrandt improved in spirit, but not in body,
+he was Margaret's pensioner for life; and a long-expected sorrow fell
+upon poor Catherine, and left her still more bowed down; and she lost
+her fine hearty bustling way, and never went about the house singing
+now; and her nerves were shaken, and she lived in dread of some terrible
+misfortune falling on Cornelis. The curse was laid on him as well as
+Sybrandt.
+
+She prayed Eli, if she had been a faithful partner all these years, to
+take Cornelis into his house again; and let her live awhile at
+Rotterdam.
+
+"I have good daughters here," said she; "but Margaret is so tender, and
+thoughtful, and the little Gerard, he is my joy; he grows liker his
+father every day, and his prattle cheers my heavy heart; and I do love
+children."
+
+And Eli, sturdy but kindly, consented sorrowfully.
+
+And the people of Gouda petitioned the duke for a vicar, a real vicar.
+"Ours cometh never nigh us," said they, "this six months past: our
+children they die unchristened, and our folk unburied, except by some
+chance comer." Giles's influence baffled this just complaint once; but a
+second petition was prepared, and he gave Margaret little hope that the
+present position could be maintained a single day.
+
+So then Margaret went sorrowfully to the pretty manse to see it for the
+last time, ere it should pass forever into a stranger's hands.
+
+"I think he would have been happy here," she said, and turned heartsick
+away.
+
+On their return, Reicht Heynes proposed to her to go and consult the
+hermit.
+
+"What," said Margaret, "Joan has been at you. She is the one for
+hermits. I'll go, if 'tis but to show thee they know no more than we
+do." And they went to the cave.
+
+It was an excavation partly natural, partly artificial, in a bank of
+rock overgrown by brambles. There was a rough stone door on hinges, and
+a little window high up, and two apertures, through one of which the
+people announced their gifts to the hermit, and put questions of all
+sorts to him; and, when he chose to answer, his voice came dissonant and
+monstrous out at another small aperture.
+
+On the face of the rock this line was cut--
+
+    _Felix qui in Domino nirus ab orbe fugit._
+
+Margaret observed to her companion that this was new since she was here
+last.
+
+"Ay," said Reicht, "like enough," and looked up at it with awe. Writing
+even on paper she thought no trifle: but on rock!
+
+She whispered, "'Tis a far holier hermit than the last; he used to come
+in the town now and then; but this one ne'er shows his face to mortal
+man."
+
+"And that is holiness?"
+
+"Ay, sure."
+
+"Then what a saint a dormouse must be!"
+
+"Out, fie, mistress. Would ye even a beast to a man?"
+
+"Come Reicht," said Margaret, "my poor father taught me overmuch. So I
+will e'en sit here; and look at the manse once more. Go thou forward and
+question thy solitary; and tell me whether ye get nought or nonsense out
+of him; for 'twill be one."
+
+As Reicht drew near the cave, a number of birds flew out of it. She gave
+a little scream, and pointed to the cave to show Margaret they had come
+thence. On this Margaret felt sure there was no human being in the cave,
+and gave the matter no further attention. She fell into a deep reverie
+while looking at the little manse.
+
+She was startled from it by Reicht's hand upon her shoulder, and a faint
+voice, saying, "Let us go home."
+
+"You got no answer at all, Reicht," said Margaret, calmly.
+
+"No, Margaret," said Reicht, despondently. And they returned home.
+
+Perhaps after all Margaret had nourished some faint secret hope in her
+heart, though her reason had rejected it; for she certainly went home
+more dejectedly.
+
+Just as they entered Rotterdam, Reicht said, "Stay! Oh, Margaret, I am
+ill at deceit; but 'tis death to utter ill news to thee; I love thee so
+dear."
+
+"Speak out, sweetheart," said Margaret. "I have gone through so much, I
+am almost past feeling any fresh trouble."
+
+"Margaret, the hermit did speak to me."
+
+"What, a hermit there? among all those birds."
+
+"Ay; and doth not that show him a holy man?"
+
+"I' God's name, what said he to thee, Reicht?"
+
+"Alas! Margaret, I told him thy story, and I prayed him for our Lady's
+sake, tell me where thy Gerard is. And I waited long for an answer, and
+presently a voice came like a trumpet. 'Pray for the soul of Gerard, the
+son of Eli!'"
+
+"Ah!"
+
+"Oh, woe is me that I have this to tell thee, sweet Margaret! bethink
+thee thou hast thy boy to live for yet."
+
+"Let me get home," said Margaret, faintly.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Passing down the Brede Kirk Straet they saw Joan at the door.
+
+Reicht said to her, "Eh, woman, she has been to your hermit, and heard
+no good news."
+
+"Come in," said Joan, eager for a gossip.
+
+Margaret would not go in. But she sat down disconsolate on the lowest
+step but one of the little external staircase that led into Joan's
+house; and let the other two gossip their fill at the top of it.
+
+"Oh," said Joan, "what yon hermit says is sure to be sooth. He is that
+holy, I am told, that the very birds consort with him."
+
+"What does that prove?" said Margaret, deprecatingly. "I have seen my
+Gerard tame the birds in winter till they would eat from his hand."
+
+A look of pity at this parallel passed between the other two. But they
+were both too fond of her to say what they thought. Joan proceeded to
+relate all the marvellous tales she had heard of this hermit's sanctity.
+How he never came out but at night, and prayed among the wolves, and
+they never molested him: and how he bade the people not bring him so
+much food to pamper his body, but to bring him candles.
+
+"The candles are to burn before his saint," whispered Reicht, solemnly.
+
+"Ay, lass; and to read his holy books wi'. A neighbour o' mine saw his
+hand come out, and the birds sat thereon and pecked crumbs. She went for
+to kiss it; but the holy man whippit it away in a trice. They can't
+abide a woman to touch 'em, or even look at 'em, saints can't."
+
+"What like was his hand, wife? Did you ask her?"
+
+"What is my tongue for, else? Why, dear heart, all one as ourn; by the
+same token a had a thumb and four fingers."
+
+"Look ye there now."
+
+"But a deal whiter nor yourn and mine."
+
+"Ay, ay."
+
+"And main skinny."
+
+"Alas."
+
+"What could ye expect? Why a live upon air, and prayer: and candles."
+
+"Ah, well," continued Joan, "poor thing, I whiles think 'tis best for
+her to know the worst. And now she hath gotten a voice from heaven, or
+almost as good: and behoves her pray for his soul. One thing she is not
+so poor now as she was; and never fell riches to a better hand; and she
+is only come into her own for that matter: so she can pay the priest to
+say masses for him, and that is a great comfort."
+
+In the midst of their gossip Margaret, in whose ears it was all buzzing,
+though she seemed lost in thought, got softly up; and crept away with
+her eyes on the ground, and her brows bent.
+
+"She hath forgotten I am with her," said Reicht Heynes, ruefully.
+
+She had her gossip out with Joan, and then went home.
+
+She found Margaret seated cutting out a pelisse of grey cloth, and a
+cape to match. Little Gerard was standing at her side, inside her left
+arm, eyeing the work, and making it more difficult by wriggling about,
+and fingering the arm with which she held the cloth steady; to all which
+she submitted with imperturbable patience and complacency. Fancy a male
+workman so entangled, impeded, worried!
+
+"Ot's that, mammy?"
+
+"A pelisse, my pet."
+
+"Ot's a p'lisse?"
+
+"A great frock. And this is the cape to't."
+
+"Ot's it for?"
+
+"To keep his body from the cold; and the cape is for his shoulders, or
+to go over his head like the country folk. 'Tis for a hermit."
+
+"Ot's a 'ermit?"
+
+"A holy man that lives in a cave all by himself."
+
+"In de dark?"
+
+"Ay, whiles."
+
+"Oh."
+
+In the morning Reicht was sent to the hermit with the pelisse, and a
+pound of thick candles.
+
+As she was going out of the door, Margaret said to her, "Said you whose
+son Gerard was?"
+
+"Nay, not I."
+
+"Think, girl! How could he call him Gerard, son of Eli, if you had not
+told him?"
+
+Reicht persisted she had never mentioned him but as plain Gerard. But
+Margaret told her flatly she did not believe her; at which Reicht was
+affronted, and went out with a little toss of the head. However she
+determined to question the hermit again, and did not doubt he would be
+more liberal in his communication, when he saw his nice new pelisse and
+the candles.
+
+She had not been gone long when Giles came in with ill news. The living
+of Gouda would be kept vacant no longer.
+
+Margaret was greatly distressed at this. "Oh, Giles," said she, "ask for
+another month. They will give thee another month, maybe."
+
+He returned in an hour to tell her he could not get a month. "They have
+given me a week," said he. "And what is a week?"
+
+"Drowning bodies catch at strawen," was her reply. "A week? a little
+week?"
+
+Reicht came back from her errand out of spirits. Her oracle had declined
+all further communications. So at least its obstinate silence might
+fairly be interpreted.
+
+The next day Margaret put Reicht in charge of the shop, and disappeared
+all day. So the next day; and so the next. Nor would she tell any one
+where she had been. Perhaps she was ashamed. The fact is she spent all
+those days on one little spot of ground. When they thought her dreaming
+she was applying to every word that fell from Joan and Reicht the whole
+powers of a far acuter mind than either of them possessed.
+
+She went to work on a scale that never occurred to either of them. She
+was determined to see the hermit, and question him face to face, not
+through a wall. She found that by making a circuit she could get above
+the cave and look down without being seen by the solitary. But when she
+came to do it she found an impenetrable mass of brambles. After tearing
+her clothes and her hands and feet, so that she was soon covered with
+blood, the resolute, patient girl took out her scissors and steadily
+snipped and cut till she made a narrow path through the enemy. But so
+slow was the work that she had to leave it half done. The next day she
+had her scissors fresh ground, and brought a sharp knife as well; and
+gently, silently cut her way through to the roof of the cave. There she
+made an ambush of some of the cut brambles, so that the passers-by might
+not see her, and couched with watchful eye till the hermit should come
+out. She heard him move underneath her. But he never left his cell. She
+began to think it was true that he only came out at night. The next day
+she came early, and brought a jerkin she was making for little Gerard,
+and there she sat all day working and watching with dogged patience.
+
+At four o'clock the birds began to feed; and a great many of the smaller
+kinds came fluttering round the cave, and one or two went in. But most
+of them taking a preliminary seat on the bushes suddenly discovered
+Margaret, and went off with an agitated flirt of their little wings. And
+although they sailed about in the air they would not enter the cave.
+Presently, to encourage them, the hermit all unconscious of the cause of
+their tremors put out a thin white hand with a few crumbs in it.
+Margaret laid down her work softly, and gliding her body forward like a
+snake, looked down at it from above: it was but a few feet from her. It
+was as the woman described it, a thin, white hand.
+
+Presently the other hand came out with a piece of bread, and the two
+hands together broke it and scattered the crumbs.
+
+But that other hand had hardly been out two seconds ere the violet
+eyes, that were watching above, dilated; and the gentle bosom heaved and
+the whole frame quivered like a leaf in the wind.
+
+What her swift eye had seen I leave the reader to guess. She suppressed
+the scream that rose to her lips; but the effort cost her dear. Soon the
+left hand of the hermit began to swim indistinctly before her gloating
+eyes: and with a deep sigh her head drooped, and she lay like a broken
+lily.
+
+She was in a deep swoon, to which perhaps her long fast to-day, and the
+agitation and sleeplessness of many preceding days contributed.
+
+And there lay beauty, intelligence, and constancy; pale and silent. And
+little that hermit guessed who was so near him. The little birds hopped
+on her now; and one nearly entangled his little feet in her rich auburn
+hair.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+She came back to her troubles. The sun was set. She was very cold. She
+cried a little; but I think it was partly from the remains of physical
+weakness. And then she went home, praying God and the saints to
+enlighten her and teach her what to do for the best.
+
+When she got home she was pale and hysterical, and would say nothing in
+answer to all their questions but her favourite word, "We are wading in
+deep waters."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The night seemed to have done wonders for her.
+
+She came to Catherine who was sitting sighing by the fireside, and
+kissed and said, "Mother, what would you like best in the world?"
+
+"Eh, dear," replied Catherine, despondently. "I know nought that would
+make me smile now; I have parted from too many that were dear to me.
+Gerard lost again as soon as found. Kate in heaven; and Sybrandt down
+for life."
+
+"Poor mother! Mother dear, Gouda manse is to be furnished, and cleaned,
+and made ready all in a hurry. See here be ten gold angels. Make them go
+far, good mother; for I have ta'en over many already from my boy for a
+set of useless loons that were aye going to find him for me."
+
+Catherine and Reicht stared at her a moment in silence; and then out
+burst a flood of questions, to none of which would she give a reply.
+"Nay," said she, "I have lain on my bed, and thought, and thought, and
+thought, whiles you were all sleeping; and methinks I have got a clue
+to all. I love you, dear mother; but I'll trust no woman's tongue. If I
+fail this time, I'll have none to blame but Margaret Brandt."
+
+A resolute woman is a very resolute thing. And there was a deep dogged
+determination in Margaret's voice and brow, that at once convinced
+Catherine it would be idle to put any more questions at that time. She
+and Reicht lost themselves in conjectures; and Catherine whispered
+Reicht, "Bide quiet; then 'twill leak out;" a shrewd piece of advice
+founded on general observation.
+
+Within an hour Catherine was on the road to Gouda in a cart with two
+stout girls to help her, and quite a siege artillery of mops, and pails,
+and brushes. She came back with heightened colour and something of the
+old sparkle in her eye, and kissed Margaret with a silent warmth that
+spoke volumes; and at five in the morning was off again to Gouda.
+
+That night as Reicht was in her first sleep a hand gently pressed her
+shoulder, and she awoke, and was going to scream.
+
+"Whisht," said Margaret, and put her finger to her lips.
+
+She then whispered. "Rise softly, don thy habits, and come with me!"
+
+When she came down, Margaret begged her to loose Dragon and bring him
+along. Now Dragon was a great mastiff, who had guarded Margaret Van Eyck
+and Reicht, two lone women, for some years, and was devotedly attached
+to the latter.
+
+Margaret and Reicht went out with Dragon walking majestically behind
+them. They came back long after midnight and retired to rest.
+
+Catherine never knew.
+
+Margaret read her friends: she saw the sturdy faithful Frisian could
+hold her tongue; and Catherine could not. Yet I am not sure she would
+have trusted even Reicht, had her nerve equalled her spirit: but with
+all her daring and resolution, she was a tender, timid woman, a little
+afraid of the dark, very afraid of being alone in it, and desperately
+afraid of wolves. Now Dragon could kill a wolf in a brace of shakes; but
+then Dragon would not go with her, but only with Reicht. So altogether
+she made one confidante.
+
+The next night they made another moonlight reconnaissance; and, as I
+think, with some result. For not the next night (it rained that night
+and extinguished their courage), but the next after, they took with
+them a companion; the last in the world Reicht Heynes would have thought
+of; yet she gave her warm approval as soon as she was told he was to go
+with them.
+
+Imagine how these stealthy assailants trembled and panted, when the
+moment of action came: imagine, if you can, the tumult in Margaret's
+breast, the thrilling hopes, chasing and chased by, sickening fears; the
+strange, and perhaps unparalleled mixture of tender familiarity and
+distant awe, with which a lovely, and high spirited, but tender adoring
+woman, wife in the eye of the Law, and no wife in the eye of the Church,
+trembling, blushing, paling, glowing, shivering, stole at night,
+noiseless as the dew, upon the hermit of Gouda.
+
+And the stars above seemed never so bright and calm.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XCIV
+
+
+YES, the hermit of Gouda was the vicar of Gouda, and knew it not, so
+absolute was his seclusion.
+
+My reader is aware that the moment the phrenzy of his passion passed, he
+was seized with remorse for having been betrayed into it. But perhaps
+only those who have risen as high in religious spirit as he had, and
+suddenly fallen, can realize the terror at himself that took possession
+of him. He felt like one whom self-confidence had betrayed to the very
+edge of a precipice. "Ah, good Jerome," he cried, "how much better you
+knew me than I knew myself! How bitter yet wholesome was your
+admonition!"
+
+Accustomed to search his own heart, he saw at once that the true cause
+of his fury was Margaret. "I love her better than God," said he,
+despairingly, "better than the Church. From such a love what can spring
+to me, or to her?" He shuddered at the thought. "Let the strong battle
+temptation; 'tis for the weak to flee. And who is weaker than I have
+shown myself? What is my penitence, my religion? A pack of cards built
+by degrees into a fair-seeming structure: and lo! one breath of earthly
+love, and it lies in the dust. I must begin again: and on a surer
+foundation." He resolved to leave Holland at once, and spend years of
+his life in some distant convent before returning to it. By that time
+the temptations of earthly passion would be doubly baffled; an older,
+and a better, monk, he should be more master of his earthly affections,
+and Margaret, seeing herself abandoned, would marry, and love another.
+
+The very anguish this last thought cost him showed the self-searcher and
+self-denier, that he was on the path of religious duty.
+
+But in leaving her for his immortal good and hers, he was not to neglect
+her temporal weal. Indeed, the sweet thought he could make her
+comfortable for life, and rich in this world's goods, which she was not
+bound to despise, sustained him in the bitter struggle it cost him to
+turn his back on her without one kind word or look. "Oh, what will she
+think of me?" he groaned. "Shall I not seem to her of all creatures the
+most heartless, inhuman? but so best: ay, better she should hate me,
+miserable that I am. Heaven is merciful, and giveth my broken heart this
+comfort; I can make that villain restore her own, and she shall never
+lose another true lover by poverty. Another? Ah me! ah me! God and the
+saints to mine aid!"
+
+How he fared on this errand has been related. But first, as you may
+perhaps remember, he went at night to shrive the hermit of Gouda. He
+found him dying, and never left him till he had closed his eyes and
+buried him beneath the floor of the little oratory attached to his cell.
+It was the peaceful end of a stormy life. The hermit had been a soldier,
+and even now carried a steel corselet next his skin, saying he was now
+Christ's soldier as he had been Satan's. When Clement had shriven him
+and prayed by him, he, in his turn, sought counsel of one who was dying
+in so pious a frame. The hermit advised him to be his successor in this
+peaceful retreat. "His had been a hard fight against the world, the
+flesh, and the devil, and he had never thoroughly baffled them till he
+retired into the citadel of Solitude."
+
+These words and the hermit's pious and peaceful death, which speedily
+followed, and set as it were the seal of immortal truth on them, made a
+deep impression upon Clement. Nor in his case had they any prejudice to
+combat; the solitary recluse was still profoundly revered in the Church,
+whether immured as an anchorite, or anchoress, in some cave or cell
+belonging to a monastery, or hidden in the more savage but laxer
+seclusion of the independent hermitage. And Clement knew more about the
+hermits of the Church than most divines at his time of life; he had read
+much thereon at the monastery near Tergou; had devoured their lives with
+wonder and delight in the manuscripts of the Vatican, and conversed
+earnestly about them with the mendicant friars of several nations.
+Before Printing these friars were the great circulators of those local
+annals and biographies which accumulated in the convents of every land.
+Then, his teacher, Jerome, had been three years an anchorite on the
+heights of Camaldoli, where for more than four centuries the Thebaid had
+been revived; and Jerome, cold and curt on most religious themes, was
+warm with enthusiasm on this one. He had pored over the annals of St.
+John Baptist's abbey, round about which the hermits' caves were
+scattered, and told him the names of many a noble, and many a famous
+warrior, who had ended his days there a hermit, and of many a bishop and
+archbishop who had passed from the see to the hermitage, or from the
+hermitage to the see. Among the former the archbishop of Ravenna; among
+the latter Pope Victor the Ninth. He told him too, with grim delight, of
+their multifarious austerities, and how each hermit set himself to find
+where he was weakest, and attacked himself without mercy or remission
+till there, even there, he was strongest. And how seven times in the
+twenty-four hours, in thunder, rain, or snow, by daylight, twilight,
+moonlight or torchlight, the solitaries flocked from distant points,
+over rugged precipitous ways, to worship in the convent church; at
+matins, at prime, tierce, sexte, nones, vespers, and complin. He even,
+under eager questioning, described to him the persons of famous
+anchorites he had sung the Psalter and prayed with there; the only
+intercourse their vows allowed, except with special permission. Moncata,
+Duke of Moncata and Cardova, and Hidalgo of Spain, who in the flower of
+his youth had retired thither from the pomps, vanities, and pleasures of
+the world; Father John Baptist of Novara, who had led armies to battle,
+but was now a private soldier of Christ; Cornelius, Samuel, and
+Sylvanus. This last, when the great Duchess de' Medici obtained the
+Pope's leave, hitherto refused, to visit Camaldoli, went down and met
+her at the first wooden cross, and there, surrounded as she was with
+courtiers and flatterers, remonstrated with her and persuaded her, and
+warned her, not to profane that holy mountain, where no woman for so
+many centuries had placed her foot; and she, awed by the place and the
+man, retreated with all her captains, soldiers, courtiers, and pages,
+from that one hoary hermit. At Basle Clement found fresh materials,
+especially with respect to German and English anchorites; and he had
+even prepared a "Catena Eremitarum" from the year of our Lord 250, when
+Paul of Thebes commenced his ninety years of solitude, down to the year
+1470. He called them _Angelorum amici et animalium_, _i. e._,
+
+    FRIENDS OF ANGELS AND ANIMALS.
+
+Thus, though in those days he never thought to be a recluse, the road
+was paved, so to speak: and when the dying hermit of Gouda blessed the
+citadel of Solitude, where he had fought the good fight and won it, and
+invited him to take up the breastplate of faith, that now fell off his
+own shrunken body, Clement said within himself: "Heaven itself led my
+foot hither to this end." It struck him too, as no small coincidence,
+that his patron, St. Bavon, was a hermit, and an austere one, a
+cuirassier[D] of the solitary cell.
+
+As soon as he was reconciled to Ghysbrecht Van Swieten, he went eagerly
+to his new abode, praying Heaven it might not have been already occupied
+in these three days. The fear was not vain; these famous dens never
+wanted a human tenant long. He found the rude stone door ajar; then he
+made sure he was too late; he opened the door and went softly in. No;
+the cell was vacant, and there were the hermit's great ivory crucifix,
+his pens, ink, seeds, and memento mori, a skull; his cilice of hair, and
+another of bristles; his well-worn sheepskin pelisse and hood, his
+hammer, chisel, and psaltery, &c. Men and women had passed that way, but
+none had ventured to intrude, far less to steal. Faith and simplicity
+had guarded that keyless door more securely than the houses of the laity
+were defended by their gates like a modern jail, and thick iron bars at
+every window, and the gentry by moat, bastion, chevaux de frise, and
+portcullis.
+
+As soon as Clement was fairly in the cell there was a loud flap, and a
+flutter, and down came a great brown owl from a corner, and whirled out
+of the window, driving the air cold on Clement's face. He started and
+shuddered.
+
+Was this seeming owl something diabolical? trying to deter him from his
+soul's good? On second thoughts, might it not be some good spirit the
+hermit had employed to keep the cell for him, perhaps the hermit
+himself? Finally he concluded that it was just an owl; and that he would
+try and make friends with it.
+
+He kneeled down and inaugurated his new life with prayer.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Clement had not only an earthly passion to quell, the power of which
+made him tremble for his eternal weal, but he had a penance to do for
+having given way to ire, his besetting sin, and cursed his own brothers.
+
+He looked round this roomy cell furnished with so many comforts, and
+compared it with the pictures in his mind of the hideous place, eremus
+in eremo, a desert in a desert, where holy Jerome, hermit, and the
+Plutarch of hermits had wrestled with sickness, temptation, and despair,
+four mortal years; and with the inaccessible and thorny niche, a hole in
+a precipice, where the boy hermit Benedict buried himself and lived
+three years on the pittance the good monk Romanus could spare him from
+his scanty commons; and subdivided that mouthful with his friend, a
+raven; and the hollow tree of his patron St. Bavon, and the earthly
+purgatory at Fribourg, where lived a nameless saint in a horrid cavern,
+his eyes chilled with perpetual gloom, and his ears stunned with an
+eternal waterfall; and the pillar on which St. Simeon Stylita existed
+forty-five years, and the destina, or stone box, of St. Dunstan, where
+like Hilarion in his bulrush hive, sepulchro potius quam domu, he could
+scarce sit, stand or lie; and the living tombs, sealed with lead, of
+Thais, and Christina, and other recluses; and the damp dungeon of St.
