Stories of Catulle Mendès
Published by the Ex-Classics Project, 2024
Public Domain



We first came across a reference to this author in Max Beerbohm's
Enoch Soames, where the title character's stories were described as
"like a story by Catulle Mendès in which the translator had either
skipped or cut out every alternate sentence." Mendès was a French
writer who lived 1841-1909, and wrote prolifically, producing plays,
poems, short stories and novels. The stories included fairy tales,
wry parables about love and sex, accounts of crime and the uncanny.
Very popular at the time, he is now mostly forgotten, and it turned
out to be difficult to find any of his work in English. We have
managed to track some down: here they are.



CATULLE MENDÈS (1843-1909)
From "A Library of the World's Best Literature," edited by Charles
Dudley Warner, New York, 1897, Vol. 25. Author of this introduction
not credited.

The writings of Catulle Mendès are representative of the cameo-art
in literature. His little stories and sketches are of a dainty and
polished workmanship, and of minute, complex design. The French
faculty of attaining perfection in miniature is his to a high
degree. He was born in Bordeaux in 1843, and in 1860 he began
writing for the reviews. His short tales are written with exquisite
nonchalance of style; but underneath their graceful lightness there
are not wanting signs of a deep insight into human nature, and into
life's little ironies. The pretty stories, so delicately
constructed, hint of a more serious intention in their framing than
merely to amuse. "The Mirror" might be read to nursery children and
to an audience of sages with equal pertinence. The "Man of Letters"
condenses the experience of a thousand weary writers into a few
paragraphs. In the pastoral of vagabond Philip and the little white
goat with gilded horns, there is all the fragrance of the country
and of a wandering outdoor life. "Charity Rewarded" embodies the
unique quality of Mendès in its perfection. He is able to put a
world of meaning into a phrase, as when he writes that the pretty
lasses and handsome lads did not see the beggar at the roadside
because they were occupied "with singing and with love." Sometimes
he puts a landscape into a sentence, as when Philip in the country
hears "noon rung out from a slender steeple."

Mendès is a poet as well as a writer of stories. It should be said,
however, that much that he has written of late years has not
represented his higher gifts.



THE FOOLISH WISH
From the 'Contes du Rouet'

BAREFOOT, his hair blowing in the wind, a vagabond was passing along
the way before the King's palace. Very young, he was very handsome,
with his golden curls, his great black eyes, and his mouth fresh as
a rose after rain. As if the sun had taken pleasure in looking at
him, there was more joy and light on his rags than on the satins,
velvets, and brocades of the gentlemen and noble ladies grouped in
the court of honour.

"Oh, how pretty she is," he exclaimed, suddenly stopping.

He had discovered the princess Rosalind, who was taking the fresh
air at her window; and indeed it would be impossible to see anything
on earth as pretty as she. Motionless, with arms lifted toward the
casement as toward an opening in the sky which revealed Paradise, he
would have stayed there until evening if a guard had not driven him
off with a blow of his partisan, and hard words.

He went away hanging his head. It seemed to him now that everything
was dark before him, around him,—the horizon, the road, the
blossoming trees. Now that he no longer saw Rosalind he thought the
sun was dead. He sat down under an oak on the edge of the wood, and
began to weep.

"Well, my child, why are you sorrowing thus?" asked an old woman who
came out of the wood, her back bowed under a heap of withered
branches.

"What good would it do me to tell you? You can't do anything for me, 
good woman."

"In that you are mistaken," said the old woman.

At the same time she drew herself up, throwing away her bundle. She
was no longer an old forester, but a fairy beautiful as the day,
clad in a silver robe, her hair garlanded with flowers of precious
stones. As to the withered boughs, they had taken flight, covering
themselves with green leaves; and returned to the trees from which
they had fallen, shaken with the song of birds.

"O Madame Fairy!" said the vagabond, throwing himself on his knees,
"have pity on my misfortune. Since seeing the King's daughter, who
was taking the fresh air at her window, my heart is no longer my
own. I feel that I shall never love any other woman but her."

"Good!" said the fairy: "that's no great misfortune."

"Could there be a greater one for me? I shall die if I do not become
the princess's husband."

"What hinders you? Rosalind is not betrothed."

"O Madame, look at my rags, my bare feet. I am a poor boy who begs
along the way."

"Never mind! He who loves sincerely cannot fail to be loved. That is
the happy eternal law. The King and Queen will repulse you with
contempt, the courtiers will make you a laughing-stock: but if your
love is genuine, Rosalind will be touched by it; and some evening
when you have been driven off by the servants and worried by the
dogs, she will come to you blushing and happy."

The boy shook his head. He did not believe that such a miracle was
possible.

"Take care!" continued the fairy. "Love does not like to have his
power doubted, and you might be punished in some cruel fashion for
your little faith. However, since you are suffering, I am willing to
help you. Make a wish: I will grant it."

"I wish to be the most powerful prince on the earth, so that I can
marry the princess whom I adore."

"Ah! Why don't you go without any such care, and sing a love song
under her window? But as I have promised, you shall have your
desire. But I must warn you of one thing: when you have ceased to be
what you are now, no enchanter, no fairy—not even I—can restore you
to your first state. Once a prince, you will be one for always."

"Do you think that the royal husband of Princess Rosalind will ever
want to go and beg his bread on the roads?"

"I wish you happiness," said the fairy with a sigh.

Then with a golden wand she touched his shoulder; and in a sudden
metamorphosis, the vagabond became a magnificent lord, sparkling
with silk and jewels, astride a Hungarian steed, at the head of a
train of plumed courtiers, and of warriors in golden armour who
sounded trumpets.

So great a prince was not to be ill received at court. They gave him
a most cordial welcome. For a whole week there were carousals, and
balls, and all kinds of festivities in his honour. But these
pleasures did not absorb him. Every hour of the day and night he
thought of Rosalind. When he saw her he felt his heart overflow with
delight. When she spoke he thought he heard divine music; and once
he almost swooned with joy when he gave her his hand to dance a
pavane. One thing vexed him a little: she whom he loved so much did
not seem to heed the pains he took for her. She usually remained
silent and melancholy. He persisted, nevertheless, in his plan of
asking her in marriage; and naturally Rosalind's parents took care
not to refuse so illustrious a match. Thus the former vagabond was
about to possess the most beautiful princess in the world! Such
extraordinary felicity so agitated him that he responded to the
King's consent by gestures hardly compatible with his rank; a little
more and he would have danced the pavane all alone before the whole
court. Alas! this great joy had only a short duration. Hardly had
Rosalind been informed of the paternal will, when she fell half dead
into the arms of her maids of honour; and when she came to, it was
to say, sobbing and wringing her hands, that she did not want to
marry, that she would rather kill herself than wed the prince.

More despairing than can be expressed, the unhappy lover
precipitated himself in spite of etiquette into the room where the
princess had been carried; and fell on his knees, with arms
stretched toward her.

"Cruel girl!" he cried: "take back the words which are killing me!"

She slowly opened her eyes, and answered languidly yet firmly:—

"Prince, nothing can overcome my resolve: I will never marry you."

"What! you have the barbarity to lacerate a heart which is all your
own? What crime have I committed to deserve such a punishment? Do
you doubt my love? Do you fear that some day I may cease to adore
you? Ah! if you could read within me, you would no longer have this
doubt nor these fears. My passion is so ardent that it renders me
worthy even of your incomparable beauty. And if you will not be
moved by my complaints, I will find only in death a remedy for my
woes! Restore me to hope, princess, or I will go to die at your
feet."

He did not end his discourse there. He said everything that the most
violent grief can teach a loving heart; so that Rosalind was
touched, but not as he wished.

"Unhappy prince," she said, "if my pity instead of my love can be a
consolation to you, I willingly grant it. I have as much reason to
complain as you; since I myself am enduring the torments which are
wringing you."

"What do you mean, princess?"

"Alas! if I refuse to marry you, it is because I love with a
hopeless love a young vagabond with bare feet and hair blowing in
the wind, who passed my father's palace one day and looked at me,
and who has never come back!"



THE SLEEPING BEAUTY
From the 'Contes du Rouet'

It is not alone history which is heedlessly written, but legend as
well; and it must be admitted that the most conscientious and best-
informed story-tellers—Madame d'Aulnoy, good Perrault himself—have
frequently related things in not exactly the fashion in which they
happened in fairyland. For example, Cinderella's eldest sister did
not wear to the prince's ball a red velvet dress with English
garniture, as has been hitherto supposed: she had a scarlet robe
embroidered with silver and laced with gold. Among the monarchs of
all the countries invited to the wedding of Peau d'Ane some indeed
did come in sedan chairs, others in cabs, the most distant mounted
on eagles, tigers, or elephants; but they have omitted to tell us
that the King of Mataguin entered the palace court between the wings
of a monster whose nostrils emitted flames of precious stones. And
don't think to catch me napping by demanding how and by whom I was
enlightened upon these important points. I used to know, in a
cottage on the edge of a field, a very old woman; old enough to be a
fairy, and whom I always suspected of being one. As I used to go
sometimes and keep her company when she was warming herself in the
sun before her little house, she took me into friendship; and a few
days before she died,—or returned, her expiation finished, to the
land of Vivians and Melusinas,—she made me a farewell gift of a very
old and very extraordinary spinning-wheel. For every time the wheel
is turned it begins to talk or to sing in a soft little voice, like
that of a grandmother who is cheerful and chatters. It tells many
pretty stories: some that nobody knows; others that it knows better
than anyone else; and in this last case, as it does not lack malice,
it delights to point out and to rectify the mistakes of those who
have taken upon themselves to write these accounts.

You will see that I had something to learn, and you would be very
much astonished if I were to tell you all that has been revealed to
me. Now you think you know all the details of the story of the
princess, who having pierced her hand with a spindle, fell into a
sleep so profound that no one could wake her; and who lay in a
castle in the midst of a park, on a bed embroidered with gold and
silver. I am sorry to say that you know nothing at all about it, or
else that you are much mistaken as to the end of this accident; and
you will never know if I do not make it my duty to inform you.

Yes, yes,—hummed the Wheel,—the princess had been sleeping for a
hundred years, when a young prince, impelled by love and by glory,
resolved to penetrate to her and to waken her. The great trees, the
thorns and brambles, drew aside of their own accord to let him pass.
He walked toward the castle, which he saw at the end of a broad
avenue; he entered; and what surprised him a little, none of his
company had been able to follow him, because the trees had grown
together again as soon as he had passed. At last, when he had
crossed several courts paved with marble,—where porters with pimpled
noses and red faces were sleeping beside their cups, in which were
remaining a few drops of wine, which showed plainly enough that they
had gone to sleep while drinking; when he had traversed long
vestibules and climbed staircases where the guards were snoring, his
carbine on his shoulder,—he finally found himself in a gilded room,
and saw on a bed with open curtains the most beautiful sight he had
ever beheld,—a princess who seemed about fifteen or sixteen, and
whose resplendent beauty had something luminous and divine.

I grant that things happened in this way,—it is the Wheel who is
speaking,—and up to this point the author has not been audaciously
false. But nothing is more untrue than the rest of the tale; and I
cannot admit that the awakened Beauty looked lovingly at the prince,
or that she said to him, "Is it you? you have kept me waiting a long
time."

If you want to know the truth, listen.

The princess stretched her arms, raised her head a little, half
opened her eyes, closed them as if afraid of the light, and sighed
long, while Puff her little dog, also awakened, yelped with rage.

"What has happened?" asked the fairy's goddaughter at last; "and
what do they want of me?"

The prince on his knees exclaimed:—"He who has come is he who adores
you, and who has braved the greatest dangers" (he flattered himself
a little) "to draw you from the enchantment in which you were
captive. Leave this bed where you have been sleeping for a hundred
years, give me your hand, and let us go back together into
brightness and life."

Astonished at these words, she considered him, and could not help
smiling; for he was a very well made young prince, with the most
beautiful eyes in the world, and he spoke in a very melodious voice.

"So it is true," she said, pushing back her hair: "the hour is come
when I can be delivered from my long, long sleep?"

"Yes, you can."

"Ah!" said she.

And she thought. Then she went on:—"What will happen to me if I come
out of the shadows, if I return among the living?"

"Can't you guess? Have you forgotten that you are the daughter of a
king? You will see your people hastening to welcome you, charmed,
uttering cries of pleasure, and waving gay banners. The women and
children will kiss the hem of your gown. In short, you will be the
most powerful, most honoured queen in the world."

"I shall like to be queen," she said. "What else will happen to me?"

"You will live in a palace bright as gold; and ascending the steps
to your throne, you will tread upon mosaics of diamonds. The
courtiers grouped about you will sing your praises. The most august
brows will incline under the all-powerful grace of your smile."

"To be praised and obeyed will be charming," she said. "Shall I have
other pleasures?"

"Maids of honour as skilful as the fairies. Your godmothers will
dress you in robes the colour of moon and sun. They will powder your
hair, put tiny black patches at the brink of your eye or at the
corner of your mouth. You will have a grand golden mantle trailing
after you."

"Good!" she said. "I was always a little coquettish."

"Pages as pretty as birds will offer you dishes of the most
delicious sweetmeats, will pour in your cup the sweet wines which
are so fragrant."

"That is very fine," she said. "I was always a little greedy. Will
those be all of my joys?"

"Another delight, the greatest of all, awaits you."

"Ah! what?"

"You will be loved."

"By whom?"

"By me!—Unless you think me unworthy to claim your affection."

"You are a fine-looking prince; and your costume is very becoming."

"If you deign not to repel my prayers, I will give you my whole
heart for another kingdom of which you shall be sovereign; and I
will never cease to be the grateful slave of your cruellest
caprices."

"Ah! what happiness you promise me!"

"Rise then, sweetheart, and follow me."

"Follow you? Already? Wait a little. I must reflect. There is
doubtless more than one tempting thing among all that you offer me;
but do you know if I may not have to leave better in order to obtain
it?"

"What do you mean, princess?"

"I have been sleeping for a century, it is true; but I have been
dreaming too, for a century. In my dreams I am also a queen, and of
what a divine kingdom! My palace has walls of light. I have angels
for courtiers, who celebrate me in music of infinite sweetness. I
tread on branches of stars. If you knew what beautiful dresses I
wear, the peerless fruits I have on my table, and the honey wines in 
which I moisten my lips! As for love, believe me, I don't lack that
either; for I am adored by a husband who is handsomer than all the
princes of the earth, and who has been faithful for a hundred years.
Everything considered, I think, my lord, that I should gain nothing
by coming out of my enchantment. Please let me sleep."

Thereupon she turned toward the side of the bed, drew her hair over
her eyes, and resumed her long nap; while Puff the little dog
stopped yelping, content, her nose on her paws.

The prince went away much abashed. And since then, thanks to the
protection of the good fairies, no one has come to disturb the
slumbers of the Sleeping Beauty.



THE CHARITY OF SYMPATHY
From 'The Humour of France'

ON THE Spanish high-road, where the pretty lasses and the handsome
lads arm-in-arm were returning from the corrida, a young beggar,
wrapped in his ragged cloak, asked alms, saying he had eaten nothing
for two days. Judging from his miserable appearance and his hollow
cheeks, it was plain he did not lie. However, no one took any heed
of him, occupied as they were with singing and love. Must he be left
to die of hunger, the handsome beggar, by the roadside?

But three girls of twenty years, plump, laughing, stopped and took
pity on him.

The first gave him a real.

"Thank you," he said.

The second gave him a smaller coin.

"May God reward you," he said.

The third—the poorest and the prettiest—had neither small coins nor
reals; she gave him a kiss. The starving man spoke never a word; but
a flower-seller happening to come by, he spent all the money they
had just given him on a big bunch of roses, and presented it to the
pretty girl.



THE MIRROR
From 'The Humour of France'

It was in a kingdom in which there was no mirror. All the mirrors—
those you hang on the walls, those you hold in your hand, those you
carry on the chatelaine—had been broken, reduced to the tiniest bits
by order of the Queen. If the smallest glass was found, no matter in
what house, she never failed to put the inhabitants to death with
terrible tortures. I can tell you the motives of the strange
caprice. Ugly to a degree that the worst monsters would have seemed
charming beside her, the Queen did not wish when she went about the
town to run the risk of encountering her reflection; and knowing
herself to be hideous, it was a consolation to her to think that
others at least could not see their beauty. What was the good of
having the most beautiful eyes in the world, a mouth as fresh as
roses, and of putting flowers in your hair, if you could not see
your head-dress, nor your mouth, nor your eyes? You could not even
count on your reflection in the brooks and lakes. The rivers and
ponds of the country had been hidden under deftly joined slabs of
stone; water was drawn from wells so deep that you could not see
their surface, and not in pails in which reflection would have been
possible, but in almost flat troughs. The grief was beyond anything
you can imagine, especially among the coquettes, who were not rarer
in that country than in others. And the Queen did not pity them at
all; but was well content that her subjects should be as unhappy at
not seeing themselves as she would have been furious at sight of
herself.

However, there was in a suburb of the town a young girl called
Jacinthe, who was not quite so miserable as the rest, because of a
lover she had. Someone who finds you beautiful, and never tires of
telling you so, can take the place of a mirror.

"What, truly?" she asked, "there is nothing unpleasant in the colour
of my eyes?"

"They are like corn-flowers in which a clear drop of amber has
fallen."

"My skin isn't black?"

"Know that your brow is purer than snow crystals; know that your
cheeks are like roses fair yet pink!"

"What must I think of my lips?"

"That they are like a ripe raspberry."

"And what of my teeth, if you please?"

"That grains of rice, however fine, are not as white."

"But about my ears, haven't I reason for disquiet?"

"Yes, if it disquiets you to have in a tangle of light hair, two
little shells as intricate as newly opened violets."

Thus they talked,—she charmed, he more ravished still; for he did
not say a word which was not the very truth. All that she had the
pleasure of hearing praised, he had the delight of seeing. So their
mutual tenderness grew livelier from hour to hour. The day he asked
if she would consent to have him for her husband, she blushed, but
certainly not from fear; people who seeing her smile might have
thought she was amusing herself with the thought of saying no, would
have been much mistaken. The misfortune was, that the news of the
engagement came to the ears of the wicked Queen, whose only joy was
to trouble that of others; and she hated Jacinthe more than all,
because she was the most beautiful of all.

