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Title: Seven Gothic Tales
Author: Blixen, Karen [Dinesen, Isak] (1885-1962)
Author [introduction]: Fisher, Dorothy Canfield (1879-1958)
Date of first publication: 1934
Edition used as base for this ebook:
   New York: Harrison Smith and Robert Haas, 1934
   ["Seventh Printing, December, 1934"]
Date first posted: 7 June 2018
Date last updated: 7 June 2018
Project Gutenberg Canada ebook #1534

This ebook was produced by Al Haines, Mark Akrigg,
Cindy Beyer & the Online Distributed Proofreading
Canada Team at http://www.pgdpcanada.net


PUBLISHER'S NOTE

Italics in the original printed edition are indicated _thus_.

Obvious typographical errors have been silently corrected.

As part of the conversion of the book to its new digital
format, we have made certain minor adjustments in its layout.






SEVEN GOTHIC TALES

by Isak Dinesen

with an introduction by Dorothy Canfield





CONTENTS

  The Deluge at Norderney
  The Old Chevalier
  The Monkey
  The Roads Round Pisa
  The Supper at Elsinore
  The Dreamers
  The Poet




INTRODUCTION


The person who has set his teeth into a kind of fruit new to him, is
usually as eager as he is unable to tell you how it tastes. It is not
enough for him to be munching away on it with relish. No, he must twist
his tongue trying to get its strange new flavor into words, which never
yet had any power to capture colors or tastes. "It's not like a peach,"
you hear him say, biting out another mouthful from the oddly colored and
oddly shaped thing, and chewing thoughtfully, "nor yet like a pear.
Perhaps like a dead-ripe pineapple. Yet only if it had always been
watered with fine old wine. Grown out of doors in Siberia, too, for all
it has that southern tang. Nothing hothouse about it."

With some such nonsensical combination of impossibles do we all try to
describe something--book or food--that has given us a new sensation. As
if it were possible to suggest in words any sensation except those
already known to everybody! Of course the only sensible thing is to say,
"Take a taste, yourself. You'll eat it to the core, if you do."

To fit the occasion, an introduction to the seven stories--are they
stories?--in this book, should, therefore, contain nothing but the
exhortation, "Here, read one for yourself. You'll need no introduction
to make you read the volume." But having just finished a second reading
of the volume, myself, I am so much under its spell (it feels exactly
like a spell) that I must seize this opportunity for babbling about it.
Yet I can't even tell you the first fact about it which everybody wants
to know about a book--who is the author. In this case, all that we are
told is that the author is a Continental European, writing in English
although that is not native to his pen, who wishes his-or-her identity
not to be known, although between us be it said, it is safe from the
setting of the tales to guess that he is not a Sicilian. Really all
there is to tell you beforehand is what you will see for yourself as
soon as you begin to read, that the people in this book are a race
apart.

Although solidly set in an admirably described factual background
somewhere on the same globe we inhabit, in a past mostly no longer ago
than sometime in the nineteenth century, although they are human beings,
young men, maidens, old men, old women, they are unlike us and the
people we know in books and in real life, because the attitude towards
life which they have is different from ours, or from any attitude we
have met in life or in books. All those who are given leading rles in
these stories have in their youth expected more out of life than it had
to give--wait a moment!--you are jumping to the conclusion that the book
is just some more Romantic School stuff. You are mistaken. Romantic
School characters, after encountering this disappointment, spend the
rest of their lives spooning up out of their disillusion the softest and
most delicately flavored custard of self-pity. If the characters in
these stories ever feel pity for anything, it is a cold, disdainful pity
for life itself in being so meanly smaller and poorer and safer than
they would have made it, had they been God. Stop!--you are thinking of
Byron. You are wrong. Byron was a poet of genius. At least that is what
is said about him by people who ought to know. And I daresay these
stories, for all their bizarre power, can scarcely expect to have the
thumping signboard of genius hung up above the stand in the literary
market where they are for sale. But Byron's moral atmosphere is that of
a nave, kindly, immature youth compared to the tense, fierce, hard,
controlled, over-civilized, savage something-or-other, for which I find
no name, created in this book by its anonymous author.

Perhaps the best description of the spirit one divines back of these
stories, is found in the author's own description of one of the
characters. She is walking here and there in a public park, taking small
well-bred steps in prettily furred boots, and living through a moment of
wild emotion (about to keep a rendezvous with a long-dead brother, if
you'd like to know). The author says of her, that "in her heart a great
mad wing-clipped bird was fluttering in the winter sunset." If you will
meditate a moment on that description, you will have quite a clear
notion of what you will find in the book--a great mad, wing-clipped
bird, fluttering in a winter sunset. Let me add to that self-descriptive
phrase, a bit of dialogue which also evokes the dominant mood of the
book. It is in "The Deluge at Norderney," to my notion (although you
will of course have your own favorite) one of the finest of the tales.
The Cardinal says to the old maid of the noble family of Nat-og-Dag,
(the world we step into through the covers of this book has many
aristocrats in it, cardinals, ambassadors, Chanoinesses, exquisite and
perverted young noblemen--and old ones too), "Madame," he says
admiringly, "you have a great power of imagination and a fine courage."

"Oh, I am a Nat-og-Dag," said Miss Malin modestly.

"But are you not," asked the Cardinal, "a little...?"

"Mad?" asked the old lady. "I thought you were aware of that, my lord."
Now if you don't know what the general spirit animating the book is, I
can't tell you.

But there is a great deal more to an author than the spirit that
animates him, let that be as curious and rare as it will. There is his
style. And I don't know how to tell you what the style of the book is,
any more definitely than what the spirit of it is, because the style too
is very new to me, and will be to you, I think.

You will probably read it as I did, laying it down from time to time, to
look up at the ceiling, pondering, "Is it of Cervantes' leisurely,
by-path-following style that it reminds me? Or perhaps just R. L.
Stevenson's more mannered--no, no, it is more like a Romantic School
German narrator's way of telling a story. Or is that only because the
grotesque and occasionally gruesome touches remind one of Hoffman?
Perhaps it is because a foreigner, writing English, often falls as it
were by accident on inimitably fresh ways of using our battered old
words. Perhaps, quite simply, the style seems so original and strange
because the personality using it is original and strange." And having
come to no conclusion at all, you will turn back to read until you are
again stopped by some passage for which you can't find a comparison in
the writing you know. Like this one, in "The Supper at Elsinore" at the
end of the party. The two middle-aged but still brilliant sisters "were
happy to get rid of their guests; but a little silent bitter minute
accompanied the pleasure. For they could still make people fall in love
with them; they had the radiance in them which could refract little
rainbow effects on the atmosphere of Copenhagen existence. But who could
make them feel in love? At this moment, the _tristesse_ of the eternal
hostess stiffened them a little."

Or this beginning of "Roads Around Pisa." "Count Augustus von
Schimmelmann, a young Danish nobleman of a melancholy disposition, who
would have been very good-looking if he had not been a little too fat,
was writing a letter on a table made out of a millstone, in the garden
of an _osteria_ near Pisa, on a fine May evening of 1823."

Or this, a phrase in a description of a small fashionable watering place
on the North Sea, "The very air had here in its embrace a scornful vigor
which incited and renewed the heart. There was also a small Casino where
the coquetry with the dangerous powers of existence could be carried on
in a different manner."

And this description of an aging mother who died after hearing of her
only son's execution. "She was a stringed instrument from which her
children had many of their high and clear notes. If it were never again
to be used, if no waltz, serenade, or martial march were ever to be
played upon it again, it might as well be put away. Death was no more
unnatural to her than silence."

"...that rare, wild, broken and arrogant smile of the dying poet..."
sounds again like a description of the spirit of the book. And
this from "The Monkey" (a story guaranteed to addle your brains in the
most powerful manner), when young Boris kisses the hand of his old aunt,
the Chanoinesse, "...and all at once got such a terrible impression
of strength and cunning that it was as if he had touched an electric
eel. Women, he thought, when they are old enough to have done with the
business of being women and can let loose their strength, must be the
most powerful creatures in the whole world." And on the next page, when
as he leaves he encounters a corpulent old countess, "...a gentle
melancholy veiled her always and her lady companion said of her, 'The
Countess Anastasia has a heavy cross. The love of eating is a heavy
cross.'" And as he drives on to find Athena, "Now in the afternoon sun
the trunks of the fir trees were burning red, and the landscape far away
seemed cool, all blue and pale gold. Boris was able to believe what the
old gardener at the convent had told him when he was a child; that he
had once seen about this time of the year and the day, a herd of
unicorns come out of the woods to graze upon the sunny slopes, the white
and dappled mares rosy in the sun, treading daintily and looking around
for their young, the old stallion, darker roan, sniffing and pawing the
ground. The air here smelled of pine needles and toadstools and was so
fresh that it made him yawn. And yet, he thought, it was different from
the freshness of spring; the courage and gayety of it were tinged with
despair. It was the finale of the symphony."

Where, you will ask yourself, puzzled, have I ever encountered such
strange slanting beauty of phrase, clothing such arresting but
controlled fantasy? As for me, I don't know where.

****

Have I given you an idea that the book is filled with a many-colored
literary fog in which you can make out no recognizable human shapes? If
so I have been exceptionally inept. The light in it is strange, not at
all the good straight downward noon-day stare of the every day sun. But
it is clear light, and in it we see a series of vigorously presented,
outrageously unexpected, sometimes horrifying, but perfectly real human
beings. They seem endowed with a sort of legendary intensity of living,
almost beyond the possible, but that may be a result of the eerie light
in which they are shown; as ordinary people sometimes for a moment or
two, although perfectly visible to us as themselves, look legendary and
epic in the darkening moment before the bursting of a storm, or in the
first glimmer of dawn--in that moment or two during which the sunrise is
seen as the miracle it is.

Perhaps you will allow me, as a Vermonter, to fall back on the New
England language of understatement as my final report on these stories,
and assure you that in my opinion, it will be worth your while to read
them.

DOROTHY CANFIELD.

Arlington, Vermont, 1934.





THE DELUGE AT NORDERNEY


During the first quarter of the last century, seaside resorts became the
fashion, even in those countries of Northern Europe within the minds of
whose people the sea had hitherto held the rle of the devil, the cold
and voracious hereditary foe of humanity. The romantic spirit of the
age, which delighted in ruins, ghosts, and lunatics, and counted a
stormy night on the heath and a deep conflict of the passions a finer
treat for the connoisseur than the ease of the salon and the harmony of
a philosophic system, reconciled even the most refined individuals to
the eternal wildness of the coast scenery and of the open seas. Ladies
and gentlemen of fashion abandoned the shade of their parks to come and
walk upon the bleak shores and watch the untameable waves. The
neighborhood of a shipwreck, where, in low tide, the wreck was still in
sight, like a hardened, black, and salted skeleton, became a favorite
picnic place, where fair artists put up their easels.

On the west coast of Holstein the bath of Norderney thus sprang up and
flowered for a period of twenty years. Along the sandy roads of the
downs fine carriages and coaches came, to unload trunks and cartons, and
ladies on small feet, whose veils and chenilles blew about them in the
fresh breeze, in front of neat little hotels and cottages. The Duke of
Augustenburg, with his beautiful wife and his sister, who was a fine
wit, and the Prince of Noer honored the place with their presence. The
landed nobility of Schleswig-Holstein, with pins and needles in their
legs from the new political stir, and the representatives of old Hamburg
and Lbeck merchant houses, worth their weight in gold, together
undertook the pilgrimage into the heart of nature. The peasants and
fishermen of Norderney themselves learned to look upon the terrible and
faithless gray monster westward of them as upon some kind _matre de
plaisir_.

Here was a promenade, a club, and a pavilion, the rendezvous in the long
summer evenings of many sweet colors and sounds. Ladies with
marriageable daughters, over whose heads barren seasons of the courts
and towns had washed, now watched fruitful courtships ripen on the sunny
beach. Young dandies managed their mounts on the long sands in front of
clear eyes. Old gentlemen dug themselves down into political and
dynastic discussions in the club, their glasses of fine rum at their
sides; and their young wives walked, their cashmeres on their arms, to a
lonely hollow in the downs, still sun-baked from the long summer day, to
become one with nature, with the lyme grass and the little wind-blown
pansies, and to gaze straight up at the full moon, high in the pale
summer sky. The very air had here in its embrace a scornful vigor which
incited and renewed the heart. Heinrich Heine, who visited the bath,
held that the persevering smell of fish which clung to them would in
itself be enough to protect the virtue of the young fishermaidens of
Norderney. But there were other nostrils and hearts to which the rank
briny smell was intoxicating, even as the smell of gunpowder over the
battlefield. There was even a small casino, where the coquetry with the
dangerous powers of existence could be carried on in a different
measure. At times there were great balls, and on fine summer evenings
the orchestra played upon the terrace.

"You do not know," said the Princess of Augustenburg to Herr Gottingen,
"what a place this is for making you clean. That sea breeze has blown
straight through my bonnet and my clothes, and through the very flesh
and the bones of me, until my heart and spirit are swept, sun-dried, and
salted."

"With Attic salt, I have noticed," said Herr Gottingen, and, looking at
her, he added in his heart: "God, yes. Precisely like a split cod."

In the late summer of 1835 a terrible disaster took place at the bath of
Norderney. After a three days' storm from the southwest, the wind sprang
around to the north. This is a thing that happens only once in a hundred
years. The tremendous mass of water driven up by the storm was turned
and pressed down in the corner, upon the Westerlands. The sea broke the
dikes in two places and washed through them. Cattle and sheep were
drowned by the hundred. Farmhouses and barns came down like card castles
before the advancing waters, and many human lives were lost even as far
as Wilsum and Wredon.

It began with an evening of more than ordinarily heavenly calm, but of
stifling air and a strange, luminous, sulphurous dimness. There was no
distinguishable line of division between the sky and the sea. The sun
went down in a confusion of light, itself a dull red like the target
upon the promenade. The waves seemed of a curious substance, like
jellyfish washing up on the shore. It was a highly inspiring evening;
many things happened at Norderney. That night the people who were not
kept awake by the beating of their own hearts woke up, terrified, by a
new, swiftly approaching roar. Could their sea sing now in this voice?

In the morning the world was changed, but none knew into what. In this
noise nobody could talk, or even think. What the sea was doing you could
not tell. Your clothes were already whipped off you before you got in
sight of the sand, and the salt foam whirled sky high. Long and towering
waves came in behind it, each more powerful than the last. The air was
cold and bitter.

The rumor of a ship run aground four miles to the north reached the
bath, but nobody ventured out to see it. Old General von Brackel, who
had seen the occupation of East Prussia by Napoleon's armies in 1806,
and old Professor Schmiegelow, the physician to the princely house of
Coburg, who had been in Naples at the time of the cholera, walked out a
little together, and from a small hill watched the scenery, both quite
silent. It was not till Thursday that the flood came. By then the storm
was over.

By this time, also, there were not many people left at Norderney. The
season had been drawing to a close, and many of the most illustrious
guests had gone before the time of the storm. Now most of the remaining
visitors made haste to depart. The young women pressed their faces to
the window panes of their coaches, wild to catch a last glimpse of the
wild scenery. It seemed to them that they were driving away from the one
real place and hour of their lives. But when the grand coach of Baron
Goldstein, of Hamburg, was blown straight off the road on the dike, it
was realized that the time for quick action had come. Everybody went off
as speedily as possible.

It was during these hours, the last of the storm and the first of the
following night, that the sea broke the dikes. The dikes, made to resist
a heavy pressure from seaward, could not hold when sapped from the east.
They gave way along a stretch of half a mile, and through the opening
the sea came in.

The farmers were awakened by the plaintive bellowing of their animals.
Swinging their feet out of bed, in the dark, they put them down in a
foot of cold, muddy water. It was salt. It was the same water which
rolled, out to the west, a hundred fathoms deep, and washed the white
feet of the cliffs of Dover. The North Sea had come to visit them. It
was rising quickly. In an hour the movables of the low farmhouses were
floating on the water, knocking against the walls. As the dawn came, the
people, from the roofs of their houses, watched the land around them
change. Trees and bushes were growing in a moving gray ground, and thick
yellow foam was washing over the stretches of their ripening corn, the
harvest of which they had been discussing on the last days before the
storm.

There had been such floods before. A few old people could still recount
to the young how they had once been snatched from their beds and hurled
upon rafts by their pale mothers, and had seen, from the collapsing
houses, the cattle struggle and go under in dark water; and how
breadwinners had perished and households had been ruined and lost. The
sea did such things from time to time. Still, this flood lived long in
the memory of the coast. By coming on in summer time, the deluge assumed
the character of a terrible, grim joke. In the annals of the province,
where it kept a place and a name of its own, it was called the flood of
the Cardinal.

This was because in the midst of their misery the terror-stricken people
got support from one already half-mythical figure, and felt at their
side the presence of a guardian angel. Many years after, in the minds of
the peasants, it seemed that his company in their dark despair had shed
a great white light over the black waves.

The Cardinal Hamilcar von Sehestedt had, during the summer, been living
in a small fisherman's house at some distance from the bath, to collect
his writings of many years in a book upon the Holy Ghost. With Joachim
de Flora, who was born in 1202, the Cardinal held that while the book of
the Father is given in the Old Testament, and that of the Son, in the
New, the testament of the Third Person of the Trinity still remained to
be written. This he had made the task of his life. He had grown up in
the Westerlands, and had preserved, during a long life of travels and
spiritual work, his love for the coast scenery and the sea. In his
leisure hours he would go, after the example of St. Peter himself, a
long way out on the sea with the fishermen in their boats, to watch
their work. He had with him in his cottage only a sort of valet or
secretary, a man by the name of Kasparson. This man was a former actor
and adventurer, a brilliant fellow in his way, who spoke many languages
and had been given to all sorts of studies. He was devoted to the
Cardinal, but he seemed a curious Sancho Panza for the noble knight of
the church.

The name of Hamilcar von Sehestedt was at that time famous all over
Europe. He had been made a Cardinal three years before, when he was only
seventy. He was a strange flower upon the old solid wood of the
Sehestedt family tree. An old noble race of the province had lived for
many hundred years for nothing but wars and their land, to produce him.
The one remarkable thing about them was that they had stuck, through
many trials, to the ancient Roman Catholic faith of the land. They had
no mobility of spirit to change what they had once got into their heads.
The Cardinal had nine brothers and sisters, none of whom had shown any
evidences of a spiritual life. It was as if some slowly gathered and
quite unused store of intellectuality in the tribe had come out in this
one child of it. Perhaps a woman, imported from outside, had dropped a
thought into the blood of it before becoming altogether a Sehestedt, or
some idea in a book had impressed itself upon a young boy before he had
been taught that books and ideas mean nothing, and all this had mounted
up.

The extraordinary talents of young Hamilcar had been recognized, not by
his own people, but by his tutor, who had been tutor to the Crown Prince
of Denmark himself. He succeeded in taking the boy off to Paris and
Rome. Here this new light of genius suddenly flared up in a clear blaze,
impossible to ignore. There existed a tale of how the Pope himself,
after the young priest had been presented to him, had seen in a dream
how this youth had been set apart by providence to bring back the great
Protestant countries under the Holy See. Still, the church had tried the
young man severely, distrustful of many of the ideas and powers in him,
of his visionary gift, and of the most striking feature of his nature:
an immense capacity for pity which embraced not only the sinful and
miserable but seemed to turn even toward the high and holy of the world.
Their severity did not hurt him; obedience was in his nature. To his
great power of imagination he joined a deep love of law and order.
Perhaps in the end these two sides of his nature came to the same thing:
to him everything seemed possible, and equally likely to fall in with
the beautiful and harmonious scheme of things.

The Pope himself, later, said of him: "If, after the destruction of our
present world, I were to charge one human being with the construction of
a new world, the only person whom I would trust with this work would be
my young Hamilcar." Whereupon, however, he quickly crossed himself two
or three times.

The young Cardinal, after the church had handled him, came out a man of
the world in the old sense of the word, but in a new and greater
proportion. He moved with the same ease and grace amongst kings and
outcasts. He had been sent to the missionary monasteries of Mexico, and
had had great influence with the Indian and half-caste tribes there. One
thing about him impressed the world everywhere: wherever he went, it was
believed of him that he could work miracles. At the time of his stay in
Norderney the hardened and heavy coast people took to thinking strange
things of him. After the flood it was said by many that he had been seen
to walk upon the waves.

He may have felt handicapped in this feat, for he was nearly killed at
the very start of events. When the fishermen from the hamlet, as the
flood came on, ran to his assistance, they found his cottage already
half a ruin. In the fall of it the man Kasparson had been killed. The
Cardinal himself was badly wounded, and wore, all during his rescue
work, a long, blood-stained bandage wound about his head.

In spite of this the old man worked all day with undaunted courage with
the ruined people. The money that he had had with him he gave over to
them. It was the first contribution to the funds which were afterward
collected for the sufferers from all over Europe. Much greater still was
the effect of his presence amongst them. He showed good knowledge of
steering a boat. They did not believe that any vessel holding him could
go down. On his command they rowed straight in amongst fallen buildings,
and the women jumped into the boats from the house roofs, their children
in their arms. From time to time he spoke to them in a strong and clear
voice, quoting to them the book of Job. Once or twice, when the boat,
hit by heavy floating timbers, came near to capsizing, he rose and held
out his hand, and as if he had a magic power of balance, the boat
steadied itself. Near a farmhouse a chained dog, on the top of its
kennel, over which the sea was washing, pulled at its chain and howled,
and seemed to have gone mad with fear. As one of the men tried to take
hold of it, it bit him. The old Cardinal, turning the boat a little,
spoke to the dog and loosened its chain. The dog sprang into the boat.
Whining, it squeezed itself against the old man's legs, and would not
leave him.

Many peasant households had been saved before anybody thought of the
bath. This was strange, as the rich and gay life out there had played a
big part in the minds of the population. But in the hour of danger old
ties of blood and life were stronger than the new fascination. At the
baths they would have light boats for pleasure trips, but few people who
knew how to maneuver them. It was not till noon that the heavier boats
were sent out, advancing fathom-high over the promenade.

The place where the boats unloaded, on their return landward, was a
windmill which, built on a low slope and a half-circular bastion of big
stones, gave them access to lay to. From the other side of it you could
somehow move on by road. Here, at a distance, horses and carts had been
brought up. The mill itself made a good landmark, her tall wings
standing up, hard and grim, a tumbledown big black cross against a tawny
sky. A crowd of people was collected here waiting for the boats. As they
came in from the baths for the first time there were no tears of welcome
and reunion, for these people they carried, luxuriously dressed even in
their panic, with heavy caskets on their knees, were strangers. The last
boat brought news that there were still, out at Norderney, four or five
persons for whom no place had been found in the boat.

The tired boatmen looked at one another. They knew the tide and high sea
out there, and they thought: We will not go. Cardinal Hamilcar was
standing in a group of women and children, with his back to the men, but
as if he could read their hardening faces and hearts he became silent.
He turned and looked at the newly arrived party. Even he seemed to
tarry. Below the white bandages his eyes rested on them with a singular,
a mysterious expression. He had not eaten all day; now he asked for
something to drink, and they brought him a jug of the spirits of the
province. Turning once more toward the water he said quietly, _Eh bien.
Allons, allons._ The words were strange to the peasants, for they were
terms used by the coachmen of the nobility, trained abroad, for their
teams of four horses. As he walked down to the boat, and the people from
the bath dispersed before him, some of the ladies suddenly and wildly
clapped their hands. They meant no harm. Knowing heroism only from the
stage, they gave it the stage's applause. But the old man whom they
applauded stopped under it for a moment. He bowed his head a little,
with an exquisite irony, in the manner of a hero upon the stage. His
limbs were so stiff that he had to be supported and lifted into the
boat.

It was not till late on Thursday afternoon that the boat was again on
its way back. A dead darkness had all day been lying upon the wide
landscape. As far as the eye reached, what had been an undulating range
of land was now nothing but an immense gray plane, alarmingly alive.
Nothing seemed to be firm. To the crushed hearts of the men rowing over
their cornfields and meadows, this movableness of what had been their
foundation and foothold was unbearable, and they turned their eyes away
from it. The clouds hung low upon the water. The small boat, moving
heavily, seemed to be advancing upon a narrow horizontal course,
squeezed in between the mass of weight below and what appeared to be a
mass of weight above it. The four people lately rescued from the ruins
of Norderney sat, white as corpses, in the stern.

The first of them was old Miss Nat-og-Dag, a maiden lady of great
wealth, the last of the old illustrious race which carried arms
two-parted in black and white, and whose name meant "Night and Day." She
was close to sixty years, and her mind had for some years been confused,
for she, who was a lady of the strictest virtue, believed herself to be
one of the great female sinners of her time. She had with her a girl of
sixteen, the Countess Calypso von Platen Hallermund, the niece of the
scholar and poet of that name. These two ladies, although they behaved
in the midst of danger with great self-control, gave nevertheless that
impression of wildness which, within a peaceful age and society, only
the vanishing and decaying aristocracy can afford to maintain. To the
rescuing party it was as if they had taken into the boat two tigresses,
one old and one young, the cub quite wild, the old one only the more
dangerous for having the appearance of being tamed. Neither of them was
in the least afraid. While we are young the idea of death or failure is
intolerable to us; even the possibility of ridicule we cannot bear. But
we have also an unconquerable faith in our own stars, and in the
impossibility of anything venturing to go against us. As we grow old we
slowly come to believe that everything will turn out badly for us, and
that failure is in the nature of things; but then we do not much mind
what happens to us one way or the other. In this way a balance is
obtained. Miss Malin Nat-og-Dag, while perfectly indifferent to what
should become of her, was also, because of the derangement of her mind,
joining, to this advantage of her age, the privilege of youth, that
simple and arrogant optimism which takes for granted that nothing can go
wrong with it. It is even doubtful whether she believed that she could
die. The girl of sixteen, pressed close to her, her dusky tresses
loosened and blown about her, was taking in everything around her with
ecstasy: the faces of her companions, the movements of the boat, the
terrible, dull-brownish hue of the water below her, and was imagining
herself to be a great divinity of the sea.

The third person of the rescued party was a young Dane, Jonathan Mrsk,
who had been sent to Norderney by his doctor to recover from a severe
attack of melancholia. The fourth was Miss Malin's maid, who lay in the
bottom of the boat, too terrified to lift her face from the knees of her
mistress.

These four people, so lately snatched out of the jaws of death, had not
yet escaped his hold. As their boat, on its way landward, passed at a
little distance the scattered buildings of a farm, of which only the
roofs and upper parts of the walls appeared above the water, they caught
sight of human beings making signs to them from the loft of one of these
buildings. The peasant boatmen were surprised, for they were certain
that a barge had been sent to this place earlier in the day. Under the
commanding glances of young Calypso, who had caught sight of children
amongst the castaways, they changed their direction, and with difficulty
approached the house. As they were drawing near, a small granary, of
which only the roof was visible, suddenly gave in, fell, and disappeared
noiselessly before their eyes. At this sight Jonathan Mrsk rose up in
the boat. For a moment he tried to follow the dispersing bits of
wreckage with his eyes. Then he sat down again, very pale. The boat
grated along the wall of the farmhouse and at last found a holdfast in a
projecting beam, which made it possible for them to communicate with the
people in the hayloft. They found there two women, one old and one
young, a boy of sixteen, and two small children, and learned that they
had been visited by the rescuing barge about three hours before. But
they had profited by it only to send off their cow and calf, and a small
collection of poor farm goods, heroically remaining themselves with the
rising waters around them. The old woman had even been offered a place
in the barge, with the animals, but she had refused to leave her
daughter and grandchildren.

The boat could not possibly hold an additional load of five persons, and
it had to be decided quickly who of the passengers should change places
with the family of the farmhouse. Those who were left in the loft would
have to remain there till the boat could return. Since it was already
growing dark, and there was no chance of bringing a boat along until
dawn, this would mean a wait of six or seven hours. The question was
whether the house would hold out for so long.

The Cardinal, rising up in his fluttering dark cloak, said that he would
stay in the loft. At these words the people in the boat were thrown into
dark despair. They were afraid to come back without him. The boatmen let
go their hold on the oars, laid their hands on him, and implored him to
stay with them. But he would hear nothing, and explained to them that he
would be as much in the hand of God here as anywhere else, even though
perhaps under a different finger, and that it might have been for this
that he had been sent out on this last journey. They saw that they could
do nothing with him, and resigned themselves to their fate. Miss Malin
then quickly pronounced herself determined to keep him company in the
hayloft, and the girl would not leave her old friend. Young Jonathan
Mrsk seemed to wake from a dream, and told them that he would come with
them. At the last moment Miss Malin's maid cried out that she would not
leave her mistress, and the men were already lifting her from the bottom
of the boat when her mistress cast upon her the sort of glance by which
you judge whether a person is likely to make a satisfactory fourth at a
game of cards. "My pussy," she said, "nobody wants you here. Besides,
you are probably in the family way, and so must hold onto futurity, my
poor girl. Good night, Mariechen."

It was not easy for the women to get from the boat into the loft. Miss
Malin, though, was thin and strong, and the men lifted her and placed
her in the doorway as one would plant a scarecrow in a field. The small
and light girl followed her as lithely as a cat. The black dog, on
seeing the Cardinal leave the boat, whined loudly and suddenly jumped
from the rail to the loft, and the young girl hauled it in. It was now
high time for the peasant family to get into the boat, but they would
not go before they had, loudly weeping, kissed the hands of their
relievers and piled blessings upon them. The old woman insisted on
handing over to them a small stable lantern with a couple of spare
tallow candles, a jug of water, and a keg of gin, together with a loaf
of the hard black bread which the peasants of the Westerlands make.

The men in the boat shoved off, and in a moment a belt of brown water
lay between the house and the boat.

From the door of the hayloft the derelicts watched the boat withdraw,
very slowly, for it was heavily laden, across the heaving plane. The
branches of tall poplars near the house floated upon the surface of the
water and were washed about violently with it. The dark sky, which all
day had lain like a leaden lid upon the world, suddenly colored deep
down in the west, as if the lid had been lifted a little there, to a
flaming red that was reflected in the sea below. All faces in the boat
were turned toward the loft, and when they were nearly out of sight they
lifted their arms in a farewell greeting. The Cardinal, standing in the
doorway of the loft, solemnly raised his arms to them in a blessing.
Miss Malin waved a little handkerchief. Soon the boat, fading from their
sight, became one with the sea and the air.

As if they had been four marionettes, pulled by the same wire, the four
people turned their faces to one another.

"How will he do to dance with?" a young girl asks herself, when, at the
ball, the _Chapeau_ is presented to her. She may even add: "How will he
do as a beau, an _pouseur_, the Intended of my life?"

"How will these people do to die with?" the castaways of the hayloft,
scrutinizing each others' faces, asked themselves. Miss Malin, always
inclined toward a bright view of things, found herself satisfied with
her partners.

The Cardinal gave expression to these thoughts. The old man stood for a
little while in deep silence, as if it took him time to get used again
to the steadiness of a house, after a day spent in boats upon the
restless seas, and to an atmosphere of comparative quiet after long
hours of incessant danger--for nothing was likely to happen here at the
moment--to get used, also, after his work with the broken-hearted
peasants and fishermen around him, to the company of his equals. Slowly
his manner changed from that of a commander to that of a convive. He
smiled at his companions.

"My sisters and my brother," he said, "I congratulate myself upon being
amongst brave people. I am looking forward to what hours I shall, under
the favor of God, spend with you here. Madame," he said to Miss Malin,
"I am not surprised at your gallantry, for I know about your race. It
was a Nat-og-Dag who, at Warberg, when the King's horse was shot under
him, jumped from his own horse and handed it to the King, with the
words: 'To the King, my horse; to the enemy, my life; to the Lord, my
soul.' It was a Svinhoved,[1] if I am not wrong--your
great-great-grandfather--who, at the sea battle of Koege, rather than
expose the rest of the Danish fleet to the danger of fire from his
burning ship, chose to go on fighting with his last breath, until the
fire reached the powder room, and he was blown up with his crew. Here,"
he said, looking around him at the loft, "I may say it: Blessed are the
pure in blood, for they shall see----" He paused, reflecting upon his
theme. "Death," he concluded. "They shall see, verily, the face of
death. For this moment here, for us, our fathers were brought up,
through the centuries, in skill of arms and loyalty to their king; and
our mothers, in virtue."

He could have said nothing which would better have strengthened and
inspired the hearts of the women, who were both fierce devils in racial
pride. But young Jonathan Mrsk, the bourgeois amongst them, made a
gesture as if of protest. Nevertheless he said nothing.

They closed the door of the loft, but as it was hanging loose, and kept
knocking about, the Cardinal asked the women if they could not find
something with which to tie it fast. The girl felt for the ribbon which
had tied her hair, but it had blown away. Miss Malin then gracefully
lifted her petticoat and took off a long garter, embroidered with
rosebuds. "The zenith in the career of a garter, My Lord," she said, "is
generally in the loosening, not in the fastening, of it. On that account
the sister of this ribbon, which is now being sanctified by your holy
hand, lies in the vault of the Royal Mausoleum of Stuttgart."

"Madame," said the Cardinal, "you speak frivolously. Pray do not talk or
think in that way. Nothing sanctifies, nothing, indeed, is sanctified,
except by the play of the Lord, which is alone divine. You speak like a
person who would pronounce half of the notes of the scale--say, _do_,
_re_ and _mi_--to be sacred, but _fa_, _sol_, _la_, and _si_ to be only
profane, while, Madame, no one of the notes is sacred in itself, and it
is the music, which can be made out of them, which is alone divine. If
your garter be sanctified by my feeble old hand, so is my hand by your
fine silk garter. The lion lies in wait for the antelope at the ford,
and the antelope is sanctified by the lion, as is the lion by the
antelope, for the play of the Lord is divine. Not the bishop, or the
knight, or the powerful castle is sacred in itself, but the game of
chess is a noble game, and therein the knight is sanctified by the
bishop, as the bishop by the queen. Neither would it be an advantage if
the bishop were ambitious to acquire the higher virtues of the queen, or
the castle, those of the bishop. So are we sanctified when the hand of
the Lord moves us to where he wants us to be. Here he may be about to
play a fine game with us, and in that game I shall be sanctified by you,
as you by any of us."

When the door of the loft was closed, the place became dark, but the
little lantern on the floor shed a gentle light. The loft looked like a
home to the hearts of the derelicts. It was as if they had lived here a
long time. The farmers had lately harvested their hay, and half the loft
was stacked with it. It smelled very sweet and made a clean and soft
seat. The Cardinal, who was very tired, soon sank down into it, his long
cloak spread around him on the floor. Miss Malin faced him from the
opposite side of the lantern. The young girl sat next to her, her legs
crossed, like a small oriental idol. The boy, when at last he sat down
with them, took a seat upon a ladder which lay on the floor, and which
raised him a little above the others. The dog kept close to the
Cardinal. Sitting up, its ears back, from time to time it seemed, in a
deep movement, to swallow its fear and loneliness. In these positions
the party remained for most of the night. Indeed, the Cardinal and Miss
Malin kept theirs, as will be heard, until the first light of dawn. All
their shadows, thrown away in a circle from the center of the stable
lamp, reached up to the rafters under the roof. In the course of the
night it often seemed as if it were these long shadows which were really
alive, and which kept up the spirit and the talk of the gathering,
behind the exhausted people.

"Madame," said the Cardinal to Miss Malin, "I have been told of your
salon, in which you make everybody feel at ease and at the same time
keen to be at his best. As we want to feel like this tonight, I pray
that you will be our hostess, and transfer your talents to this loft."

Miss Malin at once fell in with his suggestion and took command of the
place. During the night she performed her rle, regaling her guests upon
the rare luxuries of loneliness, darkness, and danger, while up her
sleeve she had death itself, like some lion of the season, some fine
Italian tenor, out of the reach of rival hostesses, waiting outside the
door to appear and create the sensation of the night. Some people manage
to loll upon a throne; Miss Malin, on the contrary, sat in the hay as
upon one of those tabourets which are amongst the privileges of
duchesses. She made Jonathan cut up the bread and hand it around, and to
her companions, who had had no food all day, the hard black crusts held
the fragrance of the cornfields. In the course of the night she and the
Cardinal, who were old and faint, drank between them most of the gin in
the keg. The two young people did not touch it.

She had, straight away, more than she had asked for in the task of
making her companions comfortable, for hardly had the Cardinal spoken
when he fell down in a dead faint. The women, who dared not loosen the
bandages around his head, sprinkled them with water out of the jar. When
he first recovered he stared wildly at them, and put his hands to his
head, but as he regained consciousness he gently apologized for the
trouble he had given them, adding that he had had a fatiguing day. He
seemed, however, somehow changed after his recovery, as if weaker than
before, and, as if handing some of his leadership and responsibility to
Miss Malin, he kept close to her.

It may be well at this point to give a brief account of Miss Malin
Nat-og-Dag:

****

It has been said that she was a little off her head. Still, to
the people who knew her well, it sometimes seemed open to doubt
whether she was not mad by her own choice, or from some caprice
of hers, for she was a capricious woman. Neither had she always
been mad. She had even been a woman of great sense, who studied
philosophy, and held human passions in scorn. If Miss Malin had
now been given the choice of returning to her former reasonable
state, and had been capable of realizing the meaning of the
offer, she might have declined it on the ground that you have in
reality more fun out of life when a little off your head.

Miss Malin was now a rich woman, but she had not always been
that, either. She had grown up an orphan girl in the house of
rich relations. Her proud old name she had always had, also her
very proud big nose.

She had been brought up by a pious governess, of the sect of the
Hernhuten, who thought much of female virtue. In those days a
woman's being had one center of gravity, and life was simpler to
her on this account than it has been later on. She might poison
her relations and cheat at cards with a high hand, and yet be an
_honnte femme_ as long as she tolerated no heresy in the sphere
of her specialty. Ladies of her day might themselves fix the
price of their hearts and minds and of their souls, should they
choose to deal with the devil; but as to their bodies, those
were the women's stock in trade, and the lowering of the sacred
standard price for them was thought of as disloyal competition
to the guild of the _honntes femmes_, and was a deadly sin.
Indeed, the higher a young woman could drive up the price
individually, the greater was her state of holiness, and it was
far better that it should be said of her that for her sake many
men had been made unhappy, than that she should have made many
men happy.

Miss Malin, urged on by her disposition as well as her
education, ran amuck a little in her relation to the doctrine.
She took the line, not only of defense, but of a most audacious
offensive. Fantastical by nature, she saw no reason for
temperance, and drove up her price fantastically high. In fact,
in regard to the high valuation of her own body she became the
victim of a kind of megalomania. Sigrid the Haughty, the ancient
Queen of Norway, summoned to her all her suitors amongst the
minor kings of the country, and then put fire to the house and
burned them all up, declaring that in this way she would teach
the petty kings of Norway to come and woo her. Malin might have
done the same with an equally good conscience. She had taken to
heart what her governess had read her out of the Bible, that
"whoever looketh on a woman to lust after her hath already
committed adultery with her in his heart," and she had made
herself the female counterpart of the conscientious young male
of the Gospel. A man's desire for her was to her, as probably to
Queen Sigrid, a deadly impertinence, and as grave an offense as
an attempted rape. She showed but little feminine _esprit de
corps_, and appeared not to consider in the least that it would
have been hard on the honest young women in general if the
principle had been carried through, since their whole field of
action lay between the two ideas, and, by amalgamating them, you
would put as quick an end to their activity as you would to that
of a concertina player by folding up the concertina and hooking
its two end pieces together. She cut a slightly pathetic figure,
as do all people who, in this world, take the words of Scripture
_au pied de la lettre_. But she did not at all mind what sort of
figure she cut.

In her youth, however, this fanatical virgin cut no mean figure
in society, for she was highly talented and brilliant. Though
not beautiful, she had the higher gift of seeming so, and in
society she played the part of a belle when far lovelier women
were left unattended. The homage that she received she took as
the natural tribute to a Nat-og-Dag, and she was not insensitive
to flatteries which concerned her spirit and courage, or her
rare gifts for music and dancing. She even chose her friends
mostly amongst men, and thought women a little stupid. But she
was at the same time ever on the outlook, like a fighting bull
for a red cloth, or a crusader for the sign of the half-moon,
for any sign of the eye of lust, in order to annihilate the
owner without pity.

Yet Miss Malin had not escaped the common fate of human beings.
She had her romance. When she was twenty-seven, already an old
maid, she decided to marry after all. In this position she felt
like a very tall bitch surrounded by small yapping lap dogs. She
was still prepared to burn up the petty kings who might come to
woo her, but she picked out her choice. So did Queen Sigrid, who
swooped down on the Christian hero, Olav Trygveson, and in the
saga can be read the tragic outcome of the meeting of these two
proud hearts.

Malin, for her part, picked out Prince Ernest Theodore of
Anhalt. This young man was the idol of his time. Of the highest
birth and enormously rich, since his mother had been a grand
duchess of Russia, he was also handsome as an angel, a
_bel-esprit_, and a lion of Judah as a soldier. He had even a
noble heart, and no frivolity in his nature, so that when, to
the right and left of him, fair women died from love of him, he
grieved. With all this he was an observer; he saw things. One
day he saw Miss Malin, and for some time saw little else.

This young man had obtained everything in life--and women in
particular--too cheaply. Beauty, talents, charm, virtue had been
his for the lifting of his little finger. About Miss Malin there
was nothing striking but the price. That this thin, big-nosed,
penniless girl, two years older than he, would demand not only
his princely name and a full share in his brilliant future, but
also his prostrate adoration, his life-long fidelity, and
subjection in life and death and could be had for nothing
less,--this impressed the young Prince.

Some people have an unconquerable love of riddles. They may have
the chance of listening to plain sense, or to such wisdom as
explains life; but no, they must go and work their brains over a
riddle, just because they do not understand what it means. That
the solution is most likely silly in itself makes no difference
to those possessed by this particular passion. Prince Ernest had
this mentality, and, even from his childhood, would sit for days
lost in riddles and puzzles--a pastime which, in his case, was
taken as a proof of high intellectuality. When, therefore, he
found this hard nut to crack, the more easily solved beauties
faded before his eyes.

So nervous was Prince Ernest about this first risk of refusal
which he had taken in his life--and God knows whether he most
dreaded or coveted it--that he did not propose to Malin
Nat-og-Dag until the very last evening before he was to depart
for the war. A fortnight later he was killed upon the battle
field of Jena, and he was clasping in his hand a small gold
locket with a curl of fair hair in it. Many lovely blondes found
comfort in the thought of this locket. None knew that amongst
all the riches of silken tresses that had weighed him down, only
this lock from an old maid's head had been to him a wing feather
of a Walkyrie, lifting him from the ground.

If Malin had been a Roman Catholic she would have gone into a
nunnery after the battle of Jena, to save, if not her soul, at
least her self-respect, for, say what you will, no maiden makes
such a brilliant match as she who becomes the bride of the Lord.
But being a good Protestant, with a leaning toward the teachings
of the Hernhuten, she just took up her cross and carried it
gallantly. That nobody in the world knew of her tragedy fell in
well with her opinion of other people, namely, that they never
did know anything of any importance. She gave up all thought of
marriage.

At the age of fifty she came unexpectedly into a very great
fortune. There were people who understood her so little as to
believe that it was this that went to her head and caused there
the confounding of fact and fantasy. It was not so. She would
not have been in the least upset by finding herself in
possession of the treasures of the Grand Turk. What changed her
was what changes all women at fifty: the transfer from the
active service of life--with a pension or the honors of war, as
the case may be--to the mere passive state of a looker-on. A
weight fell away from her; she flew up to a higher perch and
cackled a little. Her fortune helped her only in so far as it
provided the puff of air under her wings that enabled her to fly
a little higher and cackle a little louder, although it also did
away with all criticism from her surroundings. In her laughter
of liberation there certainly was a little madness.

This madness took, as already said, the curious form of a firm
faith in a past of colossal licentiousness. She believed herself
to have been the grand courtesan of her time, if not the great
whore of the Revelation. She took her fortune, her house, and
her jewels as the wages of sin, collected in her long career of
falls, and because of this she was extremely generous with her
money, considering that what had been frivolously gathered must
be frivolously spent. She could not open her mouth without
referring to her days of debauchery. Even Prince Ernest
Theodore, the chaste young lover whom she had refused even a
parting kiss, figured in her waxwork collection as a victim of
her siren's arts and ferocity.

It is doubtful whether any spectacle can be enjoyed in the same
way by those people who may, after all, run a risk of becoming
part of it and by those who are by circumstance entirely cut off
from any such possibility. The Emperor of Rome himself might,
after a particularly exciting show, see the trident and the net
in a nightmare. But the Vestal Virgins would lie on their marble
couches and, with the knowledge of connoisseurs, go over every
detail in the fight, and imagine themselves in the place of
their favorite gladiator. In the same way it is unlikely that
even the most pious old lady would attend the trial and burning
of a witch with quite the untroubled mind of the male audience
around the stake.

No young woman could, even from a nun's cell, have thrown
herself into the imaginary excesses of Miss Malin without fear
and trembling. But the old woman, who had seen to her safety,
could dive down into any abyss of corruption with the grace of a
crested grebe. Faithful by nature, she stuck to the point of
view of her youth with regard to the Gospel's words concerning
adultery. She had the word of the Bible for it that a multitude
of young men had indeed committed it with her. But she
resolutely turned them inside out, as a woman will a frock the
colors of which have disappointed her by fading. She was the
catoptric image of the great repenting sinner whose sins are
made white as wool, and was here taking a genuine pleasure in
dyeing the pretty lamb's wool of her life in sundry fierce dyes.
Jealousy, deceit, seduction, rape, infanticide, and senile
cruelty, with all the perversities of the human world of
passion, even to the _maladies galantes_, of which she exhibited
a surprising knowledge, were to her little sweetmeats which she
would pick, one by one, out of the _bonbonnire_ of her mind,
and crunch with true _gourmandise_. In all her fantasies she was
her own heroine, and she ran through the spheres of the seven
deadly sins with the ecstasy of a little boy who gallops through
the great races of the world upon his rocking-horse. No danger
could possibly put fear into her, nor any anguish of conscience
spoil her peace. If there was one person of whom she spoke with
contempt it was the Mary Magdalene of the Gospel, who could no
better carry the burden of her sweet sins than to retire to the
desert of Libya in the company of a skull. She herself carried
the weight of hers with the skill of an athlete, and was up to
playing a graceful game of bilboquet with it.

Her face itself changed under her great spiritual revolution,
and at the time when other women resort to rouge and belladonna,
her lenience with human weakness produced in her a heightened
color and sweet brilliancy of eye. She was nearer to being a
pretty woman than she had ever been before. Like a witch she had
always looked, but in her second childhood her appearance had
more of the wicked fairy of the children's tales than of the
Medusa, the revenging angel with her flaming sword who had held
her own against Prince Ernest. She had preserved her elfin
leanness and lightness, and as for her skill as a dancer, she
might still be the belle of any great ball. The little cloven
hoof beneath was now daintily gilded, like that of Esmeralda's
goat itself. It was in this glow of mild madness and second
youth that she now sat, marooned in the hayloft of the peasant's
barn, conversing vivaciously with the Cardinal Hamilcar.

****

"When, as a boy, I stayed for some time at Coblentz, at the court of the
emigrant Duke of Chartres," the Cardinal said, after a little pause,
pensively, "I knew the great painter Abildgaard, and used to spend my
mornings in his studio. When the ladies of the court came to him to have
their portraits painted--for he was much sought by such fair women who
wanted their beauty immortalized--how many times have I not heard him
tell them: 'Wash your faces, Mesdames. Take the powder, rouge, and kohl
off them. For if you will paint your faces yourselves I cannot paint
you.' Often, in the course of my life, have I thought of his words. It
has seemed to me that this is what the Lord is continually telling the
too weak and vain mortals: 'Wash your faces. For if you will do the
painting of them yourselves, laying on humility and renunciation,
charity and chastity one inch thick, I can do nothing about them.'
Tonight, indeed," the old man went on, smiling, as a deep movement of
the sea seemed to shake the building, "the Lord is doing the washing for
us with his own hands, and he is using a great deal of water for it. But
we will seek comfort in the thought that there is no higher honor or
happiness for us than this: to have our portraits painted by the hand of
the Lord. That alone is what we have ever longed for and named
immortality."

Seeing that the face of the speaker was covered with blood-stained
bandages, Miss Malin was about to make a remark, but she restrained
herself, for she did not know what lasting disfigurements of a noble
presence they might conceal. The Cardinal understood her thought and
expressed it with a smile. "Yes, Madame," he said, "my face the Lord has
seen fit to wash in a more ardent spirit. But have we not been taught of
the cleansing power of blood? Madame, I know now that it is stronger
even than we thought. And perhaps my face needed it. Who, but the Lord,
knows what rouge and powder I have put on it in the course of seventy
years? Verily, Madame, in these bandages I feel that I am nearer to
posing for my portrait by him than I ever have been before."

Miss Malin blushed slightly at being detected in a lack of tact, and
nimbly put back the conversation a little, as one sets back a clock. "I
am thankful," she said, "that I have in my life had neither rouge nor
powder on my face, and Monsieur Abildgaard might have painted it at any
moment. But as to this divine portrait of me, which is, I suppose, to be
hung in the galleries of heaven, when I myself am dead and gone--allow
me to say, My Lord, that here my ideas differ from yours a little.

"The ideas of art critics," said the Cardinal, "are likely to differ;
that much I learned in the studio. I have seen the master himself strike
the face of a great French painter with a badger's-hair brush full of
cadmium, because they disagreed about the laws of perspective. Impart to
me your views, Madame. I may learn from you."

"Well, then," said Miss Malin, "where in all the world did you get the
idea that the Lord wants the truth from us? It is a strange, a most
original, idea of yours, My Lord. Why, he knows it already, and may even
have found it a little bit dull. Truth is for tailors and shoemakers, My
Lord. I, on the contrary, have always held that the Lord has a penchant
for masquerades. Do you not yourself tell us, my lords spiritual, that
our trials are really blessings in disguise? And so they are. I, too,
have found them to be so, at midnight, at the hour when the mask falls.
But at the same time nobody can deny that they have been dressed up by
the hand of an unrivaled expert. The Lord himself--with your
permission--seems to me to have been masquerading pretty freely at the
time when he took on flesh and dwelt amongst us. Indeed, had I been the
hostess of the wedding of Cana, I might have resented the feat a
little--I might, I tell you, My Lord--had I there asked that brilliant
youth, the carpenter's son, in order to give him a treat on my best
Berncastler Doktor, and he had, at the moment when it suited him,
changed pure water into a far finer vintage! And still the lady did not
know, of course, of what things he was really capable, being God
Almighty.

"Indeed, My Lord," she went on, "of all monarchs of whom I have ever
heard, the one who came, to my mind, nearest to the true spirit of God
was the Caliph Haroun of Bagdad, who, as you know, had a taste for
disguise. Ah, ah! had I lived in his day I should have played the game
with him to his own taste, should I have had to pick up five hundred
beggars before knocking against the Commander of the Faithful under the
beggar's robe. And when I have, in my life, come nearest to playing the
rle of a goddess, the very last thing which I have wanted from my
worshipers has been the truth. 'Make poetry,' I have said to them, 'use
your imagination, disguise the truth to me. Your truth comes out quite
early enough'--under your favor, My Lord--'and that is the end of the
game.'

"And now, what, My Lord," said the old lady, "do you think of womanly
modesty? Surely, that is a divine quality; and what is it but deceit on
principle? Since here a youth and a maiden are present, you and I, who
have observed life from the best of observatories--you from the
confessional, and I from the alcove--will take pains to disregard the
truth; we will talk only of legs. I can tell you, then, that you may
divide all women according to the beauty of their legs. Those who have
pretty legs, and who know the concealed truth to be sweeter than all
illusions, are the truly gallant women, who look you in the face, who
have the genuine courage of a good conscience. But if they took to
wearing trousers, where would their gallantry be? The young men of our
days, who wear tight trousers which oblige them to keep two valets for
drawing them on, one for each leg----"

"And a difficult job even at that," said the Cardinal thoughtfully.

"To walk about as true missionaries of the truth," Miss Malin resumed,
"may be more human, but surely they have nothing divine. They may have
the facts of life on their side, while the legs of the women, under
their petticoats, are ideas. But the people who go forth on ideas are
the ones who have the true heroism. For it is the consciousness of
hidden power which gives courage. But I beg your pardon, My Lord, for
speaking so long."

"Madame," said the Cardinal gently, "do not apologize. I have profited
by your speech. But it has not convinced me that you and I are not
really of one mind. This world of ours is like the children's game of
bread and cheese; there is always something underneath--truth, deceit;
truth, deceit! When the Caliph masqueraded as one of his own poor
subjects, all his hidden splendor could not have saved the jest from
being in pretty poor taste, had he not had beneath it a fraternal heart
for his poor people. Likewise, when our Lord did, for some thirty years,
masquerade as a son of man, there would have been no really good sense
in the thing had he not had, after all, a humane heart, and even,
Madame, a sympathy with lovers of good wine. The witty woman, Madame,
chooses for her carnival costume one which ingeniously reveals something
in her spirit or heart which the conventions of her everyday life
conceal; and when she puts on the hideous long-nosed Venetian mask, she
tells us, not only that she has a classic nose behind it, but that she
has much more, and may well be adored for things other than her mere
beauty. So speaketh the Arbiter of the masquerade: 'By thy mask I shall
know thee.'

"But let us agree, Madame," he went on, "that the day of judgment shall
not be, as insipid preachers will have us believe, the moment of
unveiling of our own poor little attempts at deceit, about which the
Lord does indeed already know all, but, on the contrary, that it shall
be the hour in which the Almighty God himself lets fall the mask. And
what a moment! Oh, Madame, it will not be too much to have waited for it
a million years. Heaven will ring and resound with laughter, pure and
innocent as that of a child, clear as that of a bride, triumphant as
that of a faithful warrior who lays down the enemy's banners at his
sovereign's feet, or who is at last lifted from the dungeon and the
chains, cleared of his slanderer's calumnies!

"Still, Madame, has not the Lord arranged for us here a day of judgment
in miniature? It will be soon midnight. Let it be the hour of the
falling of the mask. If it be not your mask, or mine, which is to fall,
let it be the mask of fate and life. Death we may soon have to face,
without any mask. In the meantime we have nothing to do but to remember
what life be really like. Come, Madame, and my young brother and sister!
As we shall not be able to sleep, and are still comfortably seated here,
tell me who you are, and recount to me your stories without restraint.

"You," the old man said, addressing himself to Jonathan Mrsk, "rose up
in the boat, with danger of capsizing it, at the sight of the falling
granary. Thus, I believe, some proud building of your life has fallen,
and has gone to pieces under your eyes. Tell us which it was.

"Also, I noticed a short time ago," he went on, "when I spoke of the
purity of our blood, that you shrank from my words as from the sight of
the granary. You are, perhaps, a partisan of the revolutionary ideas of
your generation. Do not imagine, then, that I am a stranger to those
theories. I am indeed more closely in touch with them than you could
know. But should we let any discrepancy in politics separate our hearts
at this hour? Come, I shall Speak to you in your own words: And now
abideth liberty, equality, fraternity, these three, but the greatest of
these is fraternity.

"Or," he said, "you may be, my dear son, groaning under the sad burden
of the bastard. But who more than the bastard needs to cry out to ask
who he is? So have faith in us. Tell us now, before morning, the story
of your life."

The young man, whose countenance had all the time been stamped with the
loneliness which is the hallmark of true melancholy, at these words
looked up into the Cardinal's face. The great dignity of manner of the
old man had impressed the others from the moment they came into his
presence. Now the boy was fascinated by the strange lucidity of his
eyes. For a few moments the two looked intensely at each other. The
color rose in the pale cheeks of the young man. He drew a deep sigh.

"Yes," he said, as if inspired, "I will tell you my story. Perhaps I
shall understand it all better when I can, at last, give words to it."

"Wash your face, my young friend," said Miss Malin, "and your portrait,
within our hearts, will impart to you immortality."

"I will call my tale," said the young man, "The Story of Timon of
Assens."

****

"If you had happened to live in Copenhagen," the young man began, "you
would have heard of me, for there I was, at a time, much talked about.
They even gave me a name. They called me Timon of Assens. And they were
right in so far as I do indeed come from Assens, which is, as you may
know, a small seaport town on the island of Funen. There I was born, the
son of very respectable people, the skipper Clement Mrsk and his wife,
Magdalena, who owned a pretty house with a garden in the town.

"I do not know whether you will think it curious that all the time I
lived at Assens it never occurred to me that anything could or would
harm me. I never, indeed, thought that anything at all might occupy
itself with me. It seemed to me that it was, on the contrary, my task to
look after the world. My father sailed, and for many summers I sailed
with him, and came to Portugal and Greece. When we were on the sea, the
ship and the cargo had to be looked after by us, and to both of us they
seemed the important things in the world.

"My mother was a lovely woman. Although I have for some time moved in
the highest society, I never have seen her equal either in looks or in
manners. But she kept no company with the other skippers' wives, and
never went to other people's houses. Her father had been assistant to
the great Swedish botanist, Linn, and to her the flowers, and what
happened to them, and the bees, and their hives and works, seemed more
important than anything which had to do with human beings. While I was
with her I held the belief that the plants, flowers, and insects of the
world were the really important things in it, and that human beings were
here only to look after them.

"In the garden at Assens my mother and I lived in what I think is called
an idyll. Our days were filled with nothing but innocence and pleasure."

Miss Malin, who had been listening attentively, always keen for any kind
of narrative, here interrupted the narrator, sighing a little. "Ah," she
said, "I know about idylls. _Mais moi je n'aime pas les plaisirs
innocents._"

"I had a friend in Assens, or so I thought," Jonathan went on, "a clever
boy by the name of Rasmus Petersen, a couple of years older than I, and
taller by a head. He was to have been a parson, but he got into some
trouble and never succeeded, but when he was a student in Copenhagen he
was a tutor in many great houses. He always took a great interest in me,
but though I admired him I never felt quite well in his company. He was
very sharp, like a razor; you did not come away from him without having
cut your fingers a little, although at the moment you might not feel it.
When I was about sixteen he told my father that I ought to come with him
to Copenhagen, to study under the learned people that he knew there, for
he thought me a very brilliant boy."

"And were you very brilliant?" asked Miss Malin with surprise.

"Alas, no, Madame," said Jonathan.

"When I first came to Copenhagen," Jonathan went on, "I was very lonely,
because there was nothing for me to do. It seemed to me that there was
nothing but people there. They did not care for me, either. When I had
talked to them for a little they generally walked away. But after a
while my interest was caught by the expansive hothouses and nurseries of
the royal palaces and of the great noblemen. Amongst these the most
renowned were those of Baron Joachim von Gersdorff, who was High Steward
of Denmark, and himself a great botanist, who had traveled all over
Europe, India, Africa, and America and collected rare plants everywhere.

"Have you heard of this man before, or do you know him? He came of a
Russian family, and his wealth was such as is otherwise unknown in
Denmark. He was a poet and musician, a diplomat, a seducer of women,
even then, when he was an old man. Still, all this was not what caught
your mind about the man. But it was this: that he was a man of fashion.
Or you might say that fashion itself was only, in Copenhagen at least,
the footman of Baron Gersdorff. Whatever he did at once became the thing
for everybody to do. Oh, I do not want to describe the man. You will
know, I think, what a man of fashion means. I have learned it. Such a
man was he.

"I had not been to his hothouses, to which Rasmus obtained admission for
me, more than a few times when I met Baron Gersdorff himself there one
afternoon. Rasmus presented me to him, and he greeted me in a very
friendly way, and offered to show me the whole place, which he did with
much patience and benevolence. After that day I nearly always found him
there. He took me on to write a catalogue for his cactus house. We spent
many days together in that hot glasshouse. I liked him much, because he
had seen so much of the world, and could tell me about the flowers and
insects of it. At times I noticed that my presence moved him strangely.
One afternoon, as I was reading to him a treatise upon the mouth of the
tube of the Epiphyllum, I saw that he had shut his eyes. He took my hand
and held it, and as I finished he looked up and said: 'What am I to give
you, Jonathan, as a finder's fee?' I laughed and answered that I did not
think that I had found out anything exceptional yet. 'Oh, God,' he said,
'a finder's fee for the summer of 1814!' Shortly after that day he began
to talk to me of my voice. He told me that I had a remarkably sweet
voice, and asked me to let him arrange for Monsieur Dupuy to give me
singing lessons."

"And did you have a lovely voice?" asked Miss Malin with some
incredulity, for the voice of the narrator was low and hoarse.

"Yes, Madame," he said, "at that time I had a very pretty voice. I had
been taught to sing by my mother."

"Ah," said Miss Malin, "there is nothing in the world more lovely than a
lovely boy's voice. When I was in Rome there was a boy named Mario in
the choir of the Jesu, who had a voice like an angel. The Pope himself
told me to go and hear him, and I was well aware why, for he was hoping
to convert me to Rome, and thought that this golden angel's song might
break down all my resistance. From my pew I saw the Pope himself burst
into tears when, like a swan taking the wing, this Mario lifted up his
voice in Carissimi's immortal recitative: 'Get thee behind me, Satan!'
Oh, that good Pius VIII. Two days later he was wickedly poisoned by
three cantharide pills. I do not hold with popery, but I admit that he
was a fine figure of a Pope, and died like a man. And so you had your
lessons, and became a virtuoso, Monsieur Jonathan?"

"Yes, Madame," said Jonathan with a smile, "my lessons I had. And as I
was always very fond of music I worked hard and made good progress. At
the beginning of the third winter the Baron, who by this time never
seemed to like to part with me, took me around to the great houses of
his friends and made me sing for them. When I had first come to
Copenhagen I used to stand outside the great houses on winter evenings,
to see the flowers and chandeliers in the halls, and the young women as
they got out of their carriages. Now I went in everywhere myself, and
the ladies, old and young, were as kind to me as if I had been their
child or young brother. I sang at Court, before King Frederick and Queen
Marie, and the Queen smiled very kindly at me. I was very happy. I
thought: How foolish those people are who tell you that the great people
of the towns love nothing but riches and worldly honors. All these
ladies and great gentlemen love music as much as I do--yes, more--and
forget everything else for it, and what a great thing is the love of the
beautiful."

"Did you fall in love?" Miss Malin asked.

"In a way I was in love with all of them," said Jonathan. "They had
tears in their eyes when I sang; they accompanied me on the harp, or
joined me in duets; they took flowers from their hair and gave them to
me. But perhaps I was in love with the Countess Atalanta Danneskjold,
who was the youngest of the sisters Danneskjold, whom they called the
nine swans of Sams. Her mother made us pose together in a charade, as
Orpheus and Euridice. All that winter was very much like a dream, for do
you not sometimes dream that you can sing whatever note you like, and
run up and down the whole scale, like the angels on Jacob's ladder? I
sometimes dream that even now.

"But toward spring there befell me what I took to be a great misfortune,
not knowing then what misfortune means. I fell ill, and as I was getting
well the court physician, who was attending me, told me that I had lost
my voice and that I had no hope of getting it back. While I was still in
bed I was much worried by this, not only by the loss of my voice itself,
but by the thought of how I should now disappoint and lose my friends,
and how sad my life would now become. I was even shedding tears about it
when Rasmus Petersen came to see me. I opened my heart to him, to get
his sympathy in my distress. He had to get up from his chair and pretend
to look out of the window to hide his laughter. I thought it heartless
of him, and did not say any more to him. 'Why, Jonathan,' he said, 'I
have reason to laugh, for I have won my bet. I held that you were indeed
the simpleton you look, which nobody else would believe. They think that
you are a shrewd boy. It will not make the slightest difference in the
world to you that you have lost that voice of yours.' I did not
understand him. I think I grew pale, even though his words cheered me.

"'Come,' he said, 'the Baron Gersdorff is your father. I guessed as
much, before I ever brought you to his hothouses, from looking at a
portrait of him as a child, in which he also has the head of an angel.
When he knew it himself he was more pleased than I have ever seen him.
He said: "I have never had a child in my life. It seems very curious to
me that I should have got one. Still, I believe this boy to be indeed
the son of my body, and I shall reward him for that. But should I find
that my soul is going to live on, in him--as God liveth I will
legitimatize him, and leave him all that I own. If it be not possible to
have him made a Baron Gersdorff, I will at least have him a Knight of
Malta under the name of De Rsurrection."

"'It is on this account,' Rasmus said, 'that the fine people of
Copenhagen have all been spoiling you, Jonathan. They have been watching
you all the time to see if the soul of Baron Gersdorff was showing
itself in you, in which case you would be the richest man, and the best
match, Jonathan, in all northern Europe.' Then he proceeded to recount
to me a conversation that he had had with Baron Gersdorff about me:

"'You know me, my good Rasmus, to be a poet," the Baron had said to him.
'Well, I will tell you what sort of poet I am. I have never in my life
written a line without imagining myself in the place of some poet or
other that I know of. I have written poems in the manner of Horace or
Lamartine. Likewise I am not capable of writing a love letter to a woman
without representing to myself in my own mind either Lovelace, the
Corsaire or Eugene Onegine. The ladies have been flattered, adored, and
seduced by all the heroes of Chateaubriand and Lord Byron in turn. There
is nothing that I have ever done unconsciously, without knowing well
what I did. But this boy, this Jonathan, I have really made without
thinking of it. He is bound to be, not any figure out of Firdousi, or
even Oehlenschlaeger, but a true and genuine work of Joachim Gersdorff.
That is a curious thing, a very curious thing, for Joachim Gersdorff to
be watching. That is a phenomenon of extreme importance to Joachim
Gersdorff. Let him but show me what a Joachim Gersdorff is in reality,
and no reward of mine shall be too great. Riches, houses, jewels, women,
wines, and the honors of the land shall be his for it.'

"All this I heard as I was lying in my bed.

"I do not know if you will think it strange, My Lord, or you, Miss
Nat-og-Dag, that the strongest emotion which these words aroused in me
was a feeling of deep shame. Such a strong feeling I had never, in all
my life, experienced.

"If the Baron had seduced me, as I believe that he did seduce other
pretty boys, I should have had to blush before the faces of honest
people. But I might have found refuge from that shame in my own heart,
for in a way I loved the man. For the shame which I now felt it seemed
to me that there was no refuge anywhere. Upon the very bottom of my
soul, I felt, and that for the first time in my life, the eyes of all
the world.

"God made the world, My Lord, and looked at it, and saw that it was
good. Yes. But what if the world had looked back at him, to see whether
he was good or not? This was, I thought, what Lucifer had really done to
God: he had looked at him, and had made the Lord feel that he himself
was being judged by a critic. Was he good? I--I had been innocent as
God. Now I was made a true Joachim Gersdorff. I had in all my veins the
blood of this man, of a man of fashion, the sort of man who attracts the
eyes of all the world. God could not stand it. He hurled down Lucifer,
as you remember, into the abyss. God was right; he should not have stood
it. I could not stand it either, but I had to.

"To find out whether Rasmus was right I did, I think, a brave, even a
heroic, thing, which proves to my mind that I had been well brought up,
after all, by the skipper and his wife. I went to a big party at the
house of Countess Danneskjold, and sang to them again. I sang my old
songs, and I heard my own voice, or what was left of it. You will
understand, who are listening to me now, how poor that must have been. I
had sung to them before, and done my best, and it seemed to me that I
had then given them the very best which I had in me. As I now sang there
was not one of the faces around me which showed the slightest
disappointment or regret. All the people were kind and complimentary to
me, as they had always been. I felt then that I had never given them
anything, had never done anything to them at all. It was the world
around me which was watching me, and meant to do something to me. All
eyes were on me, for I was a genuine Joachim Gersdorff, a young man of
fashion. I came away from that house at midnight, and that was the hour,
My Lord, of which the fall of the granary reminded me.

"The same night I wrote a letter to the Baron, to take leave of him. I
was so filled with abhorrence of him and all his world that, on reading
my letter through, I found the word 'fashion' recurring nine times. I
gave my letter to Rasmus to hand to him. As he was leaving I remembered
that I had said nothing of the fortune which the Baron meant to leave to
me. I now charged my friend to communicate to him my refusal of any of
it.

"I could not stand the sight of the streets. Leaving my pretty rooms in
the neighborhood of the Gersdorff Palace, I went in a boat across the
harbor to the small fortified island of Trekroner, and took lodgings
with the quartermaster, where I could see nothing but the sea. Rasmus
walked down with me, and carried my bag. All the time he was trying to
hold me back. We had to pass the door of the Gersdorff Palace, and such
a sudden loathing of the whole place filled me at the sight of it that I
spat at it, as my father--alas, as the skipper Clement Mrsk of
Assens--had taught me to spit when I was a boy.

"For a few days I lived at Trekroner, trying to find again there the
world as it had once been mine--not myself, for I wanted nothing less
than myself. I thought of the garden of Assens, but it was closed to me
forever. Once you have eaten of the tree of knowledge, and have seen
yourself, gardens close themselves to you. You become a person of
fashion, even as did Adam and Eve when they began to occupy themselves
with their appearance.

"But only a few days later Rasmus came over to see me. He had taken a
small yawl to get to me, he who was so terrified of the sea.

"'Ah, my friend,' he said, rubbing his hands, 'you were born under a
lucky star. I gave your letter to the Baron, and as he read it he became
to the highest degree excited and delighted. He got up and walked to and
fro, and exclaimed: "God, this misanthropy, this melancholy! How I know
them. They are my own altogether! For the first week after I had become
the lover of the Empress Catherine I felt all that he feels now. I meant
to enter a monastery. It is young Joachim Gersdorff to a turn, but done
all in black, an etching from the colored original. But good God, what
power the boy has got in him, what a fine deep black! I had not thought
it of him with his high voice. This is the winter night of Russia, the
wolves upon the steppes." After he had read your letter a second time he
said: "He will not be a man of fashion? But so we all are, we
Gersdorffs; so was my father at the court of the young Empress. Why
should not my son be the same? Surely he shall be our heir, the glass of
fashion, and the mold of form."

"'I tell you, Jonathan,' said Rasmus, 'that your melancholy is the
highest fashion of the day. The elegant young men of Copenhagen wear
black and speak with bitterness of the world, and the ladies talk of the
grave.'

"And this was the time when they took to calling me Timon of Assens.

"'Did you tell him,' I asked Rasmus, 'that I will on no account have any
of his money?' And Rasmus answered, 'Yes, I did; and he was so pleased
that I thought that he might have a stroke and leave you his heir there
and then. "Good," he said, "good, my son Timon. Let me see you throw it
away. Scatter it well. Show the world your contempt of it in the true
Gersdorff way. Let the hetra have it; there is no better advertisement
for a melancholy man of fashion. They will follow you everywhere and
make a charming contrast to your deep black. How I love that boy," he
said. "I have," he added, "a collection of emeralds, unmatched in all
Europe. I will send him that to start with." And here, indeed, it is,'
said Rasmus, handing me, with great care, a case of jewels.

"'But when the Baron heard,' Rasmus said, 'of your spitting at the door
of his house, he became very grave. "That," he said, "I did to my
father's door, to the door of the Gersdorff Palace of St. Petersburg."
He at once sent for his lawyer, and drew up a document to acknowledge
you as his son, and to leave you all his fortune. Likewise he has
written to obtain for you the title of Knight of Malta, and the name of
De Rsurrection.'

"By this time I was so depressed that I thought of death with a true
longing and nostalgia. I returned with Rasmus to town, to pay my debts,
so that my tailor and my hatter should not talk of me when I was dead,
and I walked out upon the bridge of Langebro, looking at the water and
the boats lying there, some of which came from Assens. I waited until
there were not so many people about. It was one of the blue April
evenings of Copenhagen. A barcarole by Salvadore that I had used to sing
ran into my mind. It gave me much ease, together with the thought that I
would soon disappear. As I was standing there a carriage, driving by,
slackened its pace, and a little later a lady dressed in black lace came
up, looked around, and spoke to me in a low voice, quite out of breath.
'You are Jonathan Mrsk?' she asked me, and as I said yes, she came up
close to me. 'Oh, Jonathan Mrsk,' she said, 'I know you. I have
followed you. I see what you are about. Let me die with you. I have long
meant to seek death, but I dare not go alone. Let me go in your company.
I am as great a sinner as Judas,' she said, 'like him I have betrayed,
betrayed. Come, let us go.' In the spring twilight she seized my hand
and held it. I had to shake her off and run away.

"I thought: There are probably always in Copenhagen four or five women
who are on the verge of suicide; perhaps there are more. If I have
become the man of fashion amongst them, how shall I escape them, to die
in peace? Must I die, now, in fashionable company, and give the tone of
fashion to the bridge of Langebro? Must I go down to the bottom of the
sea in the society of women who do not know a major from a minor key,
and is my last moan to be----"

"_Le dernier cri_," said Miss Malin, with a truly witchlike little
laugh.

"I went back to Trekroner," said Jonathan after a short pause, "and sat
in my room. I could neither eat nor drink.

"At this moment I unexpectedly received a visit from skipper Clement
Mrsk of Assens. He had been away to Trankebar, and had just returned,
and had looked me up.

"'What is this,' he said, 'that I hear of you, Jonathannerl? Are they to
make you a Knight of Malta? I know Malta well. As you go into the
entrance and have got the Castle of San Angelo on your right hand, you
have to be careful about a rock to port.'

"'Father,' I said, remembering again how we had sailed together, 'is
Baron Gersdorff my father? Do you know that man?'

"'Leave the women's business alone,' he said. 'Here you are, Jonathan, a
seaworthy ship, whoever built you.'

"I told him then all that had happened to me.

"'Little Jonathan,' he said, 'you have fallen amongst women.' I said
that I really did not know many women. 'That does not signify,' he said,
'I have seen the men of Copenhagen. Those people who want things to
happen are all of them women, masquerading in a new model of wax noses.
I tell you, in regard to ships, if it were not for the women sitting in
ports waiting for silks, tea, cochineal, and pepper--all things which
they want for making things happen--the ships would sail on quietly,
content to be on the sea and never thinking of land. Your mother,' he
went on after a little while, 'was the only woman I ever knew who did
not want things to happen.' I said, 'But even she, Father, did not
succeed in it, and God help me now.'

"I told him how Baron Gersdorff had wanted to leave me his fortune.
Father had become hard of hearing. Only after a time he said, 'Did you
speak of money? Do you want money, Jonathan? It would be curious if you
did, for I know where there is a lot of it. Three years ago,' he
recounted, 'I was becalmed off a small island near Haiti. I went ashore
to see the place, and to dig up some rare plants which I meant to bring
your mother, and there I struck upon the buried treasure of Captain
l'Olonnais, who was one of the _Filibustiers_. I dug it all up, and as I
wanted exercise I dug it all down again, in better order than the
Captain had done. I know the exact place of it. If you want it I will
get it for you some time, and if you cannot stop the Baron from giving
you his money, you might make him a present of it. It is more than he
has got.'

"'Father!' I cried, 'you do not know what you say. You have not lived in
this town. What a gesture that would be. It would make me a man of
fashion forever--I should indeed be Timon of Assens. Bring me a parrot
from Haiti, Father, but not money.'

"'I believe you are unhappy, Jonathan,' he said.

"'I am unhappy, Father,' I said. 'I have loved this town and the people
in it. I have drunk them down with delight. But they have some poison in
them which I cannot stand. If I think of them now, I vomit up my soul.
Do you know of a cure for me?'

"'Why, yes,' he said, 'I know of a cure for everything: salt water.'

"'Salt water?' I asked him.

"'Yes,' he said, 'in one way or the other. Sweat, or tears, or the salt
sea.'

"I said: 'I have tried sweat and tears. The salt sea I meant to try, but
a woman in black lace prevented me.'

"'You speak wildly. Jonathan,' he said.

"'You might come with me,' he said after a little time. 'I am bound for
St. Petersburg.'

"'No,' I said, 'to St. Petersburg I will not go.'

"'Well,' he said, 'I am bound for it. But go and get well while I am
there, for you are looking very sick. I will take you when I come back,
into open sea.'

"'I cannot stay in Copenhagen,' I said. "'Good,' he said, 'go to some
place of which the doctors can tell you, and I will pick you up at
Hamburg.'

"And in this way, My Lord, and Miss Nat-og-Dag," the young man said, "I
was sent here, by skipper Mrsk, whether he be my father or not, to get
cured by salt water."

"Ah, ah, ah," said Miss Malin, when the young man had finished his tale,
in which she had by this time become quite absorbed. She rubbed her
small hands together, as pleased as a child with a new toy. "What a
story, Monsieur Timon. What a place this is! What people we are! I
myself have by now become aware of my identity: I am Mademoiselle
Diogenes, and this little lantern, which the fat old peasant woman left
us, that is my famous lamp, by the light of which I have sought a man,
and by which I have found him. You are the man, Timon! If I had searched
all Europe with lamp and lantern I should not have found more precisely
what I wanted."

"What do you want me for, Madame?" Jonathan asked her.

"Oh, not for myself," said Miss Malin. "I am not in a mood for
love-making tonight. In fact, I might have had, for supper, a decoction
of the tree agnus castus, of which a specimen is shown in Guinenne. I
want you for Calypso.

"You see this girl?" she asked him, looking with pride and tenderness at
the fair young creature by her side. "She is not my own daughter, and
still, by the Holy Ghost, I am making her, as much as my old friend
Baron Gersdorff ever made you. I have carried her in my heart and my
mind, and sighed under her weight. Now the days are accomplished when I
shall be delivered, and here we have the stable and the manger. But when
I have brought her forth, I shall want a nurse; further, I shall want a
governess, a tutor, a _maestro_ for her, and you are to be all that."

"Alas, to teach her what?" asked Jonathan.

"To teach her to be seen," said Miss Malin. "You complain of people
looking at you. But what if you were bent down by the opposite
misfortune? What if nobody could or would see you, although you were,
yourself, firmly convinced of your own existence? There are more
martyrdoms than yours, Misanthrope of Assens. You may have read the tale
of the Emperor's new clothes, by that brilliant, rising young author,
Hans Andersen. But here we have it the other way around: the Emperor is
walking along in all his splendor, scepter and orb in hand, and no one
in the whole town dares to see him, for they believe that they shall
then be thought unfit for their offices, or impossibly dull. This is my
little Emperor; the procession a bad man made, about whom I shall tell
you; and you, Monsieur Timon, you are the innocent child who cries out:
'But there _is_ an Emperor!'

"The motto of the Nat-og-Dag family," went on Miss Malin, "runs thus:
'The sour with the sweet.' Out of piety to my ancestors I have partaken
of many of the mixed dishes of life: the giblet soup of Mr. Swedenborg,
the salad of platonic love, even the sauerkraut of the divine Marquis. I
have developed the palate of a true Nat-og-Dag; I have come to relish
them. But the bitterness of life, that is bad nourishment, particularly
to a young heart. Upon the meadows of the Westerlands they raise a sort
of mutton which, fed on salt grass, produces an excellent-tasting meat
known in the culinary world as _pr-sal_. This girl has been fed on
such salt plains and on brine and bitter herbs. Her little heart has had
nothing else to eat. She is indeed, spiritually, an _agneau pr-sal_,
my salted little ewe lamb."

The girl, who had all the time sat crouching near her old friend, drew
herself up when Miss Malin began to tell her story. She sat up straight
then, her amber-colored eyes below their delicate, long-drawn eyebrows
that were like the markings on a butterfly's wings, or themselves like a
pair of low extended wings, were fixed on the air, too haughty to turn
toward her audience. In spite of her gentle brow she was a dangerous
animal, ready to spring. But at what? At life altogether.

"Have you ever heard," asked Miss Malin, "of Count August
Platen-Hallermund?" At the sound of the name the girl shuddered and
became pale. A threatening dusk sank over her clear eyes. "Hush," said
Miss Malin, "we shall not name him again. As he is not a man, but an
angel, we shall call him the Count Seraphina. We shall sit, tonight, in
a _lit de justice_ on the Count. The truth must be told about him just
this one time. When I was a little girl and was taught French," the old
lady addressed herself, above the heads of the young people, in a sudden
little fit of familiarity, to the Cardinal, "the very first phrase in my
reading book ran thus: _Le lit est une bonne chose; si l'on n'y dort
pas, l'on s'y repose._ Like much else which we were taught as children,
it was proved by life to be a complete fallacy. But it may still apply
to the bed of justice."

"Indeed I have read the poetry and philosophy of Count August," said the
Cardinal.

"Not I," said Miss Malin. "When, on doomsday, I am called to account for
many hours spent in the wrong places, I shall still be able to plead:
'But I have not read the poems of Count August von Platen.' How many
poems has he written, My Lord?"

"Ah, I could not tell," said the Cardinal. Miss Malin said: "_Cinq ou
six milles? C'est beaucoup. Combien en a-t-il de bons? Quinze ou seize.
C'est beaucoup, dit Martin._"

"You have read, My Lord," she went on, "of the unhappy young man who had
been changed into a pug by a witch, and who could not be transformed
back unless a pure virgin, who had known no man, should, upon a St.
Sylvester's night, read the poems of Gustav Pfizer without falling
asleep? And his sympathetic friend, when he is told all this, answers:
'Then, alas, I cannot help you. First of all, I am no virgin. Secondly,
I never could, reading Gustav Pfizer's poems, keep from falling into
slumber.' If Count August is turned into a pug, for exactly the same
reasons I shall not be able to help him."

"This man, then, this Count Seraphina," she took up the thread of her
tale, after her little flutter of thought, "was the uncle of this girl,
and she was brought up in his house after the death of her parents. So
now, my good friends, I will lighten the darkness of this night to you,
by impressing upon it the deeper darkness of Calypso's story:

****

"Count Seraphina," said Miss Malin, "meditated much upon celestial
matters. And, as you must be aware, who have read his poems, he was
convinced that no woman was ever allowed to enter heaven. He disliked
and mistrusted everything female; it gave him goose flesh.

"His idea of paradise was, then, a long row of lovely young boys, in
transparent robes of white, walking two by two, singing his poems to his
music, in such lovely trebles as you yourself once possessed, Mr.
Jonathan, or otherwise discussing his philosophy, or absorbed in his
books upon arithmetics. The estate which he owned at Angelshorn in
Mechlenburg he endeavored to turn into such a heaven, a Von Platen
waxwork elysium, and in the very center of it he had, most awkwardly for
himself and for her, this little girl, about whom he had doubts as to
whether or not she might pass as an angel.

"As long as she was a child he took pleasure in her company, for he had
an eye for beauty and grace. He had her dressed up in boy's clothes, all
of velvet and lace, and he allowed her hair to grow into such
hyacinthine locks as young Ganymede wore at the court of Jove. He was
much occupied by the thought of showing himself to the world as a
conjurer, a high white Magian, capable of transforming that drop of
blood of the devil himself, a girl, into that sweet object nearest to
the angels, which was a boy. Or perhaps he even dreamed of creating a
being of its own kind, an object of art which was neither boy nor girl,
but a pure Von Platen. There may have been times, then, when his
delicate artist's blood stirred a little in his veins at the idea. He
taught the little girl Greek and Latin. He tried to convey to her the
idea of the beauty of higher mathematics. But when he lectured to her
upon the infinite loveliness of the circle, she asked him: if it were
really so fair, what color was it--was it not blue? Ah, no, he said, it
had no color at all. From that moment he began to fear that she would
not become a boy.

"He kept looking at her, with terrible doubts, more and more virtuously
indignant at the signs of his mistake. And when he found that there was
no longer any doubt, but that his failure was a certainty, with a shiver
he turned his eyes away from her forever, and annihilated her. Her
girl's beauty was her sentence of death. This happened two or three
years ago. Since then she has not existed. Mr. Timon, you are free to
envy her.

"The Count Seraphina had a great predilection for the Middle Ages. His
huge castle of Angelshorn dated from that time, and he had taken pains
to bring it back inside, as outside, to the times of the Crusades. It
was not constructed, no more than was the Count himself, to spread
itself much on earth, but the tall towers aspired to heaven, with a
flight of jackdaws like a thin smoke around their heads, and the deep
vaults seemed to dig themselves down toward the pit. The daylight was
let in, between fathom-thick walls, through old stained glass, like
cinnamon and blood of oxen, along the sides of the rooms, where, upon
faded tapestries, unicorns were killed and the Magians and their retinue
carried gold and myrrh to Bethlehem. Here the Count listened to, and
himself played, the _viol de gamba_ and the _viol d'amore_, and
practiced archery. He never read a printed book, but had his authors of
the day copied by hand in ultramarine and scarlet letters.

"He liked to imagine himself the abbot of a highly exclusive monastery,
whereto only fair young monks of brilliant talent and soft manners were
admitted. He and his circle of young friends sat down to dinner in old
sculptured oak pews, and wore cowls of purple silk. His house was an
abbey upon the northern soil, a Mount Athos to which no hen or cow is
allowed to come, not even the wild bees, on account of their queen bee.
Aye, the Count was more zealous than the monks of Athos, for when he and
his seraglio of lovely youths sometimes drank wine out of a skull, to
keep present the thought of death and eternity, he took care that it
should not be the skull of a lady. Oh, that the name of that man must
dishonor my lips! It were better for a man that he should kill a lady,
in order to procure her skull to drink his wine from, than that he
should excite himself by drinking it, so to say, out of his own skull.

"In this dark castle the annihilated girl would walk about. She was the
loveliest thing in the place, and would have adorned the court of Queen
Venus, who would very likely have made her keeper of her doves, dove as
she is herself. But here she knew that she did not exist, for nobody
ever looked at her. Where, My Lord, is music bred--upon the instrument
or within the ear that listens? The loveliness of woman is created in
the eye of man. You talk, Timon, of Lucifer offending God by looking at
him to see what he was like. That shows that you worship a male deity. A
goddess would ask her worshiper first of all: 'How am I looking?'