+Alred. These and scores more of the dismal dens in which true hermits
+had worn out their wasted bodies on the rock, and the rock under their
+sleeping bodies, and their praying knees, all came into his mind, and he
+said to himself, "This sweet retreat is for safety of the soul; but what
+for penance? Jesu aid me against faults to come; and for the fault I
+rue, face of man I will not see for a twelvemonth and a day." He had
+famous precedents in his eye even for this last and unusual severity. In
+fact the original hermit of this very cell was clearly under the same
+vow. Hence the two apertures through which he was spoken to, and
+replied.
+
+Adopting, in other respects, the uniform rule of hermits and anchorites,
+he divided his day into the seven offices, ignoring the petty accidents
+of light and dark, creations both of Him to whom he prayed so
+unceasingly. He learned the psalter by heart, and in all the intervals
+of devotion, not occupied by broken slumbers, he worked hard with his
+hands. No article of the hermit's rule was more strict or more ancient
+than this. And here his self-imposed penance embarrassed him, for what
+work could he do, without being seen, that should benefit his
+neighbours? for the hermit was to labour _for himself_ in those cases
+only where his subsistence depended on it. Now Clement's modest needs
+were amply supplied by the villagers.
+
+On moonlight nights he would steal out like a thief, and dig some poor
+man's garden on the outskirts of the village. He made baskets and
+dropped them slily at humble doors.
+
+And since he could do nothing for the bodies of those who passed by his
+cell in daytime, he went out in the dead of the night with his hammer
+and his chisel, and carved moral and religious sentences all down the
+road upon the sandstone rocks. "Who knows?" said he, "often a chance
+shaft striketh home. Oh, sore heart, comfort thou the poor and bereaved
+with holy words of solace in their native tongue; for _he_ said well,
+''tis clavis ad corda plebis.'" Also he remembered the learned Colonna
+had told him of the written mountains in the east where kings had
+inscribed their victories. "What," said Clement, "are they so wise,
+those Eastern monarchs, to engrave their warlike glory upon the rock,
+making a blood bubble endure so long as earth; and shall I leave the
+rocks about me silent on the King of Glory, at whose word they were, and
+at whose breath they shall be dust? Nay, but these stones shall speak to
+weary wayfarers of eternal peace, and of the Lamb, whose frail, and
+afflicted, yet happy servant worketh them among."
+
+Now at this time the inspired words that have consoled the poor and the
+afflicted for so many ages, were not yet printed in Dutch, so that these
+sentences of gold from the holy Evangelists came like fresh oracles from
+heaven, or like the dew on parched flowers; and the poor hermit's
+written rocks softened a heart or two, and sent the heavy laden singing
+on their way.[E]
+
+These holy oracles that seemed to spring up around him like magic; his
+prudent answers through his window to such as sought ghostly counsel;
+and above all, his invisibility, soon gained him a prodigious
+reputation. This was not diminished by the medical advice they now and
+then extorted from him, sore against his will, by tears and entreaties;
+for if the patients got well, they gave the holy hermit the credit, and
+if not, they laid all the blame on the devil. I think he killed nobody,
+for his remedies were "womanish and weak." Sage, and wormwood, sion,
+hyssop, borage, spikenard, dog's-tongue, our Lady's mantle, feverfew,
+and Faith, and all in small quantities except the last.
+
+Then his abstinence, sure sign of a saint. The eggs and milk they
+brought him at first he refused with horror. Know ye not the hermit's
+rule is bread, or herbs, and water? Eggs, they are birds in disguise;
+for when the bird dieth then the egg rotteth. As for milk, it is little
+better than white blood. And when they brought him too much bread he
+refused it. Then they used to press it on him. "Nay, holy father; give
+the overplus to the poor."
+
+"You who go among the poor can do that better. Is bread a thing to fling
+haphazard from an hermit's window?" And to those who persisted after
+this: "To live on charity, yet play Sir Bountiful, is to lie with the
+right hand. Giving another's to the poor, I should beguile them of their
+thanks, and cheat thee the true giver. Thus do thieves, whose boast it
+is they bleed the rich into the lap of the poor. Occasio avaritiae nomen
+pauperum."
+
+When nothing else would convince the good souls, this piece of Latin
+always brought them round. So would a line of Virgil's AEneid.
+
+This great reputation of sanctity was all external. Inside the cell was
+a man who held the hermit of Gouda as cheap as dirt.
+
+"Ah!" said he, "I cannot deceive myself; I cannot deceive God's animals.
+See the little birds, how coy they be! I feed and feed them and long for
+their friendship, yet will they never come within, nor take my hand, by
+lighting on't. For why? No Paul, no Benedict, no Hugh of Lincoln, no
+Columbia, no Guthlac bides in this cell. Hunted doe flieth not hither,
+for here is no Fructuosus, nor Aventine, nor Albert of Suabia: nor e'en
+a pretty squirrel cometh from the wood hard by for the acorns I have
+hoarded; for here abideth no Columban. The very owl that was here hath
+fled. They are not to be deceived; I have a Pope's word for that; Heaven
+rest his soul."
+
+Clement had one advantage over her, whose image in his heart he was bent
+on destroying.
+
+He had suffered and survived the pang of bereavement; and the mind
+cannot quite repeat such anguish. Then he had built up a habit of
+looking on her as dead. After that strange scene in the church and
+churchyard of St. Laurens, that habit might be compared to a structure
+riven by a thunderbolt. It was shattered, but stones enough stood to
+found a similar habit on; to look on her as dead _to him_.
+
+And, by severe subdivision of his time and thoughts, by unceasing
+prayers, and manual labour, he did, in about three months, succeed in
+benumbing the earthly half of his heart.
+
+But, lo! within a day or two of this first symptom of mental peace
+returning slowly, there descended upon his mind a horrible despondency.
+
+Words cannot utter it; for words never yet painted a likeness of
+despair. Voices seemed to whisper in his ear, "Kill thyself, kill! kill!
+kill!"
+
+And he longed to obey the voices; for life was intolerable. He wrestled
+with his dark enemy with prayers and tears; he prayed God but to vary
+his temptation. "Oh let mine enemy have power to scourge me with red-hot
+whips, to tear me leagues and leagues over rugged places by the hair of
+my head, as he has served many a holy hermit, that yet baffled him at
+last; to fly on me like a raging lion; to gnaw me with a serpent's
+fangs: any pain, any terror, but this horrible gloom of the soul that
+shuts me from all light of Thee and of the saints."
+
+And now a freezing thought crossed him. What if the triumphs of the
+powers of darkness over Christian souls in desert places, had been
+suppressed; and only their defeats recorded, or at least in full: for
+dark hints were scattered about antiquity that now first began to grin
+at him with terrible meaning.
+
+"THEY WANDERED IN THE DESERT AND PERISHED BY SERPENTS," said an ancient
+father, of hermits that went into solitude, "and were seen no more." And
+another at a more recent epoch, wrote: "Vertunter ad melancoliam;" "they
+turn to gloomy madness." These two statements were they not one? for the
+ancient fathers never spoke with regret of the death of the body. No,
+the hermits so lost were perished souls, and the serpents were
+diabolical[F] thoughts, the natural brood of solitude.
+
+St. Jerome went into the desert with three companions; one fled in the
+first year; two died: how? The single one that lasted, was a gigantic
+soul with an iron body.
+
+The cotemporary who related this made no comment; expressed no wonder.
+What then if here was a glimpse of the true proportion in every age, and
+many souls had always been lost in solitude for one gigantic mind and
+iron body that survived this terrible ordeal.
+
+The darkened recluse now cast his despairing eyes over antiquity to see
+what weapons the Christian arsenal contained, that might befriend him.
+The greatest of all was prayer. Alas! it was a part of his malady to be
+unable to pray with true fervour. The very system of mechanical
+supplication he had for months carried out so severely by rule had
+rather checked than fostered his power of originating true prayer.
+
+He prayed louder than ever, but the heart hung back cold and gloomy, and
+let the words go up alone.
+
+"Poor wingless prayers," he cried; "you will not get half way to
+heaven."
+
+A fiend of this complexion had been driven out of King Saul by music.
+
+Clement took up the hermit's psaltery, and with much trouble mended the
+strings and tuned it.
+
+No, he could not play it. His soul was so out of tune. The sounds jarred
+on it, and made him almost mad.
+
+"Ah, wretched me!" he cried. "Saul had a saint to play to him. He was
+not alone with the spirits of darkness; but here is no sweet bard of
+Israel to play to me; I, lonely, with crushed heart, on which a black
+fiend sitteth mountain high, must make the music to uplift that heart to
+heaven; it may not be." And he grovelled on the earth weeping and
+tearing his hair.
+
+VERTEBATUR AD MELANCHOLIAM.
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[D] "Loricatus," vide Ducange, in voce
+
+[E] It requires now-a-days a strong effort of the imagination to realize
+the effect on poor people who had never seen them before, of such
+sentences as this: "Blessed are the poor," &c.
+
+[F] The primitive writer was so interpreted by others besides Clement;
+and, in particular by Peter of Blois, a divine of the twelfth century,
+whose comment is noteworthy, as he himself was a forty-year hermit.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XCV
+
+
+ONE day as he lay there sighing, and groaning, prayerless, tuneless,
+hopeless, a thought flashed into his mind. What he had done for the poor
+and the wayfarer, he would do for himself. He would fill his den of
+despair with the name of God and the magic words of holy writ, and the
+pious, prayerful, consolations of the Church.
+
+Then, like Christian at Apollyon's feet, he reached his hand suddenly
+out and caught, not his sword, for he had none, but peaceful labour's
+humbler weapon, his chisel, and worked with it as if his soul depended
+on his arm.
+
+They say that Michael Angelo in the next generation used to carve
+statues, not like our timid sculptors, by modelling the work in clay,
+and then setting a mechanic to chisel it; but would seize the block,
+conceive the image, and, at once, with mallet and steel make the marble
+chips fly like mad about him, and the mass sprout into form. Even so
+Clement drew no lines to guide his hand. He went to his memory for the
+gracious words, and then dashed at his work and eagerly graved them in
+the soft stone, between working and fighting.
+
+He begged his visitors for candle ends, and rancid oil.
+
+"Anything is good enough for _me_," he said, "if 'twill but burn." So at
+night the cave glowed afar off like a blacksmith's forge, through the
+window and the gaping chinks of the rude stone door, and the rustics
+beholding crossed themselves and suspected deviltries, and, within, the
+holy talismans one after another came upon the walls, and the sparks and
+the chips flew day and night, night and day, as the soldier of Solitude
+and of the Church plied, with sighs and groans, his bloodless weapon,
+between working and fighting.
+
+    _Kyrie Eleeison_
+    _Christe Eleeison_
+
+    [Greek: Ton Satanan syntripson hypo tous podas hemon.][1]
+
+    _Sursum corda_[2]
+
+    _Deus refugium nostrum et virtus_[3]
+
+_Agnus Dei, qui tollis peccata mundi, miserere mihi._[4]
+
+  _Sancta Trinitas unus Deus, miserere nobis._[5]
+  _Ab infestationibus Daemonum, a ventura ira, a damnatione perpetua._[6]
+
+                                            _Libera nos Domine
+  Deus, qui miro ordine Angelorum ministeria, etc._    (the whole
+                                                          collect).[7]
+
+_Quem quaerimus adjutorem nisi te Domine, qui pro peccatis nostris juste
+irascaris?_[8]
+
+_Sancte Deus, Sancte fortis, Sancte et misericors Salvator, amarae morti
+ne tradas nos._
+
+And underneath the great crucifix, which was fastened to the wall, he
+graved this from Augustine:--
+
+_O anima Christiana, respice vulnera patientis, sanguinem morientis,
+pretium redemptionis.--Haec quanta sint cogitate, et in statera mentis
+vestrae appendite, ut totus vobis figatur in corde, qui pro vobis totus
+firus est in cruce. Nam, si passio Christi ad memoriam revocetur, nihil
+est tam durum quod non aequo animo toleretur._
+
+Which may be thus rendered:--
+
+_O Christian soul, look on the wounds of the suffering One, the blood of
+the dying One, the price paid for our redemption! These things, oh think
+how great they be, and weigh them in the balance of thy mind: that He
+may be wholly nailed to thy heart, who for thee was all nailed unto the
+cross. For do but call to mind the sufferings of Christ, and there is
+nought on earth too hard to endure with composure._
+
+Soothed a little, a very little, by the sweet and pious words he was
+raising all round him, and weighed down with watching and working night
+and day, Clement one morning sank prostrate with fatigue; and a deep
+sleep overpowered him for many hours.
+
+Awaking quietly, he heard a little cheep; he opened his eyes, and, lo!
+upon his breviary which was on a lone stool near his feet, ruffling all
+his feathers with a single pull, and smoothing them as suddenly, and
+cocking his bill this way and that with a vast display of cunning purely
+imaginary, perched a robin redbreast.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Clement held his breath.
+
+He half closed his eyes lest they should frighten the airy guest.
+
+Down came robin on the floor.
+
+When there he went through his pantomime of astuteness; and then, pim,
+pim, pim, with three stiff little hops, like a ball of worsted on
+vertical wires, he was on the hermit's bare foot. On this eminence he
+swelled, and contracted again, with ebb and flow of feathers; but
+Clement lost this, for he quite closed his eyes and scarce drew his
+breath in fear of frightening and losing his visitor. He was content to
+feel the minute claw on his foot. He could but just feel it, and that by
+help of knowing it was there.
+
+Presently a little flirt with two little wings, and the feathered
+busy-body was on the breviary again.
+
+Then Clement determined to try and feed this pretty little fidget
+without frightening it away. But it was very difficult. He had a piece
+of bread within reach, but how get at it? I think he was five minutes
+creeping his hand up to that bread, and when there he must not move his
+arm.
+
+He slily got a crumb between a finger and thumb and shot it as boys do
+marbles, keeping the hand quite still.
+
+Cockrobin saw it fall near him, and did sagacity, but moved not.
+
+When another followed, and then another: he popped down and caught up
+one of the crumbs, but not quite understanding this mystery fled with
+it, for more security, to an eminence; to wit the hermit's knee.
+
+And so the game proceeded till a much larger fragment than usual rolled
+along.
+
+Here was a prize. Cockrobin pounced on it, bore it aloft and fled so
+swiftly into the world with it, the cave resounded with the buffeted
+air.
+
+"Now, bless thee, sweet bird," sighed the stricken solitary; "thy wings
+are music, and thou a feathered ray camedst to light my darkened soul."
+
+And from that to his orisons; and then to his tools with a little bit of
+courage; and this was his day's work:--
+
+    _Veni Creator Spiritus
+    Mentes tuorum visita
+    Imple superna gratia
+    Quae tu creasti pectora_
+
+    _Accende lumen sensibus
+    Mentes tuorum visita
+    Infirma nostri corporis
+    Virtute firmans perpetim._
+
+And so the days rolled on; and the weather got colder and Clement's
+heart got warmer; and despondency was rolling away; and by-and-by,
+somehow or another, it was gone. He had outlived it.
+
+It had come like a cloud, and it went like one.
+
+And presently all was reversed; his cell seemed illuminated with joy.
+His work pleased him; his prayers were full of unction; his psalms of
+praise. Hosts of little birds followed their crimson leader, and flying
+from snow, and a parish full of Cains, made friends one after another
+with Abel; fast friends. And one keen frosty night as he sang the
+praises of God to his tuneful psaltery, and his hollow cave rang forth
+the holy psalmody upon the night, as if that cave itself was Tubal's
+sounding shell, or David's harp, he heard a clear whine, not
+unmelodious; it became louder and less in tune. He peeped through the
+chinks of his rude door, and there sat a great red wolf moaning
+melodiously with his nose high in the air.
+
+Clement was rejoiced. "My sins are going," he cried, "and the creatures
+of God are owning me, one after another." And in a burst of enthusiasm
+he struck up the laud:
+
+"Praise Him all ye creatures of His! Let everything that hath breath
+praise the Lord."
+
+And all the time he sang the wolf bayed at intervals.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+But above all he seemed now to be drawing nearer to that celestial
+intercourse, which was the sign, and the bliss of the true hermit; for
+he had dreams about the saints and angels, so vivid, they were more like
+visions. He saw bright figures clad in woven snow. They bent on him eyes
+lovelier than those of the antelopes he had seen at Rome, and fanned
+him with broad wings hued like the rainbow, and their gentle voices bade
+him speed upon his course.
+
+He had not long enjoyed this felicity, when his dreams began to take
+another and a strange complexion. He wandered with Fra Colonna over the
+relics of antique nations, and the friar was lame and had a staff, and
+this staff he waved over the mighty ruins, and were they Egyptian,
+Greek, or Roman, straightway the temples and palaces whose wrecks they
+were, rose again like an exhalation, and were thronged with the famous
+dead. Songsters that might have eclipsed both Apollo and his rival,
+poured forth their lays; women, godlike in form, and draped like
+Minerva, swam round the marble courts in voluptuous but easy and
+graceful dances. Here sculptors carved away amidst admiring pupils, and
+forms of supernatural beauty grew out of Parian marble in a quarter of
+an hour; and grave philosophers conversed on high and subtle matters,
+with youth listening reverently; it was a long time ago. And still
+beneath all this wonderful panorama a sort of suspicion or expectation
+lurked in the dreamer's mind. "This is a prologue, a flourish, there is
+something behind; something that means me no good, something mysterious,
+awful."
+
+And one night that the wizard Colonna had transcended himself, he
+pointed with his stick, and there was a swallowing up of many great
+ancient cities, and the pair stood on a vast sandy plain with a huge
+crimson sun sinking to rest. There were great palm-trees; and there were
+bulrush hives, scarce a man's height, dotted all about to the sandy
+horizon, and the crimson sun.
+
+"These are the anchorites of the Theban desert," said Colonna, calmly;
+"followers not of Christ and his apostles, and the great fathers, but of
+the Greek pupils of the Egyptian pupils of the Brachmans and
+Gymnosophists."
+
+And Clement thought that he burned to go and embrace the holy men and
+tell them his troubles, and seek their advice. But he was tied by the
+feet somehow, and could not move, and the crimson sun sank; and it got
+dusk, and the hives scarce visible. And Colonna's figure became shadowy
+and shapeless, but his eyes glowed ten times brighter: and this thing
+all eyes spoke and said: "Nay, let them be, a pack of fools! see how
+dismal it all is." Then with a sudden sprightliness, "But I hear one of
+them has a manuscript of Petronius, on papyrus; I go to buy it, farewell
+for ever, for ever, for ever."
+
+And it was pitch dark, and a light came at Clement's back like a gentle
+stroke; a glorious roseate light. It warmed as well as brightened. It
+loosened his feet from the ground; he turned round, and there, her face
+irradiated with sunshine, and her hair glittering like the gloriola of a
+saint, was Margaret Brandt.
+
+She blushed and smiled and cast a look of ineffable tenderness on him.
+"Gerard," she murmured, "be whose thou wilt by day, but at night be
+mine!"
+
+Even as she spoke, the agitation of seeing her so suddenly awakened him,
+and he found himself lying trembling from head to foot.
+
+That radiant figure, and mellow voice, seemed to have struck his nightly
+keynote.
+
+Awake he could pray, and praise, and worship God; he was master of his
+thoughts. But, if he closed his eyes in sleep, Margaret, or Satan in her
+shape, beset him, a seeming angel of light. He might dream of a thousand
+different things, wide as the poles asunder, ere he woke the imperial
+figure was sure to come and extinguish all the rest in a moment stellas
+exortus uti aetherius sol: for she came glowing with two beauties never
+before united, an angel's radiance and a woman's blushes.
+
+Angels cannot blush. So he knew it was a fiend.
+
+He was alarmed, but not so much surprised as at the demon's last
+artifice. From Anthony to Nicholas of the Rock scarce a hermit that had
+not been thus beset; sometimes with gay voluptuous visions, sometimes
+with lovely phantoms, warm, tangible, and womanly without, demons
+within, nor always baffled even by the saints. Witness that "angel form
+with a devil's heart," that came hanging its lovely head, like a bruised
+flower, to St. Macarius, with a feigned tale; and wept, and wept, and
+wept, and beguiled him first of his tears and then of half his virtue.
+
+But with the examples of Satanic power and craft had come down copious
+records of the hermits' triumphs and the weapons by which they had
+conquered.
+
+Domandum est corpus; the body must be tamed; this had been their
+watchword for twelve hundred years. It was a tremendous war-cry; for
+they called the earthly affections, as well as appetites, body; and
+crushed the whole heart through the suffering and mortified flesh.
+
+Clement then said to himself that the great enemy of man had retired but
+to spring with more effect, and had allowed him a few days of true
+purity and joy only to put him off his guard against the soft
+blandishments he was pouring over the soul, that had survived the
+buffeting of his black wings. He applied himself to tame the body; he
+shortened his sleep, lengthened his prayers, and increased his severe
+temperance to abstinence. Hitherto, following the ordinary rule, he had
+eaten only at sunset. Now he ate but once in forty-eight hours, drinking
+a little water every day.
+
+On this the visions became more distinct.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Then he flew to a famous antidote; to "the grand febrifuge" of
+anchorites--cold water.
+
+He found the deepest part of the stream that ran by his cell; it rose
+not far off at a holy well; and, clearing the bottom of the large
+stones, made a hole where he could stand in water to the chin, and,
+fortified by so many examples, he sprang from his rude bed upon the next
+diabolical assault, and entered the icy water.
+
+It made him gasp and almost shriek with the cold. It froze his marrow.
+"I shall die," he cried, "I shall die: but better this, than fire
+eternal."
+
+And the next day he was so stiff in all his joints he could not move,
+and he seemed one great ache. And even in sleep he felt that his very
+bones were like so many raging teeth, till the phantom he dreaded came
+and gave one pitying smile, and all the pain was gone.
+
+Then, feeling that to go into the icy water again, enfeebled by fasts,
+as he was, might perhaps carry the guilt of suicide, he scourged himself
+till the blood ran, and so lay down smarting.
+
+And when exhaustion began to blunt the smart down to a throb, that
+moment the present was away, and the past came smiling back. He sat with
+Margaret at the duke's feast, the minstrels played divinely, and the
+purple fountains gushed. Youth and love reigned in each heart, and
+perfumed the very air.
+
+Then the scene shifted and they stood at the altar together man and
+wife. And no interruption this time, and they wandered hand in hand, and
+told each other their horrible dreams. As for him "he had dreamed she
+was dead, and he was a monk; and really the dream had been so vivid and
+so full of particulars that only his eyesight could even now convince
+him it was only a dream, and they were really one."
+
+And this new keynote once struck, every tune ran upon it. Awake he was
+Clement the hermit, risen from unearthly visions of the night, as
+dangerous as they were sweet; asleep he was Gerard Eliassoen, the happy
+husband of the loveliest and best, and truest girl in Holland: all the
+happier that he had been for some time the sport of hideous dreams, in
+which he had lost her.
+
+His constant fasts, coupled with other austerities, and the deep mental
+anxiety of a man fighting with a supernatural foe, had now reduced him
+nearly to a skeleton; but still on those aching bones hung flesh
+unsubdued, quivering with an earthly passion; so however, he thought;
+"or why had ill spirits such power over him?" His opinion was confirmed,
+when one day he detected himself sinking to sleep actually with a
+feeling of complacency, because now Margaret would come and he should
+feel no more pain, and the unreal would be real, and the real unreal,
+for an hour.
+
+On this he rose hastily with a cry of dismay, and stripping to the skin
+climbed up to the brambles above his cave, and flung himself on them,
+and rolled on them writhing with the pain: then he came into his den a
+mass of gore, and lay moaning for hours; till, out of sheer exhaustion,
+he fell into a deep and dreamless sleep.
+
+He awoke to bodily pain, and mental exultation; he had broken the fatal
+spell. Yes, it was broken; another and another day passed, and her image
+molested him no more. But he caught himself sighing at his victory.
+
+The birds got tamer and tamer, they perched upon his hand. Two of them
+let him gild their little claws. Eating but once in two days he had more
+to give them.
+
+His tranquillity was not to last long.
+
+A woman's voice came in from the outside, told him his own story in a
+very few words, and asked him to tell her where Gerard was to be found.