Walking one day, a short time before the wedding, in the orchard, an
old woman approached Jacinthe asking alms; then suddenly fell back
with a shriek, like some one who has nearly trodden on a toad.

"Ah, heaven! what have I seen?"

"What's the matter, my good woman, and what have you seen? Speak."

"The ugliest thing on the face of the earth."

"Certainly that isn't me," said Jacinthe, smiling.

"Alas! yes, poor child, it is you. I have been a long time in the
world, but I never yet met anyone so hideous as you are."

"Do you mean to say that I am ugly—I?"

"A hundred times more than it is possible to express!"

"What! my eyes?"

"They are gray as dust; but that would be nothing if you did not
squint in the most disagreeable way."

"My skin?"

"One would say that you had rubbed your forehead and cheeks with
coal-dust."

"My mouth?"

"It is pale like an old autumnal flower."

My teeth?"

"If the beauty of teeth was to be large and yellow, I should not
know any more beautiful than yours."

"Ah! At least my ears—"

"They are so big, so red, and so hairy, one cannot look at them
without horror. I am not at all pretty myself, and yet I think I
should die of shame if I had the like."

Thereupon the old woman, who must have been some wicked fairy, a
friend of the wicked Queen, fled, cruelly laughing; while Jacinthe,
all in tears, sank down on a bench under the apple-trees.

Nothing could divert her from her affliction. "I am ugly! I am
ugly!" she repeated unceasingly. In vain her lover assured her of
the contrary with many oaths.

"Leave me! you are lying out of pity. I understand everything now.
It is not love but pity that you feel for me. The beggar-woman had
no interest in deceiving me; why should she do so? It is only too
true: I am hideous. I cannot conceive how you even endure the sight
of me."

In order to undeceive her, it occurred to him to make many people
visit her: every man declared that Jacinthe was exactly made for the
pleasure of eyes; several women said as much in a fashion a little
less positive. The poor child persisted in the conviction that she
was an object of horror.

"You are planning together to impose upon me!" and as the lover
pressed her, in spite of all, to fix the day for the wedding, "I
your wife!" she cried, "never! I love you too tenderly to make you a
present of such a frightful thing as I am." You can guess the
despair of this young man, so sincerely enamoured. He threw himself
on his knees, he begged, he supplicated. She always answered the
same thing, that she was too ugly to marry. What was he to do? The
only means of contradicting the old woman, of proving the truth to
Jacinthe, would have been to put a mirror before her eyes. But there
was not a mirror in the whole kingdom; and the terror inspired by
the Queen was so great that no artisan would have consented to make
one.

"Well, I shall go to court," said the lover at last. "However
barbarous our mistress is, she cannot fail to be moved by my tears
and Jacinthe's beauty. She will retract, if only for a few hours,
the cruel command from which all the harm comes." It was not without
difficulty that the young girl allowed herself to be conducted to
the palace. She did not want to show herself, being so ugly; and
then, what would be the use of a mirror except to convince her still
more of her irremediable misfortune? However, she finally consented,
seeing that her lover was weeping.

Well, what is it?" said the wicked Queen. "Who are these people, and
what do they want of me?"

"Your Majesty, you see before you the most wretched lover on the
face of the earth."

"That's a fine reason for disturbing me."

"Do not be pitiless."

But what have I to do with your love troubles?"

"If you would allow a mirror—"

The Queen rose, shaking with anger. "You dare to talk of a mirror!"
she said, gnashing her teeth.

"Do not be angry, your Majesty. I beseech you, pardon me and deign
to hear me. The young girl you see before you labours under the most
unaccountable error: she imagines that she is ugly—"

"Well," said the Queen with a fierce laugh, "she is right! I never
saw, I think, a more frightful object."

At those words Jacinthe thought she should die of grief. Doubt was
no longer possible, since to the Queen's eyes as well as to those of
the beggar she was ugly. Slowly she lowered her eyelids, and fell
fainting on the steps of the throne, looking like a dead woman. But
when her lover heard the cruel words, he was by no means resigned;
he shouted loudly that either the Queen was mad, or that she had
some reason for so gross a lie. He had not time to say a word more;
the guards seized him and held him fast. At a sign from the Queen
someone advanced, who was the executioner. He was always near the
throne, because he might be wanted at any moment.

"Do your duty," said the Queen, pointing to the man who had insulted
her.

The executioner lifted a big sword, while Jacinthe, not knowing
where she was, beating the air with her hands, languidly opened one
eye, and then two very different cries were heard. One was a shout
of joy, for in the bright naked steel Jacinthe saw herself, so
deliciously pretty! and the other was a cry of pain, a rattle,
because the ugly and wicked Queen gave up the ghost in shame and
anger at having also seen herself in the unthought-of mirror.



THE MAN OF LETTERS
From 'The Humour of France.'

Last evening, a poet, as yet unknown, was correcting the last sheets
of his first book. A famous man of letters, who happened to be
there, quickly caught hold of the young man's hand, and said in a
rough voice, "Don't send the press proofs! Don't publish those
poems!"

"You consider them bad?"

"I haven't read them, and I don't want to read them. They are
possibly excellent. But beware of publishing them."

"Why?"

"Because, the book once out, you would henceforth be irremediably an
author, an artist—that is to say, a monster!"

"A monster?"

"Yes."

"Are you a monster, dear master?"

"Certainly! and one of the worst kind; for I have been writing
poems, novels, and plays longer than many others."

The young man opened his eyes wide. The other, walking up and down
the room, violently gesticulating, continued:—"True, we are honest,
upright, and loyal! Twenty or thirty years ago it was the fashion
for literary men to borrow a hundred sous and forget to return them;
to leave their lodgings without giving the landlord notice; and
never to pay, even in a dream, their bootmaker or their tailor. To
owe was a sort of duty. Follies of one's youth! The Bohemians have
disappeared; literature has become respectable. We have cut our hair
and put our affairs in order. We no longer wear red waistcoats; and
our concierge bows to us because we give him tips, just as politely
as he does to the banker on the ground floor or the lawyer on the
second. Good citizens, good husbands, good fathers, we prepare
ourselves epitaphs full of honour. I fought in the last war side by
side with Henri Regnault; I have a wife to whom I have never given
the slightest cause for sorrow; and I myself teach my three children
geography and history, and bring them up to have a horror of
literature. Better still: it happened to me—a remarkable turning of
the tables—to lend six thousand francs to one of my uncles, an
ironmonger at Angoulême, who had foolishly got into difficulties,
and not without reading him a severe lecture. In a word, we are
orderly, correct persons. But I say we are monsters. For isn't it
indeed a monstrous thing, being a man, not to be—not to be able to
be—a man like other men? To be unable to love or to hate, to rejoice
or to suffer, as others love or hate, rejoice or suffer? And we
cannot,—no, no, never,—not under any circumstances! Obliged to
consider or observe, obliged to study, analyse, in ourselves and
outside ourselves, all feelings, all passions; to be ever on the
watch for the result, to follow its development and fall, to consign
to our memory the attitudes they bring forth, the language they
inspire,—we have definitely killed in ourselves the faculty of real
emotion, the power of being happy or unhappy with simplicity. We
have lost all the holy unctuousness of the soul! It has become
impossible for us, when we experience, to confine ourselves to
experiencing. We verify, we appraise our hopes, our agonies, our
anguish of heart, our joys; we take note of the jealous torments
that devour us when she whom we expect does not come to the tryst;
our abominable critical sense judges kisses and caresses, compares
them, approves of them or not, makes reservations; we discover
faults of taste in our transports of joy or grief; we mingle grammar
with love, and at the supreme moment of passion, when we say to our
terrified mistress, 'Oh, I want you to love me till death!' are
victims of the relative pronoun, of the particle. Literature!
Literature! You have become our heart, our senses, our flesh, our
voice. It is not a life that we live—it is a poem, or a novel, or a
play. Ah! I would give up all the fame that thirty years of work
have brought me, in order to weep for one single moment without
perceiving that I am weeping!"



THE LOST WORDS

Once upon a time a very cruel fairy, pretty as the flowers, but
wicked as the serpents who hide in the grass ready to spring upon
you, resolved to avenge herself upon all the people of a great
country. Where was this country? On the mountain or in the plain, at
the shore of the river or by the sea? This the story does not tell.
Perhaps it was near the kingdom where the dressmakers were very
skilful in adorning princesses’ robes with moons and with stars. And
what was the offence under which the fairy smarted? On this point
also the story is silent. Perhaps they had omitted to offer up
prayers to her at the baptism of the king’s daughter. Be this as it
may, it is certain that the fairy was in a great rage.

At first she asked herself whether she should devastate the country
by sending out the thousands of spirits that served her to set fire
to all the palaces and all the cottages; or whether she should cause
all the lilacs and all the roses to fade; or whether she should turn
all the young girls into ugly old women. She could have let loose
all the four winds in the streets and laid low all the houses and
trees. At her command fire-spitting mountains would have buried the
entire land under a mass of burning lava, and the sun would have
turned from his path so as not to shine upon the ac-cursed city. But
she did still worse. Like a thief leisurely choosing the most
precious jewels in a case, she removed from the memory of men and
woman the three divine words: "I love you."

And having wrought this affliction, she removed herself with a smile
that would have been more hideous than the church of the devil had
she not had the most beautiful rosy lips in all creation.

At first the men and women only half perceived the wrong that had
been done them. They felt they lacked something, but did not know
what. The sweethearts who met in the eglantine lanes, the married
couples who talked confidingly to each other behind closed windows
and drawn curtains, suddenly interrupted themselves and looked at
each other or embraced. They felt, indeed, the desire to utter a
certain customary phrase, but they had no idea even of what that
phrase was. They were astonished, uneasy, but they asked no
question, for they knew not what question to ask, so complete was
their forgetfulness of the precious word. As yet, however, their
suffering was not very great. They had so many other words they
could whisper to each other, so many forms of endearment.

Alas! It was not long before they were seized with a profound
melancholy. In vain did they adore each other, in vain did they call
each other by the tenderest names and speak the sweetest language.
It was not enough to declare that all the bliss lay in their kisses;
to swear that they were ready to die, he for her and she for him; to
call each other: "My soul; My flame! My dream!" They instinctively
felt the need of saying and hearing another word, more exquisite
than all other words; and with the bitter memory of the ecstasy
contained in this word came the anguish of never again being able to
utter or to hear it.

Quarrels followed in the wake of this distress. Judging his
happiness incomplete on account of the avowal that was henceforth
denied to the most ardent lips, the lover demanded from her and she
from him the very thing that neither the one nor the other could
give, without either knowing what that thing was, nor being able to
name it. They accused each other of coldness, of perfidy, not
believing in the tenderness which was not expressed as they desired
it should be.

Thus the sweethearts soon ceased to have their rendezvous in the
lanes where the eglantines grew, and even after the windows were
closed the conjugal chambers echoed only with dry conversations from
easy-chairs that were never drawn close to each other. Can there be
joy without love? If the country which had incurred the hatred of
the fairy had been ruined by war, or devastated by pestilence, it
could not have been as desolate, as mournful, as forlorn as it had
become on account of the three forgotten words.

There lived in this country a poet whose plight was even more
pitiful than the plight of all the rest. It was not that having a
beautiful sweetheart he was in despair at not being able to say and
to hear the stolen word. He had no sweetheart He was too much in
love with the muse. It was because he was unable to finish a poem he
had begun the day before the wicked fairy had accomplished her
vengeance. And why? Because it just happened that the poem was to
wind up with "I love you!" and it was impossible to end it in any
other way.

The poet struck his brow, took his head between his hands, and asked
himself: "Have I gone mad?" He was certain he had found the words
that were to precede the last point of exclamation before he had
commenced to write the stanza. The proof that he had found them was
that the rhyme with which it was to go was already written. There it
was—it waited for them, nay, called aloud for them; it wanted no
others, waiting for them like lips waiting for sister lips to kiss
them. And this indispensable, fatal phrase he had forgotten; he
could not even recall that he had ever known it. Surely there was
some mystery in this, the poet mused increasingly and with bitter
melancholy—oh, the pang of interrupted poems!—as he sat at the edge
of the forest near the limpid fountains where the fairies are wont
to dance of an evening by starlight.

Now as he sat one morning under the branches of a tree, the wicked,
thieving fairy saw him and loved him. One is not a fairy for
nothing; a fairy does not stand on ceremony. Swifter than a
butterfly kisses a rose she put her lips on his lips, and the poet,
greatly preoccupied though he was with his ode, could not help but
feel the heavenliness of her caress. Blue and rose diamond grottos
opened up in the depths of the earth, luminous as the stars. Thither
the poet and the fairy were drawn in a chariot of gold by winged
steeds who left the earth in their flight. And for a long, long time
they loved each other, forgetful of all but their kisses and smiles.
If they ceased for a moment to have their mouths united and to look
into each other’s eyes, it was but to take pleasure in more amiable
diversions. Gnomes dressed in violet satin, elves attired in a misty
haze, performed dances before them that fell in rhythm with the
music of unseen orchestras, while flitting hands that had no arms
brought them ruby baskets of snow-white fruit, perfumed like a white
rose and like a virgin bosom. Or, to please the fairy more, the poet
recited, while striking the chords of a theorbo, the most beautiful
verses his fancy could conceive.

Fairy that she was, she had never known joy comparable to this of
being sung to by a beautiful young man who invented new songs every
day. And when he grew silent, and she felt the breath of his mouth
near her hair, felt it passing through her hair, she melted away in
tenderness.

Their happiness seemed without end. Days passed by, many, many days,
but nothing occurred to disturb their joy. And yet she had moments
of gloom, when she would sit musing, with her cheek on her hand and
her hair falling in streams down to her hips.

He cried: "O queen! What is it that makes you sad; what more can you
desire, seeing that we are so happy in the midst of all our
pleasures, you who are all powerful, you who are so beautiful?"

At first she made no answer, but when he insisted, she sighed and
said: "Alas! One always ends by suffering the evil that one has
inflicted on others. Alas! I am sad because you have never told me:
"I love you."

He did not pronounce the words, but uttered a cry of joy at having
found again the end of his poem. In vain the fairy attempted to
retain him in the blue and rose diamond grottos, in the gardens of
lilies that were as luminous as the stars. He returned to earth,
completed, wrote and published his ode, in which the men and women
of the afflicted country found again the divine words they had lost.

Now there were rendezvous again in the lanes, and warm, amorous
conversations at the conjugal windows.

It is because of poetry that kisses are sweet, and lovers say
nothing that the poets have not sung.



THE CRIME OF OLD BLAS.
From "Choice Readings", edited by Charles W. Cole, 1892



PART I.—OLD BLAS AND YOUNG BLAS.

It is a pleasant thing to begin a hard day's work by sitting down in
the low-ceilinged dining-room of the farm house, amid the copper
vessels glistening in the opening daylight, before the well scrubbed
wooden table and, leaning drowsily on the elbow, to eat long slices
of black bread, moistened in milk still foaming round the edge of
the bowl.

Cadije, twenty-nine years old, bare-armed, her rosy face made still
more glowing by her red cotton, Basque headdress, goes to the foot
of the staircase and cries, Heavens! are they deaf, those people up
there? Halloo, father, husband, boy! Are you not ashamed to be
sleeping still, after I am up?"

It is a fine farm and pleasing to the eye. There are only twenty
acres; but they are acres of the very richest soil well enclosed by
a thick hedge. The long rows of apple trees are carefully placed at
regular intervals; and under them the denizens of the barnyard,
cackling on the turf, hissing around the pond, crowing on the fence-
tops, hens and chickens, turkeys and geese, are a collection
sufficient to satisfy any farmer's wife. And Cadije does feel very
happy amid her fruit trees and her fowls. She goes and comes from
morning till evening, doing the work of two; familiar with people
generally, but not always good tempered, because you must scold
sometimes to make both animals and men mind you.

There are in our Basque country, among the foot-hills of the
Pyrenees, generally near some mountain stream that roars and
thunders along, many of these fertile farms, where the herbage
thrives, and the branches are heavy with fruit. The hills guard them
from the winds; the torrent widens into a placid river or flows into
a lake. In short, a miniature Normandy, with its apple trees and
grassy fields, can be found in these valleys.

Presently the rough staircase of white wood creaks heavily under the
tread of descending feet. Old Blas appears, bolding little Blas by
the hand. The one was the father, the other the son, of Cadije.

They leaned on each other and were gradually becoming of the same
height; little Blas increasing in stature as old Blas bent more and
more. The latter was seventy-one years old, the former six.

A large face, very sunburned, with many wrinkles, short white hair
and beard, little yellowish eyes always winking as if fatigued by
seeing too many days—such was the old man. He was rather heavy, had
short limbs, and wore the short vest of the Basque of the plain and
the knitted cap with its large red tassel falling on his shoulder.
He had lived—he now only existed. He had been a great gallant in his
time, he had not had his equal in attacking the bull or throwing the
ball; but he feels now that his time is past. He finds a heaviness,
a trembling in his limbs formerly so quick and ready; and his head,
which he carries a little bent towards the left, shakes
involuntarily. His mind even is not as bright and clear as it used
to be. It sometimes happens that he does not recall a thing that he
had said the evening before. And sometimes, when they come back to
the country, he does not recognize the comrades with whom he had
emptied more than one bottle before the inn door in the old days.
But what of all this? He knows enough yet, after his glass of cider,
to tell a good story; he can still walk his four leagues without a
cane. He has no use for any support but the shoulder of his
grandson. It sustains old Blas to hold up the boy.

The latter was a child of the mountains, robust and healthy.
Nourished by a strong mother, by plain living, by the pure air that
vivified his lungs, he had grown and hardened. A powerful and
beautiful manhood was visible in his infancy. From his babyhood he
had always been pretty, with that air of astonishment, even of
wildness, which shows the mind that is always questioning and is
beginning to comprehend. Restless and vivacious, he was still 
without care or anxiety. It was the highest pleasure of old Blas'
life to kiss that blooming face, already a little tanned, fringed by
rings of black hair, beneath which the clear blue eyes sparkled like
the lakes of the mountains.

Behind these came Cadije's husband, the child's father, Antonin
Perdigut. He was thirty years old and had that serious look which
the man of the mountain valleys usually has. He walked with a
measured step, without haste, but without hesitation—the step of a
labourer.

Cadije kissed the three and they seated themselves around the table
and ate in silence. Breakfast is not the hour for chatting and
laughing. It is then necessary to keep your force and activity for
the day's work, and not to dissipate it in badinage. But at evening,
when the task is done, then you can amuse yourself; when you have
paid your debt, you are permitted to be a prodigal.