"You might well ask me now: 'Did not one of the castellan's sleek
minions look for himself, and find out how sweet she was?' But no; this
is the story of the Emperor's new clothes, and is told to prove to you
the power of human vanity. These beautiful boys were too fearful of
being found impossibly dull, and unfit for their office. They were busy
discussing Aristotle and lecturing upon the doctrines and mysteries of
ancient and medieval scholastics.

"The Emperor himself, you will remember, believed that he was finely
attired. So also the maid herself believed that she was not worth
looking at. Still, in her heart she could hardly believe it, and this
everlasting struggle between instinct and reason devoured her, as much
as it did Hercules himself, or any other traditional hero of tragedy.
Sometimes she would stand and look at the mighty coats of armor in the
corridors of Angelshorn. These looked like real men. She felt that they
would have been partisans of hers, had they not all been hollow. She
became shy of all people, and wild, in the loneliness of the brilliant
circle of the house. But she became also fierce, and might well, on a
dark night, have put fire to the castle.

"In the end, as you, Timon, could not stand your existence, but meant to
jump into the water from Langebro, she could no longer stand her
nonexistence at Angelshorn. But your task was easier. You wanted only to
disappear, while she had to create herself. She had been for such a long
time brought up in the wicked heresies of those falsifiers of truth, and
so thoroughly tortured and threatened with the stake, that she was by
now ready to deny any god. Abu Mirrah had a ring which made him
invisible, but when he wanted to marry the Princess Ebadu, and could not
get it off his finger, he cut off the finger with it. In this way
Calypso resolved to cut off her long hair, and to chop off her young
breasts, so as to be like her acquaintances. This deed of darkness she
made up her mind to commit one summer night."

At this point of Miss Malin's narrative, the girl, who had hitherto
stared straight in front of her, turned her wild eyes toward the
narrator, and began to listen with a new kind of interest, as if she
herself were hearing the tale for the first time. Miss Malin had an
opulent power of imagination. But still the story, correct or not, was
to the heroine herself a symbol, a dressed-up image of what she had in
reality gone through, and she acknowledged it by her clear deep glance
at the old woman.

"At midnight, My Lord," Miss Malin went on, "the maiden got up to go to
this dismal rendezvous. She took a candlestick in one hand, and a sharp
hatchet in the other, like to Judith when she went to kill Holophernes.
But what darkness, my friends, what darkness in the castle of
Angelshorn, compared to that of the tent of Dothaim. The angels must
have turned away and wept.

"She walked all through the house to a room in which she knew there was
a long looking-glass on the wall. It was a room that was never used;
nobody would come there. The lost girl swept down her clothes to her
waist, and fixed her eyes on the glass, not allowing herself any
thought, lest it should frighten her from her purpose.

"In that same midnight hour newly married young men, within nuptial
chambers, were trembling, unveiling, fondling and kissing the bodies of
their young brides. In the light of five hundred wax candles great
ladies were turning the destinies of nations by lifting their shoulders
in their low frocks. Even in the houses of ill fame of Naples, the old
brown _madamas_, dragging their girls to the little candle on the
bed-table, and pulling down their bodices, were bargaining with their
customers for higher fees. Calypso, while lowering her eyes to the
whiteness of her bosom within the dim mirror, for she had never seen
herself naked in a mirror, was trying the edge of her ax upon her little
finger.

"At that moment she saw in the looking-glass a big figure behind her
own. It seemed to move, and she turned around. There was nobody there,
but on the wall was an enormous old painting which had grown dark with
age, but in which the lighter parts, illuminated by her candle, sprang
out. It represented a scene out of the life of the nymphs, fauns, and
satyrs, with the centaurs, playing in groves and on the flowery plains.
It had been brought, many years ago, from Italy by one of the old lords
of the house, but it had been thought a very indecent picture even
before the time of the present Count, and had been removed from the
living-rooms. It was not a well-painted picture, but there were a lot of
figures in it. In the foreground three young naked nymphs, silvery as
white roses, were holding up branches of trees.

"Calypso walked all along the huge picture, holding up her candle, and
gazing gravely at it. That it was a scandalous picture she lacked
knowledge to see; neither did she doubt that it was a true
representation of beings actually existing. She looked with great
interest at the satyrs and centaurs. In her lonely existence she had
developed a passionate tenderness for animals. To the mind of Count
August the existence of the brute creation was an enigma and a tragedy,
and there were no animals at Angelshorn. But to the girl they seemed
sweeter than human beings, and she was delighted to find that there were
people who possessed so many of their characteristics. But what
surprised and overwhelmed her was the fact that these strong and lovely
beings were obviously concentrating their attention upon following,
adoring, and embracing young girls of her own age, and of her own figure
and face, that the whole thing was done in their honor and inspired by
their charms.

"She looked at them for a very long time. In the end she returned to her
mirror and stood there contemplating herself within it. She had the
sense of art of her uncle himself, and knew by instinct what things
harmonized together. Now a hitherto unexperienced feeling of a great
harmony came upon her.

"She knew now that she had friends in the world. By right of her looks
she might step into the mellow golden light, the blue sky and gray
clouds, and the deep brown shadows of these plains and olive groves. Her
heart swelled with gratitude and pride, for here they all looked at her
and recognized her as their own. The god Dionysos himself, who was
present, looked her, laughingly, straight into the eyes.

"She looked around the room and saw, in showcases, what she had never
seen before at Angelshorn: woman's clothes, fans, jewels, and little
shoes. All these had belonged to her great-grandmother. For, strange to
say, the Count had had a grandmother. He had even had a mother, and
there had been a time, when, _bon gr mal gr_, he had made a close
acquaintance with the body of a fair young woman. He had a tenderness
for his grandmother, who had birched him when he was a child. In the
very center of his abbey he had left her boudoir untouched. A faint
perfume of attar of roses still lived here.

"The girl spent the night in the room. She put on and took off one after
the other of the court robes, the pearl strings, and diamonds. She
looked from the glass to the painting for the applause of the
centaurs--in what attire did they like her best? She could have no doubt
about it. At last she left the room to go to the room of the castellan.
Before she closed the door she gently kissed the nymphs, as high up as
she could place her kiss, as if they had been her beloved friends.

"She walked up the stairs very gently, and went close to the great bed
of her uncle. There he was, between the yellow silk hangings, his eyes
shut, his nose in the air, white in a fine white nightshirt. The girl
still had on a great yellow-brocade frock, and she stood by his bedside
like Psyche beside the couch of Eros. Psyche had feared to see a
monster, and had found the god of love. But Calypso had held her uncle
to be a minister of truth, an arbiter of taste, an Apollo himself, and
what did she find? A poor little doll stuffed with sawdust, a caricature
of a skull. She blushed deeply. Had she been afraid of this
creature--she, who was the sister of the nymphs and had centaurs for
playmates? She was a hundred times as strong as he.

"Had he woke up then, and seen her by his bedside, still with her
hatchet in her hand, he might have died from fear, or it might have done
him good in some other way. But he slept on--God knows what his dreams
were--and she did not cut off his head. She gave him instead a little
swift epigram out of her French book, which had once been made about a
king who also imagined himself much-beloved:

    _Ci-git Louis, ce pauvre roi._
    _L'on dit qu'il fut bon--mais  quoi?_

And she did not bear him the slightest grudge; for she was not a freed
slave, but a conqueror with a mighty train, who could afford to forget.

"She left the room as quietly as she had come, and blew out the candle,
for in the summer night she could find her way without it. All around
her the whole seraglio was silent; only as she passed a door she heard
two of the young boys arguing upon divine love. They might all have been
dead as far as she was concerned. As she lifted the heavy medieval lock
of the front door she lifted their weight off her heart.

"When she came out it was raining. The night itself wanted to touch her.

"She walked over the moors, grave as Ceres herself with a thunderbolt
borrowed from Jove in her hand, who, even as she knits her brows, smells
of strawberries and honey. Around the horizon the corn-lightnings were
playing in her honor. She let her frock trail over the heather. Why
should she not? Had a young highwayman met her, she might have made him
her husband then and there, until death had them parted; or she might
have chopped off his head, and God knows which fate would have been more
to be envied him.

"She had no gay ditty on her lips. She had been seriously brought up as
a good Protestant, and life had taught her no frivolity. In her heart
she repeated the hymn of good Paul Gerhardt, altering it as to the
personal pronoun only:

    _Against me who can stand?_
    _The lightning's in my hand._
    _Who dares to bring distress_
    _Where I decide to bless?_

"In the early morning she came to the house where I was staying. She was
wet all through like a tree in the garden. She knew of me, for I am her
godmother, and she felt that I had knowledge of, and might tell her more
about, nymphs and centaurs. She found me getting into my carriage to go
to the bath of Norderney. In this way fate drove us together, to be, in
the end, like yourself, Mr. Timon, cured by salt water."

"And to shine above them," the Cardinal said, as gently as he had all
the time been listening to the tale of the old woman, "a Stella Maris in
the darkness of our loft."

"Madame, indeed," said Jonathan, "I do not know if you will think it
strange, but I have never in my life, until you told me so now, thought
that fair women could suffer. I held them to be precious flowers, which
must be looked after carefully."

"And what do you feel now that I have told you so?" Miss Malin asked
him.

"Madame," said the young man after having thought it over, "I feel how
edifying is the thought that toward women we are always in the wrong."

"You are an honest young man," said Miss Malin. "Your side hurts you
now, where your rib was once taken out of you."

"If I had been in the castle of Angelshorn," he went on, in high
agitation, "I should not have minded dying to serve this lady."

"Come, Jonathan and Calypso," said Miss Malin, "it would be sinful and
blasphemous were you two to die unmarried. You have been brought here
from Angelshorn and Assens, into each other's arms. You are hers, and
she is yours, and the Cardinal and I, who stand you in parents' stead,
will give you our blessing." The two young people stared at each other.
"If anybody will say," said Miss Malin, "that you are not her equal in
birth, I shall answer him that you belong to the order of knighthood of
the hayloft of Norderney, outside of which no member of it can marry."
The girl, in great excitement, rose half up and stood on her knees. "Did
you not see, Calypso," Miss Malin addressed herself kindly to her, "how
he followed you here, and how, the moment he heard that you were staying
here with me, nothing in the world could induce him to go with the boat?
Many waters cannot quench love, neither can the floods drown it."

"Is that true?" asked the girl, turning her eyes upon the boy with such
an intense and frantic look as if life and death for her depended upon
his answer.

"Yes, that is true," said Jonathan. It was not in the least true. He had
not even, at the time, been aware of the girl's existence. But the power
of imagination of the old woman was enough to sway anybody off his feet.
The girl's face, at his words, suddenly paled into a rare pearly white.
Her eyes grew bigger and darker. They shone at him like stars with a
moisture deeper than tears, and at the sight of her changed face
Jonathan sank upon his knees before her in the hay.

"Oh, Jonathan," said Miss Malin, "are you going to thank the Baron, upon
your knees, that he took the trouble about you?"

"Yes, Madame," said the young man.

"And you, Calypso," she asked the girl, "do you want him to look at you
forever and ever?"

"Yes," said the girl.

Miss Malin looked at them triumphantly. "Then, My Lord," she said to the
Cardinal, "will you consent to marry these two people, who stand in
great need of it?"

The Cardinal's eyes gravely sought their faces, which had now colored as
strongly as if they had been in front of a high fire. "Yes," he said.
"Lift me up." The bridegroom-to-be helped him to rise.

"You will," said Miss Malin, "have a Cardinal to marry you, and a
Nat-og-Dag for a bridesmaid, which no one will have hereafter. Your
marriage must be in every way a more intense affair than the lukewarm
unions generally celebrated around us, for you must see her, listen to
her, feel her, know her with the energy which you meant to use for
jumping into the sea from Langebro. One kiss will make it out for the
birth of twins, and at dawn you shall celebrate your golden wedding."

"My Lord," she said to the Cardinal, "the circumstances being so
unusual--for we have no need of procreation, seeing that the boat can
hold no more than we are, and we run but little risk of fornication, I
feel; and as to the company of one another, we cannot escape it if we
would--I think that you will have to make us out a new marriage rite."

"I am aware of that," said the Cardinal.

To make a clear space in the middle of the circle, Miss Malin lifted up
the little lamp in her clawlike hand, and Calypso moved the bread and
the keg away. The dog, at this rearrangement of the group, got up and
walked around them uneasily. In the end it settled down close to the
young bride.

"Kneel down, my children," said the old priest.

He stood up, his huge and heavy figure looming over them in the large,
half-dark room. At this moment, as the wind had risen a little, they
heard the sighing of the waters all around and beneath them.

"I cannot," said the Cardinal very slowly, "here tonight call upon the
magnificence of the cathedral, or the presence of a congregation, to
sanction this covenant. I have no time to teach or prepare you. You
must, therefore, accept my profession to you solely on my authority. You
two, I have seen," he went on after a pause, "have had your faith in the
cohesion and justice of life shaken. Have faith in me now; I will help
you. Have you a ring?"

The young people had no ring, and were much put out by the lack of it,
but Miss Malin took off a very magnificent diamond, which she handed to
the old man.

"Jonathan," said he, "place this ring on this girl's finger." The boy
did so, and the Cardinal placed a hand on the head of each of the
kneeling people. "Jonathan," said the Cardinal again, "do you now
believe that you are married?"

"Yes," said Jonathan.

"And you, Calypso?" the Cardinal asked the girl.

"Yes," she whispered.

"And that you will," said the Cardinal, "from now, love and honor each
other until the end of your lives, and even in death and eternity?"

"Yes," they said.

"Then," said the Cardinal, "you are married."

Miss Malin stood by, erect, holding the lamp like a sibyl.

The hours of rest in the hayloft had not strengthened the Cardinal, who
was probably past all his strength. He was less steady in his movements
than when he had come out of the boat. His figure seemed to sway,
strangely, in time to the sound of the water.

"As to the state of marriage," he said, "and the matter of love, I
suppose that neither of you knows anything at all about these things?"
The two young people shook their heads. "I cannot," said the Cardinal
again, "here make the Scripture and the Fathers of the Church bear
witness to my words to you. I cannot even, for I am very tired, call up
the texts and examples wherewith to enlighten and instruct you. You
will, again, accept my profession on my authority as a very old man who
has been throughout a long and strange life a student of divine matters.
These matters, I tell you, are divine. Do you, Jonathan, expect and hold
them to be so?"

"Yes," said Jonathan.

"And you, Calypso?" he asked the bride.

"Yes," she said.

"Then that is all," said the Cardinal.

As he did not appear to be going to say any more, the married young
people, after a moment, got up, but they were too strongly moved to be
able to get away. Standing there, they looked at each other for the
first time since they had been called out to be married, and this one
look took away all self-consciousness from both of them. They went back
to their places in the hay.

"As to you and me, Madame," said the Cardinal, speaking over their heads
to Miss Malin, but apparently forgetting that he was no longer in the
pulpit, for he went on talking as solemnly as he had done when
performing the marriage ceremony, "who are only onlookers upon this
occasion, and who know more about the matters of love and marriage, we
will consider the lesson which they, above and before all other things,
teach us about the tremendous courage of the Creator of this world.
Every human being has, I believe, at times given room to the idea of
creating a world himself. The Pope, in a flattering way, encouraged
these thoughts in me when I was a young man. I reflected then that I
might, had I been given omnipotence and a free hand, have made a fine
world. I might have bethought me of the trees and rivers, of the
different keys in music, of friendship, and innocence; but upon my word
and honor, I should not have dared to arrange these matters of love and
marriage as they are, and my world should have lost sadly thereby. What
an overwhelming lesson to all artists! Be not afraid of absurdity; do
not shrink from the fantastic. Within a dilemma, choose the most
unheard-of, the most dangerous, solution. Be brave, be brave! Ah,
Madame, we have got much to learn."

Upon this, he fell into deep thought.

As they sat down, their former positions were not much changed, except
that the newly married people now sat closer together, and held each
other's hands. Sometimes they also turned their faces toward each other.
The lantern stood on the floor in front of them. Miss Malin and the
Cardinal, after their effort in marrying them, remained silent for about
half an hour, and drank a few drops out of the keg of gin.

Miss Malin sat up straight, but by now she looked like a corpse of
twenty-four hours. She was deeply moved and happy, as if she had really
given away a daughter in marriage. Long shudders ran through her from
head to feet. When she at last took up the conversation again, her voice
was faint, but she smiled. She had probably been reflecting upon
marriage and the Garden of Eden.

"Do you, My Lord," she asked, "believe in the fall of man?"

The Cardinal thought over her question for some time, then he bent
forward, his elbows on his knees, and pushed back the bandage a little
from his brow.

"This is a question," he said, in a voice slightly changed, thicker than
before, but also with a great deal more energy in it, as if he had at
the same time pushed back ten years of his age, "upon which I have
thought much. It is pleasant that I shall get an opportunity for talking
of it tonight.

"I am convinced," he declared, "that there has been a fall, but I do not
hold that it is man who has fallen. I believe that there has been a fall
of the divinity. We are now serving an inferior dynasty of heaven."

Miss Malin had been prepared for an ingenious argument, but at this
speech she was shocked, and for a moment held her little hands to her
ears. "These are terrible words to the ear of a Legitimist," she cried.

"What are they, then," asked the Cardinal solemnly, "to the lips of a
Legitimist? I have detained them for seventy years. But you asked me,
Madame, and, if the truth must out, this is a good place and night for
it. At some time there has taken place, in heaven, a tremendous
overturning, equal to the French Revolution upon earth, and its
after-effects. The world of today is, like the France of today, in the
hands of a Louis Philippe."

"There are traditions still," he went on, "from _le Grand Monarque_ and
_le Grand Sicle_. But no human being with a feeling for greatness can
possibly believe that the God who created the stars, the sea, and the
desert, the poet Homer and the giraffe, is the same God who is now
making, and upholding, the King of Belgium, the Poetical School of
Schwaben, and the moral ideas of our day. We two may at last speak about
it. We are serving Louis Philippe, a human God, much as the King of
France is a bourgeois King."

Miss Malin stared at him, pale, her mouth a little open.

"Madame," he said, "we who are by birth the grandees of the King, and
hereditary office-holders of his court, and who have the code of _le
Grand Monarque_ in our veins, have a duty toward the legitimate king,
whatever we think of him. We must keep up his glory. For the people must
not doubt the greatness of the king, or suspect any weakness of his, and
the responsibility for keeping up their faith rests upon you and me,
Madame. The barber of the court was not capable of keeping his own
counsel; he had to whisper to the reeds of the king's asses' ears. But
we--are we barbers? No, Madame, we are no barbers."

"Have we not done our best?" asked Miss Malin proudly.

"Yes," said the Cardinal, "we have done our best. When you look around,
Madame, you see everywhere the achievements of the faithful, who have
worked, nameless, for the king's honor. I could name you many examples
out of history, of which I have thought. I shall give you a few only.
God made the shell, which is a pretty object, but not more than what
even Louis Philippe might have hit upon when he was playing with a pair
of dividers. Out of the shell we made all the art of the rococo, which
is a charming jest, in the true spirit of the _Grand Monarque_. And if
you read the history of great people, you will find that the lords and
ladies of the bedchamber have been at work, serving our master of
blessed memory. The Pope Alexander and his children, according to the
latest historical researches, were a group of pleasant people, given to
gardening and house decoration, and full of family affection, _et voil
tout_--obviously the handwork of Louis Philippe. But out of that
indifferent material we have made our figures of the Borgias. You will
find very nearly the same thing if you go into the facts about the great
reputations of history. Or even, Madame, if you do not mind," the old
man went on, "death: What is it, nowadays, at the hand of Louis
Philippe? A negation, a decay, not even in the best of taste. But look
at what we have made of it, faithful to our gone Lord: the Imperial
Mausoleum of Escurial, Madame, the 'Funeral March' of Herr Ludwig von
Beethoven. How could we ever have made those--poor human beings as we
are, and, moreover, ourselves bound to be part in this meager affair--if
we had not in our hearts the unquenchable love for our departed Lord,
the great adventurer, to whom our family did first swear its oath of
allegiance."

"But with all that," he went on, very gravely, "the end is nearing. I
hear the cocks crow. King Louis Philippe cannot last. In his cause the
blood of Roland himself would be shed in vain. He has all the qualities
of a good bourgeois, and none of the vices of a _Grand Seigneur_. He
claims no rank except that of the first citizen of his kingdom, and no
privileges except on account of his loyalty to the bourgeois code of
morals. When it comes to that, the days of royalty are counted. I will
pronounce a prophecy, Madame: that good King of France will not last
another thirteen years. And the good God, whom Louis Philippe and his
bourgeoisie worship today, he has all the virtues of a righteous human
being; he claims no divine privileges except by virtue of his virtues.
We, we no more expected a moral attitude in our God than we meant to
hold our great King responsible to the penal law. The humane God must
share the fate of the bourgeois King. I was myself brought up by humane
people to have faith in a humane God. It was to the highest extent
intolerable to me. Ah, Madame, what a revelation, what a bliss to my
heart, when, in the nights of Mexico, I felt the great traditions rise
up again of a God who did not give a pin for our commandments. In this
manner, Madame, we are dying for a lost cause."

"To get our reward in paradise," said Miss Malin.

"Oh, no, Madame," said the old man, "we shall not get into paradise, you
or I. Look at the people whom the King Louis Philippe today decorates,
elevates to peer's rank and places in the great offices. They are safely
bourgeois, all of them; no name of the old aristocracy appears in the
list. Neither you nor I succeed in pleasing the Lord nowadays; we even
irritate him a little, and he is not beyond showing it in his behavior
toward us. The old nobility, whose manner and very names bring back the
traditions of the Great Monarch, must needs be a little trying to King
Louis Philippe."

"So we have no hope of heaven, you or I?" asked Miss Malin proudly.

"I wonder if you would be keen to get in there," said the old Cardinal,
"if you were first allowed a peep into the place. It must be the
rendezvous of the bourgeoisie. Madame, to my mind there never was a
great artist who was not a bit of a charlatan; nor a great king, nor a
god. The quality of charlatanry is indispensable in a court, or a
theater, or in paradise. Thunder and lightning, the new moon, a
nightingale, a young girl--all these are bits of charlatanry, of a
divine swank. So is the _gallrie de glaces_ at Versailles. But King
Louis Philippe has no drop of blood of the charlatan in him; he is
genuinely reliable all through. Paradise, these days, is very likely the
same. You and I, Madame, were not brought up to a reasonable content. We
shall cut a finer figure in hell. We were trained for it.

"It is a satisfaction, Madame, to do a thing that one has learned well.
It must be a satisfaction to you, I am sure, to dance the minuet. Let us
take an example. Let us say that I have been trained from a child to do
something. For argument's sake, let us say to do rope-dancing. I have
been taught it, beaten to learn it. If I fall down and break my bones, I
still have to get up again on my rope. My mother has wept over me, and
has still encouraged me. She has had to go without bread to pay the
vaulter who teaches me. And I have become a good rope-dancer, say the
best rope-dancer in the world. It is a fine thing, then, to be a
rope-dancer. And I shall be amply rewarded when, upon some great
occasion, at the entertainment of a great foreign monarch, my King says
to his royal guest: 'You must really see this, Sire and my Brother; this
is my finest show, my servant Hamilcar, the rope-dancer!' But what if he
should say, Madame, 'There is not much sense in rope-dancing. It is a
rough performance; I am going to stop it'? What sort of performance, on
the part of the King, should that be to me?

"Have you been to Spain, Madame?" he asked the old lady.

"Oh, yes," said Miss Malin, "a beautiful country, My Lord. I had
serenades sung under my window, and my portrait painted by Monsieur Goya
himself."

"Have you seen a bullfight there?" the Cardinal asked.

"Yes," said Miss Malin. "It is a very picturesque thing, though not to
my taste."

"It is a picturesque thing," said the Cardinal. "And what do you
imagine, Madame, that the bull thinks of it? The plebeian bull may well
think: 'God have mercy on me, what terrible conditions here. What
disasters, what a run of bad luck. But it must be endured.' And he would
be deeply thankful, moved even to humble tears, were the King, in the
midst of the bullfight, to send directions to have it stopped, out of
compassion for him. But the purebred fighting bull falls in with it, and
says: 'Lo, this is a bullfight.' He will have his blood up straight
away, and he will fight and die, because otherwise there would be no
bullfight out of the thing at all. He will also be known for many years
as that black bull which put up such a fine fight, and killed the
matador. But if, in the middle of it, when this bull's blood had already
flowed, the King chose to stop it, what would the true fighting bull
think of it? He might go for the audience, even for the master of
ceremonies then. He would roar at them: 'You should have thought of this
before!' Madame, the King should have his show. He has bred and reared
me for it, and I am ready to fight and die before the Great Monarch,
when he comes in state to see me. But I am hanged," he said after a
moment, with great energy, "if I care to perform before Louis Philippe."

"Ah, but wait," said Miss Malin. "I have thought of something else.
Perhaps you are mistaken in your ideas of the sense of humor of King
Louis Philippe. He may have a quite different taste from yours and mine,
and may like a world turned upside down, like that Empress of Russia
who, to amuse herself, made her old Councilors, the tears running down
their faces, dance in a ballet before her, and her ballet-dancers sit in
council. That, My Lord, might well be his idea of a joke. I will tell
you a little story to make myself clear, and it fits in well, since we
have been talking of rope-dancing.

"When I was in Vienna twenty years ago," she began, "a pretty boy with
big blue eyes made a great stir there by dancing on a rope blindfolded.
He danced with wonderful grace and skill, and the blindfolding was
genuine, the cloth being tied around his eyes by a person out of the
audience. His performance was the great sensation of the season, and he
was sent for to dance before the Emperor and Empress, the archdukes and
archduchesses, and the court. The great oculist, Professor Heimholz, was
present. He had been sent for by the Emperor, since everybody was
discussing the problem of clairvoyance. But at the end of the show he
rose up and called out: 'Your Majesty,' he said, in great agitation,
'and your Imperial Highnesses, this is all humbug, and a cheat.'

"'It cannot be humbug,' said the court oculist, 'I have myself tied the
cloth around the boy's eyes most conscientiously.'

"'It is all humbug and a cheat,' the great professor indignantly
insisted. 'That child was born blind.'"

Miss Malin made a little pause. "What," she said, "if your Louis
Philippe shall say, on seeing us cutting such fine figures in hell: This
is all humbug. These people have been in hell from their birth." She
laughed a little.

"Madame," said the Cardinal after a silence, "you have a great power of
imagination, and a fine courage."

"Oh, I am a Nat-og-Dag," said Miss Malin modestly.

"But are you not," said the Cardinal, "a little----"

"Mad?" asked the old lady. "I thought that you were aware of that, My
Lord."

"No," said he, "that was not what I meant to say. But a little hard on
the King of France. I may perhaps be in a position to understand him
better than you. Bourgeois he is, but not canaille.

"I shall also tell you a story," went on the old man, "seeing that I
have not yet contributed to the night's entertainment. I shall tell it
just to illustrate that there are--with your permission, Madame--worse
things than perdition, and I shall call it--" he reflected a moment--"I
shall call it 'The Wine of the Tetrarch'."

****

"As, then, upon the first Wednesday after Easter," the Cardinal began,
"the Apostle Simon, called Peter, was walking down the streets of
Jerusalem, so deeply absorbed in the thought of the resurrection that he
did not know whether he was walking upon the pavement or was being
carried along in the air, he noticed, in passing the Temple, that a man
was standing by a pillar waiting for him. As their eyes met, the
stranger stepped forward and addressed him. 'Wast thou not also,' he
asked, 'with Jesus of Nazareth?'

"'Yes, yes, yes,' Peter replied quickly.

"'Then I should much like to have speech with you,' said the man. 'I do
not know what to do. Will you come inside the inn close hereby, and have
a drink with me?' Peter, because he could not disengage himself from his
thoughts sufficiently to find an excuse, accepted, and soon the two were
seated together inside the inn.

"The stranger seemed to be well known there. He at once obtained a table
to himself at the end of the room and out of earshot of the other guests
who from time to time entered the inn and went out again, and he also
ordered the best wine for himself and the Apostle. Peter now looked at
the man, and found him an impressive figure. He was a swarthy, strongly
built, proud young man. He was badly dressed and had on a much-patched
goatskin cloak, but with it he wore a fine crimson silk scarf, and he
had a gold chain around his neck, and upon his hands many heavy gold
rings, one of which had a large emerald in it. It now seemed to Peter
that he had seen the man before, in the midst of terrible fear and
turbulence; still, he did not remember where.

"'If you are indeed one of the followers of the Nazarene,' he said, 'I
want to ask you two questions. I will tell you my reasons, too, for
asking them, as we go on.'

"'I shall be glad if I can help you in any way,' said Peter, still
absent-minded.

"'Well,' said the man, 'first: Is it true, what they tell of this Rabbi
whom you served, that he has risen from the dead?'

"'Yes, it is true,' said Peter, even feeling his own heart to swell at
his proclamation.

"'Nay, I heard rumors about it,' said the man, 'but I did not know for
sure. And is it true that he told you himself, before he was crucified,
that he would rise?'

"'Yes,' said the Apostle, 'he told us. We knew that it would happen.'

"'Do you think, then,' the stranger asked, 'that every word which he has
spoken is certain to come true?'

"'Nothing in the world is as sure as that,' Peter answered. The man sat
silent for a while.

"'I will tell you why I ask you this,' he suddenly said. 'It is because
a friend of mine was crucified with him on Friday at the place of a
skull. You saw him there, I think. To him this Rabbi of yours promised
that he should be with him in paradise on the very same day. Do you then
believe that he did go to paradise on Friday?'

"'Yes, he is sure to have gone there and he is there now,' said Peter.
The man again was silent.

"'Well, that is good,' he said. 'He was my friend.'

"Here a young boy of the inn brought the wine which the man had ordered.
The man poured some of it out into their glasses, looked at it, and put
it down again. 'And this,' he said, 'is the other thing that I wanted to
speak with you about. I have tried many wines within the last few days,
and they all tasted bad to me. I do not know what has happened to the
wine of Jerusalem. It has neither flavor nor body any longer. I think it
may be due to the earthquake which we had on Friday afternoon; it has
turned it all bad.'

"'I do not think that this wine is bad,' said Peter, to encourage the
stranger, for he looked sad as death.

"'Is it not?' the man said hopefully, and drank a little of it. 'Yes,
this also is bad,' he said, as he put down his glass. 'If you call it
good, perhaps you have not much knowledge of wine? I have, and good wine
is my great pleasure. Now I do not know what to do.

"'Now about that friend of mine, Phares,' he took up the thread of the
conversation, 'I will tell you all about how he was taken prisoner, and
put to death. He was a robber on the road between Jericho and Jerusalem.
On that road there came along a transport of wine which the Emperor of
Rome sent as a present to the tetrarch Herodes, and amongst it was a
hogshead of red Capri wine, which was beyond price. One evening, in this
same place where we are now, I was talking to Phares. I said to him: "I
would give my heart to drink that red wine of the tetrarch's." He said:
"For the sake of my love of you, and to show you that I am not a much
lesser man than you, I will kill the overseer of this transport and have
the hogshead of red wine buried under such and such a cedar on the
mountain, and you and I will drink the wine of the tetrarch together."
He did indeed do all this, but as he came into Jerusalem to find me, he
was recognized by one of the people of the transport, who had escaped,
and thrown into prison, and condemned to be crucified.

"'I was told of it, and I walked about in Jerusalem in the night,
thinking of a means to help him escape. In the morning, on passing the
steps of the Temple, I saw there an old beggar, whom I had seen many
times before, who had a bad leg, all bandaged up, and was also mad. In
his madness he would scream out, and prophesy, complaining of his fate
and cursing the governors of the town, proclaiming many bad things
against the tetrarch and his wife. As he was mad, people only used to
laugh at him. But this morning it happened that a centurion was passing
with his men, and when he heard what the beggar said of the tetrarch's
wife he was angry. He told the beggar that if he did this again he would
make him sleep in the prison of Jerusalem, and he would have him dealt
twenty-five strokes of a stick in the evening, and twenty-five in the
morning, to teach him to speak reverently about high people.

"'I listened, and thought: this is the opportunity for me. So in the
course of the day I had my beard and hair shaved off, I dyed my face in
nut oil, and dressed myself in rags, and I also bandaged up my right
leg, but in those bandages I had hidden a strong, sharp file and a long
rope. In the evening, when I went to the steps of the Temple, the old
beggar had been so frightened that he had not come, so I took his place
there myself. Just as the watch was passing, I cried out loudly, in the
voice of the mad beggar, the worst curses I could think of against Csar
in Rome himself, and, as I had thought, the watch took hold of me and
brought me to the prison, and no one could recognize me in my rags. I
was given, there, twenty-five strokes, and I took note of the face of
the man who beat me, for the sake of the future; but with a piece of
silver I bribed the turnkey to shut me up for the night in the prison
where Phares was kept, which was very high up in the prison, the which,
as you know, is built into the rock.

"'Phares fell down and kissed my feet, and he gave me some water that he
had, but later we set to work to file through the iron bar of the
window. It was high up, and he had to stand upon my shoulders, or I upon
his, but by early morning we broke it, and then tied the rope onto the
broken bar. Phares lowered himself down first, until he came to the end
of the rope, which was not quite long enough, and then he let himself
fall. Then I got out, but I was weak, and too slow at it, and it
happened that just at that hour a batch of soldiers came to the place
with a prisoner. They had torches with them, and one of them caught
sight of me as I was hanging onto the rope on the wall. Now Phares could
have got away, if he had run, but he would not go before he had seen
what would happen to me, and in this way we were both taken once more,
and they saw who I was.

"'That is how it happened,' said the stranger. 'But then you tell me
that Phares is now in paradise.'

"'All this,' said Peter, who had, though, been listening only with half
an ear, 'I hold to be very brave of you, and it was well done to risk
your life for your friend.' At that he sighed deeply. 'Oh, I have lived
too long in the woods to be frightened of an owl,' said the stranger.
'Has anybody told you of me that I was the sort that runs away from
danger?'

"'No,' said Peter. 'But then you tell me,' he said after a moment, 'that
you, too, were made prisoner. Still, since you are here, you got off
somehow?'

"'Yes; I got off,' said the man, and gave Peter a strange deep glance.
'I meant, then, to revenge Phares's death. But since he is in paradise I
do not see that I need to worry. And now I do not know what to do. Shall
I dig up this hogshead of the tetrarch's wine and drink it?'

"'It will be sad to you without your friend,' said Peter, and his eyes
filled with such tears as were still left in him after this last week.
He thought that he ought perhaps to reproach the man with the theft of
the tetrarch's wine, but too many recollections welled up in his own
heart.

"'No, it is not that of which I am thinking,' said the stranger, 'but if
that wine also has gone bad and gives me no pleasure, what am I to do
then?'

"Peter sat for a little while in his own thoughts. 'Friend,' he said,
'there are other things in life to give you pleasure than the wine of
the tetrarch.'

"'Yes, I know,' said the stranger, 'but what if the same thing has
happened to them? I have two lovely wives waiting for me at home, and
just before this happened I purchased a virgin of twelve years. I have
not seen her since. I could try them, if I chose. But the earthquake may
have affected them as well, so that they may have neither flavor nor
body, and what shall I do then?'

"Now Peter began to wish that this man would stop his complaints and
leave him to himself. 'Why,' he asked, 'do you come to me about this?'

"'You remind me,' said the stranger. 'I will tell you. I have been
informed that your Rabbi, on the night before he died, gave a party to
his followers, and that at that time a special wine was served, which
was very rare and had some highly precious body in it. Have you, now,
any more of this wine, and will you consent to sell it to me? I will
give you your price.'

"Peter stared at the stranger. 'Oh, God, oh, God,' he cried, so highly
affected that he upset his wine, which ran onto the floor, 'you do not
know what you are saying. This wine which we drank on Thursday night,
the Emperor of Rome cannot pay for one drop of it.' His heart was so
terribly wrung that he rocked to and fro in his seat. Still, in the
midst of his grief the words of the Lord, that he was to be a fisher of
men, were brought back to him, and he reflected that it might be his
duty to help this man, who seemed in some deep distress. He turned to
him again, but as he was looking at him it came over him that of all
people in the world, this young man was the one whom he could not help.
To strengthen himself he called up one of the words of the Lord himself.

"'My son,' he said kindly and gravely, 'take up thine cross and follow
him.' The stranger, just at the same moment as the Apostle, had been
about to speak. Now he stopped and looked very darkly at Peter. 'My
cross!' he cried. 'Where is my cross? Who is to take up my cross?'

"'No one but yourself can take up your cross,' said Peter, 'but He will
help you to carry it. Have patience and strength. I will tell you much
more about all this.'

"'What have you to tell me about it?' said the stranger. 'It seems to me
that you know nothing of it. Help? Who is it who wants help to carry the
sort of cross which the carpenters of Jerusalem make in these days? Not
I, you may be sure. That bow-legged Cyrenean would never have had the
opportunity to exhibit his strength on my behalf. You talk of strength
and patience,' he went on after a moment, still highly agitated, 'but I
have never known a man as strong as myself. Look,' he said, and pulling
back his cloak he showed Peter his chest and shoulders, crossed by many
terrible deep white scars. 'My cross! The cross of Phares was to the
right, and the cross of the man Achaz, who was never worth much, to the
left. I should have taken up my cross better than any of them. Do you
not think that I should have lasted more than six hours? I do not think
much of that, I tell you. Wherever I have been, I have been a leader of
men, and they have looked to me. Do not believe, because now I do not
know what to do, that I have not been used to telling others to come and
go as I liked.'

"At the disdainful tone of this speech Peter was about to lose his
patience with the stranger, but he had promised himself, since he cut
off Malchus's ear, to control his temper, so he said nothing.

"After a while the man looked at him, as if impressed by his silence.
'And you,' he said, 'who are a follower of this Prophet, what do you
think is likely to happen to yourself now?' Peter's face, marred by
sorrow, cleared and softened. His whole countenance radiated hope. 'I
trust and believe,' he said, 'that my faith, though it be tried with
fire, be found unto praise and honor. I hope that it may be granted to
me to suffer and die for my Lord. Sometimes, even, in these last
nights,' he went on, speaking in a low voice, 'I have thought that at
the end of the road a cross might await me.' Having spoken thus he dared
not look up to meet the other's eyes. He added quickly, 'Although you
may think that I am boasting, and that I am too low for that.'

"'No,' said the stranger, 'I think it very likely that all this of which
you have spoken will indeed happen to you.'

"This confidence in his own hopes struck Peter as a most unexpected and
generous piece of friendliness in the stranger. His heart melted with
gratitude. He blushed like a young bride. For the first time he felt a
real interest in his companion, and it seemed to him that he ought to do
something for him in return for the lovely things that he had said to
him. 'I am sorry,' he said gently, 'that I have not been able to help
you in what weighs upon your soul. But indeed I am hardly in command of
myself, so much has happened to me in these last days.'

"'Oh,' said the stranger, 'I hardly expected anything better.'

"'In the course of our talk,' Peter said, 'you said a couple of times
that you did not know what to do. Tell me in what matter it is that you
are in such doubts. Even about this wine, of which you speak, I will try
to advise you.' The stranger looked at him. 'I have not been talking of
any particular matter," he said. 'I do not know what to do at all. I do
not know where such wine is found that will gladden my heart again. But
I suppose,' he went on, after a little while, 'that I had better go and
dig up that wine of the tetrarch's, and sleep with this girl that I told
you of. I may as well try.'

"With these words he got up from the table and draped his cloak around
him.

"'Do not go yet,' Peter said. 'It seems to me that there are many things
of which we ought to talk together.'

"'I have to go in any case,' said the man. 'There is a transport of oil
on its way from Hebron, which I must meet."

"'Are you trading in oil, then?' Peter asked. 'In a way,' said the man.

"'But tell me, before you go,' said Peter, 'what is your name? For we
might speak again together, some time, if I knew where to find you?' The
stranger was already standing in the door. He turned around and looked
at Peter with hauteur and a slight scorn. He looked a magnificent
figure. 'Did you not know my name?' he asked him. 'My name was cried all
over the town. There was not one of the tame burghers of Jerusalem who
did not shout it with all his might. "Barabbas," they cried, "Barabbas!
Barabbas! Give us Barabbas." My name is Barabbas. I have been a great
chief, and, as you said yourself, a brave man. My name shall be
remembered.'

"And with these words he walked away."

****

As the Cardinal had finished his tale, Jonathan got up and changed the
tallow candle in the lantern, for it had burned quite down, and was now
flickering wildly up and down in its last convulsions.

He had no sooner done this than the girl at his side became deadly pale.
Her eyes closed, and her whole figure seemed to sink together. Miss
Malin asked her kindly if she felt sleepy, but she denied it with great
energy, and might well do so. She had lived during this night as she had
never lived before. She had faced death and had thrown herself nobly
into the jaws of danger for the sake of her fellow-creatures. She had
been the center of a brilliant circle, and she had even been married.
She did not want to miss a single moment of these pregnant hours. But
during the next ten minutes she fell asleep time after time in spite of
her efforts to keep awake, her young head rocking forward and back.

She at last consented to lie down to rest for a moment, and her husband
arranged a couch for her in the hay, and took off his coat to spread
over her. Still holding his hand she sank down, and looked, on the dark
ground, like a lovely marble figure of the angel of death. The dog,
which had stayed near her for the last hour, at once followed her, and,
curling itself up, pressed close to her, its head on her knees.

Her young husband sat for some time watching her sleep, but after a
little while he could no longer keep awake himself, and lay down at a
little distance from her, but close enough so that he could still hold
her hand. For a while he did not sleep, but looked sometimes at her, and
sometimes at the erect figures of Miss Malin and the Cardinal. When he
did at last fall asleep, in his sleep he made a sudden movement,
thrusting himself forward, so that his head nearly touched the head of
the girl, and their hair, upon the pillow of the hay, was mingled
together. A moment later he sank into the same slumber as had his wife.

The two old people sat silent before the light of the new candle, which,
to begin with, burned only feebly. Miss Malin, who now looked as if she
were not going to sleep for all eternity, regarded the sleepers with the
benevolence of a successful creator. The Cardinal looked at her for a
moment and then he evaded her eyes. After a while he began to undo the
bandages around his head, and in doing so he kept his eyes fixed upon
the face of the old lady in a strange stare.

"I had better get rid of these," he said, "now that morning is almost
here."

"But will it not hurt you?" Miss Malin asked anxiously.

"No," he said, and went on with his occupation. After a moment he added:
"It is not even my blood. You, Miss Nat-og-Dag, who have such an eye for
the true noble blood, you ought to recognize the blue blood of Cardinal
Hamilcar."

Miss Malin did not move, but her white face changed a little.

"The blood of Cardinal Hamilcar?" she asked in a slightly less steady
voice. "Yes," he said, "the blood of that noble old man. On my head. And
on my hands as well. For I struck him on the head with a beam which had
fallen down, before the boat arrived to rescue us early this morning."

For quite two or three minutes there was a deep silence in the hayloft.
Only the dog stirred, whining a little in its sleep as it poked its head
further into the clothes of the young girl. The bandaged man and the old
woman did not let go the hold of each other's eyes. He slowly finished
taking off the long, red-stained linen strips, and laid them down. Freed
of these, he had a broad, red, puffed face, and dark hair.

"God rest the soul of that noble man," said Miss Malin at last. "And who
are you?"

The man's face changed a little at her words. "Is that what you ask me?"
he said. "Is it of me that you are thinking, and not of him?"

"Oh, we need not think of him, you and I," she said. "Who are you?"

"My name," said the man, "is Kasparson. I am the Cardinal's valet."

"You must tell me more," said Miss Malin with firmness. "I still want to
know with whom I have passed the night."

"I will tell you much more, if it amuses you," Kaparson said, "for I
have been to many continents, and I myself like to dwell in the past.

"I am an actor, Madame, as you are a Nat-og-Dag; that is, we remain so
whatever else we take on, and fall back upon this one thing when the
others fail us.

"But when I was a child I danced in ballet, and when I was thirteen
years old I was taken up--because of being so extraordinarily graceful,
and particularly because I had to an unusual extent what in the
technique of the ballet is termed _ballon_, which means the capacity for
soaring, for rising above the ground and the laws of gravitation--by the
great elderly noblemen of Berlin. My stepfather, the famous tenor, Herr
Eunicke, introduced me to them, and believed that I was to be a gold
mine to him. For five years I have known what it is to be a lovely
woman, fed upon dainties, dressed in silks and a golden turban, whose
caprices are law to everyone. But Herr Eunicke, like all tenors, forgot
to reckon with the laws of passing time. Age stole upon us before we
dreamed of it, and my career as a courtesan was a short one.

"Then I went to Spain, and became a barber. I was a barber in Seville
for seven years, and I liked that, for I have always had a partiality
toward soap and toilet waters, and have liked all sorts of clean and
neat things. For this reason it often surprised me in the Cardinal that
he did not object to dirtying his hands with his black and red inks. I
became, Madame, a very good barber indeed.

"But I have also been a printer of revolutionary papers in Paris, a
dog-seller in London, a slavetrader in Algiers, and the lover of a
dowager principezza of Pisa. Through her I came to travel with Professor
Rosellini, and the great French orientalist Champollion, upon their
Egyptian expedition. I have been to Egypt, Madame. I have stood in the
great triangular shadow of the great pyramid, and from the top of it
four thousand years gazed down upon me."

Miss Malin, outshone as a world traveler by the valet, quickly took
refuge in the wide world of her imagination. "Ah," she said, "in Egypt,
in the great triangular shadow of the great pyramid, while the ass was
grazing, St. Joseph said to the Virgin: 'Oh, my sweet young dear, could
you not just for a moment shut your eyes and make believe that I am the
Holy Ghost?'"

Kasparson went on with his account. "I have even lived in Copenhagen,"
he said, "but toward the end I had but a poor time of it. I became a
hostler in the night-lodgings of the fat old man called Bolle
Bandeat--which means, with your permission, the cursed, or
damned--where, for the fee of a penny, you could sleep on the floor, and
for a halfpenny standing up, with a rope under your arms. When at last I
had to flee from the hands of the law there, I changed my name to that
of Kasparson, in remembrance of that proud and unfortunate boy of
Nrnberg who stabbed himself to death in order to make Lord Stanhope
believe that he was the illegitimate son of Grand Duchess Stephanie of
Baden.

"But if it be about my family that you want to hear, I have the honor to
inform you that I am a bastard of the purest bastard blood extant. My
mother was a true daughter of the people, an honest artisan's child,
that lovely actress Johanna Handel-Schutz, who made all the classic
ideals live upon the stage. She had a melancholy disposition
nevertheless. Of my sixteen brothers and sisters, five have committed
suicide. But if I tell you who was my father, that will be sure to
interest you. When Johanna came to Paris, sixteen years old, to study
art, she found favor in the eyes of a great lord.

"I am the son of that Duke of Orlans--who shortly after took up with
the people in still another way--who insisted on being addressed as a
_citoyen_, voted for the death of the King of France, and changed his
name to that of galit. The bastard of galit! Can one be more bastard
than that, Madame?"

"No," said the old woman, with white and stiff lips, unable to give a
word of comfort to the pale man before her.

"That poor King Louis Philippe," said Kasparson, "for whom I feel sorry,
and about whom I regret having spoken so harshly tonight--he is my
little brother."

Miss Malin, even face to face with the greatest misfortunes, was never
speechless for long. She said after a silence:

"Tell me now, for we may not have much time, first, why did you murder
the Cardinal? And secondly, why did you take the trouble to deceive me,
after you came here with me, and to make a fool of me on what may be the
last night of my life? You were in no danger here. Did you think that I
had not sufficient spirit myself, or sympathy with the dark places of
the heart, to understand you?"

"Ah," said Kasparson, "why did I not tell you? That moment, in which I
killed the Cardinal, that was the mating of my soul with destiny, with
eternity, with the soul of God. Do we not still impose silence at the
threshold of the nuptial chamber? Or even, does the Emperor demand
publicity, may not Pythagoras have a taste for decorum?

"And why did I kill my master?" he went on. "Madame, there was little
hope that both of us could be saved, and he would have sacrificed his
life for mine. Should I have lived on as the servant for whom the lord
had died, or should I have been simply drowned and lost, a sad
adventurer?

"I told you: I am an actor. Shall not an actor have a rle? If all the
time the manager of the theater holds back the good rles from us, may
we not insist upon understudying the stars? The proof of our undertaking
is in the success or fiasco. I have played the part well. The Cardinal
would have applauded me, for he was a fine connoisseur of the art. Sir
Walter Scott, Madame, took much pleasure in Wilibald Alexis's novel,
_Walladmor_, which he published in his name, and which he called the
most delightful mystery of the century. The Cardinal would have
recognized himself in me. Quoting the great tragedy, _Axel and Walborg_,
he said, slowly:

    _"My honored Lord, St. Olaf comes in person,_
    _He puts me on, he drapes himself in me._
    _I am his ghost, the larva of his spirit;_
    _The transient shell of an immortal mind...._

"The only thing," he went on after a pause, "which he might have
criticized is this: he might have held that I overdid my rle. I stayed
in this hayloft to save the lives of those sottish peasants, who
preferred the salvation of their cattle to their own. It is doubtful
whether the Cardinal would ever have done that, for he was a man of
excellent sense. That may be so. But a little charlatanry there must
needs be in all great art, and the Cardinal himself was not free from
it.

"But in any case," he concluded, lifting his voice and his body, "at the
day of judgment God shall not say to me now: 'Kasparson, you bad actor!
How was it that you could not, not even with death in your own heart,
play me the dying Gaul?'"

Again Miss Malin sat for a long time in the deep silence of the huge
dark room.

"And why," she said at last, "did you want this rle so much?"

"I will confide in you," said Kasparson, speaking slowly. "Not by the
face shall the man be known, but by the mask. I said so at the beginning
of the night.

"I am a bastard. I have upon me the bastard's curse, of which you know
not. The blood of galit is an arrogant blood, full of
vanity--difficult, difficult for you, when you have it in your veins. It
claimed splendor, Madame; it will stand no equivalence; it makes you
suffer greatly at the least slight.

"But these peasants and fishermen are my mother's people. Do you not
think that I have wept blood over the hardness of their lives and their
pale children? At the thought of their hard crusts and thin-worn
breadknives, their patched clothes and patient faces, my heart is wrung.
Nothing in the world have I ever loved, except them. If they would have
made me their master I would have served them all my life. If they would
only have fallen down and worshiped me, I would have died for them. But
they would not. That they reserved for the Cardinal. Only tonight have
they come around. They have seen the face of God in my face. They will
tell you, after tonight, that there was a white light over the boat in
which I went out with them. Yes, even so, Madame.

"Do you know," he said, "do you know why I look to, why I cleave to,
God? Why I cannot do without him? Because he is the only being toward
whom I need not, I cannot, I must not, feel pity. Looking at all the
other creatures of this life I am tortured, I am devoured by pity, and I
am bent and crushed under the weight of their sorrows. I was sorry for
the Cardinal, very sorry for that old man who had to be great and good,
and who wrote a book on the Holy Ghost like a little spider hanging in
the great space. But in the relation of God and me, if there is any
pitying to be done, it is for him to do it. He will be sorry for me.

"Why, Madame, so it should have been with our kings. But, God help me, I
feel sorry for my brother the King of France. My heart aches a little
for the little man.

"Only God I shall keep, to have no mercy upon him. Let me, at least,
keep God, you tender-hearted humans."

"But in that case," said Miss Malin suddenly, "it cannot possibly mean
much to you whether we are saved or not. Forgive me for saying so,
Kasparson, but it will not make much difference to your fate if this
house holds on until the boat comes back for us, or not."

Kasparson, at these words, laughed a little, softly and congenially. It
was clear by now that he was under the influence of the peasants' keg of
gin, but in this matter Miss Malin was not far behind him.

"You are right, Miss Nat-og-Dag," he said, "your sharp wits have hit the
nail on the head. And so much for my fine courage. But have patience
just a little longer, and I will explain the case to you.

"Few people, I said, could say of themselves that they were free of the
belief that they could have made the world. Nay, go further, Madame: few
people can say of themselves that they are free of the belief that this
world which they see around them is in reality the work of their own
imagination. Are we pleased with it, proud of it, then? Yes, at times.
In the evenings, in early spring, in the company of children and of
beautiful, witty women, I have been pleased with and proud of my
creation. At other times, when I have been with ordinary people, I have
had a very bad conscience over my producing of such vulgar, insipid,
dull stuff. I may have tried to do away with them, as the monk, in his
cell, tries to drive out the degrading pictures which disturb his peace
of mind and his pride in being a servant of the Lord. Now, Madame, I am
pleased to have made this night here. I am genuinely proud of having
made you, I assure you. But what about this one figure within the
picture, this man Kasparson? Is he a success? Is he worth keeping? May
he not be pronounced a blot in the picture? The monk may go to the
extent of flagellating himself to drive out the image which offends him.
My five brothers and sisters, who, of my mother's sixteen children, have
committed suicide, may have felt in this way, for, as I have already
said, my mother had a deep feeling and instinct for the classics, for
the harmonious cosmos. They may have said: 'This work is in itself
rather brilliant. My only failure is this one figure within it, which I
will now have removed, even at a cost."

"Well," said Miss Malin after a pause, "and did you enjoy playing the
rle of the Cardinal when you had your chance at last? Did you have a
pleasant time?"

"As God liveth, Madame, I had that," said Kasparson, "a good night and
day. For I have lived long enough, by now, to have learned, when the
devil grins at me, to grin back. And what now if this--to grin back when
the devil grins at you--be in reality the highest, the only true fun in
all the world? And what if everything else, which people have named fun,
be only a presentiment, a foreshadowing, of it? It is an art worth
learning, then."

"And I too, I too," said Miss Malin in a voice which, although it was
subdued, was rich and shrill, and which seemed to rise in the flight of
a lark. As if she wanted to accompany in person the soaring course of
it, she rose straight up, with the lightness and dignity of a lady who
has had, by now, enough of a pleasant entertainment, and is taking her
leave. "I have grinned back at him too. It is an art worth learning."

The actor had risen with her, her _cavalire servante_, and now stood
up. She looked at him with radiant eyes.

"Kasparson, you great actor," she said, "Bastard of galit, kiss me."

"Ah, no, Madame," said Kasparson, "I am ill; there is poison in my
mouth."

Miss Malin laughed. "A fig for that tonight," she said. She looked,
indeed, past any sort of poison. She had on her shoulders that
death's-head by which druggists label their poison bottles, an
unengaging object for any man to kiss. But looking straight at the man
before her, she said slowly and with much grace: "_Fils de St. Louis,
montez au ciel_!"

The actor took her in his arms, held her even in a strong embrace, and
kissed her. So the proud old maid did not go unkissed into her grave.

With a majestic and graceful movement she lifted up the hem of her skirt
and placed it in his hand. The silk, which had been trailing over the
floor, was dripping wet. He understood that this was the reason why she
had got up from her seat.

Their eyes, together, sought the floor of the loft. A dark figure, like
that of a long thick snake, was lying upon the boards, and a little
lower down, where the floor slanted slightly, it widened to a black pool
which nearly touched the feet of the sleeping girl. The water had risen
to the level of the hayloft. Indeed, as they moved, they felt the heavy
boards gently rocking, floating upon the waters.

The dog suddenly sat up with a jerk. It threw its head back, its ears
flattened and its nose in the air, and gave a low whine.

"Hush, Passup," said Miss Malin, who had learned its name from the
fishermen.

She took one of the actor's hands in hers. "Wait a moment," she said
softly, so as not to waken the sleepers. "I want to tell you. I, too,
was once a young girl. I walked in the woods and looked at the birds,
and I thought: How dreadful that people shut up birds in cages. I
thought: If I could so live and so serve the world that after me there
should never again be any birds in cages, they should all be free----"

She stopped and looked toward the wall. Between the boards a strip of
fresh deep blue was showing, against which the little lamp seemed to
make a red stain. The dawn was breaking.

The old woman slowly drew her fingers out of the man's hand, and placed
one upon her lips.

"_A ce moment de sa narration_," she said, "_Scheherazade vit paratre
le matin, et, discrte, se tut_."

-----

[1] The name means "hog's head."




THE OLD CHEVALIER


My father had a friend, old Baron von Brackel, who had in his day
traveled much and known many cities and men. Otherwise he was not at all
like Odysseus, and could least of all be called ingenious, for he had
shown very little skill in managing his own affairs. Probably from a
sense of failure in this respect he carefully kept from discussing
practical matters with an efficient younger generation, keen on their
careers and success in life. But on theology, the opera, moral right and
wrong, and other unprofitable pursuits he was a pleasant talker.

He had been a singularly good-looking young man, a sort of ideally
handsome youth, and although no trace of this past beauty could be found
in his face, the history of it could be traced in a certain
light-hearted dignity and self-reliance which are the product of a
career of good looks, and which will be found, unaccountably, in the
carriage of those shaking ruins who used to look into the mirrors of the
last century with delight. In this way one should be able to point out,
at a _danse macabre_, the skeletons of the real great beauties of their
time.

One night he and I came to discuss an old theme, which has done its duty
in the literature of the past: namely, whether one is ever likely to get
any real benefit, any lasting moral satisfaction, out of forsaking an
inclination for the sake of principle, and in the course of our talk he
told me the following story:

****

On a rainy night in the winter of 1874, on an avenue in Paris, a drunken
young girl came up and spoke to me. I was then, as you will understand,
quite a young man. I was very upset and unhappy, and was sitting
bareheaded in the rain on a seat along the avenue because I had just
parted from a lady whom, as we said then, I did adore, and who had
within this last hour tried to poison me.

This, though it has nothing to do with what I was going to tell you, was
in itself a curious story. I had not thought of it for many years until,
when I was last in Paris, I saw the lady in her box at the opera, now a
very old woman, with two charming little girls in pink who were, I was
told, her great-granddaughters. She was lovely no more, but I had never,
in the time that I have known her, seen her look so contented. I was
sorry afterward that I had not gone up and called on her in her box, for
though there had been but little happiness for either of us in that old
love affair of ours, I think that she would have been as pleased to be
reminded of the beautiful young woman, who made men unhappy, as I had
been to remember, vaguely as it was, the young man who had been so
unhappy that long time ago.

Her great beauty, unless some rare artist has been able to preserve it
in color or clay, now probably exists only within a few very old brains
like mine. It was in its day something very wonderful. She was a blonde,
the fairest, I think, that I have ever seen, but not one of your
pink-and-white beauties. She was pale, colorless, all through, like an
old pastel or the image of a woman in a dim mirror. Within that cool and
frail form there was an unrivaled energy, and a distinction such as
women have no more, or no more care to have.

I had met her and had fallen in love with her in the autumn, at the
chteau of a friend where we were both staying together with a large
party of other gay young people who are now, if they are alive, faded
and crooked and deaf. We were there to hunt, and I think that I shall be
able to remember to the last of my days how she used to look on a big
bay horse that she had, and that autumn air, just touched with frost,
when we came home in the evenings, warm in cold clothes, tired, riding
side by side over an old stone bridge. My love was both humble and
audacious, like that of a page for his lady, for she was so much
admired, and her beauty had in itself a sort of disdain which might well
give sad dreams to a boy of twenty, poor and a stranger in her set. So
that every hour of our rides, dances and _tableaux vivants_ was
exuberant with ecstasy and pain, the sort of thing you will know
yourself: a whole orchestra in the heart. When she made me happy, as one
says, I thought that I was happy indeed. I remembered smoking a cigar on
the terrace one morning, looking out over the large view of low,
wood-covered blue hills, and giving the Lord a sort of receipt for all
the happiness that I should ever have any claim to in my life. Whatever
would happen to me now, I had had my due, and declared myself satisfied.

Love, with very young people, is a heartless business. We drink at that
age from thirst, or to get drunk; it is only later in life that we
occupy ourselves with the individuality of our wine. A young man in love
is essentially enraptured by the forces within himself. You may come
back to that view again, in a second adolescence. I knew a very old
Russian in Paris, enormously rich, who used to keep the most charming
young dancers, and who, when once asked whether he had, or needed to
have, any illusions as to their feelings for him, thought the question
over and said: "I do not think, if my chef succeeds in making me a good
omelette, that I bother much whether he loves me or not." A young man
could not have put his answer into those words, but he might say that he
did not care whether his wine merchant was of his own religion or not,
and imagine that he had got close to the truth of things. In middle age,
though, you arrive at a deeper humility, and you come to consider it of
importance that the person who sells or grows your wine shall be of the
same religion as you yourself. In this case of my own, of which I am
telling you, my youthful vanity, if I had too much of it, was to be
taught a lesson very soon. For during the months of that winter, while
we were both living in Paris, where her house was the meeting place of
many _bel-esprits_, and she herself the admired dilettante in music and
arts, I began to think that she was making use of me, or of her own love
for me, if such can be said, to make her husband jealous. This has
happened, I suppose, to many young men down through the ages, without
the total sum of their experience being much use to the young man who
finds himself in the same position today. I began to wonder what the
relations between those two were really like, and what strange forces
there might be in her or in him, to toss me about between them in this
way, and I think that I began to be afraid. She was jealous of me, too,
and would scold me with a sort of moral indignation, as if I had been a
groom failing in his duties. I thought that I could not live without
her, and also that she did not want to live without me, but exactly what
she wanted me for I did not know. Her contact hurt me as one is hurt by
touching iron on a winter day: you do not know whether the pain comes
from heat or from cold.

Before I had ever met her I had read about her family, whose name ran
down for centuries through the history of France, and learned that there
used to be werewolves amongst them, and I sometimes thought that I
should have been happier to see her really go down on all fours and
snarl at me, for then I should have known where I was. And even up to
the end we had hours together of a particular charm, for which I shall
always be thankful to her. During my first year in Paris, before I knew
any people there, I had taken up studying the history of the old hotels
of the town, and this hobby of mine appealed to her, so that we used to
dive into old quarters and ages of Paris, and dwell together in the age
of Ablard or of Molire, and while we were playing in this way she was
serious and gentle with me, like a little girl. But at other times I
thought that I could stand it no longer, and would try to get away from
her, and any suspicion of this was enough, I imagine, to make her lie
awake at night thinking out new methods of punishing me. It was between
us the old game of the cat and the mouse--probably the original model of
all the games of the world. But because the cat has more passion in it,
and the mouse only the plain interest of existence, the mouse is bound
to become tired first. Toward the end I thought that she wished us to be
found out, she was so careless in this _liaison_ of ours; and in those
days a love affair had to be managed with prudence.

I remember during this period coming to her hotel on the night of a ball
to which she was going, while I had not been asked, disguised as a
hairdresser. In the 'seventies ladies had large chignons and the work of
a _coiffeur_ took time. And through everything the thought of her
husband would follow me, like, I thought, the gigantic shadow, upon the
white back-curtain, of an absurd little punchinello. I began to feel so
tired--not exactly of her, but really exhausted in myself--that I was
making up my mind to have a scene and an explanation from her, even if I
should lose her by it, when suddenly, on the night of which I am telling
you, she herself produced both the scene and the explanation, such a
hurricane as I have never again been out in; and all with exactly the
same weapons as I had myself had ready: with the accusation that I
thought more of her husband than I did of her. And when she said this to
me, in that pale blue boudoir of hers that I knew so well--the
silk-lined, upholstered and scented box, such as the ladies of that time
liked to keep themselves in, with, I remember, some paintings of flowers
on the walls, and very soft silk cushions everywhere, and a lot of
lilacs in the corner behind me, with the lamp subdued by a large red
shade--I had no reply, for I knew that she was right.

You would know his name if I told you, for he is still talked about,
though he has been dead for many years. Or you would find it in any of
the memoirs of that period, for he was the idol of our generation. Later
on, great unhappiness came upon him, but at that moment--I believe that
he was then thirty-three years old--he was walking quietly in the full
splendor of his strange power. I once, about that time, heard two old
men talk about his mother, who had been one of the beauties of the
Restoration, and one of them said of her that she carried all her famous
jewels as lightly and gracefully as other young ladies would wear
garlands of field flowers. "Yes," the other said after he had thought it
over for a moment, "and she scattered them about her, in the end, like
flowers, _ la_ Ophelia." Therefore I think that this rare lightness of
his must have been, together with the weakness, a family trait. Even in
his wildest whims, and in a sort of mannerism which we then named _fin
de sicle_ and were rather proud of, he had something of _le grand
sicle_ about him: a straight nobility that belonged to the old France.

I have looked since at those great buildings of the seventeenth century
which seem altogether inexpedient as dwellings for human beings, and
have thought that they must have been built for him--and his mother, I
suppose--to live in. He had a confidence in life, independent of the
successes which we envied him, as if he knew that he could draw upon
greater forces, unknown to us, if he wanted to. It gave me much to think
about, on the fate of man, when many years later I was told how this
young man had, toward the end of his tragic destiny, answered the
friends who implored him in the name of God, in the words of Sophocles's
Ajax: "You worry me too much, woman. Do you not know that I am no longer
a debtor of the gods?"

I see that I ought not to have started talking about him, even after all
these years; but an ideal of one's youth will always be a landmark
amongst happenings and feelings long gone. He himself has nothing to do
with this story.

I told you that I myself felt it to be true that my feelings for the
lovely young woman, whom I adored, were really light of weight compared
to my feelings for the young man. If he had been with her when we first
met, or if I had known him before I met her, I do not think that I
should ever have dreamed of falling in love with his wife.

But his wife's love for him, and her jealousy, were indeed of a strange
nature. For that she was in love with him I knew from the moment that
she began to speak of him. Probably I had known it a long time before.
And she was jealous. She suffered, she cried--she was, as I have told
you, ready to kill if nothing else would help her--and all the time that
fight, which was very likely the only reality in her life, was not a
struggle for possession, but a competition. She was jealous of him as if
he had been another young woman of fashion, her rival, or as if she
herself had been a young man who envied him his triumphs. I think that
she was, in herself, always alone with him in a world that she despised.
When she rode so madly, when she surrounded herself with admirers, she
had her eye on him, as a competitor in a chariot race would have his
eyes only on the driver just beside him. As for the rest of us, we only
existed for her in so far as we were to belong to her or to him, and she
took her lovers as she took her fences, to pile up more conquests than
the man with whom she was in love.

I cannot, of course, know how this had begun between them. Afterward I
tried to believe that it must have arisen from a desire for revenge, on
her side, for something that he had done to her in the past. But I had
the feeling that it was this barren passion which had burned all the
color out of her.

Now you will know that all this happened in the early days of what we
called then the "emancipation of woman." Many strange things took place
then. I do not think that at the time the movement went very deep down
in the social world, but here were the young women of the highest
intelligence, and the most daring and ingenious of them, coming out of
the chiaroscuro of a thousand years, blinking at the sun and wild with
desire to try their wings. I believe that some of them put on the armor
and the halo of St. Joan of Arc, who was herself an emancipated virgin,
and became like white-hot angels. But most women, when they feel free to
experiment with life, will go straight to the witches' Sabbath. I myself
respect them for it, and do not think that I could ever really love a
woman who had not, at some time or other, been up on a broomstick.

I have always thought it unfair to woman that she has never been alone
in the world. Adam had a time, whether long or short, when he could
wander about on a fresh and peaceful earth, among the beasts, in full
possession of his soul, and most men are born with a memory of that
period. But poor Eve found him there, with all his claims upon her, the
moment she looked into the world. That is a grudge that woman has always
had against the Creator: she feels that she is entitled to have that
epoch of paradise back for herself. Only, worse luck, when chasing a
time that has gone, one is bound to get hold of it by the tail, the
wrong way around. Thus these young witches got everything they wanted as
in a catoptric image.

Old ladies of those days, patronesses of the church and of home, said
that emancipation was turning the heads of the young women. Probably
there were more young ladies than my mistress galloping high up above
the ground, with their fair faces at the backs of their necks, after the
manner of the wild huntsman in the tale. And in the air there was a
theory, which caught hold of them there, that the jealousy of lovers was
an ignoble affair, and that no woman should allow herself to be
possessed by any male but the devil. On their way to him they were proud
of being, according to Doctor Faust, always a hundred steps ahead of
man. But the jealousy of competition was, as between Adam and Lilith, a
noble striving. So there you would find, not only the old witches of
Macbeth, of whom one might have expected it, but even young ladies with
faces smooth as flowers, wild and mad with jealousy of their lovers'
mustachios. All this they got from reading--in the orthodox witches'
manner--the book of Genesis backwards. Left to themselves, they might
have got a lot out of it. It was the poor, tame, male preachers of
emancipation, cutting, as warlocks always will, a miserable figure at
the Sabbath, who spoiled the style and flight of the whole thing by
bringing it down to earth and under laws of earthly reason. I believe,
though, that things have changed by now, and that at the present day,
when males have likewise emancipated themselves, you may find the young
lover on the hearth, following the track of the witch's shadow along the
ground, and, with infinitely less imagination, blending the deadly brew
for his mistress, out of envy of her breasts.

The part which had been granted to me, in the story of my emancipated
young witch, was not in itself flattering. Still I believe that she was
desperately fond of me, probably with the kind of passion which a little
girl has for her favorite doll. And as far as that goes I was really the
central figure of our drama. If she would be Othello, it was I, and not
her husband, who must take the part of Desdemona, and I can well imagine
her sighing, "Oh, the pity of it, the pity of it, Iago," over this
unfortunate business, even wanting to give me a kiss and yet another
before finishing it altogether. Only she did not want to kill me out of
a feeling of justice or revenge. She wished to destroy me so that she
should not have to lose me and to see a very dear possession belong to
her rival, in the manner of a determined general, who will blow up a
fortress which he can no longer hold, rather than see it in the hands of
the enemy.

It was toward the end of our interview that she tried to poison me. I
believe that this was really against her program, and that she had meant
to tell me what she thought of me when I already had the poison in me,
but had been unable to control herself for so long. There was, as you
will understand, something unnatural in drinking coffee at that stage of
our dialogue. The way in which she insisted upon it, and her sudden
deadly silence as I raised the cup to my mouth, gave her away. I can
still, although I only just touched it, recall the mortal, insipid taste
of the opium, and had I emptied the cup, it could not have made my
stomach rise and the marrow in my bones turn to water more than did the
abrupt and fatal conviction that she wanted me to die. I let the cup
drop, faint as a drowning man, and stood and stared at her, and she made
one wild movement, as if she meant to throw herself at me still. Then we
stood quite immovable for a minute, both knowing that all was lost. And
after a little while she began to rock and whimper, with her hands at
her mouth, suddenly changed into a very old woman. For my own part, I
was not able to utter a sound, and I think that I just ran from the
house as soon as I had strength enough to move. The air, the rain, and
the street itself met me like old forgotten friends, faithful still in
the hour of need.

And there I sat on a seat of the Avenue Montaigne, with the entire
building of my pride and happiness lying around me in ruins, sick to
death with horror and humiliation, when this girl, of whom I was telling
you, came up to me.

I think that I must have been sitting there for some time, and that she
must have stood and watched me before she could summon up her courage to
approach. She probably felt herself in sympathy with me, thinking that I
was drunk too, as sensible people do not sit without a hat in the rain,
perhaps also because I was so near her own age. I did not hear what she
said, neither the first nor the second time. I was not in a mood to
enter into talk with a little girl of the streets. I think that it must
have been from sheer instinct of self-preservation that I did in the end
come to look at her and to listen. I had to get away from my own
thoughts, and any human being was welcome to assist me. But there was at
the same time something extraordinarily graceful and expressive about
the girl, which may have attracted my attention. She stood there in the
rain, highly rouged, with radiant eyes like stars, very erect though
only just steady on her legs. When I kept on staring at her, she laughed
at me, a low, clear laughter. She was very young. She was holding up her
dress with one hand--in those days ladies wore long trains in the
streets. On her head she had a black hat with ostrich feathers drooping
sadly in the rain and overshadowing her forehead and eyes. The firm
gentle curve of her chin, and her round young neck shone in the light of
the gas lamp. Thus I can see her still, though I have another picture of
her as well.

What impressed me about her was that she seemed altogether so strangely
moved, intoxicated by the situation. Hers was not the conventional
advance. She looked like a person out on a great adventure, or someone
keeping a secret. I think that on looking at her I began to smile, some
sort of bitter and wild smile, known only to young people, and that this
encouraged her. She came nearer. I fumbled in my pocket for some money
to give her, but I had no money on me. I got up and started to walk, and
she came on, walking beside me. There was, I remember, a certain comfort
in having her near me, for I did not want to be alone. In this way it
happened that I let her come with me.

I asked her what her name was. She told me that it was Nathalie.

At this time I had a job at the Legation, and I was living in an
apartment on the Place Franois I, so we had not far to go. I was
prepared to come back late, and in those days, when I would come home at
all sorts of hours, I used to keep a fire and a cold supper waiting for
me. When we came into the room it was lighted and warm, and the table
was laid for me in front of the fire. There was a bottle of champagne on
ice. I used to keep a bottle of champagne to drink when I returned from
my shepherd's hours.

The young girl looked around the room with a contented face. Here in the
light of my lamp I could see how she really looked. She had soft brown
curls and blue eyes. Her face was round, with a broad forehead. She was
wonderfully pretty and graceful. I think that I just wondered at her, as
one would wonder at finding a fresh bunch of roses in a gutter, no more.
If I had been normally balanced I suppose I should have tried to get
from her some explanation of the sort of mystery that she seemed to be,
but now I do not think that this occurred to me at all.

The truth was that we must both have been in quite a peculiar sort of
mood, such as will hardly ever have repeated itself for either of us. I
knew as little of what moved her as she could have known about my state
of mind, but, highly excited and strained, we met in a special sort of
sympathy. I, partly stunned and partly abnormally wide awake and
sensitive, took her quite selfishly, without any thought of where she
came from or where she would disappear to again, as if she were a gift
to me, and her presence a kind and friendly act of fate at this moment
when I could not be alone. She seemed to me to have come as a little
wild spirit from the great town outside--Paris--which may at any moment
bestow unexpected favors on one, and which had in the right moment sent
her to me. What she thought of me or what she felt about me, of that I
can say nothing. At the moment I did not think about it, but on looking
back now I should say that I must also have symbolized something to her,
and that I hardly existed for her as an individual.

I felt it as a great happiness, a warmth all through me, that she was so
young and lovely. It made me laugh again after those weird and dismal
hours. I pulled off her hat, lifted her face up, and kissed her. Then I
felt how wet she was. She must have walked for a long time on the
streets in the rain, for her clothes were like the feathers of a wet
hen. I went over and opened the bottle on the table, poured her out a
glass, and handed it to her. She took it, standing in front of the fire,
her tumbled wet curls falling down over her forehead. With her red
cheeks and shining eyes she looked like a child that has just awakened
from sleep, or like a doll. She drank half the glass of wine quite
slowly, with her eyes on my face, and, as if this half-glass of
champagne had brought her to a point where she could no longer be
silent, she started to sing, in a low, gentle voice, hardly moving her
lips, the first lines of a song, a waltz, which was then sung in all the
music halls. She broke it off, emptied her glass, and handed it back to
me. _ votre sant_, she said.

Her voice was so merry, so pure, like the song of a bird in a bush, and
of all things music at that time went most directly to my heart. Her
song increased the feeling I had, that something special and more than
natural had been sent to me. I filled her glass again, put my hand on
her round white neck, and brushed the damp ringlets back from her face.
"How on earth have you come to be so wet, Nathalie?" I said, as if I had
been her grandmother. "You must take off your clothes and get warm." As
I spoke my voice changed. I began to laugh again. She fixed her starlike
eyes on me. Her face quivered for a moment. Then she started to unbutton
her cloak, and let it fall onto the floor. Underneath this cloak of
black lace, badly suited for the season and faded at the edges into a
rusty brown, she had a black silk frock, tightly fitted over the bust,
waist and hips, and pleated and draped below, with flounces and ruffles
such as ladies wore at that time, in the early days of the bustle. Its
folds shone in the light of my fire. I began to undress her, as I might
have undressed a doll, very slowly and clumsily, and she stood up
straight and let me do it. Her fresh face had a grave and childlike
expression. Once or twice she colored under my hands, but as I undid her
tight bodice and my hands touched her cool shoulders and bosom, her face
broke into a gentle and wide smile, and she lifted up her hand and
touched my fingers.

****

The old Baron von Brackel made a long pause. "I think that I must
explain to you," he said, "so that you may be able to understand this
tale aright, that to undress a woman was then a very different thing
from what it must be now. What are the clothes that your ladies of these
days are wearing? In themselves as little as possible--a few
perpendicular lines, cut off again before they have had time to develop
any sense. There is no plan about them. They exist for the sake of the
body, and have no career of their own, or, if they have any mission at
all, it is to reveal.

"But in those days a woman's body was a secret which her clothes did
their utmost to keep. We would walk about in the streets in bad weather
in order to catch a glimpse of an ankle, the sight of which must be as
familiar to you young men of the present day as the stems of these
wineglasses of ours. Clothes then had a being, an idea of their own.
With a serenity that it was not easy to look through, they made it their
object to transform the body which they encircled, and to create a
silhouette so far from its real form as to make it a mystery which it
was a divine privilege to solve. The long tight stays, the whalebones,
skirts and petticoats, bustle and draperies, all that mass of material
under which the women of my day were buried where they were not laced
together as tightly as they could possibly stand it--all aimed at one
thing: to disguise.

"Out of a tremendous froth of trains, pleatings, lace, and flounces
which waved and undulated, _secundum artem_, at every movement of the
bearer, the waist would shoot up like the chalice of a flower, carrying
the bust, high and rounded as a rose, but imprisoned in whalebone up to
the shoulder. Imagine now how different life must have appeared and felt
to creatures living in those tight corsets within which they could just
manage to breathe, and in those fathoms of clothes which they dragged
along with them wherever they walked or sat, and who never dreamed that
it could be otherwise, compared to the existence of your young women,
whose clothes hardly touch them and take up no room. A woman was then a
work of art, the product of centuries of civilization, and you talked of
her figure as you talked of her salon, with the admiration which one
gives to the achievement of a skilled and untiring artist.

"And underneath all this Eve herself breathed and moved, to be indeed a
revelation to us every time she stepped out of her disguise, with her
waist still delicately marked by the stays, as with a girdle of rose
petals.

"To you young people who laugh at the ideas, as at the bustles, of the
'seventies, and who will tell me that in spite of all our artificiality
there can have been but little mystery left to any of us, may I be
allowed to say that you do not, perhaps, quite understand the meaning of
the word? Nothing is mysterious until it symbolizes something. The bread
and wine of the church itself has to be baked and bottled, I suppose.
The women of those days were more than a collection of individuals. They
symbolized, or represented, Woman. I understand that the word itself, in
that sense, has gone out of the language. Where we talked of
woman--pretty cynically, we liked to think--you talk of women, and all
the difference lies there.

"Do you remember the scholars of the middle ages who discussed the
question of which had been created first: the idea of a dog, or the
individual dogs? To you, who are taught statistics in your
kindergartens, there is no doubt, I suppose. And it is but justice to
say that your world does in reality look as if it had been made
experimentally. But to us even the ideas of old Mr. Darwin were new and
strange. We had our ideas from such undertakings as symphonies and
ceremonials of court, and had been brought up with strong feelings about
the distinction between legitimate and illegitimate birth. We had faith
in purpose. The idea of Woman--of _das ewig weibliche_, about which you
yourself will not deny that there is some mystery--had to us been
created in the beginning, and our women made it their mission to
represent it worthily, as I suppose the mission of the individual dog
must have been worthily to represent the Creator's idea of a dog.

"You could follow, then, the development of this idea in a little girl,
as she was growing up and was gradually, no doubt in accordance with
very ancient rules, inaugurated into the rites of the cult, and finally
ordained. Slowly the center of gravity of her being would be shifted
from individuality to symbol, and you would be met with that particular
pride and modesty characteristic of the representative of the great
powers--such as you may find again in a really great artist. Indeed, the
haughtiness of the pretty young girl, or the old ladies' majesty,
existed no more on account of personal vanity, or on any personal
account whatever, than did the pride of Michelangelo himself, or the
Spanish Ambassador to France. However much greeted at the banks of the
Styx by the indignation of his individual victims with flowing hair and
naked breasts, Don Giovanni would have been acquitted by a board of
women of my day, sitting in judgment on him, for the sake of his great
faith in the idea of Woman. But they would have agreed with the masters
of Oxford in condemning Shelley as an atheist; and they managed to
master Christ himself only by representing him forever as an infant in
arms, dependent upon the Virgin.

"The multitude outside the temple of mystery is not very interesting.
The real interest lies with the priest inside. The crowd waiting at the
porch for the fulfillment of the miracle of the boiling blood of St.
Pantaleone--that I have seen many times and in many places. But very
rarely have I had admittance to the cool vaults behind, or the chance of
seeing the priests, old and young, down to the choirboys, who feel
themselves to be the most important persons at the ceremony, and are
both scared and impudent, occupying themselves, in a measure of their
own, with the preparations, guardians of a mystery that they know all
about. What was the cynicism of Lord Byron, or of Baudelaire, whom we
were just reading then with the _frisson nouveau_, to the cynicism of
these little priestesses, augurs all of them, performing with the utmost
conscientiousness all the rites of a religion which they knew all about
and did not believe in, upholding, I feel sure, the doctrine of their
mystery even amongst themselves. Our poets of those days would tell us
how a party of young beauties, behind the curtains of the
bathing-machine, would blush and giggle as they 'put lilies in water.'

"I do not know if you remember the tale of the girl who saves the ship
under mutiny by sitting on the powder barrel with her lighted torch,
threatening to put fire to it, and all the time knowing herself that it
is empty? This has seemed to me a charming image of the woman of my
time. There they were, keeping the world in order, and preserving the
balance and rhythm of it, by sitting upon the mystery of life, and
knowing themselves that there was no mystery. I have heard you young
people saying that the women of old days had no sense of humor. Thinking
of the face of my young girl upon the barrel, with severely downcast
eyes, I have wondered if our famous male humor be not a little insipid
compared to theirs. If we were more thankful to them for existing than
you are to your women of the present day, I think that we had good
reason for it.

"I trust that you will not mind," he said, "an old man lingering over
these pictures of an age gone by. It will be, I suppose, like being
detained a little in a museum, before a _montre_ showing its fashions.
You may laugh at them, if you like."

The old chevalier then resumed his story:

****

As I then undressed this young girl, and the layers of clothes which so
severely dominated and concealed her fell one by one there in front of
my fire, in the light of my large lamp, itself swathed in layers of
silk--all, my dear, was thus draped in those days, and my large chairs
had, I remember, long silk fringes all around them and on the tops of
those little velvet pompons, otherwise they would not have been thought
really pretty--until she stood naked, I had before me the greatest
masterpiece of nature that my eyes have ever been privileged to rest
upon, a sight to take away your breath. I know that there may be
something very lovable in the little imperfections of the female form,
and I have myself worshiped a knock-kneed Venus, but this young figure
was pathetic, was heart-piercing, by reason of its pure faultlessness.
She was so young that you felt, in the midst of your deep admiration,
the anticipation of a still higher perfection, and that was all there
was to be said.

All her body shone in the light, delicately rounded and smooth as
marble. One straight line ran through it from neck to ankle, as though
the heaven-aspiring column of a young tree. The same character was
expressed in the high instep of the foot, as she pushed off her old
shoes, as in the curve of the chin, as in the straight, gentle glance of
her eyes, and the delicate and strong lines of her shoulder and wrist.

The comfort of the warmth of the fire on her skin, after the clinging of
her wet and tumbled clothes, made her sigh with pleasure and turn a
little, like a cat. She laughed softly, like a child who quits the
doorstep of school for a holiday. She stood up erect before the fire;
her wet curls fell down over her forehead and she did not try to push
them back; her bright painted cheeks looked even more like a doll's
above her fair naked body.

I think that all my soul was in my eyes. Reality had met me, such a
short time ago, in such an ugly shape, that I had no wish to come into
contact with it again. Somewhere in me a dark fear was still crouching,
and I took refuge within the fantastic like a distressed child in his
book of fairy tales. I did not want to look ahead, and not at all to
look back. I felt the moment close over me, like a wave. I drank a large
glass of wine to catch up with her, looking at her.

I was so young then that I could no more than other young people give up
the deep faith in my own star, in a power that loved me and looked after
me in preference to all other human beings. No miracle was incredible to
me as long as it happened to myself. It is when this faith begins to
wear out, and when you conceive the possibility of being in the same
position as other people, that youth is really over. I was not surprised
or suspicious of this act of favor on the part of the gods, but I think
that my heart was filled with a very sweet gratitude toward them, I
thought it after all only reasonable, only to be expected, that the
great friendly power of the universe should manifest itself again, and
send me, out of the night, as a help and consolation, this naked and
drunk young girl, a miracle of gracefulness.

We sat down to supper, Nathalie and I, high up there in my warm and
quiet room, with the great town below us and my heavy silk curtains
drawn upon the wet night, like two owls in a ruined tower within the
depth of the forest, and nobody in the world knew about us. She leaned
one arm on the table and rested her head on it. I think that she was
very hungry, under the influence of the food. We had some caviar, I
remember, and a cold bird. She began to beam on me, to laugh, to talk to
me, and to listen to what I said to her.