+
+He was so astounded he could only say, with an instinct of self-defence,
+"Pray for the soul of Gerard, the son of Eli!" meaning that he was dead
+to the world. And he sat wondering.
+
+When the woman was gone, he determined, after an inward battle, to risk
+being seen, and he peeped after her to see who it could be: but he took
+so many precautions, and she ran so quickly back to her friend that the
+road was clear.
+
+"Satan!" said he, directly.
+
+And that night back came his visions of earthly love and happiness so
+vividly, he could count every auburn hair in Margaret's head, and see
+the pupils of her eyes.
+
+Then he began to despair, and said, "I must leave this country; here I
+am bound fast in memory's chain:" and began to dread his cell. He said
+"A breath from hell hath infected it, and robbed even these holy words
+of their virtue." And unconsciously imitating St. Jerome, a victim of
+earthly hallucinations, as overpowering, and coarser, he took his
+warmest covering out into the wood hard by, and there flung down under a
+tree that torn and wrinkled leather bag of bones, which a little ago
+might have served a sculptor for Apollo.
+
+Whether the fever of his imagination intermitted, as a master mind of
+our day has shown that all things intermit,[G] or that this really broke
+some subtle link, I know not, but his sleep was dreamless.
+
+He awoke nearly frozen, but warm with joy within.
+
+"I shall yet be a true hermit, Dei gratia," said he.
+
+The next day some good soul left on his little platform a new lambs-wool
+pelisse and cape, warm, soft, and ample.
+
+He had a moment's misgiving on account of its delicious softness and
+warmth; but that passed. It was the right skin,[H] and a mark that
+Heaven approved his present course.
+
+It restored warmth to his bones after he came in from his short rest.
+
+And now, at one moment he saw victory before him if he could but live to
+it; at another, he said to himself, "'Tis but another lull; be on thy
+guard, Clement."
+
+And this thought agitated his nerves and kept him in continual awe.
+
+He was like a soldier within the enemy's lines.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+One night, a beautiful clear frosty night, he came back to his cell,
+after a short rest. The stars were wonderful. Heaven seemed a thousand
+times larger as well as brighter than earth, and to look with a thousand
+eyes instead of one.
+
+"Oh, wonderful," he cried, "that there should be men who do crimes by
+night; and others scarce less mad, who live for this little world, and
+not for that great and glorious one, which nightly, to all eyes not
+blinded by custom, reveals its glowing glories. Thank God I am a
+hermit."
+
+And in this mood he came to his cell door.
+
+He paused at it; it was closed.
+
+"Why, methought I left it open," said he. "The wind. There is not a
+breath of wind. What means this?"
+
+He stood with his hand upon the rugged door. He looked through one of
+the great chinks, for it was much smaller in places than the aperture it
+pretended to close, and saw his little oil wick burning just where he
+had left it.
+
+"How is it with me," he sighed, "when I start and tremble at nothing?
+Either I did shut it, or the fiend hath shut it after me to disturb my
+happy soul. Retro Sathanas!"
+
+And he entered his cave rapidly, and began with somewhat nervous
+expedition to light one of his largest tapers. While he was lighting it,
+there was a soft sigh in the cave.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+He started and dropped the candle just as it was lighting, and it went
+out.
+
+He stooped for it hurriedly and lighted it, listening intently. When it
+was lighted he shaded it with his hand from behind, and threw the faint
+light all round the cell.
+
+In the farthest corner the outline of the wall seemed broken.
+
+He took a step towards the place with his heart beating.
+
+The candle at the same time getting brighter, he saw it was the figure
+of a woman.
+
+Another step with his knees knocking together.
+
+IT WAS MARGARET BRANDT.
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[1] Beat down Satan under our feet.
+
+[2] Up, Hearts!
+
+[3] Oh God our refuge and strength.
+
+[4] Oh! Lamb of God, that takest away the Sins of the world, have mercy
+upon me!
+
+[5] Oh! Holy Trinity, one God, have mercy upon us.
+
+[6] From the assaults of demons--from the wrath to come--from
+everlasting damnation--
+
+Deliver us O Lord!
+
+
+[7] See the English collect, St. Michael and all Angels.
+
+[8] Of whom may we seek succour, but of thee, Oh Lord, who for our sins
+art justly displeased (and that torrent of prayer, the following verse).
+
+[G] Dr. Dickson, author of _Fallacies of the Faculty_, etc.
+
+[H] It is related of a mediaeval hermit, that being offered a garment
+made of cats' skins, he rejected it, saying, "I have heard of a lamb of
+God, but I never heard of a cat of God."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XCVI
+
+
+HER attitude was one to excite pity rather than terror, in eyes not
+blinded by a preconceived notion. Her bosom was fluttering like a bird,
+and the red and white coming and going in her cheeks, and she had her
+hand against the wall by the instinct of timid things, she trembled so;
+and the marvellous mixed gaze of love, and pious awe, and pity, and
+tender memories, those purple eyes cast on the emaciated and glaring
+hermit, was an event in nature.
+
+"Aha!" he cried. "Thou art come at last in flesh and blood; come to me
+as thou camest to holy Anthony. But I am ware of thee; I thought thy
+wiles were not exhausted. I am armed." With this he snatched up his
+small crucifix and held it out at her, astonished, and the candle in the
+other hand, both crucifix and candle shaking violently, "Exorcizo te."
+
+"Ah, no!" cried she, piteously; and put out two pretty deprecating
+palms. "Alas! work me no ill! It is Margaret."
+
+"Liar!" shouted the hermit. "Margaret was fair, but not so supernatural
+fair as thou. Thou didst shrink at that sacred name, thou subtle
+hypocrite. In Nomine Dei exorcizo vos."
+
+"Ah, Jesu!" gasped Margaret, in extremity of terror, "curse me not! I
+will go home. I thought _I_ might come. For very manhood be-Latin me
+not! Oh Gerard, is it thus you and I meet after all; after all?"
+
+And she cowered almost to her knees, and sobbed with superstitious fear,
+and wounded affection.
+
+Impregnated as he was with Satanophobia, he might perhaps have doubted
+still whether this distressed creature, all woman, and nature, was not
+all art, and fiend. But her spontaneous appeal to that sacred name
+dissolved his chimera; and let him see with his eyes, and hear with his
+ears.
+
+He uttered a cry of self-reproach, and tried to raise her; but what with
+fasts, what with the over-powering emotion of a long solitude so broken,
+he could not. "What," he gasped shaking over her, "and is it thou? And
+have I met thee with hard words? Alas!" And they were both choked with
+emotion, and could not speak for a while.
+
+"I heed it not much," said Margaret, bravely, struggling with her tears;
+"you took me for another: for a devil; oh! oh! oh! oh! oh!"
+
+"Forgive me, sweet soul!" And as soon as he could speak more than a word
+at a time, he said, "I have been much beset by the evil one since I came
+here."
+
+Margaret looked round with a shudder. "Like enow. Then oh take my hand,
+and let me lead thee from this foul place."
+
+He gazed at her with astonishment.
+
+"What, desert my cell; and go into the world again? Is it for that thou
+hast come to me?" said he, sadly and reproachfully.
+
+"Ay, Gerard. I am come to take thee to thy pretty vicarage: art vicar of
+Gouda, thanks to Heaven and thy good brother Giles: and mother and I
+have made it so neat for thee, Gerard. 'Tis well enow in winter I
+promise thee. But bide a bit till the hawthorn bloom, and anon thy walls
+put on their kirtle of brave roses, and sweet woodbine. Have we
+forgotten thee, and the foolish things thou lovest? And, dear Gerard,
+thy mother is waiting; and 'tis late for her to be out of her bed:
+prithee; prithee; come! And the moment we are out of this foul hole I'll
+show thee a treasure thou hast gotten, and knowest nought on't, or sure
+hadst never fled from us so. Alas! what is to do? What have I ignorantly
+said; to be regarded thus?"
+
+For he had drawn himself all up into a heap, and was looking at her with
+a strange gaze of fear and suspicion blended.
+
+"Unhappy girl," said he, solemnly, yet deeply agitated, "would you have
+me risk my soul and yours for a miserable vicarage and the flowers that
+grow on it? But this is not thy doing: the bowelless fiend sends thee,
+poor simple girl, to me with this bait. But oh, cunning fiend, I will
+unmask thee even to this thine instrument, and she shall see thee, and
+abhor thee as I do. Margaret, my lost love, why am I here? Because I
+love thee."
+
+"Oh! no, Gerard, you love me not, or you would not have hidden from me;
+there was no need."
+
+"Let there be no deceit between us twain: that have loved so true; and
+after this night, shall meet no more on earth."
+
+"Now God forbid!" said she.
+
+"I love thee, and thou hast not forgotten me, or thou hadst married ere
+this, and hadst not been the one to find me, buried here from sight of
+man. I am a priest, a monk: what but folly or sin can come of you and me
+living neighbours, and feeding a passion innocent once, but now (so
+Heaven wills it) impious and unholy? No, though my heart break I must be
+firm. 'Tis I that am the man, 'tis I that am the priest. You and I must
+meet no more, till I am schooled by solitude, and thou art wedded to
+another."
+
+"I consent to my doom but not to thine. I would ten times liever die;
+yet I will marry, ay, wed misery itself sooner than let thee lie in this
+foul dismal place, with yon sweet manse a waiting for thee." Clement
+groaned; at each word she spoke out stood clearer and clearer, two
+things--his duty, and the agony it must cost.
+
+"My beloved," said he, with a strange mixture of tenderness and dogged
+resolution, "I bless thee for giving me one more sight of thy sweet
+face, and may God forgive thee, and bless thee, for destroying in a
+minute the holy peace it hath taken six months of solitude to build. No
+matter. A year of penance will, Dei gratia, restore me to my calm. My
+poor Margaret, I seem cruel: yet I am kind: 'tis best we part; ay, this
+moment."
+
+"Part, Gerard? Never: we have seen what comes of parting. Part? Why you
+have not heard half my story; no nor the tithe. 'Tis not for thy mere
+comfort I take thee to Gouda manse. Hear me!"
+
+"I may not. Thy very voice is a temptation with its music, memory's
+delight."
+
+"But I say you shall hear me, Gerard, for forth this place I go not
+unheard."
+
+"Then must we part by other means," said Clement, sadly.
+
+"Alack! what other means? Wouldst put me to thine own door, being the
+stronger?"
+
+"Nay, Margaret, well thou knowest I would suffer many deaths rather than
+put force on thee; thy sweet body is dearer to me than my own: but a
+million times dearer to me are our immortal souls, both thine and mine.
+I have withstood this direst temptation of all long enow. Now I must fly
+it: farewell! farewell!"
+
+He made to the door, and had actually opened it and got half out, when
+she darted after and caught him by the arm.
+
+"Nay, then another must speak for me. I thought to reward thee for
+yielding to me: but unkind that thou art, I need his help I find; turn
+then this way one moment."
+
+"Nay, nay."
+
+"But I say ay! And then turn thy back on us an thou canst." She somewhat
+relaxed her grasp, thinking he would never deny her so small a favour.
+But at this he saw his opportunity and seized it.
+
+"Fly, Clement, fly!" he almost shrieked, and, his religious enthusiasm
+giving him for a moment his old strength, he burst wildly away from her,
+and after a few steps bounded over the little stream and ran beside it,
+but finding he was not followed, stopped and looked back.
+
+She was lying on her face, with her hands spread out.
+
+Yes, without meaning it, he had thrown her down and hurt her.
+
+When he saw that, he groaned and turned back a step; but suddenly, by
+another impulse, flung himself into the icy water instead.
+
+"There, kill my body!" he cried, "but save my soul!"
+
+Whilst he stood there, up to his throat in liquid ice, so to speak,
+Margaret uttered one long, piteous moan, and rose to her knees.
+
+He saw her as plain almost as in midday. Saw her face pale and her eyes
+glistening; and then in the still night he heard these words:
+
+"Oh, God! thou that knowest all, thou seest how I am used. Forgive me
+then! For I will not live another day." With this she suddenly started
+to her feet, and flew like some wild creature, wounded to death, close
+by his miserable hiding-place, shrieking:
+
+"CRUEL!--CRUEL!--CRUEL!--CRUEL!"
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+What manifold anguish may burst from a human heart in a single syllable.
+There were wounded love, and wounded pride, and despair, and coming
+madness, all in that piteous cry. Clement heard, and it froze his heart
+with terror and remorse, worse than the icy water chilled the marrow of
+his bones.
+
+He felt he had driven her from him for ever, and in the midst of his
+dismal triumph, the greatest he had won, there came an almost
+incontrollable impulse to curse the Church, to curse religion itself,
+for exacting such savage cruelty from mortal man. At last he crawled
+half dead out of the water, and staggered to his den. "I am safe here,"
+he groaned; "she will never come near me again; unmanly, ungrateful
+wretch that I am." And he flung his emaciated, frozen body down on the
+floor, not without a secret hope that it might never rise thence alive.
+
+But presently he saw by the hour-glass that it was past midnight. On
+this he rose slowly and took off his wet things, and moaning all the
+time at the pain he had caused her he loved, put on the old hermit's
+cilice of bristles, and over that his breastplate. He had never worn
+either of these before, doubting himself worthy to don the arms of that
+tried soldier. But now he must give himself every aid: the bristles
+might distract his earthly remorse by bodily pain, and there might be
+holy virtue in the breastplate.
+
+[Illustration: HE SCANNED, WITH GREAT TEARFUL EYES, THIS STRANGE FIGURE
+THAT LOOKED SO WILD]
+
+Then he kneeled down and prayed God humbly to release him that very
+night from the burden of the flesh. Then he lighted all his candles and
+recited his psalter doggedly: each word seemed to come like a lump of
+lead from a leaden heart, and to fall leaden to the ground; and in this
+mechanical office every now and then he moaned with all his soul. In
+the midst of which he suddenly observed a little bundle in the corner he
+had not seen before in the feebler light, and at one end of it something
+like gold spun into silk.
+
+He went to see what it could be; and he had no sooner viewed it closer
+than he threw up his hands with rapture, "It is a seraph," he whispered,
+"a lovely seraph. Heaven hath witnessed my bitter trial, and approves my
+cruelty; and this flower of the skies is sent to cheer me, fainting
+under my burden."
+
+He fell on his knees, and gazed with ecstasy on its golden hair, and its
+tender skin and cheeks like a peach.
+
+"Let me feast my sad eyes on thee ere thou leavest me for thine
+ever-blessed abode, and my cell darkens again at thy parting, as it did
+at hers."
+
+With all this the hermit disturbed the lovely visitor. He opened wide
+two eyes, the colour of heaven; and seeing a strange figure kneeling
+over him, he cried piteously: "MUM--MA! MUM--MA!" And the tears began to
+run down his little cheeks.
+
+Perhaps, after all, Clement, who for more than six months had not looked
+on the human face divine, estimated childish beauty more justly than we
+can; and in truth, this fair northern child, with its long golden hair,
+was far more angelic than any of our imagined angels. But now the spell
+was broken.
+
+Yet not unhappily. Clement, it may be remembered, was fond of children,
+and true monastic life fosters this sentiment. The innocent distress on
+the cherubic face, the tears that ran so smoothly from those transparent
+violets, his eyes, and his pretty, dismal cry for his only friend, his
+mother, went through the hermit's heart. He employed all his gentleness
+and all his art to sooth him, and, as the little soul was wonderfully
+intelligent for his age, presently succeeded so far that he ceased to
+cry out, and wonder took the place of fear, while in silence, broken
+only in little gulps, he scanned, with great tearful eyes, this strange
+figure that looked so wild, but spoke so kindly, and wore armour, yet
+did not kill little boys, but coaxed them. Clement was equally perplexed
+to know how this little human flower came to lie sparkling and blooming
+in his gloomy cave. But he remembered he had left the door wide open,
+and he was driven to conclude that, owing to this negligence, some
+unfortunate creature of high or low degree had seized this opportunity
+to get rid of her child for ever.[I] At this his bowels yearned so over
+the poor deserted cherub that the tears of pure tenderness stood in his
+eyes, and still, beneath the crime of the mother, he saw the divine
+goodness, which had so directed her heartlessness as to comfort his
+servant's breaking heart.
+
+"Now bless thee, bless thee, bless thee, sweet innocent, I would not
+change thee for e'en a cherub in heaven."
+
+"At's pooty," replied the infant, ignoring contemptuously, after the
+manner of infants, all remarks that did not interest him.
+
+"What is pretty here, my love, beside thee?"
+
+"Ookum-gars,"[J] said the boy, pointing to the hermit's breastplate.
+
+"Quot liberi, tot sententiunculae!" Hector's child screamed at his
+father's glittering casque and nodding crest: and here was a mediaeval
+babe charmed with a polished cuirass, and his griefs assuaged.
+
+"There are prettier things here than that," said Clement, "there are
+little birds; lovest thou birds?"
+
+"Nay. Ay. En um ittle, ery ittle? Not ike torks. Hate torks; um bigger
+an baby."
+
+He then confided, in very broken language, that the storks, with their
+great flapping wings, scared him, and were a great trouble and worry to
+him, darkening his existence more or less.
+
+"Ay, but my birds are very little, and good, and oh, so pretty!"
+
+"Den I ikes 'm," said the child, authoritatively. "I ont my mammy."
+
+"Alas, sweet dove! I doubt I shall have to fill her place as best I may.
+Hast thou no daddy as well as mammy, sweet one?"
+
+Now not only was this conversation from first to last, the relative
+ages, situations, and all circumstances of the parties considered, as
+strange a one as ever took place between two mortal creatures, but at or
+within a second or two of the hermit's last question, to turn the
+strange into the marvellous, came an unseen witness, to whom every word
+that passed carried ten times the force it did to either of the
+speakers.
+
+Since, therefore, it is with her eyes you must now see, and hear with
+her ears, I go back a step for her.
+
+Margaret, when she ran past Gerard, was almost mad. She was in that
+state of mind in which affectionate mothers have been known to kill
+their children, sometimes along with themselves, sometimes alone, which
+last is certainly maniacal. She ran to Reicht Heynes pale and trembling,
+and clasped her round the neck. "Oh, Reicht! oh, Reicht!" and could say
+no more. Reicht kissed her and began to whimper; and, would you believe
+it, the great mastiff uttered one long whine: even his glimmer of sense
+taught him grief was afoot.
+
+"Oh, Reicht!" moaned the despised beauty, as soon as she could utter a
+word for choking, "see how he has served me;" and she showed her hands
+that were bleeding with falling on the stony ground. "He threw me down,
+he was so eager to fly from me. He took me for a devil; he said I came
+to tempt him. Am I the woman to tempt a man? you know me, Reicht."
+
+"Nay, in sooth, sweet Mistress Margaret, the last i' the world."
+
+"And he would not look at my child. I'll fling myself and him into the
+Rotter this night."
+
+"Oh fie, fie! eh, my sweet woman, speak not so. Is any man that breathes
+worth your child's life?"
+
+"My child! where is he? Why, Reicht, I have left him behind. Oh shame!
+is it possible I can love him to that degree as to forget my child? Ah!
+I am rightly served for it."
+
+And she sat down, and faithful Reicht beside her, and they sobbed in one
+another's arms.
+
+After a while Margaret left off sobbing and said, doggedly, "Let us go
+home."
+
+"Ay, but the bairn?"
+
+"Oh! he is well where he is. My heart is turned against my very child.
+_He_ cares nought for him; wouldn't see him, nor hear speak of him; and
+I took him there so proud, and made his hair so nice I did, and put his
+new frock and cowl on him. Nay, turn about: it's his child as well as
+mine; let him keep it awhile: mayhap that will learn him to think more
+of its mother and his own."
+
+"High words off an empty stomach," said Reicht.
+
+"Time will show. Come thou home."
+
+They departed, and Time did show quicker than he levels abbeys, for at
+the second step Margaret stopped, and could neither go one way nor the
+other, but stood stock still.
+
+"Reicht," said she, piteously, "what else have I on earth? I cannot."
+
+"Who ever said you could? Think you I paid attention? Words are woman's
+breath. Come back for him without more ado; 'tis time we were in our
+beds, much more he."
+
+Reicht led the way, and Margaret followed readily enough in that
+direction; but as they drew near the cell she stopped again.
+
+"Reicht, go you and ask him will he give me back my boy; for I could not
+bear the sight of him."
+
+"Alas! mistress, this do seem a sorry ending after all that hath been
+betwixt you twain. Bethink thee now, doth thine heart whisper no excuse
+for him? dost verily hate him for whom thou hast waited so long? Oh
+weary world!"
+
+"Hate him, Reicht? I would not harm a hair of his head for all that is
+in nature; but look on him I cannot; I have taken a horror of him. Oh!
+when I think of all I have suffered for him, and what I came here this
+night to do for him, and brought my own darling to kiss him and call him
+father. Ah; Luke, my poor chap, my wound showeth me thine. I have
+thought too little of thy pangs, whose true affection I despised: and
+now my own is despised. Reicht, if the poor lad was here now, he would
+have a good chance."
+
+"Well, he is not far off," said Reicht Heynes, but somehow she did not
+say it with alacrity.
+
+"Speak not to me of any man," said Margaret, bitterly, "I hate them
+all."
+
+"For the sake of one?"
+
+"Flout me not, but prithee go forward and get me what _is_ my own, my
+sole joy in the world. Thou knowest I am on thorns till I have him to my
+bosom again."
+
+Reicht went forward; Margaret sat by the roadside and covered her face
+with her apron, and rocked herself after the manner of her country, for
+her soul was full of bitterness and grief. So severe, indeed, was the
+internal conflict, that she did not hear Reicht running back to her, and
+started violently when the young woman laid a hand upon her shoulder.
+
+"Mistress Margaret!" said Reicht, quietly, "take a fool's advice that
+loves ye. Go softly to yon cave wi' all the ears and eyes your mother
+ever gave you."
+
+"Why?--what,--Reicht?" stammered Margaret.
+
+"I thought the cave was afire, 'twas so light inside; and there were
+voices."
+
+"Voices?"
+
+"Ay, not one, but twain, and all unlike--a man's and a little child's,
+talking as pleasant as you and me. I am no great hand at a keyhole for
+my part, 'tis paltry work; but if so be voices were talking in yon cave,
+and them that owned those voices were so near to me as those are to
+thee, I'd go on all fours like a fox, and I'd crawl on my belly like a
+serpent, ere I'd lose one word that passes _atwixt those twain_."
+
+"Whisht, Reicht! Bless thee! Bide thou here. Buss me! Pray for me!"
+
+And almost ere the agitated words had left her lips Margaret was flying
+towards the hermitage as noiselessly as a lapwing. Arrived near it, she
+crouched, and there was something truly serpentine in the gliding,
+flexible, noiseless movements by which she reached the very door, and
+there she found a chink and listened. And often it cost her a struggle
+not to burst in upon them, but warned by defeat, she was cautious and
+resolute to let well alone. And after a while slowly and noiselessly she
+reared her head, like a snake its crest, to where she saw the broadest
+chink of all, and looked with all her eyes and soul, as well as
+listened.
+
+The little boy then being asked whether he had no daddy, at first shook
+his head, and would say nothing; but being pressed, he suddenly seemed
+to remember something, and said he, "Dad--da ill man; run away and leave
+poor mum--ma."
+
+She who heard this winced. It was as new to her as to Clement. Some
+interfering foolish woman had gone and said this to the boy, and now out
+it came in Gerard's very face. His answer surprised her; he burst out,
+"The villain! the monster! he must be born without bowels to desert
+thee, sweet one. Ah! he little knows the joy he hath turned his back on.
+Well, my little dove, I must be father and mother to thee, since the one
+runs away, and t'other abandons thee to my care. Now to-morrow I shall
+ask the good people, that bring me my food, to fetch some nice eggs and
+milk for thee as well; for bread is good enough for poor old
+good-for-nothing me, but not for thee. And I shall teach thee to read."
+
+"I can yead, I can yead."
+
+"Ay verily, so young? all the better; we will read good books together,
+and I shall show thee the way to heaven. Heaven is a beautiful place, a
+thousand times fairer and better than earth, and there be little cherubs
+like thyself, in white, glad to welcome thee and love thee. Wouldst like
+to go to heaven one day?"
+
+"Ay, along wi'--my--mammy."