Besides, they had slept late at the farm that morning, and it was
the sowing season. Antonin Perdigut had to hasten to the field with
his bag of grain on his shoulder. As to the grandfather, he was
employed on a railroad which passed nearby; an easy task, not at all
fatiguing, which a child could have done, but which had been
confided to the old man.

So, without speaking, they quietly softened the long pieces of rye
bread in the blue-tinted whiteness of the milk. From out of doors
the rosy greyness of the morning, entering by the lowered windows,
lifted little by little the long shadows from the wall. The
darkness, already pierced by light, became less and less sombre, as
if heavy curtains drawn upwards were vanishing one after another.
The awakening of the farm resounded in the chattering of birds, the
whispering of the leaves, the mooing from the stable, in all the
mingled noises of farm animals, and in the freshly blowing, cool
wind.

Old Blas, having emptied his bowl, spoke with a timid air: "It would
be very nice to let the little one come with me to the bridge to
amuse him—to amuse me, too. To see one train go by after another,
all day long, is not very gay. I even get tired, after a while, of
watching the flowing stream. Young people make the old young again.
They put gaiety in the aged spirits and light in the old eyes. The
other day it rained the whole time, but Blas was with me, and on
coming home I said, 'What beautiful weather we have had to-day!'
Besides, it is very good for the child to breathe the pure air of
the riverside, and to play with the flowers by the side of my little
hut."

"Do you mean," said Cadije, rising, that the air at the farm is not
good, or that there are no flowers in the garden? The child stays at
home with me and the animals. If he wants to amuse himself, he can
drive the geese along the road outside the hedge. He is small, it is
true, but that has nothing to do with it; he must begin to make
himself useful. You may be sure I am not going to let him go with
you. The number of passing trains is frightful, and I don't like to
have him play by the edge of the stream; the bank is slippery, and
the stones keep rolling under your feet."

The boy had not made any objection at first, because he was still
drinking his milk, but now he began to cry with a heartbroken air
and to rub his eyes with his fists.

"Good, good," said Cadije, "what I have said is said. You want to go
with your grandfather, because he tells you stories, because he lets
you run wherever you want to, because he spoils you; but I don't
intend to have you spoiled. Didn't you come back in a beautiful
state the other day? Wet with perspiration, trousers in tatters,
thistles in your hair; it took me more than an hour to mend your
blouse. If you don't know how to take care of a child, you ought not
to ask to take him with you."

But little Blas kept on crying, and even old Blas had some moisture
in his little, yellow eyes that was going to form a tear.

Antonin Perdigut then interposed, and having remarked that one time
doesn't make a custom, said that she might, as an extraordinary
favor, let the little one go with the grandfather to-day.

Cadije said "No!" a hundred times; scolded and talked and ended by
saying, "At least, be as careful as you can, both of you." And when
they had promised not to run on the way, not to approach too near
the river, and especially, to be very careful when the trains
passed, then the mother added,

"Well, yes, I give my consent, but it is for the last time!"

They started out after many cautions and many kisses, with a slow
step in order to prove how really careful they were going to be;
they crossed the yard, and going through the wooden gate, went
slowly along the hedge which was so low just there that they could
still be seen. But when they had passed the low hedge and nobody in
the house could see them,—how things changed then!

Young Blas pulled his hand loose, ran ahead, came back, jumped
ditches, climbed trees, lost his hat in the branches, tore his
trousers on the bark, and all the growing light of morning, and the
cool breeze whispering among the branches, played around and about
him; while the grandfather, old child that he was, who wanted to
play too, followed, running and murmuring in his white beard, "All
right; the mother can't see us now; wake up, my boy!"

The boy ran, the old man laughed; and finally they arrived at the
river's bank, before the bridge. The lumber rafts, and the sail-
boats, with their tall masts, float down the narrow and deep river,
which here flows between a sandy beach and a mountain of black
granite. At the foot of the mountain yawns the gloomy tunnel. There
the trains disappear, after having crossed the little bridge of wood
and iron, the thread that connects the bank of sand with the bank of
rock.

The spot, solitary and bare as it is, appears more mournful on
account of the high black mountain. But the sun, now fully risen,
lightens and gilds the plains below where the farms here and there
make isles of verdure.

At present, the drawbridge is raised. Quickly old Blas goes to see
that the dew of the night has not rusted the chains; that the crank
moves easily when pressed. It is his duty to raise the bridge when
the rafts and boats go by, and to lower it again for the passage of
trains, each: time that the signal is given to him by the noise of
the electric bell or, afterwards, by the whistle of the locomotive.

But little Blas don't trouble himself about the bridge and the crank
and trains and boats; his duty to himself is to roll on the grass
before the little wooden hut, which his grandfather has built by the
side of the water as a shelter from the autumn rains. It is a pretty
little house, which a young vine clothes in climbing verdure, and
where the swallows come to drink the drops of dew from the gently-
drooping cups of the morning-glory.

Then there is a garden, with paths bordered with wood, so narrow
that it seems as if the old man wished that only the child should
stroll there. And, besides, the plants are very small ones; pinks
and tulips and pansies, upon which the little Blas is able to look
down proudly from his own lofty height. In the middle of the garden
a sunflower raises itself pompously, like a very drum-major of
flowers.

The machinery of the bridge put in order, the grandfather comes
noiselessly, on tiptoe, and suddenly takes in his two great hands
the head of the child, who turns quickly, at first frightened, then
laughing.

"Ah! I have you! I have you! But I will let you go again. I catch
birds and hold them a minute in my hand, so that they may have more
pleasure when I let them fly away. You know, Blas, the stones are
all ready to skip on the water; the flowers are only there in order
to be gathered, and I don't even forbid your running over the beds.
That is the way I bring up my children. These little angels should
be little imps once in a while." Then he added, "Down in that clump
of bushes I found a bird's nest; we will go and look for it pretty
soon, when the train has passed."

But the little Blas had another plan. He gathered daisies and threw
them, one by one, at the old man's head; the petals caught in the
white hair, and soon old Blas had a beard of flowers. This was
charming. He seated himself before the cabin, took the child on his
knees and, in reprisal, tickled him with the daisy petals. All this
occurred amid laughter, little cries of pure happiness, and
scattered flowers, under the wheeling flight of swallows, and in the
beautiful sunlight which grew clearer and more golden above their
heads.

Then the boy, becoming serious, said suddenly, I have played enough;
now, tell me a story."

It was for that that old Blas waited. The child never failed to
reward him with a kiss after a fine story all full of giants and
fairies, and the pleasure of a good kiss is well worth the trouble
of telling a story. But long ago the grandfather had told all his
stories; "Hop o' My Thumb," "Blue Beard" and "Goldilocks." He had
even bought from a peddler a big book which the man told him was
full of very pretty stories. He found that the book was "An Essay on
the Establishment of French Banks on the Mississippi." Little Blas
had asked for something more amusing.

Since then his memory was empty and his library useless. In order to
earn his kiss the grandfather was obliged to become a poet. He lay
awake nights, inventing wonderful adventures of princesses and
fairies, which he repeated the next morning in the little hut.

"All right," he said, "a story; a story so beautiful that the little
city boys have never heard its equal."

"What is it called?"

"It is the Story of the Little Boy who had no Ears, and of the Black
Dog who smoked his Pipe.'"

"Oh!" said the child.

"Wait, and you will learn all about it," said the grandfather.

And little Blas, seated on the doorstep, raised his pretty sun-
browned face with its laughing lovelocks, while old Blas commenced
slowly and deliberately; a little disturbed, too, because the story
was very complicated, and he was not quite sure that he had found
the right ending.



PART II.—THE STORY OF THE LITTLE BOY WHO HAD NO EARS, AND OF THE
BLACK DOG WHO SMOKED HIS PIPE.

"ONCE upon a time—"

"Where?"

"In a country. Once upon a time, there was a man and his wife,
peasants, as we are, but much more unfortunate—a man and his wife to
whom nothing ever happened, except that very frequently they had no
bread for supper before going to sleep."

"But soup?"

"Not even the soup dish, for the cat had broken it. They were really
very poor, and what made them sadder still was that their little boy
was a child who had no ears."

"Then he could not hear?"

"Oh yes!"

"How?"

"By the nose, perhaps, or by the eyes. The story does not explain
that."

Little Blas reflected a moment and then said: "It is not very
amusing, this story."

"But this is only the beginning. You will see very soon. Now the boy
who had no ears and who yet heard very well, heard his father tell
his mother one day, that, in a mountain in that country, there was a
cave where a very rich enchanter had concealed much gold and silver,
and that, by permission of the enchanter, the treasure would belong
to the one who had the courage to go to seek it amid a thousand
dangers."

"An enchanter?"

"Like in the 'Blue Princess.'"

"Ah, yes"

"Guignonet, for that was the boy's name, thought 'I should like to
go to that mountain to see the enchanter's gold and silver, because
we should then be rich, and father and mother would not have to work
as they do, and we should not have to go to bed without any supper.'
He was, as you see, of a good disposition, this little boy without
ears; and he resolved to start for the mountain all alone, without
saying a word to anybody, because he wished to surprise his parents
when he came back with the treasure. What made him hesitate a little
was that he usually did not have much luck in what he undertook.
When he did something very good, things turned out so that it seemed
that he had done something very bad, and he was punished for his
good intentions. There are many people like him in the world who
never meet with any success, and who are always wrongfully accused.

"Thus, one day, seeing a beggar on the road, although he was very
poor himself, Guignonet gave him a sou that he had received as a
present. What do you think the beggar said to him? Thanks? Not at
all. He suddenly threw the sou in his face and cried out, shaking
his fist, it is very wicked in you to try to deceive a poor beggar—
the good God will punish you well.'"

"Why did the beggar say that?"

"The sou was bad; but that was not Guignonet's fault, as it had been
given to him.

"Another time, during the night, he heard a hen cackle in the
stable; it cackled and cackled. He felt so, sorry for it that he
jumped out of bed and, went to the aid of the poor fowl. He found it
tied in a round basket, and it cackled as if asking somebody to help
it. Guignonet caressed it, but it still cackled. Then he said to
himself, it must be that there is something in the basket that hurts
it.' He wanted to help it, so he opened the basket. The hen flew out
with wide-stretched wings, cackling louder than ever, and what do
you think fell out of the basket? Two dozen eggs. And all the eggs
were broken. You can imagine whether Guignonet was scolded by his
parents who had put the eggs in the basket for the hen to hatch.
Still the little earless boy wanted to help the hen.

"And wait; in regard to his ears; I must tell you how he lost them;
because he was not born so. He was one time in the woods, when he
was about eight years old, and he came, upon a big black dog, seated
on his haunches, who quietly smoked his pipe."

"Who smoked his pipe?"

"Yes, In the country where Guignonet, lived, you met, very
frequently, dogs who smoked while walking in the streets and on the
roads. In our country, they are much more rare. The dog that
Guignonet met smoked his pipe quietly, or rather, he did not smoke,
but that was not his fault, because the pipe had gone out.

"Guignonet approached him and said, 'Mr. Dog, if you wish, I will go
to the village to get you some matches.' Was not that amiable and
polite? Well, the dog raised himself on his paws, barked furiously,
threw himself upon Guignonet and in two bites took off both his
ears. Then turning and running quickly away, he disappeared in the
forest."

"With Guignonet's ears?"

"With both ears."

"Say, grandfather, in the story, does he not get them back again
later?"

"I can't tell you that yet. Who listens will know: You can
understand that all these adventures had rendered Guignonet a little
timid, but, nevertheless, the desire of doing good was stronger than
the fear of being ill-treated, and so one night, when everybody in
the house was asleep, he got up, took his shoes in his hand, so as
to make no noise, went out, and, although it was very dark on the
road, started without any fear for the mountain.

"Now, that mountain was all black like the one before us, and there
was no road up it; and, besides, Guignonet did not know in what
place he would find the cave, so that he was very much puzzled, and
he was on the point of returning home when a great raven came flying
around his head.

"As it flew, the raven croaked, but in a manner that had nothing
frightful or terrible in it. You would have said on the contrary,
that the great black bird had good intentions and wished to give
good advice to the little earless boy.

"Guignonet looked at it, and it seemed to him that he had already
seen that large, pointed head, which held in its beak a pine twig.
No, he had never seen it, but the raven with the pine twig in its
beak resembled, a little, the black dog who smoked his pipe.

"On account of this resemblance the child wished to flee, fearing
for his eyes or his nose, since his ears were gone; but the raven
flying over him said, 'Guignonet, don't be discouraged. The beggar
to whom you gave the sou called you names. You were scolded for
helping the cackling hen. The black dog has stolen your ears,
because you offered to get him matches to light his pipe. Many other
things have happened in which you had not the least luck, and it is
on that account that you are called Guignonet, or Little Luckless.
But sooner or later the good that you do will bring its reward, as
the seed brings the harvest, as the acorn becomes the oak. Be always
a good little boy, ready to sacrifice yourself for others, and do
not trouble yourself about anything else. Now seat yourself between
my wings, and I will carry you to the side of the cave where the
enchanter has concealed his treasure.'

"After speaking thus, the raven perched on the ground with wings
extended. It was such a big bird that Guignonet, who was very little
and very thin because he did not have much to eat, easily found room
between the great wings.

"The raven flew off, but Guignonet was not afraid. He thought of the
pleasure of his parents when he brought them the treasure of the
mountain. After it had flown higher than the highest peak, the raven
gradually descended into a clump of bushes in a kind of ravine which
was very dark and very terrible, because you could see, shining here
and there, the frightful eyes of owls.

"Guignonet jumped down, saying: 'Thanks, Mr. Raven, I pray you now
to show me the way that leads to the cave.' But the bird was no
longer a bird. It had changed very quickly into an old black dwarf,
who looked with an evil smile and who had a pipe in his mouth.
Guignonet thought again of the wicked dog who had stolen his ears.
But he was not afraid, and he said: 'Mr. Dwarf, will you please show
me the road which leads to the cave of the enchanter?' Then it was
terrible. The dwarf with a great stick, the owls with their beaks,
began to beat, pinch and maltreat in every way the little earless
boy. 'Go, you thief! You have no right to take money that does not
belong to you! What would you do with the treasure of the mountains?
You would buy marbles to play in the street, instead of going to
school.' Guignonet answered: 'I can take the money, because it
belongs to nobody, since the enchanter has left it for the most
courageous of men. And I assure you, it is not to buy marbles that I
want it; but so that my parents may not have to go to bed hungry,
and that I may give alms to the beggars.' But they were useless
words.

"The wicked birds and the cruel dwarf did not cease to abuse the
little boy, who, finally fleeing, all bruised from the strokes of
the stick, all bleeding from the bites of the beaks, slipped and
slid down over the stony side of the ravine to a great hole that
opened there.

"Anybody else would have given up the enterprise on account of the
injustice that was shown him. Guignonet did not lose courage for so
little. He thought of nothing but of making his parents happy.

"It was very dark in the hole on which he had chanced, and in the
blackness there was some kind of a beast, more black still, that
looked like a wolf. It had between its teeth a bone that it had
gnawed all white, so that you might well have taken it for a great
pipe. The wolf said, Get out of my house, little wretch; I am the
guardian of the treasure which is there under the stone, and I will
not allow you to touch it.' But Guignonet threw himself boldly upon
the wolf, and his desire to be useful lent him so much strength that
he threw the beast over backwards, raised the stone that concealed
the treasure, and there in place of the money and gold he had
expected, he saw a little open casket in which was a great number of
jewels, so beautiful that one alone would have been enough to make
the fortune of many kings.

"He seized the heavy box, while the wolf snapped at his heels and
bit his legs: but Guignonet paid no attention to the sharp teeth
that bit him. He thought of the happiness of his mother when she
would have beautiful dresses like those of the city ladies, and when
she would be able every day to give soup to the passing beggars.
That was the kind of boy he was. It was all right for him to suffer,
provided others were happy. Then, pursued by the wolf that clung
close to his heels, he sought among the brambles to find the road
that led to the foot of the mountain 195 and to his home. He found a
little stony path which descended very rapidly.

"But in the shadows all around him was a crowd of creatures, men and
beasts, which ran backwards and forwards, crying with all their
might, 'See the little boy who has committed a great crime;' and the
birds following him, flying among the branches, sang, 'Catch the
robber!''

"Guignonet was very sad because he was afraid that they would kill
him, but more sad to see that everybody thought so badly of him.
When he reached the plain, he believed that he was out of danger and
that nobody could any longer call him wicked names. He already saw
himself waking his father and mother in the little chamber. 'Behold
the treasure concealed by the enchanter of the mountain cave, and
which was reserved for the bravest of men! I have found it and I
have brought it to you. Rejoice! Eat, drink, and share with all the
world the fortune which I have gained at the peril of my life!'

"But things did not stop here as the little earless boy hoped. He
saw suddenly by his side and in front of him three monstrous
policemen, and as the moon had risen, he could see clearly the
shining steel of their sabres and their white belts. But what was
very extraordinary in these three policemen was that they all had,
over their faces, great dog's muzzles, and, nevertheless, they
quietly smoked their pipes."

Old Blas had reached this point in his story when the electric bell
was heard. The first train would soon pass; it was time to lower the
bridge. He was just getting up, but little Bias, stopped him,
saying, "Then, grandfather, those policemen were dogs?"

"Real dogs," answered old Blas. And as he knew the train would not
arrive for a quarter of an hour yet, and a couple of minutes were
all that were necessary to lower the bridge, by means of the crank,
he continued—

"At least they looked like real dogs, but, you know, in stories,
people are not always what they seem.

"When the policemen saw Guignonet they ran to him, took his casket
away from him and said, ' t is you, then, who robbed the travellers
in the woods?'

"The earless boy answered, 'You are mistaken. I come from the
mountain. I am carrying to my parents the treasure which belongs to
the bravest.'

"They would not listen to a word. They put handcuffs on him and led
him to the city prison. There he was placed in a very dark dungeon
where the rats ran all over him. All the city was aroused. From his
cell he heard the people outside say, 'Oh! Oh! He is arrested; that
little thief! Who would have thought that Guignonet, with his honest
face, was such a rascal?'

"In loneliness, he wept, knowing well that he had not wished to do
wrong, and feeling that he had not really done wrong."