I do not remember what we talked about. I think we were very
open-hearted, and that I told her, what I could not have mentioned to
anybody else, of how I had come near to being poisoned just before I met
her. I also think that I must have told her about my country, for I know
that at a time afterwards the idea came to me that she would write to me
there, or even come to look for me. I remember that she told me, rather
sadly to begin with, a story of a very old monkey which could do tricks,
and had belonged to an Armenian organ-grinder. Its master had died, and
now it wanted to do its tricks and was always waiting for the catchword,
but nobody knew it. In the course of this tale she imitated the monkey
in the funniest and most gracefully inspired manner that one can
imagine. But I remember most of her movements. Sometimes I have thought
that the understanding of some pieces of music for violin and piano has
come to me through the contemplation of the contrast, or the harmony,
between her long slim hand and her short rounded chin as she held the
glass to her mouth.

I have never in any other love affair--if this can be called a love
affair--had the same feeling of freedom and security. In my last
adventure I had all the time been worrying to find out what my mistress
really thought of me, and what part I was playing in the eyes of the
world. But no such doubts or fears could possibly penetrate into our
little room here. I believe that this feeling of safety and perfect
freedom must be what happily married people mean when they talk about
the two being one. I wonder if that understanding can possibly, in
marriage, be as harmonious as when you meet as strangers; but this, I
suppose, is a matter of taste.

One thing did play in to both of us, though we were not conscious of it.
The world outside was bad, was dreadful. Life had made a very nasty face
at me, and must have made a worse at her. But this room and this night
were ours, and were faithful to us. Although we did not think about it,
ours was in reality a supper of the Girondists.

The wine helped us. I had not drunk much, but my head was fairly light
before I began. Champagne is a very kind and friendly thing on a rainy
night. I remember an old Danish bishop's saying to me that there are
many ways to the recognition of truth, and that Burgundy is one of them.
This is, I know, very well for an old man within his paneled study. But
young people, who have seen the devil face to face, need a stronger
helping hand. Over our softly hissing glasses we were brought back to
seeing ourselves and this night of ours as a great artist might have
seen us and it, worthy of the genius of a god.

I had a guitar lying on my sofa, for I was to serenade, in a _tableau
vivant_, a romantic beauty--in real life an American woman from the
Embassy who could not have given you an echo back from whatever angle
you would have cried to her. Nathalie reached out for it, a little later
in our supper. She shuddered slightly at the first sound, for I had not
had time or thought for playing it, and crossing her knees, in my large
low chair, she began to tune it. Then she sang two little songs to me.
In my quiet room her low voice, a little hoarse, was clear as a bell,
faintly giddy with happiness, like a bee's in a flower. She sang first a
song from the music halls, a gay tune with a striking rhythm. Then she
thought for a moment and changed over into a strange plaintive little
song in a language that I did not understand. She had a great sense of
music. That strong and delicate personality which showed itself in all
her body came out again in her voice. The light metallic timbre, the
straightness and ease of it, corresponded with her eyes, knees, and
fingers. Only it was a little richer and fuller, as if it had grown up
faster or had stolen a march somehow upon her body. Her voice knew more
than she did herself, as did the bow of Mischa Elman when he played as a
_Wunderkind_.

All my balance, which I had kept somehow while looking at her, suddenly
left me at the sound of her voice. These words that I did not understand
seemed to me more directly meaningful than any I had ever understood. I
sat in another low chair, opposite her. I remember the silence when her
song was finished, and that I pushed the table away, and how I came
slowly down on one knee before her. She looked at me with such a clear,
severe, wild look as I think that a hawk's eyes must have when they lift
off his hood. I went down on my other knee and put my arms around her
legs. I do not know what there was in my face to convince her, but her
own face changed and lighted up with a kind of heroic gentleness.
Altogether there had been from the beginning something heroic about her.
That was, I think, what had made her put up with the young fool that I
was. For _du ridicule jusqu'au sublime_, surely, _il n'y a qu'un pas_.

My friend, she was as innocent as she looked. She was the first young
girl who had been mine. There is a theory that a very young man should
not make love to a virgin, but ought to have a more experienced partner.
That is not true; it is the only natural thing.

It must have been an hour or two later in the night that I woke up to
the feeling that something was wrong, or dangerous. We say when we turn
suddenly cold that someone is walking over our grave--the future brings
itself into memory. And as _l'on meurt en plein bonheur de ses malheurs
passs_, so do we let go our hold of our present happiness on account of
coming misfortune. It was not the _omne animal_ affair only; it was a
distrust of the future as if I had heard myself asking it: "I am to pay
for this; what am I to pay?" But at the time I may have believed that
what I felt was only fear of her going away.

Once before she had sat up and moved as if to leave me, and I had
dragged her back. Now she said: "I must go back," and got up. The lamp
was still burning, the fire was smoldering. It seemed to me natural that
she should be taken away by the same mysterious forces which had brought
her, like Cinderella, or a little spirit out of the _Arabian Nights_. I
was waiting for her to come up and let me know when she would come back
to me, and what I was to do. All the same I was more silent now.

She dressed and got back into her black shabby disguise. She put on her
hat and stood there just as I had seen her first in the rain on the
avenue. Then she came up to me where I was sitting on the arm of my
chair, and said: "And you will give me twenty francs, will you not?" As
I did not answer, she repeated her question and said: "Marie said
that--she said that I should get twenty francs."

I did not speak. I sat there looking at her. Her clear and light eyes
met mine.

A great clearness came upon me then, as if all the illusions and arts
with which we try to transform our world, coloring and music and dreams,
had been drawn aside, and reality was shown to me, waste as a burnt
house. This was the end of the play. There was no room for any
superfluous word.

This was the first moment, I think, since I had met her those few hours
ago, in which I saw her as a human being, within an existence of her
own, and not as a gift to me. I believe that all thoughts of myself left
me at the sight, but now it was too late.

We two had played. A rare jest had been offered me and I had accepted
it; now it was up to me to keep the spirit of our game until the end.
Her own demand was well within the spirit of the night. For the palace
which he builds, for four hundred white and four hundred black slaves
all loaded with jewels, the djinn asks for an old copper lamp; and the
forest-witch who moves three towns and creates for the woodcutter's son
an army of horse-soldiers demands for herself the heart of a hare. The
girl asked me for her pay in the voice and manner of the djinn and the
forest-witch, and if I were to give her twenty francs she might still be
safe within the magic circle of her free and graceful and defiant
spirit. It was I who was out of character, as I sat there in silence,
with all the weight of the cold and real world upon me, knowing well
that I should have to answer her or I might, even within these few
seconds, pass it on to her.

Later on I reflected that I might have had it in me to invent something
which would have kept her safe, and still have allowed me to keep her. I
thought then that I should only have had to give her twenty francs and
to have said: "And if you want another twenty, come back tomorrow
night." If she had been less lovely to me, if she had not been so young
and so innocent, I might perhaps have done it. But this young girl had
called, during our few hours, on all the chivalrousness that I had in my
nature. And chivalrousness, I think, means this: to love, or cherish,
the pride of your partner, or of your adversary, as you will define it,
as highly, or higher than, your own. Or if I had been as innocent of
heart as she was, I might perhaps have thought of it, but I had kept
company with this deadly world of reality. I was practiced in its laws
and had the mortal bacilli of its ways in my blood. Now it did not enter
my head any more than it ever has to alter my answers in church. When
the priest says: "O God, make clean our hearts within us," I have never
thought of telling him that it is not needed, or to answer anything
whatever but, "And take not your holy spirit from us."

So, as if it were the only natural and reasonable thing to do, I took
out twenty francs and gave them to her.

Before she went she did a thing that I have never forgotten. With my
note in her left hand she stood close to me. She did not kiss me or take
my hand to say good-by, but with the three fingers of her right hand she
lifted my chin up a little and looked at me, gave me an encouraging,
consoling glance, such as a sister might give her brother in farewell.
Then she went away.

In the days that followed--not the first days, but later--I tried to
construct for myself some theory and explanation of my adventure.

This happened only a short time after the fall of the Second Empire,
that strange sham millennium, and the Commune of Paris. The atmosphere
had been filled with catastrophe. A world had fallen. The Empress
herself, whom, on a visit to Paris as a child, I had envisaged as a
female deity resting upon clouds, smilingly conducting the ways of
humanity, had flown in the night, in a carriage with her American
dentist, miserable for the lack of a handkerchief. The members of her
court were crowded into lodgings in Brussels and London while their
country houses served as stables for the Prussians' horses. The Commune
had followed, and the massacres in Paris by the Versailles army. A whole
world must have tumbled down within these months of disaster.

This was also the time of Nihilism in Russia, when the revolutionaries
had lost all and were fleeing into exile. I thought of them because of
the little song that Nathalie had sung to me, of which I had not
understood the words.

Whatever it was that had happened to her, it must have been a
catastrophe of an extraordinary violent nature. She must have gone down
with a unique swiftness, or she would have known something of the
resignation, the dreadful reconciliation to fate which life works upon
us when it gets time to impress us drop by drop.

Also, I thought, she must have been tied to, and dragged down with,
somebody else, for if she had been alone it could not have happened. It
would have been, I reflected, somebody who held her, and yet was unable
to help her, someone either very old, helpless from shock and ruin, or
very young, children or a child, a little brother or sister. Left to
herself she would have floated, or she would have been picked up near
the surface by someone who would have valued her rare beauty, grace, and
charm and have congratulated himself upon acquiring them; or, lower
down, by somebody who might not have understood them, but whom they
would still have impressed. Or, near the bottom, by people who would
have thought of turning them to their own advantage. But she must have
gone straight down from the world of beauty and harmony in which she had
learned that confidence and radiance of hers, where they had taught her
to sing, and to move and laugh as she did, where they had loved her, to
a world where beauty and grace are of no account, and where the facts of
life look you in the face, quite straight to ruin, desolation and
starvation. And there, on the last step of the ladder, had been Marie,
whoever she was, a friend who out of her narrow and dark knowledge of
the world had given her advice, and lent her the miserable clothes, and
poured some sort of spirit into her, to give her courage.

About all this I thought much, and for a long time; but of course I
could not know.

As soon as she had gone and I was alone--so strange are the automatic
movements which we make within the hands of fate--I had no thought but
to go after her and get her back. I think that I went, in those minutes,
through the exact experience, even to the sensation of suffocation, of a
person who has been buried alive. But I had no clothes on. When I got
into some clothes and came down to the street it was empty. I walked
about in the streets for a long time. I came back, in the course of the
early morning, to the seat on which I had been sitting when she first
spoke to me, and to the hotel of my former mistress, I thought what a
strange thing is a young man who runs about, within the selfsame night,
driven by the mad passion and loss of two women. Mercutio's words to
Romeo about it came into my mind, and, as if I had been shown a
brilliant caricature of myself or of all young men, I laughed. When the
day began to spring I walked back to my room, and there was the lamp,
still burning, and the supper table.

This state of mine lasted for some time. During the first days it was
not so bad, for I lived then in the thought of going down, at the same
hour, to the same place where I had met her first. I thought that she
might come there again. I attached much hope to this idea, which only
slowly died away.

I tried many things to make it possible to live. One night I went to the
opera, because I had heard other people talk about going there. It was
clear that it was done, and there might be something in it. It happened
to be a performance of _Orpheus_. Do you remember the music where he
implores the shadows in Hades, and where Euridice is for such a short
time given back to him? There I sat, in the brilliant light of the
_entr'actes_, a young man in a white tie and lavender gloves, with
bright people who smiled and talked all around, some of them nodding to
me, closely covered and wrapped up in the huge black wings of the
Eumenides.

At this time I developed also another theory. I thought of the goddess
Nemesis, and I believed that had I not had the moment of doubt and fear
in the night, I might have felt, in the morning, the strength in me, and
the right, to move her destiny and mine. It is said about the highwaymen
who in the old days haunted the forests of Denmark that they used to
have a wire stretched across the road with a bell attached. The coaches
in passing would touch the wire and the bell would ring within their den
and call out the robbers. I had touched the wire and a bell had rung
somewhere. The girl had not been afraid, but I had been afraid. I had
asked: "What am I to pay for this?" and the goddess herself had
answered: "Twenty francs," and with her you cannot bargain. You think of
many things, when you are young.

All this is now a long time ago. The Eumenides, if they will excuse me
for saying so, are like fleas, by which I was also much worried as a
child. They like young blood, and leave us alone later in life. I have
had, however, the honor of having them on me once more, not very many
years ago. I had sold a piece of my land to a neighbor, and when I saw
it again, he had cut down the forest that had been on it. Where were now
the green shades, the glades and the hidden footpaths? And when I then
heard again the whistle of their wings in the air, it gave me, with the
pain, also a strange feeling of hope and strength--it was, after all,
music of my youth.

****

"And did you never see her again?" I asked him.

"No," he said, and then, after a little while, "but I had a fantasy
about her, a _fantaisie macabre_, if you like.

"Fifteen years later, in 1889, I passed through Paris on my way to Rome,
and stayed there for a few days to see the exhibition and the Eiffel
Tower which they had just built. One afternoon I went to see a friend, a
painter. He had been rather wild as a young artist, but later had turned
about completely, and was at the time studying anatomy with great zeal,
after the example of Leonardo. I stayed there over the evening, and
after we had discussed his pictures, and art in general, he said that he
would show me the prettiest thing that he had in his studio. It was a
skull from which he was drawing. He was keen to explain its rare beauty
to me. 'It is really,' he said, 'the skull of a young woman, but the
skull of Antinos must have looked like that, if one had been able to
get hold of it.'

"I had it in my hand, and as I was looking at the broad, low brow, the
clear and noble line of the chin, and the clean deep sockets of the
eyes, it seemed suddenly familiar to me. The white polished bone shone
in the light of the lamp, so pure. And safe. In those few seconds I was
taken back to my room in the Place Franois I, with the silk fringes and
the heavy curtains, on a rainy night of fifteen years before."

"Did you ask your friend anything about it?" I said.

"No," said the old man, "what would have been the use? He would not have
known."




THE MONKEY


[I]

In a few of the Lutheran countries of northern Europe there are still in
existence places which make use of the name convent, and are governed by
a prioress or chanoiness, although they are of no religious nature. They
are retreats for unmarried ladies and widows of noble birth who here
pass the autumn and winter days of their lives in a dignified and
comfortable routine, according to the traditions of the houses. Many of
these institutions are extremely wealthy, own great stretches of land,
and have had, during the centuries, inheritances and legacies bequested
to them. A proud and kindly spirit of past feudal times seems to dwell
in the stately buildings and to guide the existence of the communities.

The Virgin Prioress of Closter Seven, under whose hands the convent
prospered from the year 1818 to that of 1845, had a little gray monkey
which had been given her by her cousin, Admiral von Schreckenstein, on
his return from Zanzibar, and of which she was very fond. When she was
at her card table, a place where she spent some of her happiest hours,
the monkey was wont to sit on the back of her chair, and to follow with
its glittering eyes the course of the cards as they were dealt out and
taken in. At other times it would be found, in the early mornings, on
top of the stepladder in the library, pulling out brittle folios a
hundred years old, and scattering over the black-and-white marble floor
browned leaves dealing with strategy, princely marriage contracts, and
witches' trials.

In a different society the monkey might not have been popular. But the
convent of Closter Seven held, cordinately with its estimable female
population, a whole world of pets of all sorts, and was well aware of
the order of precedence therein. There were here parrots and cockatoos,
small dogs, graceful cats from all parts of the world, a white Angora
goat, like that of Esmeralda, and a purple-eyed young fallow deer. There
was even a tortoise which was supposed to be more than a hundred years
old. The old ladies therefore showed a forbearance with the whims of the
Prioress's favorite, much like that which courtiers of a
petticoat-governed court of the old days, conscious of their own
frailty, might have shown toward the caprices of a royal
_matresse-en-titre_.

From time to time, particularly in the autumn, when nuts were ripening
in the hedges along the roads and in the large forests that surrounded
the convent, it happened that the Prioress's monkey would feel the call
of a freer life and would disappear for a few weeks or a month, to come
back of its own accord when the night frosts set in. The children of the
villages belonging to Closter Seven would then come upon it running
across the road or sitting in a tree, from where it watched them
attentively. But when they gathered around it and started to bombard it
with chestnuts from their pockets, it would roll its eyes and grind its
teeth at them, and finish by swiftly mounting the branches to disappear
in the crowns of the forest.

It was the general opinion, or a standing joke amongst the ladies of the
convent, that the Prioress, during these periods, would become silent
and the victim of a particular restlessness, and would seem loth to act
in the affairs of the house, in which at ordinary times she showed great
vigor. Amongst themselves they called the monkey her _Geheimrat_, and
they rejoiced when it was to be seen again in her drawing-room, a little
chilled after its stay in the woods.

Upon a fine October day, when the monkey had in this way been missing
for some weeks, the Prioress's young nephew and godson, who was a
lieutenant in the Royal Guards, arrived unexpectedly at the convent.

The Prioress was held in high respect by all her relations, and had in
her time presented at the font many babies of her own noble blood, but
this young man was her favorite amongst them. He was a graceful boy of
twenty-two, with dark hair and blue eyes. Although he was a younger son,
he was fortunately situated in life. He was the preferred child of his
mother, who had come from Russia and had been an heiress; he had made a
fine career. He had friends, not everywhere in the world, but everywhere
in that world, that is of any significance.

On his arrival at the convent he did not, however, look like a young man
under a lucky star. He came, as already said, in headlong hurry and
unannounced, and the ladies with whom he exchanged a few words while
waiting for admission to his aunt, and who were all fond of him, noticed
that he was pale and looked deadly tired, as if under some great
agitation of mind.

They were not unaware, either, that he might have reason to be so.
Although Closter Seven was a small world of its own, and moved in a
particular atmosphere of peace and immutability, news of the greater
world outside reached it with surprising quickness, for each of the
ladies had her own watchful and zealous correspondents there. Thus these
cloistered women knew, just as well as the people in the center of
things, that during the last month clouds of strange and sinister nature
had been gathering over the heads of that very regiment and circle of
friends to which the boy belonged. A sanctimonious clique of the
capital, led by the Court Chaplain, of all people, who had the ear of
high personages, had, under pretense of moral indignation, lifted their
voices against these young flowers of the land, and nobody knew for
certain, or could even imagine, what might come out of that.

The ladies had not discussed these happenings much amongst themselves,
but the librarian of the convent, who was a theologian and a scholar,
had been dragged away into more than one tte--tte, and encouraged to
give his opinion on the problem. From him they had learnt to connect it
somehow with those romantic and sacred shores of ancient Greece which
they had till now held in high esteem. Remembering their young days,
when everything Greek had been _le dernier cri_, and frocks and
coiffures had been named _ la grecque_, they wondered--Could the
expression be used also to designate anything so little related to their
young ladies' dreams of refinement? They had loved those frocks, they
had waltzed with princes in them; now they thought of them with
uneasiness.

Few things could have stirred their natures more deeply. It was not only
the impudence of the heroes of the pulpit and the quill attacking
warriors which revolted the old daughters of a fighting race, or the
presentiment of trouble and much woe that worried them, but something in
the matter which went deeper than that. To all of them it had been a
fundamental article of faith that woman's loveliness and charm, which
they themselves represented in their own sphere and according to their
gifts, must constitute the highest inspiration and prize of life. In
their own individual cases the world might have spread snares in order
to capture this prize of their being at less cost than they meant it to,
or there might have been a strange misunderstanding, a lack of
appreciation, on the part of the world, but still the dogma held good.
To hear it disputed now meant to them what it would mean to a miser to
be told that gold no longer had absolute value, or to a mystic to have
it asserted that the Lord was not present in the Eucharist. Had they
known that it might ever be called into question, all these lives, which
were now so nearly finished, might have come to look very different. To
a few proud old maids, who had the strategic instincts of their breed
developed to the full, these new conceptions came very hard. So might
have come, to a gallant and faithful old general who through a long
campaign, in loyalty to higher orders, had stood strictly upon the
defensive, the information that an offensive would have been the right,
and approved, move.

Still in the midst of their inquietude every one of the old women would
have liked to have heard more of this strange heresy, as if, after all,
the tender and dangerous emotions of the human heart were, even within
their own safe reclusion, by right their domain. It was as if the tall
bouquets of dried flowers in front of the convents' pier glasses had
stirred and claimed authority when a question of floriculture was being
raised.

They gave the pale boy an unsure welcome, as if he might have been
either one of Herod's child martyrs, or a young priest of black magic,
still within hope of conversion, and when he walked up the broad stair
which led to the Prioress's rooms, they evaded one another's eyes.

The Prioress received her nephew within her lofty parlor. Its three tall
windows looked out, between heavy curtains which had on them borders of
flower garlands done in cross-stitch, over the lawns and avenues of the
autumnal garden. From the damask-clad walls her long-departed father and
mother gazed down, out of broad gilt frames, with military gravity and
youthful grace, powdered and laced for some great court occasion. Those
two had been the young man's friends since he was a baby, yet today he
was struck and surprised by a puzzled, even a worried, look upon their
faces. It seemed to him also, for a moment, that there was a certain
strange and disquieting smell in the room, mixed with that of the
incense sticks, which were being burned more amply than usual. Was this,
he thought, a new aspect of the catastrophal tendencies of his
existence?

The boy, while taking in the whole well-known and harmonious atmosphere,
did not want or dare to waste time. After he had kissed his aunt's hand,
inquired after her health and the monkey, and given her the news of his
own people in town, he came straight to the matter which had brought him
to Closter Seven.

"Aunt Cathinka," he said, "I have come to you because you have always
been so good to me. I should like"--here he swallowed to keep his
rebellious heart in place, knowing how little indeed it would like
it--"to marry, and I hope that you will give me your advice and help."


[II]

The boy was well aware that under ordinary circumstances nothing that he
could have said could possibly have pleased the old woman better. Thus
did life, he thought, manage to satisfy its taste for parody, even in
relation to people like his aunt, whom in his own heart he had named
after the Chinese goddess Kuan-Yin, the deity of mercy and of benignant
subtlety. He thought that in this case she would suffer from the irony
of destiny more than he himself, and it made him feel sorry for her.

On his way to the convent, driving through the forests and little
villages, past long stretches of stubble-fields on which large flocks of
geese were feeding, herded by bare-legged children and young girls, he
had been trying to imagine how the meeting between his aunt and himself
would be likely to develop. Knowing the old lady's weakness for little
Latin phrases, he had wondered if he would get from her lips _Et tu,
Brute_, or a decided _Discite justitiam moniti, et non temnere divos_.
Perhaps she would say _Ad sanitatem gradus est novisse morbum_--that
would be a better sign.

After a moment he looked straight at the old lady's face. Her
high-backed chair was in the chiaroscuro of the lace curtain, while he
had on him the full light of the afternoon sun. From the shade her
luminous eyes met his, and made him look away, and this dumb play was
repeated twice over.

"_Mon cher enfant_," she said at last in a gentle voice which gave him
the impression of firmness, although it had in it a curious little
shiver, "it has long been a prayer of my heart that you should make this
decision. On what help an old woman, outside the world, can give you,
dear Boris, you can surely rely."

Boris looked up with smiling eyes in a white face. After a terribly
agitated week, and a row of wild scenes which his mother's love and
jealousy had caused, he felt like a person who is, from a flooded town,
taken up into a boat. As soon as he could speak he said: "It is all for
you to decide, Aunt Cathinka," trusting that the sweetness of power
would call out all the generosity of the old woman's nature.

She kept her eyes on him, kindly. They took possession of him as if she
had actually been drawing him to her bosom, or even within the closer
circle of her heart. She held her little handkerchief to her mouth, a
gesture common with her when she was moved. She would help him, he felt,
but she had something to say first.

"What is it," she said very slowly, in the manner of a sibylla, "which
is bought dearly, offered for nothing, and then most often
refused?--Experience, old people's experience. If the children of Adam
and Eve had been prepared to make use of their parents' experience, the
world would have been behaving sensibly six thousand years ago. I will
give you my experience of life in a little pill, sugar-coated by poetry
to make it go down: 'For as of all the ways of life but one--the path of
duty--leads to happiness.'" Boris sat silent for a moment. "Aunt
Cathinka," he said at last, "why should there be only one way? I know
that good people think so, and I was taught it myself at my
confirmation, but still the motto of our family is: 'Find a way or make
it.' Neither can you read any cookery book which will not give you at
least three or four ways of making a chicken ragot, or more. And when
Columbus sailed out and discovered America," he went on, because these
were thoughts which had occupied him lately, and the Prioress was a
friend of his, to whom he could venture to express them, "he really did
so to find the back way to the Indies, and it was considered a heroic
exploit." "Ah," said the Prioress with great energy, "Dr. Sass, who was
the parson of Closter Seven in the seventeenth century, maintained that
in paradise, until the time of the fall, the whole world was flat, the
back-curtain of the Lord, and that it was the devil who invented a third
dimension. Thus are the words 'straight,' 'square,' and 'flat' the words
of noblemen, but the apple was an orb, and the sin of our first parents,
the attempt at getting around God. I myself much prefer the art of
painting to sculpture." Boris did not contradict her. His own taste
differed from hers here, but she might be right. Up to now he had
congratulated himself upon his talent for enjoying life from all sides,
but lately he had come to consider it a doubtful blessing. It was to
this, he thought, that he owed what seemed to be his fate: to get
everything he wanted at a time when he no longer wanted it. He knew from
experience how a wild craving for an orgy, or music, or the sea, or
confidence might, before there had been time for its fulfillment, have
ceased to exist--as in the case of a star, of which the light only
reaches the earth long after it has itself gone under--so that at the
moment when his wish was about to be granted him, only a bullfight, or
the life of a peasant plowing his land in the rain, would satisfy the
hunger of his soul.

The Prioress looked him up and down, and said:

    _Straight is the line of duty,_
    _Curved is the line of beauty._
    _Follow the straight line; thou shalt see_
    _The curved line ever follows thee._

The boy thought the poem over.

A decanter of wine and some fruit were at this moment brought in for
him, and as he understood that she wanted him to keep quiet, he drank
two glasses, which did him good, and in silence peeled the famous silky
pears of Closter Seven, and picked the dim black grapes off their stems
one by one. Without looking at his aunt he could follow all her
thoughts. The dramatic urgency for quick action, which might have
frightened another person of her age, did not upset her in the least.
She had amongst her ancestors great lords of war who had prepared
campaigns with skill, but who had also had it in them to give over at
the right moment to pure inspiration.

He understood that for her in these moments her red parlor was filled
with young virgins of high birth--dark and fair, slim and junoesque,
good housekeepers, good horsewomen, granddaughters of schoolmates and
friends of her youth--a muster-roll of young femininity, who could hide
no excellency or shortcoming from her clear eyes. Spiritually she was
licking her lips, like an old connoisseur walking through his cellar,
and Boris himself followed her in thought, like the butler who is
holding the candle.

Just then the door opened and the Prioress's old servant came in again,
this time with a letter on a silver tray, which he presented to her. She
took it with a hand that trembled a little, as if she could not very
well take in any more catastrophe, read it through, read it again, and
colored faintly. "It is all right, Johann," she said, keeping the letter
in her silken lap.

She sat for a little while in deep thought. Then she turned to the boy,
her dark eyes clear as glass. "You have come through my new fir
plantation," she said with the animation of a person talking about a
hobby. "What do you think of it?" The planting and upkeep of forests
were indeed among her greatest interests in life. They talked for some
time pleasantly of trees. There was nothing for your health, she said,
like forest air. She herself was never able to pass a good night in town
or amongst fields, but to lie down at night knowing that you had the
trees around you for miles, their roots so deep in the earth, their
crowns moving in the dark, she considered to be one of the delights of
life. The forest had always done Boris good when he had been staying at
Closter Seven as a child. Even now he would notice a difference when he
had been in town for a long time, and she wished that she could get him
down more often.--"And who, Boris," she said with a sudden skip of
thought and a bright and determined benevolence, "who, now that we come
to talk about it, could indeed make you a better wife than that great
friend of yours and mine, little Athena Hopballehus?"

No name could in this connection have come more unexpectedly to Boris.
He was too surprised to answer. The phrase itself sounded absurd to him.
He had never heard Athena described as little, and he remembered her as
being half an inch taller than himself. But that the Prioress should
speak of her as a great friend showed a complete change of spirit, for
he was sure that ever since their neighbor's daughter had grown up, his
aunt and his mother, who were rarely of one mind, had been joining
forces to keep him and Athena apart.

As his mind turned from this unaccountable veering on the part of the
old lady to the effect which it might have upon his own destiny, he
found that he did not dislike the idea. The burlesque he had always
liked, and it might even be an extravaganza of the first water to bring
Athena to town as his wife. So when he looked at his aunt he had the
face of a child. "I have the greatest faith in your judgment, Aunt
Cathinka," he said.

The Prioress now spoke very slowly, not looking at him, as if she did
not want any impressions from other minds to intermingle with her own.
"We will not waste time, Boris," she said. "That has never been my habit
once my mind was made up." And that means, never at all, Boris thought.
"You go and change into your uniform, and I will in the meantime write a
letter to the old Count. I will tell him how you have made me your
confidante in this matter of your heart, upon which the happiness of
your life depends, and in which your dear mother has not been able to
give you her sympathy. And you, you must be ready to go within half an
hour."

"Do you think, Aunt Cathinka, that Athena will have me?" asked Boris as
he rose to go. He was always quick to feel sorry for other people. Now,
looking out over the garden, and seeing two of the old ladies emerge, in
galoshes, from one of the avenues, wherein they had been taking their
afternoon walk, he felt sorry for Athena for merely existing. "Athena,"
the Prioress was saying, "has never had an offer of marriage in her
life. I doubt if, for the last year, she has seen any man but Pastor
Rosenquist, who comes to play chess with her papa. She has heard my
ladies discuss the brilliant marriages which you might have made if you
had wanted to. If Athena will not have you, my little Boris," she said,
and smiled at him very sweetly, "I will."

Boris kissed her hand for this, and reflected what an excellent
arrangement it might prove to be, and then all at once he got such a
terrible impression of strength and cunning that it was as if he had
touched an electric eel. Women, he thought, when they are old enough to
have done with the business of being women, and can let loose their
strength, must be the most powerful creatures in the whole world. He
gazed at his aunt's refined face.

No, it would not do, he thought.


[III]

Boris drove from Closter Seven in the Prioress's britzska, with her
letter upon his heart, looking the ideal young hero of romance. The news
of his errand had spread mysteriously in the convent, as if it had been
a new kind of incense, and had gone straight to the hearts of the old
ladies. Two or three of them were sitting in the sun on the long terrace
to see him go, and a particular friend of his, a corpulent old maid,
bleached by having been kept for fifty years from all the lights of
life, stood beside his carriage to hand him three long-stemmed white
asters from her little winter garden. Thus had gone away, thirty years
ago, the young man she loved, and then he had been killed at Jena. A
gentle melancholy veiled her always, and her lady companion said of her:
"The Countess Anastasia has a heavy cross. The love of eating is a heavy
cross." But it was the memory of this last parting of theirs that had
kept her eyes, in her puny face, bright like light blue enamel. She felt
at the moment the resurrection of an entire destiny, and handed him her
flowers as if they had been some part of it, mysteriously come to life
in a second round, as if they had been her three unborn daughters, now
tall and marriageable, joining his journey in the quality of
bridesmaids.

Boris had left his servant at the convent, for he knew him to be in love
with one of the lady's maids, and it seemed to him that he ought now to
show sympathy towards all legitimate love-making. He wished to be alone.
Solitude was always a pleasure to him, and he never had much opportunity
for it. Lately he seemed never to have been alone at all. When people
were not at him, working upon his feelings with all their might, they
had still succeeded in making him take up their line of thought, until
he felt those convolutions of the brain which had to do with these
matters aching as if they were worn out. Even on his way down to the
convent he had been made to think the thoughts of other people. Now, he
thought with great contentment, for an hour he could think whatever he
liked.

The road from Closter Seven to Hopballehus rises more than five hundred
feet and winds through tall pine forest. From time to time this opens
and affords a magnificent view over large stretches of land below. Now
in the afternoon sun the trunks of the fir trees were burning red, and
the landscape far away seemed cool, all blue and pale gold. Boris was
able now to believe what the old gardener at the convent had told him
when he was a child: that he had once seen, about this time of the year
and the day, a herd of unicorns come out of the woods to graze upon the
sunny slopes, the white and dappled mares, rosy in the sun, treading
daintily and looking around for their young, the old stallion, darker
roan, sniffing and pawing the ground. The air here smelled of fir leaves
and toadstools, and was so fresh that it made him yawn. And yet, he
thought, it was different from the freshness of spring; the courage and
gayety of it were tinged with despair. It was the finale of the
symphony.

He remembered how he had, upon a May evening not six months ago, been
taken into the young heart of spring, as now into the sad heart of
autumn. He and a young friend of his had amused themselves by wandering
for three weeks about the country, visiting places where nobody had
known them to be. They had traveled in a caravan, carrying with them a
little theater of dolls, and had given performances of plays which they
made up themselves in the villages that they came through. The air had
been filled with sweet smells, the nightingales had been raving within
the bird cherries, the moon stood high, not much paler than the sky of
those nights of spring.

One night they had come, very tired, to a farmhouse in a grass field,
and had been given a large bed in a room that had in it a grandfather's
clock and a dim looking-glass. Just as the clock was striking twelve,
three quite young girls appeared on the threshold in their shifts, each
with a lighted candle in her hand, but the night was so clear that the
little flames looked only like little drops of the moon. They clearly
did not know that two wayfaring young men had been taken in and given
the large bedroom, and the guests watched them in deep silence from
behind the hangings of the big bed. Without looking at one another,
without a word, one by one they dropped their slight garments on the
floor and quite naked they walked up to the mirror and looked into it,
the candle held high overhead, absorbed in the picture. Then they blew
out their candles, and in the same solemn silence they walked backward
to the door, their long hair hanging down, got into their shifts, and
disappeared. The nightingales kept on singing outside, in a green bush
near the window. The two boys remembered that this was Walpurgis Night,
and decided that what they had witnessed was some witchcraft by which
these girls had hoped to catch a glimpse of their future husbands.

He had not been up this way for a long time, not since, as a child, he
had gone with the Prioress in her landaulet to pay a call at her
neighbors'. He recognized the curves, but they had shrunk, and he fell
to meditating upon the subject of change.

The real difference between God and human beings, he thought, was that
God cannot stand continuance. No sooner has he created a season of a
year, or a time of the day, than he wishes for something quite
different, and sweeps it all away. No sooner was one a young man, and
happy at that, than the nature of things would rush one into marriage,
martyrdom or old age. And human beings cleave to the existing state of
things. All their lives they are striving to hold the moment fast, and
are up against a _force majeure_. Their art itself is nothing but the
attempt to catch by all means the one particular moment, one mood, one
light, the momentary beauty of one woman or one flower, and make it
everlasting. It is all wrong, he thought, to imagine paradise as a
never-changing state of bliss. It will probably, on the contrary, turn
out to be, in the true spirit of God, an incessant up and down, a
whirlpool of change. Only you may yourself, by that time, have become
one with God, and have taken to liking it. He thought with deep sadness
of all the young men who had been, through the ages, perfect in beauty
and vigor--young pharaohs with clean-cut faces hunting in chariots along
the Nile, young Chinese sages, silk-clad, reading within the live shade
of willows--who had been changed, against their wishes, into supporters
of society, fathers-in-law, authorities on food and morals. All this was
sad.

A turning of the road and a long vista cut through the wood brought him
face to face with Hopballehus, still at a distance. The old architect of
two hundred years ago had succeeded in building something so enormous
that it fell in with nature, and might have been a little formation of
the gray rock. To someone now standing on the terrace, Boris thought, I
and the britzska and the gray and black horses would look diminutive,
hardly distinguishable.

The sight of the house turned his thoughts toward it. It had always
appealed to his imagination. Even now, when he had not seen it for
years, it would happen that he would dream of it at night. It was in
itself a fantastic place, resting upon a large plateau, with miles of
avenues around it, rows of statues and fountains, built in late baroque
and now baroquely dilapidated and more than half a ruin. It seemed a
sort of Olympus, more Olympic still for the doom which was hanging over
it. The existence therein of the old Count and his daughter had about it
something Olympic as well. They lived, but how they got through the
twenty-four hours of their day and night must remain a mystery to
humans. The old Count, who had once been a brilliant diplomatist, a
scientist and a poet, had for many years been absorbed in a great
lawsuit which he had going on in Poland, and which he had inherited from
his father and grandfather. If he could win it, it would give him back
the immense riches and estates that had once belonged to his family, but
it was known that he could never win it, and it was only ruining him
with ever greater speed. He lived in those gigantic worries as in clouds
which made all his movements dim. Boris had at times wondered what the
world looked like to his daughter. Money, if she had ever seen it, he
knew to hold no place in her life; no more did society or what is called
the pleasures of life, and he wondered if she had ever heard of love.
God knows, he thought, if she has ever looked at herself in a glass.

The light carriage swished through the layers of fallen leaves upon the
terrace. In places they lay so thick that they half covered the stone
balusters and reached the knees of Diana's stag. But the trees were
bare; only here and there a single golden leaf trembled high upon the
black twigs. Following the curve of the road, Boris's carriage came
straight upon the main terrace and the house, majestic as the Sphinx
herself in the sunset. The light of the setting sun seemed to have
soaked into the dull masses of stone. They reddened and glowed with it
until the whole place became a mysterious, a glorified, abode, in which
the tall windows shone like a row of evening stars.

Boris got out of the britzska in front of the mighty stone stairs and
walked toward them, feeling for his letter. Nothing stirred in the
house. It was like walking into a cathedral. And, he thought, by the
time that I get into that carriage once more, what will everything be
like to me?


[IV]

At this moment the heavy doors above the stairs were flung open, and the
old Count appeared at the top step, standing like Samson when in his
wrath he broke down the temple of the Philistines.

He was always a striking figure, short in the legs and with the torso of
a giant, his mighty head surrounded by a mane of wild gray hair, like a
poet's or a lion's. But today he seemed strangely inspired, in the grip
of some tremendous emotion, swaying where he stood. He remained for a
moment immovable, scrutinizing his visitor, like an old man gorilla
outside his lair, ready for the attack; then he came down the stairs
upon the young man, imposing upon him a presence such as the Lord
himself might have shown had he descended, for once, the ladder of
Jacob.

Good God, thought Boris, as he walked up the steps to meet him, this old
man knows all, and is going to kill me. He had a glimpse of the old
Count's face, filled with wild triumph, the light eyes aflame. The next
moment he felt his arms around him, and his body trembling against his
own.

"Boris!" he cried, "Boris, my child," for he had known the boy from
childhood, and had, Boris was aware, once been one of his beautiful
mother's adorers, "welcome. Welcome here today. Do you know?" "Know?"
said Boris. "I have won my case," said the old man. Boris stared at him.
"I have won my case in Poland," he repeated. "Lariki, Lipnika, Parnov
Grabovo--they are all mine, as they were the old people's."

"I congratulate you," said Boris, slowly, his thoughts strangely put
into motion. "With all my heart. This is unexpected news indeed!" The
old Count thanked him many times, and showed him the letter from his
lawyer, which he had just received, and was still holding in his hand.
As he was talking to the boy he spoke slowly at first, seeking for his
words, as a man out of the habit of speech, but as he went on he
recovered his old voice and speech that had in the old days charmed so
many people. "A great passion, Boris," he said, "such as does really and
truly devour your heart and soul, you cannot feel for individual beings.
Perhaps you cannot feel it for anything which is capable of loving you
in return. Those officers who have loved their armies, those lords who
have loved their soil, they can talk about passion. My God, I have had
the whole weight of the land of Hopballehus upon my chest at night, when
I imagined that I had been leading it into a lost battle. But this," he
said, drawing a deep breath, "this is happiness." Boris understood that
it was not the thought of his riches which filled the soul of the old
man, but the triumph of right over wrong, the righteousness of the
entire universe being, to him, concentrated in his own figure. He began
to explain the judgment in detail, still with one hand upon the young
man's shoulder, and Boris felt that he was welcome to his heart as a
friend who could listen. "Come in, come in, Boris," he said, "we will
drink a glass together, you and I, from the wine which I have put aside
for today. Our good Pastor is here. I sent for him when I got the
letter, to keep me company, as I did not know that you would be coming."

Within the prodigious hall, richly ornamented with black marble, a small
corner was made habitable by a few chairs and a table, covered with the
Count's books and papers. Above it was a gigantic picture, much darkened
by age, an equestrian portrait of an old lord of the house, holding
himself very calm upon a rearing horse with a small head, and pointing
with a roll of paper toward a battlefield depicted in the distance under
the belly of the horse. Pastor Rosenquist, a short man with red cheeks,
who had for many years been the spiritual guide of the family, and whom
Boris knew well, was sitting in one of the chairs, apparently in deep
thought. The happenings of the day had brought disorder in his theories,
which was to him a more serious disaster than if the parsonage had burnt
down. He had suffered from poverty and misfortunes all his life, and had
in the course of time come to live upon a system of spiritual
bookkeeping according to which earthly trials became an investment,
drawing interest in the other world. His own personal account, he knew,
was made up in very small change, but he had taken a great interest in
the old Count's sorrows, and had looked upon him as a favorite of the
Lord's, whose treasures were all the time accumulating in the new
Jerusalem, like to sapphires, chrysoprase and amethyst propagating on
their own. Now he was upset and did not know what to think, which to him
was a terrible condition. He had sought comfort in the book of Job, but
even there the figures would not agree, Behemoth and Leviathan coming in
upon an account of losses and profits of their own. The whole affair
seemed to him in the nature of a gift, which, according to Ecclesiastes,
destroyeth the heart, and he could not get away from the thought that
this old man, whom he loved, was in the bad way of anticipating his
income.

"Now I would," said the old Count, when he had fetched and opened the
golden bottle, "that my poor father and my dear grandfather were here
with us to drink this wine. I have felt, as I have lain awake at night,
that they have kept awake with me within their sarcophagi below. I am
happy," he went on as, still standing, he lifted his glass, "that it be
the son of Abunde"--that was his old name for Boris's mother--"who
drinks here with me tonight." In the exuberance of his heart he patted
Boris's cheek with tenderness, while his face radiated a gentleness
which had been in exile for years; and the boy, who knew a good thing
when he saw it, envied the old man his innocence of heart. "And to our
good Pastor," the Count said, turning to him. "My friend, you have shed
tears of sympathy in this house. They arise now as wine."

The old Count's manner heightened Pastor Rosenquist's uneasiness. It
seemed to him that only a frivolous heart could move with such ease in a
new atmosphere, forgetting the old. Brought up himself upon a system of
examinations and promotions, he was not prepared to understand a race
reared upon the laws of luck in war and court favor, adjusted for the
unforeseen and accustomed to the unexpected, for whom to be safe, or
even saved, seems the least necessary of all things. Then again came
into his mind the words of the Scripture--"He saith amongst the
trumpets, ha, ha!"--and he thought that perhaps after all his old friend
was all right. "Yes, yes," he said, smiling, "water has certainly been
changed into wine, once. It is without doubt a good drink. But you know
what our good peasants hold: that wine-begotten children will end badly.
So, we have reason to fear, will wine-begotten hopes and moods. Though
that," he added, "would not, of course, apply to the children of the
wedding of Cana, of which I was just speaking."

"At Lariki," said the Count, "there is hung, in the ceiling of the
gateway, a hunting-horn in an iron chain. My grandfather's grandfather
was a man of herculean strength. When in the evening he rode through the
gate, he used to take hold of the horn, and, lifting himself and his
horse from the ground, he blew it. I have known that I could do the
same, but I thought I should never ride through that gate. Athena might
do it, too," he added thoughtfully.

He refilled his glasses. "How is it that you came here today?" he asked
Boris, beaming upon him and his gala uniform, as if his coming had been
a unique exploit. "What brings you to Hopballehus?" Boris felt the old
man's openness reflected in his own heart, like a blue sky in the sea.
He looked into his friend's face. "I came here today," he said, "to ask
Athena to marry me." The old man gave him a great, luminous glance. "To
ask Athena to marry you!" he exclaimed. "You came here today for that?"
He stood for a moment, deeply moved. "The ways of God are strange
indeed," he said. Pastor Rosenquist rose from his chair and sat down
again, to arrange his accounts.

When the old Count spoke again he was much changed. The intoxication was
gone, and he seemed to have collected the forces of his nature in good
order. It was this balance which had given him a name in the old days,
when he had, as a young man of the Embassy in Paris, upon the first
night of his tragedy, _The Undine_, fought a duel with pistols in the
_entr'acte_.

"Boris, my child," he said, "you have come here to change my heart. I
have been living with my face toward the past, or for this hour of
victory. This moment is the first in which I have thought of the future.
I see that I shall have to come down from a pinnacle to walk along a
road. Your words are opening up a great vista to me. What am I to be?
The patriarch of Hopballehus, crowning virtuous village maidens?
Grandpapa, planting apple trees? Ave, Hopballehus. _Naturi te salutem._"

Boris remembered the Prioress's letter, and told the old man how he had
called at Closter Seven on his way. The Count inquired after the lady,
and, always keen on all sorts of papers, he put on his glasses and
became absorbed in the letter. Boris sat and drank his wine in a happy
mood. During the last week he had come to doubt whether life ever held
anything pleasant at all. Now his reception in the old Count's house was
to him a show of the most enjoyable kind, and he always moved with ease
from one mood to another.

When the Count had finished the reading, he laid the letter down and,
keeping his folded hands upon it, he sat for a long time silent.

"I give you," he said at last slowly and solemnly, "my blessing. First I
give it to the son of your mother--and of your father--secondly to the
young man who, as I see now, has loved so long against all. And finally
I feel that you have been sent, Boris, by stronger hands than your own
tonight.

"I give you, in Athena, the key of my whole world. Athena," he repeated,
as if it gave him joy to pronounce his daughter's name, "is herself like
a hunting-horn in the woods." And as if, without knowing it himself,
some strange and sad memory of his youth had taken possession of him, he
added, almost in a whisper, "_Dieu, que le son du cor est triste au fond
du bois_."


[V]

While they had been talking, a strong wind had sprung up outside. The
day had been still. This blowing weather had come with the dusk, like an
animal of the night. It swept along the long walls, around the corners
of the house, and whirled the dead leaves up in the air. In the midst of
it, Athena, who had been outspanning the horse from Pastor Rosenquist's
trap in the stables, was heard to cross the terrace and come up the
stairs.

The old Count, whose eyes had been dwelling on Boris's face, made a
sudden movement, as if he had been alarmed by something he did not
himself understand. "Do not speak to her tonight," he said. "You will
understand: our friend, the Pastor, Athena and myself have had so many
evenings here, together. Let this be the last of them. I will tell her
myself, and you, my dear son, come back to Hopballehus tomorrow
morning." Boris thought this a good plan. As the Count spoke, his
daughter came into the room, still in her big cloak.

Athena was a strong young woman of eighteen, six feet high and broad in
proportion, with a pair of shoulders which could lift and carry a sack
of wheat. At forty she would be enormous, but now she was too young to
be fat, and straight as a larch tree. Beneath her flaming hair her noble
forehead was white as milk; lower down her face was, like her broad
wrists, covered with freckles. Still she was so fair and clear of skin
that she seemed to lighten up the hall on entering it, with the light
that you will get inside a room when the snow is lying outside. Her
clear eyes had a darker ring around the iris--a pair of eyes for a young
lioness or eagle--otherwise the strong young creature's countenance was
peaceful, and her round face had that expression of attention and
reserve which is ordinarily found in the faces of people who are hard of
hearing. When he had been with her, Boris had sometimes thought of the
old ballad about the giant's daughter, who finds a man in the wood, and,
surprised and pleased, takes him home to play with. The giant orders her
to let him go, telling her that she will only break him.

The giant himself, the old Count, showed her an old-fashioned
chivalrousness which appeared to Boris like a rather noble old coin, dug
out of the ground, and keeping its gold value, even when no more
current. It was said that the Count had been, in his young days, one of
the lovers of Princess Pauline Borghese, who was the loveliest woman of
her time. He had seen Venus Anadyomene face to face, and for the sake of
that vision gave homage to the likeness of the goddess, even where it
was more clumsily cut in wood or stone. With no claim to beauty, Athena
had grown up in an atmosphere of incense burnt to woman's loveliness.

She blinked a little at the light and the stranger, and indeed Boris, in
his white uniform and high golden collar, his pomatumed curls like a
halo in the light, was a striking meteor in the great dim room. Still,
safe in her great strength, she asked him--standing, as was her habit,
on one leg, like a big stork--of news of his aunt, and the ladies of
Closter Seven. She knew very few people, and for these old women, who
had given her much good advice, though she had shocked them a little by
growing up so unromantically big, she had, Boris thought, the sort of
admiration that a peasant's child at a fair has for the skilled and
spangled tight-rope dancers. If she marries me, he thought, as he stood
and talked to her, his voice sweet as a song, with the fond gaze of the
old Count upon her face and his, she will be susceptible to my tricks;
but is my married life to be an everlasting fair? And if ever I drop
from my rope, will she pick me up, or just turn her back and leave?

She bid him let the Prioress know that she had seen her monkey a few
nights ago, on the terrace of Hopballehus, sitting upon the socle of
Venus's statue, in the place where a small Cupid, now broken, used to
be. Talking about the monkey, she asked him if he did not think it
curious that her father's solicitor in Poland had a monkey of the same
kind, which had also come from Zanzibar. The old Count started to speak
of the Wendish idols, from whose country his own family originally came,
and of which the goddess of love had the face and faade of a beautiful
woman, while, if you turned her around, she presented at the back the
image of a monkey. How, he asked, had these wild Nordic tribes come to
know about monkeys? Might there have lived monkeys in the somber pine
forests of Wenden a thousand years ago?

"No, that is not possible," said Pastor Rosenquist. "It would always
have been too cold. But there are certain symbols which seem to have
been the common property of all pagan iconoclasts. It would be worth
studying; it might be due to the idea of original sin."

But how, asked Athena, did they know, in the case of that goddess of
love, which was the front and which the back?

Boris here ordered his carriage, and took leave of the party. The old
Count seemed to be sorry to send him away and repentant of his hardness
to a lover. He apologized for the bad weather of Hopballehus, held the
youth's hand with tears in his eyes, and told Athena to see him out.
Pastor Rosenquist, on the other hand, could not but be pleased by the
departure of anyone who looked so much like an angel without being one.

Athena walked out on the terrace with Boris. In the light of his
carriage lanterns her big cloak, blowing about her, threw strange
shadows upon the gravel, like a pair of large wings. Over the vast lawn,
iron-gray in the moonlight, the moon herself appeared and disappeared in
a stormy sky.

Boris felt at this moment really sorry to be leaving Hopballehus. The
chaotic world of the place had reminded him of his childhood, and seemed
to him infinitely preferable to the existence of clock-work order which
he would find at the convent. He stood a little in silence, near Athena.
The clouds were parted, and a few of the constellations of stars stood
clear in the sky. The Great Bear preached its lesson: Keep your
individuality in the crowd. "Do you ever think of the bear hunt?" Boris
asked Athena. The children had not been allowed to take part in it, but
they had stolen away together, and had joined the Count's huntsmen, on a
very hot July day, high up in the hills. Two spotted dogs had been
killed, and he remembered the terrible tumult of the fight, and the
quick movements of the huge ragged brown beast within the thicket of
firs and ferns, and one glimpse of its furious roaring face, the red
tongue hanging out.

"Yes, I do, sometimes," said Athena, her eyes, with his, in the skies,
on a stellar bear hunt. "It was the bear which the peasants called the
Empress Catherine. She had killed five men."

"Are you still a Republican, Athena?" he asked. "One time you wanted to
cut off the heads of all the tyrants of Europe."

The color of Athena's face, in the light of the lamp, heightened. "Yes,"
she said, "I am a Republican. I have read the history of the French
Revolution. The kings and priests were lazy and licentious, cruel to the
people, but those men who called themselves 'the Mountain' and put on
the red Phrygian bonnet were courageous. Danton was a true patriot, and
I should have liked to meet him; so was the Abb Sieys." She warmed to
her subject in the night air. "I should like to see that place in Paris
where the guillotine stood," she said.

"And to wear the Phrygian bonnet?" Boris asked her. Athena nodded
shortly, collecting her thoughts. Then, as if meaning to be sure to
bring the truth home to him, she broke into some lines of verse,
herself, as she went on, carried away by the pathos of the words:

    _O Corse  cheveux plats, que la France tait belle_
    _au grand soleil de Messidor._
    _C'tait une cavale indomptable et rebelle,_
    _sans freins d'acier, ni rnes d'or._
    _Une jument sauvage,  la croupe rustique,_
    _fumant encore du sang des rois._
    _Mais fire, et d'un pied fibre heurtant le sol antique,_
    _Libre, pour la premire fois!_

As Boris drove away from Hopballehus the wind was blowing strong. The
moon was racing the heavens behind wild thin clouds; the air was cold.
It must be near the freezing point, he thought. His lanterns chased the
trees and their shadows and threw them to all sides around him. A large
dry branch from a tree was suddenly blown down, and crashed in front of
his shying horses. He thought, alone in the dark, of the three people in
the hall of Hopballehus, and laughed.

As he drove on, below him in the valley lights leapt up. As if they were
playing with him they appeared between the trees, looked him straight in
the face and went off again. A large group of lights came in sight, like
a reflection, on the earth, of the Pleiades. Those were the lamps of
Closter Seven.

And suddenly it came upon him that somewhere something was not right,
was quite wrong and out of order. Strange powers were out tonight. The
feeling was so strong and distinct that it was as if an ice-cold hand
had passed for a moment over his scalp. His hair rose a little upon his
head. For a few minutes he was really and genuinely afraid, struck by an
extraordinary terror. In this strange turbulence of the night, and the
wild life of dead things all around him, he felt himself, his britzska,
and his gray and black horses terribly and absurdly small, exposed and
unsafe.

As he turned into the long avenue of Closter Seven, his lamps suddenly
shone into a pair of glinting eyes. A very small shadow ran across the
road and was gone into the deeper black shadows of the Prioress's
shrubbery.

On his arrival at the convent he was told that the Prioress had gone to
bed. To have, Boris thought, all her strength on hand in the morning.

The supper table was laid for him in his aunt's private dining-room,
which she had just lately redecorated. Before it had been white, with
ornaments of stucco perhaps a hundred years old. Now it was prettily
covered with a wall paper whose pattern, upon a buff background,
presented various scenes of oriental life. A girl danced under a palm
tree, beating a tambourine, while old men in red and blue turbans and
long beards looked on. A sultan held his court of justice under a golden
canopy, and a hunting party on horseback, preceded by its greyhounds and
Negro dog-boys, passed a ruin. The Prioress had also done away with the
old-fashioned candlesticks, and had the table lighted by tall, brightly
modern, Carcel lamps of blue china, painted with pink roses. In the warm
and cozy room he supped by himself. Like, he thought, Don Giovanni in
the last act of the opera. "Until the Commandante comes," his thoughts
added on their own. He stole a glance at the window. The wind was still
singing outside, but the disquieting night had been shut out by the
heavy drawn curtains.


[VI]

The aunt and the nephew had breakfast together in pleasant harmony, from
time to time gazing, within the Prioress's silver samovar, at their own
faces curiously distorted. A little shining sun also showed itself
therein, for the day that followed the stormy night was clear and
serene. The wind had wandered on to other neighborhoods, leaving the
gardens of Closter Seven airy and bare.

Boris had recorded to the old lady the happenings at Hopballehus, and
she had listened with great content and a deep interest in the fate of
her old neighbor and friend. She could hardly refrain from letting her
imagination flutter amongst the glories of the boy's future, but it was
done so gracefully that the old Count and Athena might have been
present.

"I feel, my dear," she said, "that now Athena ought to travel and see a
little of the world. When I was her age, Papa took me to Rome and Paris,
and I met many celebrities. What a pleasure to a man of talent to
accompany that highly gifted child to those places, and show her life."

"Yes," said Boris, pouring himself out some more coffee, "she told me
yesterday that she wanted to see Paris."

"Naturally," said the Prioress. "The dear child has never owned a Paris
bonnet in her life. At Lariki," she went on, her thoughts running
pleasantly to and fro, "there is splendid bear-hunting, and wild boars.
I can well imagine your divinity, spear in hand. At Lipnika the cellar
is stored with Tokay, presented to one old lord by the Empress Maria
Theresa. Athena will pour it out with the generous hand of her family.
At Patnov Grabovo are found the famous row of _jets d'eaux_, which were
constructed by the great Danish astronomer Ole Roemer, the same who made
the _grandes eaux_ of Versailles."

While they were thus playing about with the happy possibilities of life,
old Johann had brought in two letters, which had arrived at the same
time, although the one for the Prioress had come by post, and Boris's
letter had been brought by a groom from Hopballehus. Boris, on looking
up after having read a few lines, noticed the hard and fine little smile
on the face of the old lady, absorbed in her reading. She will not smile
for long, he thought.

The old Count's letter ran as follows:

    _I am writing to you, my dear Boris, because Athena refuses to
    do so. I am taking hold of my pen in deep distress and
    repentance; indeed I have come to know that desire to cover my
    head with ashes, of which the old writers talk._

    _I have to tell you that my daughter has rejected your suit,
    which last night seemed to me to crown the benefactions of
    destiny toward my house. She surely feels no reluctance toward
    this alliance in particular, but she tells me that she will
    never marry, and that it is even impossible for her to consider
    the question at all._

    _In a way it is right that it should be I who write you this
    letter. For in this misfortune the guilt is mine, the
    responsibility rests with me._

    _I, who have had this young life in my hand, have made her
    strong youth my torchbearer on my descent to the sepulchral
    chamber. Step by step, as I have gone downwards, her shoulder
    has been my support, and she has never failed me. Now she will
    not--she cannot--look up._

    _The peasants of our province have the saying that no child born
    in wedlock can look straight at the sun; only bastards are
    capable of it. Alas, how much is my poor Athena my legitimate
    child, the legitimate child of my race and its fate! She is so
    far from being able to look straight at the sun, that she fears
    no darkness whatever, but her eyes are hurt by light. I have
    made, of my young dove, a bird of the night._

    _She has been to me both son and daughter, and I have in my mind
    seen her wearing the old coats of armor of Hopballehus. Too late
    I now realize that she is wearing it, not as the young St.
    George fighting the dragons, but as Azrael, the angel of death,
    of our house. Indeed, she has shut herself up therein, and for
    all the coming years of her life, she will refuse to lay it
    aside._

    _I have never sinned against the past, but I see now that I have
    been sinning against the future; rightly it will have none of
    me. Upon Athena's maiden grave I shall be laying down flowers
    for those unborn generations in whose faces I had for a moment,
    my dear child, thought to see your features. In asking your
    forgiveness I shall be asking the forgiveness of much doomed
    energy, talent and beauty, of lost laurels and myrtles. The
    ashes which I strew on my head is theirs!..._

Boris handed the letter to the Prioress without words, and leaned his
chin in his hand to watch her face while she read it. He nearly got more
than he asked for. She became so deadly white that he feared that she
was going to faint or die, while red flames sprang out on her face as if
somebody had struck her across it with a whip. King Solomon, it is
known, shut up the most prominent demons of Jewry in bottles, sealed
them, and had them sunk to the bottom of the sea. What goings on, down
there, of impotent fury! Alike, Boris thought, to the dumb struggles
within the narrow and wooden chests of old women, sealed up by the
Solomonic wax of their education. Probably her sight failed her, and the
red damask parlor grew black before her eyes, for she laid down the
letter before she could have had time to finish it.

"What! what!" she said in a hoarse and hardly audible voice, "what does
the Poet write to you?" She gasped for air, raised her right hand, and
shook her trembling forefinger in the air. "She will not marry you!" she
exclaimed.

"She will not marry at all, Aunt," said Boris to console her.

"No? Not at all?" sneered the old lady. "A Diana, is she that? But would
you not have made a nice little Acton, my poor Boris? And all that you
have offered her--the position, the influence, the future--that means
nothing to her? What is it she wants to be?" She looked into the letter,
but in her agony she was holding it, bewildered, upside down. "A stone
figure upon a sarcophagus--in the dark, in silence, forever? Here we
have a fanatical virgin, _en plein dix-neuvime sicle? Vraiment tu n'as
pas de la chance_! There is no _horror vaccui_ here."

"The law of the _horror vaccui_" Boris, who was really frightened, said
to distract her, "does not hold good more than thirty-two feet up."

"More than what?" asked the Prioress.

"Thirty-two feet," he said. The Prioress shrugged her shoulders.

She turned her glinting eyes on him, pulling the letter, which she had
received by the post, half up from her silk pocket, and putting it back
again. "She will have nothing," she said slowly, "and you will give
nothing. It seems to me, in all modesty, that you are well paired. I
myself, giving you my blessing, have got nothing to say. That was
already in the rules of my forefathers: 'Where nothing is, _le Seigneur
a perdu son droit_.' You, Boris, you will have to go back to Court, and
to the old Dowager Queen and her Chaplain, by the way you came. For,"
she added, still more slowly, "where we have entered in, there also we
withdraw." These words impressed the old woman herself more than they
did her nephew, who had heard them before. She became very silent.

Boris began to feel really uncomfortable, and desired to put an end to
the conversation. He could understand quite well that she wanted him to
suffer. While she had been happy she had liked to have happy people
around her. Now, tortured, she had to surround herself with the sort of
substance which was within herself, or, as in the vacuum of which she
had been talking, she would be crushed. But in his particular case she
had such strong allies in the very circumstances. It was true that he
had not yet realized what Athena's refusal would mean to him. If the old
woman would go on beating him like this with all her might, all the
misery of the last weeks would be returned upon his head again. Suddenly
the Prioress turned from him and went up to the window, as if she meant
to throw herself out.

In the midst of his own individual distress Boris could not hold his
thoughts from the other two persons within this trinity of theirs.
Perhaps Athena was walking the pine forests of Hopballehus, her face as
wildly set as that of the old woman in her parlor. In his mind he saw
himself, in his white uniform, as a marionette, pulled alternately by
the deadly determined old lady and the deadly determined young lady. How
was it that things meant so much to them? What forces did these
impassionate people have within them to make them prefer death to
surrender? Very likely he had himself as strong tastes in the matter of
this marriage as anybody, but still he did not clench his hands or lose
his power of speech.

The Prioress turned from the window and came up to him. She was all
changed, and carried no implements of the rack with her. On the contrary
she seemed to bring a garland to crown his head. She looked so much
lighter, that it was really as if she had been throwing a weight away,
out of the window, and was now gracefully floating an inch above the
ground.

"Dear Boris," she said, "Athena still has a heart. She owes it to the
old playfellow of her childhood to see him, to give him a chance of
speaking to her, and to answer him by word of mouth. I will tell her all
this, and send the letter back at once. The daughter of Hopballehus has
a sense of duty. She will come."

"Where?" asked Boris.

"Here," said the Prioress.

"When?" asked Boris, looking around.

"This evening, for supper," said his aunt. She was smiling, a gentle,
even waggish little smile, and still her mouth seemed to get smaller and
smaller, like a very dainty little rosebud. "Athena," she said, "must
not leave Closter Seven tomorrow without being----" She paused a little,
looked to the right and left, and then at him. "Ours!" she said,
smiling, in a little whisper. Boris looked at her. Her face was fresh as
that of a young girl.

"My child, my dear child," she exclaimed, in a sudden outburst of deep,
gentle passion, "nothing, nothing must stand in the way of your
happiness!"


[VII]

This great supper of seduction, which was to remain a landmark in the
existence of the banqueters, was served in the Prioress's dining-room,
and groups of oriental statesmen and dancers watched it from the walls.
The table was prettily decorated with camellias from the orangery, and
upon the snow-white tablecloth, amongst the clear crystal glasses, the
old green wineglasses threw delicate little shadows, like the spirit of
a pine forest in summer. The Prioress had on a gray taffeta frock with
very rare lace, a white lace cap with streamers, and her large old
diamond eardrops and brooches. The heroic strength of soul of old women,
Boris thought, who with great taste and trouble make themselves
beautiful--more beautiful, perhaps, than they have ever been as young
women--and who still can hold no hope of awakening any desire in the
hearts of men, is like that of a righteous man working at his good deeds
even after he has abandoned his faith in a heavenly reward.

The food was very good, and they had one of the famous carp of Closter
Seven, cooked in a way which was kept a secret of the convent. Old
Johann poured out the wine very freely, and before they had come to the
marzipan and crystallized fruit, the convives of this quiet and
dignified meal of an old and a young maid and a rejected lover, were all
three of them more than a little drunk.

Athena was slightly drunk in the everyday sense of the word. She had
drunk very little wine in her life, and had never tasted champagne, and
with the amounts which the hostess of the supper party poured into her,
she ought rightly not to have been able to stand on her legs. But she
had behind her a long row of ancestors who had in their time lain under
all the heavy old oak tables of the province, and who now came to the
assistance of the daughter of their race. Still the wine went to her
head. It gave her a rose on each cheek, and very bright eyes, and let
loose new forces of her nature. She came to swell over a little in her
feeling of invincibility, like a young captain advancing into fire, with
a high courage, overbearingly.

Boris, who could drink more than most people, and who till the end
remained the most sober of the party, was drunk in a more spiritual way.
The deepest and truest thing in the nature of the young man was his
great love for the stage and all its ways. His mother, as a maiden, had
had the same grand passion, and had fought a mighty combat with her
parents in Russia to go onto the stage, and lost it. Her son had no need
to fight anybody. He was not dogmatic enough to believe that you must
have boards and footlights to be within the theater; he carried the
stage with him in his heart. As a very young boy he had played many
ladies' rles in amateur theatricals, and the famous old stage manager
Paccazina had burst into tears on seeing him as Antigone, so much did he
remind him of Mars. To him the theater was real life. As long as he
could not act, he was puzzled by the world and uncertain what to do with
it; but as an actor he was his true self, and as soon as he could see a
situation in the light of the theater, he would feel at home in it. He
did not shirk tragedy, and would perform with good grace in a pastoral,
if it were asked of him.

There was something in this way of thinking that he had which
exasperated his mother, in spite of her old sympathies for the art, for
she suspected him of having in his heart very little preference for the
rle of a promising and popular young officer. He was, she thought,
prepared to give it up at any moment should a rle that would appeal
more strongly to him present itself, be it that of an outcast or martyr,
or, possibly, the tragic part of a youth ascending the scaffold. She had
sometimes wanted to cry to him, contrarily to the Old Cordelier: Oh, my
child, you fear too little unpopularity, exile and death! Still she
could not herself help admiring him in his favorite rles, nor, even, at
times taking up a rle herself in an ensemble with him, and these
performances of theirs might embrace a very wide scale.

Tonight Paccazina would have delighted in him; he had never played
better. Out of gratitude to his godmother, he had resolved to do his
best. He had laid his mask with great care in front of his mirror, and
had exchanged his uniform for that black color which he considered more
appropriate to his part. In itself he always preferred the rle of the
unhappy, to that of the successful, lover. The wine helped him on, as
did the faces of his fellow-players, including old Johann, who wore on
his closed countenance a discreet shine of happiness. But he was himself
in his own heart carried away by the situation, by the action of the
play and by his own talents. He was on the boards, the curtain was up,
every moment was precious, and he needed no _souffleur_.

As he looked at Athena on his left hand, he was pleased with his _jeune
premire_ of the night. Now that they were upon the stage together he
read her like a book.

He quite understood the deep impression which his proposal had made upon
the mind of the girl. It had not flattered her; it had probably at the
moment made her very angry. And the fact that any live person could in
this way break in upon the proud isolation of her life had given her a
shock. He agreed with her about it. Having lived all his life with
people who were never alone, he had become sensitive to her atmosphere
of solitude. It had happened to himself, at times, to be entirely alone
on a night, dreaming, not of familiar persons or things, but of scenes
and people wholly his own creation, and the recollection of such nights
he would cherish in his mind. What was now at the moment bewildering the
girl was the fact that the enemy approached her in such an extremely
gentle manner, and that the offender was asking for consolation. As
Boris grew conscious of these feelings of hers, he accentuated the
sweetness and sadness of his behavior.

It was probably such a new thing to Athena to feel fear that it had a
strange attraction for her. It was doubtful, he thought, whether
anything but the scent of some sort of danger could have brought her to
Closter Seven on this night. Of what is she afraid? he thought. Of being
made happy by my aunt and me? This is this tragic maiden's prayer: From
being a success at court, a happy, congratulated bride, a mother of a
promising family, good Lord, deliver me. As a tragic actor of a high
standard himself, he applauded her.

The presence of some unknown danger, he felt, was impressed upon the
girl by the Prioress's manner toward her. The old woman had been her
friend before, but a severe friend. Most of what the girl had said and
done had till now been wrong here at the convent, and she had always
known that in a benevolent way the old lady had wanted to put her in a
cage. Tonight the old eyes dwelt upon her with sweet content, what she
said was received with little smiles as gentle as caresses. The cage had
been put out of sight. This special sort of incense, offered to her
individually, was as unknown to Athena as the champagne itself, and as
it was now being burnt at her from her right and her left, she might
have felt a difficulty in breathing within the comfortable dining-room
of Closter Seven, had she not felt so sure that the door behind her
would open, whenever she wanted it, to the woods of Hopballehus.

Boris, who knew more about that door, lifted his eyelashes, soft as
mimosa leaves, upon her flaming face. Had her father called her a bird
of the night, the eyes of which are hurt by the light? He himself was
now walking, slowly, backwards in front of her, carrying some sort of
chandelier which twinkled at her. She blinked a little at the light, but
she came on.

The Prioress was drunk with some secret joy which remained a mystery to
the other convives of her supper party and which glinted in the dark.
From time to time she dabbed her eyes or her mouth with her little,
delicately perfumed, lace handkerchief.


[VIII]

"My great-grandmother," said the Prioress in the course of the
conversation, "was, in her second marriage, ambassadress to Paris, and
lived there for twenty years. This was under the Regency. She has
written down in her memoirs, how, during the Christmas of 1727, the Holy
Family came to Paris and were known to stay there for twelve hours. The
entire building of the stable of Bethlehem had mysteriously been moved,
even with the crib and the pots in which St. Joseph had been cooking the
spiced beer for the Virgin, to a garden of a small convent, called du
Saint Esprit. The ox and the ass were themselves transported, together
with the straw upon the floor. When the nuns reported the miracle at the
Court of Versailles, it was kept from the public, for they feared that
it might presage a judgment upon the lewdness of the rulers of France.
But the Regent went in great state, with all his jewels on, together
with his daughter, the Duchess of Berri, the Cardinal Dubois, and a few
selected ladies and gentlemen of the Court, to do homage to the Mother
of God and her husband. My great-grandmother was allowed, because of the
high esteem in which she was held at Court, to come with them as the
only foreigner, and she preserved to the end of her days the furred robe
of brocade, with a long train, which she wore on the occasion.

"The Regent had been highly moved and agitated by the news. At the sight
of the Virgin he went into a strange ecstasy. He swayed and uttered
little screams. You will know that the beauty of the Mother of the Lord,
while without equal, was of such a kind that it could awaken no sort of
earthly desire. This the Duke of Orlans had never experienced before,
and he did not know what to do. At last he asked her, in turn blushing
scarlet and deadly pale, to come to a supper at the Berri's, where he
would have such food and wine served as had never been seen before, and
to which he would make the Comte de Noircy come, and Madame de Parabere.

"The Duchess of Berri was at the time in _grossesse_, and evil tongues
had it that this was by her father, the Regent. She threw herself at the
feet of the Virgin. 'Oh, dear sweet Virgin,' she cried, 'forgive me. You
would never have done it, I know. But if I could only tell you what a
deadly, what a damnably dull Court this is!' Fascinated by the beauty of
the child she dried her tears and asked for permission to touch it.
'Like strawberries and cream,' she exclaimed, 'like strawberries  la
Zelma Kuntz.' Cardinal Dubois saluted St. Joseph with extreme
politeness. He considered that this saint would not often be bothering
the Almighty with supplications, but when he did so, he would be heard,
as the Lord owed him much. The Regent fell upon my great-grandmother's
neck, all in tears, and cried: 'She will never, never come. Oh,
Madame--you, who are a virtuous woman, tell me what in the world to do.'
All this is in my great-grandmother's memoirs."

They talked about travels, and the Prioress entertained them with many
pleasant reminiscences of her young days. She was in high spirits, her
old face freshly colored under the lace of her cap. From time to time
she made use of a little gesture peculiar to her, of daintily scratching
herself here and there with her delicately pointed little finger. "You
are lucky, my little friend," she said to Athena. "To you the world is
like a bride, and each particular unveiling is a surprise and a delight.
Alas, we, who have celebrated our golden wedding with it, are prudent in
our inquisitiveness."

"I should like," said Athena, "to go to India, where the King of Ava is
now fighting the English General Amhurst. He has, Pastor Rosenquist has
told me, tigers with his army, which are taught to fight the enemy along
with it." In her excited state of mind she overturned her glass,
breaking the stem of it, and the wine flowed over the tablecloth.

"I should like," said Boris, who did not want to talk of Pastor
Rosenquist, in whom he suspected an antagonist--beware, his mind told
him, of people who have in the course of their lives neither taken part
in an orgy nor gone through the experience of childbirth, for they are
dangerous people--"to go away and live upon a forlorn island, far from
other people. There is nothing for which you feel such a great longing
as for the sea. The passion of man for the sea," he went on, his dark
eyes on Athena's face, "is unselfish. He cannot cultivate it; its water
he cannot drink; in it he dies. Still, far from the sea you feel part of
your own soul dying, disappearing, like a jellyfish thrown on dry land."

"On the sea!" the Prioress cried. "Going on the sea! Ah, never, never."
Her deep disgust drove the blood to her face until it became quite pink
and her eyes shone. Boris was impressed, as he had been before, by the
intensity of all women's aversion to anything nautical. He had himself
as a boy tried to run away from home to be a sailor. But nothing, he
thought, makes a woman flare up in a deadly hostility as quickly as talk
of the sea. From the first smell of sea water to the contact with salted
and tarred ropes, they loath and shun it and all its ways; and perhaps
the church might have kept the sex in order by painting them a maritime,
an ashen gray and frigid waving hell. For fire they fear not, looking
upon it as an ally to whom they have long done service. But to talk to
them of the sea is like talking of the devil. By the time when the rule
of woman shall have made the land inhabitable to man, he will have to
take to the sea for peace, for women will rather die than follow him
there.

A sweet pudding was served to them, and the Prioress, with a neat
_gourmandise_, picked out a few of the cloves in it and ate them. "This
is a very lovable smell and taste," she said, "and the fragrance of a
clove grove unbelievably delightful in the midday sun, or when the
evening breeze fans the spiced currents of air all over the land. Try a
few of them. It is incense to the stomach."

"Where do they come from, Madame my Aunt?" asked Athena, who, in
accordance with the tradition of the province, was used to address her
in this way.

"From Zanzibar," said the Prioress. A gentle melancholy seemed for a few
minutes to sink over her as she sat in deep thought, nibbling at her
cloves.

Boris, in the meantime, had been looking at Athena, and had let a
fantasy take hold of his mind. He thought that she must have a lovely,
an exquisitely beautiful, skeleton. She would lie in the ground like a
piece of matchless lace, a work of art in ivory, and in a hundred years
might be dug up and turn the heads of old archeologists. Every bone was
in place, as finely finished as a violin. Less frivolous than the
traditional old libertine who in his thoughts undresses the women with
whom he sups Boris liberated the maiden of her strong and fresh flesh
together with her clothes, and imagined that he might be very happy with
her, that he might even fall in love with her, could he have her in her
beautiful bones alone. He fancied her thus, creating a sensation on
horseback, or trailing her long dresses through the halls and galleries
at Court, with the famous tiara of her family, now in Poland, upon her
polished skull. Many human relations, he thought, would be infinitely
easier if they could be carried out in the bones only.

"The King of Ava," said the Prioress, awakening from the soft reverie
into which she had been sunk, "had, in the city of Yandabu--so I have
been told by those who have been there--a large menagerie. As in all his
country he had none but the elephants of India, the Sultan of Zanzibar
presented him with an African elephant, which is much bigger and more
magnificent than the rotund, domesticated Indian beasts. They are indeed
wonderful animals. They rule the highlands of East Africa, and the ivory
traders who sell their mighty tusks at the ivory markets have many tales
of their strength and ferocity. The elephants of Yandabu and their
herdsmen were terrified of the Sultan's elephant--such as Africa always
frightens Asia--and in the end they made the King have him put in chains
and a barred house built for him in the menagerie. But from that time,
on moonlit nights, the whole city of Yandabu began to swarm with the
shades of the elephants of Africa, wandering about the place and waving
their large shadow-ears in the streets. The natives of Yandabu believed
that these shadow-elephants were able to walk along the bottom of the
ocean, and to come up beside the landing place of the boats. No people
dared any more be out in the town after dark had fallen. Still they
could not break the cage of the captive elephant.

"The hearts of animals in cages," the Prioress went on, "become grated,
as upon a grill, upon the shadow of the bars. Oh, the grated hearts of
caged animals!" she exclaimed with terrible energy.

"Still," she said after a moment, her face changing, with a little
giggle at the bottom of her voice, "it served those elephants right.
They were great tyrants when in their own country. No other animal could
have its own way for them."

"And what became of the Sultan's elephant?" Athena asked.

"He died, he died," said the old woman, licking her lips.

"In the cage?" asked Athena.

"Yes. In the cage," the Prioress answered.

Athena laid her folded hands upon the table, with exactly the gesture of
the old Count after he had read the Prioress's letter. She looked around
the room. The bright color sank from her face. The supper was finished,
and they had nearly emptied their glasses of port.

"I think, my Aunt," she said, "that with your permission I will now go
to bed. I feel very tired."

"What?" said the Prioress. "Indeed you must not deprive us of the
pleasure of your company yet, my nutmeg. I was going to withdraw myself
now, but I want you two old friends to have a little talk on this night.
Surely you promised Boris that--the dear boy."

"Yes, but that must be tomorrow morning," Athena said, "for I believe
that I have drunk too much of the good wine. Look, my hand is not even
steady when I put it on this table." The Prioress stared at the girl.
She probably felt, Boris thought, that she ought not to have talked
about cages, that she had here made her one _faux pas_ of the evening.

Athena looked at Boris, and he felt that he had obtained this slight
success: that she was sorry to part from him. Altogether she probably
realized that she was making an abrupt retreat from the battle, and
regretted it, but under the circumstances she considered it the best
move. Boris felt her straight glance as a decoration received before the
front. It was not a high decoration, but in this campaign he could not
expect more. The girl bid a very kind good night to the Prioress,
curtseyed to her, and was gone.

The Prioress turned in great agitation to her nephew. "Do not let her go
away," she said to him. "Follow her. Take hold of her. Do not waste your
time."

"Let us leave her alone," said Boris. "That girl has spoken the truth.
She will not have me."

The double rebelliousness in the two young people, the happiness of
whose lives she was arranging, seemed to make the Prioress lose speech,
or faith in speech. She and Boris remained together in the room for
perhaps five minutes more, and it seemed to Boris, when he afterward
thought of it, that their intercourse had been carried out entirely in
pantomime.

The Prioress stood quite still and looked at the young man, and he
really did not know whether within the next seconds she would kill him
or kiss him. She did neither. She laughed a little in his face, and
fumbling in her pocket she drew out the letter which she had received in
the morning, and gave it to him to read.

This letter was a last deadly blow upon the boy's head. It was written
by the Prioress's friend, who was the first lady of honor of the Dowager
Queen. With deep compassion for his aunt she gave, in very dark colors,
the latest news of the capital. His name had been brought up, he had
even been pointed out particularly by the Court Chaplain, as one of the
corrupters of youth in the case. It was clear that he was at this moment
standing upon the brink of an abyss, and that unless he could get this
marriage of his through, he should fall over and disappear.

He stood for a little while, his face changed by pain. His whole being
rose against being dragged from his star part of the evening, and the
elegiac mood of a lover, back to this reality that he loathed. As he
looked up to give back the letter to his aunt he found her standing
quite close to him. She lifted one hand, keeping her elbow close to her
body, and pointed toward the door.

"Aunt Cathinka," said Boris, "you do not know, perhaps, but there is a
limit to the effects of will-power in a man."

The old woman kept staring at him. She stretched out her dry delicate
little hand and touched him. Her face twisted in a wry little grimace.
After a moment she moved around to the back of the room and brought back
a bottle and a small glass. Very carefully she filled the glass, handed
it to him, and nodded her head two or three times. In sheer despair he
emptied it.

The glass was filled with a liquor of the color of very old dark amber.
It had an acrid and rank taste. Acrid and rank were also the old
dark-amber eyes of the woman, watching him over the rim of the glass. As
he drank, she laughed. Then she spoke. Boris, strangely enough,
afterward remembered these words, which he did not understand: "Help him
now, you good Faru," she said.

When he had left the room, after a second or two she very gently closed
the door after him.


[IX]

Now this might be the hour for tears, to move the proud beauty's heart,
Boris thought. He remembered the tales of that gruesome gang of
pilgrims, the old hangmen, who are said to have been wandering over
Europe in the twelfth century, visiting the holy places. They carried
with them the attributes of their trade: thumbscrews, whips, irons and
tongs, and these people, it was said, were able to weep whenever they
wanted to. "Yes," the boy said to himself, "but I have not hewed up,
flayed and fried alive enough people for that. A few I have, of course,
as we all have; but I am only a young hangman for all that--a hangman's
apprentice--and the gift of weeping whenever I want to, I have not
attained."

He walked down the long white corridor, which led to Athena's room. It
had on his left hand a row of old portraits of ladies, and on the right
a row of tall windows. The floor was laid with black and white marble
tiles, and the whole place looked seriously at him in the nocturnal
light. He heard his own footfall, fatal to others and to himself. He
looked out of one of the windows as he passed it. The moon stood high in
the heavens, clear and cold, but the trees of the park and the lawns lay
in a silvery mist. There outside was the whole noble blue universe, full
of things, in which the earth swam onward amongst thousands of stars,
some near and others far away. O world, he thought, O rich world. Into
his hot brain was thrown a long-forgotten verse:

    _Athena, my high mistress, on Apollon's bidding,_
    _Here I come to thee._
    _Much experienced, and tried in many things._
    _A house, inhabited by strangers, strangely changed._
    _Thus have I wandered far on land, and on the sea...._

He had come to the door. He turned the handle, and went in.

Of all the memories which afterward Boris carried with him from this
night, the memory of the transition from the coloring and light of the
corridor to that of the room was the longest lasting.

The Prioress's state guest room was large and square, with windows, upon
which the curtains were now drawn, on the two walls. The whole room was
hung with rose silks, and in the depths of it the crimson draperies of
the four-poster bed glowed in the shade. There were two pink-globed
lamps, solicitously lighted by the Prioress's maid. The floor had a
wine-colored carpet with roses in it, which, near the lamps, seemed to
be drinking in the light, and farther from them looked like pools of
dark crimson into which one would not like to walk. The room was filled
with the scent of incense and flowers. A large bouquet decorated the
table near the bed.

Boris knew at once what it was that he felt like. He had at one time,
when he had been on a visit to Madrid, been much addicted to bull
fights. He was familiar with the moment when the bull is, from his dark
waiting-room underneath the tribune, rushed into the dazzling sunlight
of the arena, with the many hundred eyes around it. So was he himself in
a moment hurled from the black and white corridor, of quiet moonlight,
into this red atmosphere. His blood leapt up to his brain; he hardly
knew where he was. With failing breath he wondered if this was an effect
of the Prioress's love potion. He did not know either whether Athena was
now to be the disemboweled horse, which would be dragged out of the
arena, having no more will of its own, or the matador who was to lay him
low. One or the other she would be--he could meet nobody else in this
place.

Athena was standing in the middle of the room. She had taken off her
frock and was dressed only in a white chemise and white pantalettes. She
looked like a sturdy young sailor boy about to swab the deck. She turned
as he came in, and stared at him.

Boris had been afraid, when imagining the development of the situation,
that he would not be able to keep himself from laughing. This risibility
of his had before now been his ruin in tender situations. But at the
moment he ran no such risk. He was as much in earnest as the girl
herself. He had, before he knew where he was, taken hold of one of her
wrists and drawn her toward him. Their breaths met and mingled, they
were both baring their teeth a little in a sort of perplexed smile or
challenge.

"Athena," he said, "I have loved you all my life. You know that without
you I shall dry up and shrink, there shall be nothing left of me. Stoop
to me, throw me back in the deep. Have mercy on me."

For a moment the light-eyed girl stared at him, bewildered. Then she
drew herself up as a snake does when it is ready to strike. That she did
not attempt to cry for help showed him that she had a clearer
understanding of the situation, and of the fact that she had no friend
in the house, than he had given her credit for; or perhaps her young
broad breast harbored sheer love of combat. The next moment she struck
out. Her powerful, swift and direct fist hit him in the mouth and
knocked out two of his teeth. The pain and the smell and taste of the
blood which filled his mouth sent him beside himself. He let her go to
try for a stronger hold, and immediately they were in each other's arms,
in an embrace of life and death.

At this same moment Boris's heart leapt up within him and sang aloud,
like a bird which swings itself to the top of a tree and there bursts
into song. Nothing happier in all the world could have happened to him.
He had not known how this conflict between them was to be solved, but
she had known it; and as a coast sinks around a ship which takes the
open sea, so did all the worries of his life sink around this release of
all his being. His existence up to now had given him very little
opportunity for fury. Now he gave his heart up to the rapture of it. His
soul laughed like the souls of those old Teutons to whom the lust of
anger was in itself the highest voluptuousness, and who demanded nothing
better of their paradise than the capacity for being killed once a day.