+
+"What, not without her then?"
+
+"Nay. I ont my mammy. Where is my mammy?"
+
+(Oh! what it cost poor Margaret not to burst in and clasp him to her
+heart!)
+
+"Well, fret not, sweetheart, mayhap she will come when thou art asleep.
+Wilt thou be good now and sleep?"
+
+"I not eepy. Ikes to talk."
+
+"Well, talk we then; tell me thy pretty name."
+
+"Baby." And he opened his eyes with amazement at this great hulking
+creature's ignorance.
+
+"Hast none other?"
+
+"Nay."
+
+"What shall I do to pleasure thee, baby? Shall I tell thee a story?"
+
+"I ikes tories," said the boy, clapping his hands.
+
+"Or sing thee a song?"
+
+"I ikes tongs," and he became excited.
+
+"Choose then, a song or a story."
+
+"Ting I a tong. Nay, tell I a tory. Nay, ting I a tong. Nay--." And the
+corners of his little mouth turned down and he had half a mind to weep
+because he could not have both, and could not tell which to forego.
+Suddenly his little face cleared, "Ting I a tory," said he.
+
+"Sing thee a story, baby? Well, after all, why not? And wilt thou sit o'
+my knee and hear it?"
+
+"Yea."
+
+"Then I must 'een doff this breastplate. 'Tis too hard for thy soft
+cheek. So. And now I must doff this bristly cilice; they would prick thy
+tender skin, perhaps make it bleed, as they have me, I see. So. And now
+I put on my best pelisse, in honour of thy worshipful visit. See how
+soft and warm it is; bless the good soul that sent it; and now I sit me
+down; so. And I take thee on my left knee, and put my arm under thy
+little head; so. And then the psaltery, and play a little tune; so, not
+too loud."
+
+"I ikes dat."
+
+"I am right glad on't. Now list the story."
+
+He chanted a child's story in a sort of recitative, singing a little
+moral refrain now and then. The boy listened with rapture.
+
+"I ikes oo," said he. "Ot is oo? is oo a man?"
+
+"Ay, little heart, and a great sinner to boot."
+
+"I ikes great tingers. Ting one other tory."
+
+Story No. 2 was chanted.
+
+"I ubbs oo," cried the child, impetuously. "Ot caft[K] is oo?"
+
+"I am a hermit, love."
+
+"I ubbs vermins. Ting other one."
+
+But during this final performance, Nature suddenly held out her leaden
+sceptre over the youthful eyelids. "I is not eepy," whined he very
+faintly, and succumbed.
+
+Clement laid down his psaltery softly and began to rock his new treasure
+in his arms, and to crone over him a little lullaby well known in
+Tergou, with which his own mother had often set him off.
+
+And the child sank into a profound sleep upon his arm. And he stopped
+crooning, and gazed on him with infinite tenderness, yet sadness; for,
+at that moment he could not help thinking what might have been but for a
+piece of paper with a lie in it.
+
+He sighed deeply.
+
+The next moment the moonlight burst into his cell, and with it, and in
+it, and almost as swift as it, Margaret Brandt was down at his knee with
+a timorous hand upon his shoulder.
+
+"GERARD, YOU DO NOT REJECT US. YOU CANNOT."
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[I] More than one hermit had received a present of this kind.
+
+[J] Query? "looking-glass."
+
+[K] Craft. He means trade or profession.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XCVII
+
+
+THE startled hermit glared from his nursling to Margaret, and from her
+to him, in amazement, equalled only by his agitation at her so
+unexpected return. The child lay asleep on his left arm, and she was at
+his right knee; no longer the pale, scared, panting girl he had
+overpowered so easily an hour or two ago, but an imperial beauty, with
+blushing cheeks and sparkling eyes, and lips sweetly parted in triumph,
+and her whole face radiant with a look he could not quite read; for he
+had never yet seen it on her; maternal pride.
+
+He stared and stared from the child to her, in throbbing amazement.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+"Us?" he gasped at last. And still his wonder-stricken eyes turned to
+and fro.
+
+Margaret was surprised in her turn. It was an age of impressions not
+facts. "What!" she cried, "doth not a father know his own child? and a
+man of God, too? Fie, Gerard, to pretend! nay, thou art too wise, too
+good, not to have--why I watched thee: and e'en now look at you twain!
+'Tis thine own flesh and blood thou holdest to thine heart."
+
+Clement trembled. "What words are these," he stammered, "this angel
+mine?"
+
+"Whose else? since he is mine."
+
+Clement turned on the sleeping child, with a look beyond the power of
+the pen to describe, and trembled all over, as his eyes seemed to absorb
+the little love.
+
+Margaret's eyes followed his. "He is not a bit like me," said she,
+proudly; "but oh at whiles he is thy very image in little; and see this
+golden hair. Thine was the very colour at his age; ask mother else. And
+see this mole on his little finger; now look at thine own; there! 'Twas
+thy mother let me weet thou wast marked so before him; and oh, Gerard,
+'twas this our child found thee for me; for by that little mark on thy
+finger I knew thee for his father, when I watched above thy window and
+saw thee feed the birds;" here she seized the child's hand and kissed it
+eagerly, and got half of it into her mouth, heaven knows how. "Ah! bless
+thee, thou didst find thy poor daddy for her, and now thou hast made us
+friends again after our little quarrel; the first, the last. Wast very
+cruel to me but now, my poor Gerard, and I forgive thee; for loving of
+thy child."
+
+"Ah! ah! ah! ah! ah!" sobbed Clement, choking.
+
+And lowered by fasts, and unnerved by solitude, the once strong man was
+hysterical, and nearly fainting.
+
+Margaret was alarmed, but, having experience, her pity was greater than
+her fear. "Nay, take not on so," she murmured soothingly, and put a
+gentle hand upon his brow. "Be brave! So, so. Dear heart, thou art not
+the first man, that hath gone abroad, and come back richer by a lovely
+little self, than he went forth. Being a man of God take courage, and
+say He sends thee this to comfort thee for what thou hast lost in me;
+and that is not so very much, my lamb; for sure the better part of love
+shall ne'er cool here to thee, though it may in thine, and ought, being
+a priest, and parson of Gouda."
+
+"I? priest of Gouda? Never!" murmured Clement, in a faint voice, "I am a
+friar of St. Dominic: yet speak on sweet music, tell me all that has
+happened thee, before we are parted again."
+
+Now some would on this have exclaimed against parting at all, and raised
+the true question in dispute. But such women as Margaret do not repeat
+their mistakes. It is very hard to defeat them _twice_, where their
+hearts are set on a thing.
+
+She assented, and turned her back on Gouda manse as a thing not to be
+recurred to; and she told him her tale, dwelling above all on the
+kindness to her of his parents; and, while she related her troubles, his
+hand stole to hers, and often she felt him wince and tremble with ire,
+and often press her hand, sympathizing with her in every vein.
+
+"Oh, piteous tale of a true heart battling alone against such bitter
+odds," said he.
+
+"It all seems small, when I see thee here again, and nursing my boy. We
+have had a warning, Gerard. True friends like you and me are rare, and
+they are mad to part, ere death divideth them."
+
+"And that is true," said Clement, off his guard.
+
+And then she would have him tell her what he had suffered for her, and
+he begged her to excuse him, and she consented; but by questions quietly
+revoked her consent and elicited it all; and many a sigh she heaved for
+him, and more than once she hid her face in her hands with terror at his
+perils, though past.
+
+And to console him for all he had gone through, she kneeled down and put
+her arms under the little boy, and lifted him gently up. "Kiss him
+softly," she whispered. "Again, again! kiss thy fill if thou canst; he
+is sound. 'Tis all I can do to comfort thee till thou art out of this
+foul den and in thy sweet manse yonder."
+
+Clement shook his head.
+
+"Well," said she, "let that pass. Know that I have been sore affronted
+for want of my lines."
+
+"Who hath dared affront thee?"
+
+"No matter, those that will do it again if thou hast lost them, which
+the saints forbid."
+
+"I lose them? nay, there they lie, close to thy hand."
+
+"Where, where, oh where?"
+
+Clement hung his head. "Look in the Vulgate. Heaven forgive me: I
+thought thou wert dead, and a saint in heaven."
+
+She looked, and on the blank leaves of the poor soul's Vulgate she found
+her marriage lines.
+
+"Thank God!" she cried, "thank God! Oh, bless thee, Gerard, bless thee!
+Why what is here, Gerard?"
+
+On the other leaves were pinned every scrap of paper she had ever sent
+him, and their two names she had once written together in sport, and the
+lock of her hair she had given him, and half a silver coin she had
+broken with him, and a straw she had sucked her soup with the first day
+he ever saw her.
+
+When Margaret saw these proofs of love and signs of a gentle heart
+bereaved, even her exultation at getting back her marriage lines was
+overpowered by gushing tenderness. She almost staggered, and her hand
+went to her bosom, and she leaned her brow against the stone cell and
+wept so silently that he did not see she was weeping; indeed she would
+not let him, for she felt that to befriend him now she must be the
+stronger; and emotion weakens.
+
+"Gerard," said she, "I know you are wise and good. You must have a
+reason for what you are doing, let it seem ever so unreasonable. Talk we
+like old friends. Why are you buried alive?"
+
+"Margaret, to escape temptation. My impious ire against those two had
+its root in the heart; that heart then I must deaden, and, Dei gratia, I
+shall. Shall I, a servant of Christ and of the Church, court temptation?
+Shall I pray daily to be led out on't, and walk into it with open eyes?"
+
+"That is good sense any way," said Margaret, with a consummate affection
+of candour.
+
+"'Tis unanswerable," said Clement, with a sigh.
+
+"We shall see. Tell me, have you escaped temptation here? Why I ask is,
+when _I_ am alone, my thoughts are far more wild and foolish than in
+company. Nay, speak sooth; come!"
+
+"I must needs own I have been worse tempted here with evil imaginations
+than in the world."
+
+"There now."
+
+"Ay, but so were Anthony, and Jerome, Macarius, and Hilarion, Benedict,
+Bernard, and all the saints. 'Twill wear off."
+
+"How do you know?"
+
+"I feel sure it will."
+
+"Guessing against knowledge. Here 'tis men folk are sillier than us that
+be but women. Wise in their own conceits, they will not let themselves
+see; their stomachs are too high to be taught by their eyes. A woman, if
+she went into a hole in a bank to escape temptation, and there found it,
+would just lift her farthingale and out on't, and not e'en know how wise
+she was, till she watched a man in like plight."
+
+"Nay, I grant humility and a teachable spirit are the roads to wisdom;
+but, when all is said, here I wrestle but with imagination. At Gouda she
+I love as no priest or monk must love any but the angels, she will tempt
+a weak soul, unwilling, yet not loth, to be tempted."
+
+"Aye that is another matter; _I_ should tempt thee then? to what, i'
+God's name?"
+
+"Who knows? The flesh is weak."
+
+"Speak for yourself, my lad. Why you are thinking of some other
+Margaret, not Margaret a Peter. Was ever my mind turned to folly and
+frailty? Stay, is it because you were my husband once, as these lines
+avouch? Think you the road to folly is beaten for you more than for
+another? Oh! how shallow are the wise, and how little able are you to
+read me, who can read you so well from top to toe. Come, learn thy A B
+C. Were a stranger to proffer me unchaste love, I should shrink a bit,
+no doubt, and feel sore, but I should defend myself without making a
+coil; for men, I know, are so, the best of them sometimes. But if you,
+that have been my husband, and are my child's father, were to offer to
+humble me so in mine own eyes, and thine, and his, either I should spit
+in thy face, Gerard, or, as I am not a downright vulgar woman, I should
+snatch the first weapon at hand and strike thee dead."
+
+And Margaret's eyes flashed fire, and her nostrils expanded, that it was
+glorious to see; and no one that did see her could doubt her sincerity.
+
+"I had not the sense to see that," said Gerard, quietly. And he
+pondered.
+
+Margaret eyed him in silence, and soon recovered her composure.
+
+"Let not you and I dispute," said she, gently; "speak we of other
+things. Ask me of thy folk."
+
+"My father?"
+
+"Well, and warms to thee and me. Poor soul, a drew glaive on those twain
+that day, but Jorian Ketel and I we mastered him, and he drove them
+forth his house for ever."
+
+"That may not be; he must take them back."
+
+"That he will never do for us. You know the man; he is dour as iron: yet
+would he do it for one word from one that will not speak it."
+
+"Who?"
+
+"The vicar of Gouda. The old man will be at the manse to-morrow, I
+hear."
+
+"How you come back to that."
+
+"Forgive me: I am but a woman. It is us for nagging; shouldst keep me
+from it wi' questioning of me."
+
+"My sister Kate?"
+
+"Alas!"
+
+"What hath ill befallen e'en that sweet lily? Out and alas!"
+
+"Be calm, sweetheart, no harm hath her befallen. Oh, nay, nay, far fro'
+that." Then Margaret forced herself to be composed, and in a low sweet,
+gentle voice she murmured to him thus: "My poor Gerard, Kate hath left
+her trouble behind her. For the manner on't, 'twas like the rest. Ah;
+such as she saw never thirty, nor ever shall while earth shall last. She
+smiled in pain too. A well, then, thus 'twas; she was took wi' a languor
+and a loss of all her pains."
+
+"A loss of her pains? I understand you not."
+
+"Ay, you are not experienced; indeed, e'en thy mother almost blinded
+herself, and said, ''tis maybe a change for the better.' But Joan Ketel,
+which is an understanding woman, she looked at her and said, 'Down sun,
+down wind!' And the gossips sided and said, 'Be brave, you that are her
+mother, for she is half way to the saints.' And thy mother wept sore,
+but Kate would not let her; and one very ancient woman, she said to thy
+mother, 'She will die as easy as she lived hard.' And she lay painless
+best part of three days, a sipping of heaven aforehand. And, my dear,
+when she was just parting, she asked for 'Gerard's little boy,' and I
+brought him and set him on the bed, and the little thing behaved as
+peaceably as he does now. But by this time she was past speaking: but
+she pointed to a drawer, and her mother knew what to look for: it was
+two gold angels thou hadst given her years ago. Poor soul! she had kept
+them till thou shouldst come home. And she nodded towards the little
+boy, and looked anxious: but we understood her, and put the pieces in
+his two hands, and, when his little fingers closed on them, she smiled
+content. And so she gave her little earthly treasures to her favourite's
+child--for you _were_ her favourite--and her immortal jewel to God, and
+passed so sweetly we none of us knew justly when she left us.
+Well-a-day, well-a-day!"
+
+Gerard wept.
+
+"She hath not left her like on earth," he sobbed. "Oh how the affections
+of earth curl softly round my heart! I cannot help it: God made them
+after all. Speak on, sweet Margaret; at thy voice the past rolls its
+tides back upon me; the loves and the hopes of youth come fair and
+gliding into my dark cell, and darker bosom, on waves of memory and
+music."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+"Gerard, I am loth to grieve you, but Kate cried a little when she first
+took ill, at you not being there to close her eyes."
+
+Gerard sighed.
+
+"You were within a league, but hid your face from her."
+
+He groaned.
+
+"There, forgive me for nagging; I am but a woman: you would not have
+been so cruel to your own flesh and blood knowingly, would you?"
+
+"Oh, no."
+
+"Well then, know that thy brother Sybrandt lies in my charge with a
+broken back, fruit of thy curse."
+
+"Mea culpa! mea culpa!"
+
+"He is very penitent; be yourself and forgive him this night!"
+
+"I have forgiven him long ago."
+
+"Think you he can believe that from any mouth but yours? Come! he is but
+about two butts' length hence."
+
+"So near? Why where?"
+
+"At Gouda manse. I took him there yestreen. For I know you, the curse
+was scarce cold on your lips when you repented it" (Gerard nodded
+assent), "and I said to myself, Gerard will thank me for taking Sybrandt
+to die under his roof; he will not beat his breast and cry mea culpa,
+yet grudge three footsteps to quiet a withered brother on his last bed.
+He may have a bee in his bonnet, but he is not a hypocrite, a thing all
+pious words and uncharitable deeds."
+
+Gerard literally staggered where he sat at this tremendous thrust.
+
+"Forgive me for nagging," said she. "Thy mother too is waiting for thee.
+Is it well done to keep her on thorns so long? She will not sleep this
+night. Bethink thee, Gerard, she is all to thee that I am to this sweet
+child. Ah, I think so much more of mothers since I had my little Gerard.
+She suffered for thee, and nursed thee, and tended thee from boy to man.
+Priest, monk, hermit, call thyself what thou wilt, to her thou art but
+one thing; her child."
+
+"Where is she?" murmured Gerard, in a quavering voice.
+
+"At Gouda manse, wearing the night in prayer and care."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Then Margaret saw the time was come for that appeal to his reason she
+had purposely reserved till persuasion should have paved the way for
+conviction. So the smith first softens the iron by fire; and then brings
+down the sledge hammer.
+
+She showed him, but in her own good straightforward Dutch, that his
+present life was only a higher kind of selfishness; spiritual egotism.
+Whereas a priest had no more right to care only for his own soul than
+only for his own body. That was not _his_ path to heaven. "But," said
+she, "whoever yet lost his soul by saving the souls of others? the
+Almighty loves him who thinks of others, and when He shall see thee
+caring for the souls of the folk the duke hath put into thine hand, He
+will care ten times more for thy soul than He does now."
+
+Gerard was struck by this remark. "Art shrewd in dispute," said he.
+
+"Far from it," was the reply, "only my eyes are not bandaged with
+conceit.[L] So long as Satan walks the whole earth, tempting men, and so
+long as the sons of Belial do never lock themselves in caves, but run
+like ants, to and fro, corrupting others, the good man that skulks
+apart, plays the devil's game, or at least gives him the odds: thou a
+soldier of Christ? ask thy comrade Denys, who is but a soldier of the
+duke, ask him if ever he skulked in a hole and shunned the battle
+because forsooth in battle is danger as well as glory and duty. For thy
+sole excuse is fear; thou makest no secret on't. Go to; no duke nor king
+hath such cowardly soldiers as Christ hath. What was that you said in
+the church at Rotterdam about the man in the parable, that buried his
+talent in the earth and so offended the giver? Thy wonderful gift for
+preaching, is it not a talent, and a gift from thy creator?"
+
+"Certes; such as it is."
+
+"And hast thou laid it out? or buried it? To whom hast thou preached
+these seven months? to bats and owls? Hast buried it in one hole with
+thyself and thy once good wits.
+
+"The Dominicans are the friars Preachers. 'Tis for preaching they were
+founded; so thou art false to Dominic as well as to his master.
+
+"Do you remember, Gerard, when we were young together, which now are old
+before our time, as we walked handed in the fields, did you but see a
+sheep cast, ay three fields off, you would leave your sweetheart (by her
+good will), and run and lift the sheep for charity? Well then, at Gouda
+is not one sheep in evil plight, but a whole flock; some cast, some
+strayed, some sick, some tainted, some a being devoured, and all for the
+want of a shepherd. Where is their shepherd? lurking in a den like a
+wolf; a den in his own parish, out fie! out fie!
+
+"I scented thee out, in part, by thy kindness to the little birds. Take
+note, you Gerard Eliassoen must love something, 'tis in your blood; you
+were born to't. Shunning man you do but seek earthly affection a peg
+lower than man."
+
+Gerard interrupted her. "The birds are God's creatures, his innocent
+creatures, and I do well to love them, being God's creatures."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+"What, are they creatures of the same God that we are, that he is who
+lies upon thy knee?"
+
+"You know they are."
+
+"Then what pretence for shunning us and being kind to them? Sith man is
+one of the animals, why pick him out to shun? Is't because he is of
+animals the paragon? What, you court the young of birds, and abandon
+your own young? Birds need but bodily food, and, having wings, deserve
+scant pity if they cannot fly and find it. But that sweet dove upon thy
+knee, he needeth not carnal only, but spiritual food. He is thine as
+well as mine: and I have done my share. He will soon be too much for me,
+and I look to Gouda's parson to teach him true piety and useful lore. Is
+he not of more value than many sparrows?"
+
+Gerard started and stammered an affirmation. For she waited for his
+reply.
+
+"You wonder," continued she, "to hear me quote holy writ so glib. I have
+pored over it this four years, and why? Not because God wrote it, but
+because I saw it often in thy hands ere thou didst leave me. Heaven
+forgive me; I am but a woman. What thinkest thou of this sentence? 'Let
+your work so shine before men that they may see your good works and
+glorify your Father which is in heaven!' What is a saint in a sink
+better than 'a light under a bushel'?
+
+"Therefore, since the sheep committed to thy charge bleat for thee and
+cry: 'Oh desert us no longer, but come to Gouda manse;' since I, who
+know thee ten times better than thou knowest thyself, do pledge my soul
+it is for thy soul's weal to go to Gouda manse,--since duty to thy
+child, too long abandoned, call thee to Gouda Manse,--since thy
+sovereign, whom holy writ again bids thee honour, sends thee to Gouda
+manse,--since the Pope, whom the Church teaches thee to revere, hath
+absolved thee of thy monkish vows, and orders thee to Gouda manse--"
+
+"Ah?"
+
+"Since thy grey-haired mother watches for thee in dole and care, and
+turneth oft the hour-glass and sigheth sore that thou comest so slow to
+her at Gouda manse,--since thy brother, withered by thy curse, awaits
+thy forgiveness and thy prayers for his soul, now lingering in his body,
+at Gouda manse,--take thou up in thine arms the sweet bird wi' crest of
+gold that nestles to thy bosom, and give me thy hand; thy sweetheart
+erst and wife, and now thy friend, the truest friend to thee this night
+that ere man had; and come with me to Gouda manse!"
+
+"IT IS THE VOICE OF AN ANGEL!" cried Clement loudly.
+
+"Then hearken it, and come forth to Gouda manse!"
+
+The battle was won.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Margaret lingered behind, cast her eye rapidly round the furniture, and
+selected the Vulgate and the psaltery. The rest she sighed at, and let
+it lie. The breastplate and the cilice of bristles she took and dashed
+with feeble ferocity on the floor. Then, seeing Gerard watch her with
+surprise from the outside, she coloured and said: "I am but a woman:
+'little' will still be 'spiteful.'"
+
+"Why encumber thyself with those? They are safe."
+
+"Oh, she had a reason."
+
+And with this they took the road to Gouda parsonage. The moon and stars
+were so bright, it seemed almost as light as day.
+
+Suddenly Gerard stopped. "My poor little birds!"
+
+"What of them?"
+
+"They will miss their food. I feed them every day."
+
+"The child hath a piece of bread in his cowl. Take that and feed them
+now, against the morn."
+
+"I will. Nay, I will not. He is as innocent, and nearer to me and to
+thee."
+
+Margaret drew a long breath. "'Tis well. Hadst taken it, I might have
+hated thee; I am but a woman."
+
+When they had gone about a quarter of a mile, Gerard sighed. "Margaret,"
+said he, "I must e'en rest; he is too heavy for me."
+
+"Then give him me, and take thou these. Alas! alas! I mind when thou
+wouldst have run with the child on one shoulder, and the mother on
+t'other."
+
+And Margaret carried the boy.
+
+"I trow," said Gerard, looking down, "overmuch fasting is not good for a
+man."
+
+"A many die of it each year, winter time," replied Margaret.
+
+Gerard pondered these simple words, and eyed her askant, carrying the
+child with perfect ease. When they had gone nearly a mile, he said, with
+considerable surprise: "You thought it was but two butts' length."
+
+"Not I."
+
+"Why, you said so."
+
+"That is another matter." She then turned on him the face of a Madonna.
+"I lied," said she, sweetly. "And to save your soul and body, I'd maybe
+tell a worse lie than that, at need. I am but a woman. Ah, well, it is
+but two butts' length from here at any rate."
+
+"Without a lie?"
+
+"Humph? Three, without a lie."
+
+And sure enough, in a few minutes they came up to the manse.
+
+A candle was burning in the vicar's parlour. "She is waking still,"
+whispered Margaret.
+
+"Beautiful! beautiful!" said Clement, and stopped to look at it.
+
+"What, in Heaven's name?"
+
+"That little candle, seen through the window at night. Look an it be not
+like some fair star of size prodigious: it delighteth the eyes and
+warmeth the heart of those outside."
+
+"Come, and I'll show thee something better," said Margaret, and led him
+on tiptoe to the window.