Here old Bias jumped up quickly. Two whistles were heard, and one
could already see, below, the black rolling smoke. He ran toward the
bridge, while the child began to play with the stones in the path.
He began to turn the crank. He heard behind him, but still far off,
the whistle, roar and thunder of the heavy locomotive and its long
train of cars.

It was an express train. If old Blas had turned, he could have seen
the travelers, whose heads were thrust out the windows, looking at
the high mountain under which they were going.

The bridge descended slowly, had already descended a little more
than a third of its way. Old Blas did not hurry; he had plenty of
time. All was well. Suddenly there came a cry. He knew that voice;
it was the voice of little Bias. Playing on the river's edge, on the
sand and stones, the child had slipped, rolled down, fallen into the
water. Alas, he saw his grandchild, his love, his darling, disappear
in the current.

Old Bias was seventy-one, but he was strong, a splendid swimmer too.
He dropped the crank and leaped toward the water. He would save his
child, whose head appeared there, farther down.

But the train was now very near—if he did not hasten to lower the
bridge, the locomotive would hurl itself against the massive
platform; there would be a frightful disaster, the engine and cars
would be crushed into fragments; and men and women would lie there,
dead and dying.

The child appeared again, still farther off, calling to him,
stretching his arms to him. What did the grandfather do? He turned,
took the crank in his two strong hands, and very soon the bridge
rested on the opposite side. The locomotive and its cars rolled over
with the noise of thunder, buried itself in the tunnel and
disappeared; there was only a distant roar that shook the mountain.
The train had passed,—the child was drowned.

Old Blas, with horror-stricken eyes, stared at the river that had
carried away little Blas.

He stood there, stupefied, watching the deep water and the flowing
current. His little Blas was drowned, his little Blas was dead. Two
things tormented him; its impossibility and its reality.

What! He would never see again that pretty, happy face, those clear
blue eyes where laughed the sun? He would never hear again the cries
of joy over a butterfly caught, or a bird pursued; never, never for
him, poor old man, that ecstasy again.

He started to run along the bank. He would find the little body. He
would again hold it in his arms. No! The river had too great a
start. The current so quickly carries away bodies, especially when
they are little and light.

And then, he must stay where he was, to watch over the road, to make
the customary signals; he must remain at his post, since he was a
kind of soldier. He would not even have the consolation of seeing
the pale body of his grandson stopped by some tree, or caught in the
grass.

"Did I do right in lowering the bridge? If I had left the crank
alone without troubling myself about the train, if I had immediately
thrown myself into the water, I could have saved my poor, dear
child. The cars would have hurled themselves, broken into a
frightful mass, against the bridge of iron and wood, many of the
travellers would have perished; they would now be lying there
bleeding, wounded, shattered. But what are the misfortunes and
curses of others to me? A grandfather ought first to save his child.
I did wrong to do my duty."

He said this in his sorrow, but it seemed to him, nevertheless, that
he had done right. He should not even have hesitated between the
life of his child and that of so many men and women. Yes, but it was
terrible just the same. He was in despair and was fainting with
grief. He gained the little flower-surrounded hut. He looked at the
narrow walks that he had made for the saunterings of the boy, and
throwing himself upon the ground caressed the place where the boy
had seated himself to listen to the story. In his white beard, the
daisies which little Blas had thrown at him, still clung, and old
Blas, picking them off, kissed them, with sobs that shook his whole
body.

The setting sun reddened the granite mountain, like a fire in the
depths of a black mirror, then, little by little, the shadows
mounted, and, amid the great silence, old Blas heard only the
sinister sound of the rushing waters.

It was time to go back to the farm. To enter alone without the
child—what should he say to the mother? He took a staff from the
hut; he needed it now. How gay supper had always been when the day's
task was done! How many times he used to empty his glass of cider;
and how would the lad, to whom the grandfather had been passing the
tidbits of his supper, under the table, go to sleep finally in his
high chair, tired and happy.

But this evening's supper! The old man walked slowly, like one who
did not wish to advance. He rested against a tree as if not able to
take another step, and leaned his head against the bark, weeping.

To tell this to Cadjie and the father? How? With whatwords? The cry
of the mother, when he said to her, "Little Blas is drowned"—that
cry, sharp, bitter, terrible, already rang in his ears. And not only
would he see his daughter sob, his son-in-law turn pale, not only
would he witness their awful anguish, but he foresaw, as a supreme
agony, their reproaches.

He understood it well. A father and mother would not stop to think
whether he ought to consider others first and then himself and his
own. "It was necessary to save the little one," Cadije would cry,
and let all those people that we do not know, die." Yes, Cadije
would say that; and the old mind, troubled by that great
catastrophe, thinks that perhaps she is right.

Heroic by instinct then, he was not sure now that he had done right
and he thinks, perhaps he himself, if Cadije, on entering the house
some evening, had said, I have sacrificed the little one in order to
save a crowd of people"—perhaps he would have cried, "You are a bad
mother."

All this weighed him down. He walked with head lowered and shoulders
bent, like one who carries a heavy burden. He wished that the farm
was very far off, ten leagues, twenty leagues, or that between it
and him there was a lofty mountain peak that could not be climbed.

But no matter how slowly he walked, he had finally to come to his
journey's end. It was now dark. He went along the hedge, bending
down so as not to be seen. He remembered how joyously he had passed
there that morning. And he was so weak that he was hardly able to
open the wooden gate. He recoiled, alarmed at the noise of the dog's
chain as he passed the kennel. He advanced toward the other side of
the yard; the wide open door showed the well-lighted table where the
supper was smoking. Cadije appeared on the door-sill.

"Ah! father! said she with a smile, where now are your twenty-year-
old legs? The good man is already returned. The soup is hot. Hurry,
because it is not so good cold, and I have brought you a cup of
cider to cheer you up."

He drew near with a timid look, and hesitated, with the air of a dog
that is going to be beaten. Seated before the table, Antonin
Perdigut lowered his head to smell the sweet cabbage, and then cried
joyously, "Enough talking; I am dying of hunger in here."

This calm, like that of other evenings, this home-coming, like all
the others, frightened old Blas. Ah! How it would all change! How
they would cease laughing! How their hunger would depart! The mother
demanded, "But, where is the child?"

Behold, the moment had come! The confession could no longer be kept
back. It was necessary to answer, The child is drowned." He raised
his head, mouth open, eyes fixed; as one looks at death, if it rises
suddenly before him, so he looked at the strong, good, happy Cadije,
with her gay smile.

Then he lowered his head and stammered,—"The child is there, behind
the hedge; he has walked slowly on account of a nest that we have
found. It is the truth, it is really the truth. Wait an instant. He
is there, behind the hedge. I will go and find him."

"Ho! Blas!" called the mother.

"No! no! repeated he, trembling in all his limbs, "he will—will not
obey.—He thinks that he is going to be scolded, because we are so
late. I tell you that I am going to look for him myself. Do not be
impatient and—begin supper."

Then old Blas turned around, passed through the gate, closed it, and
when he was alone outside the farm-yard, said "No, truly no;—I did
not dare; I was not able."

And quickly, without any other thought than that of not seeing his
daughter in despair, of not hearing the curse of his son, he began
to run across the fields, through the shadows and darkness, like one
who has committed a crime, or a beast suddenly stricken with
madness.

PART III—THE END OF THE STORY OF THE LITTLE BOY WHO HAD NO EARS, AND
OF THE BLACK DOG WHO SMOKED HIS PIPE.

HE did not return. He crossed the plain, climbed the mountain, slept
a sleep full of horrible dreams under a projecting rock, and on
awakening, fled again. He feared that he was not far enough away
from that river that had taken away his child, from that dear farm-
house where now they only wept.

With a few sous that he found in his pockets, he bought some food
while passing through a village.

People were afraid of him, because he was very pale and was
continually looking back, like one who is afraid of being followed.
A woman who was sowing corn, seeing him begin to run when he had
passed the last house in the village, said to herself, "One would
say that that old man had just done something wicked."

The next day he came to another valley where nobody knew him,
because in the Basque country the mountains are frontiers that are
seldom passed. As he had only a dozen sous left, he asked a man who
was breaking stones on the road if he could not be employed in that
work.

With the woe-begone air that he had now, he did not inspire
confidence; nevertheless, the man answered, "You cannot get this
kind of work in a day. It is necessary to have a friend in the
government. I advise you to look for some other work. Now if you are
an honest man, which everybody that happens along is not, you would
do well to go to that saw-mill there, at the end of the valley, by
the stream. The owner wants workmen and, although you don't look
very strong, perhaps he will hire you to watch the mill, or for some
other easy work."

He followed that advice: went to the mill, asked to see the master,
offered himself and was accepted. There were some difficulties made,
because he had no passport, and did not have a very reassuring look.
The master said to himself that he didn't like to take in vagabonds
that came from nobody knows where, perhaps from prison; and then
added, "I shall keep an eye on that old man."

Days and weeks passed. The work that had been given to him was to
scrape the mill-wheel paddles with a knife, so that stones and sand
could not lodge there. At first, the work was very painful, on
account of the noise of the stream always beside him; it made him
shudder; but he soon resigned himself to it. Old and bent, he ran
his knife amid the paddles and always looked as if he were thinking
of something afar off.

The death of his grandson had nearly killed him. He was not even
sure now that he himself was alive. His ideas grew obscure, his mind
confused. He had only these thoughts—little Blas was in the water—it
is all true—it is all over—now they know all at the farm and, in
their tears, o curse him; and he was as if made drowsy by the weight
of his sorrow.

Being so absorbed, he did not notice the glances that the other
workmen cast on him. At noon, nobody spoke to him, but he would not
have heard them if they had. He did not think how suspicious his
silence was; he did not know what stories were told about him.

They said that perhaps he had more money than he showed. It happened
frequently that a thief, having robbed some peasant, made a show of
working and of being poor, for a time, so as not to awaken
suspicion. They even said he might have assassinated somebody in
order to rob them, because one evening, seated by the water,
watching with a mournful eye its rapid flow, he had been heard
repeating in a low voice: Ah I my poor Blas, my poor Blas, I shave
killed him"

All this talk made the master determined to find out the truth. The
pedlars who go from valley to valley hear much gossip and never keep
it to themselves.

So one day the master made old Bias come to him. As he was a rough
man, he said harshly, "Old man, you must leave."

Blas, stupefied, said, "Go away! Why?"

"Don't pretend you don't understand," said the master, "we know your
story."

"Well?" said the old man.

"Well,"said the master, "it is possible that you did not kill the
child, I do not say that you did kill him, but you went out
together, you were alone together, the child did not come back, and
you fled without saying anything to the parents."

Old Blas burst into tears. Ah, Heaven! see what they believed; that
he had killed Blas, his little Blas, for whom he would have died
twenty times, had it been possible; who was all his delight, all his
joy, all his life! He tried to explain, but the story about the
bridge, which was raised and lowered, did not appear very clear. A
child that falls into the water at the very moment a train is
passing—it is very unlikely. And then to think that this poor man, a
peasant, hardly knowing how to read, had had the perfect heroism to
sacrifice his grandson for the safety of some unknown travellers. It
would be necessary to esteem him so much that it was much simpler to
judge him guilty.

He himself, who had done a sublime act, without analyzing it;
naturally, because it seemed that he ought to do it, could not now
explain the sentiment that had animated him; he could not find words
to justify himself; he stammered and grew ashamed.

The master said, "All is possible, we will not discuss it. It is not
I who send you away; all my workmen will leave me if I do not
dismiss you. There they are; speak to them; they will not conceal
their opinions."

The workmen entered, two by two, carrying long, swaying planks. They
formed a group, spoke in low tones, and then from all sides words
like these were heard: "Yes, yes, the old man must go. We will not
have him among us. It is too bad to have to work beside a man who
has killed a child; to sit beside him at table. Just a glance at his
hands and one must shudder. His face, too, says very well what he
is. Come, draw your wages, old man, and don't let us see you around
here again, or one of us will make an end of you."

Under this unjust wrath, before these menaces, old Blas bent as if
he were a criminal, opened the door with trembling hands and went
out. Poor, admirable old man! When he commenced to mount the side of
the valley, he looked back and saw all the workmen before the mill,
who cursed him still with cries he could no longer hear, and who
still shook their fists furiously after him.

He advanced through a ravine, the old bed of a mountain torrent, dry
at that season. The stones, rolling under his heavy step, made it
hard walking. The little Blas had perished in calling to him,
stretching out his arms to him; he had been forced to flee the dear
farm where his happy old age laughed, and this was not enough. Now
they accused him of a crime, and because he had done right, they
believed him infamous.

All this seemed very cruel to him. He suffered the more because in
his obscure conscience, the conviction of having done well was not
sufficiently clear to enable him to console himself, for injustice
done him, by pride in his noble deed.

A strong mind would have asserted itself, certain of its rectitude,
but this humble intelligence bent under the load. He had even
sometimes the idea that he was wrong, since all the world said so.

Where would he go now? They sent him away from here; they would send
him away everywhere. To return to the farm? He would never dare. How
would Cadije feel toward him? How Antonin Perdigut would hate him,
since people who were neither the father nor the mother hated him so
much. He must go on, that was evident. But to go on without knowing
where, when the heart is heavy with sorrow and the eyes are full of
tears, when you are sleepy and hungry and very old,—ah! it is
terrible.

Without rebelling, still submissive, he, nevertheless, could not
keep from thinking that all the world was very bitter against him, a
poor old man.

He climbed upward, pushing through bushes, which scratched his face
and tore his beard: maltreated by things as well as by man, he
thinks that he resembles a little that Guignonet of the story,
always punished when, he had done nothing bad.

The day appeared very long. His old limbs were fatigued with
climbing slowly, but steadily, the rocky ravine. When evening came,
having neither eaten nor drank, he felt that he could go no farther.
He threw himself down on a rock, and rested against a fir trunk,
worn out, desolate.

Around him were innumerable blocks of granite, huge, weather-beaten,
broken by avalanches of long ago. A somber verdure grew between the
rocks, and against the sky, where the clouds were gathering, the
savage cliff raised itself, black and threatening.

Suddenly, with inconceivable quickness, a thunder-storm bends the
trees, moves the huge stones, raises a whirlwind of branches and
stones. These sudden storms are common in the Pyrenees. The
traveller hardly sees the lightning, before he is enveloped by the
whirlwind.

The clouds, hurling themselves together, thunder: from their broken
sides the rain pours down, driven in sheets by the wind; already it
is running in streams down the rocks. Broken tree-trunks roll down,
stripped of foliage; boulders leap from side to side of the ravine
and, above the howling of the storm, now sounds the roar of the
avalanche.

It has carried away old Blas. From stone to stone, from tree to
tree, amid this tumultuous descent, with hands and head bleeding,
dragged as if on an immense hurdle, he cannot save himself until the
bottom of the ravine is reached. Rocks and trees pile themselves
above him, bruised wounded, dying, as if heaven itself had built his
tomb.

Under the ever increasing weight of stones which pressed upon him,
he was dying. Every inch of his body was in agony.

And then, ready to render up his soul, this old man, although
hitherto resigned, revolted.

No! He had done no wrong! And it was terrible, that chance first,
then man, and now nature, had been so bitter against him. The plain
had cast him unto the mountain, and lo! the mountain had cast him
unto death.

Ah, well; there was, then, no such thing as justice; there was no
good God. With what could he be reproached? Nothing. Why then must
he suffer? Why kill him?

He panted under the immense weight, while the thunder roared and the
wind howled.

But hold! He feels a great numbness that mounts his legs, gains his
chest, and finally reaches his head, now less painful. Blood still
flows from his wounds, but he feels them less and less. He enters
into a kind of calm, deep and profound, perhaps because it is the
beginning of the everlasting sleep. He hears only vaguely, and like
a noise that comes from afar off, the thundering of the tempest.
Then he ceases to hear even that. He can almost believe he is
sleeping in his old bed at the farm, so soft the stones seem, so
comfortable is everything.

Thus, as in a dream, he thinks that he is again on the banks of the
river, near the bridge, playing with little Blas amid the flowers of
the garden. Yes, the little Blas is there! Oh! he knows well when he
had the little Blas on his knees! But the child is no longer a
child; his face shines like a brilliant star; he has wings, white
like the seraphim.

The little Blas says to him, "Now, that I am in heaven, I know many
stories, and I will tell you some if you wish. The end of your
beautiful story about the boy without ears and the dog who smoked
his pipe—the end of that delightful story you were rather in doubt
about, were you not? Listen, grandpa, I will tell it to you myself.

"When the little Guignonet found himself in prison, because they
accused him of having stolen, he was at first very sad, as you are
now. He, also, had done nothing but good, and all the world was
against him, because of the good he had done. But while he was
weeping, believing that he was lost, behold! The black dog who
smoked his pipe entered the dungeon, still smoking the pipe, and
said, 'Guignonet, thy trials are over. The beggar on the road who
returned you your sou with curses, it was I. The hen whose eggs you
broke, it was I. The raven with great wings and the dwarf and the
policemen—each was I. But I am not a black dog who smokes his pipe.
I am a fairy, a good fairy. Look at me.'

"And then the prison was no longer a prison, but a garden all ablaze
with luminous flowers. And Guignonet saw a beautiful lady with
golden hair, who was clad like the sun in splendour, and who had a
diamond wand.

"Guignonet," said she, "you have resisted all temptations, you have
never rebelled against injustice; now rejoice, because you are in
the golden garden of heaven, where you will play forever, with
little angels as companions." And when she had spoken thus, the
fairy disappeared. Guignonet saw running toward him a crowd of
beautiful children, more beautiful than he had ever imagined, They
asked him to come and play with them, and there is nothing more
pleasant than to play hide and seek in the garden of heaven."

It was thus that the little Bias, an angel with snowy wings, spoke
to old Blas lying under the rocky debris, and thus ended the history
of The Little Boy who had no Ears and the Black Dog who smoked his
Pipe.

And the good man, understanding now that justice does exist and that
there is a good God, died, without sorrow, on the hard bed of rocks,
pressing against his heart the little Blas, now the little angel.

The grandfather hastened to hear the beautiful stories that the
child in his turn was now going to tell him in the garden of heaven.



THE LADY WHO COULDN'T BLUSH
Translated by Henry Zolinsky.

I

Colette said gravely: "Lila dear, do me a favour.

"A thousand!" cried Lila.

"No, only one. That will be enough to-night."