He could not have fought another young man, were he one of the Einherjar
of Valhalla, as he fought this girl. All hunters of big game will know
that there is a difference between hunting the wild boar or buffalo,
however dangerous they may be, and hunting the carnivora, who, if
successful, will eat you up at the end of the contest. Boris, on a visit
to his Russian relations, had seen his horse devoured by a pack of
wolves. After that, none of the Prioress's raging wild elephants could
have called forth the same feeling in him. The old, wild love, which
sympathy cannot grant, which contrast and adversity inspire, filled him
altogether.

If the shadows of the young women who had clung to him, and out of whose
soft arms the fickle lover had torn himself, had been at this moment
gathered within the Prioress's rose-colored guest room, they would have
felt the pride of their sex satisfied in the contemplation of his mortal
pursuit of this maiden who now strove less to escape than to kill him.
They tumbled to and fro for a few seconds, and one of the lamps was
turned over, fell down, and went out. Then the struggle stabilized
itself. They ceased moving and stood clasped together, swaying a little
until they found their foothold, the balance of the one so dependent
upon and amalgamated with that of the other that neither knew clearly
where his own body ended and that of his adversary began. They were
breathing hard. Her breath in his face was fragrant as an apple. The
blood kept coming into his mouth.

The girl had no feminine inspiration to scratch or bite. Like a young
she bear, she relied on her great strength, and in weight she scored a
little. Against his attempts to bend her knees she stood up as straight
as a tree. By a sudden movement she got her hands on his throat. He was
holding her close to him, her elbows pressed to her sides. Her posture
was that of a warrior, clinging to the hilt of his lifted sword, taking
a vital vow. He had not known the power of her hands and wrists. Gasping
for air, his mouth full of blood, he saw the whole room swaying from one
side to another. Red and black flecks swam in front of him. At this
moment he struck out for a last triumph. He forced her head forward with
the hand that he had at the back of her neck, and pressed his mouth to
hers. His teeth grated against her teeth.

Instantly he felt, through his whole body, which was clinging to hers
from the knees to the lips, the terrible effect which his kiss had on
the girl. She, surely, had never been kissed in her life, she had not
even heard or read of a kiss. The force used against her made her whole
being rise in a mortal disgust. As if he had run a rapier straight
through her, the blood sank from her face, her body stiffened in his
arms like that of a slowworm, when you hit it. Then all the strength and
suppleness which he had been fighting seemed to roll back and withdraw,
as a wave withdraws from a bather. He saw her eyes grow dim, her face,
so close to his, fade to a dead white. She went down so suddenly that he
came down with her, like a drowning man tied to a weight. His face was
thrown against hers.

He got up on his knees, wondering if she were dead. As he found that she
was not, he lifted her, after a moment, with difficulty, and laid her
upon her bed. She was indeed now like a stone effigy of a mail-clad
knight, felled in battle. Her face had preserved its expression of
deadly disgust. He watched her for a little while, very still himself.
He did not know that his own face had the same expression. Had the
thought of the Court Chaplain been with him, had the Court Chaplain been
with him in the flesh, it could not have stirred him. His spirit had
gone almost as definitely as hers. There was no more effect of the wine
in him; none, either, of the Prioress's love philter, which perhaps was
not calculated for more than one great effort. He wiped his bleeding
mouth and left the room.

Within his own room and bed he came to wonder whether the maiden would,
upon her awakening, lament her lost innocence. He laughed to himself in
the dark, and it seemed to him that a thin, shrill laughter, like to the
shoot of hot steam from a boiling kettle, was echoing his own somewhere
in the great house, in the dark.


[X]

In the morning the Prioress sent for Boris. He was a little frightened
when he saw her, for she seemed to have shrunk. She filled up neither
her clothes nor her armchair, and he wondered what sort of night hours
had passed over her head in her lonely bed to have squeezed out her
strength like this. If all this, he thought, is to go on much longer,
there will be nothing left of her. But probably I am looking worse than
she myself. Still, she appeared to be in high spirits, and pleased to
have got hold of him, as if she had been, somehow, in fear that he might
have run away. She told him to sit down. "I have sent for Athena as
well," she said.

Boris was content that she did not ask him any questions. His mouth had
swelled badly, and hurt him when he had to speak. While waiting he
thought of the Vicomte de Valmont, who loved _de passion, les mines de
lendemain_. Would the unusual in the circumstances have given this
particular morrow an additional charm in the eyes of the matter-of-fact
old conqueror of a hundred years ago? Or was it not more likely that he
would have considered the romantic values of the situation to be all
nonsense? Athena's arrival put an end to his reflections.

She was wearing the same great gray cloak in which he had seen her at
Hopballehus, and seemed about to depart. She did indeed so much give the
impression of having turned her back on Closter Seven, and of being
already away from it, that he felt somehow left out in the cold. As she
looked slowly around, he was deeply struck by her appearance. She seemed
to be well on her way to that purified state of the skeleton in which he
had imagined her on the night before. She had in reality a death's-head
upon her strong shoulders. Her eyes, grown paler in themselves, lay in
black holes. She had given up her habit of standing on one leg, as if it
now required both her legs to keep her upright and in balance.
Confronted by the Prioress, who had still much keen life in her face,
she might well have been an accused in the felon's dock, brought
straight from the vaults of a dungeon, and from the rack.

Boris at this moment wondered whether it would be better for her that he
should tell her all, and assure her that he had done her no harm and
would not be likely ever to do her any; in fact, that she had come out
of their trial of strength with the honors of war. But he thought it
would not. If you prepare yourself, he considered, for lifting a leaden
weight, and are deceived by a painted cardboard, your arms come out of
joint. In his admiration for her skeleton he was the last person to wish
this to happen to her. It was better for her to carry the weight. This
maiden, he thought, who could not, who would not, be made happy, let her
now have her fill. Like to an artist who has got his statue in the
crucible and finds himself short of metals, and who seizes the gold and
silver from his treasury, from his table, from his women's caskets to
hurl it in, so he had thrown his being, body and soul, into the fatal
soundings of her nature. Now she must make out of it what she could.

The Prioress, looking in turn at one and then at the other of the young
people, spoke to the girl.

"I have been informed," she said in a dull and hard voice, "by Boris of
what has happened here in the night. I do not forgive him. It is a
horrible deed to seduce a maiden. But I know that he was goaded on, and
also that a candid repentance extenuates the crime. But you, Athena, a
girl of your blood and your upbringing--what have you done? You, who
must have known your own nature, you ought never to have come here."

"No, no, Madame my Aunt," said Athena, looking straight at the old
woman, "I came here because you invited me, and you told me that it was
my duty to come. Now I go away again, and if you do not like to think of
me, you need not."

"Ah, no," said the Prioress, "such a thing you cannot do. It is terrible
to me that this has happened within the walls of Closter Seven. You know
me very little if you think that I shall not have it repaired. Would I
show so little friendship toward your father, who is a nobleman? Till
this wrong has been expiated, you shall not depart."

Athena first seemed to let this pass for what it was worth and did not
answer. Then she asked: "How is it to be repaired?"

"We must be thankful," said the Prioress, "that Boris, guilty as he be,
has still a sense of duty left. He will marry you even now." With these
words she shot at her nephew a little hard and shining glance, which
startled him, as if she had touched him once more.

"Yes, but I will not marry him," said Athena.

The Prioress had by now a highly glowing color in her face. "How is it,"
she asked in a shrill voice, "that you refuse an honorable offer, of
which your father approves, to accept, in the middle of the night, the
love that you had rejected?"

"I do not think," said Athena, "that it matters whether a thing happens
in the day or the night."

"And if you have a child?" cried the Prioress.

"What!" said Athena.

The Prioress subdued her blazing passion with a wonderful strength of
spirit. "I pity you as much as I condemn you," she said. "And if you
have a child, unfortunate girl?"

Athena's world was evidently tumbling down to the right and left of her,
like a position under heavy gun fire, but still she stood up straight.
"What?" she asked. "Shall I have a child from that?"

The old woman looked hard at her. "Athena," she said after a moment,
with the first particle of gentleness which she had, during the
conversation, shown toward the girl, "the last thing I wish is to
destroy what innocence you may still have left. But it is more than
likely that you will have a child."

"If I have a child," said Athena, from her quaking earth thrusting at
the heavens, "my father will teach him astronomy."

Boris leaned his elbow on the table and his face in his hand to hide it.
For the life of him he could not help laughing. This deadly pale and
still maiden was not beaten. A good deal of her pallor and immobility
might be due to the wine and the exertion of the night, and God only
knew if they would ever get her into their power. She had in her the
magnet, the maelstrom quality of drawing everything which came inside
her circle of consciousness into her own being and making it one with
herself. It was a capacity, he thought, which had very likely been a
characteristic of the martyrs, and which may well have aggravated the
Great Inquisitor, and even the Emperor Nero himself, to the brink of
madness. The tortures, the stake, the lions, they made their own, and
thereby conveyed to them a great harmonious beauty; but the torturer
they left outside. No matter what efforts he made to possess them, they
stood in no relation to him, and in fact deprived him of existence. They
were like the lion's den, into which all tracks were seen to lead, while
none came out; or like the river, which drowns blood or filth in its own
being, and flows on. Here, just as the conquering old woman and young
man had believed the situation to be closing around her, the girl was
about to ride away from Closter Seven, like to Samson when he lifted
upon his shoulders the doors of Gazi, the two posts, bars and all, and
carried them to the top of the hill that is before Hebron. And if she
should really become aware of him, would the giant's daughter, he
wondered, carry him with her upon the palm of her hand to Hopballehus,
and make him groom her unicorns? Again a verse from Euripides ran
through his head, and he felt that it must be the wine of the previous
night and the whole agitation around him which now caused him, in this
way, to mix up the classics with Scripture and with the legends of his
province, for ordinarily he did not do that sort of thing:

    _Oh, Pallas, savior of my house, I was bereft_
    _of Fatherland, and thou hast given me a home again therein._
    _It shall be said_
    _in Hellas: Lo, the man is an Argive once more,_
    _and dwells again within his father's heritance...._

"And what of the honor of your house?" asked the Prioress with a deadly
calm, "Who do you think, Athena, of the daughters of Hopballehus, has,
before you, been breeding bastards?"

At these words all Athena's blood rushed to her face until it flamed
darker than her flaming hair. She took a step toward the old lady.

"My child," she cried in a low tone, but with the lioness's roar deep
within her voice, from head to foot the offended daughter of a mighty
race, "would my child be that?"

"You are ignorant, Athena," said the old woman. "Unless Boris marries
you, what can your child be but a bastard?" Brave as the Prioress was,
she probably realized that the girl, if she wished to, could crush her
between her fingers. She kept her quick eyes on Boris, who did not feel
called upon to interfere in the women's discussion of his child.

Athena did not move. She stood for a few moments quite still. "Now," she
said at length, "I will go back to Hopballehus, and speak with my
father, and ask his advice about all this."

"No," said the Prioress again, "that is not as it should be. If you tell
your father of what you have done, you will break his heart. I will not
let that happen. And who knows, if you go now, if Boris will still be
ready to marry you when you meet again? No, Athena, you must marry
Boris, and you must never let your father know of what has happened
here. These two things you shall promise me. Then you can go."

"Good," said Athena. "I will never tell Papa of anything. And as to
Boris, I promise you that I shall marry him. But, Madame my Aunt, when
we are married, and whenever I can do so, I shall kill him. I came near
to killing him last night, he can tell you that. These three things I
promise you. Then I will go."

After Athena's words there was a long pause. The three people in the
room had enough in their own thoughts, without speech, to occupy them.

In this silence was heard a hard and sharp knocking upon the pane of one
of the windows. Boris now realized that he had heard it before, during
the course of their talk, without paying any attention to it. Now it was
repeated three or four times.

He became really aware of it at sight of the extraordinary effect which
the sound had upon his aunt. She had, like himself, been too absorbed in
the debate to listen. Now it attracted her attention and she was
immediately struck by a deadly terror. She glanced toward the window and
grew white as a corpse. Her arms and legs moved in little jerks, her
eyes darted up and down the walls, like a rat that is shut up and cannot
get out. Boris turned to the window to find out what was frightening
her. He had not known that anything could really do so. Upon the stone
sill outside, the monkey was crouching together, its face close to the
glass.

He rose to open the window for it. "No! No!" shrieked the old woman in a
paroxysm of horror. The knocking went on. The monkey obviously had
something in its hand with which it was beating against the pane. The
Prioress got up from her chair. She swayed in raising herself, but once
on her legs she seemed alert and ready to run. But at the next moment
the glass of the window fell crashing to the floor, and the monkey
jumped into the room.

Instantly, without looking around, as if escaping from the flames of an
advancing fire, the Prioress, gathering up the front of her silk frock
with her two hands, ran, threw herself, toward the door. On finding it
closed, she did not give herself time to open it. With the most
surprising, most wonderful, lightness and swiftness she heaved herself
straight up along the frame, and at the next moment was sitting squeezed
together upon the sculptured cornice, shivering in a horrible passion,
and grinding her teeth at the party on the floor. But the monkey
followed her. As quickly as she had done it, it squirmed up the doorcase
and was stretching out its hand to seize her when she deftly slid down
the opposite side of the doorframe. Still holding her frock with both
hands, and bending double, as if ready to drop on all fours, madly, as
if blinded by fright, she dashed along the wall. But still the monkey
followed her, and it was quicker than she. It jumped upon her, got hold
of her lace cap, and tore it from her head. The face which she turned
toward the young people was already transformed, shriveled and wrinkled,
and of dark-brown color. There was a few moments' wild whirling fight.
Boris made a movement to throw himself into it, to save his aunt. But
already at the next moment, in the middle of the red damask parlor,
under the eyes of the old powdered general and his wife, in the broad
daylight and before their eyes, a change, a metamorphosis, was taking
place and was consummated.

The old woman with whom they had been talking was, writhing and
disheveled, forced to the floor; she was scrunched and changed. Where
she had been, a monkey was now crouching and whining, altogether beaten,
trying to take refuge in a corner of the room. And where the monkey had
been jumping about, rose, a little out of breath from the effort, her
face still a deep rose, the true Prioress of Closter Seven.

The monkey crawled into the shade of the back of the room and for a
little while continued its whimpering and twitching. Then, shaking off
its misfortunes, it jumped in a light and graceful leap onto a pedestal,
which supported the marble head of the philosopher Immanuel Kant, and
from there it watched, with its glittering eyes, the behavior of the
three people in the room.

The Prioress took up her little handkerchief and held it to her eyes.
For a few minutes she found no words, but her deportment was as quietly
dignified and kindly as the young people had always remembered it.

They had been following the course of events, too much paralyzed by
surprise to speak, move, or even look at each other. Now, as out of the
terrible tornado which had been reigning in the room, calm was again
descending, they found themselves close to each other. They turned
around and looked into each other's faces.

This time Athena's luciferous eyes within their deep dark sockets did
not exactly take Boris into possession. She was aware of him as a being
outside herself; even the memory of their fight was clearly to be found
in her clear limpid gaze. But she was, in this look, laying down another
law, a command which was not to be broken: from now, between, on the one
side, her and him, who had been present together at the happenings of
the last minutes, and, on the other side, the rest of the world, which
had not been there, an insurmountable line would be forever drawn.

The Prioress lowered the handkerchief from her face, and in a soft and
sweeping movement sat down in her large armchair. She looked at the
young man and the girl.

"_Discite justitiam, et non temnere divos_," she said.




THE ROADS ROUND PISA


I. The Smelling-Bottle

Count Augustus von Schimmelmann, a young Danish nobleman of a melancholy
disposition, who would have been very good-looking if he had not been a
little too fat, was writing a letter on a table made out of a millstone
in the garden of an _osteria_ near Pisa on a fine May evening of 1823.
He could not get it finished, so he got up and went for a stroll down
the highroad while the people of the inn were getting his supper ready
inside. The sun was nearly down. Its golden rays fell in between the
tall poplars along the road. The air was warm and pure and filled with
the sweet smell of grass and trees, and innumerable swallows were
cruising about high and low, as if wanting to make the most of the last
half-hour of daylight.

Count Augustus's thoughts were still with his letter. It was addressed
to a friend in Germany, a schoolfellow of his happy student days in
Ingolstadt, and the only person to whom he could open his heart. But
have I been, he thought, really truthful in my letter to him? I would
give a year of my life to be able to talk to him tonight and, while
talking, to watch his face. How difficult it is to know the truth. I
wonder if it is really possible to be absolutely truthful when you are
alone. Truth, like time, is an idea arising from, and dependent upon,
human intercourse. What is the truth about a mountain in Africa that has
no name and not even a footpath across it? The truth about this road is
that it leads to Pisa, and the truth about Pisa can be found within
books written and read by human beings. What is the truth about a man on
a desert island? And I, I am like a man on a desert island. When I was a
student my friends used to laugh at me because I was in the habit of
looking at myself in the looking-glasses, and had my own rooms decorated
with mirrors. They attributed this to personal vanity. But it was not
really so. I looked into the glasses to see what I was like. A glass
tells you the truth about yourself. With a shudder of disgust he
remembered how he had been taken, as a child, to see the mirror-room of
the Panoptikon, in Copenhagen, where you see yourself reflected, to the
right and the left, in the ceiling and even on the floor, in a hundred
glasses each of which distorts and perverts your face and figure in a
different way--shortening, lengthening, broadening, compressing their
shape, and still keeping some sort of likeness--and thought how much
this was like real life. So your own self, your personality and
existence are reflected within the mind of each of the people whom you
meet and live with, into a likeness, a caricature of yourself, which
still lives on and pretends to be, in some way, the truth about you.
Even a flattering picture is a caricature and a lie. A friendly and
sympathetic mind, like Karl's, he thought, is like a true mirror to the
soul, and that is what made his friendship so precious to me. Love ought
to be even more so. It ought to mean, along the roads of life, the
companionship of another mind, reflecting your own fortune and
misfortunes, and proving to you that all is not a dream. The idea of
marriage has been to me the presence in my life of a person with whom I
could talk, tomorrow, of the things that happened yesterday.

He sighed, and his thoughts returned to his letter. There he had tried
to explain to his friend the reasons that had driven him from his home.
He had the misfortune to have a very jealous wife. It is not, he
thought, that she is jealous of other women. In fact she is that least
of all, and the reason is, first, that she knows that she can hold her
own with most of them, being the most charming and accomplished of them
all; secondly, that she feels how little they mean to me. Karl himself
will remember that the little adventures which I had at Ingolstadt meant
less to me than the opera, when a company of singers came along and gave
us _Alceste_ or _Don Giovanni_--less even than my studies. But she is
jealous of my friends, of my dogs, of the forests of Lindenburg, of my
guns and books. She is jealous of the most absurd things.

He remembered something that had happened some six months after his
wedding. He had come into his wife's room to bring her a pair of
eardrops which he had made a friend in Paris buy for him from the estate
of the Duke of Berri. He had always been fond of jewels himself, and had
good knowledge of their quality and cut. It had even at times annoyed
him that men should not be free to wear them, and after his marriage it
had given him pleasure to make them set off the beauty of his young
wife, who wore them so well. These were very fine, and he had been so
pleased to have got them that he had fastened them in her ears himself,
and held up the mirror for her to see them. She watched him, and was
aware that his eyes were on the diamonds and not on her face. She
quickly took them off and handed them to him. "I am afraid," she said,
with dry eyes more tragic than if they had been filled with tears, "that
I have not your taste for pretty things." From that day she had given up
wearing jewels, and had adopted a style of dress as severe as that of a
nun, and she was so elegant and graceful that she had created a
sensation and made a whole school of imitators.

Can I make Karl understand, Augustus thought, that she is indeed jealous
of her own jewels? Surely nobody can understand such folly. I know that
I do not understand her myself, and I often think that I make her as
unhappy as she makes me. I had hoped to find, in my wife, somebody to
whom I could be perfectly truthful, with whom I could share every motion
of my mind. But with Malvina that is the most impossible thing of all.
She has made me lie to her twenty times a day, and deceive her even in
looks and voice. No, I am certain that it could not go on, and that I
have been right in leaving her, for while I was with her it would have
been the same thing always.

But what will happen to me now? I do not know what to do with myself or
my life. Can I trust to fate to hold out a helping hand to me just for
once?

He took a small object from his waistcoat pocket and looked at it. It
was a smelling-bottle, such as ladies of an earlier generation had been
wont to use, made in the shape of a heart. It had painted on it a
landscape with large trees and a bridge across a river. In the
background, on a high hill or rock, was a pink castle with a tower, and
on a ribbon below it all was written _Amiti sincre_.

He smiled as he thought that this little bottle had played its part in
making him go to Italy. It had belonged to a maiden aunt of his
father's, who had been the beauty of her time, and to whom he had been
devoted. As a girl she had traveled in Italy, and had been a guest in
that same rose-colored palace, and every dream of romance and adventure
was in her mind attached to it. She had faith in her little
smelling-bottle, thinking that it would cure any ache of the teeth or
the heart. When he had been a little boy he had shared these fancies of
hers, and had himself made up tales of the beautiful things to be found
in the house and the happy life to be led there. Now that she was many
years dead, nobody would know where it was to be found. Perhaps, he
thought, some day I shall come across the bridge under the trees and see
the rock and the castle before me.

How mysterious and difficult it is to live, he thought, and what does it
all mean? Why does my life seem to me so terribly important, more
important than anything that has ever happened? Perhaps in a hundred
years people will be reading about me, and about my sadness tonight, and
think it only entertaining, if even that.


II. The Accident

At that moment he was interrupted in his thoughts by a terrible noise
behind him. He turned around and the sinking sun shone straight into his
eyes so that he was blinded and for a few seconds saw the world as all
silver, gold and flames. In a cloud of dust a large coach was coming
toward him at a terrifying speed, the horses running in a wild gallop
and hurling the carriage from one side of the road to the other. While
he was looking at it he seemed to see two human forms being whirled down
and out. They were, in fact, the coachman and lackey who were thrown
from their seats to the road. For a moment Augustus thought of throwing
himself in the way of the horses to stop them, but before the carriage
reached him something gave way; first one and then the other of the
horses detached itself from the carriage and came galloping past him.
The carriage was thrown to one side of the road, stopping dead there,
with one of the back wheels off. He ran toward it.

Leaning against the seat of the smashed carriage now lying in the dust
was a bald old man with a refined face and a large nose. He stared
straight at Augustus, but was so deadly pale and kept so still that
Augustus wondered if he had not really been killed after all. "Allow me
to help you, Sir," Augustus said. "You have had a horrible accident, but
I hope you are not badly hurt." The old man looked at him as before,
with bewildered eyes.

A broad young woman who had sat in the opposite seat and had been thrown
down on her hands and knees between cushions and boxes, now began
disentangling herself with loud lamentations. The old man turned his
eyes upon her. "Put on my bonnet," he said. The maid, as Augustus found
her to be, after some struggle got hold of a large bonnet with ostrich
feathers, and managed to get it fixed on the old bald head. Fastened
inside the bonnet was an abundance of silvery curls, and in a moment the
old man was transformed into a fine old lady of imposing appearance. The
bonnet seemed to set her at ease. She even found the shadow of a sweet
and thankful smile for Augustus.

The coachman now came running up, all covered with dust, while the
lackey was still lying in a dead faint in the middle of the road. Also
the people of the _osteria_ had come out with uplifted arms and loud
exclamations of sympathy. One of them brought one of the horses back,
and at a distance two peasants were seen trying to get hold of the
other. Between them they carried the old lady out of the wreckage of the
coach and into the best bedroom of the inn, which was adorned with an
enormous bed with red curtains. She was still pale as a corpse, and
breathed with difficulty. Her right arm seemed to have been broken above
the wrist, but what other injuries she had received they could not tell.
The maid, who had large round eyes like big black buttons, turned toward
Augustus and asked: "Are you a doctor?"

"No," said the old lady from the bed, in a very faint voice, hoarse with
pain. "No, he is neither a doctor nor a priest, of which I want none. He
is a nobleman, and that is the only person I need. Leave the room, all
of you, and let me speak to him alone."

When they were alone her face changed and she shut her eyes; then she
told him to come nearer and asked his name. "Count," she said, after a
short silence, "do you believe in God?"

Such a direct question threw Augustus into confusion, but as he found
her pale old eyes fixed on him, he answered: "That was in fact the very
question which I was asking myself at the moment when your horses ran
away. I cannot tell."

"There is a God," she said, "and even very young people will realize it
some day. I am going to die," she went on, "but I cannot, I will not,
die till I have seen my granddaughter once more. Will you, as a man of
noble birth and high mind, undertake to find her and bring her here?"
She paused, and a strange series of expressions passed over her face.
"Tell her," she said, "that I cannot lift my right hand, and that I will
bless her."

Augustus, after wondering a moment, asked her where the young lady could
be found. "She is in Pisa," said the grandmother, "and her name is Donna
Rosina di Gampocorta. If you had been in the country nine months ago you
would have known her name, for then nobody talked of anything else." She
spoke so feebly that he had to keep his head close to her pillow, and
for a moment he thought that all was over. Then she seemed to collect
her strength. Her voice changed and became at times very high and clear,
but he was not sure that she saw him or knew where she was. A faint
color rose into her cheeks; her eyelids, like thick crape, trembled
slightly. Strange and deep emotions seemed to shake her whole being. "I
will tell you my whole story," she said, "so that you will understand
what I want you to do for me."


III. The Old Lady's Story

"I am an old woman," she said, "and I know the world. I do not cling to
it, for I know enough about it to realize that whatever you cling to
will either patronize you or get tired of you. I do not even cling to
God, for that same reason. Do not pretend to be sorry for me because I
am going to die, for I feel that it is really more _comme il faut_ to be
dead than alive.

"I have had lovers, a husband, hundreds of friends and admirers. I have
myself in my life loved three people, and of those I have now only one
left, this girl Rosina.

"Her mother was not my own child--I was her stepmother. But we were more
devoted to each other than any mother and daughter ever have been. It
was all meant to be so, for from my girlhood I have had the greatest
terror of childbearing, and when I was demanded in marriage by a
widower, whose first wife had died in childbirth, I made it a condition
that I should never bear him any children myself, and because of my
beauty and wealth he agreed. The girl Anna was so lovely that I have
with my own eyes seen the statue of St. Joseph at the Basilica turn his
head to look at her, remembering the appearance of the Virgin at the
time that they were betrothed. Her feet were like swan's bills, and the
shoemaker made us our shoes over the same last. I brought her up to know
that a woman's beauty is the crowning masterpiece of God, and is not to
be given away, but when she was seventeen years old she fell in love
with a man, a soldier, at that--for this was the time of the wars of the
French and their dreadful Emperor. She married him and followed him, and
a year later she died in great agonies, like her mother.

"Though I have never had it in me really to care for any male, I had
hoped that the child would be a boy. But it was a girl, and she was
given into my care, for her father could not stand the sight of her, and
in fact he died of a broken heart only a few months later, leaving her
the heiress of his great riches, of which most was booty of war.

"Now as my granddaughter grew up, you will understand that I was all the
time thinking of how I could best arrange the future for her. Did I say
that her mother's beauty was the Almighty's highest work? No, it proved
to be but his probation work, Rosina herself being the masterpiece of
his craft. She was so fair that it was said in Pisa that when she drank
red wine you could follow its course as it ran down her throat and
chest. I did not want her to marry, so I was for a long time well
pleased to see the hardness and contempt that the child showed toward
all men, and especially toward the brilliant young swains who surrounded
her with their adoration. But I was getting old, and I did not want to
die and leave her alone in the world, either. Upon the morning of her
seventeenth birthday I took to the Church of Santa Maria della Spina a
great treasure that had been in my mother's family for many hundred
years, a belt of chastity that one of her ancestors had had made in
Spain when he went to fight the infidels. And because his wife was a
niece of St. Ferdinand of Castile, it was set with crosses of rubies.
This I gave so that the saints should help me to think of what to do.

"That same evening I gave a great ball, at which the Prince Pozentiani
saw Rosina, and applied for her hand. Now I will ask you, Count, was
this not an answer to my prayer? For the Prince was a magnificent match.
He is today the richest man in the province, for it is well known that
his family can never keep their hands from making money in one way or
another. Although he is a little advanced in years he is the most
charming person, a Mcenas, a man of refined tastes and many talents,
and an old friend of mine. And I knew also that a caprice of nature had
made him, although an admirer of our sex, incapable of being a lover or
a husband. It was his vanity or his weakness not to like this to be
known, and he used to keep the most expensive courtesans with him, and
people were afraid of him, so that the secret did not get out. But I
happened to know, because he had at a time many years ago been one of my
greatest admirers, and I had liked him very much. I was so happy and
thankful that I saw my own face smile to me in the mirror, like the face
of a blessed spirit.

"The child Rosina herself was pleased with the Prince's proposal, and
for a time she liked him very much because of his wit and charming
manners and the rich gifts which he showered upon her. The betrothal had
been announced when one night, after I had already retired to bed,
Rosina came into my room in her frock of high-red satin. She stood in
the light of the candles, as lovely as the young St. Michele himself
commanding the heavenly hosts, and told me, as if it might have been
welcome news to me, that she had fallen in love with her cousin Mario,
and would never marry anybody but him. Already at that moment I felt my
heart faint within me. But I controlled my face, and only reminded her
that the Prince was a deadly shot, and that, whatever she thought of her
cousin, she had better keep him out of his way if she really liked him.
She only answered as if she had been in love with death itself.

"I did not dislike Mario, for I have always had a curious weakness for
my husband's family, although they have all in them a sort of
eccentricity, which has in this boy come out in a passion for astronomy.
But as a husband he could not be compared to the Prince, and moreover I
had only to see Rosina and him together to realize that any weakness of
mine here would, within nine months, lead her straight into her mother's
tomb. Rosina had had her head turned by the Prince's flatteries. She
imagined that should she want the moon, she was to have it, much more
her young cousin. When I saw her holding on to her fancy I took her
before me and explained to her the facts of life. But God alone knows
what has come over the generation of women who have been born after the
Revolution of the French and the novels of that woman de Stal--wealth,
position and a tolerant husband are not enough to them, they want to
make love as we took the Sacrament."

Here the old lady interrupted her tale. "Are you married?" she asked.

"Yes, I am married," the young man answered her.

"I need not then," she went on, as if satisfied with the accent of his
reply, "develop to you the folly of these ideas. Rosina was so obstinate
that I could not reason with her. If in the end she had told me that
what she wanted was to have nine children, I should not have been
surprised.

"I have arrived at an age when I cannot very well stand to be crossed. I
got furious with her, as furious as I would have been with a brigand
whom I had seen slinging her over his horse to carry her off to wild
mountains. I told the Prince that we must hurry with the wedding, and I
kept Rosina shut up in the house. I lived through these months in such a
state of deadly worry that I hardly ever slept, and each night was like
a journey around the world.

"Rosina had a friend, Agnese della Gherardesci, whom all her life she
had loved next to me. Once, when the girls were doing needlework
together, they had pricked their fingers, mixed their blood, and vowed
sisterhood. This girl had been allowed to grow up wild and had become a
real child of the age. She got into her head the notion that she looked
like the Milord Byron, of whom so much is talked, and she used to dress
and ride as a man, and to write poetry. To make Rosina happier I made
Agnese come and stay with her the last week before the wedding. But
there is a demon in girls when they believe a love affair to be at
stake, and I think that she managed somehow to bring letters to Mario.

"On the morning before the wedding, when the Prince and I thought that
all was safe, Agnese got hold of a hackney coach, Rosina slipped out of
the house and got into it, and they started on the road to Pisa. A
faithful maid gave them away to me, and I got into my own coach and
followed them at once. By midday I overtook the miserable little
carriage on the road, Agnese driving it, dressed in a coachman's cloak,
and the horses ready to drop, while mine were as fresh as ever.

"When Rosina saw me approaching at full speed she got out, and I also,
when I came up to her, descended on the road, but neither of us spoke a
word. I took her into my coach, paying no attention whatever to her
friend, and told my coachman to turn back. On that road there is a
little chapel amongst some trees. As we came up to it Rosina asked me
for permission to stop the coach and enter it for a moment. I said to
myself, 'She is going to make a vow of some sort,' and I got out and
went with her into the little church. But in that dark room, smelling
from the cold incense, I felt with despair that the heart of a maid is a
dark church, a place of mystery, and that it is no use for an old woman
to try to find her way in it. Rosina went straight to the altar and
dropped on her knees. She looked into the face of the Virgin and then
walked up, as if I had been an old peasant woman praying in the chapel
on my own. I was in great pain, since for the life of me I could not
make up a prayer. It was as if I had been informed that the Virgin and
the saints had gone deaf. When I came out and saw her standing beside
the coach looking toward Pisa, I spoke to her. 'I know, if you do not,'
I said, 'what madness it is to let the thought of any man come between
you and me. Now, I can make a vow as well as you can. As I hope that we
shall some day walk together in paradise, I swear that as long as I can
lift my right hand I am not going to give my blessing to any marriage of
yours, except with the Prince.' Rosina looked at me and courtesied as
when she was a child, and never spoke. The next day the marriage was
celebrated with much splendor.

"A month after the wedding Rosina petitioned the Pope for an annulment
of her marriage on the ground that it had not been consummated.

"This was a very great scandal. The Prince had mighty friends and she
was all alone to begin with, and quite young and inexperienced; but she
held out with a wonderful strength till in the end it was the only thing
that anybody talked about, and she got the whole people with her. The
Prince was not popular, mostly on account of his unhappy passion for
money; and romance, you will know, appeals to the lower classes. They
ended by looking upon her as some sort of saint, and when she had at
last been assisted to get to Rome, the population there surrounded her
in the streets and applauded her as if she had been a prima donna of the
opera. The Prince behaved like a fool and used his influence to chase
Mario out of Pisa, which under the circumstances was probably the most
stupid thing he could have done, and he mocked the church and shocked
the people.

"Rosina threw herself at the feet of the Holy Father with her
certificates from all the doctors and midwives of Rome. The Prince fell
down like dead when he was told about it, and for three days could not
speak. He had to shut the windows so as not to hear them sing in the
streets about the Virgin of Pisa, and would keep on biting his fingers
while imagining the happiness of the young people--at which I think that
he would be good--for as soon as she had the Pope's letter of annulment
they were married.

"During all this time, while I had heard the very air around me humming
with her name, I had refused to see her, and had tried not to think of
her. But what is there left in the world to take an old woman's mind off
the things she has thought about for seventeen years, when she does not
want to think about them any longer?

"Two months ago I was told that my granddaughter was to have a child.
Although I had of course been prepared for this, it was like the last
blow to me. It nearly killed me. I thought of her mother and of my vow.
I failed to believe in the saints any longer. Rosina's picture was
before me day and night as she had looked in the chapel, and my heart
was filled with such bitterness as it is not right that a woman shall
endure at my time of life. In the end I gave up thinking of paradise,
for I thought that a hundred years there would not be worth a week
within her house in Italy. For a long time I have been too ill to
travel, but yesterday I set out for Pisa.

"Now, my friend, you have heard all my story, and I leave it to you to
make your reflections upon the ways of providence."

Here she made a long pause. When, frightened by it, he looked up at her
face, he saw that it had fallen. She seemed to have shrunk, but beneath
her waxen eyelids her clear eyes were still fixed upon his face.

"I am ready to leave this world," she said. "It must by now know me by
heart as I know it. We have nothing more to say to each other. It seems
curious to me myself that I should still feel so much affection for, and
take so much interest in, this old Carlotta de Gampocorta, who will soon
have disappeared altogether, that I cannot let her go out without giving
her the chance of assembling, and forgiving, those who have trespassed
against her. But what will you--habits are not easily changed at my age.
Will you go and find her for me?"

Her left arm moved on the sheet as if trying to reach his hand. Augustus
touched the cold fingers. "I am at your service, Madame," he said. She
drew a deep sigh and closed her eyes. He hastened to get hold of the
doctor, who had been sent for from the village.

He ordered his servants to have everything ready for an early start in
the morning, and as he wanted to get his letter off before leaving, he
took it up again to finish it. On reading through his reflections on
life, he thought that their sadness might upset his good Karl, so he
took his pen and added two lines out of Goethe's _Faust_, a favorite
quotation of his friend's, by which he had many times, in Ingolstadt,
closed one of their discussions:

    _A good man, through obscurest aspirations,_
    _Has still the instinct of the one true way...._

And half smiling, he sealed the letter.


IV. The Young Lady's Sorrows

At the next inn to which he came--which was the last before Pisa, and
had more houses, carts and people around it, so that one felt already in
the air the nearness of a great town--a phaton drove up just in front
of Augustus, from which descended a slim young man in a large dark cloak
and an old major-domo who looked like Pantalone. It was getting dark. A
few stars had sprung out upon the deep blue sky, and there was a slight
breeze in the air. Augustus had that feeling of being really on the road
in which lies so much of the happiness of all true travelers. He had
passed so many wayfarers in the course of the day--riders on horses and
donkeys, coaches, oxcarts and mule carts--that there seemed to be a
direction in life, and it would be strange if there should be none for
him. The lamplight, the noise, and the smell of wood-smoke, grease and
cheese from the house pleased him. The air of Italy seemed to have come
down from mountains and across rivers to lay itself gently against his
face.

The _osteria_ had at one time been the lodge of a great villa; it had a
large fine room with frescoes on the walls. Entering it, he found the
old landlord with two attendants laying the table at the open window,
and at the same time having a heated discussion, from which the old man
tore himself away to welcome the guest and assure him that he would do
anything to make him happy. But all these honored guests arriving at the
same moment, unexpected; to a house so keen to maintain its _renomm_
nearly overwhelmed him. For Prince Pozentiani was arriving within half
an hour, and with him his young friend, the Prince Giovanni Gastone.
These were people who could judge a meal, and they had ordered quails,
but the cook had made a mistake in the cooking. Augustus asked if the
boy whom he had just seen arrive would be the Prince Giovanni. Ah, no,
said the old man, that undoubtedly was another rich and fastidious
customer. But was it possible that the Milord had never heard of Prince
Nino? He was such a young man the like of whom one would not find
outside of Tuscany. When he was a baby his beauty had made him the model
of the infant Jesus on the painting in the cathedral. Wherever he went
the people loved him. For he was a patriot, a true son of Tuscany.
Though he had been sent by his ambitious mother to the courts of both
Vienna and St. Petersburg, he had come back unwilling to speak any
language but that of the great poets. His _palazzi_ were run in the old
Tuscan manner: he kept an orchestra to play Italian music only; he ran
his horses in the classical races; and when his vintage was finished,
the festivals--at which the old dances were performed, the virgins of
the villages pressed the grapes, naked, and the _improvvisatori_ recited
in the old way--called back the ancient happy days.

With a greasy towel under his arm and his little black eyes upon every
movement of the servants, the old man had still sufficient vivacity of
spirit to entertain his foreign guest with great charm. Had not Prince
Nino, when a German singer had the audacity to appear in Cimarosa's
opera, _Ballerina Amante_, chased him off the stage and himself sung the
entire part to an enraptured audience? As to the fair sex--here the
broad face of the landlord seemed to draw itself together actually into
a point, so concentrated did it become in the communication--the Milord
must know for himself, if they choose to throw themselves in the way of
a man, what is it possible for him to do? And even there he had shown
himself a true son of his country. For he might have married an
archduchess, and the sister of the Czar of Russia herself had gone mad
with love of him when he had been at the Court of St. Petersburg, but he
had quoted the exquisite Redi in his _Bacco in Tuscany_, saying that
only the barrels of the wine of Tuscany should come to groan under his
caresses. Also it was said that the husbands of Tuscany did not always
mind his invincibility as much as one would have thought, for a woman
who had belonged to Prince Nino would never afterward condescend to take
another lover, and more than one coquettish lady had, when he had left
her, settled down to her husband and her memories. It was a great pity
that the way in which he had scattered the riches of his house, and even
of his mother, had delivered him to the mercy of the old Prince
Pozentiani, who lent out money. It was said that of late he had changed.
He had been known to say that a miracle had crossed his way and made him
believe in miracles. Some people thought that the sainted Queen
Mathilda, of his own house, had shown herself to him in a dream and
turned his heart from this world. Here one of the waiters made such a
grave mistake in the laying of the table that the old man, as in a
terrific spiritual bound, flew off from the conversation. He came back a
little later, smiling but silent, with the wine that Augustus had
ordered, and left him to it with a deep bow.

Two old priests sat over their wine near the glowing coals on the
fireplace, which shone on their greasy black frocks, and the boy who had
driven the phaton was thoughtfully drinking coffee out of a glass which
his old servant brought him, on a low seat under a picture of the angels
visiting Abraham. His young figure there was so graceful that Augustus,
always an admirer of beauty, and finding in his pure pensive face a
likeness to his friend Karl's as a boy, found his eyes wandering back to
it. When the old major-domo, returning, reported on a quarrel between
the young man's groom and his own over the best stabling places,
Augustus profited by the opportunity to ask him a few questions about
the road to Pisa, and prayed him to have a glass of wine with him. The
boy very courteously declined, saying that he never drank wine, but
finding that Augustus was a foreigner and ignorant of the road, he sat
down with him for a moment to give him the information he wanted. While
talking, the youth rested his left arm on the table, and Augustus,
looking at it, thought how plainly one must realize, in meeting the
people of this country, that they had been living in marble palaces and
writing about philosophy while his own ancestors in the large forests
had been making themselves weapons of stone and had dressed in the furs
of the bears whose warm blood they drank. To form a hand and wrist like
these must surely take a thousand years, he reflected. In Denmark
everybody has thick ankles and wrists, and the higher up you go, the
thicker they are.

The boy colored with pleasure on learning that Augustus came from
Denmark, and told him that he was the first person from the country of
Prince Hamlet that he had ever met. He appeared to know the English
tragedy very well, and talked as if Augustus must have come straight
from the court of King Claudius. His Italian courtesy kept him from
dwelling upon the tragic happenings, as if Ophelia might have been the
recently lost cousin of the other young man, but he quoted the soliloquy
with great charm, and said that he had often in his thoughts stood at
Elsinore, upon the dreadful summit of the cliff that beetles o'er his
base into the sea. Augustus did not want to tell him that Elsinore is
quite flat, so asked him instead if he did not write poetry himself.

"Ah, no," said the boy, shaking his soft brown curls, "I used to, but I
gave it up a year ago."

"You were wrong, I think," said Augustus, smiling. "Surely poetry is one
of the delights of life, and helps us to endure the monotony of the
world."

The boy seemed to feel that he had here met a brother or friend of the
unhappy Danish Prince, and to open his heart to the stranger on this
account.

"Something happened to me," he said after a short silence, "that I could
not turn into poetry. I have written both comedies and tragedies, but I
could not fit it into either." Again after a short pause he added: "I am
now going to Pisa to study astronomy."

He had a grave and friendly manner that attracted Augustus, who had
himself at Ingolstadt given much time to the study of the stars. They
talked for some time of them, and he told the boy how the great Danish
astronomer Tycho Brahe had ordered at Augsburg the construction of a
nineteen-foot quadrant and of a celestial globe five feet in diameter.

"I want to study astronomy," said the boy, "because I can no longer
stand the thought of time. It feels like a prison to me, and if I could
only get away from it altogether I think I should be happy."

"I have thought that myself," Augustus said pensively, "and still I have
reflected that if at any single moment of our lives, even such as we
ourselves call the happiest, we were told that it was to go on forever,
we would conclude that we had been brought, not to eternal bliss, but to
everlasting suffering." He remembered with sadness how this old
reflection of his had come back to him even on a certain moment of his
wedding night. The young man seemed to follow the train of his thought
with sympathy.

"I have had the misfortune, Signore," he said after a moment, his young
face looking somehow paler and his eyes darker than before, "to have
always on my mind the recollection of one single hour of my life. Up to
that hour I used to think with pleasure of both the past and the future,
as well as of the present itself, and time was like a road through a
pleasant landscape on which I could wander to and fro as I fancied. But
now I cannot get my thoughts away from that one hour. Every second of it
seems bigger than whole years of the rest of my life. I must escape from
it to where there is no time. I know," he said, "that some people would
recommend the idea of moral infinity, as given to us in religion, as the
right refuge, but I have already tried it and it is of no use to me--on
the contrary, the thought of the omnipotence of God, man's free will,
heaven and hell, all bring back to me the thoughts from which I want to
get away. I want to turn to the infinity of space, and from what I have
heard it seems to me that the roads of the planets and stars, their
ellipses and circles within the infinite space, must have the power to
turn the mind into new ways. Do you not think so, Signore?"

Augustus thought of the time, not many years ago, when he had himself
felt the spheres his right home. "I think," he said sadly, "that life
has its law of gravitation spiritually as well as physically. Landed
property, women----" He looked out through the window. On the blue sky
of the spring evening Venus stood, radiant as a diamond.

The boy turned toward him. "You do not," he said, "really think that I
am a man? I am not, and under your favor, I am happy not to be. I know,
of course, that great work has been achieved by men, but still I think
that the world would be a more tranquil place if men did not come in to
break up, very often, the things that we cherish."

Augustus became confused to find that he had been treating a young lady
as a boy, but he could not apologize for it, as it was not his fault. He
made haste to introduce himself and to ask if he could be of any
assistance to her on her journey. The girl, however, did not alter her
manner toward him in the least, and seemed quite indifferent to any
change in his attitude toward her which her information might have
caused. She sat in the same position, with her slender knees crossed
under her cloak and her hands folded around one knee. Augustus thought
that he had hardly ever talked to a young woman whose chief interest in
the conversation had not been the impression that she herself was making
on him, and he reflected that this must be what generally made converse
with women awkward and dull to him. The way in which this young woman
seemed to take a friendly and confident interest in him, without
apparently giving any thought to what he thought of her, seemed to him
new and sweet, as if he suddenly realized that he had all his life been
looking for such an attitude in a woman. He wished that he could now
himself keep away from the conventional accent of male and female
conversation.

"It is very sad," he said thoughtfully, "that you should think so little
of us, for I am sure that all men that you have met have tried to please
you. Will you not tell me why it should be so? For it has happened to me
many times that a lady has told me that I was making her unhappy, and
that she wished that she and I were dead, at a time when I have tried
hardest to make her happy. It is so many years now since Adam and
Eve"--he looked across the room to a picture of them--"were first
together in the garden, that it seems a great pity that we have not
learned better how to please one another."

"And did you not ask her?" said the girl.

"Yes," he answered, "but it seemed to be our fate that we should never
take up these questions in cold blood. For myself, I think that women,
for some reason, will not let us know. They do not want an
understanding. They want to mobilize for war. But I wish that once, in
all the time of men and women, two ambassadors could meet in a friendly
mind and come to understand each other. It is true," he added after a
moment, "that I did once meet, in Paris, a woman, a great courtesan, who
might have been such an ambassador. But you would hardly have given her
your letters of credence or have submitted to her decisions. I do not
even know if you would not have considered her a traitor to your sex."

The girl thought for a time of what he had said. "I suppose," she then
said, "that even in your country you have parties, balls and
_conversazione_?"

"Yes," he said, "we have those."

"Then you will know," she went on slowly, "that the part of a guest is
different from that of a host or hostess, and that people do not want or
expect the same things in the two different capacities?"

"I think you are right," said Augustus.

"Now God," she said, "when he created Adam and Eve"--she also looked at
them across the room--"arranged it so that man takes, in these matters,
the part of a guest, and woman that of a hostess. Therefore man takes
love lightly, for the honor and dignity of his house is not involved
therein. And you can also, surely, be a guest to many people to whom you
would never want to be a host. Now, tell me, Count, what does a guest
want?"

"I believe," said Augustus when he had thought for a moment, "that if we
do, as I think we ought to here, leave out the crude guest, who comes to
be regaled, takes what he can get and goes away, a guest wants first of
all to be diverted, to get out of his daily monotony or worry. Secondly
the decent guest wants to shine, to expand himself and impress his own
personality upon his surroundings. And thirdly, perhaps, he wants to
find some justification for his existence altogether. But since you put
it so charmingly, Signora, please tell me now: What does a hostess
want?"

"The hostess," said the young lady, "wants to be thanked."

Here loud voices outside put an end to their conversation.


V. The Story of the Bravo

The landlord of the _osteria_ came in first, walking backwards with a
three-armed candlestick in each hand, with surprising grace and
lightness for an old man. Following him came the party of three
gentlemen for whom the table had been laid, the first two walking arm in
arm. Their arrival changed the whole room in a moment, they brought with
them so much light, loud talk and color--even so much plain matter, for
two of them were very big men.

The one who attracted Augustus's attention, as he would always attract
the attention of anybody near him, was a man of about fifty, very tall
and broad, and enormously fat. He was dressed very elegantly in black,
his white linen shining, and wore some heavy rings and in his large
stock a brilliantly sparkling diamond. His hair was dyed jet black, and
his face was painted and powdered. In spite of his fatness and his
stays, he moved with a peculiar grace, as if he had in him a rhythm of
his own. Altogether, Augustus thought, if one could get quite away from
the conventional idea of how a human being ought to look, he would be a
very handsome object and a fine ornament in any place, and would have
made, for instance, a most powerful and impressive idol. It was he who
spoke, in a high and piercing, and at the same time strangely pleasing,
voice.

"Oh, charming, charming, my Nino," he said, "to be together again. But I
have heard about you last week only, and how you have bought a Dana by
Correggio, and sixteen piebald horses from Cascine, to drive with your
coach."

The young man to whom he spoke and whose arm he was holding seemed to
pay very little attention to him. On looking at him Augustus understood
that the people of the country should think highly of his beauty. He had
been looking over many galleries of paintings lately, and reflected that
any young St. Sebastian or John the Baptist, living on wild honey and
locust, or even a young angel from the opened sepulcher, might have come
down from his frame, dressed in modern clothes with elegance and
carelessness, and looked like that. He even had in the pronounced brown
color-tones of his hair, face and eyes something of the patina of old
paintings, and he had withal the appearance of thinking of nothing at
all which must be natural in paradise where there is no need of thought.

The third of the party was a tall young man, also very richly dressed,
with fair curly hair and a pink face like a sheep's, which continued
down into his fat throat without any sign of a jawbone. He was absorbed
in listening to the old man and never took his eyes off him. All three
sat down to their meal, with the light of the candles on them.

The young lady looked at the newly arrived party for a few seconds, then
got up and, draping her cloak around her, left the room. Augustus
followed her out, where her old servant was waiting for her with a
candle.

As he came back his own supper was being brought in, and he sat down to
a capon and a cake decorated with pink whipped cream. The supper party
at the larger table was so noisy that he was disturbed in his thoughts
and from time to time had his eyes drawn toward them. He noticed that
the old man, while all the time making his guests drink, drank himself
only lemonade, but nevertheless kept pace with them in their rising
spirits, as if he had within him a sort of natural intoxication upon
which he could draw without outward assistance. Once his voice, talking
for a long time, caught Augustus's ear as he was telling the others a
story.

"At Pisa," he said, "I was, many years ago, present when our glorious
Monti, the poet, drew out his pistol and shot down Monsignor Talbot. It
happened at a supper party, just like ours here with only the three of
us present. And it all arose from an argument on eternal damnation.

"Monti, who had then just finished his _Don Giovanni_, had for some time
been sunk in a deep melancholy, and would neither drink nor talk, and
Monsignor Talbot asked him what was the matter with him, and wondered
that he was not happy after having achieved so great a success. So Monti
asked him whether he did not think that it might weigh upon the mind of
a man to have created a human being who was to burn through eternity in
hell. Talbot smiled at him and declared that this could only happen to
real people. Whereupon the poet cried out and asked him if his Don
Giovanni were not real, and the _monsignore_, still smiling at him for
taking it so seriously, and leaning back in his chair, explained that he
meant beings who had really been in the flesh. 'The flesh!' the poet
cried. 'Can you doubt that he was in the flesh when in Spain alone there
can be found one thousand and three ladies to give evidence to that
effect?' Monsignor Talbot asked him if he did really believe himself a
creator in the same sense as God.

"'God!' Monti cried, 'God! Do you not know that what God really wants to
create is my Don Giovanni, and the Odysseus of Homer, and Cervantes's
knight? Very likely those are the only people for whom heaven and hell
have ever been made, for you cannot imagine that an Almighty God would
go on forever and ever, world without end, with my mother-in-law and the
Emperor of Austria? Humanity, the men and women of this earth, are only
the plaster of God, and we, the artists, are his tools, and when the
statue is finished in marble or bronze, he breaks us all up. When you
die you will probably go out like a candle, with nothing left, but in
the mansions of eternity will walk Orlando, the Misanthrope and my Donna
Elvira. Such is God's plan of work, and if we find it somehow slow, who
are we that we should criticize him, seeing that we know nothing
whatever of time or eternity?'

"Monsignor Talbot, although himself a great admirer of the arts, began
to feel uncomfortable about such heretical views, and took the poet to
task over them. 'Oh, go and find out for yourself then!' Monti cried,
and resting the barrel of the pistol, with which he had been playing,
upon the edge of the table, he fired straight at the _monsignore_, who
sat opposite him, so that he fell down in his blood. It was a serious
affair, for Monsignor Talbot had to have a grave operation, and hovered
for a long time between life and death."

The young men, who had by this time had a good deal to drink, began to
make jests over this idea, holding up to the narrator the various forms
of immortality which he might obtain under the hands of different poets.
In this they used many names and expressions unknown to Augustus; also
their voices were less distinct than that of the old man, so he only
began to give their conversation his attention when the latter was again
talking alone.

"No, no, my children," he said, "I have other hopes than that. But as it
may be good for you to occupy yourselves a little with the idea of the
other world, and may even dissipate that new melancholy of our sweet
Nino, about which the whole province grieves, I will tell you another
story."

He leaned back in his chair, and throughout his narrative he did not
again touch food or drink. Augustus noticed that as he proceeded his
dark young neighbor, whom he had called his Nino, took to the same
manner, so that of the three it was only the fair young man with the
sheep's face who went on enjoying the pleasures of the table.

"In Pisa lived, my dear friends," the old man began, "at the time of my
grandfather, a nobleman of high rank and great wealth, who had the sad
experience of having a young friend, on whom he had bestowed every
benefaction, turn upon him with the common ingratitude of youth and
inflict upon him a deadly insult, one which, moreover, turned him into
an object of ridicule in the eyes of the world. The nobleman was a
philosopher, and valued beyond everything in life his peace of mind.
When he realized that this matter was about to spoil his sleep, and that
he would not get any pleasure, or recover his balance, till he had had
the blood of his young enemy, he decided to have it. Now because of his
position and other circumstances he did not see his way to do it
himself, so addressed himself to a young bravo of the town. In those
days such people were still to be found. This young man was of an
extravagant disposition, and thereby had got himself into heavy debt and
such a miserable position that he could hardly see any way out of it but
marriage. My grandfather's friend said to him: 'I want everybody to come
out of this affair perfectly satisfied. I will pay you for my peace of
soul what I think it worth, which is a great deal. Do me this service,
and I will have your debts wiped out, even down to your grandmother's
little rosary of coral beads, which you had pawned.' Upon this the bravo
agreed, and everything was arranged between them."

A big cat that had been walking about the room, here sprang up on the
knee of the old man who was telling the story. Without looking at it he
kept on stroking it while he continued his tale.

"The clock struck midnight when the bravo left him, and as he knew that
he should not be able to sleep until he had made sure that the business
had been settled, he kept awake in his room, waiting for the young man's
return, and had a very dainty supper prepared for him there. Just as the
clock struck the hour of one the young man entered, looking like death.
'Is my enemy dead?' the nobleman asked. 'Yes,' said the bravo. 'And is
it sure?' said his employer, whose heart began to dance within his
breast. 'Yes,' said the bravo, 'if a man be dead who has had my stiletto
in his heart three times, up to the hilt. Everybody ought, as you have
said, to come out of this affair perfectly satisfied. Now I will have a
bottle of champagne with you.' So the two had a very pleasant supper
together. 'Do you know,' said the bravo, 'what I think a great pity? It
is this: that we have all become such skeptics that we hardly believe
what our pious grandmothers told us. For it would give me great pleasure
to think that both you and I shall be eternally damned.'

"The nobleman was surprised, and sorry for the young man, for he looked
as if he were out of his senses. He also felt very kindly disposed
toward him, so he tried to comfort him. 'This has been too much for
you,' he said. 'I took you for a stronger man. As to this business of
damnation, I see what you mean, and believe that very likely you are
right. The murder that you have committed tonight I have myself
committed many times already in my heart, and the Scripture has it that
it is then as good as done. Sophistical thinkers may even prove your
part in it to be entirely illusory, and you may very well still wash
your robes in the blood of the Lamb and make them white. Still, I must
say that what I paid you, I paid for the trouble which you had to take
and for the risk you are running with regard to the law of Pisa and the
relations of my dead enemy. Of your soul I had not thought. Against this
risk, small as I consider it to be, I will give you, in addition to what
you have already, this ring of mine.' With these words he took from his
hand a ring with a large ruby in it, a very valuable stone, and handed
it to the young man, who laughed at him as if they had never been
talking of sacred things, and went away. Our nobleman went to bed, and
slept well for the first time in many months, in the consciousness of
having had his wish fulfilled at last, and also of having behaved with
great generosity toward his bravo."

At this point in the tale the cat walked across the table and jumped
into the lap of the young Prince. As if he had been the reflection,
within a looking-glass, of his neighbor, he began to stroke the beast
softly while leaning back in his chair and listening.

"But it was his fate," the old man went on, "to have his faith in human
beings shaken. It was only a few weeks later, and while he was still
enjoying, as in a second youth, the society of his friends, music, and
the beauty of the scenery around Pisa, that he had a letter from a
friend in Rome who wrote to tell him that his enemy, for whose death he
had paid so high a price, was there, fresher than ever, and highly
admired in Roman society and at the papal court.

"This last proof of human perfidy, and of the foolishness of having
faith in friends or employees, hit the unsuspecting man hard. He fell
ill and suffered for a long time from pains in his eyes and his right
arm, so that he had to go to the baths of Pyrmont to recover. But I will
pass over this sad period. Only, as he was a man given to thinking, he
began to speculate upon the future of himself and his bravo as they had
discussed it over their supper table. Is it really, he thought, the
intention only which weighs down the scale, and saves us or condemns us,
and has the action nothing to do with it all? The more he thought of
this the more he realized that it must be so. Probably even, he thought,
the intention only carries this weight in so far as it remains an
intention and nothing else. For the action wipes out the desire. The
surest way to leave off coveting your neighbor's wife is, without doubt,
to have her, and we can love our enemies and pray for them which
despitefully use us, if only they be dead. He remembered how kindly he
had thought of his young enemy during that short period when he believed
him to have been killed.

"Therefore, he thought, hell is very likely filled with people who have
not carried out what they had meant to do. Theirs is the worm that never
dies. And so," said the old man, his voice suddenly becoming very slow
and gentle as a caress, "having lost his faith in bravoes, he decided,
in the future, to carry out his intentions himself. But there was one
thing," he went on in the same soft voice, "which he thought he should
have liked to know, before he put the whole tragedy out of his mind: How
much, he wondered, did this bravo of his, who had been so handsomely
paid by him, make out of the affair from the other side?

"This, my sweet Nino, is my story, and I hope that I have not bored you
with it. You would do me a great service if you would tell me what you
think of it."

There was a silence. The dark young Prince leaned forward, put his arm
upon the table and his chin in his hand, and looked at the old man. This
movement had in it so much of the cat which he was holding that it gave
Augustus quite a shock.

"Yes, under your favor," he said, "I have been a little bored, for I
think that as a story yours was too long, and even yet it has had no
end. Let us make an end tonight."

He refilled his glass with his left hand and half emptied it. Then, with
a gentle movement, as if he had drunk too much to make a more violent
effort, he tossed the glass across the table into the old man's face.
The wine ran down the scarlet mouth and powdered chin. The glass rolled
onto his lap and from there fell to the floor and was broken.

The young man with the fair curly hair gave a scream. He jumped up and,
producing a small lace handkerchief, tried to wipe the wine from the
other's face as if it had been blood. But the fat old man pushed him
away. His face remained for a moment quite immovable, like a mask. Then
it began to glow, as if from inside, with a strange triumphant
brightness. It would have been impossible to say whether his face really
colored under the paint, but it showed suddenly the same effect of
heightened primitive vitality. He had looked old while he was telling
his tale. Now he gave the impression of youth or childhood. Augustus now
saw who he was really like: he had the soft fullness, and the great
power behind it, of the ancient statues of Bacchus. The atmosphere of
the room became resplendent with his rays, as if the old god had
suddenly revealed himself, vine-crowned, to mortals. He took up a
handkerchief and carefully dabbed his mouth with it, then, looking at
it, he spoke in a low and sweet voice, such as a god would use in
speaking to human beings, aware that his natural strength is too much
for them.

"It is a tradition of your family, Nino, I know," he said, "this
exquisite _savoir-mourir_." He sipped a little of his lemonade to take
away the taste of the wine which had touched his mouth. "What an
excellent critic you are," he went on, "not only of your own Tuscan
songs, but of modern prose as well. That exactly was the fault of my
story: that it had no end. A charming thing, an end. Will you come
tomorrow at sunrise to the terrace at the back of this house? I know the
place; it is a very good spot."

"Yes," said Nino, still in the same position, with his chin in his hand.
"Thank you," said the old man, "thank you, my dear. And now," he went on
with quiet dignity, "with your permission I shall retire. I cannot," he
said, with a glance downward at his soiled shirt, "remain in your
company in these clothes. Arture, give me your arm. I will send him back
to arrange with you, Nino. Good night, sleep you well!"

When he had gone away on the arm of the fair young man, who was now
deadly pale and seemed stricken with panic, the other young man sat for
a time without moving, as if he had fallen asleep over the table. Then,
turning, he looked straight at Augustus, of whose presence he had not
before seemed to be aware, got up, came over to him, and greeted him
very politely. He was not quite steady on his feet, but nevertheless
looked as if he would, mentally, be able to take a part in any ballet.

"Signore," he said, "you have been the witness of a quarrel between
myself and my friend, the Prince Pozentiani, whom I shall have to give
satisfaction. Will you, as a nobleman, show me the favor of acting as my
second tomorrow morning? I am Giovanni Gastone, of Tuscany, at your
service." Augustus told the Prince that he had never had anything to do
with a duel and the idea now made him uneasy.

"I should be glad to be of assistance to you," he said, "but I cannot
help thinking that it would be better to settle such a quarrel, between
friends and over a supper table, in a friendly way, and that you cannot
have any wish to fight a man so much older than yourself over nothing."

Giovanni smiled very sweetly at him. "Set your conscience at rest,
Count," he said, "the Prince is the affronted party and will choose the
weapons. If you had lived in Tuscany you would have heard something of
his shooting. As to his being old, it is true that he has lived for
twice as many years as either you or I, but for all that he is in
himself a child compared to any of us. It will be as natural to him to
live for two hundred years as for us to live sixty. The things that wear
us down do not touch him. He is very wonderful."

"What you have said," Augustus replied, "does not seem to me to make
your duel more reasonable. Might he not then kill you?"

"No, no," said the young man, "but he has been my best friend for many
years. We want to find out which of us does really stand best with God."

The low and clear cry of a bird sounded from the garden, like the voice
of the night itself. "Do you hear the aziola cry?" asked Giovanni. "That
used to mean that something fortunate was going to happen to me. I do
not know," he added after a while, "what it would be now, unless God has
very much more power of imagination than I myself have--that is, unless
he is very much more like my friend the Prince than he is like me. But
that, of course, I trust him to be." He sat in thought for some time.
"Those horses which I bought--" he said, "I have not yet given them
names. The Prince, now, could so easily have found names for them. Can
you think of any?"


VI. The Marionettes

As the young Prince had, with repeated thanks, said good night to his
second and left him, the old servant whom he had seen in the phaton
came up behind Augustus, noiseless as a cat, and touched his sleeve. His
mistress, he said, had been disturbed by the noises in the house and
wished the Count to tell her what was happening. She was, in fact,
waiting for him at the end of the house, where the light from a window
fell out upon a stone seat. The old servant remained in attendance, near
a large tree a little way off.

Augustus hesitated to inform the young lady of the duel, but he found
that she knew all about it already, her old major-domo having, with the
host of the inn, been listening outside the door. What she wanted to
know, and seemed in a highly excited state about, was how the quarrel
had arisen. Augustus thought that he might as well tell her, in case
there should be an inquest later on, so declaring that he was himself
quite unable to see how it could have brought on a fight of life and
death, he repeated to her as much of the conversation of the supper
party as he could remember. She listened to him without a word, standing
as still and erect as a statue, but in the midst of the narrative she
took hold of his arm and led him into the circle of light. When he had
finished she begged him to tell her the old Prince's story of the bravo
all over again, and stopped him to have certain words and figures
repeated to her.

As he came to the end the second time she suddenly turned toward the
light, and he was startled to see in her face, as if reflected within a
mirror, the expression in the face of the old Prince when he had been so
deeply insulted. She did not use either powder or paint, so that he
could follow the course of her blood as it slowly rose to her forehead
until her whole face glowed as from violent exercise or strong wine. In
a lighter manner--since she did not carry any of his weight, either
physically or morally--she partook at this moment of his divine
metamorphosis, and might well have passed, in the train of that old
Dionysus, for a young bacchante, or possibly, with the light in her big
eyes, for one of his panthers.

She drew her breath deeply. "From the moment I first saw you, Signore,"
she said, "I knew that something fortunate was going to happen to me.
Please tell me now: Is it possible, if they both fire at the same
moment, and both take good aim, that the two bullets would hit their
hearts at the same instant and that they would both be killed?"

Augustus thought this young lady to be, for a student of the stars and
of philosophy, of a sanguinary turn of mind. "I have never heard of such
a thing happening," he said, "though I cannot say that it would not be
possible. I am myself uneasy about the result of this duel, and it is a
strange coincidence that I should have been told, only yesterday, of
this old Prince being such a deadly shot."

"Everybody knows that," she said, "if he cannot frighten people in any
other way, he frightens them with his pistols. But kindly tell me,
Signore," she went on, "who is the young man whom the old Prince is
going to kill? You did not tell me his name." Augustus told her. Again
she stood silent and very quiet. "Giovanni Gastone," she repeated
slowly, "then I have myself seen him. On the day of my first communion,
five years ago, he accompanied his grandmother to the basilica, and held
his umbrella over her from her carriage to the porch, for it was raining
heavily."

"Let them go to bed," she said after a little while. "If this is to be
the last night he will ever go to bed, let him sleep. But we, Signore,
cannot possibly sleep, and what are we to do? My servant tells me that
there is a marionette company at the inn, and as the wagoners from Pisa
come back late, they are giving a performance within this hour. Let us
go and see them."

Augustus felt himself that he was not likely to sleep. In fact, he had
not often been more wide awake or more pleasantly so. He felt his own
body lighter, as when he had been a boy. With the happy wonder of a
searcher for gold who strikes a vein of the metal in the rock, he
reflected that he had come upon a vein of events in life. The company of
the girl also pleased him in a particular way, and he was thinking
whether it might not be, partly, because she was dressed like himself in
those long black trousers which seemed to him the normal costume for a
human being. The fluffs and trains with which women in general
accentuate their femininity are bound, he thought, to make talking with
them much like conversation with officers in uniform or clergymen in
their robes, neither of which you are likely to get much out of. He
followed her into the large whitewashed barn where the theater had been
erected and the play had just started.

The air in there was hot and stifling, though high up in the roof a
window had been opened to the powder-blue nocturnal sky. The building
was half filled with people and very dimly lighted by some old lanterns
which hung from the ceiling. Around the stage itself the candles of the
footlights were creating a magic oasis of light, and making the crimson,
orange and bright green of the puppets' little costumes, probably faded
and dull in the daylight, shine and glow like jewels. Their shadows,
much larger than themselves, reflected all their movements upon the
white cloth of the back-curtain.

The performer stopped his speech upon the arrival of the distinguished
spectators, and brought them two armchairs to sit in near the stage, in
front of the audience. Then he took up the thread where he had
interrupted it, speaking loudly in the various voices of his characters.

The play which was being acted was the immortal _Revenge of Truth_, that
most charming of marionette comedies. Everybody will remember how the
plot is created by a witch pronouncing, upon the house wherein all the
characters are collected, a curse to the effect that any lie told within
it will become true. Thus the mercenary young woman who tries to catch a
rich husband by making him believe that she loves him, does fall in love
with him; the braggart becomes a hero; the hypocrites finish by becoming
really virtuous; the old miser who tells people that he is poor loses
all his money. When the women are alone they speak in verse, but the
language of the men is very coarse in parts; only a young boy, the one
innocent person in the comedy, has some very fine songs which are
accompanied by a mandolin behind the stage.

The moral of the play pleased the audience, and their tired, dusty faces
lighted up as they laughed at Mopsus, the clown. The girl followed the
development of the plot in the spirit of a fellow author. Augustus felt,
in his present mood, some of the speeches go strangely to his heart.
When the lover says to his mistress that a piece of dry bread satiates
one's hunger better than a whole cookery book, he took it, somehow, as
advice to himself. The unsuspecting victim discourses to his intended
murderer upon the loveliness of the moonlight, and the villain answers
by lecturing on the absurdity of the power of God to make us delight in
things which are of no advantage whatever to us, which may even be quite
the contrary; and he goes on saying that God therefore likes us in the
same way as we like our dogs: because when he is in high spirits, we are
in high spirits; and when he is depressed, we are depressed; and when
he, in a romantic mood, makes the moonlight night, we trot at his heels
as well as we can. This made Augustus smile. He thought that he would
like to feel once more, as when he was a child, like one of the dogs of
God.

At the end the witch appears again, and on being asked what is really
the truth, answers: "The truth, my children, is that we are, all of us,
acting in a marionette comedy. What is important more than anything else
in a marionette comedy, is keeping the ideas of the author clear. This
is the real happiness of life, and now that I have at last come into a
marionette play, I will never go out of it again. But you, my fellow
actors, keep the ideas of the author clear. Aye, drive them to their
utmost consequences." This speech seemed to him suddenly to hold a lot
of truth. Yes, he thought, if my life were only a marionette comedy in
which I had my part and knew it well, then it might be very easy and
sweet. The people of this country seemed, somehow, to be practicing this
ideal. They were as immune to the terrors, the crimes and miracles of
the life in which they took part as were the little actors upon the old
player's stage. To the people of the North the strong agitations of the
soul come each time as a strange thing, and when they are in a state of
excitement their speech comes by fits and starts. But these people spoke
fluently under the wildest passions, as if life were, in any of her
whims, a comedy which they had already rehearsed. If I have now at last,
he thought, come into a marionette play, I will not go out of it again.

During the last scene, when all the puppets were on the stage to receive
the applause of the house, Augustus heard a door open at the back of the
room, and on turning saw the Prince Giovanni and his servant come in and
look around the audience as if searching for somebody. As he thought
that they might be looking for him, he went up to them, a little away
from the noise of the theater. He felt somehow shy for having gone away
to amuse himself on what might be the last night of this young man's
life, but Giovanni did not appear to be surprised, and asked if the play
had been good. "An unfortunate thing has happened," he said. "The young
friend of the Prince, who was to have been his second, has been taken
with fits. He is very sick and cannot stop crying. I remembered having
seen you, in the evening, in the company of a boy whom I took, from your
manner toward him, to be a young gentleman of high rank, perhaps from
your own country. I came to beg you to make him take the part of second
tomorrow morning, for neither the Prince nor I wish the affair delayed."

The speech of the Prince brought Augustus into a dilemma. He did not
want to give away the young lady's secret, and reflected that he had
perhaps better let Giovanni remain in the belief that she was really a
boy of his own country, of whom he was somehow in charge. "This young
gentleman," he said, "seems to me to be very young to take part in so
sinister an affair. But as he is here with me, if you will wait I will
go and speak with him."

As he came back to the young lady she was still looking at the stage,
but just then the curtain went down for the last time. He repeated to
her his conversation with the Prince and suggested that they should find
some excuse which would enable her to get away early in the morning, so
that she might keep out of the affair. She thought this over for a
moment, and got up and looked at Giovanni, who was himself, from the
other end of the room, looking at her and Augustus.

"Signore," she said slowly and gravely, "I wish to meet your friend the
Prince Nino, and nothing could give me greater pleasure than to be a
second at this duel. Our families have never been friendly to one
another, but in an affair of honor it is a duty to disregard any matters
of the past. Have the goodness to tell him that my name is Daniele delle
Gherardesci, and that I am at his service."

Prince Giovanni, seeing them looking at him, came up to them, and as
Augustus introduced them to each other the young people exchanged a
greeting of extreme politeness. She was standing with her back to the
stage, and the footlights of the theater made a halo around her head, so
that in her easy and arrogant attitude she looked like a young saint
masquerading as a dandy. The people in the audience, who had been
getting up, on recognizing the Prince stopped to look at him, holding
back a little from the group.

The Prince expressed his gratitude for the courtesy shown to him. "Sir,"
said the girl, "in Egypt, when she was an old lady and he prime
minister, Potiphar's wife once obtained an audience with Joseph to ask
him for the high order, the star of paradise, for her son-in-law. 'I
much dislike being exacting,' she said, 'still, I feel that it is now
such a long time since I asked Your Excellency for anything that I hope
that you will lend me a favorable ear.'

"'Madame,' said the Prime Minister, 'once upon a time I happened to be
in a prison. There I could not see the stars, but I used to dream about
them. I dreamed that because I could not watch them they were running
wild all over heaven, and the shepherds and the camelherds driving their
flocks at night would lose their way. I even once dreamed about you,
Madame, and that when I found the star Aldebaran fallen from the sky, I
picked it up and gave it to you. You pinned it in your fichu and said:
"A thousand thanks, Joseph." I am glad that my dream has more or less
come true. The order which you want for your son-in-law is already
his.'"

Soon after they parted.


VII. The Duel

The sun was not up as yet, but there was a wonderful promise of light in
the air, and not a cloud in the sky. The stone pavement of the terrace
was still wet with dew; a bird, and then another, started singing within
the trees of the garden, and from the road came the shouts of the wagon
drivers, who were afoot early, walking beside their long-horned
bullocks.

Augustus was the first to come out of the house. The coolness of the
morning air, pure as a glass of water, made him draw his breath deeply,
slowly taking in the smell of smoke, flowering trees, and the dust of
the road. It seemed strange to him that there should be death in this
air, and yet he could not doubt that the adversaries were in dead
earnest; and from the rules of the duel, as they had made them up the
previous night, he thought it very likely that one of them would not be
alive to see the sun high up upon this cloudless sky.

The thought of death grew stronger in him as he walked slowly up to the
end of the long terrace. From there he had a wide view of the road with
its rows of trees, winding up and down through the landscape. On the
horizon he distinguished a low, broken, blue line over which a little
cloud was hovering in the air. He thought that when the sun came up this
would prove to be Pisa. So here was the first station on his journey,
for he had letters of introduction to people there. But these people
were hurrying to the last station of their entire journey, and he
reflected that they must have traveled, in a way, much farther than
himself, and have seen more on the road, to be prepared to make an end
to it in this way.

As he turned again he saw Giovanni come out, accompanied by his valet,
and stop to look at the sky just as he himself had done. On seeing the
young Dane, he came up and bade him good morning, and they walked up and
down the terrace together, talking of indifferent matters. If the
duelist was nervous, this was deep down in him and showed itself only in
a new softness and playfulness of manner. At the same time Augustus had
the feeling that he was clinging to the fatefulness of the coming hour
with a passionate tenderness, so that he would not have allowed anything
in the world to take it away from him.

Two of the old Prince's servants came out, carrying a large armchair.
The Prince was too fat to stand up for his duel, and was accustomed to
do his shooting practice sitting down. They asked Augustus where to put
the chair, and they all began to look for a perfectly level place on the
ground. There was to be ten paces between the combatants, and they
measured the distance out carefully, and marked the place where Giovanni
was to stand. The old Prince's servants also brought out a pair of
pistols in a very elegant case, and placed it, together with a glass of
lemonade and a silk handkerchief, on a small table near the old man's
chair. Then they went back into the house. While they were arranging
this, the girl and her old servant came up the long terrace. She looked
pale in her large cloak, and kept a little away from the others. The
doctor, who had been sent for from the village--an old man who smelled
of peppermint and still wore the pigtail and bag of the last
generation--arrived at the same time, and kept standing close to her,
entertaining her with tales of duels of which he had heard and read, and
which had all ended with death. The young Prince, at a distance, looked
at them from time to time. The air seemed to be slowly filling with
light; the song of the birds was suddenly very clear. In a moment, it
was felt, something would happen. Upon the road a large flock of sheep
passed in a cloud of dust which was already tinged with gold.

They were looking toward the door of the _osteria_ when it was opened
and the old Prince walked out, leaning upon his servant's arm. He was
very elegantly dressed in a bottle-green coat, and made up with great
care, and he carried himself with the utmost grace and dignity. It was
plain that he was deeply moved. The sun rose at this moment above the
horizon, but it did not change or dominate the scene any more than did
his arrival. All the others were in some way repressing or disguising
their real feelings, whereas he showed his distress with the simplicity
of an unspoiled child, perfectly confident of the sympathy of his
surroundings. His dark eyes were moist, but frank and gentle, as if
everything in life were natural and sweet to him, and he gave the same
impression of assurance and mastery as a great virtuoso who on his
violin runs up and down all the scales, even to the devil's own thrill,
as if it were child's play. This equilibrium of his mind was as striking
and surprising as the balance of his great body upon his extraordinarily
small and elegant feet. The moment Augustus met his eyes, on that
morning on the terrace, he felt convinced that the shot of this old man
would be deadly. Jupiter himself, with his thunderbolt within the pocket
of his coat-tail, could not have given a stronger impression of
insuperability.

He spoke with courtesy and friendliness to them all, and seemed to make
the doctor his slave from the first instant. The fish-like eyes of the
latter followed the great man's slightest movement. He was in no hurry,
but obviously did not want to draw things out, either. It was clear,
from the moment when he came in, that everything would proceed with the
measure and grace of a perfectly performed minuet.

After a few remarks on the weather and the surroundings, and on his
gratitude to the two seconds, he offered, still standing, the choice of
pistols to his friend, and as Giovanni, with one of them in his hand,
withdrew a little to the place marked for him, he freed himself of his
servant's arm, made a deep bow to his adversary and a sort of great
movement of relief, as if he had now happily come to the end of everyday
existence and the beginning of real life, and, holding the other pistol,
he seated himself in the large armchair, resting, for a moment, the
weapon on his knee. Augustus took up his position at an equal distance
from both duelists, so that each of them should be able to hear his
signal. A faint breeze at this moment ran through the leaves of the
trees in the garden, shaking down the blossoms and spreading their
fragrance.

At the moment when Augustus was clearing his throat to pronounce the
one--two--three of the moment, the slim figure of the girl, who stood
with her face toward him, stepped up to the old Prince, and, lifting one
hand to her hip, she spoke to him in a clear low voice, as if a bird of
the garden had descended on his shoulder to sing to him.

"Allow me, Prince," she said, "to speak to you before you shoot. I have
something to tell you. If I were quite sure about the issue of your duel
I would wait till you have killed your friend, but nobody can know
certainly the ways of providence, and I do not wish you to die before
you have heard what I have to say." All faces had turned toward her, but
she looked only into the still and sorrowful face of the old man. She
looked very young and small, but her deep gravity and great
self-possession gave her figure a terrible importance, as if a young
destroying angel had rushed from the blue sky above them onto the stone
terrace, to stand in judgment there.

"A year ago," she said, "Rosina, your wife, went in the middle of the
night to see her cousin Mario, who was to leave Pisa in the morning, at
the house of her old nurse near the harbor. It was necessary to those
two to meet and decide what they were to do, and Rosina also felt that
her strength was giving way, and that she must see her lover again or
she thought that she might die.

"Rosina, as you know, always had a night lamp burning in her bedroom,
and she dared not put it out on this night for fear that you yourself
might walk through the room, or that one of your spies, her maids, might
look in, and, on finding the room empty, might wake up all the house. So
she asked her best friend, a virgin like herself, one who, by virtue of
a sacred vow, would always be ready to serve her, to take her place in
the bed for this one hour. Between them they bribed your negro servant,
Baba, with twelve yards of crimson velvet and a little Bologna dog
belonging to Rosina's friend--which was all that they possessed in the
world to give away--to let them in and out of the house. They came and
went away dressed like the apothecary's assistant, who would sometimes
be called for to give a clyster to your old housekeeper. Rosina went to
her nurse's house and talked to Mario in the old woman's presence, for
so it had to be. They pledged eternal fidelity and she gave him a letter
to her great-uncle in Rome, and she came back to the _palazzo_ a little
after one o'clock. This, Prince, was my tale, which I wanted you to
know."

They all stood perfectly immobile, like a party of little wooden dolls
placed on that terrace of the inn, in the middle of the great
landscape--Augustus and the old doctor, because they did not know what
this speech meant; the old Prince and Giovanni, because they were too
deeply impressed to move.

At last the old man spoke. "Who," said he, "has sent you to tell me this
today, my pretty young signore?" The girl looked him straight in the
eyes.

"Do you not recognize me, Prince?" she asked. "I am that girl, Agnese
della Gherardesci, who did your wife this service. You have seen me at
your wedding, where I was a bridesmaid, dressed in yellow. Also at one
time you came into Rosina's rooms, and I was playing chess with the
Professor Pacchiani, whom you had sent to talk to her about her duties.
She stood at the window so as not to show that she was crying." After
she had spoken these words the Prince Giovanni never took his eyes off
her face; during all that happened later he kept quite still, like one
of the trees in the garden.

The old Prince sat in the large chair, looking more than ever like a
beautiful and severe old idol made in a mosaic of gold, ivory and ebony.
He looked with interest at the young girl. "I am extremely sorry,
Signora," he said with a deep courtesy. Then again he sat silent.

"And so," he said very slowly after a time, "if Baba had been faithful
to me I should have found the two together at that house near the
harbor, in the night, and I should have had them in my hand?"

"Yes, that you would," said the girl. "But they would not have minded
being killed by you if they had died together."

"No, no, no," said the old Prince, "by no means. How can you imagine
that I would have killed either of them? But I would have taken their
clothes away and told them that I was going to have them killed in a
terrible way, in the morning, and I would have had them shut up together
alone, over the night. When she was frightened or angry her face, her
whole body, blushed like an oleander flower." This gave him stuff for
thought for a long time. He seemed to stiffen more and more into
something inanimate, until suddenly a great wave of high color spread
over his old face.

"And," he exclaimed with deep emotion, "I should have had her, my lovely
child, to play with still!"

There was a long silence; nobody dared to speak in the presence of so
great a pain.

Suddenly he smiled at them all, a very gentle and sweet smile. "Always,"
he said in a high and clear voice, "we fail because we are too small. I
grudged the boy Mario that, in a petty grudge. And in my vanity I
thought that I should prefer an heir to my name, if it was to be, out of
a ducal house. Too small I have been, too small for the ways of God."

"Nino," he said after a minute, "Nino, my friend, forgive me. Give me
your hand." Deeply moved, Giovanni put away his pistol and took the hand
of his old friend. But the old Prince, after having squeezed the young
man's fingers, again took hold of his pistol, as if on guard against a
greater enemy.

His deep dark eyes looked straight in front of him. His mouth was
slightly open, as if he were going to sing. "Carlotta," he said.

Then, with a strange, as if weary, movement, he turned to the right and
fell, with the chair, sideways onto the ground, his heavy weight
striking the stone pavement with a dull thud. The chair lay with its two
legs in the air as he rolled out of it onto the pavement and remained
still. At that moment his pistol, which he was still holding in his
hand, went off, the bullet, taking a wild line up in the air, passed so
close to Augustus's head that he heard its whistle as it passed, like a
bird's singing. It stunned him for a second, and brought back the image
of his wife. When he felt steady on his feet again he saw the doctor,
kneeling beside the old Prince, lifting both arms toward heaven. The
face of the old man slowly took on an ashen color. The paint on his
cheeks and mouth looked like rose and crimson enamel upon silver.

The doctor dropped his arms and put one hand on the breast of the still
figure. After a minute he turned his head and looked back at the people
behind him, his face so terrified that it had no expression in it at
all. Meeting their eyes, it changed. He got up and solemnly declared to
them, "All is over."

They remained quite still around him. The figure of the old Prince,
lying immovably on the ground, still held the center of the picture as
much as if he had been slowly ascending to heaven, and they his
disciples, left behind, gazing up toward him. Only Nino, like one of
those figures which were put into sacred pictures as the portrait of the
man on whose order they were painted, kept somehow his own direction.

The sun, rising in the blue morning sky, lent a misty bloom to the green
broadcloth covering the heavy curves of the old man's body upon the
stone terrace.


VIII. The Freed Captive

When the old Prince's servants had lifted him up and carried him into
the house, Giovanni and Agnese found themselves face to face on the
deserted terrace. Their dark eyes met, and as if this were the most
fatal of her missions on this spring morning, she looked straight at him
for as long a time as it took the landlady's cock--which was a
descendant of the cock in the house of the high priest Caiaphas, and
whose ancestors had been brought to Pisa by the Crusaders--to raise and
finish a long crow. Then she turned to follow the others into the house.
At that he spoke, standing quite still. "Do not go away," he said. She
stood for a moment, waiting, but did not speak to him. "Do not go away,"
he said again, "before you have let me speak to you."