+
+They looked in, and there was Catherine kneeling on the hassock, with
+her "hours" before her.
+
+"Folk can pray out of a cave," whispered Margaret. "Ay and hit heaven
+with their prayers. For 'tis for a sight of thee she prayeth; and thou
+art here. Now, Gerard, be prepared; she is not the woman you knew her;
+her children's troubles have greatly broken the brisk, light-hearted
+soul. And I see she has been weeping e'en now; she will have given thee
+up, being so late."
+
+"Let me get to her," said Clement hastily, trembling all over.
+
+"That door! I will bide here."
+
+When Gerard was gone to the door, Margaret, fearing the sudden surprise,
+gave one sharp tap at the window, and cried, "Mother!" in a loud,
+expressive voice that Catherine read at once. She clasped her hands
+together and had half risen from her kneeling posture, when the door
+burst open and Clement flung himself wildly on his knees at her knees,
+with his arms out to embrace her. She uttered a cry such as only a
+mother could. "Ah! my darling, my darling!" And clung sobbing round his
+neck. And true it was, she saw neither a hermit, a priest, nor a monk,
+but just her child, lost, and despaired of, and in her arms. And after a
+little while Margaret came in, with wet eyes and cheeks, and a holy calm
+of affection settled by degrees on these sore troubled ones. And they
+sat all three together, hand in hand, murmuring sweet and loving
+converse; and he who sat in the middle, drank right and left their true
+affection and their humble but genuine wisdom, and was forced to eat a
+good nourishing meal, and at daybreak was packed off to a snowy bed, and
+by-and-by awoke, as from a hideous dream, friar and hermit no more,
+Clement no more, but Gerard Eliassoen, parson of Gouda.
+
+FOOTNOTE:
+
+[L] I think she means prejudice.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XCVIII
+
+
+MARGARET went back to Rotterdam long ere Gerard awoke, and actually left
+her boy behind her. She sent the faithful, sturdy Reicht off to Gouda
+directly with a vicar's grey frock and large felt hat, and with minute
+instructions how to govern her new master.
+
+Then she went to Jorian Ketel; for she said to herself, "he is the
+closest I ever met, so he is the man for me," and in concert with him
+she did two mortal sly things; yet not, in my opinion, virulent, though
+she thought they were; but if I am asked what were these deeds without a
+name, the answer is, that as she, who was "but a woman," kept them
+secret till her dying day, I, who am a man,--Verbum non amplius addam.
+
+She kept away from Gouda parsonage.
+
+Things that pass little noticed in the heat of argument, sometimes
+rankle afterwards; and, when she came to go over all that had passed,
+she was offended at Gerard's thinking she could ever forget the priest
+in the sometime lover. "For what did he take me?" said she. And this
+raised a great shyness which really she would not otherwise have felt,
+being downright innocent. And pride sided with modesty, and whispered
+"Go no more to Gouda parsonage."
+
+She left little Gerard there to complete the conquest her maternal heart
+ascribed to him, not to her own eloquence and sagacity; and to anchor
+his father for ever to humanity.
+
+But this generous stroke of policy cost her heart dear. She had never
+yet been parted from her boy an hour; and she felt sadly strange as well
+as desolate without him. After the first day it became intolerable; and
+what does the poor soul do, but creep at dark up to Gouda parsonage, and
+lurk about the premises like a thief till she saw Reicht Heynes in the
+kitchen alone. Then she tapped softly at the window and said, "Reicht,
+for pity's sake bring him out to me unbeknown." With Margaret the person
+who occupied her thoughts at the time ceased to have a name, and sank to
+a pronoun.
+
+Reicht soon found an excuse for taking little Gerard out, and there was
+a scene of mutual rapture; followed by mutual tears when mother and boy
+parted again.
+
+And it was arranged that Reicht should take him half way to Rotterdam
+every day, at a set hour, and Margaret meet them. And at these meetings,
+after the raptures, and after mother and child had gambolled together
+like a young cat and her first kitten, the boy would sometimes amuse
+himself alone at their feet, and the two women generally seized this
+opportunity to talk very seriously about Luke Peterson. This began thus:
+
+"Reicht," said Margaret, "I as good as promised him to marry Luke
+Peterson. 'Say you the word,' quoth I, 'and I'll wed him.'"
+
+"Poor Luke!"
+
+"Prithee, why poor Luke?"
+
+"To be bandied about so, atwixt yea and nay."
+
+"Why, Reicht, you have not ever been so simple as to cast an eye of
+affection on the boy, that you take his part?"
+
+"Me?" said Reicht, with a toss of the head.
+
+"Oh, I ask your pardon. Well, then, you can do me a good turn."
+
+"Whist! whisper! that little darling is listening to every word, and
+eyes like saucers."
+
+On this both their heads would have gone under one cap.
+
+Two women plotting against one boy? Oh you great cowardly serpents!
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+But when these stolen meetings had gone on about five days Margaret
+began to feel the injustice of it, and to be irritated as well as
+unhappy.
+
+And she was crying about it, when a cart came to her door, and in it,
+clean as a new penny, his beard close shaved, his bands white as snow,
+and a little colour in his pale face, sat the vicar of Gouda in the grey
+frock and large felt hat she had sent him.
+
+She ran upstairs directly and washed away all traces of her tears and
+put on a cap, which, being just taken out of the drawer, was cleaner,
+theoretically, than the one she had on; and came down to him.
+
+He seized both her hands and kissed them, and a tear fell upon them. She
+turned her head away at that to hide her own which started.
+
+"My sweet Margaret," he cried, "why is this? Why hold you aloof from
+your own good deed? we have been waiting and waiting for you every day,
+and no Margaret."
+
+"You said things."
+
+"What! when I was a hermit; and a donkey."
+
+"Ay! no matter, you said things. And you had no reason."
+
+"Forget all I said there. Who hearkens the ravings of a maniac? for I
+see now that in a few months more I should have been a gibbering idiot:
+Yet no mortal could have persuaded me away but you. Oh what an outlay of
+wit and goodness was yours! But it is not here I can thank and bless you
+as I ought; no, it is in the home you have given me, among the sheep
+whose shepherd you have made me; already I love them dearly; there it is
+I must thank 'the truest friend ever man had.' So now I say to you as
+erst you said to me, come to Gouda manse."
+
+"Humph! we will see about that."
+
+"Why, Margaret, think you I had ever kept the dear child so long, but
+that I made sure you would be back to him from day to day? Oh he curls
+round my very heart strings, but what is my title to him compared to
+thine? Confess now, thou hast had hard thoughts of me for this."
+
+"Nay, nay, not I. Ah! thou art thyself again; wast ever thoughtful of
+others. I have half a mind to go to Gouda manse, for your saying that."
+
+"Come then, with half thy mind, 'tis worth the whole of other folk's."
+
+"Well, I dare say I will; but there is no such mighty hurry," said she
+coolly (she was literally burning to go). "Tell me first how you agree
+with your folk."
+
+"Why, already my poor have taken root in my heart."
+
+"I thought as much."
+
+"And there are such good creatures among them; simple, and rough, and
+superstitious, but wonderfully good."
+
+"Oh! leave you alone for seeing a grain of good among a bushel of ill."
+
+"Whisht; whisht! And, Margaret, two of them have been ill friends for
+four years, and came to the manse each to get on my blind side. But,
+give the glory to God, I got on their bright side and made them friends
+and laugh at themselves for their folly."
+
+"But are you in very deed their vicar? answer me that."
+
+"Certes: have I not been to the bishop and taken the oath, and rung the
+church bell, and touched the altar, the missal, and the holy cap, before
+the churchwardens? And they have handed me the parish seal; see here it
+is. Nay 'tis a real vicar inviting a true friend to Gouda manse."
+
+"Then my mind is at ease. Tell me oceans more."
+
+"Well, sweet one, nearest to me of all my parish is a poor cripple that
+my guardian angel and his (her name thou knowest even by this turning of
+thy head away) hath placed beneath my roof. Sybrandt and I are that we
+never were till now, brothers. 'Twould gladden thee, yet sadden thee to
+hear how we kissed and forgave one another. He is full of thy praises,
+and wholly in a pious mind; he says he is happier since his trouble than
+e'er he was in the days of his strength. Oh! out of my house he ne'er
+shall go to any place but heaven."
+
+"Tell me somewhat that happened thyself, poor soul! All this is good,
+but yet no tidings to me. Do I not know thee of old?"
+
+"Well, let me see. At first I was much dazzled by the sunlight, and
+could not go abroad (owl!); but that is past; and good Reicht
+Heynes--humph!"
+
+"What of her?"
+
+"This to thine ear only, for she is a diamond. Her voice goes through me
+like a knife, and all voices seem loud but thine, which is so mellow
+sweet. Stay, now I'll fit ye with tidings: I spake yesterday with an old
+man that conceits he is ill-tempered, and sweats to pass for such with
+others, but oh! so threadbare, and the best good heart beneath."
+
+"Why 'tis a parish of angels," said Margaret, ironically.
+
+"Then why dost thou keep out on't?" retorted Gerard. "Well he was
+telling me there was no parish in Holland where the devil hath such
+power as at Gouda; and among his instances, says he, 'We had a hermit,
+the holiest in Holland; but, being Gouda, the devil came for him this
+week, and took him, bag and baggage: not a ha'porth of him left but a
+goodish piece of his skin, just for all the world like a hedgehog's, and
+a piece o' old iron furbished up."
+
+Margaret smiled.
+
+"Aye, but," continued Gerard, "the strange thing is, the cave has verily
+fallen in; and, had I been so perverse as resist thee, it had assuredly
+buried me dead there where I had buried myself alive. Therefore in this
+I see the finger of Providence, condemning my late, approving my
+present, way of life. What sayest thou?"
+
+"Nay, can I pierce the like mysteries? I am but a woman."
+
+"Somewhat more, methinks. This very tale proves thee my guardian angel,
+and all else avouches it: so come to Gouda manse."
+
+"Well, go you on, I'll follow."
+
+"Nay, in the cart with me."
+
+"Not so."
+
+"Why?"
+
+"Can I tell why and wherefore, being a woman? All I know is I seem--to
+feel--to wish--to come alone."
+
+"So be it then. I leave thee the cart, being, as thou sayest, a woman,
+and I'll go a-foot being a man again, with the joyful tidings of thy
+coming."
+
+When Margaret reached the manse the first thing she saw was the two
+Gerards together, the son performing his capriccios on the plot, and the
+father slouching on a chair, in his great hat, with pencil and paper,
+trying very patiently to sketch him.
+
+After a warm welcome he showed her his attempts. "But in vain I strive
+to fix him," said he, "for he is incarnate quicksilver. Yet do but note
+his changes, infinite, but none ungracious: all is supple and easy; and
+how he melteth from one posture to another." He added presently, "Woe to
+illuminators! looking on thee, sir baby, I see what awkward, lopsided,
+ungainly toads I and my fellows painted missals with, and called them
+cherubs and seraphs." Finally he threw the paper away in despair, and
+Margaret conveyed it secretly into her bosom.
+
+At night when they sat round the peat fire he bade them observe how
+beautiful the brass candlesticks and other glittering metals were in the
+glow from the hearth. Catherine's eyes sparkled at this observation.
+"And oh the sheets I lie in here," said he, "often my conscience
+pricketh me and saith, 'Who art thou to lie in lint like web of snow?'
+Dives was ne'er so flaxed as I. And to think that there are folk in the
+world that have all the beautiful things which I have here, yet not
+content. Let them pass six months in a hermit's cell, seeing no face of
+man; then will they find how lovely and pleasant this wicked world is;
+and eke that men and women are God's fairest creatures. Margaret was
+always fair: but never to my eye so bright as now." Margaret shook her
+head incredulously. Gerard continued: "My mother was ever good and kind,
+but I noted not her exceeding comeliness till now."
+
+"Nor I neither," said Catherine: "a score years ago I might pass in a
+crowd, but not now."
+
+Gerard declared to her that each age had its beauty: "See this mild grey
+eye," said he, "that hath looked motherly love upon so many of us, all
+that love hath left its shadow, and that shadow is a beauty which
+defieth Time. See this delicate lip, these pure white teeth. See this
+well-shaped brow, where comeliness just passeth into reverence. Art
+beautiful in my eyes, mother dear."
+
+"And that is enough for me, my darling. 'Tis time you were in bed,
+child. Ye have to preach the morn."
+
+And Reicht Heynes and Catherine interchanged a look, which said, "We two
+have an amiable maniac to superintend; calls everything beautiful."
+
+The next day was Sunday; and they heard him preach in his own church. It
+was crammed with persons, who came curious, but remained devout. Never
+was his wonderful gift displayed more powerfully: he was himself deeply
+moved by the first sight of all his people, and his bowels yearned over
+this flock he had so long neglected. In a single sermon, which lasted
+two hours and seemed to last but twenty minutes, he declared the whole
+scripture: he terrified the impenitent and thoughtless, confirmed the
+wavering, consoled the bereaved and the afflicted, uplifted the hearts
+of the poor, and, when he ended, left the multitude standing, rapt, and
+unwilling to believe the divine music of his voice and soul had ceased.
+
+Need I say that two poor women in a corner sat entranced, with streaming
+eyes.
+
+"Wherever gat he it all?" whispered Catherine with her apron to her
+eyes. "By our Lady not from me."
+
+As soon as they were by themselves Margaret threw her arms round
+Catherine's neck and kissed her.
+
+"Mother, mother, I am not quite a happy woman, but oh I am a proud one."
+
+And she vowed on her knees never by word or deed to let her love come
+between this young saint and heaven.
+
+Reader, did you ever stand by the sea-shore after a storm, when the
+wind happens to have gone down suddenly? The waves cannot cease with
+their cause; indeed, they seem at first to the ear to lash the sounding
+shore more fiercely than while the wind blew. Still we are conscious
+that inevitable calm has begun, and is now but rocking them to sleep. So
+it was with those true and tempest-tossed lovers from that eventful
+night, when they went hand in hand beneath the stars from Gouda
+hermitage to Gouda manse.
+
+At times a loud wave would every now and then come roaring; but it was
+only memory's echo of the tempest that had swept their lives: the storm
+itself was over; and the boiling waters began from that moment to go
+down, down, down, gently, but inevitably.
+
+This image is to supply the place of interminable details, that would be
+tedious and tame. What best merits attention at present, is the general
+situation, and the strange complication of feeling that arose from it.
+History itself, though a far more daring storyteller than romance,
+presents few things so strange[M] as the footing on which Gerard and
+Margaret now lived for many years. United by present affection, past
+familiarity, and a marriage irregular, but legal; separated by holy
+Church and by their own consciences which sided unreservedly with holy
+Church: separated by the Church, but united by a living pledge of
+affection, lawful in every sense at its date.
+
+And living but a few miles from one another, and she calling his mother
+"mother." For some years she always took her boy to Gouda on Sunday,
+returning home at dark. Go when she would, it was always fete at Gouda
+manse, and she was received like a little queen. Catherine, in these
+days, was nearly always with her, and Eli very often. Tergou had so
+little to tempt them, compared with Rotterdam; and at last they left it
+altogether, and set up in the capital.
+
+And thus the years glided: so barren now of striking incidents, so void
+of great hopes, and free from great fears, and so like one another,
+that without the help of dates I could scarcely indicate the progress of
+time.
+
+However, early next year, 1471, the Duchess of Burgundy with the open
+dissent, but secret connivance of the duke, raised forces to enable her
+dethroned brother, Edward the Fourth of England, to invade that kingdom;
+our old friend Denys thus enlisted, and passing through Rotterdam to the
+ships, heard on his way that Gerard was a priest, and Margaret alone. On
+this he told Margaret that marriage was not a habit of his, but that as
+his comrade had put it out of his own power to keep troth, he felt bound
+to offer to keep it for him; "for a comrade's honour is dear to us as
+our own," said he.
+
+She stared, then smiled, "I choose rather to be still thy she-comrade,"
+said she; "closer acquainted we might not agree so well." And in her
+character of she-comrade she equipped him with a new sword of Antwerp
+make, and a double handful of silver. "I give thee no gold," said she;
+"for 'tis thrown away as quick as silver, and harder to win back. Heaven
+send thee safe out of all thy perils; there be famous fair women yonder
+to beguile thee with their faces, as well as men to hash thee with their
+axes."
+
+He was hurried on board at La Vere, and never saw Gerard at that time.
+
+In 1473, Sybrandt began to fail. His pitiable existence had been
+sweetened by his brother's inventive tenderness, and his own contented
+spirit, which, his antecedents considered, was truly remarkable. As for
+Gerard, the day never passed that he did not devote two hours to him;
+reading or singing to him, praying with him, and drawing him about in a
+soft carriage Margaret and he had made between them. When the poor soul
+found his end near, he begged Margaret might be sent for; she came at
+once, and almost with his last breath he sought once more that
+forgiveness she had long ago accorded. She remained by him till the
+last; and he died blessing and blessed, in the arms of the two true
+lovers he had parted for life. Tantum religio scit suadere boni.
+
+1474 there was a wedding in Margaret's house. Luke Peterson and Reicht
+Heynes.
+
+This may seem less strange if I give the purport of the dialogue
+interrupted some time back.
+
+Margaret went on to say: "Then in that case you can easily make him
+fancy you, and for my sake you must, for my conscience it pricketh me
+and I must needs fit him with a wife, the best I know." Margaret then
+instructed Reicht to be always kind and good humoured to Luke; and she
+would be a model of peevishness to him. "But be not thou so simple as
+run me down," said she. "Leave that to me. Make thou excuses for me; I
+will make myself black enow."
+
+Reicht received these instructions like an order to sweep a room, and
+obeyed them punctually.
+
+When they had subjected poor Luke to this double artillery for a couple
+of years, he got to look upon Margaret as his fog and wind, and Reicht
+as his sunshine: and his affections transferred themselves, he scarce
+knew how or when.
+
+On the wedding day Reicht embraced Margaret and thanked her almost with
+tears. "He was always my fancy," said she, "from the first hour I
+clapped eyes on him."
+
+"Heyday, you never told me that. What, Reicht, are you as sly as the
+rest?"
+
+"Nay, nay," said Reicht eagerly; "but I never thought you would really
+part with him to me. In my country the mistress looks to be served
+before the maid."
+
+Margaret settled them in her shop, and gave them half the profits.
+
+1476 and 7, were years of great trouble to Gerard, whose conscience
+compelled him to oppose the Pope. His Holiness, siding with the Grey
+Friars in their determination to swamp every palpable distinction
+between the Virgin Mary and her Son, bribed the Christian world into his
+crotchet by proffering pardon of all sins to such as would add to the
+Ave Mary, this clause: "and blessed be thy Mother Anna, from whom,
+without blot of original sin, proceeded thy virgin flesh."
+
+Gerard, in common with many of the northern clergy, held this sentence
+to be flat heresy; he not only refused to utter it in his church, but
+warned his parishioners against using it in private; and he refused to
+celebrate the new feast the Pope invented at the same time, viz., "the
+feast of the miraculous conception of the Virgin."
+
+But this drew upon him the bitter enmity of the Franciscans, and they
+were strong enough to put him into more than one serious difficulty, and
+inflict many a little mortification on him.
+
+In emergencies he consulted Margaret, and she always did one of two
+things, either she said, "I do not see my way"; and refused to guess;
+or else she gave him advice that proved wonderfully sagacious. He had
+genius; but she had marvellous tact.
+
+And where affection came in and annihilated the woman's judgment, he
+stepped in his turn to her aid. Thus, though she knew she was spoiling
+little Gerard, and Catherine was ruining him for life, she would not
+part with him, but kept him at home, and his abilities uncultivated. And
+there was a shrewd boy of nine years, instead of learning to work and
+obey, playing about and learning selfishness from their infinite
+unselfishness, and tyrannizing with a rod of iron over two women, both
+of them sagacious and spirited, but reduced by their fondness for him to
+the exact level of idiots.
+
+Gerard saw this with pain, and interfered with mild but firm
+remonstrance; and after a considerable struggle prevailed, and got
+little Gerard sent to the best school in Europe, kept by one Haaghe at
+Deventer: this was in 1477. Many tears were shed, but the great progress
+the boy made at that famous school reconciled Margaret in some degree,
+and the fidelity of Reicht Heynes, now her partner in business, enabled
+her to spend weeks at a time hovering over her boy at Deventer.
+
+And so the years glided; and these two persons subjected to as strong
+and constant temptation as can well be conceived, were each other's
+guardian angels; and not each other's tempters.
+
+To be sure the well greased morality of the next century, which taught
+that solemn vows to God are sacred in proportion as they are reasonable,
+had at that time entered no single mind; and the alternative to these
+two minds was self-denial, or sacrilege.
+
+It was a strange thing to hear them talk with unrestrained tenderness to
+one another of their boy; and an icy barrier between themselves all the
+time.
+
+Eight years had now passed thus, and Gerard, fairly compared with men in
+general, was happy.
+
+But Margaret was not.
+
+The habitual expression of her face was a sweet pensiveness; but
+sometimes she was irritable and a little petulant. She even snapped
+Gerard now and then. And, when she went to see him, if a monk was with
+him, she would turn her back and go home.
+
+She hated the monks for having parted Gerard and her, and she inoculated
+her boy with a contempt for them which lasted him till his dying day.
+
+Gerard bore with her like an angel. He knew her heart of gold, and hoped
+this ill gust would blow over.
+
+He himself being now the right man in the right place this many years,
+loving his parishioners, and beloved by them, and occupied from morn
+till night in good works, recovered the natural cheerfulness of his
+disposition. To tell the truth, a part of his jocoseness was a blind: he
+was the greatest peacemaker, except Mr. Harmony in the play, that ever
+was born. He reconciled more enemies in ten years than his predecessors
+had done in three hundred; and one of his manoeuvres in the
+peace-making art was to make the quarrellers laugh at the cause of
+quarrel. So did he undermine the demon of discord. But, independently of
+that, he really loved a harmless joke. He was a wonderful tamer of
+animals, squirrels, hares, fawns, &c. So half in jest, a parishoner who
+had a mule supposed to be possessed with a devil, gave it him, and said,
+"Tame this vagabone, parson, if ye can." Well, in about six months,
+Heaven knows how, he not only tamed Jack, but won his affections to such
+a degree, that Jack would come running to his whistle like a dog. One
+day, having taken shelter from a shower on the stone settle outside a
+certain public-house, he heard a toper inside, a stranger, boasting he
+could take more at a draught than any man in Gouda. He instantly marched
+in, and said, "What, lads, do none of ye take him up for the honour of
+Gouda? Shall it be said that there came hither one from another parish a
+greater sot than any of us? Nay, then, I your parson do take him up. Go
+to; I'll find thee a parishioner shall drink more at a draught than
+thou."
+
+A bet was made: Gerard whistled; in clattered Jack--for he was taught to
+come into a room with the utmost composure--and put his nose into his
+backer's hand.
+
+"A pair of buckets!" shouted Gerard, "and let us see which of these two
+sons of asses can drink most at a draught."
+
+On another occasion two farmers had a dispute whose hay was the best.
+Failing to convince each other, they said, "We'll ask parson;" for by
+this time he was their referee in every mortal thing.
+
+"How lucky you thought of me!" said Gerard. "Why, I have got one staying
+with me who is the best judge of hay in Holland. Bring me a double
+handful apiece."
+
+So when they came, he had them into the parlour, and put each bundle on
+a chair. Then he whistled, and in walked Jack.
+
+"Lord a mercy!" said one of the farmers.
+
+"Jack," said the parson, in the tone of conversation, "just tell us
+which is the best hay of these two."
+
+Jack sniffed them both, and made his choice directly; proving his
+sincerity by eating every morsel. The farmers slapped their thighs, and
+scratched their heads. "To think of we not thinking o' that." And they
+each sent Jack a truss.
+
+So Gerard got to be called the merry parson of Gouda. But Margaret, who
+like most loving women had no more sense of humour than a turtledove,
+took this very ill. "What!" said she to herself, "is there nothing sore
+at the bottom of his heart that he can go about playing the zany?" She
+could understand pious resignation and content, but not mirth, in true
+lovers parted. And whilst her woman's nature was perturbed by this gust
+(and women seem more subject to gusts than men) came that terrible
+animal, a busybody, to work upon her. Catherine saw she was not happy,
+and said to her, "Your boy is gone from you. I would not live alone all
+my days if I were you."