"Well then! What is it? Speak quick!"

"Listen, said Colette. Without any conceit, I can consider myself, I
think, well enough gifted for the function for which I was
destined."

"What function?"

"You are a fool."

Colette continued:

"Certainly I am as pretty as can be—you are my dark mirror—with my
russet curls, varied, ruffled, which seem like little golden wrens
pecking at the snow of my forehead, with my narrow eyes which
twinkle very quickly beneath crumpled lids, and my little nose which
turns up, showing the carmine backs of its wings, and my smart mouth
where the slightly protruding tongue is like the rosy pistil of a
red flower. As for those mysterious charms with which I was
provided, it would be improper, and besides useless, to describe
them to you."

"Useless, by all means," said Lila.

"And I am no less worthy of praise from other points of view! The
sweetness of my happy nature, developed, refined by its continual
use in the most diverse cases, has left me quite equal to the
immoderate exigencies of desperate or crafty young men, whom I may
please, and who may please me; I have nothing in common—heaven be
praised!—with those mild women who, in times when only sincerity is
in place, have recourse to an inexcusable trickery; and it is a fact
that no one has ever kissed my eyes without drinking of their
gushing tears, the soft moisture of ecstasy."

"No one!"

"Finally, if I may grant myself some indulgence in self-observation,
I should no doubt have the right to consider myself perfect."

"You are!"

"No, dearie," said Colette sadly.

"What then do you lack in order to be so?"

"A charm which adds incomparable value to whatever beauty one has,
to the favours that one grants, or that one permits, a charm which
fastidious lovers cannot do without, and which, without retarding
our defeat, doubles the joy of their victory, a charm which mingles
with abandon all the modesty of resistance."

"But what, pray?"

"The Blush, Lila dear!"

"I don't understand you."

"Alas! I cannot blush."

"You cannot. . . ."

". . . Blush! No, whatever may be the extremities to which the
passion of those who adore me carries me, when I am yielding, my
face remains pale, the colour of rice-powder. My neck swells, my
eyelashes are like blades of grass with trembling drops of dew, but
I do not blush! No! Not for a moment! And although it may be a great
humiliation for me, I assure you, to be a white rose that the
strangest kisses cannot make rosy, even the shame of not blushing
fails to hatch a blush on my cheeks!"

"That is very annoying, I admit; it is something to alienate you
from hearts curious enough about innocence to be pleased with the
semblance of ingenuousness. But how can it be remedied? And what
favour do you ask of your friend?"

"You haven't guessed? What is not known must be learned; I want you
to teach me!"

"To blush?"

"Precisely! Oh! don't excuse yourself, my dear, in your exaggerated
modesty. You are as ingenious as one can be! No one is more learned
than you in what concerns the adorable mysteries. Speak to me,
close, in my ear; if among the things you will tell me there is one
which makes a peony bloom on my cheeks, I shall think of it later in
the time when the blush is proper; and I shall be obliged to you for
charming those who love me for a flowering of modesty, which, after
all, they did not believe me capable of."

"When have I not answered for you?" said Lila.

II

They were alone in the boudoir, in which were dying, under the
caress of twilight, the colours, the perfumes. Seated next to each
other, Lila was resting her elbow, outside of a fringe of lace, on
the shoulder of her friend, and speaking into her hair:

"Imagine!" said she. "It is evening. You are stretched out almost
asleep—after some pages of a book of love which has fallen from your
hands—on the very low couch, in all the disorder of your dressing
gown, and one of your feet, naked, pink-heeled, caresses with a toe
the fur of the rug, which tickles. No, you have no evil thought; you
are sleeping, innocently; and, not expecting anyone, you have not
purposely left your bust half exposed—where your small breasts,
standing their red points, are, in the double opening of your plush
bodice, two fruits of the snow, offered. But now the door is opened;
the one who enters is the one you prefer of all those whom you have
chosen. You are not very sure of his presence. You may be sleeping
and dreaming. However, you see him. He approaches, he kneels, he
takes between his warm hands the little naked foot which has been
hanging, and kisses it lightly, with a sweeter tickling than that of
the rug. But he is not satisfied with this respectful caress. It
must be exquisite, the leg which ends in this adorable foot of
silken hose; full of boldness, he raises with a hand the skirt of
your dressing-gown. . . ."

Lila stopped.

"Well?" said she.

"Well?"

"You do not blush?"

"I don't think so. Look."

"Indeed, not at all."

Then, Lila, lowering her voice: "Imagine! It is morning, you enter
your dressing room where all the odours of the bed you just left
follow you within the folds of your chemise, where perfumes of open
flasks welcome you, sponges which remember and that freshness which
rises from porcelains full of water. The mirror sees you. Ah! How
pretty you are, one shoulder and one breast emerging from the torn
cambric; which is about to slip, which does slip. Then your whole
body,—your hair knotted over your head, your arms raised, revealing
their tufted mysteries,—appears in the glass and charms you. Why
should you not look at yourself? Why should you not take pleasure in
adoring yourself, since the doors are closed and the curtains are
crossed, since no one, not even your chambermaid, can enter, can
take you by surprise? But now, by magic, the doors open, the windows
open, the walls fall away as in a fairy scene, and from all sides,
dazzled, enraptured, men, young, old, a mob see you, devour you with
their eyes, with gestures which would smother you, and you, you
cannot stir, all naked, your arms always raised; impossible to
refuse anything to the lust of their eyes, neither your shining
breasts, polished as smooth snow, nor your flanks, nor your legs
where a golden down trembles."

Lila stops.

"Well?"

"Well?"

"Have you blushed?"

"I don't think so. Look."

"Ah, the devil," said Lila.

But she was not the woman to admit herself conquered! She again
began to speak into the ear of her friend. What was she saying this
time? Leaning, her eyes aflame, and her throat throbbing, she spoke
in so low a voice that the scarab of sapphire and opal set in
Collette's hair, even if living, would have heard nothing. And
Lila's lips were moving more and more rapidly. And she whispered for
a long time, and at last stopped from sheer exhaustion, seemed out
of breath.

"Colette . . ." said she after a silence. 
	"Lila?"

"Ah! You blushed, I think?"

"I don't think so. Look."

Then Lila really began to grow angry. After all, this was putting
her out of patience, this impassiveness of countenance, this
implacable pallor, in which, as in the poem of Gautier, nothing was
able to place a red tint; she began to walk through the boudoir, her
hands behind her back, furious, with a desire to smash the Venetian
mirrors which shone in the plush frames, and the Japanese bibelots
on the mantelpiece, amongst the Saxon figurines.

III

"The devil take you, Colette! As for me, I give up trying to bring
the charming red of shame to your cheeks. What! I. evoke the most
fitting images for disturbing modesty; I expose your virtue—in idea—
to temptations, to the greatest perils, and you, in the midst of all
these stirring fancies, you remain serene and pale, like a petty
provincial bourgeoise, in flat headbands, in a high dress, linen
collar, long sleeves. . ."

She did not have a chance to finish. Red as peony Colette had leaped
on her neck!

"Ah! said she, just look, I've blushed! Yes, long sleeves, linen
collar, a high dress, Oh! That is what scares me! Oh! Isn't that
something to make one die of shame? Thank you, dear. But you went
too far. Surely, in the time when one is supposed to have a little
sweet purple on her face, I will just think of this high dress,
these long sleeves,—ah fie! Fie! Horrors!—In order to be, when in my
lover's arms, my feet thrown backward,—all red with shame!



THE ISLES OF LOVE

INVITATION TO THE VOYAGE

Would it not delight you, O dear Parisiennes, to travel, and to see
the far lands of love? For I, even now, have loaded a galley like
unto the winged barks wherein Watteau groups those charming couples
departing for Cytherea; its rowers are vested with columbine velour
and with zinzoline silk. There, all day and all evening, musicians
make song on the lute and on the rebec. If you would come aboard on
some rose-morning or on some star-night, we would depart together
for those blessed isles yonder! For, far better than on stormy
continents encumbered by too much humanity, love delights itself in
these peaceful islets, which dream beneath the sky, apart from the
world, and which the noise of waters surrounds with eternal
epithalamium; there nothing is which is not love; and it isolates
itself with joy in their isolation. It was on an island that
Anadyomene smiled for the first time, that Ariadne, in tears, was
consoled, and that Virginia died. Come away! Come beautiful and dear
ones, we shall sail together, in music and dreams, and in the noises
of kisses toward the "Isles of Love," mysterious and tender, of all
rivers, of all seas, toward Paphos where the breeze carries perfume
of mouths, toward Otahiti where the bathing-girls with their sunskin
glisten under water, like Nereids in gold, and toward Cyprus, which
has for its flower Amathonte, and toward Lesbos too; not without
putting in at La Grande-Jatte and at La Grenouillère where the
beautiful girls have the abandonment to enfold boatmen within their
naked arms.

FERLOE

In the glazed island, of the north, the earth is white as the
battlefield of a swan-war, and the light flurries of snow, when a
breeze sways and glides, are perhaps the fluttering of the wings of
one wounded. Amidst the air which seems like vaporized frost,
beneath the wan sky, through which clouds are moving with the
heaviness of icebergs, Rosborg and Nohella, benumbed despite their
coats of fur, remain embraced beside a fir-tree that is bent from
its accumulation of rime. There is sun only in their hair, warmth
only in their lips, in all this pale isle, gripped by the eternal
winter.

Sometimes, from the clouds, a bird drops to the earth, its wings
sprawling, dead and cold.

In the meanwhile Nohella is saying: "What are you dreaming about,
Rosborg, and what means this smile which possesses you? Are you not
happy, you whom I love? Have I not deserted, to rejoin you here, the
underground hut where my father and my brothers become uneasy at no
longer seeing me, and, all that one may ravish in a virgin, have I
not given you that, ingrate?"

He replies: "No one is more loved than you, Nohella, even as no one
is more tender. You have made me the most gracious of gifts since I
have been your husband in the morning solitudes. But I dream in
spite of myself of those beautiful lands of light and of those
blowing flowers, which are remembered by the lost sailors who debark
sometimes on this isle."

"Ah! why do you dream of those far countries, when I am near you?"

"Nohella, my beloved! yonder, in the azure south, amongst the
scattered flames of the breezes, there are woods of lilacs and of
roses so warm, that the young girls there may disrobe in the arms of
their lovers. Those who are happy down there know the whiteness of
breasts, whereon a strawberry blushes, and the whiteness of naked
arm, neck-entangling. And I, who possess you, I have seen only your
eyes and your lips under your hood of animal-skin. How lovely you
must be, Nohella, alas!"

"Is this then your trouble, Rosborg?"

"There is none greater."

"Why did you not say so before?" says Nohella, smiling. And very
swiftly, even in the moment in which there falls from the clouds an
eider with stiffened wings, she unites, tears off, throws away her
furs. She is all naked, on the frozen island, in the north.

"Vision! Vision!" cries Rosborg in ecstasy. "O divine flesh! O
perfect beauty!"

But, white with terror, he does not add another word. For Nohella
has fallen, and white death lies on the earth like a swan.

CROISSY

Between the stillness of the wood and the stillness of the water,
beneath the beautiful sky, clear, wherein the rockets rise to tease
the stars, La Grenouillère laughs, sings, drinks, dances, amuses
itself, and the naked arms of rowers, well-muscled, white-skinned,
whirl away the flying skirts of dark girls, of russet girls, in the
mad quadrille rhythmed by a rasping harpsichord out-of-tune. In the
wooden shack—a hulk which is an inn where the walls are painted with
half-nude barcarolles, there is a pell-mell of laughs, and of cries,
of legs and of arms, of tables overturned amongst rolling bottles,
and of prostrate couples who rise again only after having partaken
on the boards of the relish of the love-bed. The shoe of a dancer,
above all their heads, defies the death-head that a gloomy fantasist
has sketched on the wall, between the commandress of the Vibrion and
real herrings that swim in an aquarelle river.

Colette speaks softly into the ear of Ludovic:

"Really, I—I am not at all bored; and because of this gaiety, this
youth, this frenzy, I am younger and gayer and madder than ever.
Don't you thing that in this stirring music of storms of laughter
and songs, a kiss would be a pretty organ-point?"

"Ah," cries Ludovic, "who would not think so, on seeing your lips?".
. . "Maybe I have seen yours," murmurs Colette, "and if there be,
under the nearby trees, some dark retreat, well-apart from the
frivolous passers-by, I shall behold without any anguish, the
extremity of finding myself alone there with you." . . "We shall
find it easily, this boudoir of verdure! Come Colette, try to
preserve on your mouth that young-rose smile, which has driven me
mad, and which I want to pluck!" . . . "If it is no longer there you
will find another one like it of equal worth. But please, I pray
you, let me alone discover the lovely solitary corner in which I
would be sweet to you, for I maintain that it is of my fancy and not
of yours, Sir."

Thereupon Colette flees from the crowd, at a little run, and sets
out through the lanes, behind the holiday inn. She seeks a leafy
shelter, propitious to tender conferences. She has somewhat of the
aspect of a duel second in quest of a place for combat; but how
lovely it will be, this duel! Under the white moon, she sees, in a
bush of syringas, a shadowy opening, flowery, of just a little
space, with inviting caresses. Would not one be soft there? She
approaches, bends over, feels with her delicate hands the turf and
moss. Oh dear! The place is taken. Two lovers, seeing her, interrupt
a sweeter occupation to burst out laughing. She wants to escape.
There is no time. An arm has her by the waist, holds her, keeps her.
She has seen closely his lip of fine moustaches which are not at all
repulsive.

"But, Sir, you are not alone!" . . . "Oh, that's all right, the
more, the more loving!" A long moment passes before she breaks away,
and, when she escapes, finally, she murmurs in very sad tones. . . .
"Ludovic! Ah! poor boy!" Meanwhile she continues her search
diligently. It is not easy, these nights of summer Sundays, to find
in the Isle of Croissy a nook of verdure where no eclogue is being
murmured. "The next time it is going to be our affair," says
Colette. She has just spied, under a willow, a moored boat, a boat
in which carpets and thick furs lie. And she is turning back from it
to go and look for Ludovic. But suddenly she is seized, lifted, in a
powerful embrace, and the boat in which she finds herself lying in
truth very comfortably reaches the middle of the river, while a
young oarsman, rowing—Ah! the pretty mustache, this time even more
so! says to the astonished Colette . . . "I was expecting Albertine,
but you are a hundred times prettier than she." Alas! meanwhile,
Ludovic has grown impatient, is troubled at not having seen his
mistress return. Where is she? What is she doing? What can be
keeping her? Are there no propitious bushes, nor carpets of soft
grass in the Isle of Croissy? One hour goes by, then another. He
does not know what to think. He is frightened, he is irritated. . .
. Here is Colette at last! But no more has she on her lips, nor in
her eyes, the smile that he loves. However, he is happy. Since she
is here, since she is going to follow him.

"Well! Colette, have you found it, the charming place of the
promised kiss, and are you as clement to me as you were a little
while ago." . . . "Ah! Ludovic," she says with singular calm,
"strange things happen on that island, which is not deserved; and as
for that matter of the kiss, we'll talk about it tomorrow!"

SADO SHIMA

As soon as night comes, the whole facade of the djorea is lit up by
a thousand lanterns, and, from a distance, one might believe that
one is looking at the conflagration of a forest of flowers. Close
by, the spectacle is even more seductive; for, behind the lattice,
in the vast hall which is decorated with silks coloured by a flight
of birds or by falling wisteria, or by bamboos which a tiger is
parting, on rice-straw mats, the dainty djoro are seated, each in
her frame, her heels under her thighs. They motion to the passers-
by, while lighting their pipes on the embers of little bronze
stoves. They are careful not to wear much clothing, being insensible
to cold from their habit of undressing so often; only one kimono
suffices to clothe them, of light crepe, shrinking, inwoven here and
there with threads of vermilion, and so close, so well adapted to
their slender bodies, that one might take it for a trembling skin,
tattooed with gold. But, through the parting of the cloth under the
chin, the true skin appears, a little yellow, with a small ripe neck
beginning. May the brilliant Kouannon keep you from disdaining the
houses of pleasure in which Yokohama prides itself! There the girls
are as beautiful as the mistresses of a daimyo; there the best songs
are heard; the rice-wine that is poured inebriates one with great
love. But the djorea of the isle of Sado is not lacking in renown;
they come there from all parts of the empire, and it is with the
memory of sweetest joys that the guests there sleep to the sound of
the go and of the Samisen. Now, of all the djoro who flourish
throughout the season on the island, none is so lovely as Naivha.
Whitened by a fragrant powder, she has on her low, curving brow hair
shinier than a black lake; a line of light between very long
eyelashes is all one sees of her eyes; her narrow mouth opens with
thick lips, and her laugh makes her teeth gleam like moistened
pearls. When she walks, her bust protruding, her hams lowered, her
knees joined, it seems that she is about to fall at any moment. So
much has she as she moves along on her little feet—retarded by the
clacking, wooden slippers—of an endearing negligee in her dress
which presses her closely on all sides. And on her stooping loins,
where the cloth is flowered, the middle of her body resembles an
enormous butterfly heavier than the branch. But it is when she has
emptied five cups of sake, one after another, that one should see
and hear her! Slowly she twists her arms, downy with dark gold, out
of her long sleeves, and, pushing forward her whole body, offers her
firm breasts like two round stones, and her belly which pulses like
a bosom; while with a voice more shrill than the jabbering of
pintados, she sings the plaint of the daughter of the daimyo, whose
dress, ignited by the firebrands of a burning woodpile, set fire to
an entire village. Never has any man, no matter how old, been able
to resist such charms; more often than any other does she mount the
stairs, going before, holding in her right hand the candle of paper
wick, toward the little rooms of the second story, where, with
neither dancing nor speaking, she is even more seductive. And Naivha
rejoices greatly to please visitors this way. She will have soon
repaid the three hundred yen which were advanced to her some time
ago by the patron of the djorea: She will be able to return from
there to Tokyo, to him she loves, a young and strong Samurai, for
whom she has sold herself, for he used to have a debt in every tea-
house of the town for whom she will again sell herself, with neither
chagrin nor remorse, if he would but kiss her on the eyes on the
morning of her departure, and kiss her on the mouth on the evening
of her return.

LESBOS

Muse! Since it is true that the daughters of Lesbos sometimes turn
away from the masculine lips which covet them, and wend their way,
in pairs, in the evening, conversing in whispers, in lanes of
oleander, sing the divine anger from which their crime has arisen,
and how they learned the mysteries of feminine hymeneals.