"I cannot think," said she, "that you can have anything to say to me."
He stood for a long time, very pale, as if making a great effort to
collect his voice, then he spoke in a changed and low voice:

    _Lo spirito mio, che gi cotanto_
    _tempo era stato ch'alla sua presenza_
    _non era di stupor tremando affranto_
    _sanza degli occhi aver pi conoscenza,_
    _per occulta virt che da lei mosse_
    _d'antico amor senti la gran potenza._

There was a long and deep silence. She might have been a little statue
in the garden, except for the light morning wind playing with and
lifting her soft locks.

"I had left you," he said, speaking altogether like a person in a dream,
"and was going away, but I turned back at the door. You were sitting up
in the bed. Your face was in the shadow, but the lamp shone on your
shoulders and your back. You were naked, for I had torn off your
clothes. The bed had green and golden curtains, like my forests in the
mountains, and you were like my picture of Daphne, who turns away and is
changed into a laurel. And I was standing in the dark. Then the clock
struck one. For a year," he cried, "I have thought of nothing but that
one moment."

Again the two young people stood quite still. Like the marionettes of
the night before, they were within stronger hands than their own, and
had no idea what was going to happen to them. He spoke again:

    _Di penter s mi punse ivi l'ortica_
    _che di tutt'altre cose, qual mi torse_
    _pi nel suo amor, pi mi si fe' nemica._
    _Tanta riconoscenza il cuor mi morse_
    _ch' io caddi vinto...._

He stopped because, though he had repeated these lines to himself many
times, at the moment he could not remember any more. It was as if he
might have dropped down dead, like his old adversary.

She turned again and looked at him, very severely, and yet her face
expressed the clearness and calm which the sound of poetry produces in
the people who love it. She spoke very slowly to him, in her clear and
sweet voice, like a bird's:

    _...da tema e da vergogna_
    _voglio che tu omai ti disviluppe_
    _e che non parli pi com'uom che sogna._

She looked away for a moment, drew a deep breath, and her voice took on
more force.

    _Sappi che il vaso che il serpente ruppe_
    _fu e non , ma chi n'ha colpa creda_
    _che vendetta di Dio non teme suppe._

With these words she walked away, and though she passed so near to him
that he might have held her back by stretching out his hand, he did not
move or try to touch her, but stood upon the same spot as if he intended
to remain there forever, and followed her with his eyes as she walked up
to the house.

Augustus came out of the door at that same moment, and walked up to meet
her. Though he was deeply affected by the happenings of the morning, and
last of all by the sight of the old Prince, now lying in peace and
dignity on a large bed within the inn, his conscience told him that he
ought to make an effort to get the message of the old lady to Pisa, and
he wanted the girl to help him and guide him there. At the same time he
was, now that he understood more of the whole affair which had brought
on the morning's tragedy, shy of approaching her, as one of the
principal figures in it, and talking to her of such trivial matters as
roads and coaches. She met him, however, as if he had been an old friend
whom she was happy to meet again. She took his hand and looked at him.
She was changed, like a statute come to life, he thought.

She listened with great interest to all he had to tell her, and was
naturally eager to bring the message to her friend as soon as possible.
She suggested that they travel together in her phaton, which would be
quicker than his coach. She told him that she would drive it herself.

"My friend," she said, "let us go away. Let us go to Pisa as quickly as
we can. For I am free. I can choose where I will go, I can think of
tomorrow. I think that tomorrow is going to be lovely. I can remember
that I am seventeen, and that by the mercy of God I have sixty years
more to live. I am no more shut up within one hour. God!" she said with
a sudden deep shudder, "I cannot remember it now if I try."

She looked like a young charioteer who is confident of winning his race.
It was clear that the idea of speed was at this moment the most
attractive of all ideas to her. As they were going into the house she
looked back at the terrace.

"We have all been wrong," she said. "That old man was great and might
well have been loved. While he was alive we wished for his death, but
now that he is dead I think that we all wish that he were back."

"That," said Augustus, who had been reflecting upon his own life, "may
make us realize that every human being whom we meet and get to know is,
after all, something in our minds, like a tree planted in our gardens or
a piece of furniture within our house. It may be better to keep them and
try to put them to some use, than to cast them away and have nothing at
all there in the end." She thought of this for a little while. "Then the
old Prince shall be," said she, "within the garden of my mind a great
fountain, made of black marble, near which it is always cool and fresh,
and from which great cascades of water are rushing and playing. I shall
go and sit there sometimes, when I have much to think of. If I had been
Rosina I would not have tried to get away from him. I would have made
him happy. It would have been good if he had been happy; it is hard to
make anybody unhappy."

Augustus, who thought he heard the note of a late regret in her voice,
said in order to console her: "Remember now that you have saved the
other's life." She changed color and was silent for a moment. Then she
turned and looked at him with deep serenity. "Who," she said, "would
have stood by and heard a man so unjustly accused?"

As soon as her carriage was ready they started for Pisa and went at a
great speed. The day was beginning to get warm, the road was dusty, and
the shadows of the trees were keeping close underneath them. Augustus
had left his address with the old doctor in case there would have to be
an inquest, but after all the old Prince had died a natural death.


IX. The Parting Gift

Count Augustus von Schimmelmann had been staying in Pisa for more than
three weeks and had come to like the place. He had had a love affair
with a Swedish lady, some years older than himself, who lived in Pisa to
keep away from her husband, and had a small opera stage on which she
appeared to her friends. She was a disciple of Swedenborg, and told
Augustus that she had had a vision of herself and him in the next world.
What really interested him more were the attempts of two priests, one
old and one young, to convert him to the Church of Rome. He had no
intention of joining it, but it surprised and pleased him that anyone
should chose to occupy himself so much with his soul, and he took much
trouble in explaining to the churchmen his ideas and states of mind. He
could, however, foresee that this affair of spiritual seduction could
not go on forever, but would, like, worse luck, all affairs of
seduction, have to come to an end one way or another, and he had begun
to give much of his time to a secret political society to which he had
been introduced as coming from a freer country. At their sances he had
met one of the genuine old Jacobins, an exile, a former member of the
Mountain, who had been a friend of Robespierre. Augustus often visited
him in a little dark and dirty room high up in an old house, and
discussed tyranny and freedom with him. He was also taking painting
lessons, and had begun to copy an old picture in the gallery.

One day he received a letter from the old Countess di Gampocorta, who
was at the time in residence at her villa close to Pisa and asked him to
come and see her. She wrote with great friendliness and gratitude and
gave him her news. On being informed, at the same moment, of her
grandmother's accident and the death of her former husband, the young
Rosina had been brought to bed of a boy, who had been christened Carlo
after his great-grandmother, and whom she described as a very wonderful
baby. Both the old and the young woman were well again, though the old
Countess wrote that she had given up all hope of getting back the use of
her right hand, and they were longing to express to him their thanks for
the service that he had done them in their hour of need.

Augustus drove out to the old lady's villa on the afternoon of an
extremely hot day. As he was nearing the place a thunderstorm which had
hung over Pisa for three days broke loose. A strange sulphurous color
and smell filled the air, and the large dark trees near the road on
which they were driving were bent down by the violent gusts of wind. A
few tremendous flashings of lightning seemed to strike quite close to
the carriage, and were followed by long wild roarings of thunder. Then
came the rain in heavy warm drops, and in a moment the whole landscape
was veiled to him, within his covered carriage, behind streaks of gray
and luminous water. As they drove over a stone bridge with a low
balustrade he saw the rain strike the dark river like many hundred
arrowheads. They climbed up a road along a steep and rocky hill, now
slippery with the rain, and as they came to a stop at the bottom of a
long stone stair in front of the house, a servant with a large umbrella
came running down to protect the visitor on his ascent to the house.

In the very large room opening onto a long stone terrace with a view
over the river, the quick drumming of heavy raindrops upon the stones
was as distinct as if it had been in the room itself. With it came,
through the tall open windows, the smell of the sudden freshness and
moisture of the air, and of hot stones cooling under water. The room
itself smelled of roses. At the other end of it an old _abbate_ had been
giving a little girl a lesson on the piano, but they had stopped because
the noise of the thunder and rain interfered with their counting their
measures, and they were now looking out over the valley and the river.

The old Countess and the young mother, on a sofa, had had the baby
brought in to look at. He was in the arms of his nurse, a very large
magnificent young woman in pink and red, like an oleander flower, and
there looked fantastically small, like a little roasted apple to which
had been attached a great stream of lace and ribbons. Their attention
was divided between the child and the storm, and the two had brought
them into a state of exultation, as if their lives had at this hour
reached their zenith.

The old lady, who had meant to get up to meet him, was so overcome with
her feelings at the sight of Augustus that she could not move. Her eyes,
under the old eyelids that were like crape, filled with tears, which
from time to time during their conversation rolled down her face. She
kissed him on both cheeks, and introduced him with deep emotion to her
granddaughter, who was in reality as lovely as any Madonna he had seen
in Italy, and to the baby. Augustus had never been able to feel anything
but fear in the presence of very young children--though they might, he
thought, be of some interest as a kind of promise--and he was surprised
to realize that the women were all of the opinion that the baby at this
stage had reached its very acme of perfection, and that it was a tragic
thing that it should ever have to change. This view, that the human race
culminates at birth to decline ever after, impressed him as being easier
to live up to than his own.

The old lady had changed since the day when he had met her on the road.
The love for a male creature, which she had told him that she had thus
far been unable to feel, had rounded out her life in a great and sweet
harmony. She told him so herself in the course of their talk. "When I
was a little girl," she said, "I was told never to show a fool a thing
half finished. But what else does the Lord himself do to us during all
our lives? If I had been shown this child from the beginning I should
have been docile and have let the Lord ride me in any direction he
wanted. Life is a mosaic work of the Lord's, which he keeps filling in
bit by bit. If I had seen this little bit of bright color as the
centerpiece, I would have understood the pattern, and would not have
shaken it all to pieces so many times, and given the good Lord so much
trouble in putting it together again." Otherwise she talked mostly about
her accident and the afternoon that they had spent together at the inn.
She talked with that great delight in remembering which gives value to
any occurrence of the past, however insignificant it may have been at
the moment.

A servant brought wine and some very beautiful peaches, and the young
father came in and was introduced to the guest; but he played no greater
part in the picture than the youngest Magus of the adoration, the old
Countess having taken for herself the part of Joseph.

When the rain had eased off the old lady took Augustus to the window to
see the view. "My friend," she said, while they were standing there
together, a little away from the others, "I can never rightly express my
gratitude to you, but I want to give you a small token of it to remember
me by, when you are far away, and I hope that you will give me the
pleasure of accepting it."

Augustus was looking out at the landscape below. A vaguely familiar note
within it struck him and made him feel slightly giddy.

"When we first met," she went on, "I told you that I had loved three
persons in the course of my life. About the two you know. The third and
first was a girl of my own age, a friend from a far country, whom I knew
for a short time only and then lost. But we had promised to remember
each other forever, and the memory of her has given me strength many
times in the vicissitudes of life. When we parted, with many tears, we
gave each other a gift of remembrance. Because this thing is precious to
me and a token of a real friendship, I want you to take it with you."

With these words she took from her pocket a small object and handed it
to him.

Augustus looked at it, and unconsciously his hand went up to his breast.
It was a small smelling-bottle in the shape of a heart. On it was
painted a landscape with trees, and in the background a white house. As
he gazed at it he realized that the house was his own place in Denmark.
He recognized the high roof of Lindenburg, even the two old oaks in
front of the gate, and the long line of the lime tree avenue behind the
house. The stone seat under the oaks had been painted with great care.
Underneath, on a painted ribbon, were the words _Amiti sincre_.

He could feel his own little bottle in his waistcoat pocket, and came
near to taking it out and showing it to the old lady. He felt that this
would have made a tale which she would forever have cherished and
repeated; that it might even come to be her last thought on her
deathbed. But he was held back by the feeling that there was, in this
decision of fate, something which was meant for him only--a value, a
depth, a resort even, in life which belonged to him alone, and which he
could not share with anybody else any more than he would be able to
share his dreams.

He thanked the old lady with much feeling, and as she realized how much
her gift was being appreciated she answered him back with pride and
dignity.

He parted from his old friend and the young couple with all the
expressions of sincere friendship and took the road to Pisa.

The rain had stopped. The afternoon air was almost cold. Golden sunlight
and deep quiet blue shadows divided the landscape between them. A
rainbow stood low in the sky.

Augustus took a small mirror from his pocket. Holding it in the flat of
his hand, he looked thoughtfully into it.




THE SUPPER AT ELSINORE


Upon the corner of a street of Elsinore, near the harbor, there stands a
dignified old gray house, built early in the eighteenth century, and
looking down reticently at the new times grown up around it. Through the
long years it has been worked into a unity, and when the front door is
opened on a day of north-north-west the door of the corridor upstairs
will open out of sympathy. Also when you tread upon a certain step of
the stair, a board of the floor in the parlor will answer with a faint
echo, like a song.

It had been in the possession of the family De Coninck for many years,
but after the state bankruptcy of 1813 and simultaneous tragic
happenings within the family itself, they gave it up and moved to their
house in Copenhagen. An old woman in a white cap looked after the old
house for them, with a man to assist her, and, living in the old rooms,
would think and talk of old days. The two daughters of the house had
never married, and were now too old for it. The son was dead. But in
summers of long ago--so Madam Bk would recount--on Sunday afternoons
when the weather was fine, the Papa and Mamma De Coninck, with the three
children, used to drive in a landaulet to the country house of the old
lady, the grandmother, where they would dine, as the custom was then, at
three o'clock, outside on the lawn under a large elm tree which, in
June, scattered its little round and flat brown seeds thickly upon the
grass. They would partake of duck with green peas and of strawberries
with cream, and the little boy would run to and fro, in white nankeens,
to feed his grandmother's Bolognese dogs.

The two young sisters used to keep, in cages, the many birds presented
to them by their seafaring admirers. When asked if they did not play the
harp, old Madam Bk would shrug her shoulders over the impossibility of
giving any account of the many perfections of the young ladies. As to
their adorers, and the proposals which had been made them, this was a
hopeless theme to enter upon. There was no end to it.

Old Madam Bk, who had herself been married for a short time to a
sailor, and had, when he was drowned, rentered the service of the De
Coninck family as a widow, thought it a great pity that neither of the
lovely sisters had married. She could not quite get over it. Toward the
world she held the theory that they had not been able to find any man
worthy of them, except their brother. But she herself felt that her
doctrine would not hold water. If this had been the two sisters'
trouble, they ought to have put up with less than the ideal. She
herself, on their behalf, would have done so, although it would have
cost her much. Also, in her heart she knew better. She was seventeen
years older than the elder sister, Fernande, whom they called Fanny, and
eighteen years older than the younger, Eliza, who was born on the day of
the fall of the Bastille, and she had been with them for the greater
part of her life. Even if she was unable to put it into words, she felt
keenly enough, as with her own body and soul, the doom which hung over
the breed, and which tied these sisters and this brother together and
made impossible for them any true relation to other human beings.

While they had been young, no event in the social world of Elsinore had
been a success without the lovely De Coninck sisters. They were the
heart and soul of all the gayety of the town. When they entered its
ballrooms, the ceilings of sedate old merchants' houses seemed to lift a
little, and the walls to spring out in luminous Ionian columns, bound
with vine. When one of them opened the ball, light as a bird, bold as a
thought, she consecrated the gathering to the gods of true joy of life,
from whose presence care and envy are banished. They could sing duets
like a pair of nightingales in a tree, and imitate without effort and
without the slightest malice the voices of all the _beau monde_ of
Elsinore, so as to make the paunches of their father's friends, the
matadors of the town, shake with laughter around their card tables. They
could make up a charade or a game of forfeits in no time, and when they
had been out for their music lessons, or to the Promenade, they came
back brimful of tales of what had happened, or of tales out of their own
imaginations, one whim stumbling over the other.

And then, within their own rooms, they would walk up and down the floor
and weep, or sit in the window and look out over the harbor and wring
their hands in their laps, or lie in bed at night and cry bitterly, for
no reason in the world. They would talk, then, of life with the black
bitterness of two Timons of Athens, and give Madam Bk an uncanny
feeling, as in an atmosphere of corrodent rust. Their mother, who did
not have the curse in her blood, would have been badly frightened had
she been present at these moments, and would have suspected some unhappy
love affair. Their father would have understood them, and have grieved
on their behalf, but he was occupied with his affairs, and did not come
into his daughters' rooms. Only this elderly female servant, whose
temperament was as different as possible from theirs, would understand
them in her way, and would keep it all within her heart, as they did
themselves, with mingled despair and pride. Sometimes she would try to
comfort them. When they cried out, "Hanne, is it not terrible that there
is so much lying, so much falsehood, in the world?" she said, "Well,
what of it? It would be worse still if it were actually true, all that
they tell."

Then again the girls would get up, dry their tears, try on their new
bonnets before the glass, plan their theatricals and sleighing parties,
shock and gladden the hearts of their friends, and have the whole thing
over again. They seemed as unable to keep from one extremity as from the
other. In short, they were born melancholiacs, such as make others happy
and are themselves helplessly unhappy, creatures of playfulness, charm
and salt tears, of fine fun and everlasting loneliness.

Whether they had ever been in love, old Madam Bk herself could not
tell. They used to drive her to despair by their hard skepticism as to
any man being in love with them, when she, indeed, knew better, when she
saw the swains of Elsinore grow pale and worn, go into exile or become
old bachelors from love of them. She also felt that could they ever have
been quite convinced of a man's love of them, that would have meant
salvation to these young flying Dutchwomen. But they stood in a strange,
distorted relation to the world, as if it had been only their reflection
in a mirror which they had been showing it, while in the background and
the shadow the real woman remained a looker-on. She would follow with
keen attention the movements of the lover courting her image, laughing
to herself at the impossibility of the consummation of their love, when
the moment should come for it, her own heart hardening all the time. Did
she wish that the man would break the glass and the lovely creature
within it, and turn around toward herself? Oh, that she knew to be out
of the question. Perhaps the lovely sisters derived a queer pleasure out
of the adoration paid to their images in the mirror. They could not do
without it in the end.

Because of this particular turn of mind they were predestined to be old
maids. Now that they were real old maids, of fifty-two and fifty-three,
they seemed to have come to better terms with life, as one bears up with
a thing that will soon be over. That they were to disappear from the
earth without leaving any trace whatever did not trouble them, for they
had always known that it would be so. It gave them a certain
satisfaction to feel that they were disappearing gracefully. They could
not possibly putrefy, as would most of their friends, having already
been, like elegant spiritual mummies, laid down with myrrh and aromatic
herbs. When they were in their sweet moods, and particularly in their
relations with the younger generation, the children of their friends,
they even exhaled a spiced odor of sanctity, which the young people
remembered all their lives.

The fatal melancholy of the family had come out in a different manner in
Morten, the boy, and in him had fascinated Madam Bk even to possession.
She never lost patience with him, as she sometimes did with the girls,
because of the fact that he was male and she female, and also by reason
of the true romance which surrounded him as it had never surrounded his
sisters. He had been, indeed, in Elsinore, as another highborn young
dandy before him, the observed of all observers, the glass of fashion
and the mold of form. Many were the girls of the town who had remained
unmarried for his sake, or who had married late in life one having a
likeness, perhaps not quite _en face_ and not quite in profile, to that
god-like young head which had, by then, forever disappeared from the
horizon. And there was even the girl who had been, in the eyes of all
the world, engaged to be married to Morten, herself married now, with
children--_aber frage nur nicht wie_! She had lost that radiant fairness
which had in his day given her the name, in Elsinore, of "golden
lambkin," so that where that fairy creature had once pranced in the
streets a pale and quiet lady now trod the pavement. But still this was
the girl whom, when he had stepped out of his barge on a shining March
day at the pier of Elsinore, with the whole population of the town
waving and shouting to him, he had lifted from the ground and held in
his arms, while all the world had swung up and down around her, had
whirled fans and long streamers in all the hues of the rainbow.

Morten De Coninck had been more reticent of manner than his sisters. He
had no need to exert himself. When he came into a room, in his quiet
way, he owned and commanded it. He had all the beauty of limb and
elegance of hands and feet of the ladies of the family, but not their
fineness of feature. His nose and mouth seemed to have been cut by a
rougher hand. But he had the most striking, extraordinarily noble and
serene forehead. People talking to him lifted their eyes to that broad
pure brow as if it had been radiant with the diamond tiara of a young
emperor, or the halo of a saint. Morten De Coninck looked as if he could
not possibly know either guilt or fear. Very likely he did not. He
played the part of a hero to Elsinore for three years.

This was the time of the Napoleonic wars, when the world was trembling
on its foundations. Denmark, in the struggle of the Titans, had tried to
remain free and to go her own ways, and had had to pay for it.
Copenhagen had been bombarded and burned. On that September night, when
the sky over the town had flamed red to all Sealand, the great chiming
bells of Frue Kirke, set going by the fire, had played, on their own,
Luther's hymn, _Ein fester Burg ist unser Gott_, just before the tall
tower fell into ruins. To save the capital the government had had to
surrender the fleet. The proud British frigates had led the warships of
Denmark--the apples of her eye, a string of pearls, a flight of captive
swans--up through the Sound. The empty ports cried to heaven, and shame
and hatred were in all hearts.

It was in the course of the struggles and great events of the following
years of 1807 and 1808 that the flotilla of privateers sprang up, like
live sparks from a smoking ruin. Driven forth by patriotism, thirst of
revenge, and hope of gain, the privateers came from all the coasts and
little islands of Denmark, manned by gentlemen, ferrymen, and fishermen,
idealists and adventurers--gallant seamen all of them. As you took out
your letter of marque you made your own cause one with that of the
bleeding country; you had the right to strike a blow at the enemy
whenever you had the chance, and you might come out of the rencounter a
rich man. The privateer stood in a curious relationship to the state: it
was a sort of acknowledged maritime love affair, a left-handed marriage,
carried through with passionate devotion on both sides. If she did not
wear the epaulets and sanctifying bright metal of legitimate union, she
had at least the burning red kiss of the crown of Denmark on her lips,
and the freedom of the concubine to enchant her lord by these wild whims
which queens do not dream of. The royal navy itself--such as was left of
it in those ships which had been away from Copenhagen that fatal
September week--took a friendly view of the privateer flotilla and lived
with it on congenial terms; on such terms, probably, as those on which
Rachel lived with her maid Bilhah, who accomplished what she could not
do herself. It was a great time for brave men. There were cannons
singing once more in the Danish fairways, here and there, and where they
were least expected, for the privateers very rarely worked together;
every one of them was out on its own. Incredible, heroic deeds were
performed, great prizes were snatched away under the very guns of the
conveying frigates and were brought into port, by the triumphant wild
little boats with their rigging hanging down in rags, amid shouts of
exultation. Songs were made about it all. There can rarely have been a
class of heroes who appealed more highly and deeply to the heart and
imagination of the common people, and to all the boys, of a nation.

It was soon found that the larger type of ship did not do well for this
traffic. The ferryboat or snow, with a station bill of twelve to twenty
men, and with six to ten swivel guns, handy and quick in emergencies,
was the right bird for the business. The nautical skill of the captain
and his knowledge of the seaways played a great part, and the personal
bravery of the crew, their artfulness with the guns, and, in boarding,
with hand weapons, carried the point. Here were the honors of war to be
won; and not only honor, but gold; and not gold alone, but revenge upon
the violator, sweet to the heart. And when they came in, these old and
young sea dogs, covered with snow, their whole rigging sometimes coated
with ice until the ship looked as if it were drawn with chalk upon a
dark sea, they had their hour of glory behind them, but a great
excitement in front, for they made a tremendous stir in the little
seaport towns. Then came the judgment of the prize, and the sale of the
salved goods, which might be of great value. The government took its
share, and each man on board came in for his, from the captain, gunner,
and mate to the boys, who received one-third of a man's share. A boy
might have gone to sea possessing nothing but his shirt, trousers and
trouser-strap, and come back with those badly torn and red-stained, and
a tale of danger and high seas to tell his friends, and might be
jingling five hundred riksdaler in his pocket a fortnight later, when
the sale was over. The Jews of Copenhagen and Hamburg, each in three
tall hats, one on top of the other, made their appearance upon the spot
quickly, to play a great rle at the sale, or, beforehand, to coax the
prize-marks out of the pockets of impatient combatants.

Soon there shot up, like new comets, the names of popular heroes and
their boats, around whose fame myths gathered daily. There was Jens
Lind, of the _Cort Adeler_, the one they called "Velvet" Lind because he
was such a swell, and who played the rle of a great nabob for some
years, and then, when all gain was spent, finished up as a bear-leader.
There was Captain Raaber, of _The Revenger_, who was something of a
poet; the brothers Wulffsen, of _The Mackerel_ and the _Madame Clark_,
who were gentlemen of Copenhagen; and Christen Kock of the _olus_,
whose entire crew--every single man--was killed or wounded in her fight
with a British frigate off Lss; and there was young Morten De Coninck,
of the _Fortuna II_.

When Morten first came to his father and asked him to equip a privateer
for him, the heart of old Mr. De Coninck shrank a little from the idea.
There were many rich and respectable shipowners of Copenhagen, some of
them greater merchants than he, who had in these days launched their
privateers, and Mr. De Coninck, who yielded to no one in patriotic
feeling, had himself suffered heavy losses at the hands of the British.
But the business was painful to him. There was to his mind something
revolting in the idea of attacking merchant ships, even if they did
carry contraband. It seemed to him like assaulting ladies or shooting
albatrosses. Morten had to turn for support to his father's cousin,
Fernand De Coninck, a rich old bachelor of Elsinore whose mother was
French and who was an enthusiastic partisan of the Emperor Napoleon.
Morten's two sisters masterfully assisted him in getting around Uncle
Fernand, and in November, 1807, the young man put to sea in his own
boat. The uncle never regretted his generosity. The whole business
rejuvenated him by twenty years, and he possessed, in the end, a
collection of souvenirs from the ships of the enemy that gave him great
pleasure.

The _Fortuna II_ of Elsinore, with a crew of twelve and four swivel
guns, received her letter of marque on the second of November--was not
this date, and the dates of exploits following it, written in Madam
Bk's heart, like the name of Calais in Queen Mary's, now, thirty-three
years after? Already on the fourth the _Fortuna II_ surprised an English
brig off Hveen. An English man-of-war, hastening to the spot, shot at
the privateer, but her crew managed to cut the cables of the prize and
bring her into safety under the guns of Kronborg.

On the twentieth of November the boat had a great day. From a convoy she
cut off the British brig, _The William_, and the snow, _Jupiter_, which
had a cargo of sail cloth, stoneware, wine, spirits, coffee, sugar and
silks. The cargo was unloaded at Elsinore, but both prizes were brought
to Copenhagen, where they were condemned. Two hundred Jews came to
Elsinore to bid at the auction sale of the _Jupiter's_ cargo, on the
thirtieth of December. Morten himself bought in a piece of white brocade
which was said to have been made in China and sent from England for the
wedding dress of the Czar's sister. At this time Morten had just become
engaged, and all Elsinore laughed and smiled at him as he walked away
with the parcel under his arm.

Many times he was pursued by the enemy's men-of-war. Once, on the
twenty-seventh of May, in flight from a British frigate, he ran ashore
near Aarhus, but escaped by throwing his ballast of iron overboard, and
got in under the guns of the Danish batteries. The burghers of Aarhus
provided the illustrious young privateers-man with new iron for his
ballast, free of charge. It was said that the little seamstresses
brought him their pressing-irons, and kissed them in parting with them,
to bring him luck.

On the fifteenth of January the _Fortuna_ had, together with the
privateer _Three Friends_, captured six of the enemy's ships, and with
these was bearing in with Drogden, to have them realized in Copenhagen,
when one of the prizes ran ashore on the Middelgrund. It was a big
British brig loaded with sail cloth, valued at 100,000 riksdaler, which
the privateers had, on the morning of the same day, cut off from an
English convoy. The British men-of-war were still pursuing them. At the
sight of the accident the pursuing ships instantly dispatched a strong
detachment of six longboats to recapture their brig. The privateers, on
their side, were not disposed to give her up, and beat up against the
British, who were driven away by a fire of grapeshot and had to give up
the recapture. But the ship was to be lost all the same. The
prize-master on board her, at the sight of the enemy's boats with their
greatly superior forces, had put fire to the brig so that she should not
fall again into the hands of the British. The fire spread so violently
that the ship could not be saved, and all night the people of Copenhagen
watched the tall, terrible beacon to the north. The five remaining
prizes were taken to Copenhagen.

It was in the summer of the same year that the _Fortuna II_ came in for
a life-and-death fight off Elsinore. She had by then become a thorn in
the flesh of the British, and on a dark night in August they made ready,
from the men-of-war stationed on the Swedish coast, to capture her. Two
big launches were sent off, their tholes bound with wool. The crew of
the privateer had turned in, and only young Morten himself and his
balker were on deck when the launches, manned by thirty-five sailors,
grated against the _Fortuna's_ sides, and the boarding pikes were
planted in her boards. From the launches shots were fired, but on board
the privateer there was neither time nor room for using the guns. It
became a struggle of axes, broadswords and knives. The enemy swarmed on
deck from all sides; men were cutting at the chain-cable and hanging in
the figurehead. But it did not last long. The _Fortuna's_ men put up a
desperate fight, and in twenty minutes the deck was cleared. The enemy
jumped into its boats and pushed off. The guns were used then, and three
canister shots were fired after the retreating British. They left twelve
dead and wounded men on the deck of the _Fortuna II_.

At Elsinore the people had heard the musketry fire from the longboats,
but no reply from the _Fortuna_. They gathered at the harbor and along
the ramparts of Kronborg, but the night was dark, and although the sky
was just reddening in the east, no one could see what was happening.
Then, just as the first light of morning was filling the dull air, three
shots rang out, one after another, and the boys of Elsinore said that
they could see the white smoke run along the dark waves. The _Fortuna
II_ bore in with Elsinore half an hour later. She looked black against
the eastern sky. It was apparent that her rigging had been badly
crippled, and gradually the people on land were able to distinguish the
little dark figures on board, and the red on the deck. It was said that
there was not a single broadsword or knife on board that was not red,
and all the netting from stern to main chains had been soaked with
blood. There was not one man on board, either, who had not been wounded,
but only one was badly hurt. This was a West-Indian Negro, from the
Danish colonies there--"black in skin but a Dane in heart," the
newspapers of Elsinore said the next day. Morten himself, fouled with
gunpowder, a bandage down over one eye, white in the morning light and
wild still from the fight, lifted both his arms high in the air to the
cheering crowd on shore.

In the autumn of that same year the whole privateer trade was suddenly
prohibited. It was thought that it drew the enemy's frigates to the
Danish seas, and constituted a danger to the country. Also, it was on
many sides characterized as a wild and inhuman way of fighting. This
broke the hearts of many gallant sailors, who left their decks to wander
all over the world, unable to settle down again to their work in the
little towns. The country grieved over her birds of prey.

To Morten De Coninck, all people agreed, the new order came
conveniently. He had gathered his laurels and could now marry and settle
down in Elsinore.

He was then engaged to Adrienne Rosenstand, the falcon to the white
dove. She was the bosom friend of his sisters, who treated her much as
if they had created her themselves, and took pleasure in dressing up her
loveliness to its greatest advantage. They had refined and decided
tastes, and spent as much time on the choice of her trousseau as if it
had been their own. Between themselves they were not always so lenient
to their frail sister-in-law, but would passionately deplore to one
another the mating of their brother with a little _bourgeoise_, an
ornamental bird out of the poultry yard of Elsinore. Had they thought
the matter over a little, they ought to have congratulated themselves.
The timidity and conventionality of Adrienne still allowed them to shine
unrivaled within their sphere of daring and fantasy; but what figures
would the falcon's sisters have cut, had he, as might well have
happened, brought home a young eagle-bride?

The wedding was to take place in May, when the country around Elsinore
is at its loveliest, and all the town was looking forward to the day.
But it did not come off in the end. On the morning of the marriage the
bridegroom was found to be missing, and he was never seen again in
Elsinore. The sisters, dissolved in tears of grief and shame, had to
take the news to the bride, who fell down in a swoon, lay ill for a long
time, and never quite recovered. The whole town seemed to have been
struck dumb by the blow, and to wrap up its head in sorrow. No one made
much out of this unique opportunity for gossip. Elsinore felt the loss
its own, and the fall.

No direct message from Morten De Coninck ever reached Elsinore. But in
the course of the years strange rumors of him drifted in from the West.
He was a pirate, it was said first of all, and that was not an
unheard-of fate for a homeless privateer. Then it was rumored that he
was in the wars in America, and had distinguished himself. Later it was
told that he had become a great planter and slave-owner in the Antilles.
But even these rumors were lightly handled by the town. His name was
hardly ever mentioned, until, after long years, he could be talked about
as a figure out of a fairy tale, like Bluebeard or Sindbad the Sailor.
In the drawing-rooms of the De Coninck house he ceased to exist after
his wedding day. They took his portrait down from the wall. Madame De
Coninck took her death over the loss of her son. She had a great deal of
life in her. She was a stringed instrument from which her children had
many of their high and clear notes. If it were never again to be used,
if no waltz, serenade, or martial march were ever to be played upon it
again, it might as well be put away. Death was no more unnatural to her
than silence.

To Morten's sisters the infrequent news of their brother was manna on
which they kept their hearts alive in a desert. They did not serve it to
their friends, nor to their parents; but within the distillery of their
own rooms they concocted it according to many recipes. Their brother
would come back an admiral in a foreign fleet, his breast covered with
unknown stars, to marry the bride waiting for him, or come back wounded,
broken in health, but highly honored, to die in Elsinore. He would land
at the pier. Had he not done so, and had they not seen it with their own
eyes? But even this spare food came in time to be seasoned with much
pungent bitterness. They themselves, in the end, would rather have
starved than have swallowed it, had they had the choice. Morten, it was
told, far from being a distinguished naval officer or a rich planter,
had indeed been a pirate in the waters around Cuba and Trinidad--one of
the last of the breed. But, pursued by the ships _Albion_ and _Triumph_,
he had lost his ship near Port of Spain, and himself had a narrow
escape. He had tried to make his living in many hard ways and had been
seen by somebody in New Orleans, very poor and sick. The last thing that
his sisters heard of him was that he had been hanged.

From Morten's wedding day, Madam Bk had carried her wound in silence
for thirty years. The sophistries of his sisters she never chose to make
use of; she let them go in at one ear and out at the other. She was very
humble and attentive to the deserted bride, when she again visited the
family, yet she never showed her much sympathy. Also she knew, as was
ever the case in the house, more than any other inhabitant of it. It
cannot be said that she had seen the catastrophe approach, but she had
had strange warnings in her dreams. The bridegroom had been in the
habit, from childhood, of coming and sitting with her in her little room
from time to time. He had done that while they were making great
preparations for his happiness. Over her needlework and her glasses she
had watched his face. And she, who often worked late at night, and who
would be up in the linen-room before the early summer sun was above the
Sound, was aware of many comings and goings unknown to the rest of the
household. Something had happened to the engaged people. Had he begged
her to take him and hold him, so that it should no longer be in his
power to leave her? Madam Bk could not believe that any girl could
refuse Morten anything. Or had she yielded, and found the magic
ineffective? Or had she been watching him, daily slipping away from her,
and still had not the strength to offer the sacrifice which might have
held him?

Nobody would ever know, for Adrienne never talked of these things;
indeed, she could not have done so if she had wanted to. Ever since her
recovery from her long illness she seemed to be a little hard of
hearing. She could only hear the things which could be talked about very
loudly, and finished her life in an atmosphere of high-shrieked
platitudes.

For fifteen years the lovely Adrienne waited for her bridegroom, then
she married.

The two sisters De Coninck attended the wedding. They were magnificently
attired. This was really the last occasion upon which they appeared as
the belles of Elsinore, and although they were then in their thirties,
they swept the floor with the young girls of the town. Their wedding
present to the bride was no less imposing. They gave her their mother's
diamond earrings and brooch, a _parure_ unique in Elsinore. They had
likewise robbed the windows of their drawing-rooms of all their flowers
to adorn the altar, this being a December wedding. All the world thought
that the two proud sisters were doing these honors to their friend to
make amends for what she had suffered at their brother's hands. Madam
Bk knew better. She knew that they were acting out of deep gratitude,
that the diamond _parure_ was a thankoffering. For now the fair Adrienne
was no longer their brother's virgin widow, and held no more the place
next to him in the eyes of all the world. When the gentle intruder now
walked out of their house, the least they could do was to follow her to
the door with deep courtesies. To her children, later in life, they also
for the same reason showed the most excessive kindness, leaving them, in
the end, most of their worldly goods; and to all this they were driven
by their thankfulness to that pretty brood of ornamental chickens out of
the poultry yard of Elsinore, because they were not their brother's
children.

Madam Bk herself had been asked to the wedding, and had a pleasant
evening. When the ice was being served, she suddenly thought of the
icebergs in the great black ocean, of which she had read, and of a
lonely young man gazing at them from the deck of a ship, and at that
moment her eyes met those of Miss Fanny, at the other end of the table.
These dark eyes were all ablaze, and shone with tears. With all her De
Coninck strength the distinguished old maid was suppressing something: a
great longing, or shame, or triumph.

But there was another girl of Elsinore whose story may rightly be told,
very briefly, in this place. That was an innkeeper's daughter of
Sletten, by the name of Katrine, of the blood of the charcoal burners
who live near Elsinore and are in many ways like gypsies. She was a big,
handsome, dark and red-cheeked girl, and was said to have been, at a
time, the sweetheart of Morten De Coninck. This young woman had a sad
fate. She was thought to have gone a little out of her head. She took to
drink and to worse ways, and died young. To this girl, Eliza, the
younger of the sisters, showed great kindness. Twice she started her in
a little milliner's shop, for the girl was talented and had an eye for
elegance, and advertised it herself by wearing no bonnets but hers, and
to the end of her life she gave her money. When, after many scandals in
Elsinore, Katrine moved to Copenhagen, and took up her residence in the
street of Dybensgade, where, in general, the ladies of the town never
set foot, Eliza De Coninck still went to see her, and seemed to come
back having gathered strength and a secret joy from her visits. For this
was the way in which a girl beloved and deserted by Morten De Coninck
ought to behave. This plain ruin, misery and degradation were the only
harmonious accompaniment to the happenings, which might resound in and
rejoice the heart of the sister while she stopped her ears to the words
of comfort of the world. Eliza sat at Katrine's deathbed like a witch
attentively observing the working of the deadly potion, holding her
breath for the fulfillment of it.

The winter of 1841 was unusually severe. The cold began before
Christmas, but in January it turned into a deadly still, continuous
frost. A little snow in spare hard grains came down from time to time,
but there was no wind, no sun, no movement in air or water. The ice was
thick upon the Sound, so that people could walk from Elsinore to Sweden
to drink coffee with their friends, the fathers of whom had met their
own fathers to the roar of cannons on the same waters, when the waves
had gone high. They looked like little rows of small black tin soldiers
upon the infinite gray plane. But at night, when the lights from the
houses and the dull street lamps reached only a little way out on the
ice, this flatness and whiteness of the sea was very strange, like the
breath of death over the world. The smoke from the chimneys went
straight up in the air. The oldest people did not remember another such
winter.

Old Madam Bk, like other people, was very proud of this extraordinarily
cold weather, and much excited about it, but during these winter months
she changed. She probably was near her end, and was going off quickly.
It began by her fainting in the dining-room one morning when she had
been out by herself to buy fish, and for some time she could hardly
move. She became very silent. She seemed to shrink, and her eyes grew
pale. She went about in the house as before, but now it seemed to her
that she had to climb an endless steep hill when in the evenings, with
her candlestick and her shadow, she walked up the stair; and she seemed
to be listening to sounds from far away when, with her knitting, she sat
close to the crackling tall porcelain stove. Her friends began to think
that they should have to cut out a square hole for her in that iron
ground before the thaw of spring would set in. But she still held on,
and after a time she seemed to become stronger again, although more
rigid, as if she herself had frozen in the hard winter with a frost that
would not thaw. She never got back that gay and precise flow of speech
which, during seventy years, had cheered so many people, kept servants
in order, and promoted or checked the gossip of Elsinore.

One afternoon she confided to the man who assisted her in the house her
decision to go to Copenhagen to see her ladies. The next day she went
out to arrange for her trip with the hackney man. The news of her
project spread, for the journey from Elsinore to Copenhagen is no joke.
On a Thursday morning she was up by candlelight and descended the stone
steps to the street, her carpetbag in her hand, while the morning light
was still dim.

The journey was no joke. It is more than twenty-six miles from Elsinore
to Copenhagen, and the road ran along the sea. In many places there was
hardly any road; only a track that went along the seashore. Here the
wind, blowing onto the land, had swept away the snow, so that no sledges
could pass, and the old woman went in a carriage with straw on the
floor. She was well wrapped up, still, as the carriage drove on and the
winter day came up and showed all the landscape so silent and cold, it
was as if nothing at all could keep alive here, least of all an old
woman all by herself in a carriage. She sat perfectly quiet, looking
around her. The plane of the frozen Sound showed gray in the gray light.
Here and there seaweeds strewn upon the beach marked it with brown and
black. Near the road, upon the sand, the crows were marching martially
about, or fighting over a dead fish. The little fishermen's houses along
the road had their doors and windows carefully shut. Sometimes she would
see the fishermen themselves, in high boots that came above their knees,
a long way out on the ice, where they were cutting holes to catch cod
with a tin bait. The sky was the color of lead, but low along the
horizon ran a broad stripe the color of old lemon peel or very old
ivory.

It was many years since she had come along this road. As she drove on,
long-forgotten figures came and ran alongside the carriage. It seemed
strange to her that the indifferent coachman in a fur cap and the small
bay horses should have it in their power to drive her into a world of
which they knew nothing.

They came past Rungsted, where, as a little girl, she had served in the
old inn, red-tiled, close to the road. From here to town the road was
better. Here had lived, for the last years of his life, in sickness and
poverty, the great poet Ewald, a genius, the swan of the North. Broken
in health, deeply disappointed in his love for the faithless Arendse,
badly given to drink, he still radiated a rare vitality, a bright light
that had fascinated the little girl. Little Hanne, at the age of ten,
had been sensitive to the magnetism of the great mysterious powers of
life, which she did not understand. She was happy when she could be with
him. Three things, she had learned from the talk of the landlady, he was
always begging for: to get married, since to him life without women
seemed unbearably cold and waste; alcohol of some sort--although he was
a fine connoisseur of wine, he could drink down the crass gin of the
country as well; and, lastly, to be taken to Holy Communion. All three
were firmly denied him by his mother and stepfather, who were rich
people of Copenhagen, and even by his friend, Pastor Schoenheyder, for
they did not want him to be happy in either of the first two ways, and
they considered that he must alter his ways before he could be made
happy in the third. The landlady and Hanne were sorry for him. They
would have married him and given him wine and taken him to Holy
Communion, had it lain with them. Often, when the other children had
been playing, Hanne had left them to pick early spring violets for him
in the grass with cold fingers, looking forward to the sight of his face
when he smelled the little bunches of flowers. There was something here
which she could not understand, and which still held all her being
strongly--that violets could mean so much. Generally he was very gay
with her, and would take her on his knees and warm his cold hands on
her. His breath sometimes smelled of gin, but she never told anybody.
Even three years later, when she was confirmed, she imagined the Lord
Jesus with his long hair in a queue, and with that rare, wild, broken
and arrogant smile of the dying poet.

Madam Bk came through the East Gate of Copenhagen just as people were
about to light their lamps. She was held up and questioned by the toll
collectors, but when they found her to be an honest woman in possession
of no contraband they let her pass. So she would appear at the gate of
heaven, ignorant of what was wanted of her, but confident that if she
behaved correctly, according to her lights, others would behave
correctly, according to theirs.

She drove through the streets of Copenhagen, looking around--for she had
not been there for many years--as she would look around to form an
opinion of the new Jerusalem. The streets here were not paved with gold
or chrysoprase, and in places there was a little snow; but such as they
were she accepted them. She likewise accepted the stables, where she was
to get out, and the walk in the icy-cold blue evening of Copenhagen to
Gammeltorv, where lay the house of her ladies.

Nevertheless she felt, as she took her way slowly through the streets,
that she was an intruder and did not belong. She was not even noticed,
except by two young men, deep in a political discussion, who had to
separate to let her pass between them, and by a couple of boys, who
remarked upon her bonnet. She did not like this sort of thing, it did
not take place in Elsinore.

The windows of the first floor of the Misses De Conincks' house were
brightly lighted. Remembering it to be Fernande's birthday, Madam Bk,
down in the square, reasoned that the ladies would be having a party.

This was the case, and while Madam Bk was slowly ascending the stair,
dragging her heavy feet and her message from step to step, the sisters
were merrily entertaining their guests in their warm and cozy gray
parlor with its green carpet and shining mahogany furniture.

The party was characteristic of the two old maids by being mostly
composed of gentlemen. They existed, in their pretty house in
Gammeltorv, like a pair of prominent spiritual courtesans of Copenhagen,
leading their admirers into excesses and seducing them into scattering
their spiritual wealth and health upon their charms. As a couple of
corresponding young courtesans of the flesh would be out after the great
people and princes of this world, so were they ever spreading their
snares for the _honoratiori_ of the world spiritual, and tonight could
lay on the table no meaner acquisition than the Bishop of Sealand, the
director of the Royal Theater of Copenhagen, who was himself a
distinguished dramatic and philosophical scribe, and a famous old
painter of animals, just back from Rome, where he had been shown great
honor. An old commodore with a fresh face, who had carried a wound since
1807, and a lady-in-waiting to the Dowager Queen, elegant and a good
listener, who looked as if her voluminous skirt was absolutely massive,
from her waist down, completed the party, all of whom were old friends,
but were there chiefly to hold the candle.

If these sisters could not live without men, it was because they had the
firm conviction, which, as an instinct, runs in the blood of seafaring
families, that the final word as to what you are really worth lies with
the other sex. You may ask the members of your own sex for their opinion
and advice as to your compass and crew, your cuisine and garden, but
when it comes to the matter of what you yourself are worth, the words of
even your best friends are void and good for nothing, and you must
address yourself to the opposite sex. Old white skippers, who have been
round the Horn and out in a hundred hurricanes, know the law. They may
be highly respected on the deck or in the mess, and honored by their
staunch gray contemporaries, but it is, finally, the girls who have the
say as to whether they are worth keeping alive or not. The old sailor's
women are aware of this fact, and will take a good deal of trouble to
impress even the young boys toward a favorable judgment. This doctrine,
and this quick estimating eye is developed in sailor's families because
there the two sexes have the chance to see each other at a distance. A
sailor, or a sailor's daughter, judges a person of the other sex as
quickly and surely as a hunter judges a horse; a farmer, a head of
cattle; and a soldier, a rifle. In the families of clergymen and
scribes, where the men sit in their houses all their days, people may
judge each other extremely well individually, but no man knows what a
woman is, and no woman what a man is; they cannot see the wood for
trees.

The two sisters, in caps with lace streamers, were doing the honors of
the house gracefully. In those days, when gentlemen did not smoke in the
presence of ladies, the atmosphere of an evening party remained serene
to the end, but a very delicate aromatic and exotic stream of steam rose
from the tumblers of rare old rum with hot water, lemon, and sugar, upon
the table in the soft glow of the lamp. None of the company was quite
uninfluenced by this nectar. They had a moment before been conjuring
forth their youth by the singing of old songs which they themselves
remembered their fathers' friends singing over their wine in the really
good old days. The Bishop, who had a very sweet voice, had been holding
up his glass while giving the ancient toast to the old generation:

    _Let the old ones be remembered now; they once were gay and free._
    _And that they knew to love, my dear, the proof thereof are we!_

The echo of the song--for she now declared that it was a five minutes'
course from her ear to her mind--was making Miss Fanny De Coninck
thoughtful and a little absent-minded. What a strange proof, she
thought, are these dry old bodies here tonight of the fact that young
men and women, half a century ago, sighed and shivered and lost
themselves in ecstasies. What a curious proof is this gray hand of the
follies of young hands upon a night in May long, long ago.

As she was standing, her chin, in this intensive dreaming, pressed down
a little upon the black velvet ribbon around her throat, it would have
been difficult for anyone who had not known her in her youth to find any
trace of beauty in Fanny's face. Time had played a little cruelly with
her. A slight wryness of feature, which had been an adorable piquantry
once, was now turned into an uncanny little disfigurement. Her birdlike
lightness was caricatured into abrupt little movements in fits and
starts. But she had her brilliant dark eyes still, and was, all in all,
a distinguished, and slightly touching, figure.

After a moment she took up again the conversation with the bishop as
animatedly as before. Even the little handkerchief in her fingers and
the small crystal buttons down her narrow silk bosom seemed to take part
in the argument. No pythoness on her tripod, her body filled with
inspiring fumes, could look more prophetic. The theme under discussion
was the question whether, if offered a pair of angel's wings which could
not be removed, one would accept or refuse the gift.

"Ah, Your Right Worshipfulness," said Miss Fanny, "in walking up the
aisle you would convert the entire congregation with your back. There
would not be a sinner left in Copenhagen. But remember that even you
descend from the pulpit at twelve o'clock every Sunday. It must be
difficult enough for you as it is, but how would you, in a pair of white
angels' wings, get out of----" What she really wanted to say was, "get
out of using a chamber-pot?" Had she been forty years younger she would
have said it. The De Coninck sisters had not been acquainted with
sailors all of their lives for nothing. Very vigorous expressions, and
oaths even, such as were never found in the mouths of the other young
ladies of Elsinore, came naturally to their rosy lips, and used to charm
their admirers into idolatry. They knew a good many names for the devil,
and in moments of agitation would say, "Hell--to hell!" Now the long
practice of being a lady and a hostess prevented Fanny, and she said
instead very sweetly, "of eating a roast white turkey?" For that was
what the Bishop had been doing at dinner with obvious delight. Still,
her imagination was so vividly at work that it was curious that the
prelate, gazing, at close quarters, with a fatherly smile into her clear
eyes, did not see there the picture of himself, in his canonicals,
making use of a chamber-pot in a pair of angels' wings.

The old man was so enlivened by the debate that he spilled a few drops
from his glass onto the carpet. "My dear charming Miss Fanny," he said,
"I am a good Protestant and flatter myself that I have not quite failed
in making things celestial and terrestrial go well together. In that
situation I should look down and see, in truth, my celestial
individuality reflected in miniature, as you see yours every day in the
little bit of glass in your fair hand."

The old professor of painting said: "When I was in Italy I was shown a
small, curiously shaped bone, which is found only in the shoulder of the
lion, and is the remains of a wing bone, from the time when lions had
wings, such as we still see in the lion of St. Mark. It was very
interesting."

"Ah, indeed, a fine monumental figure on that column," said the Bishop,
who had also been in Italy, and who knew that he had a leonine head.

"Oh, if I had a chance of those wings," said Miss Fanny, "I should not
care a hang about my fine or monumental figure. But, by St. Anne, I
should fly."

"Allow me," said the Bishop, "to hope, Miss Fanny, that you would not.
We may have our reasons to mistrust a flying lady. You have, perhaps,
heard of Adam's first wife, Lilith? She was, in contradistinction to
Eve, made all out of earth, like himself. What was the first thing that
she did? She seduced two angels and made them betray to her the secret
word which opens heaven, and so she flew away from Adam. That goes to
teach us that where there is too much of the earthly element in a woman,
neither husband nor angels can master her.

"Indeed," he went on, warming to his subject, his glass still in his
hand, "in woman, the particularly heavenly and angelic attributes, and
those which we most look up to and worship, all go to weigh her down and
keep her on the ground. The long tresses, the veils of pudicity, the
trailing garments, even the adorable womanly forms in themselves, the
swelling bosom and hip, are as little as possible in conformity with the
idea of flying. We, all of us, willingly grant her the title of angel,
and the white wings, and lift her up on our highest pedestal, on the one
inevitable condition that she must not dream of, must even have been
brought up in absolute ignorance of, the possibility of flight."

"Ah, la la," said Fanny, "we are aware of that, Bishop, and so it is
ever the woman whom you gentlemen do not love or worship, who possesses
neither the long lock nor the swelling bosom, and who has had to truss
up her skirts to sweep the floor, who chuckles at the sight of the
emblem of her very thraldom, and anoints her broomstick upon the eve of
Walpurgis."

The director of the Royal Theater rubbed his delicate hands gently
against each other. "When I hear the ladies complain of their hard task
and restrictions in life," he said, "it sometimes reminds me of a dream
that I once had. I was at the time writing a tragedy in verse. It seemed
to me in my dream that the words and syllables of my poem made a
rebellion and protested, 'Why must we take infinite trouble to stand,
walk and behave according to difficult and painful laws which the words
of your prose do not dream of obeying?' I answered, 'Mesdames, because
you are meant to be poetry. Of prose we think, and demand, but little.
It must exist, if only for the police regulations and the calendar. But
a poem which is not lovely has no _raison d'tre_.' God forgive me if I
have ever made poems which had in them no loveliness, and treated ladies
in a manner which prevented them from being perfectly lovely--my
remaining sins I can shoulder easily then."

"How," said the old commodore, "could I entertain any doubts as to the
reality of wings, who have grown up amongst sailing ships and amongst
the ladies of the beginning of our century? The beastly steamships which
go about these days may well be a species of witches of the sea--they
are like self-supporting women. But if you ladies are contemplating
giving up being white-sailed ships and poems--well, we must be perfectly
lovely poems ourselves, then, and leave you to make up the police
regulations. Without poetry no ship can be sailed. When I was a cadet,
on the way to Greenland, and in the Indian Ocean, I used to console
myself, on the middle watch, by thinking, in consecutive order, of all
the women I knew, and by quoting poetry that I had learned by heart."

"But you have always been a poem, Julian," said Eliza, "a roundel." She
felt tempted to put her arms round her cousin, they had always been
great friends.

"Ah, in talking about Eve and Paradise," said Fanny, "you all still
remain a little jealous of the snake."

"When I was in Italy," said the professor, "I often thought what a
curious thing it is that the serpent, which, if I understand the
Scripture, opened the eyes of man to the arts, should be, in itself, an
object impossible to get into a picture. A snake is a lovely creature.
At Naples they had a large reptile house, and I used to study the snakes
there for many hours. They have skins like jewels, and their movements
are wonderful performances of art. But I have never seen a snake done
successfully in a picture. I could not paint it myself."

"Do you remember," said the commodore, who had been following his own
thoughts, "the swing that I put up for you, at regaard, on your
seventeenth birthday, Eliza? I made a poem about it."

"Yes, I do, Julian," said Eliza, her face brightening, "it was made like
a ship."

It was a curious thing about the two sisters, who had been so unhappy as
young women, that they should take so much pleasure in dwelling upon the
past. They could talk for hours of the most insignificant trifles of
their young days, and these made them laugh and cry more heartily than
any event of the present day. Perhaps to them the first condition for
anything having real charm was this: that it must not really exist.

It was another curious phenomenon about them that they, to whom so very
little had happened, should talk of their married friends who had
husbands, children, and grandchildren with pity and slight contempt, as
of poor timid creatures whose lives had been dull and uneventful. That
they themselves had had no husbands, children, or lovers did not
restrain them from feeling that they had chosen the more romantic and
adventurous part. The explanation was that to them only possibilities
had any interest; realities carried no weight. They had themselves had
all possibilities in hand, and had never given them away in order to
make a definite choice and come down to a limited reality. They might
still take part in elopements by rope-ladder, and in secret marriages,
if it came to that. No one could stop them. Thus their only intimate
friends were old maids like themselves, or unhappily married women,
dames of the round table of possibilities. For their happily married
friends, fattened on realities, they had, with much kindness, a
different language, as if these had been of a slightly lower caste, with
whom intercourse had to be carried on with the assistance of
interpreters.

Eliza's face had brightened, like a fine, pure jar of alabaster behind
which a lamp is lighted, at mention of the swing, made like a boat,
which had been given her for her seventeenth birthday. She had always
been by far the loveliest of the De Coninck children. When they were
young their old French aunt had named them _la Bont_, _la Beaut_, and
_l'Esprit_, Morten being _la Bont_.

She was as fair as her sister was dark, and in Elsinore, where at the
time a fashion for surnames had prevailed, they had called her "Ariel,"
or "The Swan of Elsinore." There had been that particular quality about
her beauty that it seemed to hold promise, to be only the first step of
the ladder of some extraordinary career. Here was this exceptional young
female creature who had had the inspiration to be, from head to foot,
strikingly lovely. But that was only the beginning of it. The next step
was perhaps her clothes, for Eliza had always been a great swell, and
had run up heavy debts--for which at times her brother had taken the
responsibility before their father--on brocades, cashmeres, and plumes
ordered from Copenhagen and Hamburg, and even from Paris. But that was
also only the beginning of something. Then came the way in which she
moved, and danced. There was about it an atmosphere of suspense which
caused onlookers to hold their breaths. What was this extraordinary girl
to do next? If at this time she had indeed unfolded a pair of large
white wings, and had soared from the pier of Elsinore up into the summer
air, it would have surprised no one. It was clear that she must do
something extraordinary with such an abundance of gifts. "There is more
strength in that girl," said the old boatswain of _La Fortuna_, when
upon a spring day she came running down to the harbor, bareheaded, "than
in all _Fortuna's_ crew." Then in the end she had done nothing at all.

At Gammeltorv she was quietly, as if intentionally, fading day by day,
into an even more marble-like loveliness. She could still span her waist
with her two long slim hands, and moved with much pride and lightness,
like an old Arab mare a little stiff, but unmistakably noble, at ease in
the sphere of war and fantasias. And there was still that about her
which kept open a perspective, the feeling that somewhere there were
reserves and it was not out of the question that extraordinary things
might happen.

"God, that swing, Eliza!" said the commodore. "You had been so hard on
me in the evening that I actually went out into the garden of regaard,
on that early July morning, resolved to hang myself. And as I was
looking up into the crown of the great elm, I heard you saying behind
me: 'That would be a good branch.' That, I thought, was cruelly said.
But as I turned around, there you were, your hair still done up in
curling papers, and I remembered that I had promised you a swing. I
could not die, in any case, till you had had it. When I got it up, and
saw you in it, I thought: If it shall be my lot in life to be forever
only ballast to the white sails of fair girls, I still bless my lot."

"That is what we have loved you for all your life," said Eliza.

An extremely pretty young maid, with pale blue ribbons on her cap--kept
by the pair of old spiritual courtesans to produce an equilibrium in the
establishment, in the way in which two worldly young courtesans might
have kept, to the same end, an ugly and misshapen servant, a dwarf with
wit and imagination--brought in a tray filled with all sorts of
delicacies: Chinese ginger, tangerines, and crystallized fruit. In
passing Miss Fanny's chair she said softly, "Madam Bk has come from
Elsinore, and waits in the kitchen."

Fanny's color changed, she could never receive calmly the news that
anybody had arrived, or had gone away. Her soul left her and flew
straight to the kitchen, from where she had to drag it back again.

"In that summer of 1806," she said, "the _Odyssey_ had been translated
into Danish for the first time, I believe. Papa used to read it to us in
the evenings. Ha, how we played the hero and his gallant crew, braved
the Cyclops and cruised between the island of the Lstrygones and the
Phacian shores! I shall never be made to believe that we did not spend
that summer in our ships, under brown sails."

Shortly after this the party broke up, and the sisters drew up the
blinds of their window to wave to the four gentlemen who helped Miss
Bardenfleth into her court carriage and proceeded in a gayly talking
group across the little iron-gray desert of nocturnal Gammeltorv,
remarking, in the midst of philosophical and poetic discussions, upon
the extraordinary cold.

This moment at the end of their parties always went strangely to the
sisters' hearts. They were happy to get rid of their guests; but a
little silent, bitter minute accompanied the pleasure. For they could
still make people fall in love with them. They had the radiance in them
which could refract little rainbow effects in the atmosphere of
Copenhagen existence. But who could make them feel in love? That glass
of mental and sentimental alcohol which made for warmth and movement
within the old phlebolitic veins of their guests--from where were they
themselves to get it? From each other, they knew, and in general they
were content with the fact. Still, at this moment, the _tristesse_ of
the eternal hostess stiffened them a little.

Not so tonight, for no sooner had they lowered the blind again than they
were off to the kitchen, making haste to send their pretty maid to bed,
as if they knew the real joy of life to be found solely amongst elderly
women. They made Madam Bk and themselves a fresh cup of coffee, lifting
down the old copper kettle from the wall. Coffee, according to the women
of Denmark, is to the body what the word of the Lord is to the soul.

Had it been in the old days that the sisters and their servant met again
after a long separation, the girls would have started at once to
entertain the widow with accounts of their admirers. The theme was ever
fascinating to Madam Bk, and dear to the sisters by reason of the
opportunity it gave them of shocking her. But these days were past. They
gave her the news of the town--an old widower had married again, and
another had gone mad--also a little gossip of the Court, such as she
would understand, which they had heard from Miss Bardenfleth. But there
was something in Madam Bk's face which caught their attention. It was
heavy with fate; she brought news herself. Very soon they paused to let
her speak.

Madam Bk allowed the pause to wax long.

"Master Morten," she said at last, and at the sound of her own thoughts
of these last long days and nights she herself grew very pale, "is at
Elsinore. He walks in the house."

At this news a deadly silence filled the kitchen. The two sisters felt
their hair stand on end. The terror of the moment lay, for them, in
this: that it was Madam Bk who had recounted such news to them. They
might have announced it to her, out of perversity and fancies, and it
would not have meant much. But that Hanne, who was to them the principle
of solidity and equilibrium for the whole world, should open her mouth
to throw at them the end of all things--that made these seconds in their
kitchen feel to the two younger women like the first seconds of a great
earthquake.

Madam Bk herself felt the unnatural in the situation, and all which was
passing through the heads of her ladies. It would have terrified her as
well, had she still had it in her to be terrified. Now she felt only a
great triumph.

"I have seen him," she said, "seven times."

Here the sisters took to trembling so violently that they had to put
down their coffee cups.

"The first time," said Madam Bk, "he stood in the red dining room,
looking at the big clock. But the clock had stopped. I had forgotten to
wind it up."

Suddenly a rain of tears sprang out of Fanny's eyes, and bathed her pale
face. "Oh, Hanne, Hanne," she said.

"Then I met him once on the stair," said Madam Bk. "Three times he has
come and sat with me. Once he picked up a ball of wool for me, which had
rolled onto the floor, and threw it back in my lap."

"How did he look to you?" asked Fanny, in a broken, cracked voice,
evading the glance of her sister, who sat immovable.

"He looks older than when he went away," said Madam Bk. "He wears his
hair longer than people do here; that will be the American fashion. His
clothes are very old, too. But he smiled at me just as he always did.
The third time that I saw him, before he went--for he goes in his own
way, and just as you think he is there, he is gone--he blew me a kiss
exactly as he used to do when he was a young man and I had scolded him a
little."

Eliza lifted her eyes, very slowly, and the eyes of the two sisters met.
Never in all their lives had Madam Bk said anything to them which they
had for a moment doubted.

"But," said Madam Bk, "this last time I found him standing before your
two pictures for a long time. And I thought that he wanted to see you,
so I have come to fetch you to Elsinore."

At these words the sisters rose up like two grenadiers at parade. Madam
Bk herself, although terribly agitated, sat where she had sat, as ever
the central figure of their gatherings.

"When was it that you saw him?" asked Fanny.

"The first time," said Madam Bk, "was three weeks ago today. The last
time was on Saturday. Then I thought: 'Now I must go and fetch the
ladies.'"

Fanny's face was suddenly all ablaze. She looked at Madam Bk with a
great tenderness, the tenderness of their young days. She felt that this
was a great sacrifice, which the old woman was bringing out of her
devotion to them and her sense of duty. For these three weeks, during
which she had been living with the ghost of the outcast son of the De
Coninck house, all alone, must have been the great time of Madam Bk's
life, and would remain so for her forever. Now it was over.

It would have been difficult to say if, when she spoke, she came nearest
to laughter or tears. "Oh, we will go, Hanne," she said, "we will go to
Elsinore."

"Fanny, Fanny," said Eliza, "he is not there; it is not he."

Fanny made a step forward toward the fire, so violently that the
streamers of her cap fluttered. "Why not, Lizzie?" she said. "God means
to do something for you and me after all. And do you not remember, when
Morten was to go back to school after the holiday, and did not want to
go, that he made us tell Papa that he was dead? We made a grave under
the apple tree, and laid him down in it. Do you remember?" The two
sisters at this moment saw, with the eyes of their minds, exactly the
same picture of the little ruddy boy, with earth in his curls, who had
been lifted out of his grave by their angry young father, and of
themselves, with their small spades and soiled muslin frocks, following
the procession home like disappointed mourners. Their brother might play
a trick on them this time.

As they turned to each other their two faces had the same expression of
youthful waggishness. Madam Bk, in her chair, felt at the sight like a
happily delivered lady-in-the-straw. A weight and a fullness had been
taken from her, and her importance had gone with it. That was ever the
way of the gentry. They would lay their hands on everything you had,
even to the ghosts.

Madam Bk would not let the sisters come back with her to Elsinore. She
made them stay behind for a day. She wanted to see for herself that the
rooms were warm to receive them, and that there would be hot water
bottles in those maiden beds in which they had not slept for so long.
She went the next day, leaving them in Copenhagen till the morrow.

It was good for them that they had been given these hours in which to
make up their minds and prepare themselves to meet the ghost of their
brother. A storm had broken loose upon them, and their boats, which had
been becalmed in back waters, were whirled in a blizzard, amongst waves
as high as houses. Still they were, in their lappets of lace, no
landlubbers in the tempests of life. They were still able to maneuver,
and they held their sheets. They did not melt into tears either. Tears
were never a solution for them. They came first and were a weakness
only; now they were past them, out in the great dilemma. They were
themselves acquainted with the old sailors' rule:

    _Comes wind before rain--Topsail down and up again._
    _Comes rain before wind--Topsail down and all sails in._

They did not speak together much while waiting for admission to their
Elsinore house. Had the day been Sunday they would have gone to church,
for they were keen churchgoers, and critics of the prominent preachers
of the town, so that they generally came back holding that they could
have done it better themselves. In the church they might have joined
company; the house of the Lord alone of all houses might have held them
both. Now they had to wander in opposite parts of the town, in snowy
streets and parks, their small hands in muffs, gazing at cold naked
statues and frozen birds in the trees.

How were two highly respected, wealthy, popular and petted ladies to
welcome again the hanged boy of their own blood? Fanny walked up and
down the linden avenue of the Royal Rose Gardens of Rosenborg. She could
never revisit it later, not even in summer time, when it was a green and
golden bower, filled like an aviary with children's voices. She carried
with her, from one end of it to the other, the picture of her brother,
looking at the clock, and the clock stopped and dead. The picture grew
upon her. It was upon his mother's death from grief of him that he was
gazing, and upon the broken heart of his bride. The picture still grew.
It was upon all the betrayed and broken hearts of the world, all the
sufferings of weak and dumb creatures, all injustice and despair on
earth, that he was gazing. And she felt that it was all laid upon her
shoulders. The responsibility was hers. That the world suffered and died
was the fault of the De Conincks. Her misery drove her up and down the
avenue like a dry leaf before the wind--a distinguished lady in furred
boots, in her own heart a great, mad, wing-clipped bird, fluttering in
the winter sunset. Looking askance she could see her own large nose,
pink under her veil, like a terrible, cruel beak. From time to time a
question came into her mind: What is Eliza thinking now? It was strange
that the elder sister should feel thus, with bitterness and fear, that
her younger sister had deserted her in her hour of need. She had herself
fled her company, and yet she repeated to herself: "What, could she not
watch with me one hour?" It had been so even in the old De Coninck home.
If things began to grow really difficult, Morten and the Papa and Mamma
De Coninck would turn to the quiet younger girl, so much less brilliant
than herself: "What does Eliza think?"

Toward evening, as it grew dark, and as she reflected that Madam Bk
must by now be at home in Elsinore, Fanny suddenly stopped and thought,
Am I to pray to God? Several of her friends, she knew, had found comfort
in prayer. She herself had not prayed since she had been a child. Upon
the occasions of her Sundays in church, which were visits of courtesy to
the Lord, her little silences of bent head had been gestures of
civility. Her prayer now, as she began to form it, did not please her
either. She used, as a girl, to read out his correspondence to her papa,
so she was well acquainted with the jargon of mendicant letters--"...
Feeling deeply impressed with the magnificence of your noble and
well-known loving-kindness..." She herself had had many mendicant
letters in her days; also many young men had begged her, on their knees,
for something. She had been highly generous to the poor, and hard on the
lovers. She had not begged herself, nor would she begin it now on behalf
of her proud young brother. As her prayer took on a certain likeness to
a mendicant letter or to a proposal, she stopped it. "He shall not be
ashamed," she thought, "for he has called upon me. He shall not be
afraid of ten thousands of people that have set themselves against him
round about." Upon this she walked home.

When upon Saturday afternoon the sisters arrived at the house in
Elsinore, they went through much deep agitation of the heart. Even the
air--even the smell in the hall, that atmosphere of salt and seaweed
which ever braces up old seaside houses--went straight through them.
They say, thought Miss Fanny, sniffing, that your body is changed
completely within the course of seven years. How I have changed, and how
I have forgotten! But my nose must be the same. My nose I have still
kept and it remembers all. The house was as warm as a box, and this
struck them as a sweet compliment, as if an old admirer had put on his
gala uniform for them. Many people, in revisiting old places, sigh at
the sight of change and age. The De Coninck sisters, on the contrary,
felt that the old house might well have deplored the signs of age and
decay at this meeting again of theirs, and have cried: Heavens, heavens!
Are these the damask-cheeked, silver-voiced girls in dancing sandals who
used to slide down the bannisters of my stairs?--sighing down its long
chimneys, Oh, God! Fare away, fare away! When, then, it chose to pass
over its feelings and pretend that they were the same, it was a fine
piece of courtesy on its part.

Old Madam Bk's great and ceremonious delight in their visit was also
bound to touch them. She stood out on the steps to receive them; she
changed their shoes and stockings for them, and had warm drinks ready.
If we can make her happy so easily, they thought, how is it that we
never came till now? Was it that the house of their childhood and young
days had seemed to them a little empty and cold, a little grave-like,
until it had a ghost in it?

Madam Bk took them around to show them the spots where Morten had
stood, and she repeated his gestures many times. The sisters did not
care a pin what gestures he would make to anybody but themselves, but
they valued the old woman's love of their brother, and listened
patiently. In the end Madam Bk felt very proud, as if she had been
given a sacred relic out of the boy's beloved skeleton, a little bone
that was hers to keep.

The room in which supper was made ready was a corner room. It turned two
windows to the east, from which there was a view of the old gray castle
of Kronborg, copper-spired, like a clenched fist out in the Sound. Above
the ramparts departed commandants of the fortress had made a garden, in
which, in their winter bareness, lindens now showed the world what
loosely built trees they are when not drilled to walk, militarily, two
by two. Two windows looked south out upon the harbor. It was strange to
find the harbor of Elsinore motionless, with sailors walking back from
their boats on the ice.

The walls of the room had once been painted crimson, but with time the
color had faded into a richness of hues, like a glassful of dying red
roses. In the candlelight these flat walls blushed and shone deeply, in
places glowing like little pools of dry, burning, red lacquer. On one
wall hung the portraits of the two young De Coninck sisters, the
beauties of Elsinore. The third portrait, of their brother, had been
taken down so long ago that only a faint shadow on the wall showed where
it had once been. Some potpourri was being burned on the tall stove, on
the sides of which Neptune, with a trident, steered his team of horses
through high waves. But the dried rose-petals dated from summers of long
ago. Only a very faint fragrance now spread from their funeral pile, a
little rank, like the bouquet of fine claret kept too long. In front of
the stove the table was laid with a white tablecloth and delicate
Chinese cups and plates.

In this room the sisters and the brother De Coninck had in the old days
celebrated many secret supper-parties, when preparing some theatrical or
fancy-dress show, or when Morten had returned very late at night from an
expedition in his sailing boat, of which their parents must know
nothing. The eating and drinking at such times had to be carried on in a
subdued manner, so as not to wake up the sleeping house. Thirty-five
years ago the red room had seen much merriment caused by this
precaution.

Faithful to tradition, the Misses De Coninck now came in and took their
seats at table, opposite each other, on either side of the stove, and in
silence. To these indefatigable old belles of a hundred balls, age and
agitation all the same began to assert themselves. Their eyelids were
heavy, and they could not have held out much longer if something had not
happened.

They did not have to wait long. Just as they had poured out their tea,
and were lifting the thin cups to their lips, there was a slight rustle
in the quiet room. When they turned their heads a little, they saw their
brother standing at the end of the table.

He stood there for a moment and nodded to them, smiling at them. Then he
took the third chair and sat down, between them. He placed his hands
upon the edge of the table, gently moving them sideward and back again,
exactly as he always used to do.

Morten was poorly dressed in a dark gray coat that looked faded and much
worn. Still it was clear that he had taken pains about his appearance
for the meeting, he had on a white collar and a carefully tied high
black stock, and his hair was neatly brushed back. Perhaps he had been
afraid, Fanny for a moment thought, that after having lived so long in
rough company he should impress his sisters as less refined and well
mannered than before. He need not have worried; he would have looked a
gentleman on the gallows. He was older than when they had seen him last,
but not as old as they. He looked a man of forty.

His face was somehow coarser than before, weather-beaten and very pale.
It had, with the dark, always somewhat sunken eyes, that same divine
play of light and darkness which had long ago made maidens mad. His
large mouth also had its old frankness and sweetness. But to his pure
forehead a change had come. It was not that it was now crossed by a
multitude of little horizontal lines, for the marble of it was too fine
to be marred by such superficial wear. But time had revealed its true
character. It was not the imperial tiara, that once had caught all eyes,
above his dark brows. It was the grave and noble likeness to a skull.
The radiance of it belonged to the possessor, not of the world, but of
the grave and of eternity. Now, as his hair had withdrawn from it, it
gave out the truth frankly and simply. Also, as you got, from the face
of the brother, the key of understanding to this particular type of
family beauty, you would recognize it at once in the appearance of the
sisters, even in the two youthful portraits on the wall. The most
striking characteristic in the three heads was the generic resemblance
to the skull.

All in all, Morten's countenance was quiet, considerate, and dignified,
as it had always been.

"Good evening, little sisters; well met, well met," he said, "it was
very sweet and sisterly of you to come and see me here. You had a--" he
stopped a moment, as if searching for his word, as if not in the habit
of speaking much with other people--"a nice fresh drive to Elsinore, I
should say," he concluded.

His sisters sat with their faces toward him, as pale as he. Morten had
always been wont to speak very lowly, in contrast to themselves. Thus a
discussion between the sisters might be carried on with the two speaking
at the same time, on the chance of the one shrill voice drowning the
other. But if you wanted to hear what Morten said, you had to listen. He
spoke in just the same way now, and they had been prepared for his
appearance, more or less, but not for his voice.

They listened then as they had done before. But they were longing to do
more. As they had set eyes on him they had turned their slim torsos all
around in their chairs. Could they not touch him? No, they knew that to
be out of the question. They had not been reading ghost stories all
their lives for nothing. And this very thing recalled to them the old
days, when, for these private supper-parties of theirs, Morten had come
in at times, his large cloak soaked with rain and sea water, shining,
black and rough like a shark's skin, or glazed over with snow, or
freshly tarred, so that they had, laughing, held him at arm's length off
their frocks. Oh, how thoroughly had the tunes of thirty years ago been
transposed from a major to a minor key! From what blizzards had he come
in tonight? With what sort of tar was he tarred?

"How are you, my dears?" he asked. "Do you have as merry a time in
Copenhagen as in the old days at Elsinore?"

"And how are you yourself, Morten?" asked Fanny, her voice a full octave
higher than his. "You are looking a real, fine privateer captain. You
are bringing all the full, spiced, trade winds into our nunnery of
Elsinore."

"Yes, those are fine winds," said Morten.

"How far away you have been, Morten?" said Eliza, her voice trembling a
little. "What a multitude of lovely places you have visited, that we
have never seen! How I have wished, how I have wished that I were you."

Fanny gave her sister a quick strong glance. Had their thoughts gone up
in a parallel motion from the snowy parks and streets of Copenhagen? Or
did this quiet sister, younger than she, far less brilliant, speak the
simple truth of her heart?

"Yes, Lizzie, my duck," said Morten. "I remember that. I have thought of
that--how you used to cry and stamp your little feet and wring your
hands shouting, 'Oh, I wish I were dead.'"

"Where do you come from, Morten?" Fanny asked him.

"I come from hell," said Morten. "I beg your pardon," he added, as he
saw his sister wince. "I have come now, as you see, because the Sound is
frozen over. I can come then. That is a rule."

Oh, how the heart of Fanny flew upward at his words. She felt it
herself, as if she had screamed out, in a shout of deliverance, like a
woman in the final moment of childbirth. When the Emperor, from Elba,
set foot on the soil of France he brought back the old time with him.
Forgotten was red-hot Moscow, and the deadly white and black winter
marches. The tricolor was up in the air, unfolded, and the old
grenadiers threw up their arms and cried once more: _Vive l'Empereur!_
Her soul, like they, donned the old uniform. It was for the benefit of
onlookers only, and for the fun of the thing, from now, that she was
dressed up in the body of an old woman.

"Are we not looking a pair of old scarecrows, Morten?" she asked, her
eyes shining at him. "Were not our old aunts right when they preached to
us about our vanity, and the vanity of all things? Indeed, the people
who impress on the young that they should purchase, in time, crutches
and an ear-trumpet, do carry their point in the end."

"No, you are looking charming, Fanny," he said, his eyes shining gently
back. "Like a bumblebee-hawkmoth."--For they used to collect butterflies
together in their childhood. "And if you were really looking like a pair
of old ladies I should like it very much. There have been few of them
where I have been, for many years. Now when grandmamma had her birthday
parties at regaard, that was where you would see a houseful of fine old
ladies. Like a grand aviary, and grandmamma amongst them like a proud
cockatoo."

"Yet you once said," said Fanny, "that you would give a year of your
existence to be free from spending the afternoon with the old devils."

"Yes, I did that," said Morten, "but my ideas about a year of my
existence have changed since then. But tell me, seriously, do they still
tie weights to _billets-doux_, and throw them into your carriage when
you drive home from the balls?"

"Oh!" said Eliza, drawing in her breath.

    _Was klaget aus dem dunkeln Thal_
    _Die Nachtigall?_
    _Was seuszt darein der Erlenbach_
    _Mit manchen Ach?_

She was quoting a long-forgotten poem by a long-forgotten lover.

"You are not married, my dears, are you?" said Morten, suddenly
frightened at the absurd possibility of a stranger belonging to his
sisters.

"Why should we not be married?" asked Fanny. "We both of us have
husbands and lovers at each finger-tip. I, I married the Bishop of
Sealand--he lost his balance a little in our bridal bed because of his
wings." She could not prevent a delicate thin little laughter coming out
of her in small puffs, like steam from a kettle-spout. The Bishop
looked, at the distance of forty-eight hours, ridiculously small, like a
little doll seen from a tower. "Lizzie married----" she went on, and
then stopped herself. When they were children the young De Conincks had
lived under a special superstition, which they had from a marionette
comedy. It came to this: that the lies which you tell are likely to
become truth. On this account they had always been careful in their
choice of what lies they would tell. Thus they would never say that they
could not pay a Sunday visit to their old aunts because they had a
toothache, for they would be afraid that Nemesis might be at their
heels, and that they would indeed have a toothache. But they might
safely say that their music master had told them not to practice their
gavottes any longer, as they already played them with masterly art. The
habit was still in their blood.

"No, to speak the truth, Morten," Fanny said, "we are old maids, all on
your account. Nobody would have us. The De Conincks have had a bad name
as consorts since you went off and took away the heart and soul and
innocence of Adrienne."

She looked at him to see what he would say to this. She had followed his
thoughts. They had been faithful, but he--what had he done? He had
encumbered them with a lovely and gentle sister-in-law.

Their uncle, Fernand De Coninck, he who had helped Morten to get his
ship, had in the old days lived in France during the Revolution. That
was the place and the time for a De Coninck to live in. Also he had
never got quite out of them again, not even when he had been an old
bachelor in Elsinore, and he never felt quite at home in a peaceful
life. He had been full of anecdotes and songs of the period, and when
they had been children the brother and the sisters had known them by
heart from him. After a moment Morten slowly and in a low voice began to
quote one of Uncle Fernand's ditties. This had been made on a special
occasion, when the old aunts of the King of France had been leaving the
country, and the revolutionary police had ordered all their boxes to be
opened and examined at the frontier, for fear of treachery.

He said:

    _Avez-vous ses chemises,_
    _ Marat?_
    _Avez-vous ses chemises?_
    _C'est pour vous un trs vilain cas_
    _si vous les avez prises._

Fanny's face immediately reflected the expression of her brother's.
Without searching her memory more than a moment she followed him with
the next verse of the song. This time it is the King's old aunts
speaking:

    _Avait-il de chemises,_
    _ Marat?_
    _Avait-il de chemises?_
    _Moi je crois qu'il n'en avait pas._
    _Ou les avait-il prises?_

And Eliza took up the thread after her, laughing a little:

    _Il en avait trois grises,_
    _ Marat._
    _Il en avait trois grises._
    _Avec l'argent de son mandat_
    _sur le Pont Neuf acquises._

With these words the brother and the sisters lightened their hearts and
washed their hands forever of fair, unhappy Adrienne Rosenstand.

"But you were married, Morten?" said Eliza kindly, the laughter still in
her voice.

"Yes," said Morten, "I had five wives. The Spanish are lovely women, you
know, like a mosaic of jewels. One of them was a dancer, too. When she
danced it was really like a swarm of butterflies whirling round, and
being drawn into, the little central flame; you did not know what was up
and what was down, and that seemed to me then, when I was young, a
charming quality in a wife. One was an English skipper's daughter, an
honest girl, and she will never have forgotten me. One was the young
widow of a rich planter. She was a real lady. All her thoughts had some
sort of long train trailing after them. She bore me two children. One
was a Negress, and her I liked best."

"Did they go on board your ship?" Eliza asked.

"No, none of them ever came on board my ship," said Morten.

"And tell us," said Fanny, "which, out of all the things that you had,
you liked the best?"

Morten thought her question over for a moment. "Out of all lives," he
said, "the life of a pirate is the best."

"Finer than that of a privateer captain in the Sound?" asked Fanny.

"Yes, it is that," said Morten, "inasmuch as you are in the open sea."

"But what made you decide to become a pirate?" asked Fanny, much
intrigued, for this was really like a book of romance and adventure.

"The heart, the heart," said Morten, "that which throws us into all our
disasters. I fell in love. It was the _coup de foudre_ of which Uncle
Fernand spoke so much. He himself knew it to be no laughing matter. And
she was somebody else's, so I could not have her without cheating law
and order a little. She was built in Genoa, had been used by the French
as a dispatch-carrier, and was known to be the quickest schooner that
ever flew over the Atlantic. She was run ashore at the coast of the
island of St. Martin, which is half French and half Dutch, and was sold
by the Dutch at Philippsburg. Old Van Zandten, the ship-owner, who
employed me then and loved me as a son, sent me to Philippsburg to buy
her for him. She was the loveliest, yes, by far the loveliest thing I
ever saw. She was like a swan. When she came along, carrying the press
of her sails, she was light, gallant, noble, a great lady--like one of
grandmamma's swans at regaard, when we teased them--pure, loyal, like a
Damascene blade. And then, my dears, she was a little like _Fortuna II_.
She had, like her, a very small foresail with an unusually large
mainsail and high boom.

"I took all old Van Zandten's money then and bought her for myself, and
after that we had, she and I, to keep off the respectable people of the
country. What are you to do when love sets to at you? I made her a
faithful lover, and she had a fine time with her loyal crew, adored and
petted like a dainty lady who has her toe nails polished with henna.
With me she became the fear of the Caribbean Sea, the little sea-eaglet
who kept the tame birds on the stir. So I do not know for certain
whether I did right or wrong. Shall not he have the fair woman who loves
her most?"

"And was she in love with you as well?" asked Eliza, laughing.

"But who shall ask a woman if she is in love with him?" said Morten.
"The question to ask about woman is this: 'What is her price, and will
you pay it?' We should not cheat them, but should ask them courteously
and pay with a good grace, whether it be cash, love, marriage, or our
life or honor which they charge us; or else, if we are poor people and
cannot pay, take off our hats to them and leave them for the wealthier
man. That has been sound moral Latin with men and women since the world
began. As to their loving us--for one thing, Can they love us?"

"And what of the women who have no price?" said Eliza, laughing still.

"What of those indeed, dear?" said Morten. "Whatever they ought to have
been, they should not have been women. God may have them, and he may
know what to do with them. They drive men into bad places, and afterward
they cannot get us out even when they want to."

"What was the name of your ship?" asked Eliza, her eyes cast down.

Morten looked up at her, laughing. "The name of my ship was _La Belle
Eliza_," he answered. "Did you not know?"

"Yes, I knew," said Eliza, her voice full of laughter once more. "A
merchant captain of Papa's told me, many years ago in Copenhagen, how
his crew had gone mad with fear and had made him turn back into port
when, off St. Thomas, they spied the topsails of a pirate ship. They
were as afraid of her, he said, as of Satan himself. And he told me that
the name of the ship was _La Belle Eliza_. I thought then that she would
be your boat."