+
+"_He_ is more alone than I," sighed Margaret.
+
+"Oh, a man is a man: but a woman is a woman. You must not think all of
+him and none of yourself. Near is your kirtle, but nearer is your smock.
+Besides, he is a priest, and can do no better. But you are not a priest.
+He has got his parish, and his heart is in that. Bethink thee! Time
+flies; overstay not thy market. Wouldst not like to have three or four
+more little darlings about thy knee now they have robbed thee of poor
+little Gerard, and sent him to yon nasty school?" And so she worked upon
+a mind already irritated.
+
+Margaret had many suitors ready to marry her at a word or even a look,
+and among them two merchants of the better class, Van Schelt and
+Oostwagen. "Take one of those two," said Catherine.
+
+"Well, I will ask Gerard if I may," said Margaret one day with a flood
+of tears; "for I cannot go on the way I am."
+
+"Why, you would never be so simple as ask _him_?"
+
+"Think you I would be so wicked as marry without his leave?"
+
+Accordingly she actually went to Gouda, and after hanging her head, and
+blushing, and crying, and saying she was miserable, told him his mother
+wished her to marry one of those two; and if he approved of her marrying
+at all, would he use his wisdom, and tell her which he thought would he
+the kindest to the little Gerard of those two; for herself she did not
+care what became of her.
+
+Gerard felt as if she had put a soft hand into his body, and torn his
+heart out with it. But the priest with a mighty effort mastered the man.
+In a voice scarcely audible he declined this responsibility. "I am not a
+saint or a prophet," said he; "I might advise thee ill. I shall read the
+marriage service for thee," faltered he; "it is my right. No other would
+pray for thee as I should. But thou must choose for thyself: and oh! let
+me see thee happy. This four months past thou hast not been happy."
+
+"A discontented mind is never happy," said Margaret.
+
+She left him, and he fell on his knees, and prayed for help from above.
+
+Margaret went home pale and agitated. "Mother," said she, "never mention
+it to me again, or we shall quarrel."
+
+"He forbade you? Well, more shame for him, that is all."
+
+"He forbid me? He did not condescend so far. He was as noble as I was
+paltry. He would not choose for me for fear of choosing me an ill
+husband. But he would read the service for my groom and me: that was his
+right. Oh, mother, what a heartless creature I was!"
+
+"Well, I thought not he had that much sense."
+
+"Ah, you go by the poor soul's words: but I rate words as air when the
+face speaketh to mine eye. I saw the priest and the true lover a
+fighting in his dear face, and his cheek pale with the strife, and oh!
+his poor lip trembled as he said the stout-hearted words--Oh! oh! oh!
+oh! oh! oh! oh!" And Margaret burst into a violent passion of tears.
+
+Catherine groaned. "There, give it up without more ado," said she. "You
+two are chained together for life; and, if God is merciful, that won't
+be for long; for what are you? neither maid, wife, nor widow."
+
+"Give it up?" said Margaret: "that was done long ago. All I think of now
+is comforting him; for now I have been and made him unhappy too, wretch
+and monster that I am."
+
+So the next day they both went to Gouda. And Gerard, who had been
+praying for resignation all this time, received her with peculiar
+tenderness as a treasure he was to lose; for she was agitated and eager
+to let him see without words that she would never marry, and she fawned
+on him like a little dog to be forgiven. And as she was going away she
+murmured, "Forgive! and forget! I am but a woman."
+
+He misunderstood her, and said, "All I bargain for is, let me see thee
+content; for pity's sake, let me not see thee unhappy as I have this
+while."
+
+"My darling, you never shall again," said Margaret, with streaming eyes,
+and kissed his hand.
+
+He misunderstood this too at first; but when month after month passed,
+and he heard no more of her marriage, and she came to Gouda
+comparatively cheerful, and was even civil to Father Ambrose, a mild
+benevolent monk from the Dominican convent hard by--then he understood
+her; and one day he invited her to walk alone with him in the sacred
+paddock: and before I relate what passed between them, I must give its
+history. When Gerard had been four or five days at the manse looking out
+of window, he uttered an exclamation of joy. "Mother, Margaret, here is
+one of my birds: another, another; four, six, nine. A miracle! a
+miracle!"
+
+"Why, how can you tell your birds from their fellows?" said Catherine.
+
+"I know every feather in their wings. And see: there is the little
+darling whose beak I gilt, bless it!"
+
+And presently his rapture took a serious turn, and he saw Heaven's
+approbation in this conduct of the birds as he did in the fall of the
+cave. This wonderfully kept alive his friendship for animals: and he
+enclosed a paddock, and drove all the sons of Cain from it with threats
+of excommunication. "On this little spot of earth we'll have no murder,"
+said he. He tamed leverets and partridges, and little birds, and hares,
+and roe-deer. He found a squirrel with a broken leg; he set it with
+infinite difficulty and patience: and during the cure showed it
+repositories of acorns, nuts, chestnuts, &c. And this squirrel got well
+and went off, but visited him in hard weather, and brought a mate, and
+next year little squirrels were found to have imbibed their parents'
+sentiments: and of all these animals each generation was tamer than the
+last. This set the good parson thinking, and gave him the true clue to
+the great successes of mediaeval hermits in taming wild animals.
+
+He kept the key of this paddock, and never let any man but himself
+enter it: nor would he even let little Gerard go there without him or
+Margaret. "Children are all little Cains," said he.
+
+In this oasis then he spoke to Margaret, and said, "Dear Margaret, I
+have thought more than ever of thee of late, and have asked myself why I
+am content, and thou unhappy."
+
+"Because thou art better, wiser, holier, than I; that is all," said
+Margaret, promptly.
+
+"Our lives tell another tale," said Gerard, thoughtfully. "I know thy
+goodness and thy wisdom too well to reason thus perversely. Also I know
+that I love thee as dear as thou, I think, lovest me. Yet am I happier
+than thou. Why is this so?"
+
+"Dear Gerard, I am as happy as a woman can hope to be this side the
+grave."
+
+"Not so happy as I. Now for the reason. First then I am a priest, and
+this, the one great trial and disappointment God giveth me along with so
+many joys, why I share it with a multitude. For alas! I am not the only
+priest by thousands that must never hope for entire earthly happiness.
+Here then thy lot is harder than mine."
+
+"But Gerard, I have my child to love. Thou canst not fill thy heart with
+him as his mother can. So you may set this against yon."
+
+"And I have ta'en him from thee; it was cruel; but he would have broken
+thy heart one day if I had not. Well then, sweet one, I come to where
+the shoe pincheth, methinks. I have my parish, and it keeps my heart in
+a glow from morn till night. There is scarce an emotion that my folk
+stir not up in me many times a day. Often their sorrows make me weep,
+sometimes their perversity kindles a little wrath, and their absurdity
+makes me laugh, and sometimes their flashes of unexpected goodness do
+set me all of a glow: and I could hug 'em. Meantime thou, poor soul,
+sittest with heart--"
+
+"Of lead, Gerard, of very lead."
+
+"See now, how unkind thy lot compared with mine. Now how if thou couldst
+be persuaded to warm thyself at the fire that warmeth me."
+
+"Ah, if I could?"
+
+"Hast but to will it. Come among my folk. Take in thine hand the alms I
+set aside, and give it with kind words; hear their sorrows: they shall
+show you life is full of troubles, and, as thou sayest truly, no man or
+woman without their thorn this side the grave. In-doors I have a map of
+Gouda parish. Not to o'erburden thee at first, I will put twenty housen
+under thee with their folk. What sayest thou? but for thy wisdom I had
+died a dirty maniac, and ne'er seen Gouda manse, nor pious peace. Wilt
+profit in turn by what little wisdom _I_ have to soften her lot to whom
+I do owe all?"
+
+Margaret assented warmly: and a happy thing it was for the little
+district assigned to her: it was as if an angel had descended on them.
+Her fingers were never tired of knitting, or cutting for them, her heart
+of sympathizing with them. And that heart expanded and waved its
+drooping wings; and the glow of good and gentle deeds began to spread
+over it: and she was rewarded in another way, by being brought into more
+contact with Gerard, and also with his spirit. All this time malicious
+tongues had not been idle. "If there is nought between them more than
+meets the eye, why doth she not marry?" &c. And I am sorry to say our
+old friend, Joan Ketel, was one of these coarse sceptics. And now, one
+winter evening she got on a hot scent. She saw Margaret and Gerard
+talking earnestly together on the Boulevard. She whipped behind a tree.
+"Now I'll hear something," said she: and so she did. It was winter;
+there had been one of those tremendous floods followed by a sharp frost,
+and Gerard in despair as to where he should lodge forty or fifty
+houseless folk out of the piercing cold. And now it was, "Oh dear, dear
+Margaret, what shall I do? The manse is full of them, and a sharp frost
+coming on this night."
+
+Margaret reflected, and Joan listened.
+
+"You must lodge them in the church," said Margaret, quietly.
+
+"In the church? Profanation."
+
+"No: charity profanes nothing; not even a church: soils nought, not even
+a church. To-day is but Tuesday. Go save their lives; for a bitter night
+is coming. Take thy stove into the church: and there house them. We will
+dispose of them here and there ere the Lord's day."
+
+"And I could not think of that: bless thee, sweet Margaret; thy mind is
+stronger than mine, and readier."
+
+"Nay, nay, a woman looks but a little way; therefore she sees clear.
+I'll come over myself to-morrow."
+
+And on this they parted with mutual blessings.
+
+Joan glided home remorseful.
+
+And after that she used to check all surmises to their discredit.
+"Beware," she would say, "lest some angel should blister thy tongue.
+Gerard and Margaret paramours? I tell ye they are two saints which meet
+in secret to plot charity to the poor."
+
+In the summer of 1481 Gerard determined to provide against similar
+disasters recurring to his poor. Accordingly he made a great hole in his
+income, and bled his friends (zealous parsons always do that) to build a
+large Xenodochium to receive the victims of flood or fire. Giles, and
+all his friends were kind, but all was not enough; when lo! the
+Dominican monks of Gouda, to whom his parlour and heart had been open
+for years, came out nobly and put down a handsome sum to aid the
+charitable vicar.
+
+"The dear good souls," said Margaret, "who would have thought it!"
+
+"Any one who knows them," said Gerard. "Who more charitable than monks?"
+
+"Go to! They do but give the laity back a pig of their own sow."
+
+"And what more do I? What more doth the duke?"
+
+Then the ambitious vicar must build almshouses for decayed true men in
+their old age, close to the manse, that he might keep, and feed them, as
+well as lodge them. And, his money being gone, he asked Margaret for a
+few thousand bricks, and just took off his coat and turned builder: and
+as he had a good head, and the strength of a Hercules, with the zeal of
+an artist, up rose a couple of almshouses parson built.
+
+And at this work Margaret would sometimes bring him his dinner, and add
+a good bottle of Rhenish. And once, seeing him run up a plank with a
+wheelbarrow full of bricks, which really most bricklayers would have
+gone staggering under, she said, "Times are changed since I had to carry
+little Gerard for thee."
+
+"Ay, dear one, thanks to thee."
+
+When the first home was finished, the question was who they should put
+into it; and being fastidious over it like a new toy, there was much
+hesitation. But an old friend arrived in time to settle this question.
+
+As Gerard was passing a public-house in Rotterdam one day, he heard a
+well-known voice. He looked up, and there was Denys of Burgundy; but
+sadly changed: his beard stained with grey, and his clothes worn and
+ragged; he had a cuirass still, and gauntlets, but a staff instead of an
+arbalest. To the company he appeared to be bragging and boasting; but
+in reality he was giving a true relation of Edward the Fourth's invasion
+of an armed kingdom with 2000 men, and his march through the country
+with armies capable of swallowing him, looking on, his battles at
+Tewkesbury and Barnet, and reoccupation of his capital and kingdom in
+three months after landing at the Humber with a mixed handful of Dutch,
+English, and Burgundians.
+
+In this, the greatest feat of arms the century had seen, Denys had
+shone; and whilst sneering at the warlike pretensions of Charles the
+Bold, a duke with an itch, but no talent, for fighting, and proclaiming
+the English king the first captain of the age, did not forget to exalt
+himself.
+
+Gerard listened with eyes glittering affection and fun. "And now," said
+Denys, "after all these feats, patted on the back by the gallant young
+Prince of Gloucester, and smiled on by the great captain himself, here I
+am lamed for life; by what? by the kick of a horse, and this night I
+know not where I shall lay my tired bones. I had a comrade once in these
+parts, that would not have let me lie far from him. But he turned priest
+and deserted his sweetheart; so 'tis not likely he would remember his
+comrade. And ten years play sad havoc with our hearts, and limbs, and
+all." Poor Denys sighed; and Gerard's bowels yearned over him.
+
+"What words are these?" he said, with a great gulp in his throat. "Who
+grudges a brave soldier supper and bed? Come home with me!"
+
+"Much obliged; but I am no lover of priests."
+
+"Nor I of soldiers; but what is supper and bed between two true men?"
+
+"Not much to you; but something to me. I will come."
+
+"In one hour," said Gerard, and went in high spirits to Margaret, and
+told her the treat in store, and she must come and share it. She must
+drive his mother in his little carriage up to the manse with all speed,
+and make ready an excellent supper.
+
+Then he himself borrowed a cart, and drove Denys up rather slowly, to
+give the women time.
+
+On the road Denys found out this priest was a kind soul; so told him his
+trouble, and confessed his heart was pretty near broken. "The great use
+our stout hearts, and arms, and lives, till we are worn out, and then
+fling us away like broken tools." He sighed deeply, and it cost Gerard
+a great struggle, not to hug him then and there, and tell him. But he
+wanted to do it all like a story book. Who has not had this fancy once
+in his life? Why Joseph had it; all the better for us.
+
+They landed at the little house. It was as clean as a penny; the hearth
+blazing, and supper set.
+
+Denys brightened up. "Is this your house, reverend sir?"
+
+"Well, 'tis my work, and with these hands; but 'tis your house."
+
+"Ah, no such luck," said Denys, with a sigh.
+
+"But I say ay," shouted Gerard. "And what is more. I--" (gulp) "say--"
+(gulp) "Courage, camarade, le diable est mort!"
+
+Denys started, and almost staggered. "Why what?" he stammered,
+"w--wh--who art thou that bringest me back the merry words and merry
+days of my youth?" and he was greatly agitated.
+
+"My poor Denys, I am one whose face is changed, but nought else: to my
+heart, dear trusty comrade, to my heart." And he opened his arms, with
+the tears in his eyes. But Denys came close to him, and peered in his
+face, and devoured every feature; and when he was sure it was really
+Gerard, he uttered a cry so vehement it brought the women running from
+the house, and fell upon Gerard's neck, and kissed him again and again,
+and sank on his knees, and laughed and sobbed with joy so terribly that
+Gerard mourned his folly in doing dramas. But the women with their
+gentle soothing ways soon composed the brave fellow; and he sat smiling,
+and holding Margaret's hand and Gerard's. And they all supped together,
+and went to their beds with hearts warm as a toast, and the broken
+soldier was at peace, and in his own house, and under his comrade's
+wing.
+
+His natural gaiety returned, and he resumed his consigne after eight
+years' disuse, and hobbled about the place enlivening it, but offended
+the parish mortally by calling the adored vicar comrade, and nothing but
+comrade.
+
+When they made a fuss about this to Gerard, he just looked in their
+faces and said, "What does it matter? Break him of swearing, and you
+shall have my thanks."
+
+This year Margaret went to a lawyer to make her will, for without this
+she was told her boy might have trouble some day to get his own, not
+being born in lawful wedlock. The lawyer, however, in conversation,
+expressed a different opinion.
+
+"This is the babble of churchmen," said he. "Yours is a perfect
+marriage, though an irregular one."
+
+He then informed her that throughout Europe, excepting only the southern
+part of Britain, there were three irregular marriages, the highest of
+which was hers, viz., a betrothal before witnesses.
+
+"This," said he, "if not followed by matrimonial intercourse, is a
+marriage complete in form, but incomplete in substance. A person so
+betrothed can forbid any other banns to all eternity. It has, however,
+been set aside where a party so betrothed contrived to get married
+regularly and children were born thereafter. But such a decision was for
+the sake of the offspring, and of doubtful justice. However, in your
+case, the birth of your child closes that door, and your marriage is
+complete both in form and substance. Your course, therefore, is to sue
+for your conjugal rights: it will be the prettiest case of the century.
+The law is on our side, the Church all on theirs. If you come to that,
+the old Batavian law, which _compelled_ the clergy to marry, hath fallen
+into disuse, but was never formally repealed."
+
+Margaret was quite puzzled. "What are you driving at, sir? Who am I to
+go to law with?"
+
+"Who is the defendant? Why, the vicar of Gouda."
+
+"Alas, poor soul! And for what shall I law him?"
+
+"Why, to make him take you into his house, and share bed and board with
+you, to be sure."
+
+Margaret turned red as fire. "Gramercy for your rede," said she. "What,
+is yon a woman's part? Constrain a man to be hers by force? That is
+men's way of wooing, not ours. Say I were so ill a woman as ye think me,
+I should set myself to beguile him, not to law him;" and she departed,
+crimson with shame and indignation.
+
+"There is an impracticable fool for you," said the man of art.
+
+Margaret had her will drawn elsewhere, and made her boy safe from
+poverty, marriage or no marriage.
+
+These are the principal incidents, that in ten whole years befell two
+peaceful lives, which in a much shorter period had been so thronged with
+adventures and emotions.
+
+Their general tenor was now peace, piety, the mild content that lasts,
+not the fierce bliss ever on tiptoe to depart, and, above all, Christian
+charity.
+
+On this sacred ground these two true lovers met with an uniformity and
+a kindness of sentiment, which went far to sooth the wound in their own
+hearts. To pity the same bereaved; to hunt in couples all the ills in
+Gouda, and contrive and scheme together to remedy all that were
+remediable; to use the rare insight into troubled hearts, which their
+own troubles had given them, and use it to make others happier than
+themselves, this was their daily practice. And in this blessed cause
+their passion for one another cooled a little, but their affection
+increased. From the time Margaret entered heart and soul into Gerard's
+pious charities that affection purged itself of all mortal dross. And,
+as it had now long outlived scandal and misapprehension, one would have
+thought that so bright an example of pure self-denying affection was to
+remain long before the world, to show men how nearly religious faith,
+even when not quite reasonable, and religious charity, which is always
+reasonable, could raise two true lovers' hearts to the loving hearts of
+the angels of heaven. But the great Disposer of events ordered
+otherwise.
+
+Little Gerard rejoiced both his parents' hearts by the extraordinary
+progress he made at Alexander Haaghe's famous school at Deventer.
+
+The last time Margaret returned from visiting him she came to Gerard
+flushed with pride. "Oh, Gerard, he will be a great man one day, thanks
+to thy wisdom in taking him from us silly women. A great scholar, one
+Zinthius, came to see the school and judge the scholars, and didn't our
+Gerard stand up, and not a line in Horace or Terence could Zinthius
+cite, but the boy would follow him with the rest. 'Why, 'tis a prodigy,'
+says that great scholar, and there was his poor mother stood by and
+heard it. And he took our Gerard in his arms and kissed him, and what
+think you he said?"
+
+"Nay, I know not."
+
+"'Holland will hear of thee one day: and not Holland only, but all the
+world.' Why, what a sad brow!"
+
+"Sweet one, I am as glad as thou; yet am I uneasy to hear the child is
+wise before his time. I love him dear: but he is thine idol; and Heaven
+doth often break our idols."
+
+"Make thy mind easy," said Margaret. "Heaven will never rob me of my
+child. What I was to suffer in this world I have suffered. For if any
+ill happened to my child or thee I should not live a week. The Lord he
+knows this, and he will leave me my boy."
+
+A month had elapsed after this; but Margaret's words were yet ringing
+in his ears, when, going his daily round of visits to his poor, he was
+told quite incidentally and as mere gossip that the plague was at
+Deventer, carried thither by two sailors from Hamburgh.
+
+His heart turned cold within him. News did not gallop in those days. The
+fatal disease must have been there a long time before the tidings would
+reach Gouda. He sent a line by a messenger to Margaret, telling her that
+he was gone to fetch little Gerard to stay at the manse a little while;
+and would she see a bed prepared; for he should be back next day. And so
+he hoped she would not hear a word of the danger till it was all happily
+over. He borrowed a good horse, and scarce drew rein till he reached
+Deventer, quite late in the afternoon. He went at once to the school.
+The boy had been taken away.
+
+As he left the school he caught sight of Margaret's face at the window
+of a neighbouring house she always lodged at when she came to Deventer.
+
+He ran hastily in to scold her and pack both her and the boy out of the
+place.
+
+To his surprise the servant told him with some hesitation that Margaret
+had been there, but was gone.
+
+"Gone, woman?" said Gerard, indignantly. "Art not ashamed to say so?
+Why, I saw her but now at the window."
+
+"Oh, if you saw her----"
+
+A sweet voice above said, "Stay him not, let him enter." It was
+Margaret.
+
+Gerard ran up the stairs to her, and went to take her hand.
+
+She drew back hastily.
+
+He looked astounded.
+
+"I am displeased," said she, coldly. "What makes you here? Know you not
+the plague is in the town?"
+
+"Ay, dear Margaret: and came straightway to take our boy away."
+
+"What, had he no mother?"
+
+"How you speak to me! I hoped you knew not."
+
+"What, think you I leave my boy unwatched? I pay a trusty woman that
+notes every change in his cheek when I am not here, and lets me know. I
+am his mother."
+
+"Where is he?"
+
+"In Rotterdam, I hope, ere this."
+
+"Thank Heaven! And why are you not there?"
+
+"I am not fit for the journey: never heed me; go you home on the
+instant: I'll follow. For shame of you to come here risking your
+precious life."
+
+"It is not so precious as thine," said Gerard. "But let that pass; we
+will go home together, and on the instant."
+
+"Nay, I have some matters to do in the town. Go thou at once; and I will
+follow forthwith."
+
+"Leave thee alone in a plague-stricken town? To whom speak you, dear
+Margaret?"
+
+"Nay, then, we shall quarrel, Gerard."
+
+"Methinks I see Margaret and Gerard quarreling! Why, it takes two to
+quarrel, and we are but one."
+
+With this Gerard smiled on her sweetly. But there was no kind responsive
+glance. She looked cold, gloomy, and troubled. He sighed, and sat
+patiently down opposite her with his face all puzzled and saddened. He
+said nothing: for he felt sure she would explain her capricious conduct,
+or it would explain itself.
+
+Presently she rose hastily, and tried to reach her bedroom: but on the
+way she staggered and put out her hand. He ran to her with a cry of
+alarm. She swooned in his arms. He laid her gently on the ground, and
+beat her cold hands, and ran to her bedroom, and fetched water, and
+sprinkled her pale face. His own was scarce less pale; for in a basin he
+had seen water stained with blood: it alarmed him, he knew not why. She
+was a long time ere she revived, and when she did she found Gerard
+holding her hand, and bending over her with a look of infinite concern
+and tenderness. She seemed at first as if she responded to it, but the
+next moment her eye dilated, and she cried, "Ah, wretch, leave my hand;
+how dare you touch me?"
+
+"Heaven help her!" said Gerard. "She is not herself."
+
+"You will not leave me, then, Gerard?" said she, faintly. "Alas! why do
+I ask? Would I leave thee if thou wert----At least, touch me not, and
+then I will let thee abide, and see the last of poor Margaret. She ne'er
+spoke harsh to thee before, sweetheart; and she never will again."
+
+"Alas! what mean these dark words, these wild and troubled looks?" said
+Gerard, clasping his hands.
+
+"My poor Gerard," said Margaret, "forgive me that I spoke so to thee. I
+am but a woman, and would have spared thee a sight will make thee weep."
+She burst into tears. "Ah, me!" she cried, weeping, "that I cannot keep
+grief from thee: there is a great sorrow before my darling, and this
+time I shall not be able to come and dry his eyes."
+
+"Let it come, Margaret, so it touch not thee," said Gerard, trembling.
+
+"Dearest," said Margaret, solemnly, "call now religion to thine aid and
+mine. I must have died before thee one day, or else outlived thee and so
+died of grief."
+
+"Died? thou die? I will never let thee die. Where is thy pain? What is
+thy trouble?"