When Lesbos was a savage land, unapproached by man, all-burgeoning
among the thorns of virgin lilies and wild roses, the young god
Eros, one day, was hunting the boar in the black forests of
Lepithymos. While he was sitting, a little tired, not far from a
cave shut in by fallen stones, he heard a very soft voice speaking
in an answer of sighs:

"O beautiful! O blonde! O white! O incomparably more charming than
all the beautiful and than all the blonde and than all the white!
Why do you turn away from me? Do you believe that I love any the
less and that my caresses will be less burning because I am not the
same as the detestable men whose embrace binds too painfully and
whose kiss bites. It is not in the furious seas that the nymphs love
to bathe, but in the calm pools of tepid envelopment; flee those
stormy tormentors of the masculine passion, and yield to the
cradling of my delicate and languid love."

And then to this voice, tender murmurs of consent replied.

Then Eros was stricken with a great anger! He was not pleased that
the laws of eternal love, which he had established, should be
transgressed and flouted by the young girls of the earth. He plunged
into the cave, resolved to chastise the criminals. But, on seeing
them, he stopped, amazed, for one of them—the entreated one who was
consenting he recognized as Kypris herself, against whom his power
was naught; as for the temptress, she was a hamadryad called
Perystera.

He thought a moment, then he said:

"Mother, go away, since punishment cannot touch you. But she there
will not escape my vengeance."

He raised his dreaded right hand: Perystera, who never ceased being
as white as the swans and snow, was changed into a dove, flapped her
wings and flew into the murmuring woods. Through her, her new
sisters, soon disdainful of the ring-doves, knew the charm of the
guilty kiss, wherein beak glides into beak; and, later the girls of
Lesbos, wandering beneath the boughs, felt troubled, on seeing one
another beautiful, and on not refusing to one another their mouths,
according to the example, alas! of the cooing doves.

BORNEO

Enormous, fierce, his jaws clacking in a formidable grimace, the
monkey, with one hand, has seized a young ebony, and torn it, with
all its roots, from out a herbous heap of broken stones. He lifts it
high, and twirls it through the air, so that earth and leaves are
scattered wide; lifts it again; the tree strikes the head of another
monkey, no less great, who falls, his skull cracked, and blood flows
from his brain. But as soon as the wounded one has touched the
ground, he rebounds, stands upright, wavers a little, then springs.
He grabs the trunk of the ebony, breaks it over his knee, throws the
remains of it away, hurls himself against his opponent, bites him in
the neck, sinks his claws into his loins, through the hair which
soon grows red. And now it is one of those hideous face-to-face
combats of two monsters. Skin hangs from their shoulders. The teeth
of one has made so deep a wound in the flank of the other, that his
entrails are bulging out. And the one overthrown urges on the fight
with the overthrower. Bound together, they roll, on the pebbles, in
the brambles. Their hug is so tight, their arms are so long, that
the hands of each rejoin behind his own back. And, from their
gasping, from their choking, burst rattling cries. Meanwhile, the
uprooter of trees has seen a large stone near him, a piece of rock,
which once rolled down from the hill; he seizes it, and, laughing
with terrible teeth, again and again he strikes the chest of his
enemy, who groans, resists, is broken, is crushed. He stirs no more.
Only a quick stiffening of his legs, which soon ceases; and the
conqueror, drawing himself up torn, bleeding, what not dashes across
the foliage toward the beautiful female who swings not far from
there in the perfumed hammock of liana. She sees him, she smiles and
laughs. She licks the wounds that he has received for her, taking
pleasure in the taste of blood; she embraces him, and draws him into
a long, hairy caress. Around them the last glimmerings of the sunset
subside, about to go out. There is, over all the forest, that
tenderness spread by the beginning of evening light. The rustling of
the boughs is softer; a brook nearby murmurs more quietly; and the
endless twittering of the birds, on all sides, beguiles with its
sweet music, the deepening silence of the shadows. It is that
mysterious and good hour in which, in the nests, in the caves, in
the high briars full of invisible prowlers, repose has not yet
become sleep, and the wind is already still. Suddenly, in this
peace, there is a crash of breaking branches. The conquered monkey
has dragged himself here, now, creeping, now clinging to the stalks,
at each jolt letting fall from himself tatters which impede his legs
losing his blood, his life. At length he has arrived. He raises his
head toward the nuptial tree, looks and sees, listens and hears.
Then, with a long sigh, he falls back. He is dead. The lovers,
beneath their shelter of leaves, embrace each other more
voluptuously; and sometimes the joy of the female rattles into a
little laugh.

CAPREAE

On his bed of purple, the emperor yawns, fat, heavy, languid, laden
with necklaces and rings, with a hundred orfevreries, laden with
another weight, ennui. Today, nothing has been able to divert the
morose languor of old Tiberius. He has reread the books of
Elephantis, without a twinkle lighting up his eye. He has entered
the mysterious chamber—wherein the sacred art degrading itself so
low as to realize the dream of debauches—marble, white as pure snow
or red as the noble flesh of virgins, is seen to twist itself into
shameful positions; he has brooded long over the painting of
Parrhasius which shows Meleager swooning with joy under the strange
caress of Atalantus—this painting which he preferred to a million
sesterces! He has bathed in the vast basin of white marble, wherein
young boys, delicate and slender, swim all nude, like fish in a
hollow of the bank, and he has asked for the grazing and the
caressing that comes by chance from their boyish games; he has seen,
having been intoxicated in vain, a triple chain of men and women,
the most beautiful in the empire, without clothes, turn about him in
the enormous hall wherein rise perfumes charming and cloying;
couched on a litter, he has had himself borne in the midst of a wood
full of Sylvans and of Dryads who passionately embraced wordless,
rattling, in the grass, in the branches, in the caves, make noises
like the rut of foul brutes. He has remained silent, has not made a
gesture signifying any desire. Now, he is stretched out on his bed
of purple, he yawns. Comes, of a sudden, Cresonnius Crispus, Roman
knight, Minister of Pleasures. He announces a new one. An African
has captured a young lioness, has fed it, trained it. He has made,
of this savage beast, oblivious to males with beautiful manes, a
crawling and wise courtesan, who smiles at men with her enormous
teeth, and who licks. Tiberius, in his lassitude, has not stirred.
But his eyelids have trembled: He desires to see the lioness, gives
orders to have her brought to him. She approaches, also heavy,
tawny, with eyes of gold that bleed. He looks at her. She pleases
him. He smiles faintly, orders that they be left alone. Through a
bay-window there comes into the room the dying noises of the sea and
the ending day. The warm light of summer droops and falls. An hour
glides by, slow, with the retarded glide of a very oily liquor.
Servants appear, carrying lamps, and, according to custom, without
being called. His foot resting on the loins of the prostrate
lioness, who opens and closes her mouth with an air of ennui, the
emperor yawns, and his yawning, little by little, ends with the
dying sun.

ROBINSON

All evening, the public house, shaken with chants, has been brawling
under branches, illumined with lanterns, has been mingling the
laughter of loose women with the gross gaiety of drinkers whose
fists resound on the boards of the tables; and, through the windows,
the steps of the quadrilles, with blasts of sour music, scoff at the
melancholy waltz of the first stars. All wings have flown, except
the sparrows who snap up the crumbs between the legs of waiters, go,
come, skip, beg, in menial familiarity, with that gamin-whining
which is the slang of birds; and there is, within the grove, kisses
which take the wrong mouths, embraces on a broken bench, which take
the wrong arms. An entire bestial merrymaking has been contained in
this corner of the earth, for hours; something like a dirty rivulet
which whirls into a hole at the foot of a hill.

Now, the boats have carried away in parties those who were laughing
and drinking, all the coarse good humour, and all the drunkenness.
The windows are dark, the doors are closed. It seems as if no one
has ever come there, since no one remains. The last paper lantern
has vanished in flames! Solitude has regained possession of its
trees, of its meadows, of its mysteriously purling stream; and under
the trembling stars, far as the lands of the unknown poles, within
the shadow spacious and sweet, the island listens to the nightingale
sing the nocturnal reverie of silence.

FERME ISLE

When Amadis, with the beautiful Oriane, and Galaor and Florestan,
had landed on Ferme Isle, they were very much amazed to see in this
savage country a palace so splendid that it surpassed in glory the
abode of the Emperor of Constantinople and that also of the Emperor
of Rome. It was built of porphyry and of serancolin marble, on which
shone mosaics of fine stones, rubies, sapphires, beryls, agates; and
on the roof of polished silver, storks of gold flapped their wings,
as if they had been alive. But, still more beautiful, were two
colossal statues both on the right and left side of the gate, one of
a knight-at-arms, the other of a lady in royal raiment. Not even in
a dream could one have seen anything more marvellous than this
knight, so strong a mien of loyal valour had he; nor than this lady,
so much had she of grace and beauty. And the gate was not shut.
Under the marble vault, where the colonnades ranged, a man of bronze
stood erect on a pedestal, holding in his right hand a hunting-horn.

"Truly," says Galaor, "were this palace enchanted, and defended from
approach by magicians or giants, I should not give up trying to
enter it; for if within it is as magnificent as it is without, its
visitors are bound to taste unparalleled delight."

Florestan said about the same thing, but Amadis spoke no word, too
much engrossed with gazing at Oriane. It was not long before that
the most perfect of knights, after a long quest, had rediscovered
the most beautiful of ladies, and he thought that there was no
trouble more sweet than gazing closely at her.

Then Galaor and Florestan advanced toward the gate, but, as they put
their feet on the threshold, a moorish dwarf, clad in scarlet and
brocade, came out of the vault and spoke to them in mocking tones:

"It is my opinion that you will do well to renounce this enterprise.
For here it is not a matter of conquering, according to your custom,
giants or magicians. Now listen to a story which I am commissioned
to teach the rash ones who desire to visit this marvellous palace. 
It was built a hundred years ago, by Appollidon, the elder son of
the King of Greece, for Grimanese, sister to the Emperor of Italy.
This knight, whom you see at the right of the gate, is Apollidon,
and this lady is Grimanese. After having lived on Ferme Isle for a
long time, they were summoned to Rome to succeed the emperor who had
died. But Grimanese did not wish that an abode, in which she had
been loved with so much constancy, should be opened to whoever would
take it into his head to enter, and, at her prayer, Apollidon, who
had been, since his youth, much given to magic, arranged matters in
such a way that no one could penetrate the interior of the palace,
unless he had been always faithful to only one love."

These words made Florestan and Galaor quite uneasy; although still
young they had more than once given, retaken, and again given their
hearts.

But Galaor cried: "I know no gate ajar, which I could not open
entirely, or none closed, which I could not break in."

And Florestan said about the same. Then they advanced boldly. And a
strange thing happened to them! The man of bronze, standing under
the vault, began to blow on his hunting-horn, and there came from
his instrument so furious a blast, with a crash of thunder, that the
two knights, rebuffed, blown, carried away, were in the air like
rags swept aloft by the north wind. Florestan fell into the sea,
five hundred paces off, and he saved himself only with the greatest
difficulty. Searching with his eyes for his comrade in defeat, he
saw him, without helmet or sword, held in the air by a branch which
had caught him by the hair.

Then Amadis: "Madame," said he to Oriane, "the moment has come when
I can prove to you that in all my life I have loved only you."

"Very well," said the lady, with that air of indifference which
beautiful persons have.

He stepped toward the gate. The man of bronze blew again into his
trumpet; but, instead of a tempest, a harmony infinitely sweet
spread forth, arose, under the vault, under the sky; and with this
music there fell roses, as if the sounds had blossomed into flowers.
Amadis entered the marvellous palace without difficulty.

He saw things so shining that his eyes were almost blinded by them:
halls with floors of precious stones, with ceilings of lapis-lazuli,
with walls of diamond, statues of sun-gold, and mirrors wherein were
reflected strange flowers full of birds of all colours; it was truly
an incomparable abode. But, dazzled though he was, he did not linger
too long in his admiration of so many miracles. He was in a hurry to
see his lady again, and to win from her the recompense for a
fidelity, in which now she would be well obliged to believe.

He retraced his steps. He was surprised not to find Oriane and
Galaor.

Florestan said to him, not without an air of raillery: "I suppose
that you are going to be very much troubled. Just after you entered
the palace, Galaor, unhooked from the tree, threw himself at the
knees of Oriane, swore to her that she was the most beautiful person
in the world and that he would die with pleasure if she would not
refuse to let him kiss her lips. She smiled. They went together into
the woods yonder. I suppose that Galaor, by this time, ought to be
dead, if he has kept his word." Amadis could not help weeping
bitterly, and he seemed terribly put out. But the moorish dwarf,
clad in scarlet and brocade: "Well! that proves," said he, "that
ladies care more for desire than for fidelity, and that one can
deceive them, provided one adores them."

CYTHEREA

The children who are to be hetaira, are grouped together in the
number of one hundred in the grove of a wood of myrtles and laurel-
roses, where stands like a divine example of beauty, the statue of
Anadyomene; seated three by three on the flowered grass, they raise
their eyes to the great Lysistrata, but lately priestess at Corinth,
who teaches and questions them; and each of them, more perfect than
all the virgins. If her neighbour were not as perfect, has before
her a tablet of black wood, on which she writes, with a piece of
chalk, the lessons of the illustrious teacher; for, in Cytherea, as
in Mytilene, they initiate young girls, selected from the most
beautiful, into all the acts of charm, so that they become in time
the companions of poets, amiable sophists, and young leaders, equal
to the gods. Demosthenes, complaining of Naera, said: "We have wives
that they may give us children of our blood, and take care of our
home; concubines for the satisfaction of our senses; but we have
hetairai for the pleasure of our souls."

Lysistrata asks: "Of the means of giving joy to men, which is, in
your opinion, the best? Answer first, you Ipsea of Miletus."

Ipsea arises, all blushing; under the bonnet of Thessalian straw,
wreathed with violets, her hair flows like a golden rivulet, and her
mouth is a flower about to enfold; her tunic scarcely swells before
her; her neck is slender, she being scarcely ten years old. "May
Cytherea, born of waves, encourage and inspire me!" says she. "I
think that nothing is more pleasing to the sight of men than a well-
dressed woman."

"The toilette, it is true, gives birth to desire, which is the
beginning of happiness. But this difficult art of ornament, in what
does it consist? Don't be troubled, answer, Ipsea."

"Under the calypha, wrought of imperceptible threads, the curls of
blonde hair glitter and tremble like golden butterflies; those
having small ears should wear on them a pearl just a little long,
and those having large ones, a single precious jewel, fastened to
the skin; necklaces with three pendants go with large bosoms which
have low breasts. As for the garments, the Kyparis must be
recommended, that short shift which falls down to the middle of the
thighs; the Cymbrian tunic, of a light material; the dress of
saffron colour, unstitched, which is open at the neck, with cuffs;
the strophion which sets off the neck; the peplos which is worn on
the left shoulder; or the anaboladion, broidered with gold, which
trembles and flies away like a fog crossed with sunlight. Although
many esteem the Tyrrhenian buskins, with which the red nakedness of
the foot appears, I am inclined to prefer the crepida with silver
ribbons binding the ankle. But the science of the toilette implies
more mysterious cares. She indeed would not be worthy of the name
hetaira, who would not anoint her face to remove freckles with the
pomatum called aesipon, made of Corsican honey and of the oil of
sheep's wool; who would not black her eyebrows with lead and
antimony, would not polish her teeth with the mastic of Chios, or
with pumice stone reduced to fine powder; and it is proper to
perfume the hands with essences of Egypt, the cheeks and breasts
with odours of Phoenicia, the hair with sweet marjoram and the
armpits with wild thyme."

Having finished reciting her lesson, Ipsea sat down, deeply moved,
fearing to have omitted some important detail; but her instructress
reassured her with a complimenting look.

Then she said: "Now you answer, Eucharis of Amathus."

Eucharis then arises; her hair, bound by ribbons of the toenia, is
like a light helmet on which day is shining, and her dark eyes
languish beneath her long lifting eyebrows; because she is fourteen,
the double point of her breasts raises like arrow-ends the yielding
linen of her tunic.

"May Eros protect me!" she says, "he who is pleased with the
choruses of amorous nymphs! I think nothing is so valuable for
charming men as the sound of the lyre, rhythming beautiful odes and
graceful dances."

"It is true that music, enchantment of souls, draws mortals into a
languor that is very propitious to love. But the mysterious art of
rhythms and song, know you it, Eucharis, and can you tell of its
innumerable ways?"

"Indeed they are very numerous, thanks to the sacred musicians whom
the gods inspire! However, I hope to be able, in a while. . . ."

She cannot continue her talk because of an outburst of laughter
which sounds like the fluttering of turtle-doves; she who has
laughed is Doris, of Paphos; she is seventeen, her face has the
expression of a blossoming rose, and her eyes return to the day more
sunlight than they have received from it; she has the habit, being a
frolicsome pupil, of interrupting at every opportunity the most
grave lessons with her gay pranks.

Lysistrata looks at her sternly.

"Doris," says she, "why do you not imitate the reserve of your
companions? Will you force me to impose on you some just punishment,
in spite of my innate mansuetude?"

"By the laugh of Aphrodite when she sees through the veil the
flurried face of Hephaestos, I believe that we are wasting our
time!" replies Doris, pouting most beautifully; "it is neither the
toilette nor music which most ravishes men and women."

"Eh! what then is it?" cries the crowd of pupils in ardent tumult.

"By the elder Eros, it is kissing!" says Doris.

Lysistrata intervenes.

"Stop interrupting us! For you are wrong, child. To be sure, the art
of kissing, such as Sappho of Lesbos and Corinne of Tanagra
celebrated after having practised it, is indeed the supreme art and
the supreme joy. But how could you know its mysteries, you young
girl, who have so far blushed only in your dreams? However we are
listening; tell us, if you know, the ways and delights of the
incomparable caress."

Doris replies:

"If the kiss, which nothing equals, can be explained by the lips, it
is not by the lips which speak."

"Well," says Lysistrata, "you will follow me into this wood of
flowered myrtles. I desire greatly to prove to myself just how far
your knowledge goes; but know that I shall proclaim your defeat
without pity."

Upon these words, instructress and pupil go together into the
perfumed wood; when they return from it, the redness of evening is
already trembling in the branches of sleeping nests.