So this was the secret which the old maid had guarded from all the
world. She had not been marble all through. Somewhere within her this
little flame of happiness had been kept alive. To this purpose--for it
had been to no other--had she grown up so lovely in Elsinore. A ship was
in blue water, as in a bed of hyacinths, in winds and warm air, her full
white sails like to a bold chalk-cliff, baked by the sun, with much
sharp steel in boards, not one of the broadswords or knives not red, and
the name of the ship fairly and truly _La Belle Eliza_. Oh, you burghers
of Elsinore, did you see me dance the minuet once? To those same
measures did I tread the waves.

While he had been speaking the color had mounted to her face. She looked
once more like a girl, and the white streamers of her cap were no longer
the finery of an old lady, but the attire of a chaste, flaming bride.

"Yes, she was like a swan," Morten said, "sweet, sweet, like a song."

"Had I been in that merchant ship," said Eliza, "and you had boarded
her, your ship should have been mine by right, Morten."

"Yes," said he, smiling at her, "and my whole _matelotage_. That was our
custom when we took young women. You would have had an adoring
seraglio."

"I lost her," he said, "through my own fault, at a river mouth of
Venezuela. It is a long story. One of my men betrayed her anchoring
place to the British governor of Port of Spain, in Trinidad. I was not
with her then. I had gone myself the sixty miles to Port of Spain in a
fishing boat, to get information about a Dutch cargo boat. I saw all my
crew hanged there, and saw her for the last time.

"It was after that," he said after a pause, "that I never slept well
again. I could not get down into sleep. Whenever I tried to dive down
into it I was shoved upward again, like a piece of flotsam. From that
time I began to lose weight, for I had thrown overboard my ballast. It
was with her. I had become too light for anything. From that time on I
was somehow without body. Do you remember how Papa and Uncle Fernand
used to discuss, at dinner, the wines which they had bought together,
and to talk of some of them having a fine enough bouquet, but no body to
them? That was the case with me, then, my dears: a bouquet I should say
that I may still have had, but no body. I could not sink into
friendship, or fear, or any real delight any longer. And still I could
not sleep."

The sisters had no need to pretend sympathy with this misfortune. It was
their own. All the De Conincks suffered from sleeplessness. When they
had been children they had laughed at their father and his sisters when
they greeted one another in the morning first of all with minute
inquiries and accounts of how they had slept at night. Now they did not
laugh; the matter meant much to them also now.

"But when you cannot sleep at night," said Fanny, sighing, "is it that
you wake up very early, or is it that you cannot fall asleep at all?"

"Nay, I cannot fall asleep at all," said Morten.

"Is it not, then," asked Fanny, "because you are----" She would have
said "cold," but remembering where he had said he came from, she stopped
herself.

"And I have known all the time," said Morten, who did not seem to have
heard what she said to him, "that I shall never lay me down to rest
until I can sleep once more on her, in her, _La Belle Eliza_."

"But you lived ashore, too," said Fanny, her mind running after his, for
she felt as if he were about to escape her.

"Yes, I did," said Morten. "I had for some time a tobacco plantation in
Cuba. And that was a delightful place. I had a white house with pillars
which you would have liked very much. The air of those islands is fine,
delicate, like a glass of true rum. It was there that I had the lovely
wife, the planter's widow, and two children. There were women to dance
with there, at our balls, light like the trade winds--like you two. I
had a very pretty pony to ride there, named Pegasus; a little like
Papa's Zampa--Do you remember him?"

"And you were happy there?" Fanny asked.

"Yes, but it did not last," said Morten. "I spent too much money. I
lived beyond my means, something which Papa had always warned me
against. I had to clear out of it." He sat silent for a little while.

"I had to sell my slaves," he said.

At these words he grew so deadly pale, so ashen gray, that had they not
known him to be dead for long they would have been afraid that he might
be going to die. His eyes, all his features, seemed to sink into his
face. It became the face of a man upon the stake, when the flames take
hold.

The two women sat pale and rigid with him, in deep silence. It was as if
the breath of the hoarfrost had dimmed three windows. They had no word
of comfort for their brother in this situation. For no De Coninck had
ever parted with a servant. It was a code to them that whoever entered
their service must remain there and be looked after by them forever.
They might make an exception with regard to marriage or death, but
unwillingly. In fact it was the opinion of their circle of friends that
in their old age the sisters had come to have only one real object in
life, which was to amuse their servants.

Also they felt that secret contempt for all men, as beings unable to
raise money at any fatal moment, which belongs to fair women with their
consciousness of infinite resources. The sisters De Coninck, in Cuba,
would never have allowed things to come to such a tragic point. Could
they not easily have sold themselves three hundred times, and made three
hundred Cubans happy, and so saved the welfare of their three hundred
slaves? There was, therefore, a long pause.

"But the end," said Fanny finally, drawing in her breath deeply, "that
was not yet, then?"

"No, no," said Morten, "not till quite a long time after that. When I
had no more money I started an old brig in the carrying trade, from
Havana to New Orleans first, and then from Havana to New York. Those are
difficult seas." His sister had succeeded in turning his mind away from
his distress, and as he began to explain to her the various routes of
his trade he warmed to his subject. Altogether he had, during the
meeting, become more and more sociable and had got back all his old
manner of a man who is at ease in company and is in really good
understanding with the minds of his convives. "But nothing would go
right for me," he went on. "I had one run of bad luck after another. No,
in the end, you see, my ship foundered near the Cay Sal bank, where she
ran full of water and sank in a dead calm; and with one thing and
another, in the end, if you do not mind my saying so, in Havana I was
hanged. Did you know that?"

"Yes," said Fanny.

"Did you mind that, I wondered, you two?" he asked.

"No!" said his sisters with energy.

They might have answered him with their eyes turned away, but they both
looked back at him. And they thought that this might perhaps be the
reason why he was wearing his collar and stock so unusually high; there
might be a mark on that strong and delicate neck around which they had
tied the cambric with great pains when they had been going to balls
together.

There was a moment's silence in the red room, after which Fanny and
Morten began to speak at the same time.

"I beg your pardon," said Morten.

"No," said Fanny, "no. What were you going to say?"

"I was asking about Uncle Fernand," said Morten. "Is he still alive?"

"Oh, no, Morten, my dear," said Fanny, "he died in 'thirty. He was an
old man then. He was at Adrienne's wedding, and made a speech, but he
was very tired. In the evening he took me aside and said to me: 'My
dear, it is a _gnante fte_.' And he died only three weeks later. He
left Eliza his money and furniture. In a drawer we found a little silver
locket, set with rose diamonds, with a curl of fair hair, and on it was
written, 'The hair of Charlotte Corday.'"

"I see," said Morten. "He had a fine figure, Uncle Fernand. And Aunt
Adelaide, is she dead too?"

"Yes, she died even before he did," said Fanny. She meant to tell him
something of the death of Madame Adelaide De Coninck, but did not go on.
She felt depressed. These people were dead; he ought to have known of
them. The loneliness of her dead brother made her a little sick at
heart.

"How she used to preach to us, Aunt Adelaide," he said. "How many times
did she say to me: 'This melancholy of yours, Morten, this
dissatisfaction with life which you and the girls allow yourselves,
makes me furious. What is good enough for me is good enough for you. You
all ought to be married and have large families to look after; that
would cure you.' And you, Fanny, said to her: 'Yes, little Aunt, that
was the advice, from an auntie of his, which our Papa did follow.'"

"Toward the end," Eliza broke in, "she would not hear or think of
anything that had happened since the time when she was thirty years old
and her husband died. Of her grandchildren she said: 'These are some of
the new-fangled devices of my young children. They will soon find out
how little there is to them.' But she could remember all the religious
scruples of Uncle Theodore, her husband, and how he had kept her awake
at night with meditations upon the fall of man and original sin. Of
those she was still proud."

"You must think me very ignorant," Morten said. "You know so many things
of which I know nothing."

"Oh, dear Morten," said Fanny, "you surely know of a lot of things of
which we know nothing at all."

"Not many, Fanny," said Morten. "One or two, perhaps."

"Tell us one or two," said Eliza.

Morten thought over her demand for a little while.

"I have come to know of one thing," he said, "of which I myself had no
idea once. _C'est une invention trs fine, trs spirituelle, de la part
de Dieu_, as Uncle Fernand said of love. It is this: that you cannot eat
your cake and have it. I should never have hit upon that on my own. It
is indeed an original idea. But then, you see, he is really _trs fin,
trs spirituel_, the Lord."

The two sisters drew themselves up slightly, as if they had received a
compliment. They were, as already said, keen churchgoers, and their
brother's words had ever carried great weight with them.

"But do you know," said Morten suddenly, "that little snappy pug of Aunt
Adelaide's, Fingal--him I have seen."

"How was that?" Fanny asked. "Tell us about that."

"That was when I was all alone," said Morten, "when my ship had
foundered at the Cay Sal bank. We were three who got away in a boat, but
we had no water. The others died, and in the end I was alone."

"What did you think of then?" Fanny asked.

"Do you know, I thought of you," said Morten.

"What did you think of us?" Fanny asked again in a low voice.

Morten said, "I thought: we have been amateurs in saying no, little
sisters. But God can say no. Good God, how he can say no. We think that
he can go on no longer, not even he. But he goes on, and says no once
more.

"I had thought of that before, quite a good deal," Morten said, "at
Elsinore, during the time before my wedding. And now I kept on thinking
upon it. I thought of those great, pure, and beautiful things which say
no to us. For why should they say yes to us, and tolerate our insipid
caresses? Those who say yes, we get them under us, and we ruin them and
leave them, and find when we have left them that they have made us sick.
The earth says yes to our schemes and our work, but the sea says no; and
we, we love the sea ever. And to hear God say no, in the stillness, in
his own voice, that to us is very good. The starry sky came up, there,
and said no to me as well. Like a noble, proud woman."

"And did you see Fingal then?" Eliza asked.

"Yes," said Morten. "Just then. As I turned my head a little, Fingal was
sitting with me in the boat. You know, he was an ill-tempered little dog
always, and he never liked me because I teased him. He used to bite me
every time he saw me. I dared not touch him there in the boat. I was
afraid that he would snap at me again. Still, there he sat, and stayed
with me all night."

"And did he go away then?" Fanny asked.

"I do not know, my dear," Morten said. "An American schooner, bound for
Jamaica, picked me up in the early morning. There on board was a man who
had bid against me at the sale in Philippsburg. In this way it came to
pass that I was hanged--in the end, as you say--at Havana."

"Was that bad?" asked Fanny in a whisper.

"No, my poor Fanny," said Morten.

"Was there anyone with you there?" Fanny whispered.

"Yes, there was a fat young priest there," said Morten. "He was afraid
of me. They probably told him some bad things about me. But still he did
his best. I asked him: 'Can you obtain for me, now, one minute more to
live in?' He said, 'What will you do with one minute of life, my poor
son?' I said, 'I will think, with the halter around my neck, for one
minute of _La Belle Eliza_.'"

While they now sat in silence for a little while, they heard some people
pass in the street below the window, and talk together. Through the
shutters they could follow the passing flash of their lanterns.

Morten leaned back in his chair, and he looked now to his sisters older
and more worn than before. He was indeed much like their father, when
the Papa De Coninck had come in from his office tired, and had taken
pleasure in sitting down quietly in the company of his daughters.

"It is very pleasant in here, in this room," he said, "it is just like
old days--do you not think so? With Papa and Mamma below. We three are
not very old yet. We are good-looking people still."

"The circle is complete again," said Eliza gently, using one of their
old expressions.

"Is completed, Lizzie," said Morten, smiling back at her.

"The vicious circle," said Fanny automatically, quoting another of their
old familiar terms.

"You were always," said Morten, "such a clever lass."

At these kind direct words Fanny impetuously caught at her breath.

"And, oh, my girls," Morten exclaimed, "how we did long then, with the
very entrails of us, to get away from Elsinore!"

His elder sister suddenly turned her old body all around in the chair,
and faced him straight. Her face was changed and drawn with pain. The
long wake and the strain began to tell on her, and she spoke to him in a
hoarse and cracked voice, as if she were heaving it up from the
innermost part of her chest.

"Yes," she cried, "yes, you may talk. But you mean to go away again and
leave me. You! You have been to these great warm seas of which you talk,
to a hundred countries. You have been married to five people--Oh, I do
not know of it all! It is easy for you to speak quietly, to sit still.
You have never needed to beat your arms to keep warm. You do not need to
now!"

Her voice failed her. She stuttered in her speech and clasped the edge
of the table. "And here," she groaned out, "I am--cold. The world is
bitterly cold around me. I am so cold at night, in my bed, that my
warming-pans are no good to me!"

At this moment the tall grandfather's clock started to strike, for Fanny
had herself wound it up in the afternoon. It struck midnight in a grave
and slow measure, and Morten looked quickly up at it.

Fanny meant to go on speaking, and to lift at last all the deadly weight
of her whole life off her, but she felt her chest pressed together. She
could not out-talk the clock, and her mouth opened and shut twice
without a sound.

"Oh, hell," she cried out, "to hell!"

Since she could not speak she stretched out her arms to him, trembling.
With the strokes of the clock his face became gray and blurred to her
eyes, and a terrible panic came upon her. Was it for this that she had
wound up the clock! She threw herself toward him, across the table.

"Morten!" she cried in a long wail. "Brother! Stay! Listen! Take me with
you!"

As the last stroke fell, and the clock took up its ticking again, as if
it meant to go on doing something, in any case, through all eternity,
the chair between the sisters was empty, and at the sight Fanny's head
fell down on the table.

She lay like that for a long time, without stirring. From the winter
night outside, from far away to the north, came a resounding tone, like
the echo of a cannon shot. The children of Elsinore knew well what it
meant: it was the ice breaking up somewhere, in a long crack.

Fanny thought, dully, after a long while, What is Eliza thinking? and
laboriously lifted her head, looked up, and dried her mouth with her
little handkerchief. Eliza sat very still opposite her, where she had
been all the time. She dragged the streamers of her cap downward and
together, as if she were pulling a rope, and Fanny remembered seeing
her, long, long ago, when angry or in great pain or joy, pulling in the
same way at her long golden tresses. Eliza lifted her pale eyes and
stared straight at her sister's face.

"To think," said she, "'to think, with the halter around my neck, for
one minute of _La Belle Eliza_.'"




THE DREAMERS


On a full-moon night of 1863 a dhow was on its way from Lamu to
Zanzibar, following the coast about a mile out.

She carried full sails before the monsoon, and had in her a freight of
ivory and rhino-horn. This last is highly valued as an aphrodisiac, and
traders come for it to Zanzibar from as far as China. But besides these
cargoes the dhow also held a secret load, which was about to stir and
raise great forces, and of which the slumbering countries which she
passed did not dream.

This still night was bewildering in its deep silence and peace, as if
something had happened to the world; as if the soul of it had been, by
some magic, turned upside down. The free monsoon came from far places,
and the sea wandered on under its sway, on her long journey, in the face
of the dim luminous moon. But the brightness of the moon upon the water
was so clear that it seemed as if all the light in the world were in
reality radiating from the sea, to be reflected in the skies. The waves
looked solid, as if one might safely have walked upon them, while it was
into the vertiginous sky that one might sink and fall, into the
turbulent and unfathomable depths of silvery worlds, of bright silver or
dull and tarnished silver, forever silver reflected within silver,
moving and changing, towering up, slowly and weightless.

The two slaves in the prow were still like statues, their bodies, naked
to the waist in the hot night, iron-gray like the sea where the moon was
not shining on it, so that only the clear dark shades running along
their backs and limbs marked out their forms against the vast plane. The
red cap of one of them glowed dull, like a plum, in the moonlight. But
one corner of the sail, catching the light, glinted like the white belly
of a dead fish. The air was like that of a hothouse, and so damp that
all the planks and ropes of the boat were sweating a salt dew. The heavy
waters sang and murmured along the bow and stern.

On the after deck a small lantern was hung up, and three people were
grouped round it.

The first of them was young Said Ben Ahamed, the son of Tippo Tip's
sister, and himself deeply beloved by the great man. He had been,
through the treachery of his rivals, for two years a prisoner in the
North, and had escaped and got to Lamu by many strange ways. Now he was
here, unknown to the world, on his way home to take revenge upon his
enemies. It was the hope of revenge within Said's heart which, more
powerful than the monsoon, was in reality forcing the boat on. It was
both sail and ballast to the dhow. Had they now been aware that Said was
in a ship on his way to Zanzibar tonight, many great people would have
been hurriedly packing up their property and their harems, to get away
before it should be too late. Of Said's revenge, in the end, other tales
have told.

He sat on the deck crosslegged, bent forward, his hands loosely folded
and resting on the planks before him, in deep thought.

The second, and eldest, of the party was a person of great fame, the
much-renowned story-teller Mira Jama himself, the inventions of whose
mind have been loved by a hundred tribes. He sat with his legs crossed,
like Said, and with his back to the moon, but the night was clear enough
to show that he had, at some rencounter with his destiny, had the nose
and ears of his dark head cut clear off. He was poorly dressed, but
still had kept a regard for his appearance. Around his thin body he had
a faded, thick, crimson silk scarf, which sometimes, at a movement of
his, flamed up and burned like fire or pure rubies in the light of the
small lantern.

The third in the company was a red-haired Englishman whose name was
Lincoln Forsner, and whom the natives of the coast called Tembu, which
may mean either ivory or alcohol, as it pleases you. Lincoln was the
child of a rich family in his own country, and had been blown about by
many winds to lie tonight flat on his stomach on the deck of the dhow,
dressed in an Arab shirt and loose Indian trousers, but still shaved and
whiskered like a gentleman. He was chewing the dried leaves which the
Swaheli call _murungu_, which keep you awake and in a pleasant mood, and
from time to time spitting at a long distance. This made him
communicative. He was joining Said's expedition out of his love for the
young man, and also to see what would happen, as he had before seen
things happen in various countries. His heart was light. He was very
fond of a boat, and pleased with the speed, the warm night, and the full
moon.

"How is it, Mira," he said, "that you cannot tell us a story as we are
sailing on here tonight? You used to have many tales, such as make the
blood run cold and make you afraid to trust your oldest friend, tales
good on a hot night and for people out on great undertakings. Have you
no more?"

"No, I have no more, Tembu," said Mira, "and that in itself makes a sad
tale, good for people out on great undertakings. I was once a great
story-teller, and I specialized in such tales as make the blood run
cold. Devils, poison, treachery, torture, darkness, and lunacy: these
were Mira's stock in trade."

"I remember one of your tales now," said Lincoln. "You frightened me by
it, and two young dancers of Lamu, who really need not have been afraid
of it, so that we did not sleep all night. The Sultan wanted a true
virgin, and after much trouble she was fetched for him from the
mountains. But he found her----"

"Yes, yes," Mira took up the tale, his whole countenance suddenly
changing, his dark eyes brightening and his hands coming to life in the
old telltale manner, like two aged dancing snakes called out from their
basket by the flute, "the Sultan wanted a true virgin, such as had never
heard of men. With great trouble she was fetched for him from the Amazon
kingdom in the mountains, where all male children had been killed off by
the women, who made wild wars on their own. But when the Sultan went in
to her, between the hangings of the door he saw her looking out at a
young water-carrier, who was walking to and fro in the palace, and heard
her speak to herself: 'Oh, I have come to a good place,' she said, 'and
that creature there must be God, or a strong angel, the one who hurls
the lightning. I do not mind dying now, for I have seen what no one has
ever seen.' And at that the young water-carrier looked up at the window
too, and kept standing there, gazing at the maiden. So the Sultan became
very sad, and he had the virgin and the young man buried alive together,
in a marble chest broad enough to make a marriage bed, under a palm tree
of his garden, and seating himself below the same tree he wondered at
many things, and at how he was never to have his heart's desire, and he
had a young boy to play the flute to him. That was the tale you heard
once."

"Yes, but better told then," said Lincoln.

"It was that," said Mira, "and the world could not do without Mira then.
People love to be frightened. The great princes, fed up with the sweets
of life, wished to have their blood stirred again. The honest ladies, to
whom nothing ever happened, longed to tremble in their beds just for
once. The dancers were inspired to a lighter pace by tales of flight and
pursuit. Ah, how the world loved me in those days! Then I was handsome,
round-cheeked. I drank noble wine, wore gold-embroidered clothes and
amber, and had incense burned in my rooms."

"But how has this change come upon you?" asked Lincoln.

"Alas!" said Mira, sinking back into his former quiet manner, "as I have
lived I have lost the capacity of fear. When you know what things are
really like, you can make no poems about them. When you have had talk
with ghosts and connections with the devils you are, in the end, more
afraid of your creditors than of them; and when you have been made a
cuckold you are no longer nervous about cuckoldry. I have become too
familiar with life; it can no longer delude me into believing that one
thing is much worse than the other. The day and the dark, an enemy and a
friend--I know them to be about the same. How can you make others afraid
when you have forgotten fear yourself? I once had a really tragic tale,
a great tale, full of agony, immensely popular, of a young man who in
the end had his nose and his ears cut off. Now I could frighten no one
with it, if I wanted to, for now I know that to be without them is not
so very much worse than to have them. This is why you see me here, skin
and bone, and dressed in old rags, the follower of Said in prison and
poverty, instead of keeping near the thrones of the mighty, flourishing
and flattered, as was young Mira Jama."

"But could you not, Mira," Lincoln asked, "make a terrible tale about
poverty and unpopularity?"

"No," said the story-teller proudly, "that is not the sort of story
which Mira Jama tells."

"Well, yes, alas," said Lincoln, turning around on his side, "what is
life, Mira, when you come to think upon it, but a most excellent,
accurately set, infinitely complicated machine for turning fat playful
puppies into old mangy blind dogs, and proud war horses into skinny
nags, and succulent young boys, to whom the world holds great delights
and terrors, into old weak men, with running eyes, who drink ground
rhino-horn?"

"Oh, Lincoln Forsner," said the noseless story-teller, "what is man,
when you come to think upon him, but a minutely set, ingenious machine
for turning, with infinite artfulness, the red wine of Shiraz into
urine? You may even ask which is the more intense craving and pleasure:
to drink or to make water. But in the meantime, what has been done? A
song has been composed, a kiss taken, a slanderer slain, a prophet
begotten, a righteous judgment given, a joke made. The world drank in
the young story-teller Mira. He went to its head, he ran in its veins,
he made it glow with warmth and color. Now I am on my way down a little;
the effect has worn off. The world will soon be equally pleased to piss
me out again, and I do not know but that I am pressing on a little
myself. But the tales which I made--they shall last."

"What do you do in the meantime to keep so good a face toward it, in
this urgency of life to rid itself of you?" Lincoln asked.

"I dream," said Mira.

"Dream?" said Lincoln.

"Yes, by the grace of God," said Mira, "every night, as soon as I sleep
I dream. And in my dreams I still know fear. Things are terrible to me
there. In my dreams I sometimes carry with me something infinitely dear
and precious, such as I know well enough that no real things be, and
there it seems to me that I must keep this thing against some dreadful
danger, such as there are none in the real world. And it also seems to
me that I shall be struck down and annihilated if I lose it, though I
know well that you are not, in the world of the daytime, struck down and
annihilated, whatever you lose. In my dreams the dark is filled with
indescribable horrors, but there are also sometimes flights and pursuits
of a heavenly delight."

He sat for a while in silence.

"But what particularly pleases me about dreams," he went on, "is this:
that there the world creates itself around me without any effort on my
part. Here, now, if I want to go to Gazi, I have to bargain for a boat,
and to buy and pack my provisions, to tack up against the wind, and even
to make my hands sore by rowing. And then, when I get to Gazi, what am I
to do there? Of that also I must think. But in my dreams I find myself
walking up a long row of stone steps which lead from the sea. These
steps I have not seen before, yet I feel that to climb them is a great
happiness, and that they will take me to something highly enjoyable. Or
I find myself hunting in a long row of low hills, and I have got people
with me with bows and arrows, and dogs in leads. But what I am to hunt,
or why I have gone there, I do not know. One time I came into a room
from a balcony, in the very early morning, and upon the stone floor
stood a woman's two little sandals, and at the same moment I thought:
they are hers. And at that my heart overflowed with pleasure, rocked in
ease. But I had taken no trouble. I had had no expense to get the woman.
And at other times I have been aware that outside the door was a big
black man, very black, who meant to kill me; but still I had done
nothing to make him my enemy, and I shall just wait for the dream itself
to inform me how to escape from him, for in myself I cannot find out how
to do it. The air in my dreams, and particularly since I have been in
prison with Said, is always very high, and I generally see myself as a
very small figure in a great landscape, or in a big house. In all this a
young man would not take any pleasure at all; but to me, now, it holds
such delight as does making water when you have finished with wine."

"I do not know about it, Mira; I hardly ever dream," said Lincoln.

"Oh, Lincoln, live forever," said old Mira. "You dream indeed more than
I do myself. Do I not know the dreamers when I meet them? You dream
awake and walking about. You will do nothing yourself to choose your own
ways: you let the world form itself around you, and then you open your
eyes to see where you will find yourself. This journey of yours,
tonight, is a dream of yours. You let the waves of fate wash you about,
and then you will open your eyes tomorrow to find out where you are."

"To see your pretty face," said Lincoln.

"You know, Tembu," said Mira suddenly, after a pause, "that if, in
planting a coffee tree, you bend the taproot, that tree will start,
after a little time, to put out a multitude of small delicate roots near
the surface. That tree will never thrive, nor bear fruit, but it will
flower more richly than the others.

"Those fine roots are the dreams of the tree. As it puts them out, it
need no longer think of its bent taproot. It keeps alive by them--a
little, not very long. Or you can say that it dies by them, if you like.
For really, dreaming is the well-mannered people's way of committing
suicide.

"If you want to go to sleep at night, Lincoln, you must not think, as
people tell you, of a long row of sheep or camels passing through a
gate, for they go in one direction, and your thoughts will go along with
them. You should think instead of a deep well. In the bottom of that
well, just in the middle of it, there comes up a spring of water, which
runs out in little streamlets to all possible sides, like the rays of a
star. If you can make your thoughts run out with that water, not in one
direction, but equally to all sides, you will fall asleep. If you can
make your heart do it thoroughly enough, as the coffee tree does it with
the little surface roots, you will die."

"So that is the matter with me, you think: that I want to forget my
taproot?" asked Lincoln.

"Yes," said Mira, "it must be that. Unless it be that, like many of your
countrymen, you never had much of it."

"Unless it be that," said Lincoln.

They sailed on for a little while in silence. A slave took up a flute
and played a few notes on it, to try it.

"Why does not Said speak a word to us?" Lincoln asked Mira.

Said lifted his eyes a little and smiled, but did not speak.

"Because he thinks," said Mira. "This conversation of ours seems to him
very insipid."

"What is he thinking of?" asked Lincoln.

Mira thought for a little. "Well," he said, "there are only two courses
of thought at all seemly to a person of any intelligence. The one is:
What am I to do this next moment?--or tonight, or tomorrow? And the
other: What did God mean by creating the world, the sea, and the desert,
the horse, the winds, woman, amber, fishes, wine? Said thinks of the one
or the other."

"Perhaps he is dreaming," said Lincoln.

"No," said Mira after a moment, "not Said. He does not know how to dream
yet. The world is just drinking him in. He is going to its head and into
its blood. He means to drive the pulsation of its heart. He is not
dreaming, but perhaps he is praying to God. By the time when you have
finished praying to God--that is when you put out your surface roots;
that is when you begin to dream. Said tonight may be praying to God,
throwing his prayer at the Lord with such energy as that with which the
Angel shall, upon the last day, throw at the world the note of his
trump, with such energy as that with which the elephant copulates. Said
says to God: 'Let me be all the world.'

"He says," Mira went on after a minute, "I shall show no mercy, and I
ask for none. But that is where Said is mistaken. He will be showing
mercy before he has done with all of us."

"Do you ever dream of the same place twice?" asked Lincoln after a time.

"Yes, yes," said Mira. "That is a great favor of God's, a great delight
to the soul of the dreamer. I come back, after a long time, in my dream,
to the place of an old dream, and my heart melts with delight."

They sailed on for some time, and no one said anything. Then Lincoln
suddenly changed his position, sat up, and made himself comfortable. He
spat out on the deck the last of his _Morungu_, dived into a pocket, and
rolled himself a cigarette.

"I will tell you a tale tonight, Mira," he said, "since you have none.
You have reminded me of long-gone things. Many good stories have come
from your part of the world to ours, and when I was a child I enjoyed
them very much. Now I will tell this one, for the pleasure of your ears,
Mira, and for the heart of Said, to whom my tale may prove useful. It
all goes to teach you how I was, twenty years ago, taught, as you say,
Mira, to dream, and of the woman who taught me. It happened just as I
tell it to you. But as to names and places, and conditions in the
countries in which it all took place, and which may seem very strange to
you, I will give you no explanation. You must take in whatever you can,
and leave the rest outside. It is not a bad thing in a tale that you
understand only half of it."

****

Twenty years ago, when I was a young man of twenty-three, I sat one
winter night in the room of a hotel, amongst mountains, with snow,
storm, great clouds and a wild moon outside.

Now the continent of Europe, of which you have heard, consists of two
parts, the one of which is more pleasant than the other, and these two
are separated by a high and steep mountain chain. You cannot cross it
except in a few places where the formation of the mountains is a little
less hostile than elsewhere, and where roads have been made, with much
trouble, to take you over them. Such a place there was near the hotel
where I was staying. A road that would admit pedestrians, horses and
mules, and even coaches had been cut in the rocks, and on the top of the
pass, where, from laboriously climbing upwards, cursing your fate, you
begin to descend, soon to feel the sweet air caressing your face and
lungs, a brotherhood of holy men have built a great house for the
refreshment of travelers. I was on my way from the North, where things
were cold and dead, to the blue and voluptuous South. The hotel was my
last station before the steep journey to the top of the pass, which I
meant to undertake on the next day. It was a little early in the season
yet to travel this way at all. There were only a few people on the road
as yet, and higher up in the mountains the snow was lying deep.

To the world I looked a pretty, rich, and gay young man, on his way from
one pleasure to another, and providing himself, on the way, with the
best of everything. But in truth I was just being whirled about, forward
and backward, by my aching heart, a poor fool out on a wild-goose chase
after a woman.

Yes, after a woman, Mira, if you believe it or not. I had already been
searching for her in a variety of places. In fact, so hopeless was my
pursuit of her that I should most certainly have given it up if it had
been at all within my power to do so. But my own soul, Mira, my dear,
was in the breast of this woman.

And she was not a girl of my own age. She was many years older than I.
Of her life I knew nothing except what was painful to me to swallow,
and, what was the worst of the business, I had no reason to believe that
she would be at all pleased should I ever contrive to find her.

The whole thing had come about like this: My father was a very rich man
in England, the owner of large factories and of a pleasant estate in the
country, a man with a big family and an enormous working capacity. He
read the Bible much--our Holy Book--and had come to feel himself God's
one substitute on earth. Indeed, I do not know if he was capable of
making any distinction between his fear of God and his self-esteem. It
was his duty, he thought, to turn the chaotic world into a universe of
order, and to see that all things were made useful--which, to him, meant
making them useful to him himself. Within his own nature I know of two
things only which he could not control: he had, against his own
principles, a strong love of music, particularly of Italian opera music;
and he sometimes could not sleep at night. Later on I was told by my
aunt, his sister, who much disliked him, that he had, as a young man in
the West Indies, driven to suicide, or actually killed, a man. Perhaps
this was what kept him awake. I and my twin sister were much younger
than our other brothers and sisters. What flea had bitten my father that
he should beget two more children when he had got through most of his
trouble with the rest of us, I do not know. At the day of judgment I
shall ask him for an explanation. I have sometimes thought that it was
really the ghost of the West-Indian gentleman which had been after him.

My father was not pleased with anything which I did. In the end I think
that I became a carking care to him, for had I not been of his own
manufacture he would have been pleased to see me come to a bad end. Now
I felt that I was ever, as My Son Lincoln, being drawn, hammered and
battered into all sorts of shapes, in order to be made useful, between
one o'clock and three of the night. During these hours I myself
generally had a pretty heated and noisy time, for I had become an
officer in a smart regiment of the army, and there, to keep up my
prestige amongst the sons of the oldest families of the land, spent much
of the money, time, and wit which my father reckoned to be really and
rightly his.

At about this time a neighbor of ours died, and left a young widow. She
was pretty and rich, and had been unhappily married, and in her trials
had consoled herself with a sentimental friendship with my twin sister,
who was so like me that if I dressed up in her clothes nobody would know
the one of us from the other. Therefore my father now thought that this
lady might consent to marry me, and lift the burden of me from his
shoulders onto hers. This prospect suited me as well as anything that I
at that time expected from life. The only thing for which I asked my
father was his consent to let me travel on the continent of Europe
during the lady's year of mourning. In those days I had various strong
inclinations, for wine, gambling and cockfighting, and the society of
gypsies, together with a passion for theological discussion which I had
inherited from my father himself--all of which my father thought I had
better rid myself of before I married the widow, or, at least, which I
had better not let her contemplate at too close quarters while she could
still change her mind. As my father knew me to be quick and ardent in
love affairs, I think that he also feared that I might seduce my fiance
into too close a relation, profiting by our neighborhood in the country,
and, perhaps, by my likeness to my sister. For all these reasons the old
man agreed that I should go traveling for nine months, in the company of
an old schoolfellow of his, who had lived on his charity and whom he was
pleased to turn in this way to some sort of use.

This man, however, I soon managed to rid myself of, for when we came to
Rome he took up the study of the mysteries of the ancient Priapean cult
of Lampsacus and I enjoyed myself very well.

But in the fourth month of my year of grace, it happened to me that I
fell in love with a woman within a brothel of Rome. I had gone there, on
an evening, with a party of theologians. It was thus not a dashing place
where people with lots of money went to amuse themselves, neither was it
a murky house frequented by artists or robbers. It was just a middling
respectable establishment. I remember the narrow street in which it
stood, and the many smells which met therein. If ever I were to smell
them again, I should feel that I had come home. To this woman I owe it
that I have ever understood, and still remember, the meaning of such
words as tears, heart, longing, stars, which you poets make use of. Yes,
as to stars in particular, Mira, there was much about her that reminded
one of a star. There was the difference between her and other women that
there is between an overcast and a starry sky. Perhaps you too have met
in the course of your life women of that sort, who are self-luminous and
shine in the dark, who are phosphorescent, like touchwood.

As, upon the next day, I woke up in my hotel in Rome, I remember that I
had a great fright. I thought: I was drunk last night; my head has
played a trick on me. There are no such women. At this I grew hot and
cold all over. But again I thought, lying in my bed: I could not
possibly, all on my own, have invented such a person as this woman. Why,
only our greatest poet could have done that. I could never have imagined
a woman with so much life in her, and that great strength. I got up and
went straight back to her house, and there I found her again, such
indeed as I remembered her.

Later on I learned that the extraordinary impression of great strength
which she gave me was somehow false after all; she had not all the
strength that she showed. I will tell you what it was like:

If all your life you had been tacking up against the winds and the
currents, and suddenly, for once, you were taken on board a ship which
went, as we do tonight, with a strong tide and before a following wind,
you would undoubtedly be much impressed with the power of that ship. You
would be wrong; and yet in a way you would also be right, for the power
of the waters and the winds might be said rightly to belong to the ship,
since she had managed, alone amongst all vessels, to ally herself with
them. Thus had I, all my life, under my father's gis, been taught to
tack up against all the winds and currents of life. In the arms of this
woman I felt myself in accord with them all, lifted and borne on by life
itself. This, to my mind then, was due to her great strength. And still,
at that time I did not know at all to what extent she had allied herself
with all the currents and winds of life.

After this first night we were always together. I have never been able
to get anything out of the orthodox love affairs of my country, which
begin in the drawing-room with banalities, flatteries and giggles, and
go through touches of hands and feet, to finish up in what is generally
held to be a climax, in the bed. This love affair of mine in Rome, which
began in the bed, helped on by wine and much noisy music, and which grew
into a kind of courtship and friendship hitherto unknown to me, was the
only one that I have ever liked. After a while I often took her out with
me for the whole day, or for a whole day and night. I bought a small
carriage and a horse, with which we went about in Rome and in the
_Campagna_, as far as Frascati and Nemi. We supped in the little inns,
and in the early mornings we often stopped on the road and let the horse
graze on the roadside, while we ourselves sat on the ground, drank a
bottle of fresh, sour, red wine, ate raisins and almonds, and looked up
at the many birds of prey which circled over the great plain, and whose
shadows, upon the short grass, would run alongside our carriage. Once in
a village there was a festival, with Chinese lamps around a fountain in
the clear evening. We watched it from a balcony. Several times, also, we
went as far as the seaside. It was all in the month of September, a good
month in Rome. The world begins to be brown, but the air is as clear as
hill water, and it is strange that it is full of larks, and that here
they sing at that time of the year.

Olalla was very pleased with all this. She had a great love for Italy,
and much knowledge of good food and wine. At times she would dress up,
as gay as a rainbow in cashmeres and plumes, as a prince's mistress, and
there never was a lady in England to beat her then; but at other times
she would wear the linen hood of the Italian women, and dance in the
villages in the manner of the country. Then a stronger or more graceful
dancer was not to be found, although she liked even better to sit with
me and watch them dance. She was extraordinarily alive to all
impressions. Wherever we went together she would observe many more
things than I did, though I have been a good sportsman all my life. But
at the same time there never seemed to be to her much difference between
joy and pain, or between sad and pleasant things. They were all equally
welcome to her, as if in her heart she knew them to be the same.

One afternoon we were on our way back to Rome, about sunset, and Olalla,
bareheaded, was driving the horse and whipping him into a gallop. The
breeze then blew her long dark curls away from her face, and showed me
again a long scar from a burn, which, like a little white snake, ran
from her left ear to her collar bone. I asked her, as I had done before,
how she had come to be so badly burned. She would not answer, but
instead began to talk of all the great prelates and merchants of Rome
who were in love with her, until I said, laughing, that she had no
heart. Over this she was silent for a little while, still going at full
speed, the strong sunlight straight in our faces.

"Oh, yes," she said at last, "I have a heart. But it is buried in the
garden of a little white villa near Milan."

"Forever?" I asked.

"Yes, forever," she said, "for it is the most lovely place."

"What is there," I asked her, oppressed by jealousy, "in a little white
villa of Milan to keep your heart there forever?"

"I do not know," she said. "There will not be much now, since nobody is
weeding the garden or tuning the piano. There may be strangers living
there now. But there is moonlight there, when the moon is up, and the
souls of dead people."

She often spoke in this vague whimsical way, and she was so graceful,
gentle, and somehow humble in it that it always charmed me. She was very
keen to please, and would take much trouble about it, though not as a
servant who becomes rigid by his fear of displeasing, but like somebody
very rich, heaping benefactions upon you out of a horn of plenty. Like a
tame lioness, strong of tooth and claw, insinuating herself into your
favor. Sometimes she seemed to me like a child, and then again old, like
those aqueducts, built a thousand years ago, which stand over the
_Campagna_ and throw their long shadows on the ground, their majestic,
ancient, and cracked walls shining like amber in the sun. I felt like a
new, dull thing in the world, a silly little boy beside her then. And
always there was that about her which made me feel her so much stronger
than myself. Had I known for certain that she could fly, and might have
flown away from me and from the earth whenever she choose to, it would
have given me the same feeling, I believe.

It was not till the end of September that I began to think of the
future. I saw then that I could not possibly live without Olalla. If I
tried to go away from her, my heart, I thought, would run back to her as
water will run downhill. So I thought that I must marry her, and make
her come to England with me.

If when I asked her she had made the slightest objection, I should not
have been so much upset by her behavior later on. But she said at once
that she would come. She was more caressing, more full of sweetness
toward me from that time than she had ever been before, and we would
talk of our life in England, and of everything there, and laugh over it
together. I told her of my father, and how he had always been an
enthusiast about the Italian opera, which was the best thing that I
could find to say of him. I knew, in talking to her about all this, that
I should never again be bored in England.

It was about then that I was for the first time struck by the
appearance, whenever I went near Olalla, of a figure of a man that I had
never seen before. The first few times I did not think of it, but after
our sixth or seventh meeting he began to occupy my thoughts and to make
me curiously ill at ease. He was a Jew of fifty or sixty years, slightly
built, very richly dressed, with diamonds on his hands, and with the
manners of a fine old man of the world. He was of a pale complexion and
had very dark eyes. I never saw him with her, or in the house, but I ran
into him when I went there, or came away, so that he seemed to me to
circle around her, like the moon around the earth. There must have been
something extraordinary about him from the beginning, or I should not
have had the idea, which now filled my head, that he had some power over
Olalla and was an evil spirit in her life. In the end I took so much
interest in him that I made my Italian valet inquire about him at the
hotel where he was living, and so learned that he was a fabulously rich
Jew of Holland, and that his name was Marcus Cocoza.

I came to wonder so much about what such a man could have to do in the
street of Olalla's house, and why he thus appeared and again
disappeared, that in the end, half against my will--for I was afraid of
what she might tell me--I asked her if she knew him. She put two fingers
under my chin and lifted it up. "Have you not noted about me,
_Carissime_," she asked me, "that I have no shadow? Once upon a time I
sold my shadow to the devil, for a little heart-ease, a little fun. That
man whom you have seen outside--with your usual penetration you will
easily guess him to be no other than this shadow of mine, with which I
have no longer anything to do. The devil sometimes allows it to walk
about. It then naturally tries to come back and lay itself at my feet,
as it used to do. But I will on no account allow it to do so. Why, the
devil might reclaim the whole bargain, did I permit it! Be you at ease
about him, my little star."

She was, I thought, in her own way obviously speaking the truth for
once. As she spoke I realized it: she had no shadow. There was nothing
black or sad in her nearness, and the dark shades of care, regret,
ambition, or fear, which seem to be inseparable from all human
beings--even from me myself, although in those days I was a fairly
careless boy--had been exiled from her presence. So I just kissed her,
saying that we would leave her shadow in the street and pull down the
blind.

It was about this time, too, that I began to have a strange feeling,
that I have come to know since, and which I then innocently mistook for
happiness. It seemed to me, wherever I went, that the world around me
was losing its weight and was slowly beginning to flow upwards, a world
of light only, of no solidity whatever. Nothing seemed massive any
longer. The Castel San Angelo was entirely a castle in the air, and I
felt that I might lift the very Basilica of St. Peter between my two
fingers. Nor was I afraid of being run over by a carriage in the
streets, so conscious was I that the coach and the horses would have no
more weight in them than if they had been cut out of paper. I felt
extremely happy, if slightly light-headed, under the faith, and took it
as a foreboding of a greater happiness to come, a sort of apotheosis.
The universe, and I myself with it, I thought, was on the wing, on the
way to the seventh heaven. Now I know well enough what it means: it is
the beginning of a final farewell; it is the cock crowing. Since then,
on my travels, I have known a country or a circle of people to have
taken on that same weightless aspect. In one way I was right. The world
around me was indeed on the wing, going upwards. It was only me myself,
who, being too heavy for the flight, was to be left behind, in complete
desolation.

I was occupied with the thought of a letter that I must write to my
father, to tell him that I could not marry the widow, when I was
informed that one of my brothers, who was an officer in the navy, was at
Naples with his ship. I reflected that it might be better to give him
the letter to carry, and told Olalla that I should have to go to Naples
for a couple of days. I asked her if she would be likely to see the old
Jew while I was away, but she assured me that she would neither see him
nor speak to him.

I did not get on quite well with my brother. When I talked to him, I saw
for the first time how my plans for the future would appear to the eyes
of others, and it made me feel very ill at ease. For while I still held
their views to be idiotic and inhuman, I was yet, for the first time
since I had met Olalla, reminded of the dead and clammy atmosphere of my
former world and my home. However, I gave my letter to my brother, and
asked him to plead my cause with my father as well as he could, and I
hastened to return to Rome.

When I came back there I found that Olalla had gone. At first they told
me, in the house where she had been, that she had died suddenly from
fever. This made me deadly ill and nearly drove me mad for three days.
But I soon found out that it could not possibly be so, and then I went
to every inhabitant of the house, imploring and threatening them to tell
me all. I now realized that I ought to have taken her away from the
place before I went to Naples--although what would it have helped me if
she herself had meant to leave me? A strange superstition made me
connect her disappearance with the Jew, and in a last interview with the
_madama_ of the house I seized her by the throat, told her that I knew
all, and promised her that I would strangle her if she did not tell me
the truth. In her terror the old woman confessed: Yes, it had been he.
Olalla had left the house one day and had not come back. The next day a
pale old Jewish gentleman with very dark eyes had appeared at the house,
had settled Olalla's debts and paid a sum to the _madama_ to raise no
trouble. She had not seen the two together. "And where have they gone?"
I cried, sick because I had not had an outlet for my despair in killing
off the old yellow female. That she could not tell me, but on second
thought she believed that she had heard the Jew mention to his servant
the name of a town called Basel.

To Basel I then proceeded, but people who have not themselves tried it
can have no idea of the difficulties you have in trying to find, in a
strange town, a person whose name you do not know.

My search was made more difficult by the fact that I did not know at all
in what station of life I was to seek Olalla. If she had gone with the
Jew she might be a great lady by now, whom I should meet in her own
carriage. But why had the Jew left her in the house where I had found
her in Rome? He might do the same thing now, for some reason unknown to
me. I therefore searched all the houses of ill renown in Basel, of which
there are more than one would think, for Basel is the town in Europe
which stands up most severely for the sanctity of marriage. But I found
no trace of her. I then bethought me of Amsterdam, where I should have,
at least, the name of Cocoza to go by. I did indeed find, in Amsterdam,
the fine old house of the Jew, and learned about him that he was the
richest man of the place, and that his family had traded in diamonds for
three hundred years. But he himself, I was told, was always traveling.
It was thought that he was now in Jerusalem. I ran, from Amsterdam, upon
various false tracks which took me to many countries. This maddening
journey of mine went on for five months. In the end I made up my mind to
go to Jerusalem, and I was on my way back to Italy, to take ship at
Genoa, and these things were all running through my mind when I was
sitting, as I have told you, at the Hotel of Andermatt, waiting to cross
the pass upon the following day.

On the previous day I had found a letter from my father, which had been
following at my heels for some months, being sent after me from one
place to another. My father wrote to me:

"I am now able to look upon your conduct with calm and understanding.
This I owe to the perusal of a collection of family papers, to which I
have during the three last months given much of my time and attention.
From the study of these papers it has become clear to me that a highly
remarkable fate lies, and for the last two hundred years has lain, upon
our family.

"We are, as a family, only so much better than others because we have
always had amongst us one individual who has carried all the weakness
and vice of his generation. The faults which normally would have been
divided up among a whole lot of people have been gathered together upon
the head of one of them only, and we others have in this way come to be
what we have been, and are.

"In going through our papers I can no longer have any doubt of this
fact. I have been able to trace the one particular chosen delinquent
through seven generations, beginning with our great-aunt Elizabeth, into
whose behavior I do not want here to go. I shall only quote the examples
of my uncles Henry and Ambrose, who in their days without any doubt..."

Here followed various names and facts for the support of my father's
theory. He then continued:

"I do not know whether it would not be more of a fatal blow than of a
blessing to our name and family should this strange condition ever cease
to be. It might do away with much trouble and anxiety, but it might also
lead to the family becoming no better than other people.

"As to you, you have so perseveringly declined to follow my command or
advice that I feel I have reason to believe you the chosen victim of
your generation. You have refused to make, by your example, virtue
attractive and the reward of good conduct obvious. I have now reached,
in my relation to you, a sufficiently philosophical outlook to give you
my blessing in the completion of a career which may make filial
disobedience, weakness, and vice a usefully repugnant and deterring
example to your generation of our family."

I never saw my father again. But from my former tutor, whom, many years
later, I happened to meet again in Smyrna, in melancholy circumstances,
I heard of him. My father had so far reconciled himself to the situation
as to marry my young widow himself. They had a son, and him he
christened Lincoln. But whether he did so because after all he had liked
me better than I had known, or with the purpose of removing any
unpleasant sensations which might present themselves to him between one
and three o'clock of a night, in connection with the thought of his son
Lincoln, I cannot tell.

I had read his letter twice, and was taking it from my pocket to read it
again to pass the time, when, looking up, I saw two young men come into
the dining-room of the hotel from the cold night outside. One of them I
knew, and I thought that if he caught sight of me he would come and sit
down with me, which he did, so that the three of us spent the rest of
the night together.

The first of these two nicely dressed and well-mannered young gentlemen
was a boy of a noble family of Coburg, whom, a year before, I had known
in England, where he was sent to study parliamentary procedure, since he
meant to become a diplomat, and also to study horse-breeding, which was
the livelihood of his people. His name was Friederich Hohenemser, but he
was, in looks and manners, so like a dog I had once owned and which was
named Pilot, that I used to call him that. He was a tall and fair,
handsome, young man.

But since it will please you, Mira, to hear your own ingenious parable
made use of, I am going to tell you of him that he was a person whom
life would on no account consent to gulp down. He had himself a burning
craving to be swallowed by life, and on every occasion would try to
force himself down her throat, but she just as stubbornly refused him.
She might, from time to time, just to imbue him with an illusion, sip in
a little of him, though never a good full draught; but even on these
occasions she would vomit him up again. What it was about him which thus
made her stomach rise, I cannot quite tell you; only I know this: that
all people who came near him had, somehow, the same feeling about him,
that, while they had nothing against him, here was a fellow with whom
they could do nothing at all. In this way he was, mentally, in the state
of a very young embryo.

It probably takes a certain amount of cunning, or luck, in a man to get
himself established as an embryo. My friend Pilot had never got beyond
that. His condition was often felt by himself, I believe, as very
alarming; and so indeed it was. His blue eyes at times gave out a most
painful reflection of the hopeless struggle for existence which went on
inside him. If he ever found in himself any original taste at all, he
made the most of it. Thus he would go on talking of his preference for
one wine over another, as if he meant to impress such a precious finding
deeply upon you. A philosopher, about whom I was taught in school and
whom you would have liked, Mira, has said: "I think; consequently I am."
In this way did my friend Pilot repeat to himself and to the world: "I
prefer Moselle to Rhenish wine; consequently I exist." Or, if he enjoyed
a show or a game, he would dwell upon it the whole evening, telling you:
"That sort of thing amuses me." But he had no imagination, and was,
besides, very honest. He could invent nothing for himself, but was left
to describe such preferences as he really found in his own mind, which
were always preciously few. Probably it was, altogether, his lack of
imagination which prevented him from existing. For if you will create,
as you know, Mira, you must first imagine, and as he could not imagine
what Friederich Hohenemser was to be like, he failed to produce any
Friederich Hohenemser at all.

I had named him, I have told you, after a dog of mine, which had so much
the same sort of disposition--never having the slightest idea of what he
wanted to do, or had to do--that I finished up by shooting him. The God
of Friederich Hohenemser was more forbearing to him in the end.

With all this, Pilot did not get on badly in society, which, I suppose,
demands but a minimum of existence from its members, on the continent of
Europe. He was, besides, a rich young man, pink and white, with a pair
of vigorous calves--about all of which he was not a little vain--and he
was even thought by elderly ladies to be a very model of a youth. He
liked me, and was pleased at having made such a definite impression on
me that I had given him a nickname. A person, he thought, has given me a
nickname. Consequently I exist.

As he now came up to me I noticed that a change had come upon him. He
had come to life; there was a shine about him. Thus did the dog Pilot
shine and wag his tail upon the rare occasions on which he hoped to have
proved that he did really exist. It might have been, in the boy, the
effect of his new friendship with the young gentleman who accompanied
him. In any case he would be sure, I felt, to play out his ace to me in
the course of the evening. I sighed. I would have given much, on that
night, for the company of a really good dog. I thought regretfully of my
old dogs in England.

He presented his friend to me as Baron Guildenstern of Sweden. I had not
had the pleasure of their company for ten minutes before I had been
informed by both of them that the Baron in his own country held the
reputation of a great seducer of women. This made me meditate--although
all the time my intercourse with other people was carried on only upon
the surface of my mind--on what kind of women they have in Sweden. The
ladies who have done me the honor of letting me seduce them have, all of
them, insisted upon deciding themselves which was to be the central
point in the picture. I have liked them for it, for therein lay what was
to me the variety of an otherwise monotonous performance. But in the
case of the Baron it was clear that the point of gravity had always been
entirely with him. You would suppose him to be of an unenthusiastic
nature, even while he was talking of the beauties whom he had pursued,
but you would not find him lacking in enthusiasm when he had once turned
your eyes toward what he wanted you really to admire. It appeared from
his talk that all his ladies had been of exactly the same kind, and that
kind of woman I have never met. With himself so absolutely the hero of
each single exploit, I wondered why he should have taken so much
trouble--and he was obviously prepared to go to any length of trouble in
these affairs--to obtain, time after time, a repetition of exactly the
same trick. To begin with I was, being a young man myself, highly
impressed by such a superabundance of appetite.

Still I got, after a while, from his conversation, which was very lively
and became more so after we had emptied a few bottles together, the key
to the existence of the young Swede, which lay in the single word
"competition." Life, to him, was a competition in which he must needs
shine beyond the other entrants. I had myself been fairly keen for
competition as a boy, but even while I had been still at school I had
lost my sense of it, and by this time, unless a thing was in itself to
my taste, I thought it silly to exert myself about it just because it
happened to be to the taste of others. Not so this Swedish Baron.
Nothing in the whole world was in itself good or bad to him. He was
waiting for a cue, and a scent to follow, from other people, and to find
out from them what things they held precious, in order to outshine them
in the pursuit of such things, or to bereave them of them. When he was
left alone he was lost. In this way he became more dependent upon others
than Pilot himself, and probably he shunned solitude as the very devil.
His past life, I found from his talk, he saw as a row of triumphs over a
row of rivals, and as nothing else whatever, although he was a little
older than I. Neither in his rivals nor in his victims had he any
interest at all. He had in him neither admiration nor pity, no feeling
that was not either envy or contempt.

Yet he was no fool. On the contrary, I should say that he was a very
shrewd person. He had adopted in life the manner of a good, plain,
outspoken fellow who is a little unpolished but easily forgiven on
account of his open, simple mind. With that he had an attentive, lurking
glance, and spied on you, when you least expected it, in order to get
from you a valuation of things, so as to be able to defraud you of them.
As he was without the nerves which make ordinary people feel the strain
of things, he had without doubt an extraordinary strength and stamina,
and was held by himself and by others to be a giant in comparison with
those who have imagination or compassion in them.

The two got on very well together, Pilot being flattered into existence
by the cute young Swede--I have got, Pilot thought, a friend who is a
terrible seducer of women; consequently I exist--and the Baron quite
pleased to have outshone all former friends of the rich young German,
and to be admired by him. They would really rather have been without me.
But they were drawn magnetically toward me, Pilot to show off his friend
to me, and the Baron hot on the track of something which I might value
or want, and which he might win or trick from me.

I was so bored, after a while, with the conversation of the Baron that I
turned my attention to Pilot--a thing rarely done by anyone--and as soon
as he got the chance he began to reveal to me the great happenings in
his life.

"You might not care to be seen in my company, Lincoln," he said, "if you
knew all. I shall not be out of danger till I am out of Switzerland. The
walls have ears in a country of so much political unrest." He waited to
watch the effect of his words, then went on: "I come from Lucerne."

Now I knew that there had been a fight in that town, but it had never
occurred to me that Pilot might have been in it.

"It was hot there," he said. Poor Pilot! In his little, bashfully
smiling mouth the very truth sounded badly invented. The Baron, I am
sure, would have made a whole chain of lies come out with such aplomb
that his audience would not for a moment have doubted them. "I shot a
man in the barricade fight on the third of March," said Pilot.

I knew that there had been a fight in the streets between, on the one
side, the parties in power, and particularly the partisans of the
priests, and on the other, the common people in rebellion. "You did?" I
asked, with a deep pang of envy because he had been in a fight. "You
shot a rebel?" For Pilot had always been to me a figure of high
respectability and small intellect. I took it for granted that he had
sided with the priests, and this at least I did not envy him.

Pilot shook his head proudly and secretively. After a moment he said, "I
shot the chaplain of the Bishop of St. Gallen."

The newspapers had been full of this murder, and the murderer had been
searched for everywhere. I naturally became interested to know how the
great deed had fallen to Pilot, and made him tell me his tale from the
beginning. The Baron, bored by the recount of somebody else's martial
exploits, sat without listening, drinking and watching the people as
they went in and out.

"When I went away from Coburg," said Pilot, "I meant to stay in Lucerne
for three weeks with my uncle De Watteville. As I was about to depart,
all the elegant ladies of the place, one after the other, begged me to
bring her back from Lucerne a bonnet from a milliner whom they called
Madame Lola. This woman, they assured me, was famous from one end of
Europe to the other. Ladies from the great courts and capitals came to
her for their bonnets, and never in the history of millinery had there
been such a genius. I was naturally not averse to doing the ladies of my
native town a service, so I went off, my pockets bulging with little
silk patterns, and even, will you believe it, with little locks of hair
for Madame Lola to match her bonnets to. Still, in Lucerne, where the
air was filled with political discussions, I forgot all about Madame
Lola until one night, when I was dining with a party of high officials
and politicians, I suddenly drew out, with my handkerchief, a little
slip of rose-colored satin, and had to furnish my explanation. To my
surprise the whole conversation immediately turned to the milliner. The
married men, at least, and all the clericals, all knew about her. It was
true, said the Bishop of St. Gallen, who was present, that the woman was
a genius. The slightest touch of her hand, like a magic wand, created
miracles of art and elegance, and the great ladies of St. Petersburg and
Madrid, and of Rome itself, made pilgrimages to the milliner's shop. But
she was more than that. She was suspected of being a conspirator of the
first water, who made use of her _atelier_ as a meeting place for the
most dangerous revolutionists. And in this capacity, also, she was a
genius, a Circe, moving and organizing things with her little hands, and
the roughest of her partisans would have died for her.

"They all warned me so strongly against her that naturally the first
thing which I did on the following day was to go to her house, in the
street which had been pointed out to me. On that occasion I found her
only a highly intelligent and agreeable woman. She took all my orders,
and talked to me of my journey and even of my character and career. A
red-haired young man came in while I was there, and went out again, who
looked much like a revolutionist, but to whom she paid but little
attention.

"While she was completing all these bonnets for me, the atmosphere of
Lucerne was darkening more and more; a thunderstorm hung over the town.
My uncle, who held a high position in the town council, foresaw
disaster. He sent my aunt and his daughters away to his chteau, and
advised me to go with them. But I felt that I could not go away without
having seen Madame Lola again, and having collected my goods from her.

"On the day on which I went to her at last, the disturbance in the
streets was so great that I had to approach her abode by a network of
little side streets, and even that was extremely difficult. But upon
entering the house I found it, from doorway to garret, one seething mass
of armed people streaming in and out, the whole place indeed like a
witch's cauldron. There was no time to talk of bonnets. She herself,
standing on the counter, discoursing and directing the people, at the
sight of me jumped straight into my arms. 'Ah,' she cried, 'your heart
has driven you the right way at last!' And the whole crowd, she with it,
at this moment advanced out of the house and down the street. It dragged
me with it, or I was so filled with the very enthusiasm of the woman
that I went freely. In this way, in a second, I was whirled into a
barricade fight, and on to the barricades, always at the side of Madame
Lola.

"She was loading the guns and handing them to the combatants, and she
was using for the terrible task all the verve and adroitness which she
had used in trimming her bonnets. Now all the people around her,
although they were brave, were afraid, and had reason to be so; but she
was not in the least afraid. As she handed the rifles to the men on the
barricade, she handed them with the weapons some of her own
fearlessness. I saw this on their faces. And it was strange that I
myself was at the time convinced that nothing could harm her, or could
harm me as long as I was with her. I remembered our old cook at Coburg
telling me that a cat has nine lives. Madame Lola, I thought, must have
in her the life of nine cats. At that moment I really saw her as
something more than human, although she was, as I think I told you, no
lady of noble birth, but only a milliner of Lucerne, not young.

"It was then that I myself, carried away by the rage around me, seized a
rifle and fired into the crowd of soldiers and town militia which was
slowly advancing up the street against us. My own uncle De Watteville,
for all I knew, might be leading them, but I had no thought for him. At
the same moment I was struck down, I know not how, and dropped like
dead.

"When I woke up I was in a small room, in bed, and Madame Lola was in
the room with me. As I tried to move I found that my right leg was all
done up in bandages. She gave a great exclamation of joy at seeing me
awake, but then approached with her finger on her lips. In the darkened
room she told me of how the fight was over, and how I had killed the
chaplain of the Bishop of St. Gallen. She begged me to be very still,
first because my leg had been broken by a shot, and secondly, because
things were still upset in Lucerne. I was in great danger and must be
kept a secret in her house.

"I was there in the garret of her house, for three weeks, being nursed
by her. The fighting was still going on, and I heard shots. But of this,
of my wound, of what I had done and what my people would say, even of my
dangerous position, I hardly thought. It seemed to me that I had,
somehow, got up very high outside the world in which I used to live, and
that I was now quite alone there, with her. A doctor came to see me from
time to time. Nobody else came, but Lola would put on her shawl and
leave me for a while, begging me to keep very quiet till she came back.
These hours when she was away were to me infinitely long.

"But while I was with her we talked together much. When I have since
thought of it, I remember that she did not say a great deal, but that I
myself talked as well as I have always wished to do. Altogether, I
understood life and the world, myself and God even, while I was in the
garret. In particular we talked of the great things which I was to do in
life. I had, you understand, already done enough to be known amongst
people, but both of us felt that this was only the beginning.

"I understood that many of her friends had left Lucerne, and that she
was exposing herself to dangers for my sake, and I begged her to go
away. No, she said, she would not leave me for anything in the world.
First of all, after what I had done, the revolutionists of Lucerne
looked upon me as a brother, and would all be ready to die for my sake.
But more than that, she explained, blushing deeply, in case we were
found by the tyrants of the town or their militia, she and I must both
insist that we had taken no part in the fight, but were here together
because of a love affair. She would have to pose as my mistress, and I
as her lover, while my wound would be said to have been given me by a
jealous rival. These words of hers, although the whole thing was only a
comedy, again made me feel extraordinarily happy, and made me dream of
what I would do when I got well again. Yes, I do not know if any real
love affair could possibly have made me as happy.

"At last one evening she told me that the doctor had declared me to be
out of danger, and that we must part. She was leaving Lucerne herself
that night. I was to go away, secretly, in the early morning. A friend,
she said, would place his carriage at my disposal, and himself escort me
out of town. A sort of terror came over me at her words. But I was too
slow. I did not know what was the matter with me till it was too late.
Madame Lola went on talking gently to me. I was, she said, to have
something for my trouble, and she would give me all the bonnets that she
had in her shop. 'For I myself,' she said, 'am not coming back to
Lucerne.' So with the assistance of her little maid she made the journey
up and down the stairs twelve times, each time loaded with bandboxes,
which she placed around me. I began to laugh, and in the end could not
stop again, for I found myself nearly drowned in bonnets of all the
colors of the rainbow, trimmed with flowers, ribbons, and plumes. The
floor, the bed, chair, and table were covered with them, probably the
prettiest bonnets in all the world. 'Now,' she said, when she had filled
the room with them, 'here you have the wherewithal to conquer the hearts
of women.' She herself put on a plain bonnet and shawl, and took my
hand. 'Do not ever,' said she, 'bear me any grudge. I have tried to do
you good.' She put her arms around my neck, kissed me, and was gone.
'Lola!' I cried, and sank back in my chair in a faint. I passed, when I
woke up, a terrible night. There was not a single pleasant thing for me
to think of. The image of the curate of the Bishop of St. Gallen also
began to worry me, and it seemed to me that I had nothing to turn to in
all the world.

"Lola was as good as her word. The next morning an elderly Jewish
gentleman, of great elegance, presented himself in my garret, and at the
foot of the stair I found his handsome carriage waiting for me. He drove
me through the town, where here and there I still saw traces of the
fighting, and entertained me pleasantly on the way. As we were nearing
the outskirts of the city he said to me: 'The Baron de Watteville's
carriage will meet us at such and such a park. But the feelings of
Monsieur your Uncle have been hurt by your behavior, and he has charged
me to say that he prefers you to continue your journey straight on, so
that he and you should not meet until later.'

"'But does my uncle,' I exclaimed in great surprise, 'know of what has
happened to me?'

"'Yes,' said the old Jew, 'he has indeed known all the time. The Baron
has much influence with the clergy of Lucerne, and it is doubtful
whether we could have done without him.' He said no more, so we drove on
in silence, I in a disturbed mind.

"My uncle's carriage was indeed waiting near a park, as the Jew had
said. As we stopped, a man got out of it and slowly came up to meet us,
and I recognized the red-haired young man whom I had seen in Lola's
house on my first visit there, and later, I now remembered, on the
barricade. He now looked as if he had gone through much. He limped when
he walked, and his face was very pale and stern as he bowed to my
companion. Still, as he looked around at me, he suddenly smiled. 'So
this,' I heard him say, 'is Madame Lola's little caged goldfinch?'

"'Yes,' said the old Jew, smiling, 'that is her golem.'

"Then I did not know what I found out later, that the word _golem_, in
the Jewish language, means a big figure of clay, into which life is
magically blown, most frequently for the accomplishment of some crime
which the magician dares not undertake himself. These golems are
imagined to be very big and strong.

"The two saw me into my uncle's carriage, and we took leave of one
another. I drove on, but I had too much to think of now, and I did not
know where to find myself again. The smell of gunpowder of the
barricades, our talks of God and Lola's kiss in the attic, together with
all these bonnets which she had given me, all ran before my eyes, like
the colored spots which you see before your eyes when you have for a
long time been looking at the sun. I have not been able, since then, to
think much of those great deeds which I was to perform. I cannot even
remember what they were. But still, I have killed the curate of the
Bishop of St. Gallen, and I must be careful until I get out of this
country. I have seen a doctor, who tells me that my leg has been so
skillfully put together that it is as if it had never been broken."

"And so you are," I said, "trying to find this woman, and searching for
her everywhere, lying awake at night?"

"You guess that?" said Pilot. "Yes, I am looking for her. I do not know
what to think or feel about anything until I shall see her again. Still
she was not young, you know, and no woman of noble birth, but only a
milliner of Lucerne."

Now I had heard Pilot's tale. And while I had been listening to it, I
had been frightened more than once. There were many things in it
alarming to my ears. I thought, I have not been drunk a single time
since I lost Olalla, till tonight. It is obvious that when I drink now,
even as much as two bottles of this Swiss wine, my head betrays me. That
comes from thinking, for a long time, of one single thing only. This
tale of my friend's is too much like a dream of my own. There is much in
his woman of the barricades which recalls to me the manner of my
courtesan of Rome, and when, in the middle of his story, an old Jew
appears like a djinn of the lamp, it is quite clear that I am a little
off my head. How far can I be, I wonder, from plain lunacy?

To clear up this question I went on drinking.

The Baron Guildenstern, during the course of Pilot's narration, had from
time to time looked at me with a smile, and sometimes winked at me. But
as it drew on he had lost his interest in it, and had had a new bottle
brought in. Now he opened it, and refilled the glasses.

"My good Fritz," he said, laughing, "I know that ladies love their
bonnets. A husband to them means a person who will buy them bonnets of
all possible shapes and colors, God bless him. But it is a poor article
of dress to get off a woman. I have let them keep the bonnet on after
everything else had gone; and as to having it flung at your head, I
prefer the chemise."

"Have you never, then, paid your court to a woman without getting the
chemise?" Pilot asked, a little nervously, looking straight in front of
him at things far away.

The Baron watched him attentively, as if he were on the point of finding
out that a failure and an unsatisfied appetite might have a value for
some kinds of people. "My dear friend," he said, "I will tell you an
adventure of mine in return for your confession":

****

"Seven years ago I was sent by the colonel of my regiment in Stockholm,
the Prince Oscar, to the riding school of Saumur. I did not stay my term
out there, as I got into some sort of trouble at Saumur, but while I was
there I had some pleasant hours in the company of two rich young friends
of mine, one of whom was Waldemar Nat-og-Dag, who had come with me from
Sweden. The other was the Belgian Baron Clootz, who belonged to the new
nobility, and possessed a large fortune.

"Through letters of introduction of old aunts of ours, my Swedish friend
and I dropped for a time into a curious community of old ruined
Legitimists of the highest aristocracy, who had lost all that they had
in the French Revolution, and who lived in a small provincial town near
Saumur.

"They were all of them very aged, for when they had been young the
ladies had had no dowries to marry on, and the gentlemen no money to
maintain a family in the style of their old names, so there had been no
younger generation produced. They could thus foresee the near end of all
their world, and with them to be young was synonymous with being of the
second-best circles. The ladies held their heads together over my aunts'
letters, wondering at the strangeness of conditions in Sweden, where the
nobility still had the courage to breed.

"It all bored me to death. It was like being put on a shelf with a lot
of bottles of old wine and old pickle pots, sealed and bound with
parchment.

"In these circles there was much talk of a rich young woman who had for
a year been renting a pretty country house outside the town. I had seen
it myself, within its walled gardens, on my morning rides. In the
beginning she interested me as little as possible. I thought her only
one more of the company of Beguines. I wondered, though, how it was that
the qualities of youth and prosperity were in her no faults, but on the
contrary seemed to endear her to all the dry old hearts of the town.

"They themselves eagerly furnished me the explanation, informing me that
this lady had consecrated her life to the memory of General Zumala
Carregui, who had been, I believe, a hero and a martyr to the cause of
the rightful king of Spain, and had been killed by the rebels. In his
honor she dressed forever in white, lived on lenten food and water, and
every year undertook a pilgrim's voyage to his tomb in Spain. She gave
much charity to the poor, and kept a school for the children of the
village, and a hospital. From time to time she also had visions and
heard voices, probably the sweet and martial voice of General Zumala.
For all this she was highly thought of. That she had, before his death,
stood in a more earthly relation to the martyr in no way damaged her
reputation. The collection of old maids of both sexes were on the
contrary much intrigued by the idea of experience in this holy person,
as were, very likely, the eleven thousand martyrized virgins of Cologne
when they were, in paradise, introduced to the highly ranking saint of
heaven, St. Mary of Magdala.

"But the heart of my friend Waldemar, when he met her, melted as quickly
as a lump of sugar in a cup of hot coffee.

"'Arvid,' he said to me, 'I have never met such a woman, and I know that
it was the will of fate that I should meet her. For as you know my name
is Night-and-Day, and my arms two-parted in black and white. Therefore
she is meant for me--or I for her. For this Madame Rosalba has in her
more life than any person I have ever met. She is a saint of the first
magnitude, and she uses in being a saint as much vigor as a commander in
storming a citadel. She sits like a fresh, full flower in the circle of
old dry perisperms. She is a swan in the lake of life everlasting. That
is the white half of my shield. And at the same time there is death
about her somewhere, and that is the black half of the Nat-og-Dag arms.
This I can only explain to you by a metaphor, which presented itself to
me as I was looking at her.

"'We have heard much of wine growing since we came here, and have
learned, too, how, to obtain perfection in the special white wine of
this district, they leave the grapes on the vines longer than for other
wines. In this way they dry up a little, become over-ripe and very
sweet. Furthermore, they develop a peculiar condition which is called in
French _pourriture noble_, and in German, _Edelfaule_, and which gives
the flavor to the wine. In the atmosphere of Rosalba, Arvid, there is a
flavor which there is about no other woman. It may be the true odor of
sanctity, or it may be the noble putrefaction, the royal corrodent rust
of a strong and rare wine. Or, Arvid, my friend, it may be both, in a
soul two-parted white and black, a Nat-og-Dag soul.'

"On the following Sunday--in May, it was--I managed to be introduced to
Madame Rosalba, after mass, at dinner in the house of an old friend of
mine.

"These old aristocrats, in the midst of their ruin, kept a fairly good
table, and did not despise a bottle of wine. But the younger woman ate
lentils and dry bread, with a glass of water, and did this with such a
sweet and frank demureness that the diet seemed very noble, and nobody
would have thought of offering her anything else. After dinner, in the
fresh, darkened salon, she entertained the company, with the same
frankness and modesty, by describing a vision which she had lately had.
She had found herself, she said, in a vast flowery meadow, with a great
flock of young children, each of whom had around its head a small halo,
as clear as the flame of a little candle. St. Joseph himself had come to
her there, to inform her that this was paradise, and that she was to act
as nurse to the children. These, he explained, were none other than
those first of all martyrs, the babes of Bethlehem murdered by Herod. He
pointed out to her what a sweet task was hers, inasmuch as, just as the
Lord had suffered and died in the stead of humanity, so had these
children suffered and died in the stead of the Lord. A great felicity
had at his words come upon her, she said, and sighing with bliss she had
declared that she should never want anything of all eternity but to look
after and play with the martyrized children.

"I am not a great believer in visions or in paradise, but as this young
woman told her tale I had no doubt that she had really seen with her own
eyes what she described, or that she had been chosen for paradise. She
had so much life in her that she made one feel how well the choice had
been made; the little martyrs would have a great deal of fun.

"Once, while she was talking, she lifted her eyes. Good God, what a pair
of eyes to have! They were, indeed, of the greatest power; and when she
gave you one of her thirty-pound glances--puff!

"Now, as I was listening demurely myself and looking around at her happy
circle of old disciples, I became convinced that somewhere in all this
stuff there was a very bold piece of deceit. Rosalba might very well be
a saint of the first water. She might also be heaping benefactions on
rich and poor, out of a horn of plenty. And she might have loved the
General Zumala Carregui, in which case the general was to be envied. But
she had not loved him only in all the world, and she was not living now
for his memory alone. Monogamy--for it does exist, and I have myself
been loved by women of a monogamous disposition--shows in a woman. You
may confound the nun and the whore, but those ladies who in India, I am
told, beg to be committed to the flames of their husbands' funeral
pyres, you know when you see them. Either, I thought, this white swan
Rosalba can count the names of her lovers with the beads of her rosary,
or she is some perverse old maid--for as a maid she was not young; she
had passed her thirtieth year--who, out of desperation, poses to my
Legitimists as the mistress of a general.

"Rosalba had not looked at me more than once, but she was aware of me.
She and I, for all that we were placed far apart, were as much in
contact as if we had been performing a _pas-de-deux_ upon the center of
a stage, with the aged _corps du ballet_ grouped around us. When she
went to the window to look for her carriage, the folds of her white
dress and the tresses of her dark hair moved and floated all for my
benefit.

"I thought: I have never in my life had a dead rival. Let us see now
what the General Zumala is capable of. At Easter I had to listen to a
sermon on St. Mary Magdalen--this holy Mary, would she have been more
difficult to seduce than any of the others of the name; or easier? The
old war horse, we are told, raises its head to the war trumpet.

"I soon became a frequent visitor at Madame Rosalba's chteau. I do not
know whether the old aristocratic community of the town had any idea of
the peril of its saint. I was accepted as her companion on her visits to
the poor and the sick. In the beginning I consulted her much upon my
soul. I confessed to her many of my sins, and none of them seemed to
impress her much. They might well have appeared familiar to her. I think
that she really gave me good advice, and that if I had meant to reform I
should have done well to follow it. She had the same earnest and sweet
manner, and seemed to like me, but in our amorous _pas-de-deux_ she was
slow of movement. I, on my side, was patient. I had to keep my young
friend Waldemar in view, and I knew that I had a pleasant surprise for
her at the end of the dance.

"One thing was strange to me in that house. I have been brought up a
Lutheran, and taken to church on Christmas Day by my good grandmother. I
have heard many sermons, and I know the difference between saintliness
and sin as well as old Pastor Methodius himself, even if we disagreed a
little as to our personal tastes in the matter. But upon my honor as a
guardsman, with her it was difficult to know which was which. She
preached theology with as much voluptuousness as if the table of the
Lord was the one real treat to a gourmet, and when we talked about love
she would make it look like a pastime in a kindergarten. This I did not
like. I had a nurse who believed in witches, and at times, in Rosalba's
society, I remembered the dark tales of old Maja-Lisa. Even so, such a
holy witch and wanton saint I had not come across before.

"In the end, however, I obtained from Rosalba the promise of a
rendezvous in her house late on a Friday afternoon. On that day all the
people were going to the funeral of a marchal's widow, who had been a
hundred years old. This was late in June. By then I was bored with her
dallying, and I thought, It is to be on Friday, or I will never make
love to a woman again.

"All this, I can tell you, might have ended up in a different way, had
not something else happened in Saumur. But it came to pass that a very
rich old Jewish gentleman--in the style of the Jew of your tale,
Fritz--stopped there for a week on his way from Spain. He had everything
of the best. His coach, his servants, and his diamonds were much talked
of. But what struck our riding school to the heart was a pair of
Andalusian horses which he brought with him. They were, particularly the
one of them, the finest that had been seen in France. Even at my
regiment in Sweden there were hardly any like that. Moreover they had
been trained in the royal _mange_ at Madrid, and it was a shame that
they should be in the hands of a Jew, and a civilian.

"Because of these horses I neglected Madame Rosalba for a few days, so
much talk was there about them. Few of us would have been rich enough to
buy them, and still we thought it a point of honor with us that they
should not leave Saumur. In the end Baron Clootz, who was a millionaire
and a young nobleman of much wit, one evening after dinner made a
proposition to five of us who had been for a long time his closest
friends and associates. He promised that he would buy the horse of the
Jew, and put it up as the prize in a competition in which we were to
show what we were worth. The rule of this competition was that we were
to ride, within one day, three French miles, drink three bottles of the
wine of the district, and make love to three ladies in the course. In
what order we would take the events it was for our own judgment to
decide, but the Jew's horse was to belong to that one of us who arrived
first at Baron Clootz's house after having fulfilled the conditions.

"His proposition was a great success, and I was already in my mind
arranging the consecutive order of the items, and going through my
circle of acquaintances amongst the pretty women of the district, when I
found that the day chosen for the contest was the day of my rendezvous
with Madame Rosalba. The day had been chosen for both purposes from the
same reason: because the lite of the town would be occupied, and not
able to poke their noses into our affairs.

"I had, however, confidence in myself, and as I walked away arm in arm
with young Waldemar I thought it a good joke. He was still worshiping
Rosalba from the footstep of her pedestal, so much so as to want to
change his religion for her sake, even, I believe, and become a monk. I
often had to listen to his panegyrics upon her. Still after some
argument we had persuaded him to come into our contest. I think that he
meant to show himself to Rosalba on the Spanish horse, for he was a
tolerably good horseman.

"I was, without vanity, punctual at my rendezvous at the white chteau
of Rosalba on that Friday afternoon. By her own maid--for there was not
another soul in the house; they had all gone to the funeral--I was taken
to her boudoir in the tower, and at the top of a long stone stair. The
shutters were closed, the room was half dark, and, when you came from
outside, as cool as a church. There were a great many white lilies, so
that the air was heavy with their scent. Upon a table were glasses, and
a bottle of the best wine that I have ever tasted, a dry Chteau Yquem.
This made my third bottle of the day.

"Rosalba also was there. She was as ever very plainly attired, but she
had shaken herself, with one shake, into very great beauty.

"If what happened to me in this tower seems somehow wild and
fantastical, and more like a fairy tale or a ghost story than a romance,
the fault is not mine. It is true that the day was hot; a thunderstorm
followed it in the night; and that as I came in from the white road,
heavy in my riding boots, I was not too sure of my head. I may even have
been more in love with her than I myself knew, for everything seemed to
me to turn on her, and my bottles and my wildly galloped races to be
only the reasonably fit initiatory ceremonies to this great moment of
love-making. But I remember well all that happened.

"I had not much time to give away. Light-headed as I was, with the room
swinging up and down before my eyes, my words came easily to me, and I
had her in my arms pretty soon, her clothes disheveled. She was like a
lily in a thunderstorm herself, white and swaying, her face wet. But she
held me back with her outstretched arms. 'Listen for one moment,' she
said. 'Here we are all alone. There is no one in the house but we and my
maid who brought you here, that pretty girl. Are you not afraid?

"'Arvid,' she said, 'have you ever heard the story of Don Giovanni?' She
looked at me so intently that I had to answer that I had even heard that
opera about him. 'Do you remember, then,' she said, 'the scene in which
the statue of the Commandante comes for him? Such a statue there is on
the tomb of the General Zumala, in Spain.' I said, 'Oh, let it keep him
down in it, then.'

"'Wait,' said Rosalba. 'Rosalba belonged to General Zumala Carregui.
When she betrays him, poor Rosalba must disappear. But then, an opera
must have a fifth act to it sooner or later. And you, my star of the
north, are to be the hero of it. You have your honor in the matter, as
if you were a woman. You would have no mercy on St. Mary of Magdala.
Rosalba was such a shining bubble, and when you break her, a little bit
of wet will be all that you get out of it. But it was time that she
went. The people, and her creator even, were becoming too fond of her.
You give her her great tragic end. No other man in the world, I think,
could have done that so well. You are well worthy of coming in.'

"'Let me come in, then,' I gasped.

"'You have no pity on poor Rosalba at all?' she asked. 'That she should
lose her last refuge, and be haunted and doomed forever--that means
nothing to you?'

"'You yourself have no pity on me,' I cried.

"'Ah, how much you are mistaken,' she exclaimed. 'For you, Arvid, I am
worried, I am terribly sorry. An awful future awaits you--waste, a
desert--oh, tortures! If I could help you, I would; but that is
impossible to me. The thought of Rosalba will never be any good to you;
her example cannot help you. The thought of this hour might, afterward,
do you some good, but even that is not certain. Oh, my lover, if to save
you I made you a present of a lovely horse, all saddled within my
stable, fiery enough to carry you away in a gallop from this terrible
fall and the perdition of us both, and if I sent my maid, that pretty
girl who showed you up here, with you to find him, would you not go?

"'For soon,' she said, drawing herself up to her full height, her hand
still on my breast, as mine in hers, and speaking in the manner of a
sibyl, 'it may be too late, and we shall hear the fatal step on the
stair, marble upon marble.'

"In our agitation her dark hair, which used to hang down in ringlets on
both sides of her face, was flung back, and I saw that she had indeed
the brand of the witch upon her. From her left ear to her collar bone a
deep scar ran, like a little white snake----"

At these words of the Baron, Pilot cried out: "What! What are you
saying?"

"I said," said the Baron patiently, pleased with the impression made by
his tale, "that from her left ear to the collar bone ran a scar, like a
snake."

"I heard it," cried Pilot. "Why are you repeating my words? The milliner
of Lucerne, Madame Lola, had on her neck just such a scar, and I have
this hour described it to you."

"You have not said one word of it," said the Baron.

"Have I not?" cried Pilot to me.

I said nothing at all. I thought: I am dreaming. By now I am quite sure
that I am dreaming. This hotel, Pilot, and the Swedish Baron are all
parts of a dream. Good God, what a nightmare! I have at last lost my
reason for good and all, and the next thing that will happen will be
that Olalla will walk in through that door, swiftly, as she always comes
in dreams. With that thought I kept my eyes on the door.

From time to time, while we had been talking, new guests had come in
from the outside, to sit down or to walk through the room to the inner
apartments of the hotel. Now a lady and her maid came in, and passed us
quickly and quietly. The lady wore a black cloak, which disguised her
face and figure. The maid had her hair wrapped around her head in the
Swiss way, and carried the shawls. Both looked so demure that not even
the Baron gave them more than one glance. It was not till they were
already gone that Pilot, suddenly stopping in his heated debate with the
Baron, stood up like a statue, staring in their direction. When we asked
him, laughing--for we had drunk enough to think one another
ridiculous--what was the matter with him, he turned his big face toward
us. "That," he cried, deeply moved, and even more so by the sound of his
own voice, "was she. That was Madame Lola of Lucerne."

The lightning of madness had struck, then, but it had hit Pilot and not
me. Still no one could tell what would happen next; and indeed at his
words it seemed to me that there had been something familiar about the
lady. Pilot began to pull his hair. "Come, my boy," I said, taking hold
of his arm. "It is not necessary to be mad. We will go together and ask
the porter, who will know her, if this lady be not the midwife of
Andermatt, who will be found to have nothing whatever in common with the
Maid of Orlans." Still laughing, I dragged him to the porter's _loge_
and began to question the bald old Swiss about the newcomers. The porter
was at first busy counting up various pieces of elegant luggage, and did
not pay much attention to us.

"Come," I said to him, "here is a handsome reward for a little favor. Is
that lady, in the black _juste-au-corps_, a revolutionist, who inspired
the murder of the Bishop of St. Gallen's curate? Or is she a mystic who
has dedicated her life to the memory of General Zumala Carregui? Or is
she a prostitute of Rome?" The old man dropped his pencil and stared at
me.

"God help me, Sir, of what are you talking?" he exclaimed. "The lady who
has just gone through the dining-room, and who is occupying our number
nine, is no other than the wife of Herr Councilor Heerbrand, of Altdorf.
The Councilor is the greatest man of the town, and was a widower with a
large family. The present Frau Councilor Heerbrand is the widow of an
Italian wine-grower, and owns a property in Tuscany, which obliges her
to travel back and forth in this way. At Altdorf, where my own three
granddaughters are in service, she is highly respected. She gives tone
to all the town, and is known as a very fine card player."

"Well, Pilot," I said, as I guided him back, for he was so stupefied
that he would have stood where he was left had I let go my hold, "this
is a prosaic solution to our enigma. We may sleep calmly tonight in
rooms eight and ten with the Frau Councilor in the bed next to the other
side of the wall."