+
+"The plague," said she, calmly. Gerard uttered a cry of horror, and
+started to his feet: she read his thought. "Useless," said she, quietly.
+"My nose hath bled; none ever yet survived to whom that came along with
+the plague. Bring no fools hither to babble over the body they cannot
+save. I am but a woman; I love not to be stared at; let none see me die
+but thee."
+
+And even with this a convulsion seized her, and she remained sensible
+but speechless a long time.
+
+And now for the first time Gerard began to realize the frightful truth,
+and he ran wildly to and fro, and cried to Heaven for help as drowning
+men cry to their fellow-creatures. She raised herself on her arm and set
+herself to quiet him.
+
+She told him she had known the torture of hopes and fears, and was
+resolved to spare him that agony. "I let my mind dwell too much on the
+danger," said she, "and so opened my brain to it; through which door
+when this subtle venom enters it makes short work. I shall not be
+spotted or loathsome, my poor darling; God is good and spares thee that;
+but in twelve hours I shall be a dead woman. Ah, look not so, but be a
+man: be a priest! Waste not one precious minute over my body; it is
+doomed; but comfort my parting soul."
+
+Gerard sick and cold at heart kneeled down, and prayed for help from
+Heaven to do his duty.
+
+When he rose from his knees his face was pale and old, but deadly calm
+and patient. He went softly and brought her bed into the room, and laid
+her gently down and supported her head with pillows. Then he prayed by
+her side the prayers for the dying, and she said Amen to each prayer.
+Then for some hours she wandered, but when the fell disease had quite
+made sure of its prey, her mind cleared; and she begged Gerard to shrive
+her; "For oh my conscience it is laden," said she, sadly.
+
+"Confess thy sins to me, my daughter; let there be no reserve."
+
+"My father," said she, sadly, "I have one great sin on my breast this
+many years. E'en now that death is at my heart I can scarce own it. But
+the Lord is debonair: if thou wilt pray to him, perchance he may forgive
+me."
+
+"Confess it first, my daughter."
+
+"I--alas!"
+
+"Confess it!"
+
+"I deceived thee. This many years I have deceived thee."
+
+Here tears interrupted her speech.
+
+"Courage, my daughter, courage," said Gerard, kindly, overpowering the
+lover in the priest.
+
+She hid her face in her hands, and with many sighs told him it was she
+who had broken down the hermit's cave with the help of Jorian Ketel. "I,
+shallow, did it but to hinder thy return thither; but when thou sawest
+therein the finger of God, I played the traitress, and said, 'While he
+thinks so he will ne'er leave Gouda manse;' and I held my tongue. Oh
+false heart."
+
+"Courage, my daughter; thou dost exaggerate a trivial fault."
+
+"Ah, but 'tis not all. The birds."
+
+"Well?"
+
+"They followed thee not to Gouda by miracle but by my treason. I said,
+he will ne'er be quite happy without his birds that visited him in his
+cell; and I was jealous of them, and cried, and said, these foul little
+things, they are my child's rivals. And I bought loaves of bread, and
+Jorian and me we put crumbs at the cave door, and thence went sprinkling
+them all the way to the manse, and there a heap. And my wiles succeeded,
+and they came, and thou wast glad, and I was pleased to see thee glad;
+and when thou sawest in my guile the finger of Heaven, wicked, deceitful
+I did hold my tongue. But _die_ deceiving thee? ah, no, I could not.
+Forgive me if thou canst; I was but a woman; I knew no better at the
+time. 'Twas writ in my bosom with a very sunbeam, ''Tis good for him to
+bide at Gouda manse.'"
+
+"Forgive thee, sweet innocent!" sobbed Gerard, "what have _I_ to
+forgive? Thou hadst a foolish froward child to guide to his own weal,
+and didst all this for the best. I thank thee and bless thee. But as thy
+confessor, all deceit is ill in Heaven's pure eye. Therefore thou hast
+done well to confess and report it; and even on thy confession and
+penitence the Church through me absolves thee. Pass to thy graver
+faults."
+
+"My graver faults? Alas! alas! Why, what have I done to compare? I am
+not an ill woman, not a very ill one. If He can forgive me deceiving
+thee, He can well forgive me all the rest ever I did."
+
+Being gently pressed, she said she was to blame not to have done more
+good in the world. "I had just begun to do a little," she said; "and now
+I must go. But I repine not, since 'tis Heaven's will. Only I am so
+afeard thou wilt miss me." And at this she could not restrain her tears,
+though she tried hard.
+
+Gerard struggled with his as well as he could; and knowing her life of
+piety, purity, and charity, and seeing that she could not in her present
+state realize any sin but her having deceived _him_, gave her full
+absolution. Then he put the crucifix in her hand, and, while he
+concentrated the oil, bade her fix her mind neither on her merits nor
+her demerits, but on Him who died for her on the tree.
+
+She obeyed him, with a look of confiding love and submission.
+
+And he touched her eye with the consecrated oil, and prayed aloud beside
+her.
+
+Soon after she dozed.
+
+He watched beside her, more dead than alive himself.
+
+When the day broke she awoke, and seemed to acquire some energy. She
+begged him to look in her box for her marriage lines, and for a picture,
+and bring them both to her. He did so. She then entreated him by all
+they had suffered for each other, to ease her mind by making a solemn
+vow to execute her dying requests.
+
+He vowed to obey them to the letter.
+
+"Then, Gerard, let no creature come here to lay me out. I could not bear
+to be stared at; my very corpse would blush. Also I would not be made a
+monster of for the worms to sneer at as well as feed on. Also my very
+clothes are tainted, and shall to earth with me. I am a physician's
+daughter: and ill becomes me kill folk, being dead, which did so little
+good to men in the days of health; wherefore lap me in lead, the way I
+am; and bury me deep! yet not so deep but what one day thou mayest find
+the way, and lay thy bones by mine.
+
+"Whiles I lived I went to Gouda but once or twice a week. It cost me not
+to go each day. Let me gain this by dying, to be always at dear
+Gouda--in the green kirkyard.
+
+"Also they do say the spirit hovers where the body lies: I would have my
+spirit hover near thee, and the kirkyard is not far from the manse. I am
+so afeard some ill will happen thee, Margaret being gone.
+
+"And see, with mine own hands I place my marriage lines in my bosom. Let
+no living hand move them, on pain of thy curse and mine. Then, when the
+angel comes for me at the last day, he shall say, this is an honest
+woman, she hath her marriage lines (for you know I am your lawful wife
+though holy Church hath come between us), and he will set me where the
+honest women be. I will not sit among ill women, no, not in heaven; for
+their mind is not my mind, nor their soul my soul. I have stood,
+unbeknown, at my window, and heard their talk."
+
+For some time she was unable to say any more, but made signs to him that
+she had not done.
+
+At last she recovered her breath, and bade him look at the picture.
+
+It was the portrait he had made of her when they were young together,
+and little thought to part so soon. He held it in his hands and looked
+at it, but could scarce see it. He had left it in fragments, but now it
+was whole.
+
+"They cut it to pieces, Gerard. But see, Love mocked at their knives.
+
+"I implore thee with my dying breath, let this picture hang ever in
+thine eye.
+
+"I have heard that such as die of the plague, unspotted, yet after death
+spots have been known to come out; and, oh, I could not bear thy last
+memory of me to be so. Therefore, as soon as the breath is out of my
+body, cover my face with this handkerchief, and look at me no more till
+we meet again, 'twill not be so very long. O promise."
+
+"I promise," said Gerard, sobbing.
+
+"But look on this picture instead. Forgive me; I am but a woman. I could
+not bear my face to lie a foul thing in thy memory. Nay, I must have
+thee still think me as fair as I was true. Hast called me an angel once
+or twice; but be just! did I not still tell thee I was no angel, but
+only a poor simple woman, that whiles saw clearer than thou because she
+looked but a little way, and that loves thee dearly, and never loved but
+thee, and now with her dying breath prays thee indulge her in this, thou
+that art a man."
+
+"I will. I will. Each word, each wish is sacred."
+
+"Bless thee! Bless thee! So then the eyes that now can scarce see thee,
+they are so troubled by the pest, and the lips that shall not touch thee
+to taint thee, will still be before thee, as they were when we were
+young and thou didst love me."
+
+"When I did love thee, Margaret! Oh, never loved I thee as now."
+
+"Hast not told me so of late."
+
+"Alas! hath love no voice but words? I was a priest; I had charge of thy
+soul; the sweet offices of a pure love were lawful; words of love
+imprudent at the least. But now the good fight is won, ah me! Oh my
+love, if thou hast lived doubting of thy Gerard's heart, die not so: for
+never was woman loved so tenderly as thou this ten years past."
+
+"Calm thyself, dear one," said the dying woman, with a heavenly smile.
+"I know it: only being but a woman, I could not die happy till I had
+heard thee say so. Ah, I have pined ten years for those sweet words.
+Hast said them; and this is the happiest hour of my life. I had to die
+to get them; well, I grudge not the price."
+
+From this moment a gentle complacency rested on her fading features. But
+she did not speak.
+
+Then Gerard, who had loved her soul so many years, feared lest she
+should expire with a mind too fixed on earthly affection. "Oh my
+daughter," he cried, "my dear daughter, if indeed thou lovest me as I
+love thee, give me not the pain of seeing thee die with thy pious soul
+fixed on mortal things.
+
+"Dearest lamb of all my fold, for whose soul I must answer, oh think not
+now of mortal love, but of His who died for thee on the tree. Oh let thy
+last look be heavenwards, thy last word a word of prayer."
+
+She turned a look of gratitude and obedience on him. "What saint?" she
+murmured: meaning, doubtless, "what saint should she invoke as an
+intercessor."
+
+"He to whom the saints themselves do pray."
+
+She turned on him one more sweet look of love and submission, and put
+her pretty hands together in prayer like a child.
+
+"Jesu!"
+
+This blessed word was her last. She lay with her eyes heavenwards, and
+her hands put together.
+
+Gerard prayed fervently for her passing spirit. And when he had prayed a
+long time with his head averted, not to see her last breath, all seemed
+unnaturally still. He turned his head fearfully. It was so.
+
+She was gone.
+
+Nothing left him now, but the earthly shell of as constant, pure, and
+loving a spirit, as ever adorned the earth.
+
+FOOTNOTE:
+
+[M] Let me not be understood to apply this to the bare outline of the
+relation. Many bishops and priests, and not a few popes had wives and
+children as laymen; and entering orders were parted from the wives and
+not from the children. But in the case before the reader are the
+additional features of a strong surviving attachment on both sides, and
+of neighbourhood, besides that here the man had been led into holy
+orders by a false statement of the woman's death. On a summary of all
+the essential features, the situation was, to the best of my belief,
+unique.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XCIX
+
+
+A PRIEST is never more thoroughly a priest than in the chamber of death.
+Gerard did the last offices of the Church for the departed, just as he
+should have done them for his smallest parishioner. He did this
+mechanically, then sat down stupefied by the sudden and tremendous blow;
+and not yet realizing the pangs of bereavement. Then in a transport of
+religious enthusiasm he kneeled and thanked Heaven for her Christian
+end.
+
+And then all his thought was to take her away from strangers, and lay
+her in his own churchyard. That very evening a covered cart with one
+horse started for Gouda, and in it was a coffin, and a broken-hearted
+man lying with his arms and chin resting on it.
+
+The mourner's short-lived energy had exhausted itself in the necessary
+preparations, and now he lay crushed, clinging to the cold lead that
+held her.
+
+The man, of whom the cart was hired, walked by the horse's head, and did
+not speak to him, and when he baited the horse spoke but in a whisper,
+respecting that mute agony. But, when he stopped for the night, he and
+the landlord made a well-meaning attempt to get the mourner away to take
+some rest and food. But Gerard repulsed them, and, when they persisted,
+almost snarled at them, like a faithful dog, and clung to the cold lead
+all night. So then they drew a cloak over him, and left him in peace.
+
+And at noon the sorrowful cart came up to the manse, and there were full
+a score of parishioners collected with one little paltry trouble or
+another. They had missed the parson already. And when they saw what it
+was, and saw their healer so stricken down, they raised a loud wail of
+grief, and it roused him from his lethargy of woe, and he saw where he
+was, and their faces, and tried to speak to them. "Oh my children! my
+children!" he cried; but choked with anguish could say no more.
+
+Yet the next day, spite of all remonstrances, he buried her himself, and
+read the service with a voice that only trembled now and then. Many
+tears fell upon her grave. And when the service ended he stayed there
+standing like a statue, and the people left the churchyard out of
+respect.
+
+He stood like one in a dream, till the sexton, who was, as most men are,
+a fool, began to fill in the grave without giving him due warning.
+
+But at the sound of earth falling on her, Gerard uttered a piercing
+scream.
+
+The sexton forbore.
+
+Gerard staggered and put his hand to his breast. The sexton supported
+him, and called for help.
+
+Jorian Ketel, who lingered near, mourning his benefactress, ran into the
+churchyard, and the two supported Gerard into the manse.
+
+"Ah, Jorian! good Jorian!" said he, "something snapped within me; I felt
+it, and I heard it: here Jorian, here:" and he put his hand to his
+breast.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER C
+
+
+A FORTNIGHT after this a pale, bowed figure entered the Dominican
+convent in the suburbs of Gouda, and sought speech with brother Ambrose,
+who governed the convent as deputy, the prior having lately died, and
+his successor, though appointed, not having arrived.
+
+The sick man was Gerard, come to end life as he began it. He entered as
+a novice, on probation; but the truth was, he was a failing man, and
+knew it, and came there to die in peace, near kind and gentle Ambrose
+his friend, and the other monks to whom his house and heart had always
+been open.
+
+His manse was more than he could bear; it was too full of reminiscences
+of her.
+
+Ambrose, who knew his value, and his sorrow, was not without a kindly
+hope of curing him, and restoring him to his parish. With this view he
+put him in a comfortable cell over the gateway, and forbade him to fast
+or practise any austerities.
+
+But in a few days the new prior arrived, and proved a very Tartar. At
+first he was absorbed in curing abuses, and tightening the general
+discipline; but one day hearing the vicar of Gouda had entered the
+convent as a novice, he said, "'Tis well; let him first give up his
+vicarage then, or go: I'll no fat parsons in my house." The prior then
+sent for Gerard, and he went to him; and the moment they saw one another
+they both started.
+
+"Clement!"
+
+"Jerome!"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER CI
+
+
+JEROME was as morose as ever in his general character; but he had
+somewhat softened towards Gerard. All the time he was in England he had
+missed him more than he thought possible, and since then had often
+wondered what had become of him. What he heard in Gouda raised his
+feeble brother in his good opinion: above all that he had withstood the
+Pope and the Minorites on "the infernal heresy of the immaculate
+conception," as he called it. But when one of his young monks told him
+with tears in his eyes the cause of Gerard's illness, all his contempt
+revived. "Dying for a woman?"
+
+He determined to avert this scandal: he visited Clement twice a day in
+his cell, and tried all his old influence and all his eloquence to
+induce him to shake off this unspiritual despondency, and not rob the
+Church of his piety and his eloquence at so critical a period.
+
+Gerard heard him, approved his reasoning, admired his strength,
+confessed his own weakness, and continued visibly to wear away to the
+land of the leal. One day Jerome told him he had heard his story, and
+heard it with pride. "But now," said he, "you spoil it all, Clement:
+for this is the triumph of earthly passion. Better have yielded to it,
+and repented, than resist it while she lived, and succumb under it now
+body and soul."
+
+"Dear Jerome," said Clement, so sweetly as to rob his remonstrance of
+the tone of remonstrance, "here, I think, you do me some injustice.
+Passion there is none: but a deep affection, for which I will not blush
+here, since I shall not blush for it in Heaven. Bethink thee, Jerome;
+the poor dog that dies of grief on his master's grave, is he guilty of
+passion? Neither am I. Passion had saved my life, and lost my soul. She
+was my good angel: she sustained me in my duty and charity; her face
+encouraged me in the pulpit: her lips soothed me under ingratitude. She
+intertwined herself with all that was good in my life: and after leaning
+on her so long, I could not go on alone. And, dear Jerome, believe me I
+am no rebel against Heaven. It is God's will to release me. When they
+threw the earth upon her poor coffin, something snapped within my bosom
+here that mended may not be. I heard it and I felt it. And from that
+time, Jerome, no food that I put in my mouth had any savour. With my
+eyes bandaged now I could not tell thee which was bread, and which was
+flesh, by eating of it."
+
+"Holy saints!"
+
+"And again, from that same hour my deep dejection left me, and I smiled
+again. I often smile--why? I read it thus: He in whose hands are the
+issues of life and death gave me that minute the great summons; 'twas
+some cord of life snapped in me. He is very pitiful. I should have lived
+unhappy; but He said 'No; enough is done, enough is suffered; poor,
+feeble, loving servant, thy shortcomings are forgiven, thy sorrows touch
+thine end; come thou to thy rest!' I come, Lord, I come."
+
+Jerome groaned. "The Church had ever her holy but feeble servants," he
+said. "Now would I give ten years of my life to save thine. But I see it
+may not be. Die in peace."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+And so it was that in a few days more Gerard lay a dying in a frame of
+mind so holy and happy, that more than one aged saint was there to
+garner his dying words. In the evening he had seen Giles, and begged him
+not to let poor Jack starve: and to see that little Gerard's trustees
+did their duty, and to kiss his parents for him, and to send Denys to
+his friends in Burgundy: "Poor thing, he will feel so strange here
+without his comrade." And after that he had an interview with Jerome
+alone. What passed between them was never distinctly known; but it must
+have been something remarkable; for Jerome went from the door with his
+hands crossed on his breast, his high head lowered, and sighing as he
+went.
+
+The two monks, that watched with him till matins, related that all
+through the night he broke out from time to time in pious exclamations,
+and praises, and thanksgivings: only once they said he wandered, and
+thought he saw her walking in green meadows with other spirits clad in
+white, and beckoning him; and they all smiled and beckoned him. And both
+these monks said (but it might have been fancy) that just before dawn
+there came three light taps against the wall, one after another, very
+slow; and the dying man heard them, and said "I come, love, I come."
+
+This much is certain, that Gerard did utter these words, and prepare for
+his departure, having uttered them. He sent for all the monks who at
+that hour were keeping vigil. They came, and hovered like gentle spirits
+round him with holy words. Some prayed in silence for him with their
+faces touching the ground, others tenderly supported his head. But when
+one of them said something about his life of self-denial and charity, he
+stopped him, and addressing them all said, "My dear brethren, take note
+that he, who here dies so happy, holds not these newfangled doctrines of
+man's merit. Oh, what a miserable hour were this to me an if I did! Nay,
+but I hold with the Apostles, and their pupils in the Church, the
+ancient fathers, that 'we are justified, not by our own wisdom, or
+piety, or the works we have done in holiness of heart, but by
+faith.'"[N]
+
+Then there was a silence, and the monks looked at one another
+significantly.
+
+"Please you sweep the floor," said the dying Christian in a voice to
+which all its clearness and force seemed supernaturally restored.
+
+They instantly obeyed, not without a sentiment of awe and curiosity.
+
+"Make me a great cross with wood ashes."
+
+They strewed the ashes in form of a great cross upon the floor.
+
+"Now lay me down on it: for so will I die."
+
+And they took him gently from his bed, and laid him on the cross of wood
+ashes.
+
+"Shall we spread out thine arms, dear brother?"
+
+"Now God forbid! Am I worthy of that?"
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+He lay silent, but with his eyes raised in ecstasy.
+
+Presently he spoke half to them, half to himself. "Oh," he said with a
+subdued but concentrated rapture, "I feel it buoyant. It lifts me
+floating in the sky whence my merits had sunk me like lead."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Day broke; and displayed his face cast upward in silent rapture, and his
+hands together; like Margaret's.
+
+And just about the hour she died he spoke his last word in this world.
+
+"Jesu!"
+
+And even with that word--he fell asleep.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+They laid him out for his last resting-place.
+
+Under his linen they found a horse-hair shirt. "Ah!" cried the young
+monks, "behold a saint!"
+
+Under the hair cloth they found a long thick tress of auburn hair.
+
+They started, and were horrified; and a babel of voices arose, some
+condemning, some excusing.
+
+In the midst of which Jerome came in, and, hearing the dispute, turned
+to an ardent young monk called Basil, who was crying scandal the
+loudest. "Basil," said he, "is she alive or dead that owned this hair?"
+
+"How may I know, father?"
+
+"Then for aught you know it may be the relic of a saint?"
+
+"Certes it may be," said Basil sceptically.
+
+"You have then broken our rule, which saith 'Put ill construction on no
+act done by a brother which can be construed innocently.' Who are you to
+judge such a man as this was? go to your cell, and stir not out for a
+week by way of penance."
+
+He then carried off the lock of hair.
+
+[Illustration: THE DEATH OF GERARD]
+
+And when the coffin was to be closed, he cleared the cell: and put the
+tress upon the dead man's bosom. "There, Clement," said he to the dead
+face. And set himself a penance for doing it; and nailed the coffin up
+himself.
+
+The next day Gerard was buried in Gouda churchyard. The monks followed
+him in procession from the convent. Jerome, who was evidently carrying
+out the wishes of the deceased, read the service. The grave was a deep
+one, and at the bottom of it was a lead coffin. Poor Gerard's, light as
+a feather (so wasted was he), was lowered, and placed by the side of it.
+
+After the service Jerome said a few words to the crowd of parishioners
+that had come to take the last look at their best friend. When he spoke
+of the virtues of the departed, loud wailing and weeping burst forth,
+and tears fell upon the coffin like rain.
+
+The monks went home. Jerome collected them in the refectory and spoke to
+them thus: "We have this day laid a saint in the earth. The convent will
+keep his trentals, but will feast, not fast; for our good brother is
+freed from the burden of the flesh; his labours are over, and he has
+entered into his joyful rest. I alone shall fast, and do penance: for to
+my shame I say it, I was unjust to him, and knew not his worth, till it
+was too late. And you, young monks, be not curious to inquire whether a
+lock he bore on his bosom was a token of pure affection, or the relic of
+a saint; but remember the heart he wore beneath: most of all, fix your
+eyes upon his life and conversation; and follow them an ye may: for he
+was a holy man."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Thus after life's fitful fever these true lovers were at peace. The
+grave, kinder to them than the Church, united them for ever: and now a
+man of another age and nation, touched with their fate, has laboured to
+build their tombstone, and rescue them from long and unmerited oblivion.
+
+He asks for them your sympathy, but not your pity.
+
+No, put this story to a wholesome use.
+
+Fiction must often give false views of life and death. Here as it
+happens, curbed by history, she gives you true ones. Let the barrier,
+that kept these true lovers apart, prepare you for this, that here on
+earth there will nearly always be some obstacle or other to your perfect
+happiness; to their early death apply your Reason and your Faith, by way
+of exercise and preparation. For if you cannot bear to be told that
+these died young, who, had they lived a hundred years, would still be
+dead, how shall you bear to see the gentle, the loving, and the true,
+glide from your own bosom to the grave, and fly from your house to
+heaven?
+
+Yet this is in store for you. In every age the Master of life and death,
+who is kinder as well as wiser than we are, has transplanted to heaven,
+young, earth's sweetest flowers.
+
+I ask your sympathy then for their rare constancy, and pure affection,
+and then cruel separation by a vile heresy[O] in the bosom of the
+Church; but not your pity for their early, but happy end.
+
+Beati sunt qui in Domino moriuntur.
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[N] He was citing from Clement of Rome--
+
+[Greek: 'Ou di' heauton dikaioumetha oude dia tes hemeteras sophias, e
+eusebeias, e ergon hon kateirgasametha en hosioteti kardias, alla dia
+tes pisteos.'----_Epist. ad Corinth._, i. 32.]
+
+[O] Celibacy of the Clergy, an invention truly fiendish.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER CII
+
+
+IN compliance with a custom I despise, but have not the spirit to
+resist, I linger on the stage to pick up the smaller fragments of
+humanity I have scattered about: _i. e._ some of them, for the wayside
+characters have no claim on me; they have served their turn if they have
+persuaded the reader that Gerard travelled from Holland to Rome through
+human beings, and not through a population of dolls.