"Well?" ask all the virgins. "Doris is conquered? She was wrong? She
did not know what she said?"

"No. She was right," says Lysistrata, sweetly humbled.

NEIRAI

As one might part the branches with the ends of his fingers in order
to see a beautiful bather, the curious moon, with its gliding rays,
makes an opening amidst the foliage of pawpaws and plantains, in
order to admire Abounivalou, that daughter of a, great chief, who is
playing in the night. With her skin of sombre copper, tattooed with
black holes in relief, and which glistens with polish of oil, with
her enormous hair, coiffured like a square tower, and cemented with
coal and chalk, with her lips so thick and bulging that she has the
appearance of holding between her teeth a red fruit of the shaddock,
Abounivalou is made to charm all eyes. The ample rondure of her
belly is such that the girdle of malo fibres cannot fall to her
thighs, slender and spare as the arms of a young monkey; she presses
to the soil feet larger and flatter than a pendanus leaf. But her
grace is even more charming than her beauty; it is in an adorable
attitude that she paints, with a single nail, very long, the bush of
her left armpit, and that, with the other hand, she raises the flute
with two apertures, in which she blows from her black nostrils.

During this, Abounivalou stops intermittently in her playing, and,
turning aside her head, she gazes between the branches toward the
distant glade from which emerge, by fits and starts, red glares and
violent songs; for the men of Neirai have conquered the men of
Manolo; and now they are rejoicing in a feast. Does the daughter of
the chief regret that custom forbids women to participate in the
feast of husbands and fathers? It is more probable that she awaits
under the plantains and pawpaws, some young warrior; and doubtless,
if she is in a torment, it is because he has delayed his coming for
so long. Amidst the good cheer and drunkenness of the feast, he has
perhaps lost the memory of her whom he loves; will she have given in
vain, in breathing with her nose into the flute, the dear signal
they had agreed on? She stamps her foot and, with her upper jaw, she
bites her enormous lip, equal to a limax puffed with blood. Be not
uneasy, lovely Abounivalou. You are too perfect to be forgotten;
your lover, caring for you only, will not fail to rejoin you; the
reawakened nests will hear your kisses in the silences of the moon.

And now he appears superb! his headdress so tufted and so straight
that one might believe it coiffured of a bush; his body naked and
smooth, with the protuberance of the belly, like that of a skinned
gorilla; and in his face, into which his retroussé nose vanishes,
his mouth resembles an axe-wound.

"Abounivalou! Abounivalou! You are the most beautiful of the
daughters of Neirai! Joy is a flower which blooms beneath your large
feet, and it is in your hair that the bird of happiness nestles."

Then, opening his long arms, he goes to bind her against his chest,
tattooed with tomahawk and with lance.

But she withdraws, escapes him, feigning without doubt to have
little love because of too much modesty. How her heart must beat and
how happy she will be when she will no longer fear to confess her
tenderness! However she says: "Kanazea, have you brought me what I
have asked you for?" He hesitates and finally answers:

"No, I have not."

Then she begins to weep, with little sighs which throb her delicious
neck, long and hanging like the bags in which the mountain hunters
are accustomed to put their game.

"I knew truly," says she, "that you did not love me!" But he laughs
while she grieves.

"I was only fooling, lovely Abounivalou. Here is what you have asked
for. It was very hard for me to steal it, for my comrades would not
cease looking at me."

At the same time he takes out from under his drawers, where he has
been hiding it for fun, a man's arm, whose skin is all gilded from
having been roasted on the coals.

"Ah! dear Kanazea!" says she.

And she throws herself on the good flesh, grilled just right, bites
it with her long teeth, and stops eating from time to time in order
to smile on the young warrior with her beautiful lips gleaming with
warm blood; then she eats again, with laughs of comfort. He
contemplates her, in ecstasy at seeing her so content. They are
sitting on grass that is full of flowers. They do not speak; he
kissing her, she eating. A bird amidst the verdure awakens and
begins to sing. The moon, which is pleased with nocturnal idylls,
gazes upon them and bathes them with a tender whiteness.

SWAN ISLE

This Sunday, since morning, men, women, children, uglinesses,
vulgarities, whatnot, the crowd, prowled around the pond, in the
garden of Luxembourg, throwing crumbs of rye bread into the water,
amusing themselves with the quacking fleets of drakes and ducks.
Across the sparse grey of the fog, the sky is blue as the eyes of a
young maid behind her veil; one knows not what sort of rose-to-be
desires to break the enclosure of buds, hesitates, does not emerge,
with the timidity of an evasion which fears to be a surprise; the
air holds promise of blossoming, of perfume, of love.

The people around the pond joy in the beautiful day, in a holy
idleness of mind; in an animal comfort of living; that which charms
them, that which makes them to blossom forth themselves, they feel
without admiration; it is thus that the blind love the sun that
warms them. The bread crumbs—amidst laughs, savage words which would
discourage the spring in its rebirth, were it not dreaming of the
lovers who await it in the alleys of the wood—continue to fall into
the clear water, wherein is reflected the lengthening image of
twisting branches, and the white back of a statue; and the drakes,
beak-to-beak, quarrel stormily, in a pell-mell of beating wings.
They, however, the swans, the beautiful swans of snow, the male and
the female, wend their way through all this feather battle,
majestically, trailing behind them a long wake. They have consented,
two or three times, to snap up with their black beaks, the pieces of
fallen bread, with that regal contempt of a poet who might accept
alms. Now they swim apart, their necks aloft, in pompous whiteness.
They reach the island by the side of the tree, raise themselves upon
it, stand motionless, crushing the grass beneath their large feet,
looking at the crowd from the side, with one eye. But they do not
see it! And, suddenly, without troubling about the people who are
near, the male spreads his wings with a terrible crackling, scarcely
flies, alights on the sprawling female, whose stretched out wings
caress the grass. There, they love each other, captives, as if they
had the freedom of far skies. Then outbursts of laughter sound and
resound, gross, stupid, mingled with vulgar hooting; and mothers
leave, carrying away their questioning children. But two young
women, standing together, tall and slender, pale as the swans, have
not laughed, have not fled, and, without speaking, still more
closely together, hand-in-hand, they dream before this union of
whiteness ecstasies.

VENUS

Planet, star, dream, isle of flame and of gold, isle of the
celestial sea, it is toward thee that we shall go, Venus! When we
shall be beneath marble, with no hope of resurrection, when our
bodies will live on only in the trembling of grass, and in the
perfume of roses, our souls, those birds without wings, which mount
higher than wings, will rise towards thy light, lights themselves,
and will there disperse. Thou art the vast welcome of the flames
from here below, vanished two by two, the paradise of breaths
without mouths, and of kisses without lips, the eternal nuptials of
the betrothed who no longer embrace one another. Thy landscapes are
wrought of all the dreams of solitude in burgeoning valleys; the
lovers dwell there, as a ray is lost in a haze of dawn, the vain
form of their desires realized in your luminous nothingness; they
are that which is no more, but that which rises and shines. In thy
atmosphere, this fog, made sparse by all the sighs of love, augments
itself with other mingled breaths; thou hast volcanoes, in memory of
hearts; dew, in memory of tears; mornings because one will hope;
evenings, because one might be sad; and thou art a star, because
thou art love! But as sweetly as thou mayest rise in our horizon, as
pure as thy effulgence may be, O Venus, in whom survives,
subtilized, all dead caresses, as shining as thou mayest be, star!
know that one day, a day close at hand, thou wilt be even more
beautiful—astounder of earthly astronomers—and that will be when she
whom I loved solely, and myself whom she loved always, after all the
betrayals, and all the forgetting, and all the repentance, we will
recognize each other, our bodies vanished as one recognizes oneself
on the morrow of a ball, when the masks have fallen and we will
mingle our glows with thy glow, Venus, our flames with thy flame!



THE FUTILITY OF EXAMPLE

At a time when I was still so artless that I seemed barely as old as
a well-matured wood-pigeon, I made an excursion into the future in
the company of a young gentleman, gaily attired, whom at the time I
did not recognize, but who was, as I afterward learned, none other
than his Serene Highness, Prince Cupid.

We chanced to meet on our journey the very type of a vagabond,
whether vagrant or criminal, ragged, dishevelled and repulsive, whom
the police were ill-treating and with no very gentle words were
pushing along before them.

I drew near to the poor wretch. I seemed to discern in his
colourless eyes the recollection of a former joy; I asked him what
he had done to be reduced to such a pitiable state.

"I have loved," was his reply.

A little further, on the same road, we met a crippled beggar—a
crutch under each arm—struggling painfully along in his filthy rags.
He had lost his hair and was without teeth. In spite of the fact
that he was probably not aged, his eyes were like those of a
centenarian. I drew near to the mendicant. It seemed to me that
there was still on his pale lips the trace of a former smile. I
asked him what he had done to bring upon himself this degree of ruin
and degradation.

"I have loved," was his reply.

At a turn of the road we came upon a man, with a cord about his
neck, hanging from the limb of a tree. It was a frightful sight on
that beautiful morning. The face was distorted, the tongue swollen
and protruding from the mouth, and, though not quite dead, he was
more horrifying than a corpse.

I drew near to the suicide. It seemed to me that his forehead still
shone with a former triumph. I asked him what mishap had led him to
desire and to seek, eternity.

"I have loved," was his reply.

Then the young Prince with whom I journeyed toward the future turned
to me with this question: "You are sixteen, you will tomorrow
encounter the mysteries of existence. What will you do, child, in
life?"

"I shall love," was my reply.



LUSCIGNOLE

First Pub. 1892. Translated by Phyllis Megroz.



  BOOK ONE
I

Looking back to the earliest years of my childhood, I can see in a
rain-swept, cloudy country, a town beneath a leaden sky that looks
as though it were drenched in tears, endless, empty streets without
turnings, and right in the centre, conspicuous by its height, a very
old Cathedral with an immense round dome, topped by a slender cross
about which the ravelled white mist hangs like the shreds of a
martyr's robe.

All day long, the town is silent and deserted; occasionally, there
is the clank of an officer's sword along the cobbles, or a sound of
laughter issuing from the half-open door of some tavern; more
frequently in the new quarter of the town where tall chimneys smear
and thicken the fog with coal-dust, there is a rattle of machinery
that shakes the walls, and shrill piercing whistles that tear the
air. Then once more, silence and solitude—it seems almost as if the
ghost of nothingness dwelt behind the vacant windows of the houses.
But a little before nightfall, after a rumbling echo of closing
doors, long processions of women in groups of three proceed down the
streets towards their homes. They are factory-hands. Tall, emaciated
and bloodless, they are dressed in tattered rags, wear straw hats
knotted under their chins with string, and fold about their flat
breasts faded brown or yellow woollen shawls that hang in frayed
ends down to their out-at-heel men's shoes which clatter unwieldly
at every step they take. Each like to each, and all like Misery
herself, along they go, without speech or laughter, without any
signs of animation, moving with the regular steps of a regiment of
soldiers, passive and resigned at last to endless work, resigned
even to despair itself. At intervals, one of the women falls out of
the ranks, and without a word to her companions, turns into a
street, recedes and vanishes; the gap is immediately filled by the
first woman in the row behind, whose place is similarly taken—the
whole procession marches on with mechanical regimental precision. As
they approach the poor quarter, more and more drop out, but the
lessened line continues to advance in triple rows in the deepening
dusk. There are only a few lines left, but they still forge on,
decreasing at every step. At last, there are only three women, two
women, one woman left; she walks steadily on between the beetling
houses till little by little her straw hat and her faded woollen
shawl are swallowed up in the gloom.

There is something melancholy in the Cathedral itself with its look
of having outlasted time—the imperial melancholy of the Past beset
by the cares and griefs of the Present—it looms like the reproach of
that ancient faith which smug satisfaction and maddened misery have
denied.

Even the believers scarcely enter it—their weak faith totters before
the gigantic bronze gateway which the claw of a legendary Lucifer
split asunder; too overpowering an atmosphere emanates from the high
altars with their magnificent columns, from the pulpit with its
spiral stairs, and from the windows that shower forth a mosaic of
chrysoprase and ruby. The humble worshippers, decent middle-class
men and women, civil servants, or small tradespeople who have come
to say their unemotional little prayers and utter their trivial
confessions, are ill at ease before the defaced marble seat where
the great Emperor sat, before the stone that covers his dust, before
the memorial scabbards of so many warrior-bishops, and before the
iron grille (that seems bloodstained rather than rusted) of that
terrible reliquary with its innumerable whitening bones of those
martyrs who confessed God in ecstasies of pain. They prefer to go to
the small new church which is so very much like their own pretty
little houses that they enter it quite unmoved, as pleasantly as
though they were paying a neighbourly call; there they kneel down
under a blue ceiling sprinkled with golden stars (just the sort of
ceiling they would have for themselves if they were rich enough to
build chateaux) on mahogany praying-stools very much like their own
dining-room chairs; and Jehovah is only our Father, and wears such a
benign expression, such an indulgent smile, such an ingenuous beard
in the big picture over the high altar—it was painted by an artist
who is a friend of a friend—that really, if it were not for the
flowing blue draperies and the armed archangel, he might easily be
taken to be one's grandparent, a most worthy old gentleman who never
scolded, and always had a pocketful of sweets and toys for the
little ones.

Thus it comes about that the great Cathedral in the middle of the
gloomy town is, for the most part, empty. The gates are occasionally
unlocked by the beadle or the sacristan for the few and far between
visitors, artists or sightseers, and as soon as they are gone, the
Cathedral withdraws itself again from the world without. For within
its walls, it holds that spirit which filled it in those far-off
days when processions knelt beneath the crosiers of bishops and the
sceptres of kings, that spirit which magnified it with majesty and
awe. The silence is murmurous with unheard voices, the shadows are
peopled with insubstantial incarnations—the imperial Past blossoms
again in the nothingness. The Cathedral is full of nothingness—with
its cold stones over which the reflections from the windows dance a
ghostly arabesque; with its winding stairs that spiral to the
belfry, or descend to the day-forgotten crypt whose white pillars
look like upright winding-sheets; with its icy marble altars haunted
by kneeling presences of penitents long ages dead; with its
corridors defaced by the tread of many feet, its tombs from which
rise the phantoms of survival, and its choir whence surged
innumerable canticles that echo can nevermore repeat. The Cathedral
is full of nothingness, but in this nothingness, ten centuries of
majesty and faith are eternally enshrined. Whoever enters it falls
back with fear, though there is no cause for fear. But who can say
that in the night when unreality appears real the ancient dead do
not live again, or that the pillars, like upright winding-sheets,
shrouded ghosts or resurrected souls, do not climb the stairs from
the crypt? Who can say whether the man who once stood watch on the
dais does not descend, as was his wont, to light the tapers, who can
say whether the Emperor, spirit or flesh, caparisoned in armour,
does not raise the marble slab of his tomb, and shake the stones
with the clangour of his kneeling, while the martyrs whose scattered
bones have come together break through the iron grille, and slip
silently between the columns in a shining procession, bleeding from
their ecstatic wounds, and fulfilling their ancient rites in the
terror-stark Cathedral.

But at the time of the story I am about to tell you, the old
Cathedral had an inmate, a little girl to befriend it. She was a
slip of a child, nine years old, bubbling over with laughter, very
slight and delicately-made, the niece of the beadle. She had been
christened Marthe, but the parish priest re-named her Luscignole
[Nightingale] because she whistled and trilled like the
nightingales.

II

As soon as she could walk, Luscignole's little feet stumbled over
the stone on which the name of that Emperor who was King of Rome, is
graven, and one of her earliest games was to clamber up a column and
dip one finger in the holy water to suck it greedily—it had such a
delicious salty taste.

Her mother was the sister of Alas Schemp the beadle, and the widow
of a seller of holy images. She had scarcely eked out a living
hiring out chairs and selling candles in this Cathedral of no
worshippers, and when she died in destitution, everything went on
much as usual for the child with the exception of her rare scoldings
and rarer kisses. She slept, as before, in one of the three rooms
that had been allotted to Alas Schemp on the first floor of the
Tower, and continued to wander, after school hours, in the solitude
of the ancient building. Probably at first she would have preferred
playing about the streets with a crowd of other children, but her
uncle insisted on her coming back as soon as possible so that if any
chance strangers visited the Cathedral, she might summon him at once
either from the room in the tower where he passed most of the day
among his nightingales (being bound-up with bird-lore), or else from
the neighbouring tavern where he spent the remainder of his time
fuddling himself with ale and Schiedam gin. Thus it came about that
gradually the little girl grew resigned and contented in her
isolation between those ancient walls.

But as she grew, she did not become sober like the Holy Angels who
dream with blank unseeing eyes, a finger to their lips, or silent
like the motionless, rigid figures on the tombs; her childish fancy
was care-free among those melancholy forms, in that atmosphere of
death and decay.

The Cathedral could not age her, but she renewed its youth. Darting
about and uttering cries like little explosions of sound, she was
the clamorous and conquering radiance of the shadowy silence; and
the echo that had grown hoarse with muttered prayers and
remembrances of the Dies Irae, attempted to give back her laughter,
succeeding with yet a suggestion of huskiness in its tones. She
played in the most forbidding corners, throwing mocking glances at
the memorial icons; one day, after a funeral, she chanced upon a
long garland of roses on the tomb of a rich banker, a converted Jew,
who had conceived the fantasy of having the last rites celebrated in
the Carolingian basilica—and turning it into a skipping rope, she
skipped about from the still-vibrating organ to the scarcely-
extinguished tapers.

But she could amuse herself just as well even when the outside world
did not break in on the Cathedral with a funeral train.

She had invented games in which the solemn old statues of marble and
brass were made to join her. Running hither and thither, never
stopping in one place, she played at shuttlecock with a Madonna
whose motionless hand, uplifted like a battledore, sent back the
feathered cork. If a ray of light struck through the window onto the
brazen St. Synesius upright between the third and fourth Stations of
the Cross, she pretended (not without cheating slightly, for she 
slyly craned her neck), that the sun would gild her nose before
alighting like a wayward butterfly on the venerable nose of the
Saint. To the Cherubim with their puffed-out cheeks and their
bodiless estate hidden by their fluffy golden wings, who leaned out
of the stone bas-reliefs, she called: "We'll play at hide-and-seek,
shall we?" and she ran and hid herself—first looking carefully to
see that no-one was watching—behind the sarcophagus of Augustus, or
behind a panel of the triptych on which the 11,000 Virgins were
depicted, or behind the great christening-font with its design of
the Seven Foolish Virgins weeping over their guttered lamps, and she
cried: "Come and find me!" waited, laughed, and called again: "Come
and find me!", and because no-one found her, she ran back to the
Cherubim and made an exultant face at them, half-believing, perhaps,
that they really had followed her, and having failed to find her,
had gone sulkily back to their places.