I did not look much where I was going, and knocked into a person who,
with a little stick in his hand, was walking slowly through the
dining-room, in our own direction. As I apologized he lifted his tall
hat a little to me, and I saw that it was the old Jew of Rome, Marcus
Cocoza. At the same second he went on, and passed through the same door
as had the lady.

After my first moment of sheer terror at looking into his pale face and
deep dark eyes I was seized with a fury which shook me from head to
foot. I am slow to get angry, as you know, Mira, and was so even as a
young man. When I really become so, it is a great relief to me. I had
been depressed, disappointed, and made a fool of, and inactive for a
very long time, and my despair had reached its climax in my meeting with
the two friends at the hotel. Now, I thought, if all things in the world
were really against me, and all of them equally damnable, the moment had
come for a fight. At least that was how I felt it at the time. Later on
I reflected that it was nothing in myself which worked the change, but
just the nearness of the woman. She had passed within six feet of me,
and had liberated my heart by the waft of her petticoat, and I had once
more the winds of life in my sails, and its currents under my keel.

I looked at my two companions and saw that they had both recognized the
Jew. In their amazement they looked like two clay figures. Whatever
magic I had encountered was encircling them as well as me, or else they
were themselves creatures of my imagination. It mattered little to me. I
was determined by now to drive fate into a corner. I took out my card,
wrote on it the name of the old Jew, and a regular challenge in the best
style, asking him to see me at once, and sent the waiter of the hotel to
his room with it. I was not a little frightened of the old man whom
Olalla had called her shadow. I truly believed that he belonged to the
devil, but I had to see him. But the waiter returned to say that it was
out of the question. The old gentleman had gone to bed, had had a hot
drink brought him by his valet, and now had locked his door and would
not be disturbed. I told the man that it was a matter of great
importance, but he declined to do anything for me. He knew their guest,
who went in his own splendid coach with his own servants, and was a man
of unfathomable wealth.

"Has he traveled this way," I asked the waiter, "in the company of
Madame Heerbrand?"

"No, never," declared the poor fellow, scared, I think, by my looks. He
did not think that the lady and the gentleman knew each other at all, he
said.

It was a loathsome thought to me that I should have to wait all night
before I could do anything in the matter. Still, it could not be helped,
and I therefore dragged a chair to the fireplace and stirred up the
fire, not daring to go to sleep. I was afraid that the woman might leave
the hotel early, so I called the waiter back, gave him money, and
enjoined him to let me know when the lady of number nine should be about
to leave the hotel in the morning.

"But, Sir," said the young man, "the lady has gone."

"Gone?" I cried, with Pilot and the Baron repeating my exclamation like
a double echo. Yes, she had gone. No sooner had she left the room by one
door than she had come back to the porter's _loge_ by another, in great
distress, and had ordered a coach at once to take her to the monastery
even tonight. She had, she told the porter, found a letter for her at
the hotel, informing her that her sister lay dying in Italy. It was a
matter of life and death to her to get on.

"But is it possible," I asked, "to go up that road tonight, and in this
storm?" The waiter agreed that it would be difficult, but she had
insisted, offered to double and triple the fare, and had wrung her hands
in such grief that she had moved the heart of the coachman. Besides, it
was not easy to disobey Frau Heerbrand. She was no ordinary lady. She
had gone. We must ourselves have heard the wheels of her coach. That was
true. We had indeed just heard wheels.

There we stood, like three hounds around a fox hole.

I did not doubt but that it was the sight of the old Jew which had
driven away the woman. He was, indeed, a conjurer and a devil, the djinn
who had somehow got the fair lady into his power. For a moment it threw
me into the most terrible distress that I could not get at him and kill
him. But it would cause too much stir, and they would prevent it. Now
there was nothing to do but to follow her and protect her against him.
At this idea my heart flew up like a lark.

We had some trouble in getting a coach, but this in the end was overcome
by the Baron, who showed much energy and efficiency in the matter. I
understood that my two companions, who were unaware of any personal
interest of mine in the matter, felt surprised at my zeal. The Baron,
holding me to be very drunk, was still not averse to one more spectator
for his exploits. Pilot took my eagerness as a proof of my friendship
for him. He even, although he seemed the whole time to have been struck
dumb, tried to give words to his gratitude. "Go to hell, Pilot," I said
to him. He thereupon contented himself with pressing my hand.

At last, at great cost, a coach was produced, and the three of us set
off together for the monastery.

The wind was terrible, and the snow was thick on the road. Our coach, in
consequence, went very irregularly in bumps and starts, and at times
stood quite still. We sat inside it, each in his corner. From the time
when we got into the stifling atmosphere of the closed carriage, behind
the panes which were swiftly blinded by the snow beating in upon them,
we did not talk together. Each of us would, I am sure, willingly have
had his two fellow passengers perish on the journey. I myself, however,
was soon so entirely swallowed up by the idea of seeing Olalla again
that the outside world sank away and disappeared for me. We were going
upwards all the time. We might, for all I knew, be driving into heaven.
My heaven, had I been free to choose it then, must also have been
turbulent, filled with wild galloping air.

As we drove on, the road became steeper and the snow more fierce. Our
coachman and groom were unable to see six feet in front of them.
Suddenly the coach gave a particularly bad jump, and stopped altogether.
The coachman, descending from his box, tore open the carriage door to a
great gust of wind and snow, and, himself all covered with snow, roared
in, infuriated, that it was impossible to get out of the drift in which
the coach was stuck.

We held a short consultation inside, which meant nothing to any of us,
as no one would give up the journey. We tumbled out, buttoning our coats
and turning up the collars, and, doubling over like old men, we took up
the pursuit.

It had stopped snowing. The sky was almost clear. The moon, running
along behind thin clouds, showed us the way. But the wind was terrible
here. I remembered, just as I got out of the coach, a fairy tale, which
I had been told as a child, in which an old witch keeps all the winds of
heaven imprisoned in a sack. This pass, I thought, must be the sack. The
locked-up winds were raging wildly in it, jumping down straight, like
fighting dogs chained by their collars. Sometimes they seemed to beat
down vertically upon our heads, again they rose from the ground,
whirling the snow sky-high. In the carriage it had been cold, but here,
as we were already high up in the mountains, the air felt as frigid as
if someone had emptied a bucket of iced water over our heads. We could
hardly breathe in it. But all this wildness of the elements did me good.
In such a world and night I should find her, and she would need me.

The figures of my fellow travelers, even at arm's length dim and vague
like shadows on the snowy road, were insignificant to me. This search I
felt to be mine alone, and soon I was a good bit in front of them. Pilot
dropped out of sight. The Baron kept fairly close to me, but did not
reach me.

Suddenly, after perhaps an hour's walk, as the road turned around a
rock, a large square object, slanting on the edge of the track, loomed
like a large tower in front of me. It was Olalla's carriage. It was
standing there, stuck like our own and half upset, and there were
neither horses nor coachman with it. I jerked open the door, and a woman
inside gave a terrible shriek. It was the maid whom I had seen in the
hotel. She was crouching on the carriage floor with shawls pulled over
her. She was alone, and when she saw that I did not mean to kill or rob
her, she cried to me that the coachman had unhitched the horses to get
them into a shelter, after he had had to give up, like our own coachman,
the hope of getting any farther. But where, I cried back to her, was her
mistress? She had, the maid told me, gone ahead on foot. The girl was
horribly scared, and in describing her lady's flight and danger she
sobbed and cried, and could hardly get her words out. I tore myself
loose from her, for she did not want to let me go, and banged the door
upon her. What terror, what danger, I thought, had there been in that
coach to drive a woman out of it, alone, in the dead of the night and
amongst wild mountains? What could it be that threatened her at the
hands of the old Jew of Amsterdam?

I had stopped beside the coach for a quarter of an hour, perhaps, and
this had enabled the Baron to catch up with me. The two lanterns on the
coach were still burning, and as he came up behind me and spoke to me it
was curious to see, in the moon-cold night, his face appear, flaming
scarlet in the light of them. In the shelter of the coach we exchanged a
few words. We started again, going for a while side by side.

At a place where the road got steeper, through the mist of the loose
whirling snow which was driven along the ground like the smoke from a
cannon, I caught sight of a dark shadow in front of me, not a hundred
yards away, which might be a human figure. At first it seemed to
disappear and to appear again, and it was difficult in the night and in
the storm to keep your eyes fixed upon it. But after a time, although I
got no nearer, my eyes became used to their task, and I could follow her
steadily. She walked, on this steep and heavy road, as quickly as I
myself did, and my old fancy about her, that she could fly if she would,
came back. The wind whirled her clothes about. Sometimes it filled them
and stretched them out, so that she looked like an angry owl on a
branch, her wings spread out. At other times it screwed them up all
around her, so that on her long legs she was like a crane when it runs
along the ground to catch the wind and get on the wing.

At the sight of her I felt the Baron's nearness intolerable. If I had
chased Olalla for six months, to run her down in this mountain pass, I
must have her alone to myself. It would be of no use to try to explain
this to him. I stopped, and as he stopped with me, I seized him by the
front of his cloak and threw him back. He was tired by our climb. He was
breathing heavily, and had stopped a couple of times. But he came to
life at my grip and on seeing the expression of my face. Now he would by
no means let me go on alone. His eyes and teeth glinted at me. We had a
few minutes' fight on the stony road, and he knocked off my hat, which
rolled away. But, still gripping his clothes with my left hand, I struck
him a strong blow in the face, which made him lose his balance. The road
was slippery, and he fell and rolled backwards. As he fell he had taken
hold of a muffler around my neck, and had nearly strangled me. Cursing
the delay, I sprang on, hot and shaking from the effort.

Alone again, and certain now to catch Olalla in the end here in the high
hills, I was filled both with great happiness and with that fear which
had first taken hold of me beside the coach. Both drove me forth with
equal strength. I thought again, as I ran along down here on the dark
ground, like the moon up in the sky, that I was very likely mad. It was
indeed a maddening situation, suitable for an extravaganza for the
theaters of Rome. Here was I, out after a woman whom I loved, and she
fleeing before me in the night as fast as her legs would take her, in
the belief that I was that same old enemy of hers and mine who had first
parted us, and whom I longed to kill. She did not turn her head a single
time, and it would have been quite hopeless to shout to her against the
wind. Also, we were, both of us, exerting ourselves to our utmost
strength in the flight and pursuit; and even at that, going along, as we
were, bent double like old people, we could cover only about two miles
to the hour. But the strangest thing of all, and the one which worried
me most, was how she could possibly take me to be the old Jew. In the
streets of Rome and in the room of Andermatt he had been walking very
slowly on a stick. I was a young man and a good athlete, and yet she
could mistake me for him. He must be, in reality, a devil, or he must
have it in his power to dispatch devils on his errands. I began to feel
myself as his messenger, sent on by him. Was I, perhaps, without knowing
it, already in his power, and was I, against my will, the familiar of
the old wizard of Amsterdam?

While all this had been running through my head I had been gaining on
her. And then, spurred on by her nearness, quite mad to catch and hold
her, I made a few last long leaps. Suddenly her long cloak, swept
backwards, blew against my face, and in the next moment I was at her
side, I leaped past her, and, spinning around, stopped her. She ran on
straight into my arms and would have fallen had I not caught her. In a
moment we were under the wild winter moon, in a tight embrace. Pressed
to each other by the elements themselves, we both panted for breath.

Do you know, Mira, it is a great thing, the foolishness of human beings.
I had run for my life, sure that the moment I caught her up, my
happiness of Rome should be caught again. I do not remember now what I
had meant to do--to lift her up, make love to her there, or kill her,
perhaps, so that she should not make me unhappy again. I did have one
moment of it, too, just as I held her in my arms and felt her breath on
my face, and her long-missed form on my own body. That was a very short
time to have, surely. Her bonnet, like my hat, had blown off and away.
Her upturned face, white as bone, with its big eyes like two pools, was
quite close to me. I saw now that she was terrified of me. It was not
from the Jew that she had run--it was from me.

Many years later, on crossing the Mediterranean in a storm, I looked,
for one moment, into the face of a falcon which had tried many times in
vain to hook itself to the rigging of my ship, before it was blown off
and down into the sea for good. That was again the face of Olalla in the
mountain pass. That bird, too, was wild and mad with fear, broken by
overstrain, without hope.

I suppose that I stared at her, just as terrified as she was herself,
when I understood, and cried her name into her face two or three times.
She herself had no breath left to speak, and I do not know if she heard
me.

Now that I was sheltering her from the wind her long dark hair and dark
clothes sank down all around her. She seemed to change her form, and to
be transformed into a pillar in my arms. After we had stood there for a
little while I said to her: "Why do you run away from me?" She looked at
me. "Who are you?" she said at last. I held her closer to me and kissed
her twice. Her face was quite cold and fresh. She stood still and let me
kiss her. It might as well have been the snowflakes and the wild air
pressing themselves upon her lips as my face and mouth. "Olalla," I
said, "I have sought you all over this world my whole life. Can we not
be together here now?"

"I am all alone here," she said after a little time. "You frightened me.
Who are you?"

By this time I had been chased all around the compass, and thought that
it might be enough just for the present. So I stood still to think the
situation over. I could not leave her alone in the night and wind. I
released her a little, still supporting her with my right arm.

"Madame," I said, "I am an Englishman, traveling in these cursed
mountains. My name is Lincoln Forsner. It is not right that a lady
should be out alone on this bad road, at this time of the night. If you
will therefore allow me to escort you to the monastery I shall feel much
honored."

This she thought over, and she seemed to lean with a good grace on my
arm. But she said: "I cannot possibly walk any farther."

It was clear that she could not. If I had not held her she would have
fallen. What were we to do? She herself looked all around her, and up at
the moon. When she had regained her balance a little, she said: "Let me
rest a little. Let us sit down here and rest ourselves; then I can go
with you to the monastery."

I looked around for a place of shelter, and saw one that was not too
bad, close to where we stood, under a great rock which projected over
the road. The snow had been whirled in there, but into the hook of it
the wind could not quite get. It was perhaps ten yards away. I led or
carried her to that place. I took off my cloak, and the muffler with
which the Baron had come near to strangling me, and made her as
comfortable as I could. The night grew clearer at the same time. The
whole great landscape was quite white and bright, except when from time
to time a cloud passed over the moon. I sat beside her, and hoped that
we might be left in peace for a little, up here.

Olalla sat close to me, her shoulder even touching mine, calm and
perfectly friendly. I felt again the same thing about her that I have
talked of before: that pain and suffering did not affect her, but that
all things were in some way the same to her. She sat in the cold, waste,
mountain pass as a little girl would sit in a flower meadow, her skirt
filled with the flowers she had picked.

After a time I said to her: "What brings you up in these mountains,
Madame? I am traveling myself in search of something, but I have no
luck. I wanted, also, to assist you, and am sorry that I frightened you,
because it makes it more difficult for me to be of any help."

"Yes," she said, after a silence, "it is not easy to live, for any of
you. That was so, too, with Madame Nanine. She wanted to keep her girls
well disciplined, and at the same time she did not like to crush our
spirits, for then we should have been no good to the house."

Madame Nanine was the woman who ran the house in Rome of which I have
spoken. This she said to me in a friendly way, as if to show me a
courtesy. She evidently thought that since I had been kind enough to
admit that she was a perfect stranger to me, she would make me a return
by admitting that we had known each other long ago.

I said to her: "It is only here that it is so cold. Tomorrow, when you
descend the pass, you will meet the spring winds. In Italy it is spring
now, and in Rome, I think, the swallows are back."

"Is it spring there?" she said. "No, not yet. But it will be soon, and
that will be very pleasant to you, who are so young."

****

"Do you know, Mira," Lincoln said, interrupting himself in his tale,
"that this is the first time that I have thought at all of that hour up
there? I only remember it now step by step, so to say, as I tell you of
it. I do not know why I have not thought of it before. Does this moon
remember it perhaps? She was there, too."

****

"Madame," I said to her, "if we were now in my own country I should
prepare for you a drink, when we arrive at a house, which would revive
you--yes, and ginger should be hot in the mouth, too." I described to
her our strong spirits and how one comes home on a winter day, with
fingers and toes frozen, and drinks them in front of the fire. We came
to talk about drinks and food, and of how we should manage if we were
left up here forever. It was pleasant that here one could speak and be
heard without shouting. Altogether, this cave under the rock was very
much like a house to her and me, such as we had never before owned
between us. It seemed to me that everything would fit in well here, that
even my father, could I have conjured forth his ghost, would have joined
us with pleasure and pride. She did not say much, but laughed a little
at me. Neither did I speak all the time. We sat there, I believe, for
three-quarters of an hour or so. I knew that it would be dangerous to go
to sleep.

Just then I caught sight of a light on the road, and of two doleful
figures advancing in it, pausing from time to time. It was Pilot, dead
tired and sore from his climb, with the Baron leaning on his arm and
limping along the heavy road in the moonlight. I learned afterward that
the Swede had sprained his ankle in his fall, and that Pilot, coming up
behind him, had helped him up and assisted him. The Baron had sent the
other back to take off the one lantern which was then still burning on
Olalla's coach. This they carried with them, with much trouble, and they
were both benumbed with the cold.

My bad luck had it that they stopped to gather up strength to go on with
their journey, and put down their lantern on the ground just beside our
refuge. Pilot did not see us; he never saw anything of the world around
him. But the Baron, even limping, his face white with pain, was watchful
and quick of eye as a lynx. He turned around, pulling Pilot with him. I
had got up at the sight of them. I thought that it might perhaps be as
well that they had come; they might help me to bring Olalla to the
house.

I do not think that the Baron wanted to fight me once more, but he was
in a rage against me. It was probably always difficult to get him out in
a fight with anyone as strong as himself. But here he felt, I think,
that he had got Pilot with him. He must have described our encounter to
him, and made me out a madman or dead drunk.

"Hullo," he cried, "the chase is up and the Englishman has won. He has
improved the occasion at once, and that at ten degrees of frost. We
ought not to have told him of so many attractions. He has seen only the
women of his own country till now, and we drove him mad straight away.
Let us have a look at the lady now ourselves, Fritz."

They looked like two big birds of ill omen as they came upon us. Pilot
had turned the lantern around, so that the light fell upon Olalla. She
had got up, and stood by my side, but she did not lean upon me at all
now.

The Baron stared at her. So did Pilot. "So it is you, indeed, my sainted
Rosalba," said the former, "pausing a moment on your way to heaven. I
wish you luck in the more pleasant career."

I could see that at his words Olalla could with difficulty keep from
laughing. In fact every time she looked at the Swede she was tempted to
laugh. But she was very pale, and with every minute she grew paler.

Now Pilot, who had been holding the lantern, and had stood as if he was
himself blinded by the light, made a step nearer to us and stared into
her face. "Madame Lola," he cried, "is it you?"

"No, that is not I," said she. "You are making a mistake."

This confused Pilot terribly. He pulled his hair. I believed that he
would go mad then and there. "Do not deceive me, I beg you," he said,
"tell me who you are, then."

"That would not mean anything to you," she said. "I do not know you at
all."

"I know that you are angry with me," he cried, "for having told our
story to other people. But I did not know what to do. Indeed, since I
saw you last, I have not known what to do at all. I am unhappy, Madame
Lola. Tell me who you are."

By the light of the lantern I saw that Olalla's clothes were stiff and
shining with frozen snow, her shoes thickly covered with it. But still I
did not drag her away, but stood on and listened.

Suddenly Pilot dropped on his knees, in the snow, before her. "Madame
Lola," he cried, "save me. You are the only person in the world who can
do it. Those weeks of Lucerne were the only time of my life that I have
been happy. And all the things which I was to do! I myself have
forgotten what they were. Tell me who you are!"

The Baron snatched the lantern, which Pilot had dropped, and held it
high. I think that he was upset at seeing his partner brought so low.
"That Madame Rosalba," he cried, "_elle se moque des gens_! I was told
that from the first. But not for a long time of little Arvid
Guildenstern. That holy lady has on her back a little brown mole. We can
find out quickly enough about that, between us, to know who she is."

Again I saw Olalla restrain herself from laughing at him. But she spoke
to Pilot gently. "If I had ever known you," she said to him, "I should
have done you no harm. I should have tried to give you a little
pleasure. But I do not know you. Now let me go."

She turned to me, slowly, and looked at me, as if she were confident
that I would be on her side. So I should have been, against all the
world, ten minutes before, but it is extraordinary how quickly one is
corrupted in bad company. When I heard these other people talking of
their old acquaintance with her, I myself, who stood so much closer than
the others, turned toward her, staring into her face. "Tell them," I
cried. "Tell them who you are!"

She gave me a great dark and radiant look, then turned her eyes off me
and looked up at the moon. A long shiver ran through her body.

"We shall put an end to the mystery," cried the Baron, "when we get hold
of your old Jew. He seems to have held the paint-cup to all your
disguises."

"Of whom are you talking?" said Olalla, laughing a little, "there is no
old Jew here."

"But not far off," said the Baron, "we shall all be together at the
monastery."

At this she stood quite still, like a statue. And this stillness of
hers, toward the others, was intolerable to me. "I will chase these two
away for you," I said to her, "but this once tell me only the truth--Who
are you?"

She did not turn, or look at me. But the next moment she did what I had
always feared that she might do: she spread out her wings and flew away.
Below the round white moon she made one great movement, throwing herself
away from us all, and the wind caught her and spread out her clothes. I
have said already that on her flight from me up the hill she had looked
like some big bird which runs to catch the wind and get on the wing. Now
again she behaved exactly like a black martin when you see it throw
itself out from a slope or a roof to get off the ground and take flight.
For one second she seemed to lift herself up with the wind, then,
running straight across the road, with all her might she threw herself
from the earth clear into the abyss, and disappeared from our sight.

I had had no time to try to stop her, and for a moment I meant to follow
her. But standing on the blink of the precipice I saw that she had not
fallen far, but onto a sort of projection about twenty feet down. She
seemed in the dim light to be lying on her face, all covered by her
large cloak.

I found Pilot weeping aloud at my side, and together the three of us
worked for an hour or more to bring her up. We cut our cloaks by the
light of the lantern, knotting the strips together. When we had finished
we hung the lantern out over the edge of the road. Our task was made
more difficult for us, first by the lantern suddenly going out, as the
candle within it burnt down, and then by the snow, which started to fall
again.

The first time that they lowered me down, I missed the terrace and kept
hanging in the air. Finally I found my foothold on it, and touched her.
She seemed quite without life. Her head fell back as I lifted it, like
the head of a dead flower, but still her body was not quite cold. I
tried to make fast the rope around her, but it would not do. As they
dragged her up, her body beat against the rocks in a dreadful manner. I
had to shout to the others and to lift her back into my arms. The
terrace on which we stood was narrow and covered with thick snow. It was
not easy to move about on it. The great gulf was below us, and once or
twice I despaired of getting her up. I thought then of how it had been
my question to her which had driven her into this great white full-moon
death, in the end.

At last I managed to make a sort of noose in which to place my one foot,
and to make fast her body to mine somehow, and I cried to the others to
draw us up. This they did more quickly and easily than I had thought
they could do it. As they loosened her from me, and I fell down flat,
unable to hold myself up, I heard many voices around us, crying out that
she was not dead.

When again I could lift my head I saw, without surprise, the old Jew of
Rome, Amsterdam and Andermatt, with our party. It seemed to me natural
that he should have come up with us. His coach was standing on the road,
and his coachman and valet had helped to draw up Olalla and me. How he
had ever managed to get his heavy carriage along in the night, on that
road, I do not know; only to a Jew anything is possible.

They lifted Olalla into the carriage, and the Jew made me come in with
her, as I was bleeding at the hands and knees. I sat there with him,
holding her feet, and remembering how I had first met him in the street
of Rome. I was very thirsty and cold, for I had been wet with sweat, and
the night air went to my bones. At last we got to the large square stone
building of the monastery, from a couple of windows of which light was
shining out. People came out to meet us.

Here I had some hot wine to drink, and my hands washed. When I then
inquired about Olalla, they showed me into a large room, where on a
table two candles were burning.

Olalla was lying, as immovable as before, upon a stretcher which they
had placed on the floor. I think that they had meant to carry her
somewhere, but had given it up. They had only loosened her clothes. A
large fur rug, which belonged to the Jew, was spread over her. Her head
was slightly turned upon the pillow, and a dark shadow covered the one
side of her face.

The old Jew sat on a chair near her, still in his furred cloak and with
his tall hat on his head, his chin resting on the button of his walking
stick. He did not take his dark eyes off her face, and hardly moved. I
was surprised, on looking at a big clock in the room, to find that it
was only three hours after midnight.

I sat down myself, for a long time without speaking. As then the clock
struck, I made up my mind to speak to the Jew. If I had killed Olalla by
my question, I might as well get an answer now, and he would know. I
talked to him a little, and he answered me very civilly. I then told him
all that I knew about her, and asked him, while we were waiting here, to
tell me of her. For a time he did not seem to want to speak. Then in the
end he spoke with much energy. Pilot and the Baron were in there too.
Pilot came up from his chair at the other end of the room to look at
her, and went back again. The Baron had fallen asleep in his chair.
Later on, however, he woke up and joined us.

"I have indeed," said the Jew, "known this woman at a time when all the
world knew her and worshiped her by her real name. She was the opera
singer, Pellegrina Leoni."

At first these words meant nothing to me, so that there was a silence.
But then my memory woke up, and recalled to me my childhood.

"Why," I cried, "that is not possible. That great singer was the star of
whom my father and mother used to rave. When they came back from Italy
they would talk of nothing else. And I well remember their tears when
she was hurt at the theater fire of Milan, and died. But all this must
have been when I was ten years old, thirteen years ago."

"No," said the Jew. "Yes, she died. The great opera singer died.
Thirteen years ago, as you rightly say. But the woman lived on, for
these thirteen years."

"Explain yourself," I said to him.

"Explain myself?" he repeated. "Young Sir, you are asking much. You
might say: 'Disguise your meaning into such phrases as I am used to
hear, which mean nothing.' Pellegrina was, at the theater fire of Milan,
badly hurt. From the injuries and the shock she lost her voice. She
never sang a note again as long as she lived."

It was clear to me, as he spoke, that this was the first time that he
had ever given words to this story. I was so much impressed by his
suffering and terror at his own words that I could find nothing to say,
even though I wanted to hear more, for I found no explanation in his
statement. But Pilot asked him: "Did she, then, not die?"

"Die, live. Live, die," said the Jew. "She lived as much as any of you,
or more."

"Still," Pilot said, "all the world believed her to be dead."

"She made it believe that," said the Jew. "We--she and I--took much
trouble to make it believe so. I saw her grave filled. I erected a
monument upon it."

"Were you her lover?" the Baron asked.

"No," said the old Jew with great pride and contempt. "No, I have seen
her lovers running about, yapping around her, flattering and fighting.
No. I was her friend. When at the gate of paradise the keeper shall ask
me: 'Who are you?' I shall give that great angel no name, no position or
deed of mine in the world to be recognized by, but I shall answer him:
'I am the friend of Pellegrina Leoni.' You, who killed her now, as you
have told me, by asking her who she was--when in your time you are
asked, on the other side of the grave, 'Who are you?'--what will you
have to answer? You will have, before the face of God, to give your
names, as at the Hotel of Andermatt."

Pilot, at these words, seemed ill at ease; he wanted to speak, but
thought better of it.

"Now, young gentlemen," said the old Jew, "leave me to tell this tale at
my pleasure. Listen well, for there will be no such tale again.

"All my life I have been a very rich man. I inherited great fortunes
from my father and mother, and from their people, who were all great
traders. Also, for the first forty years of my life I was a very unhappy
man, such as you yourselves are. I traveled much. I had always been fond
of music. I was even a composer, and composed and arranged ballets, for
which I had a liking. For twenty years I kept my own _corps du ballet_,
to perform my works before me and my friends, or before me alone. I had
a staff of thirty young girls, none more than seventeen, whom my own
ballet-master taught, and who used to dance naked before me."

The Baron woke up to attention, and grinned kindly at the old man. "You
were not bored," he said.

"Why not?" asked the old Jew. "I was, on the contrary terribly bored,
bored to death. I might very well then have died from boredom, had I not
happened to hear, upon a small theater stage of Venice, Pellegrina
Leoni, who was then sixteen years old. Then I understood the meaning of
heaven and earth, of the stars, life and death, and eternity. She took
you out to walk in a rose garden, filled with nightingales, and then,
the moment she wanted to, she rose and lifted you with her, higher than
the moon. Had you ever been frightened of anything, miserable creature
that you were, she made you feel as safe, above the abyss, as in your
own chair. Like a young shark in the sea, mastering the strong green
waters by a strike of her fins, thus did she swim along within the
depths and mysteries of the great world. Your heart would melt at the
sound of her voice, till you thought: This is too much; the sweetness is
killing me, and I cannot stand it. And then you found yourself on your
knees, weeping over the unbelievable love and generosity of the Lord
God, who had given you such a world as this. It was all a great
miracle."

I felt a great compassion for this old Jew, who had to pour out his
heart to us. He had not talked of these things till now; and now that he
had begun he could not stop himself. His long delicate nose threw a sad
shadow upon the whitewashed wall.

"I had the honor, as I have said," he went on, "to become her friend. I
bought for her a villa near Milan. When she was not traveling, she
stayed there, and had many friends around her, and sometimes also we
were alone together, and then used to laugh much at the world, and to
walk arm in arm in the gardens in the afternoons and evenings.

"She turned to me as a child to its mother. She gave me many pet names,
and she used to take my fingers and play with them, telling me that I
had the finest hands in the world, hands made to handle only diamonds.
As we had first met in Venice, and as my name was Marcus, she used to
call herself my lioness. That was what she was: a winged lioness. I
alone, of all people, knew her.

"She had in her life two great, devouring passions, which meant
everything to her proud heart.

"The first was her passion for the great soprano, Pellegrina Leoni. This
was a zealous, a terribly jealous love, such as that of one of your
priests for the miracle-working image of the Virgin, which he attends,
or of a woman for her husband, who is a hero, or of a diamond-cutter for
the purest diamond that has ever been found. In her relation to this
idol she had no forbearance and no rest. She gave no mercy, and she
asked for none. She worked in the service of Pellegrina Leoni like a
slave under the whip, weeping, dying at times, when it was demanded of
her.

"She was a devil to the other women of the opera, for she needs must
have all the parts for Pellegrina. She was indignant because it was
impossible for her to perform two rles within the same opera. They
called her Lucifera there. More than one time she boxed the ears of a
rival on the stage. Both old and young singers were constantly in tears
when acting with her. And for all this she had no cause whatever, she
was so absolutely the star of all the heavens of music. It was not only,
either, in regard to her voice that she was jealous of Pellegrina
Leoni's honor. She meant Pellegrina to be, likewise, the most beautiful,
elegant, and fashionable of women, and in this connection she was fairly
ridiculous in her vanity. On the stage she would wear none but real
jewels, and the most magnificent attire. She would appear in the rle of
Agatha, a village maiden, all covered with diamonds and with a train
three yards long. She drank nothing but water for fear of spoiling the
complexion of Pellegrina. And were a prince or a cardinal or the pope
himself to call on her before noon, she would meet him with her hair
done up in curling pins, and her face covered with zinc cream, so that
in the evening she might sweep the floor with all the other women, not
only of the stage but of the parquet and boxes as well--and she had the
most brilliant audiences of all the world. It was the fashion to adore
Pellegrina Leoni. The greatest people of Italy, Austria, Russia, and
Germany thronged to her _salons_. And she was pleased about it; she
liked to see them all at Pellegrina's feet. But she would be rude to the
Czar of Russia himself, and risk a sojourn in Siberia, before she would
give up her own repertoire or her regular hours of practice.

"And the other great passion, young gentlemen, of this great heart was
her love for her audience. And that was not for the great people, the
proud princes and magnates and the lovely ladies, all in jewels; not
even for the famous composers, musicians, critics, and men of letters,
but for her galleries. Those poor people of the back streets and market
places, who would give up a meal or a pair of shoes, the wages of hard
labor, to crowd high up in the hot house and hear Pellegrina sing, and
who stamped the floor, shrieked and wept over her--she loved them beyond
everything in the world. This second passion of hers was as mighty as
the first, but it was as gentle as the love of God, or of your Virgin,
for the world. You people of the North, you do not know the women of the
South and the East when they love. When they embrace their children, and
weep over their dead, they are like holy flames. When, after the first
performance of _Mede_, the people of the town outspanned the horses of
my carriage, in which she was driving, to draw it themselves, she did
not look at the Ducas who put their noble shoulders to the task. No, she
wept a rain of warm tears, more precious than diamonds, she lifted a
rainbow of sweet smiles, over the streetsweepers, the carriers, the
fruitsellers and watermen of Milan. She would have died for them. I was
with her in the carriage, and she held my hand. She was not herself the
child of very poor people. She was a baker's daughter, and her mother,
the child of a Spanish farmer. I do not know where she had caught her
passion for those lowest in the world. It was not exactly for them alone
that she sang, for she wanted the applause of the great connoisseurs as
well; but she wanted that for the sake of her galleries. She grieved for
them when times were hard and they were suppressed. She would give them
all her money and sell her clothes for them. It was curious that they
never begged much of her, as if they had realized that she had given
them the best she had to give when she sang to them. Had they asked her,
they should have had all. Her gardens and her house were open to them,
and she would sit with the children of the poor under the oleander trees
of her terraces when she refused to receive great lords of England, who
had crossed the sea to see her.

"In the relation between these two great passions of hers lay all her
happiness. During the years of her triumphs it was perfect. Her voice
and her art grew more wonderful every day. It was an incredible thing. I
myself do not hold that she had, at the time of her fall, reached the
fulfillment of her possibilities. The world rang with her name. She held
in her little hand the philosopher's stone of music, which turned
everything that she touched into gold. You, Sir," he said, turning to
me, "have told me how, in far countries, people wept at the remembrance
of that deep river of gold, of those tall cascades of diamonds,
sapphires, and pigeon-blood rubies. And she was adored by the people.
They felt that as long as Pellegrina was singing to them, on the stage,
the earth had not been abandoned by the angels.

"This, then--that Pellegrina should sing like an angel to her galleries,
to melt their hearts and make them shed tears of heavenly joy, and to
make them forget all the hardships of their existence, and remember the
lost paradise; that she should scatter her soul over them, like a swarm
of stars, and that they, on their side, should worship Pellegrina as a
Madonna of their own, and the manifestation upon earth of God in his
heaven, and to them all that was lovely, great, elegant, and
brilliant--in this was her happiness.

"Even when she played, as I have told you, the village maidens of the
opera, all in brocades and plumes, it was not from personal vanity
either. It was as much from a feeling of duty to her galleries, just as
the priests of your churches will deck out the image of the Virgin in
the most elegant clothes that they can find. Virgin the pictures of the
Nativity themselves, where all are moved by the sight of the Mother and
child of God in the stables, on straw, and with a crib for a cradle, the
priest cannot bear to see the Virgin poorly dressed, but adorns her in
silks, and hangs gold chains on her.

"I myself smiled at this passion of hers for the poor, for to me the
common people have always smelled badly, and I have no conviction of
their virtue. 'Oh, must we all be cut to the same pattern,' she asked me
then, 'and be sinners worshiping the divinities? Come, let me be what I
am, Marcus, and choose to be. Let me be a divinity worshiping the
sinners.'

"As to her lovers, I knew most of them, and they meant very little
either to her or me. In fact, until she got used to them, they caused
her more grief than pleasure.

"For she was ever in life, in spite of her excellent good sense, a Donna
Quixotta de la Mancha. The phenomena of life were not great enough for
her; they were not in proportion with her own heart. She was like a man
who has been given an elephant gun and is asked to shoot little birds.
Or like a great bird, an albatross, asked to hop and twitter with the
little birds within an aviary. When she was hurt in her love affairs, it
was not her vanity which was wounded. For outside of the stage she had
none of it, and she knew well herself that the young men were not making
love to the great soprano, but to the lovely woman of fashion, with eyes
like two stars, and the grace of those gentle and wise gazelles of which
a countryman of mine has written poems. On that account she took their
shallowness and falsity lightly. But she was badly hurt and disappointed
because the world was not a much greater place than it is, and because
nothing more colossal, more like the dramas of the stage, took place in
it, not even when she herself went into the show with all her might.

"She came back from these first love affairs of hers, when she was still
a very young girl, even a little ashamed of herself. She would then, I
think, have liked to become a man, and saw no sense in being a woman.
For in all this splendor of woman's beauty, the magnificence of bosom
and limb, and radiance of eye, of lip, and flesh, she was like a lady
who has put on her richest attire to meet the prince at a great ball,
only to find that what she has been invited to is a homely gathering in
honor of the police magistrate, at which everyday clothes are worn. Such
ladies also feel a little ashamed, and drag their long trains and
_rivires_ of diamonds along with anger and bashfulness, feeling that
they are likely, in this place, to put them to ridicule.

"I should think," said the old Jew, "that many women, in their love
affairs, must feel like that.

"In these hours of trouble she would turn to me, sure of my
understanding. The world would have laughed at her, had it been at all
possible for the vulgar and the unimaginative to recognize in one so
beautiful and rich the traits of the knight of the woeful countenance.
But I could not help laughing at her, as it was. I said to her: 'To the
world, and to your lovers as part of it, the whole doctrine of love, and
in fact of all human intercourse, presents itself under the aspect of
toxicology, the science of poisons and counterpoisons. They are all of
them prepared for and adjusted to poisons. They are like little vipers
or scorpions, proud of their bite, and proof against poison
proportionate to their own virulence. To most of them love is a mutual
distribution of poisons and counterpoisons, and in the course of a long
career of love affairs they pride themselves on having become immune to
all poisons, as natives of India are said to train themselves to become
immune to the venom of all snakes. But you, Pellegrina, are no venomous
snake, but a python. Very often, in your walk, you recall to me the
dancing snakes which I was once shown by an Indian snake-charmer. But
you have no poison whatever in you, and if you kill it is by the force
of your embrace. This quality upsets your lovers, who are familiar with
little vipers, and who have neither the strength to resist you, nor the
wisdom to value the sort of death which they might obtain with you. And,
in fact, the sight of you unfolding your great coils to revolve around,
impress yourself upon, and finally crush a meadow mouse is enough to
split one's side with laughter.' In this way I used to make her laugh,
even through her tears.

"However, as she was so intelligent, and had been trained by my
intelligence, it was she who learned from her lovers, and in the end
these matters meant no more to her than to them. For this I owed the
young men much thanks. For they had assisted her to achieve a lightness
in such things which was not hers by birth. From the time that she had
taken their lessons to heart, she reached perfection, on the stage, in
the part of the young innocent girl in love."

"And this," said Lincoln, interrupting the tale, "you will yourself know
to be true, Mira. You remember the old immortal song of the young maiden
who refuses all the gifts of the Sultan to be true to her lover, which
begins: _Ah Rupia, kama na Majasee._ It is a very lovely song about true
and pure love. Only a whore has ever sung it well, that I know of."

He then returned to the story told by the old Jew:

"Thus did we live," the old Jew went on, "in the white villa of Milan,
until the day of her disaster.

"Young men, you remember your fathers weeping over this Tuesday. It
happened during a performance of _Don Giovanni_, in the second act,
where Donna Anna comes on the stage, with Ottavio's letter in her hand,
and begins the recitative: _Crudele? Ah n, mio bene! Troppo mi spiace
allontanarti un ben che lungamente la nostr' alma desia._ Just as
Pellegrina entered, two or three bits of flaming wood fell down from the
ceiling in front of her. She had a brave heart; she just steadily went
on, gazing up a little only, taking the high note as easily as she
breathed. But a whole burning beam followed, and the entire theater rose
up in a panic, the orchestra stopping in the middle of a measure. People
rushed to the doors, and women fainted. Pellegrina took a step back and
looked around until her eyes met mine, where I sat in the front row of
the parquet. Yes, she looked for me in that moment of despair. And have
I no cause to be proud? She was not at all frightened. She stood there
quite calm, as if she meant to say: 'Here we are to die together now,
you and I, Marcus.' But I, I was afraid. I dared not force my way up
onto that flaming stage, where all the trees, and the houses of the
streets, were cardboard only. At that same moment, as a great cloud of
smoke wafted out from the one wing of the stage to the other, and the
heat struck out like the breath of a great furnace, she was hidden from
my eyes. I ran along with the crowd and got out somehow, and in the
street, which was like a madhouse, the cold air met me again. My
servant, who had been waiting for me in the hall, held me up. We were
informed then that Pellegrina had been saved by the man who sang the
part of Leporelle, and whom she had helped in his career. He had carried
her with him all through the burning wing, and down the stairs, her hair
and her clothes all aflame. The people, when they heard that she was
saved, fell on their knees.

"I brought her to her house, and collected the doctors of Milan around
her, and she lived. She had been struck by a falling beam, and had a
deep burn, where the smoldering wood had hit her, from the ear to the
collar bone. Otherwise her burns were not deep. She recovered from them
quickly. But it was found that from the shock she had lost her voice.
She would never sing one note again.

"When I think of her as she was this first week after her loss, it seems
to me that she had in reality been burned up, and was lying on her side
in the bed, immovable, black and charred like those bodies which they
have dug up from the burned town of Pompeii. I sat with her for six
days, and she did not speak a word. And it seemed to me the most cruel
thing amongst them all that the grief of Pellegrina Leoni should be
dumb.

"I did not speak to her, either. The carriages of all the world drove up
and turned on the paved terrace outside her room, asking for news of
her.

"I sat in the darkened room and thought of the case. This to her is, I
thought, like what it would be to the priest to find the miracle-working
image of the Virgin, which he has served, only a profane, an obscene,
pagan idol, hollow and gnawed by rats. Like what it would be to the wife
to find her heroic husband no hero, but a lunatic or a clown.

"No, I thought again, it is not like that. I knew the distress to which
hers might be compared. The distress of the royal bride, who goes, with
a kingdom for her dowry, adorned with the treasures of her father's
house, her young bridegroom, a king's son, waiting for her, the city
decorated for her welcome, and ringing with cymbals and songs of maidens
and youths, and who is ravished by robbers on her way. Yes, it was like
that, I thought.

"None of the great people arriving from all parts of the world to
inquire about her ever obtained access to her house. From that fact grew
the rumor that she lay dying. What would they have said had she let them
come in, I wondered. That she was still young and beautiful, and beloved
by them all?

"What would those people, I thought, have said to the ravished royal
virgin to comfort her? That she was young and lovely still, and that her
bridegroom would cherish her? They might have told her that she had no
fault, and had done nothing wrong: 'There is no sin in her worthy of
death, for he found her in the field, and the betrothed damsel cried,
and there was none to save her.' But the consolations of the vulgar are
bitter in the royal ear. Let physicians and confectioners and the
servants in the great houses be judged by what they have done, and even
by what they have meant to do; the great people themselves are judged by
what they are. I have been told that lions, trapped and shut up in
cages, grieve from shame more than from hunger.

"You must excuse me, gentlemen, if I am talking of things too wonderful
for you, things which you understand not. For where do your women keep
their honor, in these modern times? Do they know the word even, when
they hear it?

"That I did not speak one word of comfort to her, and that no word in
the world could have comforted me myself, this made my presence bearable
to Pellegrina during this week of ours.

"She grieved for her great name, and the applause of the courts, and for
the homage of princes, as that ravished royal virgin would have wept
over her splendor, her bridal crown, and the balls and pageants of the
wedding festivities. But at the thought of her galleries she wept such
tears as the bride would have wept for her royal bridegroom. For how
were they to bear the loss of Pellegrina Leoni? Were they, from now, to
live on, day after day, going to their hard work, oppressed and wronged
by their masters and the authorities, ill paid, and the heavens never
open to them again? And no Madonna in the skies to smile on them? Their
one star had fallen; they were left in the dark of the night--the
galleries which had laughed and wept with her.

"During that week I learned what a difference there may be, in the
length of twenty-four hours, between one month and the next. Here at our
house time used to fly lightly, like a May breeze, like butterflies,
like a summer shower and rainbow. Now the day was long as a year; the
night, as ten years.

"After that first week, Pellegrina asked me to give her some strong
poison, with which to shorten her time for good. I had been in the
habit, as a young man, of carrying such stuff with me, in case life
should become unbearable to me. I was at this time living in Milan, and
I used to drive out to her house every day. I handed her the poison at
noon on a Wednesday, and she asked me to come back the next afternoon.

"When I came, I found her still very ill. She told me that she had taken
the full dose of opium, which I had given her, but that it had had no
effect. She could not die. This, although she believed it herself, I
know was not the truth. What I had given her could not have failed to
kill any human being. She may have taken enough to be ill, perhaps
unconscious, and she thought that she had taken it all. Still, this
makes no difference. The truth was that, as she had said, she could not
die. In one way or another she had too much life in her.

"Afterward I thought that had I at the time killed myself, she might
have had the strength to follow me. From what she had said to me from
time to time I have it that she had always dreaded death, as a thing too
foreign to her nature, and that it had been a comfort to her to think
that I, being so much older than she, would be likely to die before she
did, and to prepare the way for her, or to receive her in the other
world, did such a world exist. That was one of the reasons why she
preferred me to younger and stronger men. But at the time I did not
think of that.

"All the same, my powders had worked a change in her. She had done with
death. Dead-tired, she had risen, in a way, from the dead. On that
afternoon, for the first time, she wanted me to talk to her.

"I told her then how, after the long hours of the previous night, just
before daybreak, a nightingale had taken to singing, wildly,
exuberantly, as if she meant to overtake time, outside my window, and
how, listening, I had thought of a ballet which was to take its theme
from all the things that had befallen us. Pellegrina listened to this
attentively, and in the course of the next day came back to the idea of
my ballet, and asked me about the scenario and tunes of it. I told her
that I meant it to be called Philomela, and explained to her how the
scenes and dances were to follow one another. While we were talking
about it she took my hand and played with my fingers. This was the first
time since her fall that she had touched any human being.

"A couple of days later she sent for me very early in the morning,
before sunrise. I was surprised to find her in the pergola outside her
house, up and dressed in a negligee.

"It was a beautiful morning. The acacias and the grass of the garden
spread a delicate, fresh, and lovely scent in the clear, somber blue
air.

"She looked as she had before her misfortune. Her flower-like face was
white in the dim light. But when she began to speak to me her voice was
very low, as if she were afraid of waking somebody.

"'I have sent for you so early, Marcus,' she said, 'so that we should
have all the day to talk together, if it be necessary.' She took my arm
and made me walk up and down with her. As we came to the end of the
pergola she stopped and looked, before turning, out over the landscape.
The air was very fresh. 'I have much to say to you,' she said. But she
did not go on. Only as we came back once more to the same spot, she said
the same thing again: 'I have much to say to you, Marcus.'

"At last we sat down on a seat in the pergola. She did not release my
arm, so we sat there side by side, as in a carriage.

"'You think, Marcus,' she said, 'that I have not thought of anything all
these days, but you are mistaken. Only it is not easy to tell you of it,
for these little thoughts of mine, I have fetched them from far, far
away. Be patient, we have all the day.

"'You see, Marcus,' she went on, still speaking very softly, 'I have
come to see, now, that I have been very selfish. I have always thought
of Pellegrina, Pellegrina. What has happened to her, that has seemed to
me terribly important, the most important thing in all the world. The
people who loved Pellegrina, those only, I thought, were the kind, good
people of the world, and it seemed to me that the only sensible thing
that any wise person could do was to go and hear Pellegrina Leoni sing.'
Again she sat silent, pressing my arm a little.

"'Even this disaster of mine,' she said suddenly, 'had it happened to
someone else--say now, Marcus, to a soprano of China, of the Imperial
Opera of China, a hundred years ago--we might have heard of it, and not
have thought much about it, or wept many tears over it. Still, it would
have been as sad and as terrible. But because it happened to Pellegrina,
it seemed to us too cruel to bear. This, my Marcus, it need not be, and
it shall not be so for us again.

"'Wait,' she said. 'I shall explain everything better to you.

"'Pellegrina is dead,' she said. 'Was she not a great singer, a star?
You remember the song:

    _"'A light of glory is put out,_
    _High from the sky a star has fallen...._

"'It was so with her; her death was a great sorrow to the world. Oh,
sad, sad. You must now help me to tell the world of her death; you must
make the grave of Pellegrina, and have a monument erected upon it. Do
not put up a very splendid statue, such as we should have chosen had I
died and never lost my voice, but still a marble plate, to give the name
and the dates of her birth and her death. Put a short inscription upon
it as well. Put this, Marcus: _By the grace of God._ Yes, _By the grace
of God_, Marcus.'

"'Pellegrina is dead,' she said once more. 'Nobody, nobody must ever be
Pellegrina again. To have her once more upon the stage of life, of this
hard world, and to have such awful things happen to her as do happen to
people on the earth--no, that must not be thought of. No human being
could stand the thought. Now, you will promise me that, first of all?'
she asked me.

"I said that I would do as she wished.

"She rose again, and went to the end of the pergola. It was getting
lighter now; the last pale stars had gone; all the world around us was
wet with dew, and the grass, which had been dark until now, was shining
like silver with it. There was a great clarity in the air, as if the sky
were lifting itself high above the earth. Pellegrina stood close to me.
Her clothes were moist with dew. She played with her long dark tresses,
drawing one of them along between her lips, and she shivered a little in
the morning air. From this end of the pergola the ground sloped down; a
great landscape lay far beneath us; now we could distinguish the roads,
the fields, and the trees within it. Below us, on the road, we saw some
workmen and women going out into the fields.

"'Look,' she said. 'I have waited for them, to explain things to you. It
is easier for you to understand when you can see. See, there is a woman
going out to her work in the fields. Perhaps she is a peasant's wife;
perhaps her name is Maria. She is happy this morning, because her
husband is good to her and has given her a coral necklace. Or perhaps
she is unhappy, because he worries her with his jealousy. Well, what do
we think of that, Marcus, you and I? A woman named Maria is unhappy, we
think. There will always be such women here and there around us, and we
do not think very much of it. Look, there is another, going the other
way. She is taking vegetables and fruit to Milan, on her donkey, and she
is annoyed because that donkey is so old, and can walk only very slowly,
so that she will be late at the market. Nor of that do we think much,
Marcus. Oh, I will be that now. The time has come for me to be that: a
woman called one name or another. And if she is unhappy we shall not
think a great deal about it.'

"We stood there in silence, and I tried to follow her thoughts.

"'And if,' she said, 'I come to think very much of what happens to that
one woman, why I shall go away, at once, and be someone else: a woman
who makes lace in the town, or who teaches children to read, or a lady
traveling to Jerusalem to pray at the Holy Sepulcher. There are many
that I can be. If they are happy or unhappy, or if they are fools or
wise people, those women, I shall not think a great deal about that.
Neither will you, if you hear about it. I will not be one person again,
Marcus, I will be always many persons from now. Never again will I have
my heart and my whole life bound up with one woman, to suffer so much.
It is terrible to me to think of it even. That, you see, I have done
long enough. I cannot be asked to do it any more. It is all over.'

"'And you, Marcus,' she said, 'you have given me many things; now I
shall give you this good advice. Be many people. Give up this game of
being one and of being always Marcus Cocoza. You have worried too much
about Marcus Cocoza, so that you have been really his slave and his
prisoner. You have not done anything without first considering how it
would affect Marcus Cocoza's happiness and prestige. You were always
much afraid that Marcus might do a stupid thing, or be bored. What would
it really have mattered? All over the world people are doing stupid
things, and many people are bored, and we have always known about it.
Give up being Marcus Cocoza now; then what difference does it make to
the world if one more person, one old Jew, does a stupid thing, or is
bored for a day or two? I should like you to be easy, your little heart
to be light again. You must, from now, be more than one, many people, as
many as you can think of. I feel, Marcus--I am sure--that all people in
the world ought to be, each of them, more than one, and they would all,
yes, all of them, be more easy at heart. They would have a little fun.
Is it not strange that no philosopher has thought of this, and that I
should hit upon it?'

"I thought over what she said, and wondered whether it would be likely
to do me any good. But I knew that it would not be possible for me to
follow this advice of hers while she was still alive. Were she dead I
might find refuge in her whim. The moon must follow the earth, but if
the earth were to split and evaporate, it might perhaps swing itself
free of its dependency, and be, in an unfettered flight in the ether,
for a short time the moon of Jupiter, and for another, that of Venus. I
do not know enough about astronomy to tell. I leave it to you, who may
have more insight into the science.

"'What a lovely morning,' said Pellegrina. 'One thinks that it is dark
still, but really the air is as filled with light as a glassful of wine.
How wet everything is. But soon all the world will be dry again, and it
will be hot on the roads. It does not matter to us. We shall be here
together all day.'

"'And what do you want me to do?' I asked her.

"She sat for a very long time in deep silence.

"'Yes, Marcus,' she said, 'we must part. Tonight I am going away.'

"'Shall we not meet again?' I asked.

"She put her finger on her lips. 'You must never speak to me,' she said,
'if we ever happen to meet. You once knew Pellegrina, you know.'

"'Let me,' I said, 'follow you, and be near you, so that you can send
for me if ever you want a friend to help you.'

"'Yes, do that,' she said. 'Be near me, Marcus, so that if ever anyone
should mistake me for Pellegrina Leoni, I can get hold of you, and you
can help me to get away. Be never far off, so that you can always keep
the name of Pellegrina away from me. But speak to me you must never,
Marcus. I could not hear your voice without remembering the divine voice
of Pellegrina, and her great triumphs, and this house, where we stand
now, and the garden.' She looked around at the house as if it were a
thing which no longer existed.

"'Oh, the currents of life are cold, Pellegrina,' I said.

"She laughed a little in the morning air, then became again very still.
'The swallows are cruising about now,' she said. 'What,' she said after
a moment, 'do you think of this paradise that they talk about? Is it
anywhere, really? There we two shall walk again into this house, and the
paradise-winds shall lift the curtains a little. There it is spring, and
the swallows are back, and everything is forgiven.'

"She went away," said the old Jew, "as she had said, upon the evening of
that day.

"I have never spoken to her since," he said, "but she has written to me
from time to time, to make me help her when she wanted to get away and
to change from one thing into another. In Rome, if you had not"--he
turned to me--"told her that your father was an enthusiast for the
Italian opera, she would have gone with you to England. But only for a
year or two. She would have left you again. She would never let herself
become tied up in any of her rles."

Thus the old man finished his tale. He looked around at us, then quieted
down again, rested his chin upon the golden button of his walking stick,
and sank into deep thought, always watching the face of the dying woman
on the stretcher.

We three, who had been listening to him, sat on in silence, feeling, I
should say, a little sheepish, all of us.

****

Lincoln himself, here, fell into a reverie, and for some time said
nothing.

And I ought to tell you here, now, Mira, that afterward in life my
friend Pilot took the advice of Pellegrina Leoni.

It is like this: I do not now quite remember whether, many years later,
I met, at the Cape of Good Hope, an elderly German clergyman, by the
name of Pastor Rosenquist, who, while we were discussing the strangeness
of human nature, recounted to me this tale of my friend, or whether I
amused myself, many years later, by imagining that I had met, at the
Cape of Good Hope, a German clergyman who told me all this about him.

But there it is, in any case. Pilot followed her advice, and took to
being more than one person. From time to time he withdrew from the hard
and hopeless task of being Friederich Hohenemser and took on the
existence of a small landowner in a far district, by the name of
Fridolin Emser. He surrounded this second existence of his with the
greatest secrecy, and let nobody know what he was doing. He felt, when
he got away, as if he were running for his life, and he cuddled up in
Fridolin's little house, outside a village, like an animal safe in his
den. Had anyone become suspicious of him and followed up the track which
he took such pains to cover, to find out what, in the end, he did in his
concealment, he would have found that Pilot as Emser did absolutely
nothing. He looked after his little place with care, collected day by
day a little money for Fridolin, and sat of an evening in the arbor of
his garden, beneath a blackbird in a cage, smoking his long pipe; or
sometimes he would go and drink beer in the inn, and discuss politics
with friendly people. Here he was happy. For since he himself, from the
beginning, knew Fridolin to be nonexistent, he was never worried by
efforts to make him exist. The one thing which troubled him was that he
dared not remain too long in his holiday existence for fear that it
might put on too much weight, and tilt him over. He had to return to the
country place of the Hohenemsers. But even Friederich Hohenemser was
happier after he had begun to follow the plan of Pellegrina, for a
secret in his life was an asset to him as well as to Fridolin.

I do not know if, in any of his existences, he married. The marriage of
Friederich Hohenemser would have been bound to be miserably unhappy, and
I would have pitied the woman who had to drag him along with her in it;
but Fridolin might well have married and given his wife a peaceful and
pleasant time. For he would not have been occupied all the time in
proving to her that he really existed, which is the curse of many wives,
but might have quietly enjoyed seeing her existing. I do not know why it
should be so, but whenever I think of Pilot now, I picture him under an
umbrella--he who was so exposed, once, to all weathers. Beneath this
shelter the sun shall not smite him by day, nor the moon by night.

****

Shaking himself out of these reflections, Lincoln resumed his account of
the old Jew's tale:

Suddenly a violent change came over the face of the old Jew. It was as
if we, to whom he had just lately recounted the story of his life, had
all at once been annihilated. Lowering his stick, he bent forward, his
whole being concentrated on Pellegrina's face.

She stirred upon her couch. Her bosom heaved, and she moved her head
slightly on the pillow. A tremor ran over her face; after a minute her
brows lifted a little, and the fringes of her dark eyelids quivered,
like the wings of a butterfly that sits on a flower. We had all got up.
Again I looked at the Jew. It was obvious that he was terrified lest she
should see him, in case she opened her eyes. He shrank back and took
shelter behind me. The next second she slowly looked up. Her eyes seemed
supernaturally large and somber.

In spite of the Jew's move to hide himself, her gaze fell straight upon
him. He stood quite still under it, deadly pale as if he feared an
outburst of abhorrence. But none came. She looked at him attentively,
neither smiling nor frowning. At this I heard him drawing in his breath
twice, deeply, in a sort of suspense. Then he timidly approached a
little.

She tried to speak two or three times, without getting a sound out, and
again closed her eyes. But once more she opened them, looking again
straight at him. When she spoke it was in her ordinary low voice, a
little slowly, but without any effort.

"Good evening, Marcus," she said.

I heard him strain his throat to speak, but he said nothing.

"You are late," she said, as if a little vexed.

"I have been delayed," said he, and I was surprised at his voice, so
perfectly calm and pleasant was it, and nobly sonorous.

"How am I looking?" asked Pellegrina.

"You are looking well," he answered her.

At the moment when she had spoken to him, the face of the old Jew had
undergone a strange and striking change. I have spoken before of his
unusual pallor. While he was telling us his tale he had grown white, as
if there were no blood in him. Now, as she spoke and he answered her, a
deep, delicate blush, like that of a young boy, of a maiden surprised in
her bath, spread all over his face.

"It was good that you came," she said. "I am a little nervous tonight."

"No, you have no reason to be," he reassured her. "It has gone very well
up till now."

"Do you really mean that," she asked, scrutinizing his face. "You do not
criticize? Nothing could have been improved? I have done well, and you
are pleased with it all?"

"Yes," he answered, "I do not criticize; nothing could be improved. You
have done well, and I am well content with the whole thing."

She was silent for perhaps two or three minutes. Then her dark eyes slid
from his face to ours. "Who are these gentlemen?" she asked him.

"These," he said, "are three foreign young gentlemen, who have traveled
a long way to have the honor of being introduced to you."

"Introduce them, then," she said. "But I am afraid that you must be
quick about it. I do not think that the _entr'act_ can last much
longer."

The Jew, advancing toward us, took us by the hand, one by one, and led
us nearer to the stretcher. "My noble young Sirs," he said, "from
beautiful, distant countries, I am pleased to have obtained for you an
unforgettable moment in your lives. I introduce you herewith to Donna
Pellegrina Leoni, the greatest singer in the world."

With this he gave her our names, which for each of us he remembered
quite correctly.

She looked at us kindly. "I am very glad to see you here tonight," she
said. "I shall sing to you now, and, I hope, to your satisfaction." We
kissed her hand with deep bows, all three. I remembered the caresses
which I had demanded of that noble hand. But immediately after she
turned again to the Jew.

"Nay, but I am really a little nervous tonight," she said. "What scene
is it, Marcus?"

"My little star," said he, "be not nervous at all. It is sure to go well
with you tonight. It is the second act of _Don Giovanni_; it is the
letter air. It begins now with your recitative, _Crudele? Ah n, mio
bene! Troppo mi spiace allontanarti un ben che lungamente la nostr' alma
desia._"

She drew a deep sigh and repeated his words: "_Crudele? Ah n, mio bene!
Troppo mi spiace allontanarti un ben che lungamente la nostr' alma
desia._"

As she spoke these words of the old opera a wave of deep dark color,
like that of a bride, like that in the face of the old Jew, washed over
her white and bruised face. It spread from her bosom to the roots of her
hair. The three of us who were lookers-on were, I believe, pale faced;
but those who, looking at each other, glowed in a mute, increasing
ecstasy.

Suddenly her face broke, as the night-old ice on a pool was broken up
when, as a boy, I threw a stone into it. It became like a constellation
of stars, quivering in the universe. A rain of tears sprang from her
eyes and bathed it all. Her whole body vibrated under her passion like
the string of an instrument.

"Oh," she cried, "look, look here! It is Pellegrina Leoni--it is she, it
is she herself again--she is back. Pellegrina, the greatest singer, poor
Pellegrina, she is on the stage again. To the honor of God, as before.
Oh, she is here, it is she--Pellegrina, Pellegrina herself!"

It was unbelievable that, half dead as she was, she could house this
storm of woe and triumph. It was, of course, her swan song.

"Come unto her, now, all, again," she said. "Come back, my children, my
friends. It is I--I forever, now." She wept with a rapture of relief, as
if she had in her a river of tears, held back long.

The old Jew was in a terrible state of pain and strain. He also swayed
for a moment where he stood. His eyelids swelled and heavy tears pressed
themselves out under them and ran down his face. But he kept standing,
and dared not give way to his emotion, although tried to his utmost. I
believe that he held out against it so strongly for fear that he might
otherwise, very weak as he was, die before her, and thus fail her in her
last moments.

Of a sudden he took up his little walking stick and struck three short
strokes on the side of the stretcher.

"Donna Pellegrina Leoni," he cried in a clear voice. "_En scne pour le
deux._"

Like a soldier to the call, or a war horse to the blast of the trumpet,
she collected herself at his words. Within the next minute she became
quiet in a gallant and deadly calm. She gave him a glance from her
enormous dark eyes. In one mighty movement, like that of a billow rising
and sinking, she lifted the middle of her body. A strange sound, like
the distant roar of a great animal, came from her breast. Slowly the
flames in her face sank, and an ashen gray covered it instead. Her body
fell back, stretched itself out and lay quite still, and she was dead.

The Jew pressed his tall hat on his head, "_Iisgadal rejiiskadisch
schemel robo_," he said.

We stood for a little while. Afterward we went into the refectory to sit
there. Later, when it was nearly morning, it was announced to us that
our two coaches had at last arrived. I went out to give orders to the
coachmen. We wanted to go on as soon as it was quite light. That would
be best, I thought, although I did not know at all where to go.

As I passed the long room the candles were still burning, but the
daylight came in through the windows. The two were there: Pellegrina on
her stretcher and the old Jew by her side, his chin resting on his
stick. It seemed to me that I ought not to part from him yet. I went up
to him.

"Then, Mr. Cocoza," I said, "you are this time burying, not the great
artist, whose grave you made many years ago, but the woman, whose friend
you were."

The old man looked up at me. "_Vous tes trop bon, Monsieur_," he said,
which means: You are too good, Sir.

****

"This," Lincoln said, "is my tale, Mira."

Mira drew in his breath, blew it out again slowly, and whistled.

"I have thought," said Lincoln, "What would have happened to this woman
if she had not died then? She might have been with us here tonight. She
was good company and would have fitted in well. She might have become a
dancer of Mombasa, like Thusmu, that tawny-eyed old bat, the mistress of
his father and grandfather, for whose arms Said is even now longing. Or
she might have gone with us into the highlands, on an expedition for
ivory or slaves, and have made up her mind to stay there with a war-like
tribe of the highland natives, and have been honored by them as a great
witch.

"In the end, I have thought, she might perhaps have decided to become a
pretty little jackal, and have made herself a den on the plain, or upon
the slope of a hill. I have imagined that so vividly that on a moonlight
night I have believed that I heard her voice amongst the hills. And I
have seen her, then, running about, playing with her own small graceful
shadow, having a little ease of heart, a little fun."

"Ah la la," said Mira, who, in his quality of a story-teller, was an
excellent and imaginative listener, "I have heard that little jackal
too. I have heard her. She barks: 'I am not one little jackal, not one;
I am many little jackals.' And pat! in a second she really is another,
barking just behind you: 'I am not one little jackal. Now I am another.'
Wait, Lincoln, till I have heard her once more. Then I shall make you a
tale about her, to go with yours."

"Well," said Lincoln, "this is my tale. The lesson for Said."

"I know all your tale," said Mira. "I have heard it before. Now I
believe that I made it myself."

"The Sultan Sabour of Khorassan was a great hero, and not that only, but
a man of God, who had visions and heard voices which instructed him in
the will of the Lord. So he meant to teach this to all the world, with
fire and sword. But alas, he was betrayed by a woman, a dancer, just at
the zenith of his orbit; it is a long story. His great army was wiped
out. The sand of the desert drank their blood; the vultures fed on it.
The wails of the widows and orphans rose to heaven. His harem was
scattered amongst his enemies. He himself was wounded, and only dragged
away and saved by a slave. For the sake of his soldiers, then, he will
not show himself or let himself be known in his beggar's state. He has
become, like your woman, many persons, and gives up, like her, to be
one. Sometimes he is a water carrier, again a Khadi's servant, again a
fisherman by the sea, or a holy hermit. He is very wise. He knows many
things and leaves deep footprints wherever he goes. He does all people
whom he meets much good and some harm; he is a king still. But he will
not remain the same for long. When he gains friends and women to love
him, he flees the country from them, too much afraid of being again the
Sultan Sabour, or any one person at all. Only his slave knows. This
slave, I now remember, has had his nose cut off for Sabour's sake."

"Alas, Mira, life is full of disagreeables," said Lincoln.

"Ah, as to me," said Mira, "I am safe wherever I go. You yourself have
it written down in your Holy Book that all things work together for good
to them that love God."

"Does that declaration of love," asked Lincoln, "come from the heart? Or
from the lips of an old court poet?"

"Nay, I speak from my heart," said Mira. "I have been trying for a long
time to understand God. Now I have made friends with him. To love him
truly you must love change, and you must love a joke, these being the
true inclinations of his own heart. Soon I shall take to loving a joke
so well that I, who once turned the blood of all the world to ice, shall
become a teller of funny tales, to make people laugh."

"Then, according to the law of the Prophet," said Lincoln, "you will be,
with barbers and such people as kiss their wives in public, debarred
from giving evidence before a court of law."

"Yes, that is so," Mira agreed. "I shall be debarred from giving
evidence."

"What says Said?" asked Lincoln.

Said, who had sat silent and motionless all the time, laughed a little.
He looked toward land. In the moonlight a dim white strip showed, and
there was a murmur, like to the vibrating of a string, in the air.

"Those," said Said, "are the great breakers of Takaungu Creek. We shall
be in Mombasa at dawn."

"At dawn?" said Mira. "Then I will go to sleep for an hour or two."

He crawled down on the deck, drew his cloak around him and over his
head, and laid himself down to sleep, immovable as a corpse.

Lincoln sat for a little while, smoking a cigarette or two. Then he also
lay down, turned himself over a couple of times, and went to sleep.




THE POET


Around the name of the little town of Hirschholm, in Denmark, there is
much romance.

In the early years of the eighteenth century, Queen Sophia
Magdalena--the consort of that pious monarch, King Christian VI, who
went to chapel with his court three times a day and had all the theaters
of Copenhagen shut up--one summer evening, after a long day's hunting,
killed a stag on the bank of a tranquil lake in the midst of a forest.
She was so much pleased with the spot that she resolved to have a palace
built there, and she named it after the stag: Hirschholm. It was, like
most teutonic architecture of the period, a pompous and finicky affair
when it was finished, built up as it was in the middle of the lake, with
long straight embarkments across the water, upon which the royal coaches
could drive up in all their splendor, reflected, head down, in the clear
surface, as had been the stag, surrounded by the Queen's hounds. Around
the lake the little town, with its employees' houses, taverns and little
modest shops grew up, red-tiled, around the huge royal stables and
_manges_. It was very quiet most of the year, but they had a great time
when the magnificent court arrived for the hunting season.

Fifty years later, when Sophia Magdalena's grandson, King Christian VII,
ruled over Denmark, the tragedy of his young English Queen, Carolina
Mathilda, took place, or was prepared, at Hirschholm. This pathetic
pink-and-white and full-bosomed young Princess sailed over the North Sea
at the age of fifteen to marry a debauched and heartless little king,
not much older than herself, but already far on his way toward that
royal lunacy which swallowed him up some years later, a sort of Caligula
in miniature, whose portrait gives you a strange impression of an
entirely lonely and disillusioned mind. After a few unhappy years that
were probably both dull and bewildering to the English maiden, she, by
the time when the King took to playing at horses with his Negro page,
met her fate. She fell deeply, desperately, in love with the doctor who
had been summoned from Germany to heal, by means of his novel cold-water
cures, the sickly little Crown Prince. This doctor was a very brilliant
man who was much in advance of his time. Her great passion for him first
raised her lover to the highest places in the land, where he shone
surprisingly as a star of the first magnitude, a reckless revolutionary
tyrant, and then ruined them both. They had their short good time at
Hirschholm, where Carolina Mathilda impressed her Danish subjects by
riding to hounds in men's clothes--attire which one cannot imagine, from
her portraits, to have been very becoming to her. Then the rancor of the
indignant old Dowager Queen encircled the lovers and brought them down.
The doctor had his head cut off for pilfering the regalia of the crown
of Denmark, and the young Queen was sent in exile to a little town in
Hanover, and died there. Virtue triumphed in its most dismal form, and
the palace that had housed such blasphemy was itself left and finally
pulled down, partly because the royal family did not like to see it,
partly because it was said to be sinking, of itself, into the lake. The
whole splendor disappeared, and a church, in the classical style of the
dawning nineteenth century, was erected where the palace had stood, like
a cross upon its grave. Many years later statues and carved and gilt
furniture, with rose garlands and cupids, were to be found in the houses
of the wealthy peasants around Hirschholm.

After the storm had passed over its head the little town gave for years
the impression of someone benumbed by shock and lying very low. It had
not been able to believe that such things could happen, in any case not
in its very middle. It had perhaps still in its heart remnants of a
loyal sympathy for the gay young Queen who had smiled at it. But to have
one's head cut off is a serious business, and it had only to look toward
the place where the palace had stood to have the wages of sin brought
home to it. Hard times came upon the country: wars, the loss of the
fleet, bankruptcy of the state, the spirit of virtue and severe economy.
The frivolous days of the eighteenth century were gone forever.

Then, about fifty or sixty years after the tragedy of the young Queen
and her premier, the town had a pleasant little renaissance.

It could not go on forever being repentant of sins in which it had in
reality no part, and it could, no more than the rest of the country,
live forever upon the conviction of the excellency of prudence. When one
is tied down heavily enough to an existence of care, it becomes pleasant
to think of careless times and people. Also, though people do not like
their mothers' virtue to be questioned, the frivolities of grandmothers
may be charming things to smile at. By the time when men began to grow
whiskers and ladies to wear sidecurls, the sins of people in powder
began to look romantic, like passions and crimes on the stage. The time
had come when poets would drive out in wagonettes from Copenhagen and
board at Hirschholm to sing of the unhappy Queen Carolina Mathilda, and
see her shadow, flighty on her flighty steed, galloping past them in the
forest. The avenues of lime trees, planted upon the embankments in the
unselfish spirit of the eighteenth century--which must have walked
between sticks six feet high in order to give coming generations shade
and foliage--had grown up and grown old, and within their green bowers
old ladies and men who had seen, as children, the Queen ride clattering
across the stone bridges with her hounds, or the King, like an elegant
powdered and corseted little doll with a blank face, pass in his coach,
were expanding upon the excitement of court life to pretty maidens,
matrons, and youths of the town, who held their own hearts carefully in
check.

At this time there lived in Hirschholm two men who distinguished
themselves, in different ways, from the average burgher.

The first of these was, rightly, the prominent figure of the town, a
citizen of great influence, and a man not only of property and prestige,
but of the world and of great charm. His name was Mathiesen, and he had
been made a _Kammerraad_, a chamber-councilor. Later a bust of him was
erected, in remembrance of him, at the entrance to one of those long
lime avenues in which he loved to walk.

He was at the time--that is, in the early 'thirties--between fifty-five
and sixty years old, and lived quietly and contentedly in Hirschholm.
But he had been younger, and had lived in other places. He had even
traveled much and had been in both Germany and France during those fatal
and restless times which preceded the idyll: in the days of the French
Revolution and the wars of Napoleon. There he had seen, and probably
himself played a part in, many things which the little town could not
have dreamed of, and the people who had known him as a young man said of
him that he had come back with other eyes--formerly they had been blue,
but now they were light gray or green. If he had lost illusions out
there, he was not likely now to think the loss very great, and he had
surely won instead a talent for making life pleasant and himself
comfortable. There is probably no better place for a sensible epicurean
than a small provincial town. The councilor, who had been a widower for
fifteen years, had an excellent housekeeper and a cellar which might
have done honor to a Cardinal. It was said of him in Hirschholm that
when alone of an evening he did needlework in cross-stitch; but then,
there was no reason why, in his position, he should give up any pleasant
pastime in life for the sake of conventionality.

Amongst the treasures which the Councilor had collected in the great
world and brought home to Hirschholm, there was none that he valued as
highly as his recollections of Weimar, where he had lived for two years,
and his remembrance of having once lived in the atmosphere of the great
Geheimerat Goethe. It is a great thing to have been face to face with
the highest, and a law of life that one thing amongst all that we meet
must impress itself deeper upon our souls than any other; and the image
of that serene town and of the great poet were stamped forever on his
being. Here was the ideal man--the superman, he might have thought, if
the word had been invented--who combined in himself all the qualities
which humanity envies and toward which it strives: the poet,
philosopher, statesman, the friend and adviser of princes and the
conqueror of women. The Councilor had many times met Goethe on his
morning walks, and had heard him talk with friends who accompanied him.
On one occasion he had even been introduced to the great man himself,
had met the glance of those Olympian and yet human eyes, and had
exchanged a few words with the Giant. The poet and Herr Eckermann had
been discussing a question of Nordic archeology, and Herr Eckermann had
called upon the young foreigner to give evidence in the argument. Goethe
then questioned him upon the matter, and courteously asked him if he
could possibly procure certain information. Mathiesen had made a deep
bow and had answered:

    _Ich bin Eurer Excellenz ehrerbietigster Diener._

The Councilor was not an ordinary man, and had none of the ordinary
man's ambitions. He had a high opinion of his position in Hirschholm--as
indeed he had reason to have--and in his daily existence he had no wants
which were not well satisfied. If he did, for the rest of his days,
cherish, together with a picture of the Geheimerat, an ambition to feel
himself, in his smaller surroundings, a superman in miniature, it was
known only to himself, and in real life played the part of ideals in
general--that of an unseen directive force, which makes for balance. But
he was a man of broad outlook who took a long and wide view of things.
He maintained an idea of paradise, for his generation had been brought
up on the thought of life everlasting, and the idea of immortality came
naturally to him. His paradise was to be a Weimar--an elysium of
dignity, grace, and brilliancy. Still, his feelings about another world
were not of vital importance to him; he might have given them up without
too much pain. But he had a very firm faith in history, and in the
immortality which it may grant you. He had seen it made around him and
had felt its breath upon his cheek, and he knew the great Emperor and
the heroes of the Revolution to be more alive than the functionaries and
tradesmen of Hirschholm who lifted their hats to him in the roughly
paved streets and with whom he exchanged little pleasant remarks every
day. It was upon the arena, and in this high society of history, that he
desired to live on.

It was either the deep impression which poetry had made upon him when it
manifested itself with so much grandeur, or an inborn tendency in his
own heart, which one might perhaps not have expected--but who can tell,
seeing how little we know about hearts?--which made this art take such a
great place in his scheme of things. Outside of poetry there was to him
no real ideal in life, or, indeed, any satisfactory immortality. It was
natural, then, that he should have tried to write poetry himself. On his
return from Weimar he had produced a tragedy which took its theme from
old Danish history, and later he wrote a few poems inspired by the
romance of Hirschholm. But he was a judge of art, and realized, as
quickly as anybody else could have done, that he was no poet. So he had
been aware for some time that the poetry of his life would have to come
from somewhere else, and had recognized his own part in connection with
it to be that of a Mcenas, a part for which he felt himself well fitted
and which he thought would be becoming to him in that immortality toward
which he was striving.

It so happened that what he was looking for had come to meet him, in the
person of a young man who also lived at Hirschholm and who was at this
time a district clerk and--although this was only known to the Councilor
and himself--a great poet.

His name was Anders Kube, and he was twenty-four years old. He was
considered not at all good-looking by the people who knew him, but at
the same time an artist painting a sacred picture and looking for a
model for a young angel's face might have found it in him. He had a
broad face and dark blue eyes set wide apart. For his work he used
spectacles, and when he took them off and looked directly at the world
his eyes had a clear and deep gaze, such as Adam's eyes may have had
when he first walked around the garden and looked at the beasts. Of a
strange, slow and angular, unexpected gracefulness in all his movements,
with thick dark red hair and very big hands, he was a nearly perfect
specimen of a type of Danish peasant which was then to be found amongst
parish clerks and fiddlers, but which has, now that peasants are sitting
in parliament, disappeared.

Of the two worlds in which he lived, the one that gave him his daily
bread was very limited, made up of the whitewashed office room of the
district court, his own rooms--very neatly kept by his landlady, who was
fond of him--at the top of a stair and behind a large lime tree, and the
woods and fields around Hirschholm, where he roamed in his free hours.
He was also received into the houses of a few kind and respectable
burghers of Hirschholm, to play cards and listen to political arguments,
and he had friends amongst the wagoners of the great road who outspanned
and supped at the inn, as well as among members of the strange tribe of
charcoal burners who carted their charcoal from the great woods near
Elsinore to Copenhagen. The Councilor's house held a position of its own
in his existence. Three years before, when he first came to the town, he
had carried letters from a friend of the Councilor's, old Apothecary
Lerche, who had recommended him as a talented and industrious young man,
and on the strength of them he had received a standing invitation for
supper with the Councilor on Saturday nights. These evenings were
pleasant to him, and gave him many impressions. He had never before had
the chance of listening to so much worldly wisdom, such rich stock of
experience, as that with which he was here regaled. Probably the
Councilor did indeed speak more openly to him than to anybody else, but
the youth had no idea that he himself played such a part in the life of
his protector.

Neither had he any notion of a theory which the Councilor had developed
on his behalf, which came to this: that the young man had to be kept in
a sort of cage or coop in order to bring out his best as a poet. Perhaps
this theory was based upon experiences of the Councilor's own life; he
may have felt that he himself had, in the course of events of the past,
lost powers and ideals essential to a poet. Perhaps it was entirely a
matter of instinct. In any case it was a deeply rooted conviction of his
heart that he had to guard his protg. As long as he could keep him
quietly in Hirschholm, treading the pavement from his lodgings to his
office, or the long avenues, the great forces within him would have to
come out in poetry. But if the world and its wild and incalculable
influences were to get hold of him, he might be lost to literature and
to his Mcenas; he might be dragged into uproars and rebellions against
that law and order of which the Councilor was himself a staunch support,
and come to finish his days upon a barricade. Seeing that nobody else
would have imagined young Kube upon a barricade, the theory showed, if
true, a deep insight into human nature on the part of the
Councilor--except that perhaps the people found on barricades may
generally be those least expected there. At any rate its effect was that
the old man kept an untiring eye on the youth, like a sort of unselfish
lover, like a mighty and dignified Kislar Aga toward a budding beauty of
the seraglio for whom he has planned great things.

On his part the Councilor could have no knowledge that he himself was,
in the eyes of his protg, encircled by a poetic halo. It had been
created, at the beginning of the youth's stay at Hirschholm, by a tale
of his landlady's, the truth of which was doubtful, and which ran as
follows:

The Councilor was, as already said, a widower, but before he came to
this state he had gone through much. The late Madame Mathiesen had been
an heiress in a modest way. She had come from Christiansfeld, which is
the seat, in Denmark, of the Hernhuten, a severe puritan sect, like the
Jansenites in France, and she was a woman with a highly developed
conscience. But one summer evening, two years before her death, she had
suddenly lost her mind in a fit of terror of the devil, and had wanted
to kill her husband or herself with a pair of scissors. They sent for
the old doctor, who tried all his arts on her without doing her any
good, so, as there was no hospital for that kind of patient near by,
they boarded her with the old palace gardener of Fredensborg--another
royal palace at some distance from Hirschholm--and his wife, who were
kind people and owed their appointment to the influence of the
Councilor. There she lived, without regaining her reason, but in a
happier state of mind, for she believed that she was dead and in heaven,
waiting for her husband. Sometimes, though, she expressed a fear of his
never getting there, for she said that he was a great sinner; but she
trusted to the grace of God.

The narrator of the tale, who had at the time been a maid in Madame
Mathiesen's house, was the only person, outside of the narrow family
circle, who knew how this crisis had been brought on. On that July
evening, after a thunderstorm, and while a double rainbow stood burning
over the landscape, the Councilor and his wife, with a young girl who
was the daughter of a functionary at Court, the Councilor's friend, and
who had been sent to Hirschholm to recover from a disappointment in
love, were going out for a walk. Madame Mathiesen was in her room
putting on her bonnet, when, through the open window, she saw the girl
pick a yellow pansy and fasten it upon the Councilor's coat. There may
be, for the Hernhuten, some magic in a yellow pansy or in the air under
a double rainbow. At any rate the sight had upon Madame Mathiesen an
effect which nobody else could have foreseen.

Two years later, at about the same time of the year, the Councilor had
news from Fredensborg that his wife's health had improved, she no longer
thought that she was in heaven, and they believed that it would do her
good to see him. So he had his gig brought out on a fine afternoon, got
into the neat little carriage, and took the reins himself. Then he
seemed to think better of it, got out again, and went into the garden,
where he picked a yellow pansy and fastened it on his coat lapel. The
meeting between the husband and the wife did not turn out as their
friends had hoped, though she had been in her window all day waiting for
him. She no sooner saw him than she was seized by her old confusion. She
became so wild that they had to call for assistance. In fact, she fell
back into madness altogether, from which she never recovered, for she
died a year later.

Young Kube had not a judging mind, and would never, left to himself,
approach any phenomena in life from a moral standpoint. He neither
admired nor blamed the Councilor for his rle in the drama. But he had a
mind which strangely enlarged everything he met. Under the handling of
his thoughts, things became gigantic, like those huge shadows of
themselves upon the mist, which travelers in mountains meet and are
terrified of, gigantic and somehow grotesque, like objects playing
about, a little outside of human reason. So the Councilor began to swell
and evaporate and to move in mystic serpentine windings, like the spirit
which came out of Solomon's bottle and showed itself to the poor
fisherman of Bagdad; and every Saturday night the young poet sat down to
supper with Loki himself.

On most other nights he would be alone, and as he was a poorly paid
clerk, by instinct very careful about his money, and encouraged therein
by his landlady, he would sup on porridge and afterward let his big cat
drink milk out of his plate. Then he would sit very still, looking at
the fire, or, on summer nights, out of the window to where a slight
milky mist upon the surface indicated the contour of the lake, and let
all the world quietly open its heart to him, unfold and reveal itself in
such wild forms as appeared natural to him. The young son of the soil,
tied to a register, had the soul of the old Eddas, which created the
world around them in terms of gods and demons, and filled it with
heights and abysses unknown in their country; and also the playful
mentality of those old mystics who populated it with centaurs, fauns,
and water deities who did not always behave properly. Those Danish
peasants, who were by nature their descendants, had, under a deep
gravity like that of a child, more playfulness and shamelessness of mind
than a clown. Generally they have not been much understood or
appreciated except as they could turn this side of their being out, and
in a craving for understanding they have often had to take to drink.
Anders Kube still, because he thought it the right thing, would write
little poems of a spider upon a branch of roses, but later on, when he
came more into his own, his creations took quite different dimensions.

Some evenings he would go out not to come back till daylight, and his
landlady could not get out of him where he had been.

A few miles out of Hirschholm there is a little property with a pleasant
white manor house, surrounded by trees and pretty grounds, called La
Libert. For years nobody had been living there. The owner had been an
old apothecary, the same man who had given Anders Kube his letters of
introduction, who had his business in Copenhagen and had been making
money all his life. At the age of seventy, after having borrowed some
romantic narratives of travel at his club, he made up his mind to see
the world, and started on a voyage to Italy. A halo of adventurousness
had surrounded his enterprise from the beginning. It grew brighter when
it was reported how he had experienced an earthquake at Naples, and had
there made the acquaintance of a compatriot, a mysterious figure who was
sometimes described as a merchant captain and sometimes as a theatrical
director, and who died in the apothecary's arms, leaving a large family
in distress. From Naples the old man had informed his friends that he
had taken charge of the eldest daughter of this family, and was thinking
of adopting her; but from Genoa, a fortnight later, he wrote that he had
married her. "Now why did he do that?" asked his female acquaintances at
home. He never did tell them. He died at Hamburg on the return journey,
leaving his fortune to his relations, and La Libert and a small pension
to his young widow. Toward the end of the winter of 1836 she came and
settled there.