+
+Eli and Catherine lived to a great age: lived so long that both Gerard
+and Margaret grew to be dim memories. Giles also was longaevous; he went
+to the court of Bavaria, and was alive there at ninety, but had somehow
+turned into bones and leather, trumpet toned.
+
+Cornelis, free from all rivals, and forgiven long ago by his mother, who
+clung to him more and more now all her brood was scattered, waited, and
+waited, and waited, for his parents' decease. But Catherine's shrewd
+word came true: ere she and her mate wore out, this worthy rusted away.
+At sixty-five he lay dying of old age in his mother's arms, a hale woman
+of eighty-six. He had lain unconscious a while; but came to himself _in
+articulo mortis_, and seeing her near him, told her how he would
+transform the shop and premises as soon as they should be his. "Yes, my
+darling," said the poor old woman, soothingly; and in another minute he
+was clay: and that clay was followed to the grave by all the feet whose
+shoes he had waited for.
+
+Denys, broken-hearted at his comrade's death, was glad to return to
+Burgundy, and there a small pension the court allowed him kept him until
+unexpectedly he inherited a considerable sum from a relation. He was
+known in his native place for many years as a crusty old soldier, who
+could tell good stories of war, when he chose; and a bitter railer
+against women.
+
+Jerome, disgusted with northern laxity, retired to Italy, and, having
+high connections, became at seventy a mitred abbot. He put on the screw
+of discipline: his monks revered and hated him. He ruled with iron rod
+ten years. And one night he died, alone; for he had not found the way to
+a single heart. The Vulgate was on his pillow, and the crucifix in his
+hand, and on his lips something more like a smile, than was ever seen
+there while he lived; so that, methinks, at that awful hour he was not
+quite alone. Requiescat in pace. The Master he served has many servants,
+and they have many minds, and now and then a faithful one will be a
+surly one, as it is in these our mortal mansions.
+
+The yellow-haired laddie, Gerard Gerardson, belongs not to Fiction but
+to History. She has recorded his birth in other terms than mine. Over
+the tailor's house in the Brede Kirk Straet she has inscribed:--
+
+    "Haec est parva domus natus qua magnus Erasmus";
+
+and she has written half a dozen lives of him. But there is something
+left for her yet to do. She has no more comprehended magnum Erasmum,
+than any other pigmy comprehends a giant, or partisan a judge.
+
+First scholar and divine of his epoch, he was also the heaven-born
+dramatist of his century. Some of the best scenes in this new book are
+from his mediaeval pen, and illumine the pages where they come; for the
+words of a genius, so high as his are not born to die: their immediate
+work upon mankind fulfilled, they may seem to lie torpid; but, at each
+fresh shower of intelligence Time pours upon their students, they prove
+their immortal race: they revive, they spring from the dust of great
+libraries; they bud, they flower, they fruit, they seed, from generation
+to generation, and from age to age.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Transcriber's Notes:
+
+Obvious punctuation errors repaired. Archaic spelling, where recognized,
+such as "Ilias" for "Iliad" was retained. Corrections for others listed
+below. Varied hyphenation was retained. Text uses both Bergundy and
+Burgundy.
+
+Page 18, "fiends" changed to "friends" (the friends go with him)
+
+Page 72, "fortell" changed to "foretell" (who may foretell)
+
+Page 77, "gladened" changed to "gladdened" (the urchin was gladdened)
+
+Page 80, "he" changed to "be" (be in Tergou)
+
+Page 84, "contemptuuously" changed to "contemptuously" (said Martin
+contemptuuusly)
+
+Page 86, "befel" changed to "befell" (if evil befell him)
+
+Page 123, "exit" changed to "exited" (and exited with an injured)
+
+Page 135 and 173, "Gerald" changed to "Gerard" (Gerard more than
+thunder) (waked by Gerard moving)
+
+Page 147, "gruffy" changed to "gruffly" (said gruffly, "Good morrow.")
+
+Page 147, word "to" inserted into text. Orginal read (Denys whispered
+Gerard)
+
+Page 153, "brethern" changed to "brethren" (my learned brethren)
+
+Page 164, "assulting" changed to "assaulting" (assaulting a Dusseldorf)
+
+Page 165, "pow" changed to "paw" (Samson's hairy paw)
+
+Page 188, "Deny's" changed to "Denys's" (Denys's infinite amusement)
+
+Page 210, "sorowfully" changed to "sorrowfully" (said Denys,
+sorrowfully)
+
+Page 231, "worldy" changed to "worldly" (piety and worldly prudence)
+
+Page 271, "I'l" changed to "I'll" (I'll tell her tho)
+
+Page 275, repeated line of text deleted. Original read:
+
+    being sincere. Dierich Brower, who was discovered at "The Three
+    Kings," making a chatterbox drunk in order to worm out of him the
+    whereabouts of Martin Wittenhaagen, was actually taken and flung
+    into a horse-pond, and threatened with worse usage, should he ever
+    show his face in the burgh again; and finally, municipal jealousy
+    being roused, the burgomaster of Sevenbergen sent a formal missive
+    being sincere. Dierich Brower, who was discovered at "The Three
+    to the burgomaster of Tergou, reminding him he had overstepped
+
+Page 287, "Itay" changed to "Italy" (will never leave Italy)
+
+Page 287, "occured" changed to "occurred" (unlooked-for interruption
+occurred)
+
+Page 298, "occurence" changed to "occurrence" (occurrence as a miracle)
+
+Page 300, "condensd" changed to "condensed" (Covered by their condensed)
+
+Page 301, "beseigers" changed to "besiegers" (besiegers got spiteful)
+
+Page 311, "Maragaret" changed to "Margaret" (soon at Margaret Van Eyck's
+house)
+
+Page 315, "wondred" changed to "wondered" (your ways, and wondered)
+
+Page 364, "mesage" changed to "message" (message to Tergou)
+
+Page 380, "be" changed to "he" (he bade me untruss)
+
+Page 409, word "had" added to text (Ere I had gone)
+
+Page 414, "beseiged" changed to "besieged" (where they besieged)
+
+Page 414, "beseigers" changed to "besiegers" (their besiegers, and
+hashed)
+
+Page 418, "patriach" changed to "patriarch" (one the patriarch)
+
+Page 421, the word "thof" appears. The transcriber could find no meaning
+for this word nor any word or words that would be appropriate, although
+it might be a dialectic combination of "though if". It was left as
+printed. (Writing, thof it had no sale)
+
+Page 428, "runing" changed to "running" (only kept running)
+
+Page 430, "hypek thauatoio" changed to "hyp' ek thanatoio"
+
+Page 436, word "the" added to text (out of the window)
+
+Page 464, "blaze" changed to "blase" (blase. A high bred)
+
+Page 491, "carressed" changed to "caressed" (young tones, caressed)
+
+Page 536, "Wo" changed to "We" (We love our own)
+
+Page 537, "forseen" changed to "foreseen" (Heaven hath foreseen)
+
+Page 540, "aim" changed to "am" (vile I am)
+
+Page 561, "bethrothal" changed to "betrothal" (recognizing her
+betrothal)
+
+Page 570, "Maragret" changed to "Margaret" (Margaret said she thought)
+
+Page 577, "liker" changed to "like" (like iron cobwebs)
+
+Page 594, the footnote at the bottom of this page had no anchor in the
+text. The transcriber placed the anchor on the last paragraph from the
+previous page as the text seemed to fit better.
+
+Page 605, "pilows" changed to "pillows" (pillows, lay his deadly)
+
+Page 608, "reconcilation" changed to "reconciliation" (least of a
+reconciliation)
+
+Page 650, "cubboard" changed to "cupboard" (in the little cupboard)
+
+Page 622, "marrige" changed to "marriage" (me my marriage lines)
+
+Page 639, first footnote missing anchor in text. Anchor placed after
+Greek quotation. Also footnote switched from letters to numbers here.
+
+Page 642, "creasli" changed to "creasti" (Quae tu creasti)
+
+Page 645, "litle" changed to "little" (little water every day)
+
+Page 653, "ectasy" changed to "ecstasy" (gazed with ecstasy)
+
+Page 653, "wonderfuly" changed to "wonderfully" (wonderfully intelligent
+for)
+
+Page 659, "croning" changed to "crooning" (he stopped crooning)
+
+Page 703, footnote, "'Thy di heanton" changed to "'Ou di' heauton"
+
+
+
+
+
+
+End of Project Gutenberg's The Cloister and the Hearth, by Charles Reade
+
+*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE CLOISTER AND THE HEARTH ***
+
+***** This file should be named 38895.txt or 38895.zip *****
+This and all associated files of various formats will be found in:
+        https://www.gutenberg.org/3/8/8/9/38895/
+
+Produced by Emmy, Juliet Sutherland and the Online
+Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net
+
+
+Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions
+will be renamed.
+
+Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no
+one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation
+(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without
+permission and without paying copyright royalties.  Special rules,
+set forth in the General Terms of Use part of this license, apply to
+copying and distributing Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works to
+protect the PROJECT GUTENBERG-tm concept and trademark.  Project
+Gutenberg is a registered trademark, and may not be used if you
+charge for the eBooks, unless you receive specific permission.  If you
+do not charge anything for copies of this eBook, complying with the
+rules is very easy.  You may use this eBook for nearly any purpose
+such as creation of derivative works, reports, performances and
+research.  They may be modified and printed and given away--you may do
+practically ANYTHING with public domain eBooks.  Redistribution is
+subject to the trademark license, especially commercial
+redistribution.
+
+
+
+*** START: FULL LICENSE ***
+
+THE FULL PROJECT GUTENBERG LICENSE
+PLEASE READ THIS BEFORE YOU DISTRIBUTE OR USE THIS WORK
+
+To protect the Project Gutenberg-tm mission of promoting the free
+distribution of electronic works, by using or distributing this work
+(or any other work associated in any way with the phrase "Project
+Gutenberg"), you agree to comply with all the terms of the Full Project
+Gutenberg-tm License (available with this file or online at
+https://gutenberg.org/license).
+
+
+Section 1.  General Terms of Use and Redistributing Project Gutenberg-tm
+electronic works
+
+1.A.  By reading or using any part of this Project Gutenberg-tm
+electronic work, you indicate that you have read, understand, agree to
+and accept all the terms of this license and intellectual property
+(trademark/copyright) agreement.  If you do not agree to abide by all
+the terms of this agreement, you must cease using and return or destroy
+all copies of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works in your possession.
+If you paid a fee for obtaining a copy of or access to a Project
+Gutenberg-tm electronic work and you do not agree to be bound by the
+terms of this agreement, you may obtain a refund from the person or
+entity to whom you paid the fee as set forth in paragraph 1.E.8.
+
+1.B.  "Project Gutenberg" is a registered trademark.  It may only be
+used on or associated in any way with an electronic work by people who
+agree to be bound by the terms of this agreement.  There are a few
+things that you can do with most Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works
+even without complying with the full terms of this agreement.  See
+paragraph 1.C below.  There are a lot of things you can do with Project
+Gutenberg-tm electronic works if you follow the terms of this agreement
+and help preserve free future access to Project Gutenberg-tm electronic
+works.  See paragraph 1.E below.
+
+1.C.  The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation ("the Foundation"
+or PGLAF), owns a compilation copyright in the collection of Project
+Gutenberg-tm electronic works.  Nearly all the individual works in the
+collection are in the public domain in the United States.  If an
+individual work is in the public domain in the United States and you are
+located in the United States, we do not claim a right to prevent you from
+copying, distributing, performing, displaying or creating derivative
+works based on the work as long as all references to Project Gutenberg
+are removed.  Of course, we hope that you will support the Project
+Gutenberg-tm mission of promoting free access to electronic works by
+freely sharing Project Gutenberg-tm works in compliance with the terms of
+this agreement for keeping the Project Gutenberg-tm name associated with
+the work.  You can easily comply with the terms of this agreement by
+keeping this work in the same format with its attached full Project
+Gutenberg-tm License when you share it without charge with others.
+
+1.D.  The copyright laws of the place where you are located also govern
+what you can do with this work.  Copyright laws in most countries are in
+a constant state of change.  If you are outside the United States, check
+the laws of your country in addition to the terms of this agreement
+before downloading, copying, displaying, performing, distributing or
+creating derivative works based on this work or any other Project
+Gutenberg-tm work.  The Foundation makes no representations concerning
+the copyright status of any work in any country outside the United
+States.
+
+1.E.  Unless you have removed all references to Project Gutenberg:
+
+1.E.1.  The following sentence, with active links to, or other immediate
+access to, the full Project Gutenberg-tm License must appear prominently
+whenever any copy of a Project Gutenberg-tm work (any work on which the
+phrase "Project Gutenberg" appears, or with which the phrase "Project
+Gutenberg" is associated) is accessed, displayed, performed, viewed,
+copied or distributed:
+
+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
+
+1.E.2.  If an individual Project Gutenberg-tm electronic work is derived
+from the public domain (does not contain a notice indicating that it is
+posted with permission of the copyright holder), the work can be copied
+and distributed to anyone in the United States without paying any fees
+or charges.  If you are redistributing or providing access to a work
+with the phrase "Project Gutenberg" associated with or appearing on the
+work, you must comply either with the requirements of paragraphs 1.E.1
+through 1.E.7 or obtain permission for the use of the work and the
+Project Gutenberg-tm trademark as set forth in paragraphs 1.E.8 or
+1.E.9.
+
+1.E.3.  If an individual Project Gutenberg-tm electronic work is posted
+with the permission of the copyright holder, your use and distribution
+must comply with both paragraphs 1.E.1 through 1.E.7 and any additional
+terms imposed by the copyright holder.  Additional terms will be linked
+to the Project Gutenberg-tm License for all works posted with the
+permission of the copyright holder found at the beginning of this work.
+
+1.E.4.  Do not unlink or detach or remove the full Project Gutenberg-tm
+License terms from this work, or any files containing a part of this
+work or any other work associated with Project Gutenberg-tm.
+
+1.E.5.  Do not copy, display, perform, distribute or redistribute this
+electronic work, or any part of this electronic work, without
+prominently displaying the sentence set forth in paragraph 1.E.1 with
+active links or immediate access to the full terms of the Project
+Gutenberg-tm License.
+
+1.E.6.  You may convert to and distribute this work in any binary,
+compressed, marked up, nonproprietary or proprietary form, including any
+word processing or hypertext form.  However, if you provide access to or
+distribute copies of a Project Gutenberg-tm work in a format other than
+"Plain Vanilla ASCII" or other format used in the official version
+posted on the official Project Gutenberg-tm web site (www.gutenberg.org),
+you must, at no additional cost, fee or expense to the user, provide a
+copy, a means of exporting a copy, or a means of obtaining a copy upon
+request, of the work in its original "Plain Vanilla ASCII" or other
+form.  Any alternate format must include the full Project Gutenberg-tm
+License as specified in paragraph 1.E.1.
+
+1.E.7.  Do not charge a fee for access to, viewing, displaying,
+performing, copying or distributing any Project Gutenberg-tm works
+unless you comply with paragraph 1.E.8 or 1.E.9.
+
+1.E.8.  You may charge a reasonable fee for copies of or providing
+access to or distributing Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works provided
+that
+
+- You pay a royalty fee of 20% of the gross profits you derive from
+     the use of Project Gutenberg-tm works calculated using the method
+     you already use to calculate your applicable taxes.  The fee is
+     owed to the owner of the Project Gutenberg-tm trademark, but he
+     has agreed to donate royalties under this paragraph to the
+     Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation.  Royalty payments
+     must be paid within 60 days following each date on which you
+     prepare (or are legally required to prepare) your periodic tax
+     returns.  Royalty payments should be clearly marked as such and
+     sent to the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation at the
+     address specified in Section 4, "Information about donations to
+     the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation."
+
+- You provide a full refund of any money paid by a user who notifies
+     you in writing (or by e-mail) within 30 days of receipt that s/he
+     does not agree to the terms of the full Project Gutenberg-tm
+     License.  You must require such a user to return or
+     destroy all copies of the works possessed in a physical medium
+     and discontinue all use of and all access to other copies of
+     Project Gutenberg-tm works.
+
+- You provide, in accordance with paragraph 1.F.3, a full refund of any
+     money paid for a work or a replacement copy, if a defect in the
+     electronic work is discovered and reported to you within 90 days
+     of receipt of the work.
+
+- You comply with all other terms of this agreement for free
+     distribution of Project Gutenberg-tm works.
+
+1.E.9.  If you wish to charge a fee or distribute a Project Gutenberg-tm
+electronic work or group of works on different terms than are set
+forth in this agreement, you must obtain permission in writing from
+both the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation and Michael
+Hart, the owner of the Project Gutenberg-tm trademark.  Contact the
+Foundation as set forth in Section 3 below.
+
+1.F.
+
+1.F.1.  Project Gutenberg volunteers and employees expend considerable
+effort to identify, do copyright research on, transcribe and proofread
+public domain works in creating the Project Gutenberg-tm
+collection.  Despite these efforts, Project Gutenberg-tm electronic
+works, and the medium on which they may be stored, may contain
+"Defects," such as, but not limited to, incomplete, inaccurate or
+corrupt data, transcription errors, a copyright or other intellectual
+property infringement, a defective or damaged disk or other medium, a
+computer virus, or computer codes that damage or cannot be read by
+your equipment.
+
+1.F.2.  LIMITED WARRANTY, DISCLAIMER OF DAMAGES - Except for the "Right
+of Replacement or Refund" described in paragraph 1.F.3, the Project
+Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation, the owner of the Project
+Gutenberg-tm trademark, and any other party distributing a Project
+Gutenberg-tm electronic work under this agreement, disclaim all
+liability to you for damages, costs and expenses, including legal
+fees.  YOU AGREE THAT YOU HAVE NO REMEDIES FOR NEGLIGENCE, STRICT
+LIABILITY, BREACH OF WARRANTY OR BREACH OF CONTRACT EXCEPT THOSE
+PROVIDED IN PARAGRAPH 1.F.3.  YOU AGREE THAT THE FOUNDATION, THE
+TRADEMARK OWNER, AND ANY DISTRIBUTOR UNDER THIS AGREEMENT WILL NOT BE
+LIABLE TO YOU FOR ACTUAL, DIRECT, INDIRECT, CONSEQUENTIAL, PUNITIVE OR
+INCIDENTAL DAMAGES EVEN IF YOU GIVE NOTICE OF THE POSSIBILITY OF SUCH
+DAMAGE.
+
+1.F.3.  LIMITED RIGHT OF REPLACEMENT OR REFUND - If you discover a
+defect in this electronic work within 90 days of receiving it, you can
+receive a refund of the money (if any) you paid for it by sending a
+written explanation to the person you received the work from.  If you
+received the work on a physical medium, you must return the medium with
+your written explanation.  The person or entity that provided you with
+the defective work may elect to provide a replacement copy in lieu of a
+refund.  If you received the work electronically, the person or entity
+providing it to you may choose to give you a second opportunity to
+receive the work electronically in lieu of a refund.  If the second copy
+is also defective, you may demand a refund in writing without further
+opportunities to fix the problem.
+
+1.F.4.  Except for the limited right of replacement or refund set forth
+in paragraph 1.F.3, this work is provided to you 'AS-IS' WITH NO OTHER
+WARRANTIES OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO
+WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTIBILITY OR FITNESS FOR ANY PURPOSE.
+
+1.F.5.  Some states do not allow disclaimers of certain implied
+warranties or the exclusion or limitation of certain types of damages.
+If any disclaimer or limitation set forth in this agreement violates the
+law of the state applicable to this agreement, the agreement shall be
+interpreted to make the maximum disclaimer or limitation permitted by
+the applicable state law.  The invalidity or unenforceability of any
+provision of this agreement shall not void the remaining provisions.
+
+1.F.6.  INDEMNITY - You agree to indemnify and hold the Foundation, the
+trademark owner, any agent or employee of the Foundation, anyone
+providing copies of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works in accordance
+with this agreement, and any volunteers associated with the production,
+promotion and distribution of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works,
+harmless from all liability, costs and expenses, including legal fees,
+that arise directly or indirectly from any of the following which you do
+or cause to occur: (a) distribution of this or any Project Gutenberg-tm
+work, (b) alteration, modification, or additions or deletions to any
+Project Gutenberg-tm work, and (c) any Defect you cause.
+
+
+Section  2.  Information about the Mission of Project Gutenberg-tm
+
+Project Gutenberg-tm is synonymous with the free distribution of
+electronic works in formats readable by the widest variety of computers
+including obsolete, old, middle-aged and new computers.  It exists
+because of the efforts of hundreds of volunteers and donations from
+people in all walks of life.
+
+Volunteers and financial support to provide volunteers with the
+assistance they need are critical to reaching Project Gutenberg-tm's
+goals and ensuring that the Project Gutenberg-tm collection will
+remain freely available for generations to come.  In 2001, the Project
+Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation was created to provide a secure
+and permanent future for Project Gutenberg-tm and future generations.
+To learn more about the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation
+and how your efforts and donations can help, see Sections 3 and 4
+and the Foundation web page at https://www.pglaf.org.
+
+
+Section 3.  Information about the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive
+Foundation
+
+The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation is a non profit
+501(c)(3) educational corporation organized under the laws of the
+state of Mississippi and granted tax exempt status by the Internal
+Revenue Service.  The Foundation's EIN or federal tax identification
+number is 64-6221541.  Its 501(c)(3) letter is posted at
+https://pglaf.org/fundraising.  Contributions to the Project Gutenberg
+Literary Archive Foundation are tax deductible to the full extent
+permitted by U.S. federal laws and your state's laws.
+
+The Foundation's principal office is located at 4557 Melan Dr. S.
+Fairbanks, AK, 99712., but its volunteers and employees are scattered
+throughout numerous locations.  Its business office is located at
+809 North 1500 West, Salt Lake City, UT 84116, (801) 596-1887, email
+business@pglaf.org.  Email contact links and up to date contact
+information can be found at the Foundation's web site and official
+page at https://pglaf.org
+
+For additional contact information:
+     Dr. Gregory B. Newby
+     Chief Executive and Director
+     gbnewby@pglaf.org
+
+
+Section 4.  Information about Donations to the Project Gutenberg
+Literary Archive Foundation
+
+Project Gutenberg-tm depends upon and cannot survive without wide
+spread public support and donations to carry out its mission of
+increasing the number of public domain and licensed works that can be
+freely distributed in machine readable form accessible by the widest
+array of equipment including outdated equipment.  Many small donations
+($1 to $5,000) are particularly important to maintaining tax exempt
+status with the IRS.
+
+The Foundation is committed to complying with the laws regulating
+charities and charitable donations in all 50 states of the United
+States.  Compliance requirements are not uniform and it takes a
+considerable effort, much paperwork and many fees to meet and keep up
+with these requirements.  We do not solicit donations in locations
+where we have not received written confirmation of compliance.  To
+SEND DONATIONS or determine the status of compliance for any
+particular state visit https://pglaf.org
+
+While we cannot and do not solicit contributions from states where we
+have not met the solicitation requirements, we know of no prohibition
+against accepting unsolicited donations from donors in such states who
+approach us with offers to donate.
+
+International donations are gratefully accepted, but we cannot make
+any statements concerning tax treatment of donations received from
+outside the United States.  U.S. laws alone swamp our small staff.
+
+Please check the Project Gutenberg Web pages for current donation
+methods and addresses.  Donations are accepted in a number of other
+ways including including checks, online payments and credit card
+donations.  To donate, please visit: https://pglaf.org/donate
+
+
+Section 5.  General Information About Project Gutenberg-tm electronic
+works.
+
+Professor Michael S. Hart was the originator of the Project Gutenberg-tm
+concept of a library of electronic works that could be freely shared
+with anyone.  For thirty years, he produced and distributed Project
+Gutenberg-tm eBooks with only a loose network of volunteer support.
+
+
+Project Gutenberg-tm eBooks are often created from several printed
+editions, all of which are confirmed as Public Domain in the U.S.
+unless a copyright notice is included.  Thus, we do not necessarily
+keep eBooks in compliance with any particular paper edition.
+
+
+Most people start at our Web site which has the main PG search facility:
+
+     https://www.gutenberg.org
+
+This Web site includes information about Project Gutenberg-tm,
+including how to make donations to the Project Gutenberg Literary
+Archive Foundation, how to help produce our new eBooks, and how to
+subscribe to our email newsletter to hear about new eBooks.