The Councilor drove out to assist her and to see the adventuress of
Naples who had ensnared--and, he suspected, killed off--his old friend.
He found her demure, very ready to do everything that he told her. She
was a short, slight young woman who looked like a doll; not like the
dolls of the present day, which are imitations of the faces and forms of
human babies, but like the dolls of old days which strove, parallel with
humanity, toward an abstract ideal of female beauty. Her big eyes were
clear as glass, and her long eyelashes and delicate eyebrows were as
black as if they had been painted on her face. The most remarkable thing
about her was the rare lightness of all her movements, which were like
those of a bird. She had what the Councilor knew, in the technical
language of the ballet, as _ballon_, a lightness that is not only the
negation of weight, but which actually seems to carry upwards and make
for flight, and which is rarely found in thin dancers--as if the matter
itself had here become lighter than air, so that the more there is of it
the better it works. Her mourning frocks and bonnets were somewhat more
elegant than those commonly seen in Hirschholm; or perhaps it was that,
having been bought in Hamburg, they appeared a little outlandish in the
village. But she was either careful of her money or simple of taste. She
altered nothing in the old house, and did not even move about any of the
musty old furniture that had for so long led a forlorn existence in the
painted rooms. In the garden-room there was a large and costly musical
box which had been brought all the way from Russia. She seemed to like
to walk about and to sit in the garden, but she let it remain overgrown,
as it had been for years. Apparently she was bent on behaving with great
correctness, for she drove about to call on the ladies of the
neighborhood, who gave her good advice and recipes for making sausages
and gingerbread, but she spoke little herself, and was perhaps shy
because of a slight accent in speaking Danish. There was another
characteristic which the Councilor noted in her: she was to the utmost
shy of, or averse to, touch. She never kissed or caressed any of the
other ladies, such as was the custom at Hirschholm, and evidently
disliked being petted by them. There was something of a Psyche in the
doll. The ladies of Hirschholm thought her harmless. She would be no
rival either at making gingerbread or within the brilliant little school
of scandal of the town. They wondered whether she was not a bit
feebleminded. The Councilor agreed with them, and disagreed. There was
something there, he thought.

On Easter day the Councilor and Anders went to church at Hirschholm. The
sun was shining and the lake around the church was a bright blue, but
still the day was cold with a sharp east wind, and there were showers
from time to time. The daffodils, the crowns-imperial, and the
Diclytra--which the Danes call "heart-of-a-lieutenant," because, when
you open the blossom, you find inside a champagne bottle and a
dancer--which were just out in the little gardens, were harshly treated
and bowed down by the wind and rain. The peasant women, who came to take
holy communion in their gold-embroidered caps, had to struggle with
their heavy skirts and long silk ribbons at the church entrance.

Just as the Councilor and his protg were about to go in, the young
lady of La Libert arrived in a landaulet drawn by two heavy bay horses,
which amply allowed themselves everything in front of the church door.
She had got out of her widow's weeds for the first time, it being now a
year since her old husband had died, and was in a pale gray cloak and a
blue bonnet. She felt as happy as a stock-dove within a green tree, and
radiated a joy of life that was like a waltz played upon a violin with a
sordine.

As the Councilor was exchanging ideas with the parson at the moment, it
was young Kube who went to help her out of her carriage. In respect to
the widow of his old patron he held his hat in his hand while they
talked together for a moment. The Councilor was watching the scene from
the porch and found himself strangely attracted by the sight. He did not
take his eyes off them. Both the young people were exceedingly shy.
Together with the slow and heavy grace of the young man's countenance
and her extraordinary lightness of movement, this double shyness seemed
to give the brief encounter a particular expressiveness, a pregnant
quality, as if there were a secret in it, and something would come out
of it. The Councilor did not know himself why it so struck and moved
him. It was, he thought, like the opening bars of a piece of music, or
the first chapter of a romance called "Anders and Fransine."

Geheimerat Goethe, he reflected, might--would indeed--have made
something of it. He went into the church in a thoughtful mood.

All through the service the Councilor's mind was playing about with his
recent impression. It had come to him at a seasonable moment, for he had
lately been uneasy about his poet. This young slave of his had been
singularly absent-minded, and even absent bodily from one or two of
their Saturday suppers. There was in his whole manner an unconscious
restlessness, and underneath it the sign of a melancholy about which the
Councilor was anxious, for he knew well that he could find no remedy for
it. From a talk with the landlady he had got the idea that the young
clerk might be drinking too much. Many great poets had been drunkards,
he knew, but it did not quite fit into the picture with his own figure
as a Mcenas. Under the influence of drink, which he knew to have played
a part in the history of the boy's family, he might get out of hand,
might run away to play the fiddle at the peasants' weddings. The
Councilor had opposed a raise in the young clerk's salary at the
district office, knowing that that would do him no good, but he should
have liked a surer way of anchoring him. Now it occurred to him that
marriage might be what was needed. The little widow with her small
income, in the white house of La Libert, might have been provided by
providence as the ideal wife for his genius. She might prove to be,
even, a Christiane Vulpius, the only woman, he had been informed, who
had lain in the arms of the Geheimerat for whole nights without asking
him questions about the meaning of life. These vague pictures pleased
the Councilor.

From the men's section, to the right of the aisle, his eye turned once
or twice toward the women's benches. The young woman kept very still.
She was absorbed in the parson's words, but all the time her face had
the expression of deep secret joy. Toward the end of the service, as she
was kneeling, deeply moved, she held a small handkerchief to her face.
The old man wondered whether she was really crying or laughing into it.

After the service the older and the young man walked together to the
Councilor's house. As they passed the bridge a lashing, ice-cold shower
was swept across the landscape. They had to put up their umbrellas, and
they stopped on the little arched stone bridge to watch the hail beating
down on the water, and the two swans of the lake rushing angrily under
the arch through the gray waves. They kept standing there longer than
they knew, both deep in thought.

Anders had had his mind filled, by the Easter sermon, with a row of
shadows, which slowly took shape, like clouds banking up.

Mary Magdalena, he thought, came hurriedly on the dawn of Friday to the
house of Caiaphas. She had seen in a vision how, upon the afternoon of
the morrow, the veil of the temple was to be rent. She had seen the
graves opening, and the saints coming forth. She had also beheld the
angel of the Lord rolling back the stone of the grave and sitting upon
it; and she hurled at the high priests reproaches for the monstrosity
they were about to commit in crucifying God. Her words convinced the old
men that Christ was in reality the only-begotten son of God, and the
redeemer of all the world, and that what they were about to do would be
the only true crime in all the history of mankind.

Thereupon they held a council within the dark room of the palace, in
which a lamp shone upon their multicolored caftans and bearded,
passionately pensive faces. Some of the priests were struck with terror
and demanded that the prisoner be released at once; others went into
ecstasy and prophesied in shrill voices. But Caiaphas and a few of the
very old men discussed the matter with thoroughness, and agreed that
they must carry through their prospect. If the world had really this one
hope of salvation, they would have to fall in with the plan of God,
however dreadful the deed.

Mary, in despair, talked to them of the sins and the misery of the
earth, about which she knew so much, and of the holiness of Christ. The
more they listened the more they shook their heads.

Caiaphas called forth Satan to talk the matter over with him. As his
first impersonation, red-haired Judas came into the room and offered to
return his thirty pieces of silver. When the council refused, he
laughingly depicted to them the long future misery of the chosen people,
from now forever hunted down and spat upon by the world, with the pieces
of silver forever in their hands. He even described to the high priests
the Ghetto of Amsterdam, which the Councilor had himself, upon a
Saturday evening, painted to his protg. The head of the old priest
fell down upon his heavy textbook.

The Councilor's own face was somewhere in the council of the high
priests, although not yet quite distinctly placed. Mary Magdalena was
kneeling, hiding her face.

The head of the young clerk swam a little. He had sat up late last
night, playing cards with wayfaring people at the inn.

The rain had stopped. They put down their umbrellas and walked on.

The Councilor also, in spite of his matrimonial plans, had got stuff for
thought from the sermon. He reflected how strange it is that St. Peter,
who was the only person who knew of it, and who must have been in a
position to suppress it, should ever have allowed the story of the cock
to get about.

During the next three weeks the weather was very mild, but it rained.
The soil was filled with growth, and the air with a fragrance that was
only waiting for a clear day and sun to expand. Flowering plum trees
floated like clouds of chalk around the farmhouses. Later the ground of
the woods, underneath the beech trunks, was covered with windflowers,
pink as shells, with digitate leaves and sweet and bitter scent. The
nightingales arrived and turned all the world into a violin, still in
sweetly dripping rain and mist.

Upon a Thursday toward the end of May the Councilor supped and played
cards at Elsinore with a friend who was an officer in the service of the
Sound duties. These parties were annual festivities where old friends
met. They always drew out late, and it is thirteen miles from Elsinore
to Hirschholm; but the Councilor did not mind, for the nights are light
in Denmark at this season. He drove in his neat gig, lolling in his big
gray riding cloak, while Kresten, his old coachman, drove the horse, and
taking in a little sleepily the beauty of the May night and the smell
from the fields and budding groves through which they were driving. A
little way out of Hirschholm something in the harness broke. They had to
stop, and Kresten concluded that they would have to borrow a piece of
rope at the nearest farm to repair the damage. On looking around the
Councilor found that they were just outside of La Libert. Fearing that
Kresten might make too much noise and disturb the sleep of the lady of
the house, he decided to go himself. He knew the caretaker of the place;
in fact, had himself got him the job, and could knock at his window
without waking up anybody else. A little chilled, he got out of his
carriage and walked up the drive. It was just before dawn.

The dim air was filled with the sweet and acid scent of fresh wet
leafage. Upon the graveled drive there were still little pools of water;
but the night was clear. He walked slowly, for here amongst the trees
and bushes it was dark. An avenue of populus balsamifera led off the
drive toward the farmyard, contributing the nectarous acrid breath of
their shaggy flowers to the harmony of the atmosphere.

Suddenly, as he was walking on, he heard the sound of music. He stopped,
hardly believing his ears--yes, there was no doubt: it was music. A
dancing tune was being played, and it came from the house. He walked a
little, then stopped again, wondering. Who was playing and dancing here
before sunrise? He left the drive and walked across the wet grass of the
lawn toward the front side of the house. As he came up toward the
terrace the faade of the white house shone a dead white, and he saw a
clear light between the lists of the closed shutters. The young widow
might be having a ball in her garden-room tonight.

The wet lilac bushes on the terrace were full of unfolded flowers. The
dark spiky clusters held a surprise in them; they would be so much
lighter when they opened. A row of tulips kept their white and pink cups
prudently closed to the night air. It was very still. The Councilor
remembered two lines of an old poem:

    _The gentle zephyrs cease to rock_
    _Newly inslumbered Nature's cradle._

It was that hour just before sunrise when the world seems absolutely
colorless, when it gives indeed a sense of negation of color. The rich
hues of night have withdrawn, oozed away like the waves from a shore,
and all the colors of daytime lie dormant in the landscape like in the
paints used for pottery, which are all alike gray clay until they come
out in the furnace. And in this still world there is a tremendous
promise.

The old man, gray in his gray cloak, would have been nearly invisible
even to somebody looking for him. In fact he felt extremely lonely, as
if he knew that he could not be seen. He dared not put his hand to the
shutter for fear of making a noise. With his hands on his back he leaned
forward and peeped in.

He had hardly ever been more surprised. The long garden-room with its
three French windows opening on to the terrace was painted a sky blue,
much faded with time. There was but little furniture in the room, and
what was there had been pushed back against the walls. But from the
ceiling in the middle of the room hung a fine old chandelier, and it was
all ablaze, every candle in it being lighted. The big Russian musical
box was open, placed upon the old dumb spinet, and was pouring forth in
high clear notes the tune of a mazurka.

The young mistress of the house stood on the tips of her toes in the
middle of the room. She had on the very short diaphanous frock of a
ballet dancer, and her little heelless shoes were fastened with black
ribbons laced around her delicate ankles and legs. She held her arms
over her head, gracefully rounded, and stood quite still, watching the
music, her face like the placid, happy face of a doll.

As her bar of music fell in, she suddenly came to life. She lifted her
right leg slowly, slowly, the toe pointing straight at the Councilor,
higher and higher, as if she were really rising from the ground and
about to fly. Then she brought it down again, slowly, slowly, on the tip
of the toe, with a little gentle pat, no more than a fingertap upon the
table.

The spectator outside held his breath. As before, on watching the ballet
at Vienna, he had the feeling that this was too much; it could not be
done. And then it was done, lightly, as in jest. One begins to doubt the
fall of man, and not to worry about it, when a young dancer can thus
rise from it again.

Standing upon the tip of her right toe now, she lifted her left leg,
slowly, high up, opened her arms in a swift audacious movement, whirled
all around herself, and began to dance. The dance was more than a real
mazurka, very fiery and light, lasting perhaps two minutes: a
humming-top, a flower, a flame dancing, a play upon the law of
gravitation, a piece of celestial drollery. It was also a bit of acting:
love, sweet innocence, tears, a _sursum corda_ expressed in music and
movement. In the middle of it there was a little pause to frighten the
audience, but it went on all the same, only even more admirably, as if
transposed into a higher key. Just as the music box gave signs of
running down, she looked straight at the Councilor and sank down upon
the floor in a graceful heap, like a flower flung stem upward, exactly
as if her legs had been cut off with a pair of scissors.

The Councilor knew enough about the art of the ballet to value this as a
very high-class performance. He knew enough about the pretty things in
life altogether to value this early morning apparition altogether as a
vision worthy of the Czar Alexander himself, if it came to that.

At her direct clear glance he took alarm and drew back a little. When he
looked in again she had got up, but remained as if irresolute, and did
not turn on the box again. There was a long mirror in the room. Pressing
the palm of her hand gently upon the glass she bent forward and kissed
her own silvery image within it. Then she took up a long extinguisher,
and one by one she put out the candles of the chandelier. She opened the
door and was gone.

In spite of his reluctance to be seen there by anybody, the Councilor
stood still on the terrace for a minute or two. He was as astonished as
if he had happened to surprise, upon this early May morning, Echo,
practicing all on her own in the depths of the woods.

As he turned from the house he was struck by the greatness of the view
from La Libert. He had not noticed it before. From this terrace he
looked out over all the surrounding country, verdant and undulating,
even over the top of the forest. In the far distance the Sound shone
like a strip of silver, and above the Sound the sun arose.

He walked back to his carriage in deep thought. Stupidly, a bit of a
nursery rhyme, with a lovely little tune to it, came into his head:

    _Oh, it is not the fault of the hen,_
    _That the cock be dead._
    _It is the fault of the nightingale,_
    _Within the green garden._

He had forgotten all about the rope. On being informed by Kresten that
he had managed to do the repair without it, he did not find a word to
say to him.

During the rest of the drive he was very wide awake. It seemed to him
that he had much to do, that he must rearrange all the chess men upon
the board. The occupation carried in its train many ideas pleasantly
refreshing to a man who in his daily life deals much with books and law,
and who had been playing omber with three old bachelors only this last
night.

The apothecary's widow was no Christiane Vulpius, that was clear. She
was not a person to anchor anybody. She might on the contrary have it in
her to lift the young man, whom he had decided for her, off the ground,
and together those two might fly, nobody could tell where to, all away
from his supremacy. That she had thus deceived him he did not mind. He
liked her for it; he was so rarely surprised in life. But it was a lucky
thing that he had found her out, for he would not lose his poet. Indeed,
he thought, he should like to keep them both. He took off his hat for a
moment, and the wind of the young morning played around his temples. He
was not an old man; he was young, compared with what she was used to. He
was a rich man, a man who valued and deserved the rarest things in life.
Could he make her dance for him of an evening? That would make a
different married life from what he had before experienced. The poet
would remain his protg, and the friend of the house.

His thoughts went a little further while the sun rose up higher. An
unhappy love is an inspiring feeling. It has created the greatest works
of history. A hopeless passion for his benefactor's wife might make a
young poet immortal; it was a dramatic thing to have in the house. The
two young people would remain loyal to him, however much they might
suffer, and though love and youth are such strong things. And if they
did not remain so?

The Councilor helped himself to a pinch of snuff, in the relish of which
his delicate nose seemed to twist a little. His drive was nearly
finished now. In the still limpid morning air the little town looked
like a town at the bottom of the sea. The tiled roofs blossomed forth
like a growth of bold or pale coral; the blue smoke arose like thin
seaweeds rising to the surface. The bakers were taking their fresh bread
from the ovens. The morning air made the Councilor feel a little sleepy,
but very well. He came to think of that old saying which the peasants
call the bachelors' prayer:

"I pray thee, good Lord, that I may not be married. But if I am to be
married, that I may not be a cuckold. But if I am to be a cuckold, that
I may not know. But if I am to know, that I may not mind."

These are the thoughts which only such a man can allow himself who has
within the structure of his mind a perfectly swept room to which he is
absolutely sure that no one but himself has the key.

The next evening, that being Saturday, Anders came to the Councilor's
house for supper. Afterward he read to his host a poem about a young
peasant who watches three wild swans at night transform themselves into
three maidens, and bathe in the lake. He steals the wings of one of
them, which she has laid off while bathing, and makes her his wife. She
bears him children. But one day she recovers her wings from where he has
hidden them, and puts them on. She circles above the house in ever
larger rings, and at last disappears in the air.

How is it that he writes this, that he should write this? the Councilor
thought. It is curious. He has not seen her dance.

Now the beech forests of the province unfolded themselves. The gray rain
fell for a few days around all the world as the veil around a bride, and
there came a morning when all the woods were green.

This happens in Denmark every year in May, but impresses you every year,
and it impressed these people of a hundred years ago as something
entirely surprising and inexplicable. Through all the long months of
winter you have been, even within the deep of the woods, exposed to the
winds and the bleak light of heaven. Then, all of a sudden, the month of
May builds a dome over your head, and creates for you a refuge, a
mysterious sanctuary for all human hearts. The young light foliage, soft
as silk, springs out here and there like little tufts of down, little
new wings which the forest is hanging out and trying on. But the next
day, or the day after, you walk in a bower. All perpendicular lines may
give the impression of either a fall or a rise. The beech trees'
pewter-gray columns not only raise themselves, and reach forth from the
ground toward infinity, the ether, the sun as the earth swings around
it, but they lift and carry the lofty, the tremendous, roof of the airy
hall. The light within, less bright than before, seems more powerful,
filled with meaning, pregnant with secrets which are light in
themselves, although unknowable to mortals. Here and there an old rugged
oak, slow in putting out its leaves, opens a peephole in the ceiling.
The fragrance and freshness encircle you as in an embrace. The branches,
swaying down from above, seem to caress you or bless you, and as you
walk onward you go under an incessant benediction.

Then all the country goes to the woods! to the woods! to make the most
of a glory which does not last, for soon the leaves will darken and
harden, and a shadow sink within. Driving and walking, the towns
emigrate to the forest, sing and play amongst the tall trees, and bring
bread and butter and make coffee upon the sward.

The Councilor also walked in the woods, and _Domine, non sum dignus_, he
thought. Young Anders also confused the registers in the office, and
left his bed untouched at night, and from La Libert Fransine went out,
her new straw bonnet upon her arm.

When the landscape was at its prettiest, the Councilor received a visit
from his friend, Count Augustus von Schimmelmann. In spite of a
difference in age of fifteen years, the two were real friends, united by
many sympathies and common tastes. When the young Count was fifteen
years old, the old Councilor had for a year filled the place of a friend
of his, who had died, as tutor to the boy, and later they had met
abroad, in Italy, and could talk together of books and religions, and of
far people and places. For some years they had not met, but this was due
to no estrangement between them, but to a development through which the
Count had been passing, during which he had been engaged in making for
himself a sort of _modus vivendi_, in which undertaking his old friend
could have been of no use to him.

Count Augustus was by nature of a heavy and melancholy disposition. He
wanted to be very happy but he had no talent for happiness. He had
suffered during his youth. Somewhere, somewhere in the world, he had
thought, there must be a great, a wonderful, happiness, the _fons et
origo_ of the power which manifests itself in the delights of music, of
flowers, and friendship. He had collected flowers, studied music, and
had many friends. He had tried a life of pleasure and had been made
happy many times. But the road leading from it all into the heart of
things he had not found. As time went on a dreadful thing had happened
to him: one thing had become to him as good as another. Now, later in
life, he had accepted the happiness of life in a different way, not as
he really believed it to be, but, as in a reflection within a mirror,
such as others saw it.

This inner development had begun when he had unexpectedly come into a
very large fortune. Left to himself, he would have thought very little
of it, for he did not know what he was to do with the money. But upon
this occasion he was impressed by the attitude of the world around him:
the happening occupied it much; the world thought it a great and
splendid thing for him. Count Augustus was by nature very envious
himself, and had housed this particular agony many times, mostly toward
people in books, so that he was in a position to value the weight of the
feeling. Next to painting a picture of which you yourself approve, the
most pleasant thing is perhaps to paint a picture about which the whole
world agrees to approve. Thus with the happiness of Count Augustus.
Slowly he took to living, so to say, upon the envy of the outside world,
and to accept his happiness according to the quotation of the day. He
never let himself be deceived into believing that the world was right;
he worked upon a system of bookkeeping by double entry. Under the entry
of the world he had much to be proud or thankful for; he had hardly
anything but assets in this account. He had an old name, one of the
greatest estates and finest houses in Denmark, a beautiful wife, four
pretty and industrious boys, the eldest twelve years old, a great
fortune, a high prestige. He was an unusually handsome man, and became
even more so with age, which went well with his type, and at this time
of life he was a majestic figure. In the Consultation Chamber he had
been called the Alcibiades of the North. He looked stronger than he was,
like a man who enjoys his food and wine and sleeps well at night. He did
not enjoy his food or wine much, and thought that he slept very badly,
but to be envied by his neighbors for these goods of life became to him
quite an acceptable substitute for the real goods.

Even the jealousy of his wife was, from this point of view, useful to
him. The Countess had no reason to be jealous of her husband. Indeed it
was doubtful whether, amongst all the women he had met, he did not like
his wife best. But fifteen years of married life and four big sons had
not cured her of her watchfulness and distrust, of the tears and long
scenes, sometimes ending in her fainting away, which as a young man
Count Augustus had thought a heavy cross. Now her jealousy took its
place in his scheme of things, suggesting or proving to him the
possibility, not of the ladies of the surrounding country seats and of
the court falling in love with him--for that they unquestionably
did--but of him himself falling in love with them, or with one of them.
He came to depend upon her attitude, and had she reformed and done away
with her jealousy, he would have missed it. Like to the Emperor in his
new clothes, he was walking on, dignified, his life a continual
procession, entirely successful in every respect except perhaps to
himself. He did not think highly of his system, but it did not work
badly, and during the last five years he had been happier than before.

While he had thus, like a coral polyp, been building up his moral world,
the Councilor could have done him no good whatever. For he had not got
it in him to be envious of anybody, and he might have shaken the whole
building. But now that it was firmly fastened, and he himself safely
encysted within it, with no soft parts exposed, even to the extent of
taking the whole matter a bit in jest, he met his old friend again with
great pleasure. The Councilor, for his part, would always have been
pleased to meet him. So would probably Diogenes always have been pleased
to meet Alexander. Alexander was pleased with the moment when he
declared that had he not been Alexander he would have been Diogenes. But
who knows whether the great conqueror, who was very likely to a certain
extent dependent upon the opinion of the world, would at the time have
liked to hear the philosopher of the tub declare that had he not been
Diogenes he would have liked to be Alexander. Later on in his career he
might have allowed himself the luxury of a second meeting, and a real
discussion upon the nature of things, with the Cynic. So did Count
Augustus.

The two friends might still have passed as Alexander and Diogenes of
1836 as they walked in the woods, along roads strewn with the silky
fallen teguments of the young leaves. In their dark clothes they were
like two sedate birds, rooks or magpies, out to enjoy the May afternoon
with their gayer colleagues.

They sat down upon a rustic seat in the forest and talked.

"As we live," said Count Augustus, "we become aware of the humiliating
fact that as we are dependent upon our subordinates--and without my
barber I should be, within a week, socially, politically, and
domestically a wreck--so are we, in the spiritual world, dependent upon
people stupider than ourselves. I have, as you may know, some time since
given up any artistic ambitions and have been occupying myself, within
the sphere of the arts, with connoisseurship." (He was indeed a shrewd
critic of all objects of art.) "Here I have learned that it is not
possible to paint any definite object, say, a rose, so that I, or any
other intelligent critic, shall not be able to decide, within twenty
years, at what period it was painted, or, more or less, at what place on
the earth. The artist has meant to create either a picture of a rose in
the abstract, or the portrait of a particular rose; it is never in the
least his intention to give us a Chinese, Persian, or Dutch, or,
according to the period, a rococo or a pure Empire rose. If I told him
that this was what he had done, he would not understand me. He might be
angry with me. He would say: 'I have painted a rose.' Still he cannot
help it. I am thus so far superior to the artist that I can mete him
with a measure of which he himself knows nothing. At the same time I
could not paint, and hardly see or conceive, a rose myself. I might
imitate any of their creations. I might say: 'I will paint a rose in the
Chinese or Dutch or in the rococo manner.' But I should never have the
courage to paint a rose as it looks. For how does a rose look?"

He sat for a while in thought, his walking stick upon his knees.

"Thus," he said, "with the general human idea of virtue, justice, or, if
you will, of God. If anybody were to ask me what was the truth about
these things, I should answer: 'My friend, your question is without
meaning. The Hebrews conceived their God like this; the Aztecs of
America, about whom I have just read a book, like that; the Jansenites
again, like that. If you want any details of the various views I shall
be pleased to give them, having devoted a certain amount of my time to
this study. But let me advise you not to repeat your question in
intelligent company.' But at the same time I should be, for this
superior view of mine, in debt to the nave people who have believed in
the possibility of obtaining a direct and absolutely truthful idea of
God, and who were mistaken. For had they made it their object only to
create a special Hebrew, Aztec or Christian idea of God, where would the
presuppositions of the observer have been found? He would be in the
position of the Israelites, who were to make bricks without straw.
Indeed, my friend, while the fools could have done without us, we are
dependent upon the fools for our better knowledge.

"When," he went on after a little pause, "you and I, on our morning
walk, pass a pawnbroker's shop, and, pointing at a painted board in the
window, on which is written 'Clothes mangled here,' you say to me:
'Look, clothes are mangled here--I shall go and bring my washing,' I
smile at you, and inform you that you will find neither mangle nor
mangler here, that the painted board is for sale.

"Most religions are like that board, and we smile at them.

"But I should have no opportunity of smiling, or of feeling or showing
my superiority, and, in fact, the painted board would not be there at
all, if, at some time or other, some people had not believed firmly in
the possibility, in the wisdom, of mangling clothes, had not even been
firmly convinced of the existence of their own mangle, with which
clothes were indeed mangled."

The Councilor listened to him. Now that they were out here together in
the green wood, he thought that he would like to talk of his marriage
plans, of which he had not yet informed anyone, not even Madame
Fransine.

"My friend," he said, "in all this foolishness of which you are
speaking, I myself fit in harmoniously. _Alter schtzt vor Thorheit
nicht._ Under this venerable beaver hat of mine, I, while listening to
you, have been harboring little thoughts which came out and fluttered
like those two yellow butterflies"--he pointed at them with his
stick--"little creeds, if you will forgive me, in absolute virtue, in
beauty, even, perhaps, in God. I am seriously contemplating entry into
the bonds of Hymen, and had you come to Hirschholm three months later, I
might have had a Madame Mathiesen to do the honors to you."

Count Augustus was much surprised, but he had so much faith in the
wisdom of his friend that before the eyes of his mind the image of a
mature and pleasant beauty, witty and thrifty, with an agreeable dowry,
was instantly formed. Smiling, he hastened to congratulate the
Councilor.

"Yes, but I do not know yet if she will have me," said the old man,
"which is the worst of it. For she is not more than a third of my age,
and, to the best of my belief, a romantic little devil. She can neither
make a pancake nor darn a sock, and she will not read the philosophy of
Hegel. If I get her I shall have to buy the French fashion papers, carry
my wife's shawl at the balls of Hirschholm, study the language of
flowers, and take to narrating ghost stories in the winter evenings."

Count Augustus at these words received quite a little shock, so much was
he reminded of old days. It was indeed as if he saw young Augustus
Schimmelmann playing chess with his tutor at the open window of the
library of Lindenburg. For this had always been a particular little
trick of the Councilor's whenever you brought out anything for his
inspection. When you were most confident in your aces and kings he would
put down a tiny little trump to knock them on the head, and that at a
moment when you had not been aware that there were any trumps in. He had
been the same as a little boy. When the other children had, in the
autumn, been playing under the trees, pretending that the chestnuts were
horses, he would come out with a little cage of white mice, really alive
and thus much more like horses; or, as they were comparing their various
treasures of knives, wooden soldiers and fishing hooks, he would pull
out of his pocket a bit of gunpowder, which might blow up the whole lot
in a very fine flash. He did not run down his friends' acquisitions;
there was nothing negative in his argument. But he had a little familiar
devil which at the right moment put out its head and conjured the weight
out of your things, so that you would feel a little flat about them.
Those who have no taste for devils disliked this quality in the man. The
opposite type, the chess player for one, was attracted by it. Here Count
Augustus had been promenading before him, serenely, his superiority to
life, his secure and unassailable relation to it, when pat! the
Councilor took out of his pocket a little bright bit of risk and made it
sparkle between his fingers like a jewel. The younger man had been
uttering words of wisdom, and the old man produced a little flute and
played three notes on it, just to remind him that there was such a thing
as music, and also such a thing as folly, and alas for the heart of his
old pupil.

The Councilor's eyes followed the dance of the butterflies as they
disappeared between the trees. "But light," he said, "terrible as an
army with banners."

Count Augustus took off his hat and put it on his knees. The calm sweet
air of the May evening ran like caressing fingers through his locks. All
this was so much like old days, this little gentle shock of envy, as if
the wings of the yellow butterflies had touched his heart. Young
Augustus was again walking, and meditating upon heroism and die fun of
life, in the cool and sweet-smelling air, under a light and silky young
foliage. He let his silver-headed walking stick describe circles on the
ground. What was his reputation for enjoying his wine and sleeping well
at night--what was even the genuine enjoyment of these things? he asked
himself now as he remembered words that he had heard long ago: "Who
never ate his bread with tears, and never through the sorrowful night
sat weeping on his bed, he knows ye not, ye heavenly powers." Those
heavenly powers--he had not thought of them for so long. His heart
swelled a little at the remembrance of the way in which hearts do swell.

A figure came toward them down one of the forest paths, drew nearer, and
was recognized by the Councilor as that of his protg. The Councilor
introduced him to his influential friend, and after a few remarks asked
him to recite a poem for them.

Anders found it difficult to think of anything. His heart, in this
particular spring, was moving in circles as large as those of the
planets around the sun. Still he wanted to oblige this majestic, cold
elderly gentleman. For he was not deceived by the Emperor's new clothes,
but saw him at once as the center of a procession, shivering, in his
shirt. In the end he found a little ballad to recite, a little gay drop
of overflow from all that happiness and pain which had filled him
lately. It was about a young man who goes to sleep in the forest and is
taken into fairyland. The fairies love him and look after him with great
concern, puzzling their little brains to make him happy. The delights of
forest life were inspiredly painted, a long line running out at the end
of each stanza giving it something of the babbling of a spring in the
woods. But the fairies never sleep and have no knowledge of sleep.
Whenever their young friend, fatigued by exquisite pleasure, dozes off,
they lament "He dies, he dies!" and strain all their energy to keep him
awake. So in the end, to their deep regret, the boy dies from lack of
sleep.

Count Augustus praised the beauty of the poem and thought the beauty of
the little fairy queen charmingly put into words. This boy, he thought,
had in him a very strong streak of primitive sensuality which would have
to be watched if the tastefulness of his production were not to suffer.

"Beware," he said smilingly to the Councilor, "of the delights of
fairyland. To poor mortals the value of pleasure, surely, lies in its
rarity. Did not the sages of old tell us: He is a fool who knows not the
half to be more than the whole? Where pleasure goes on forever, we run
the risk of becoming blas, or, according to our young friend, of
dying."

An idea occurred to the Councilor. This green wood, he thought, might do
well as the setting for a bit of drama. "The Count," he said, smiling,
to the boy, "smiles at a little secret into which I have taken him. I
will make you my confidant as well, Anders; only you must not smile at
your old friend. I hope to procure for you, before long, a young
patroness to recite to, who may, in the beauty of your fairy queens,
dryads and undines, see her own beauty reflected as in a mirror." As in
a dim and silvery mirror, just before sunrise, he thought.

The young man, who was still standing up before the two dark figures on
the sea, remained thus for a few moments in silence, as if in deep
thought. Then he lifted his hat a little to the Councilor. "I wish you
happiness, I am sure," he said, gravely, looking at him, "and thank you
for telling me. When is this going to be?"

"Ah, I do not know. In the time of the roses, Anders," said the
Councilor, taken somewhat aback by the youth's directness. Anders, after
a moment, bade good-by to the Count and to his patron and went away.
Count Schimmelmann, who was an observer of men, followed him with his
eyes. What! he thought. Did the old conjurer of Hirschholm have at his
disposal not only his old familiar spirit and evidently a dryad to make
love to, but also a young slave of that tribe of Asra who die when they
love?

He felt a little cold, as if left out, not only of life in the abstract,
but of some fullness of this particular May evening. He rose from the
rustic seat and began to walk back. As, in the conversation with his
host, he looked at his face, he noted there a deep, a gently inspired
and resolute, look. "_Das_," thought the Count, who came of a military
race, smiling, "_das ist nur die Freude eines Helden den schnen Tod
eines Helden zu sehen_." Later on, however, he thought of these moments.

Now Count Augustus had one real talent and happiness, which other people
might well have envied him, but of which he never spoke. He took
hashish, and he took a little only, without ever overdoing the pleasure.
Somewhere in the world he may have had brothers in hashish who would
have given him half of their lives could he have sold them this
capacity.

Walking at the Councilor's side, he thought: What shall I dream tonight?
Opium, he reflected, is a brutal person who takes you by the collar.
Hashish is an insinuating oriental servant who throws a veil over the
world for you, and by experimenting you can arrive at the power of
choosing the figures within the web of the veil. He had already been a
rajah hunting tigers from the backs of elephants, and watching bayaderes
dancing; he had been the director of the great opera of Paris; and he
had been Shamyl, pushing onward with his rebellious freemen, through the
towering, snow-clad mountain passes of the Caucasus. But tonight what
would he choose to dream? Could he recall the dewy May nights within the
festoons of boughs at Ingolstadt? If he choose to, could he?--If he
could, would he?

After supper at the Councilor's house he ordered his magnificent
landaulet and his much-envied English pair of horses, and drove away.

As Councilor Mathiesen was preparing to go to La Libert, a-wooing, the
next day, news was brought which proved to be a nut somewhat hard for
him to crack. It was served him by his housekeeper, along with his new
hat which he had asked her to take out of the box.

This woman, whose name was Abelone, had been in his house for more than
fifteen years, but was still a young woman, tall, red-haired, and of an
extraordinary physical strength. She had lived all her life at
Hirschholm, and there was no particle of the life of the little town
that she did not know. It was strange that there should be any mystery
about herself, but there were people who told that she had been, as a
girl of fifteen, suspected of concealment of birth and infanticide, and
had had a narrow escape. The Councilor held her in respect. He had not
met her match as an economist, not only in the keeping of his house, but
in existence as a whole. To her, waste was probably the one deadly sin
and abomination. Everything which came within the circle of her
consciousness had to be made use of in one way or another, and nothing,
as far as he could see, was ever thrown away by her. If she had had
nothing but a rat to make a ragot of, she would have made a good ragot
of it. In his own intercourse with her he always felt that every word
and mood of his was somehow taken stock of, and kept, to be made use of
sooner or later.

On this pleasant May day she proceeded to report to him the behavior, on
the previous night, of his young clerk, whom she had until then taken
into possession as an article of inventory of the household, and treated
kindly.

This young man had been part of a company at the inn. As the beer had
come to an end, he had promised his convives that he would give them
something better, and being, as the Councilor knew, in possession of the
keys to the church, where he had been going through the parochial
registers, he had fetched from the sacristy four bottles of communion
wine, with which he had regaled the party. He had not been in the least
drunk, but quiet in his manner, as usual. He had, Abelone added,
proposed the Councilor's health in this wine.

While she was narrating, the Councilor was looking at himself in the
glass, for he had decided, with the slight nervousness suitable in a
suitor, to put on another stock, and was now tying it with solicitude.
It is not too much to say that Abelone's tale frightened him. This was,
in a Hirschholm format, Lucifer storming heaven. In what words had his
own toast been drunk?

He came to look at Abelone, behind him, in the mirror. Something in her
manner, more than in her broad, stagnant face, which was ever like the
locked door behind which was kept her rich store of material to be made
use of, gave him the impression that she, too, was frightened, or deeply
moved. There was more here, then, than met the eye. Abelone was by no
means a gossip. Whatever she knew about other people she did not let
out--she probably knew of a better recipe for making use of it--and four
bottles of communion wine would be no more to her than four bottles. If
she would not let the devil have the boy, was it that she wanted him
herself? Was he the rat out of which she was to make her ragot?

He turned back to his own face, and met the eyes of a good councilor. To
be a spectator when Lucifer was storming heaven might be a highly
interesting experience; more interesting still if one could succeed in
putting a spoke in the wheel for him.

"My good Abelone," he said, smiling, "Hirschholm seems to have a little
talent for scandal. I myself instructed Mr. Anders to take away the wine
from the sacristy. I have reason to believe that it was, by mistake,
mixed with rum, which, not being made from the grape, can hardly be
suitable for the transubstantiation. Mr. Anders will see to it that it
is replaced."

Thereupon he drove off to La Libert with much stuff for thought, most
of it, curiously enough, about his housekeeper. It was not till he
turned up the poplar avenue that his mind turned again toward his
future.

On his arrival he did not find the young lady in, and had to wait for a
little while in the garden-room. On a little console table Fransine had
put a large bunch of jessamine in a vase. The sweet and bitter scent was
strong, nearly stifling, in the cool room. He was a little nervous about
his own appearance in the rle of a suitor, not about her answer. For
she would accept him. She was pretty sure to do, in life, as she was
told. He wondered whether, when he should be driving away again from La
Libert as her accepted wooer, she would occupy herself at all with the
thought of her future as his wife. That it would be he, who, later in
life, would be told how things were to turn out under her hands, that
was a different matter.

It seemed to him, while he was waiting, that he was coming into a closer
understanding with the furniture in the sky-blue room. The spinet, the
musical box, and the chairs had withdrawn a little, with their backs to
the wall, as if uneasy about him, like the furniture of a doll's house,
frightened at the intrusion of a grown-up person. Would the time for
games be over now? He tried to set them at ease. "I have not come," he
said to them all, "to destroy, but to fulfill. The best games are to
come."

At this, as if actually soothed into existence again, young Madame
Lerche came into the room in a pink frock with flounces, followed by her
maid who carried the samovar and tea tablecloth for the guest. He could,
after a bit of pleasant conversation, begin his proposal.

Fransine always gave him the impression of being anxious, or pleased, to
have done with what she had taken on. For what reason he knew not, for
there was nothing else on which she seemed at all keen to get started.
She did not, he thought, run the risk of Faust in asking the moment to
stay because of its loveliness. She pushed all her moments on as quickly
as a little nun of Italy, who counts her rosary, pushes on the beads. As
he now talked to her of his love and audacious hopes, she grew a little
paler and moved her slim figure slightly in the big chair. Her dark eyes
met his and looked away again. She was pleased when it was over. She
accepted him as he had thought, even with a little emotion, as a refuge
in life. The Councilor kissed her hand, and she was pleased to have that
over.

Afterward, as the betrothed couple were having tea together, Fransine
presiding on the sofa behind the tall samovar, to affect a little
importance the Councilor told her of Anders and the communion wine. Here
he nearly got more than he had bargained for, for it made a terrible
impression upon her. She looked as if she wanted to sink into the ground
to get away from such abomination. When she could speak, she asked him,
deadly pale, whether the pastor knew it. The Councilor had not expected
such a profound awe of sacred things in her. It was an amiable quality,
but there was more here, a fear of ghosts, or a ghost itself. He
reassured her, and told her how he had decided to free the young clerk
from the consequences of his folly. Upon this she gave him a great
luminous glance, so languishing and alive in its deep dark sweetness
that it filled all the room, like the perfume of the jessamine, and made
him feel powerful and benevolent.

"I ought," said the Councilor, "to frighten the boy for his own sake.
Why, if I had not helped him to this job, he would be starving." At this
last word Fransine again grew pale. "And still you know, my dear," the
Councilor went on, "he has a great career in front of him. This is a sad
thing: to see a thoughtless boy, a vagabond, ruin the future of a great
man. And to me it is somewhat my future too, as if he were my son. But I
am afraid to awaken in him an obstinacy which I shall not be able to
subdue. The gentle touch of a woman might appeal to his better feelings.
He is, surely, the type of human who ought to have a guardian angel, and
it would be noble in you if you would assist me in saving him by reading
him a little sermon."

So it was arranged that Fransine should accompany the Councilor to
Hirschholm to preach to Anders Kube. She quickly put on a pink bonnet
through which the sun heightened the color of her face to the glow of a
rose. It was a little unusual for a young woman to drive out alone with
a gentleman. Even with Kresten on the back seat, the Councilor thought
that the passers-by would conclude upon their engagement, and he enjoyed
the drive. Fransine, by his side, looked at the trotting horse and
seemed happy to be getting it over with.

The Councilor and his young bride, who was to act the part of a guardian
angel, arm in arm ascended the narrow stair to Anders's small rooms
behind the big, newly unfolded lime tree, and found his sister, who was
the wife of a merchant captain of Elsinore, and her little boy with him.
This made the young woman's errand more complicated, but eased her
heart. She felt that she might pass a peaceful and pleasing hour in this
company. The sister and brother were much alike, and when the child
looked at her, the heart of Fransine ceased to beat, for here was a
bambino such as she had known in the churches of Naples--a cherub with
Anders's eyes, showing the poet's personality as might a little mirror
in heaven.

Fransine had come, in her elegant shawl, as a patroness to the poor and
erroneous. She stood now, dark-eyed and stock-still, with the face of
Rachel as she said to Jacob: "Give me children or else I die." She
wanted to kneel down to hold the child against her, but was doubtful
about the correctness of such a move. Then it occurred to her that she
might obtain the same result by lifting him to her level. She placed him
upon a chair, first to look out of the window, then to play with her
fingers in their black mittens. The child stared at her. He had never
seen such ringlets as hers, and poked his little hand into them. To
amuse him she took off her bonnet and shook the whole mass of dark
tresses forward. They fell like clouds around her face, and the child
laughed and pulled at them with both hands. She held him against her
bosom, lightly, laughing, looking into his face, and felt for a moment
his heart, like a small clock, beating against her own. As the others
looked at them she blushed. Waves of deep color washed over her face,
but still she could not help smiling.

The Councilor began to converse with the young mother, who sat down on
the sofa, in her neat white fluted cap, with the little boy on her lap,
and the two young people were left at the window in a tte--tte.
Fransine felt that the time had come for her to enter upon her mission.

"Mr. Anders," she said, "the Councilor--my fianc"--she corrected
herself, "has told me with much regret that he has had reason to be
disappointed, to be angry with you. It is not right; you must not let it
be so. You do not know, perhaps, in Hirschholm, how much evil and misery
there is in the world. But I pray you, Mr. Anders, do not do these
things which bring people into perdition."

Although she was addressing him so solemnly, her face still wore a
reflection of her smile of a moment ago. Even as she went on talking and
was deeply moved, it remained there.

Anders did not hear a word of what she was saying. With that great
talent for oblivion, which the Councilor did not always appreciate in
his protg, Anders had long since forgotten all about the matter to
which she was referring. He smiled back at her with exactly her own
expression. As her face changed, his changed. They took light and shade
from each other like two mirrors hung opposite each other in a room.

Fransine felt that the situation was not developing quite as it ought
to, but she did not know what to do.

"The Councilor," she said, "loves you as if you were his son, and if he
had not helped you, you might have been starving. He is wise. He knows
better than we do how to behave in the world. Look," she said, fumbling
at a small object which was tied to the golden watch-chain around her
neck. It was a little piece of coral, formed like a horn, such as the
plain people of Italy use as a talisman. "This my grandmother gave me.
It is said to protect you against evil eyes. But she thought that it
would guard you also against smallpox, and your own dangerous thoughts.
For this reason she gave it to me. You take it now, and let it remind
you to be careful, to follow the Councilor's advice."

Anders took the little amulet from her. As their hands met, they both
grew very pale.

From his place on the sofa, the Councilor could see with the corner of
his eye that great forces were in play. And he saw plainly that his
bride gave to the young clerk, as some sort of symbol, what looked like
a little pair of horns. With this, were it more or less than he had
expected, he had to be content, and he and Fransine walked down the
stair, arm in arm, to where Kresten was waiting for them with the
carriage.

As it was not considered by the social world of Hirschholm quite proper
that an engaged couple, even though the bridegroom were a man of a
certain age, and the bride a widow, should be much together by
themselves, it became, during the summer months, the custom for Anders,
in the capacity of a chaperon, to accompany the Councilor on his visits
to La Libert. Upon fine evenings the three of them would have tea on
the terrace, and Fransine made them pretty little Italian dishes which
reminded the Councilor of other days and things. Looking then, in the
mild, glowing evening light, across the tea table at the two young
people who were both so precious to him--although their order of
precedence within his heart might have surprised them--the Councilor
felt happy and in harmony with the universe as he very rarely had
before. It was difficult, he thought, to imagine a more perfect idyll.
"I, too," he said to himself, "have been in Arcadia."

At times the attitudes of his young shepherd and shepherdess surprised
him and made him uneasy, and he was reminded of a tale which he had read
in a book of travel. Therein a party of British explorers in a Negro
village came upon a troop of prisoners who were being fattened, behind a
palisade, for the table of their capturers. The indignant Britishers
offered to buy their freedom, but the victims refused, for they thought
that they were having a more pleasant time than they had ever had. Was
it possible, the Councilor thought, that the young people had some plan
of escape that they were skillfully concealing, or were they no more
provident than the cannibals' captives? Both possibilities seemed to him
equally unlikely.

Still he was not in his parable very far from the truth; or the truth,
had he known it, would not have appeared to him any more probable.

To Anders the situation was simplified by his decision to kill himself
on Fransine's wedding day, a decision which he had made when he heard of
her engagement, and which seemed to him as inevitable as death itself.
To the Danish peasant of his type the idea of flinging away your life
comes very easily. Life never seems--or, indeed, is--to them any very
great boon, and suicide in one way or another may be said to be the
natural end of them.

Anders had not been spoiled by fate. If he had been spoiled at all, it
had been done by other powers. He had felt the common lot of his kind,
that is: to be, as if he had been made out of some stuff essentially
different from the rest of the world, invisible to other people. When he
had met Fransine, she had seen him. Without any effort, her clear eyes
had taken him all in. This sort of human nonexistence of which he had at
times been tired had come to an end, and he had promised himself much
from his newly gained reality. If she was marrying the Councilor, and
turning away her eyes, it was only reasonable that he himself should
turn elsewhere.

He was always very reserved about his own plans, and in this case felt
that his decision concerned nobody but himself. Therefore he did not let
it out in any manner. The Councilor, had he known of it, would not only
have prevented it, but would also have disliked it. Few people would
choose to sit down at their tea tables with a ghost of today a week.
Fransine it might have made unhappy. Anders had no chivalry in his
disposition, but he had a talent for friendliness, and he would not have
liked to grieve any of them. To avoid it he had even planned to borrow a
sailing boat from a friend of his amongst the fishermen of Rungsted and
to capsize by accident. He was a skilled sailor and could manage that.
From time to time he had a strange feeling toward Anders Kube, as toward
some central figure in one of his own poems. Sometimes he felt a little
guilty, and then again as a benefactor, for he was helping him to escape
a lot of unpleasant things. Upon the whole he had, behind his palisade,
as quiet eyes as those of the Negro prisoners in the tale.

Apart from this central idea of his, he had in his head a great poem, a
swan song, which he was to finish before himself. Having written before
of the forests and fields, and relying upon the sea for a last embrace,
he had let all his thoughts wander toward her. Naiads and tritons danced
in the waves within this last great epos of his; the whales passed over
their heads like clouds; dolphins, swans, and fishes played in the
powerful and pearly foam of long breakers, and the winds played at
flutes and bassoons, and joined in great orchestras. That freedom in
which people live, who can die, had got into it; and although it was
not, as a drama, very long, there was no end to its many aspects. He
read it to Fransine, in the afternoons at La Libert, as it proceeded.

As to Fransine, it was natural for her to live like this, from hand to
mouth. She had no real idea of time; indeed did not have it in her to
distinguish between time and eternity. That was one of the traits of
character which made the ladies of Hirschholm think her a little
feebleminded. She had never before in her life been as happy as this,
and could not feel sure whether the uncertainty about its duration and
about the future might not be a peculiarity of happiness. For the rest
her thoughts followed the moods of Anders. She read his last great poem,
and as it was all about the sea, she had the frocks of her trousseau
made in hues of sky and sea blue--rather heavenly the two men thought
her.

As during these months the Councilor came to know his bride better, he
was often surprised by her extreme disregard of truth. He was himself a
rearranger of existence, and in many ways in sympathy with her; also in
this he found her methods to fall in well with his own plans. But still
more than once this talent of hers impressed him. It was, he reflected,
an especially feminine trick, a _code de femme_ of practical economy,
proved by innumerable generations. Women, wanting to be happy, are up
against a _force majeure_. Hence they may be justified in taking a short
cut to happiness by declaring things to be, in fact, that which they
want them to be. They have by practice made this household remedy
indispensable in the housekeeping of life. In this way, because he was
to be her husband, he was pronounced by his young bride _ipso facto_
good, clever, and generous. He did not take it as a personal compliment;
she had probably made use of the same formula in connection with the old
apothecary Lerche. So were his presents to her always beautiful, so were
the sermons of old Pastor Abel of Hirschholm highly moving, so was the
weather nice when he took her out for a drive. An exception to the rule
was formed by her frocks and bonnets, about which she took much genuine
trouble; but then she had such a talent for wearing clothes that in this
she could successfully strive toward an ideal. Whether she had come to
take refuge in this woman's religion from personal need, or had been
inaugurated into it by wise female Nestors, he did not know. Few women,
he thought, come to know romance, married bliss, or success in life
except by such an arrangement. The principle had some likeness to Count
Schimmelmann's new clothes, but, invented by simple women, it was devoid
of any masculine ambition to prove; it was plain dogma, indisputable.

Thus did the witches of old make up wax children, carry them for nine
months under their clothes, and then have them christened, at midnight,
with the name of someone of their acquaintance, and after that for all
practical purposes the wax child served in place of its namesake. In the
hands of an amiable witch this pretty white magic might work much good.
But if ever a young witch conceives and carries for nine months a child
of her own flesh and blood? Ah! it is then that there will be the devil
and all to pay.

The Councilor, seeing his protg so absorbed in his new work, asked him
to read it to him. Anders saw no reason whatever why his old friend
should not know of it, and recited bits of it to him from time to time.
The old man was very much impressed, filled with an admiration which at
times came near to idolatry. It seemed to him, too, that he had come out
into a new sort of space and time, into the ether itself, until he was
swimming and flying in the blue, and in a new kind of harmony and
happiness. He thought it the beginning of great things. He discussed it
much with the poet, and even advised him upon it, so that not a few of
the Councilor's own ideas and reflections were, in one way or another,
echoed within the epos, and he was, during these summer months, in a way
making love, and writing poetry, to his bride by proxy--a piquant
situation, which would last till his wedding day. For days and weeks the
three of them, even while taking tea upon the terrace, would be living
in the waters of great, heavenly seas.

Two days before the wedding the Councilor received from a friend in
Germany a copy of the new novel, _Wally: Die Zweiflerin_, by young
Gutzkow, about which the waves of indignation and discussion were at the
time going high there.

As it will be remembered, Wally and Csar love each other, but they
cannot marry, for Wally has promised to become the bride of the
ambassador of Sardinia. Csar then demands of her that she shall, to
symbolize the spiritual marriage between her and him, upon the very
wedding morning, show herself to him naked, in her full beauty. There
exists an old German poem in which Sigune in this way reveals herself to
Tchionatulander.

The Councilor was so much interested in the novel that he brought it
with him on his afternoon visit to La Libert, and went on with his
reading, seated under a tree on the terrace, while the young people went
to look at a tame fox cub which Fransine kept in the kennel. He
considered that he would not, in the coming week, have much time for
reading, and that he had better finish his book today.

He read:

    _To his left appears a picture of enrapturing beauty: Sigune,
    who uncovers herself more bashfully than the Medician Venus
    covers her nudity. She stands there helpless, blinded by the
    divine madness of love. It has asked this grace of her, and she
    is no more free of will; she is all shame, innocence, and
    devotion. And as a sign that a pious initiation sanctifies the
    scene, no red rose flowers there; only a tall white lily,
    blooming close to her body, covers her as a symbol of chastity.
    A mute second--a breath--that was all. A sacrilege, but a
    sacrilege inspired by innocence and by ever faithful
    renunciation...._

The Councilor closed his book, and leaning back in his chair, as if he
were looking toward heaven, he even closed his eyes. The air under the
crown of the lime tree was filled with green and golden light, with the
sweet scent of the linden blossoms, and the humming of innumerable bees.

This, he thought, is very pretty. Very pretty, let old Professor Menzel
thunder against it as he likes. A dream of a golden age, of an eternal
innocence and sweetness came back to him. Let the critics say that such
things do not happen; that does not really matter, for a new variety of
flower has been forced in the frame of imagination. He could hear
Fransine and Anders talking a little way off, but he could not hear what
the talk was about.

From the kennel the two young people had walked down to the vegetable
garden, south of the house, to pick some lettuce, peas, and young
carrots for the supper table. Part of the low garden was already shaded
by a row of old crooked birches which formed the boundary fence of the
garden. Through an opening they could look out on the fields, where, in
the mellow, golden, evening air two maids, walking out to milk the cows
and carrying their tall milk pans on their heads, threw tremendously
long blue shadows across the clover field.

Fransine asked Anders's advice about the fox cub. "In the autumn," she
said, "if I let him out, will he be able to find his own food?"

"I should let him out," said Anders, "only he may be too familiar with
your hen-coops, and come back in the night." He had a vision of the
sharp-toothed, lonely fox, the ghost of the woolen playmate of their
summer evenings, in a frosty, silvery, winter night, trotting on to La
Libert. "Then you must come and catch him again," said Fransine.

"But then I shall not be here," said Anders, without thinking.

"Oh," said she, "what high offices, in what state, are taking you away
from us, Mr. Anders?" Anders was silent. What high offices, in what
state?

"I have got to go away," he said at last. Fransine did not dispute the
fact. Probably she knew enough of the hard necessity, mistress of men
and gods. But after a moment she looked at him, as intently as if she
had thrown her whole being at him in the glance. "But if you are not
here," she said, "it will be--" she reflected for a second--"it will be
too cold here!" she said. Anders understood her very well. An immense
wave of pity lifted him up and hurled him at her feet. It would indeed
be too cold for her. And his soul was rent between the despair of her
feeling cold, and the despair of his being, by that time, too cold to
comfort her. "What am I to do then?" she asked him. She was standing up
before him. Except that she was clothed, and her two hands were
therefore reposing lightly on the flounces of her dress, she was holding
the exact pose of that Venus of Medici of which the Councilor was at the
same moment reading. Looking at her, Anders remembered that he had
before seen her as a child who would not lose, in him, her favorite
doll. Now he saw her differently, as the doll which could not lose its
child, the child who was to play with it, dress and undress it, and go
into ecstasies over it--an ownerless doll, a stray doll, except in his
hands.

"Mr. Anders," she said, "in those weeks after Easter, when we were much
together in the Councilor's house, at that picnic in Rungsted--do you
remember?--you told me that it would be your happiness to remain here,
as my friend, all your life." He did not speak. Those weeks after Easter
hurt when you thought of them, and they might kill if you spoke about
them. "Are you such a faithless friend?" she asked.

"Listen, Madame Fransine," he said, "I dreamed of you two nights ago."
At this she smiled, but was much interested. "I dreamed," he said, "that
you and I were walking to a great seashore, where a strong wind was
blowing. You said to me: 'This is to go on forever.' But I said that we
were only dreaming. 'Oh, no, you must not think that,' you said. 'Now,
if I take off my new bonnet and throw it into the sea, will you believe
that it is no dream?' So you untied your bonnet and threw it from you,
and the waves carried it far away. Still I thought that it was a dream.
'Oh, how ignorant you are,' you said, 'but if I take off my silk shawl
and throw it away, you must see that all this is real.' You threw back
your silk shawl, and from the sand the wind lifted it and carried it
off. But I could not help thinking that it was a dream. 'If I cut off my
left hand,' you said, 'will you be convinced?' You had a pair of
scissors in the pocket of your frock. You held up your left hand, just
as if it had been a rose, and cut it off. And with that----" He stopped,
very pale. "With that I woke up," he said.

She stood quite still. She had much faith in dreams, and had felt
herself walking with him on the seashore of which he had just told her.
But now she was collecting all her arsenal to keep him, for she really
thought that if she were to lose him she would die. She would cut off
her left hand for him, if he wanted it, but it were better that it
should be under his head. In the clear and sweet evening air she felt
her own body strong and light as a young birch tree, her slim waist
pliant as a branch, her young breasts resting lightly, like a pair of
smooth, round eggs, in the nest of warm and fresh lawn. Her flaming gaze
was so deeply sunk in his, and his in hers, that it would take a
powerful crane to lift them apart again.

She lifted the Venus's lower hand just a little and held it toward him,
slowly, as if it had been a heavy weight. He stretched out his hand and
touched her finger tip. It was exactly the gesture of the Creator of
Michelangelo transmitting divine life to young Adam. Such various
reproductions of high classic art were moving about, in the evening, in
the kitchen garden of La Libert.

They heard the Councilor stirring in his seat, laying away his book and
gazing up into the crown of the tree. Slowly, without a word, Fransine
turned and walked along the terrace toward him, and Anders followed her
with the basket of lettuce and peas.

The Councilor still had a finger in the book, at the page where he had
last been reading. "Ah, Fransine," he said, "here I have been smuggling
into the academy of refinement of La Libert a little _sans-culotte_ of
literature. The young author has been put into prison for it in Germany.
That is right. Punish the flesh and let the spirit fly. Since the
professors of universities have confiscated the poet, we may enjoy his
poetry. I am speaking frivolously, my dear," he went on, "but upon an
evening like this, the moralist cuts a poor figure. And what really
captivated me was a curious incident, a very minor matter. For it seems
to me that Gutzkow gives, in the meeting place of the rash young lovers,
an accurate description of your own little temple of friendship, at La
Libert, down in the beech wood."

With these words he got up, and went to have tea with his bride, leaving
the book on the seat under the linden.

Upon the last day before his wedding the Councilor paid no visit to La
Libert. This is considered the correct thing in Denmark. The bride is
given the last day to meditate in peace upon the past and the future,
and the bridal couple meet again only in church. The Councilor also had
much to do, and spent his day going through papers and making
arrangements with his subordinates, so as not to have the first days of
his honeymoon disturbed by prosaic matters. But he sent over young
Anders with a large bouquet of roses. It was a fine summer day.

In the evening, after sunset, Anders took his gun and went out to shoot
duck. The Councilor, also, found no rest in his rooms, and started for a
long walk, as may a bridegroom, filled with sentiments. He took the road
across the fields to La Libert, to roam, unnoticed by the world and by
her, in the nearness of his bride.

The sky of that summer night was a clear candid blue, like the petal of
a periwinkle. Large silvery clouds were towered up all around the
horizon; the big trees were holding up their severe dark crowns against
them. The long wet grass was of a luminous green. All the colors of the
day were within the landscape, no less bright than in daytime, but
changed, as if revealing a new side of their being, as if the whole
world of color had been transposed from a major to a minor key. The
stillness and silence of the night was filled with a deep life, as if
within a moment the universe would give up its secret. As the old
Councilor looked up, he was surprised to see the full summer moon
standing in the middle of the sky. Its shining disc threw a narrow
bridge of gold across the iron-gray plane of the sea, as if a shoal of
many hundred little fishes were playing in the surface; and still it did
not seem to spread much light, as if no more light were needed.

Now that he knew them to be there, however, he began to distinguish the
transparent pools of shadow under the trees, which the moon was making,
and the narrow little puddles along the road, just at the edge of the
long, wet, and fragrant grass.

The Councilor found that he had been standing for some time, looking at
the moon. She was a long way off, he knew, but there was nothing between
her and him but the diaphanous air, thinner, he had been told, the
higher you got up. How was it that he had never been able to write a
poem to the moon? He had much to say to her. She was so white and round,
and the white and round things he had always loved.

Suddenly it seemed to him that the moon had as much to say to him as he
to her. More, or at least she expressed it with more power. Old, yes, he
was old; so was she, older than he. It is not a bad thing to be old, he
thought; you see and enjoy things better than when you are young. It is
not only in the old wine that the bouquet lies; it wants an old palate
as well.

But was this powerful communication from the moon a warning? He
remembered the nursery tale of the thief who has stolen a fat sheep and
is eating it in the moonlight. Mockingly he holds up a bit of fat mutton
to the moon, crying:

    _See, my dear,_
    _What I here_
    _Can with pleasure offer._

And the moon replies:

    _Thief! beware!_
    _Key, with care,_
    _Burn that stupid scoffer._

Whereupon a red-hot key comes flying through the air and brands the face
of the thief. That story must have been told him by his old nurse fifty
years ago. Everything was in the night. Life, yes, and death, a _memento
mori_ somewhere. "Take care, death is here!" the moon said. Must he let
himself be warned?

Or was it a promise? Was his old self to be lifted now, like to
Endymion, to be rewarded for the trouble of life by an everlasting
sleep, sweet as this night? Would the world then have a statue erected
to him, here in the hayfield of La Libert, in memory of his apotheosis?

What strange fancies were these? The dripping-wet, heavy-headed,
honey-sweet clover brushed against his shins. He had a curious sensation
of walking a little above the ground. There were cows lying or walking
in it somewhere; he could not distinguish them in the moonlight, but
their deep sweet fragrance was in the air.

Suddenly he remembered something that had happened more than forty years
before. Young Peter Mathiesen, a reserved, speculative boy then, had
been staying with his uncle, the parson at Mols, and in the same house a
little girl, a farmer's daughter, was being prepared for her
confirmation. His uncle had been a well-read man who talked about
everything--God, love, life everlasting--and who was an enthusiast about
the new romantic literature. They used to read poetry in the evening at
the parsonage, and one night, because the little girl's name was Nanna,
it had amused the pastor to make the children take part in the recital
of the tragedy _Death of Baldur_, and to address to each other the
burning, passion-sick verses of Baldur and Nanna. With his glasses
pushed back the old parson had listened, transported, with that kind of
shamelessness which also makes old maids grow hyacinths in tall glasses
so that they may watch the roots, and had not known that the country
children were burning and turning pale under the sound of their own
voices. When bed time came the boy had not been able to go to bed. Hot
and bewildered, he had wandered about the farm buildings, seeking for
something which might wash off this touch, and he had come down to the
stables. It was a moonlight, misty night in early spring. Leaning
against the wall, he had felt terribly lonely, and not only lonely, but
betrayed, as if something were lying in wait for him. Then he had come
to think of the cows inside, and of their imperturbability in the
darkness. There was one big white cow, by the name of Rosa, which had
been a favorite with the children. He had felt that she might give him
comfort. Within her stall, his chest against the side of the reposing,
gently chewing animal, a sweetly penetrating calm and balance had come
upon him, and he had made up his mind to sleep with her all night. But
hardly had he lain down in the straw when the stable door was opened
gently, and a soft step approached. As he peeped over Rosa's back he saw
the little girl come in, dim and light in the dim moonlight. She had
been unhappy like him, he thought, and had felt that only a cud-chewing
animal would have power to give her back her peace of heart. The moon
shone in through the little stable window--that same moon--turning the
whitewashed wall milk white where it struck it. The girl's fair hair
glittered under its touch, but he was in the dark, and he kept very
still, like a fugitive in danger of discovery. He watched her kneeling
down in the straw, so close to him, breathing so hard. He was not sure
that she was not sobbing a little to herself. They had lain there for
several hours of the short spring night, sometimes sleeping, sometimes
awake, with the tranquil, sweet-smelling Rosa between them like the
two-edged sword in the poem of chivalry. Many thoughts, many pretty and
strong pictures had run through the boy's head. When he had slept he had
dreamed of Nanna, and when he had woke up and had raised himself to look
at her, she was still there, unaware of his presence. Very early in the
morning she got up, brushed the straw from her skirt, and was gone, and
he had never told her that he had been there with her.

The Councilor walked on, pleased. He thought of Count Schimmelmann's
quotation: "He is the fool who knows not the half to be more than the
whole." This long-forgotten incident was a little flower in his life, in
the garland of his life, a field flower, a wild forget-me-not. There
were not a few flowers, violets, pansies, in his life. Would this night
put a rose into the garland?

A little way from the garden of La Libert, in the hayfield, there was a
beech grove. In the corner of it, upon a mound, a lady of the manor who
had, a hundred years before, been partial to the quiet and sweet
solemnity of the spot, had had a little summer house erected, a temple
to friendship. There were five wooden pillars which carried a domed
roof. Two steps led up to it, and a seat ran along the inner side of the
columns, in a half circle. From here you could see the sea. Later on,
since the climate of Denmark is not always in harmony with Greek
architecture, the one side of the building had been thatched to give
shelter to the meditator. The whole place was now dilapidated, and in
the daytime a little tristful, but below the full moon it looked
romantic.

He turned his steps toward the little temple as a harmonious spot for
the dreams of a bridegroom, but he walked slowly and with prudence, for
his young bride might have had the same fancy, and if so he would not
frighten or disturb her. As he came nearer, however, voices coming from
the mound made him first stand stock-still, then move along quietly,
following the sound. For the second time a lurker in the grounds of La
Libert, he took care to approach without a sound, behind the thatched
wall.

Anders and Fransine were together in the temple, speaking softly. The
young man sat on the seat, immobile. The young woman stood up opposite
him, her back against a pillar. The moon was shining on them; the whole
world around them was light, like a landscape under snow. But the old
Councilor was in the deep shade of his hiding place. Indeed, he was like
that statue of himself about which he had recently been dreaming.
Statues also, sometimes, see a lot.

The young woman had on an outlandish garment, a sort of black domino or
opera cloak, which he had never seen in her possession, and which she
was holding closely together about her. Her dark hair hung down, a live,
odorous mantle, and her face within it was like a white rose, dew-cool,
in the night air. He had never seen her look so lovely. He had indeed
never seen any human being look so lovely before. It was as if the whole
summer night had brought forth one flower, the epitome of its beauty.
She seemed to sway a little, like a flexible branch, too heavy with the
weight of its white roses.

There was a long silence. Then Fransine gave a low laugh of happiness,
as soft and sweet as a dove's cooing.

"They are all lying down," she said, "like dead people in a churchyard.
Only you and I are afoot. Is it not stupid to lie down?" She twisted a
little in her cloak. "Oh, I am tired of them," she exclaimed,
passionately, "talking, talking always. I wish to God they would lie
forever, so that we could be left alone in the world a little." The
sweetness of the thought seemed to overwhelm her. She drew in her
breath. She stood still, waiting for him to move or answer her. After a
while she asked him, her voice still filled with laughter and
tenderness: "Anders, what is the matter?"

Anders was a long time in answering her, then he spoke very slowly:
"Yes," he said, "you may well ask, Fransine. It is important. The spirit
we need not talk about; it is not dangerous. But what is the matter? It
has many strange things about it. It is the phlogiston of our bodies,
being of negative weight, you might say. That is easy to understand, of
course, but it gives you such great pain when it is demonstrated upon
you. First we are treated by fire--burned, or roasted slowly, that comes
to the same thing--and even then we cannot fly."

Now the cause of the lover's immobility became clear to the old
listener. This young man was dead drunk. He could just manage to keep
himself, seated, in balance, but could make no further movement. He was
pale as a corpse; the sweat kept pouring down his face; and he kept his
eyes on the face of the girl as if it would have caused him infinite
pain to move them away from it. The Councilor, who had been repeating to
himself his little aphorism, "the half to be more than the whole," here
had the theory proved straight in his face.

Fransine smiled at the young man. Like many women, she did not recognize
the symptoms of drunkenness in a man. "Oh, Anders," she said, "you do
not know it, so I will tell you: I can fly. Or nearly. Old ballet-master
Basso said to me: 'The other girls I have to whip up, but I shall have
to tie two stones to your legs soon, or you will fly away from me.'
These old men are mad, and they want strange things of you. I do not
mind now. I will show you soon that I can fly, like the flying fishes
with which the sea children made ducks and drakes."

"You see, my girl," said Anders, "you are like a cook who kills a whole,
good, live duck just for making a giblet soup. You may use me for a
giblet soup if you like, but you must come and cut out the bits you want
yourself. The birds do not themselves know the places of their liver and
heart. That is woman's work, Fransine."

Fransine thought this over for a little while. She was sure that every
one of his words was wise, and kind to her. "My mother," she said, "came
from the ghetto of Rome. You did not know that. Nobody knows that. There
I saw her kill the birds in the right way, so that no blood was left in
them. That ghetto, Anders, that is the place, you can be sure, where
people suffer, where you have to be careful, or else you are robbed and
hurt. Hanged, even. I have seen people hanged. My grandfather was hanged
there. The world has been hard to me, Anders, and to you as well. But
then it is even sweeter still to be happy." She paused a moment. "To be
happy," she said. "Do you not think so?"

"But it is too late," Anders said. "Things happen, even when you are not
there. That is the trouble. That is what you do not know. The cocks are
crowing, though we cannot hear them here." Quoting an old ditty of the
charcoal burners, he said, slowly and gently:

    _Early at midsummer-dawn the cock was crowing,_
    _Twenty-nine cradles had I set a-going._

"No, they are not crowing," she said. "It is not daylight, Anders. It is
not even midnight." She stood still before him.

"There are two," said Anders, "who will take me whole, as I sit here.
Abelone will take me whole. She wants to keep a public house at
Elsinore, and me to marry her and be landlord to the seamen. The sea,
also, will take me whole. When one of the two has been at you, you will
have had your bones well picked."

The Councilor, even though absorbed in their talk, here got a small
shock. Had his housekeeper been entertaining such prospects, and not
said a word to him? Had she, perhaps, even, perceived in Fransine a
rival of her own dignities, and in this shown more insight than he
himself had?

Fransine stood staring at Anders, bewildered. "Anders," she said, "do
not speak like that. Listen. At the fairs, when I danced to them, they
cried: 'Again! Again!' They said: 'It is like seeing the stars dancing,
the hearts burning.' Do you not believe that I can make you happy?"

"Oh, my lass," said he, "let us be good. Let us behave like good people.
Let me pay you what the seamen pay the girls at Elsinore. I have not
much to give you, and that is a great pity. The other night I spent a
lot of my savings on beer for the people at the inn, and that was bad of
me. But fifty specie-dollars I have still laid aside. Do take them now,
for God's sake. I do not ask you this for my own sake, I swear to you,
for I am going to die sooner or later in any case, but for yours, you
poor, pretty girl. It is always a good thing for a girl to have fifty
specie-dollars. Go buy yourself a shift, and do not run about naked in
the cold nights."

There was much strength in Fransine. Upon this she made a movement
towards him. Her tightly drawn cloak and long hair followed it. Within
her self-luminous face her two big dark eyes were fixed upon his face.
She looked like a young witch under the moon. "Anders, Anders!" she
said, "do you not love me?"

"Oh, God!" he said. "That was coming, I knew. I can answer that, from
practice, quite well. I love you, my pretty vixen. Your hair, now, is
like a little red flame in the dark, a cloven tongue of fire, a little
marsh fire to show people the wrong way, the way to hell."

The young woman was trembling from her head to her feet. "Did you not,"
she said, wringing her hands, "want me to come, here, to you, tonight?"

He sat silent for a moment. "Well," he said, "if you are asking me my
honest opinion, Madame Fransine, No. I should like to be by myself."

Fransine turned and ran away. Her long cloak of Naples, trailing in her
wake, hindered her. Still she held it closely wrapped about her. Thus
fled Arethusa, when, long ago, she was changed into a river, and loudly
lamenting, hurled herself through the myrtle groves.

Anders sat for a long time like a dead man. Then, with the slow and
uncertain movement of drunken people, he took up his gun and got onto
his feet. He turned around, and in so doing was brought face to face
with the Councilor.

He did not seem at all surprised to see him. Perhaps he had thought of
him, or had felt his presence, somehow, in the atmosphere of his
rendezvous. He only grinned, when he set eyes on him, as if he had been
shown the solution of a crafty riddle. The Councilor felt the moment
more awkward. For a few seconds the two stared at each other. Then, with
a smile such as a boy might show in playing a bad prank on somebody,
Anders half lifted his gun, and without taking aim fired it off straight
into the body of the old man. The retort boomed and echoed far away in
the summer night.

The roar and the sudden, overwhelming pain struck the old man as one
thing, as the end or the beginning of the world. He fell, and in falling
saw his murderer, with an agility surprising in a dead-drunk man, swing
himself over the low wall of the little temple and disappear.

The Councilor found himself, after a long stay in a strange world, lying
on his back in the clover, in a pool of something warm and sticky: his
own blood, which was blending with the moisture of the field.

He had the feeling that he had been terribly angry. He was not sure
whether the din and the darkness were not the effects of his wrath, an
anathema flung at the head of his ungrateful protg. Slowly returning
to consciousness, he was still suffering from the pain and exhaustion
which a great anger leaves in the breast, but he no longer hated or
condemned. He was past all that.

He had lost a lot of blood. He thought that he must have had the full
barrel fired into his right side. He could not move his right leg,
either. It was strange that you could change things so completely just
by lying down where you had been standing up. He had never known that
the scent of the flowering clover could be so strong, but that was
because he had not before been lying down, buried, bathed in it, as now.

He was going to die. The young man, whom he loved, had meant him to die.
The world had thrown him out. His will, he remembered, was in order. He
was leaving his money to his bride. His old servants were provided for,
and his cellar was going to Count Schimmelmann, who took such pleasure
in wine. In making this will he had been wondering whether the thought
of a well-made will might be any comfort to a dying man. Now he knew it
to be so.

After a little while he tried to realize whereto he had been thrown, out
of the world. As he recognized the place, it occurred to him that he
might still save himself. He might control his world once more.

He must be about a mile from La Libert. If he could manage to turn, and
shift his weight onto his sound arm, he might be able to move. Could he
get as far as the long avenue which led to the house, he might crawl
along the stone fence, and rest against it.

He was in great pain as soon as he started to move, and he wondered
whether it would be worth while. "Now, my dear friend," he said to
himself, feeling that it was time for a kind word, "try. You will be all
right." He could draw himself along in this way, like an old snake which
has been run over on the road, but still wriggles on.

His arm gave way; he fell straight upon his face, and his mouth, open in
the struggle for breath, was filled with dust.

As he raised himself again he saw that he had been mistaken about the
place; he was not in Denmark, but at Weimar.

The sweetness of this discovery nearly overwhelmed him. Weimar, then,
was so easy to get to. A road led there from the hayfield of La Libert.
This place--he saw it clearly now--was the terrace; the view over the
town was as fine as ever; it was the sacred garden itself, and the
solemn lime trees were guarding the sanctuary; he felt their full,
balsamic scent. The moon was shining serenely on it all, and from a
shining window the great poet might at this moment be watching her,
forming divine lines to her divinity.

He remembered now: he himself was writing a tragedy. He had, upon a
time, considered this undertaking the greatest of his life, and he did
not know how it was that he had for some time not thought about it. He
had even had a plan for maneuvering it into the hands of the Geheimerat,
to get his opinion on it. Perhaps this night would be the right moment.
It had been called _The Wandering Jew_. It might not be worth very much.
There were reminiscences of the Geheimerat's own _Faust_ in it; still,
there was also some imagination. The imaginary cross, which his
Ahasuerus had been carrying through the world on his long weary road,
that was not without effective power.

He thought: Would the great poet let his own people--Wilhelm Meister,
Werther, Dorothea--associate with the creations of his, the Councilor's,
mind? Undoubtedly there would be a social order in the world of fiction
as there was everywhere, even in the world of Hirschholm. Indeed, it
might be the criterion of a work of art that you should be able to
imagine its characters keeping company with the people, or frequenting
the places, of the works of the great masters. Would not Elmire and
Tartuffe land at Cyprus, and be received there, on his master's behalf,
by young Cassio, having passed on the way a ship with brown sails,
a-sail for Scheria?

He fell again, and rolled over on his back. This was a more difficult
position from which to raise himself, and while he was lying thus,
gasping for breath, a dog barked some way off.

"The little dogs and all--Tray, Blanch, and Sweetheart--see, they bark
at me."

Yes, they might have reason to do so. He saw his own clothes in the
light of the summer moon, stiff with blood and dust. No beggar could
look worse.

King Lear, also, had at a time been in a bad position. Murderers had
been after him, too. He had been alone upon a heath and had struggled
and fallen. The night that he had been out in had been much worse than
this. But all the same the old King had somehow been so safe, so
unshakenly secure. Still lying flat upon the ground, panting, the
Councilor tried to remember what it had been that had made King Lear so
exceptionally safe, so that even the storm on the heath, and even all
the wickedness in the world, could not harm him in the least. He had
been in the hands of two ungrateful daughters; they had treated him with
dreadful cruelty; there was nothing safe in the situation there. It was
something else. The old King had been in the hands, whatever happened to
him, of the great British poet, of William Shakespeare. That was it.

The Councilor had reached the stone fence of the garden. With a very
great effort he sat himself up against it. It gave him rest. And
suddenly, with the face of the moon looking into his own blood-stained
and smirched face, the old Councilor understood everything in the world.

He was not only at Weimar. No, it was more than that. He had got inside
the magic circle of poetry. He was in the world of the mind of the great
Geheimerat. All this still landscape around him, also this great pain
which washed over him from time to time, they were the accomplishments
of the poet of Weimar. He himself had got into these works of harmony,
deep thought, and order undestroyable. He was free, if he liked, to be
Mephistopheles, or the silly student who comes to ask advice about life.
In fact he might be anything without ever running any risk, for whatever
he did the author would see to it that things would somehow come out all
right, that high and divine law and order would be maintained. How was
it that he had ever in his life been afraid? Had he believed that Goethe
might fail?

    _Make ten of one,_
    _and two let be._
    _Make even three._
    _And nine is one,_
    _and ten is none...._

The words gave him an extraordinary comfort. What a fool, what a fool he
had been! What could anything matter? He was in the hands of Goethe.

The old man looked, as if for the first time in his life, up toward the
sky. His lips moved. He said:

_Ich bin Eurer Excellenz ehrerbietigster Diener._

At this moment of his apotheosis he became aware of somebody crying a
little way off. The sound came nearer, then suddenly turned off and
withdrew. Was this, he thought, Margaret weeping in her desertion?

    _My mother, the harlot,_
    _who put me to death,_
    _My father, the varlet,_
    _who eaten me hath...._

No, he thought, it must be the young lady of La Libert, his bride of
the same day, poor Fransine. From the sound he judged her to be walking
up and down near him. She had gone to the farthest end of the terrace,
so as not to be heard from the house. If he could get a few yards
farther, he would be within earshot, and he would be saved.

With this certainty also a great feeling of pity came upon the
Councilor. Fransine must have heard the shot, he thought, and be beside
herself with fear. Her sobbing sounded wild and without hope, and there
she was, all alone in the night. This was rather cruel of the
Geheimerat. Still, he had done worse when he had made Margaret kill her
child; and yet that had also been right, had been in good order,
somehow.

He leaned against the fence, his paralyzed legs trailing in the dust,
and tried to collect and control all these thoughts. Out of his richer
knowledge he would have to console the unhappy young woman, and make
things right for her. She was young and simple; it would be no use to
try to make her see how it was that everything was in order. But that
did not matter; it was really better so. Children, who cannot digest the
full produce of the earth, are made happy with a stick of barley sugar.
He would arrange to get for Fransine that which is generally called
happiness. This, he felt, was in the plan of the author, of the
Geheimerat.

In the sky the moon had changed position and color. The dawn was
approaching. The summer sky was slowly rusting; the stars hung in it
like clear drops, ready to fall. Balsamic winds ran along, close to the
earth.

The Councilor thought that he must look like a ghost, and with great
difficulty he got out his handkerchief and wiped his face. The effort
nearly killed him, and he succeeded only in smearing blood and dust all
over his face. He felt that it would be no use to try to call to her;
his voice was too faint. He must try to get nearer. There were two stone
steps leading from the road to the end of the terrace, through the
fence, and if he could get there he would be seen by her. With his last
strength he moved forward, on elbow and knee, another ten yards, and
this, he knew, was the end; he could do no more. He got up onto the
lower stone and leaned against the top step. He had meant to call, but
could not make a sound. Just then she turned and caught sight of him.

If he looked like a ghost, which he did--so much so that she took him
for one--she herself looked, she was indeed, the ghost of that young
beauty of La Libert, of lovely Fransine Lerche. She had on a plain
nightgown only, put on in a hurry, for she had done with her body. When
she had flung away the domino of Naples, she had thrown away with it
that delicate, fragrant garland of roses and lilies of her beauty, which
had meant everything to her. Her rounded bosom and hips had shrunk;
there seemed to be nothing inside her white garment but a stick. Even
her long hair was hanging down, lifeless, like her arms. Her fresh and
gentle doll's face was dissolved and ruined by tears; the doll had been
broken; its starry eyes and rosebud mouth were now no more than black
holes in a white plane. Dead-tired, she could not sit or lie down. Her
despair kept her upright, like the lead in the little wooden figures
which children play with, like the weight tied to dead seamen's feet,
which keeps them standing up, swaying, at the bottom of the sea.

The two stared at each other. At last the old man gathered enough
strength to whisper, "Help me. I cannot move any more."

She stood stock-still. The idea occurred to him that he must
tranquillize her, for she was mad with horror. He said: "I have been
shot, as you see. But it does not matter." He did not know whether she
had heard him. He hardly knew whether he had spoken.

At last the girl understood. Her lover had shot this old man. In a short
moment, as in a great, white, flash of light, a vision was shown her:
Anders with the halter around his neck. And instantly a ghost of her old
strength came back to her, as a wreckage of your ship may be washed back
to you on a bleak shore. Let Anders have done what he liked, he and she
belonged to one another, were one. That he had hurt her to death and
that she had fled from him, and at this moment dreaded nothing in the
world as much as seeing him again--all this made no difference.

She stood and looked at the blood which was running out of the old man's
body and coloring her stone steps. As if there had been some magic in
it, it lifted and steadied her heart within her. She saw, in the red
light of it, that whatever unhappiness there had been between her and
Anders had come there through her fault. The conviction released all her
nature; for that he should be in the wrong, that had been too much for
her to bear. The red blood, the great relief of her heart, and the
coming daylight which began to fill the air, became all one to her. The
darkness would be over. After she had gone from him, Anders had proved
that he loved her. And only she and the old man knew.

Like a mnad, her hair streaming down, she began to tug and tear at one
of the big flat stones of the fence, to get it loose. When she got it
out she stood for a moment, holding it, with all her strength, in both
arms, pressed to her bosom, as if it had been her only child, which the
old sorcerer had managed to turn into stone.

The Councilor felt his blood running out quickly; if he had a message to
give her it would have to be now. Afraid that his lips had given no
sound when he had tried to speak to her, he dragged his right hand along
the ground until it touched her bare foot. The girl, who had been so
sensitive to touch, did not move; she had done with her body.

"My poor girl, my dove," he said, "listen. Everything is good. All, all!

"Sacred, Fransine," he said, "sacred puppets."

He had to wait for a minute, but he had more to say to her.

He said, very slowly: "There the moon sits up high. You and I shall
never die." He could not go on; his head dropped down upon the stone.

If Fransine did not hear him, she understood him through his touch. He
meant to tell her that the world was good and beautiful, but indeed she
knew better. Just because it suited him that the world should be lovely,
he meant to conjure it into being so. Perhaps he would hold forth on the
beauty of the landscape. He had done that to her before. Perhaps he
would tell her that it was her wedding day, and that heaven and earth
were smiling to her. But that was the world in which they meant to hang
Anders.

"You!" she cried at him. "You poet!"

She lifted the stone, in both arms, above her head, and flung it down at
him.

The blood spouted to all sides. The body, which had a second before
possessed balance, a purpose, a conception of the world around it, fell
together, and lay on the ground like a bundle of old clothes, at the
pleasure of the law of gravitation, as it had fallen.

To the Councilor himself it was as if he had been flung, in a tremendous
movement, headlong into an immeasurable abyss. It took a little time; he
was thrown down in three or four great leaps from one cataract to the
other. And meanwhile, from all sides, like an echo in the engulfing
darkness, winding and rolling in long caverns, her last word was
repeated again and again.






[End of Seven Gothic Tales, by Isak Dinesen (Karen Blixen)]