She hoisted herself onto the pedestals of mounted cavaliers, hoisted
herself still higher, and tried to peer between their half-raised
visors. "Oh, how ugly you are!" she would cry, inhaling their dust-
laden breath.

She longed to play with the Holy Babes in the arms of the Madonnas,
but she dared not ask them, being more awe-stricken by them than by
the Cherubim (who, after all, are only the winged children of
Heaven), and fearing the reproachful glances of the Mary Mothers.

She grew angry with the zig-zagging rays that darted across the
tiles of the sanctuary, between the fluting of the columns and over
the gilded flowers of the candelabras because to spite her, they
refused to be caught. On one occasion, having glimpsed a nest that
some swallows had made in the outer porch on the neck of a headless
angel, she fetched it down, carried it off with the baby birds
piping shrilly, and laid it near the high altar in the convulsed
jaws of the Dragon cast down by the Angel; it was a source of great
amusement to her during the day to watch the parent swallows fly
through the bronze gate which she had left ajar, and bring back food
to their nestlings in the Dragon's throat.

But she had real little playmates of her own in the Cathedral. These
playmates were the mice who lived in the charnel-house.

They were quite small, and greyish-white like the martyrs' bones;
they peeped slyly and uneasily between the trellised bars, and drew
hurriedly back at the slightest sound.

When Luscignole first caught sight of them, she thought she would go
and warn her uncle, for it wouldn't do at all to let mice run about
among the sacred relics—only think if the skull of Saint Catulla, or
the tibia of St. Hersilian should be nibbled to dust by those
impious little teeth. But then, if she told, the mice would come to
grief, traps would be set for them, and cats would be shut up in the
charnel-house. They were such darlings, too, with their mischievous
pink eyes, and their quivering pink muzzles. The little girl decided
at last on a plan that would safeguard the relics and spare the
mice. She would buy some cakes with the sous she occasionally rifled
from her uncle's pockets—she was too artless to think it stealing—
and these she would crumble up near the grille of the sanctuary; the
clever little mice were sure to prefer fresh cake-crumbs to tibias
and ankle-bones so long decayed that they could not be particularly
appetising. Her plan was successful. The mice ventured between the
bars to nibble at the dainties and enjoy the delicate repast; they
showed their gratitude by becoming friendly with the giver. They
lost their terror, and let her come near them and stroke them, and
at length they would jump on her hands as she knelt among them,
laughing and distributing crumbs, run the length of her arm to her
shoulders, till on both sides such a friendship grew up that, when
no-one came to disturb and startle the little girl and the mice,
Luscignole never strayed about the Cathedral, never played at hide-
and-seek with the golden Cherubim, never smiled mischievously at the
statues unless the scampering feet of twenty little grey mice
pattered behind her.

She had, however, other amusements, more befitting her nine years.
The imperial relics that lay in the Emperor's shrine, and which were
adored by pilgrims from every part of the world for three days in
every seven years, consisted of no more than a few whitened bones.
In a much smaller shrine, a mystic chamber whose key was hidden by
Luscignole, there was a fragment of Jesu's crib, a splinter of
cedarwood planed by Joseph the Carpenter in far-off days; there was
a nail of the Cross; a thorn still reddened by a drop of Divine
Blood; and most precious of all, a pale shred of the Blessed
Virgin's shift, fastened to the wall. Full of holy awe in spite of
the bad example which her little friends, the mice, had set her,
Luscignole would linger among these sacred things in the tower-
chamber forbidden to all, whose darkness seemed to deepen with the
faint emanation of age-old fragrance like the incense wafted from
some invisible censer. It worried her to see that the shift which
had once lightly touched the Blessed Virgin was in such ill-repair,
yellowed and worn to holes; that it had been cut out and stitched
such countless time ago was no excuse for such a falling-to-pieces.
Thus it befell that one night, Alas Schemp who had been searching
and shouting for Luscignole in the Cathedral for over an hour, came
upon her at length cross-legged on the floor absorbed in darning the
shift of the Virgin Mary by the light of the first star.

Yet it would be exaggeration to say that Luscignole spent all her
time before and after school in the Cathedral; very often, more and
more often as she grew older, she went into the belfry to be among
Alas Schemp's nightingales; in their company, she even forgot the
little grey mice of the charnel-house.
III

Alas Schemp's nightingales were one of the wonders of the town.
There were forty of them in cages hanging from the walls of a room
in the tower. Silent by day, they sang with wild sweetness by night,
and their song which ran unbroken to an end, was amazing in its
crystal clarity. It became a cherished custom of the townspeople who
had lingered in grave talk over their foaming tankards to go to the
Cathedral Close—before going back to their homes where their wives
and daughters were already abed—and listen to Alas Schemp's
nightingales, who, one after the other, or two by two, filled the
night with their pure music. With their hands clasped on their
stomachs, the stout beer-drinkers stood in a silent listening
circle, nodding their heads in approval.

For the rearing-up of singing-birds was held in great honour in the
town where this story took place, and it was not only the cobbler
cross-legged in his attic, or the girls of the garrets who enjoyed
the trilling of caged birds—the most dignified citizens spent their
leisure hours breeding larks, finches and warblers; His Worship, the
Criminal Prosecutor, was as proud of having obtained the first prize
for the sweet cooing of his doves in the recent local competition as
he was of his excellent rhetoric—(they certainly had cooed
remarkably well); His Reverence, the Professor of Theology, was
justly vain of his red-breasted finches for having outsung in the
warbling contest four angry canaries who had died of the
humiliation; and the Professor of Antiquity could think of nothing
but his robins.

But as for nightingales, none could compare with those of Alas
Schemp.

The beadle was not an attractive personality. He had a puny dwarf's
body topped with a huge round head that sprouted neckless from his
shoulders as though an explosion of anger had hurled it there, and
he looked less like a man than one of those gnomes, hop-brewers or
vat-trundlers, that are painted on tavern frescoes; he had red-
rimmed slits of eyes under bushy eyebrows, and a hideous mouth—the
upper lip was snarling and retracted like a hyena's, the lower
pendulous and slobbering like a gorilla's. His body, overbalanced by
the weight of his head, swayed from side to side as he moved on feet
that pattered like a dog's paws.

Moreover, he was a confirmed and redoubtable drunkard.

Having emptied twelve glasses of Schiedam gin on top of twelve
tankards of ale, he would wantonly crash his weight on the drinkers
who were sitting opposite him, and whose indignant glances he
resented, and would foam and contort himself in epileptic furies
between the overturned tables and stools. A few extra glasses of
Schiedam gin invariably drove him to excesses. He would tear out of
the tavern like an escaping animal, and dash along the roads,
falling, picking himself up, striking the walls with his fists,
striking the doors with his forehead until a blow from some jutting-
out stone or the corner of a shutter smashed his head and tumbled
his pygmy frame unconscious into the gutter.

Then he would get up apparently sober. Nobody would have believed
him drunk. As a matter of fact, his fall had made him even worse.
The more calm he appeared, the more dangerous he was. He would walk
straight on without the slightest idea of where he was going, and
would coolly perpetrate the most appalling outrages. He saw, as it
were, with unseeing eyes. If he chanced upon a cat furtively
crossing the road towards some cellar, he would eye it askance with
a sly and subtle look, and when the wretched creature ventured out,
he would reach heavily towards it with the movement of a trap about
to spring, and with a laugh that gritted through his teeth, he would
seize it coolly and methodically and strangle it with one hand,
looking back to see that no-one was observing him. Then taking out
his pocket-knife, he would skin it with the leisurely skill of a
taxidermist, sating himself with the sight of the poor little
despoiled corpse. It was even said that one rainy night he had been
surprised on his knees cutting up a gutter-rat which he had
proceeded to eat, picking out each piece like a fastidious diner
selecting the tit-bits of a chicken, occasionally breaking off from
his hideous meal to crane his head forward into the street-lamp's
glimmer to watch and listen, just like a monkey who is afraid of
being caught, and who peers about, holding in one slender paw a
half-eaten something.

The rumours about Alas Schemp were certainly exaggerated, but it was
at all events true that he was a drunkard who grew violent in his
cups. Whatever he was, he would certainly have been treated with
contempt, and would probably have lost his post of beadle, on which
his living and that of his niece depended, if he had not been
forgiven a great deal on account of his nightingales. There was
justification for this overlooking of his faults, for the art of
making nightingales sing requires innate genius.

IV.

Nightingales are wild and timid birds.

Needless to say, I am not talking of those nightingales that are
caged as nestlings, and soon grow tame, never having known the
freedom of the woodland. Such birds will never learn to sing with
that ecstasy that makes echo itself faint with delight under the
moon. They have not been taught by all those generations of
nightingales who sang away their very hearts in a rapture of passion
on the forest boughs. They will never be anything more than
agreeable warblers like the finch and the garrulous tom-tit—they can
never be the living lyrics of the forest soaring on wings of flame.

I am talking of the nightingale taken captive in his prime, taken in
springtime from the young green woodland.

Such a bird, whose voice can evoke infinite skies and moonlit spaces
in the clamour of the town, such a bird, once caught, refuses to
sing, refuses to be tamed, refuses to live. He droops in the darkest
corner of his prison, huddled in the green cloth with which the
snarer strives to deceive him with a semblance of his lost leaves;
he does not fly into a rage of despair, does not dash his ruffled
wings against the bars, does not attempt to wound himself on the
steel edges as would a common sparrow whose over-violent grief is
soon over. The dark and mysterious forest-dweller, in whose breast
is such a divine conflict of love and pain, isolates himself in his
despair, and will not peck at the most succulent food; he stoically
refuses to live in slavery, and if some hen-bird is put in his cage,
even that very mate for whose loss he is dying in an ecstasy of
grief, he would kill her with his sharp beak rather than create an
illusion of the free forest in his prison, or, less violent in his
misery, would draw away from her, nobler than the lion, whose bird-
brother he is; for the lion resigns himself to slavery, and will
even mate behind the iron bars, but the nightingale will never beget
winged serfs.

No-one who is not adept in bird-lore (as is the writer of this
story), can imagine how much skill and cunning, how much art and
patient love are needed to make a nightingale endure captivity, and
to teach him to live and sing in his prison. Most of all, one must
love them, for only a wealth of love can prevail upon them to accept
life; it was only because he loved them so devotedly that Alas
Schemp was able to sun himself in the pride of those forty
nightingales, as silver-voiced as their woodland brothers, singing
in his tower-room.

He did love them devotedly.

The vile and wretched creature, as stunted in mind as in body, half-
crazed when he was sober, a wild beast when he was drunk, expended
all the emotion of which he was capable on his birds; his dull
intelligence thought out delicious tit-bits to pacify them when he
cleaned out their cages, refilled their drinking-cups with fresh
water, and ground up their maize-meal food for them.

And from the first far-away note, the harbinger of the song, that
note at whose sound expectant silence fills the forest, Alas Schemp
was shaken into ecstasy. He listened motionless, thrilled with that
ardour which the devout Christian feels when the sacred wafer is put
between his lips. As the notes rose and rippled like the plash of
water, trilled and rang out in a wild frenzy of music as though the
very spirit of man was succumbing to the unbearable weight of mortal
joy, he almost swooned, a light froth of foam on his lips; the.;
earthy creature became transfused with light, the' unhearing ears
were filled with music, and this blind reacher-out towards
unattainable things became like a hideous transported dwarf dragging
himself from his Niebelheim towards Siegfried's celestial bird. Not
even the sodden intoxication of his cups, not even his liquor-
begotten brutalities could dull him to the mystic joy of the Winged
Word. A few hours after one of his drink-inflamed orgies that had
shocked the tavern-drinkers, one or two of whom had narrowly escaped
being strangled by him, he might have been seen in his tower-room,
crouched on a low chair, weeping childishly because the last lovely
notes of his nightingales had just died away in the pale light of
dawn.

V

Loving them to such a pitch, Alas Schemp was devoured with jealousy.
It enraged him to think that while he listened to them at night,
other people, grouped about the Cathedral Square, were listening
also. For a long while, with the instinct of a miser who guards his
treasure-chest, he had forbidden even Luscignole to enter the room
where the forty cages swung.

But eager curiosity had drawn the little girl to visit the captives
whose song sounded so distantly through the twilight of the
Cathedral, and mingled with the shadowy rays that stole through the
windows. By dint of infinite patience, by coaxing her uncle with a
pipe, by saying to him "They're wicked to say you broke your head
open yesterday on the cobblestones when there's nothing the matter
with you," by dint of childish caresses, she at length received
permission to go among the birds.

She was now ten years old—she had forgotten the mice, she was
beginning to neglect the bronze St. Synesius, and the Virgin whose
uplifted hand had played at shuttlecock; some instinct, some hope of
being given love for love, bade her love the nightingales.

She was happy in the narrow square white-walled room where the cages
hung at regular intervals. They looked like little wooden cells with
fine steel bars, and a curtain of green silk drawn across the middle
of the room filled it with mysterious shadow. Luscignole was not
tall enough to see into the cages, even if she climbed onto a chair
or onto the table. But standing in a corner that was as dark as the
semi-darkness of their prisons, she felt the presence of the birds,
knew that they were there, and trembled at the slightest noise of a
tiny claw skipping from one twig to another, or the rustle of shaken
feathers; and when sometimes, even though it was daylight, they
ventured a quiver of sound so slight that they could scarcely hear
it themselves, a pale note presaging their rapturous night-song, she
was so happy that she laughed softly to herself.

On those nights when Alas Schemp lingered at the tavern, she rose
from her narrow bed, in her shift, barefooted on the stones, and
went as close as she could to the singers—and she shivered with
strange indescribable delight, she was almost in tears. Once she
actually sobbed because one of the birds after the wild outburst of
his song had grown silent so suddenly that she thought he must have
died. Stretching out her arms she cried: "Oh, sing again, please,
please sing again. You can't be dead, oh, sing, and tell me that you
aren't dead." And shuddering, she would have slipped on the cold 
stones if the clear notes had not at that moment rung out from the
cage, blossoming into song in the night.

But child-like in mind as in years, she was not always stirred to
these ecstasies. Sometimes she could not keep from laughter because
one of the nightingales sang over-sadly.

Soon, however, she grew less babyish. The atmosphere of the austere
Cathedral began to shroud her. She loved the nightingales because
she bore in her heart the dreaminess and loneliness of the Cathedral
as they bore in their thudding hearts the illimitable woodland
spaces.

There was even a physical likeness between her and the nightingales.

One day, when by clutching on to the iron window-bars and standing
on tiptoe on the ledge, she managed to see one of the birds standing
dreamily on one foot, aloof, and with a dull, fixed, strange, almost
terrible look in his eyes, she was shaken by surprise, so like did
the winged prisoner appear to herself.

She ran towards a looking-glass.

It was true, they were alike. Her hair was like their wild little
wings, her tiny pouting mouth was pushed forward almost like a beak,
and though her eyes were less dull and glazed than theirs, they,
too, were round, and stared steadily into space—she had never 
thought her eyes were like that when she played with the pink-eyed
mice.

She grew to think she was big sister to the nightingales, and
through this fancy, her love for them increased. She no longer went
to them simply for amusement, it was her happy task, her lovely wish
to watch over them and protect them; she imagined she was a grown-up
being in charge of all the little captive souls, and more than once,
she wondered whether she should not open the cage-doors and the
windows that the nightingales might fly forth to their free forests.
But fear of her uncle withheld her, so brutal in his cups that he
would have killed her had she given the birds their freedom. She
gave herself up to caring for them and safeguarding them, till Alas
Schemp, softened by the tenderness she showed them, instructed her
in the art of bird-lore—she was an apt pupil, and studied with a
gravity rather unimaginable in a little girl not naturally so
sedate. Wherever she was, whatever she was doing, even if she were
in the middle of a game of hide-and-seek with the cherubim, she
would break off at once if she thought any danger might be
threatening her darling birds, and she would dart towards the tower
ready to attempt every danger, and run every risk. That was how it
chanced that although she was deadly afraid of cats (perhaps on
account of her erstwhile friendship with the mice), and although a
shiver of revulsion ran through her at even a glimpse of the
treacherous creatures whose claws are always ready to strike, Alas
Schemp surprised her one evening standing rigid before the tower-
room door, wild and beside herself, brandishing an old stool at a
miserable-looking gutter-cat, a hideous animal with famished eyes
who was about to spring at her.

A little later, the thought struck her that she also should be able
to sing like the nightingales since she was so like them. Oh, why,
being their sister, could she not sing as they sang? That she could
not at present sing like them was somehow incredible, something that
could not last.

She tried to utter their lovely nocturnes.

She listened to them for hours in her uncle's absence, not simply
for the delight of listening, but to discover the secret of their
song. Pouting her lips, swelling her throat with little tremors, she
shaped unuttered notes.

Why did she not utter those notes? Was it because she feared that
her voice might be too unlike that voice which she dreamed of
possessing? Was it because it would have been unbearable if the
nightingales had grown silent, angered at the audacious imitation?
It was not until she was far away from them in the loneliness of the
Cathedral, and not even then before she had hesitated trembling,
that she at length ventured to sing a little, in an undertone, ready
to break off if she realised that her desire was unattainable. But
once she had made the attempt, she was not utterly downcast. She
could not as yet compass that wonderful first note whose sound is
like the wing-beat of an angel, whose long-drawn-out quiver fills
the night with dark enchantment, but her trilling was not too
despairingly different from theirs.

It seemed to the little girl that day by day she sang better, and
she grew at length very near to loving the sound of her own song.
One night, grown less diffident, she dared to sing to the
nightingales themselves. Standing close to them, she poured out
music from her soul's depths, and trilled with all the strength of
which she was capable; she gushed out a frenzy of falling closes,
and the birds did not grow silent, they answered her, and took up
her song. She was filled with unspeakable joy. She had really,
really mastered the music of the nightingales, and she was their
sister in all things now, even her voice was theirs.

Someone struck her a violent blow across the back.

Alas Schemp had just entered in a blind rage. What was the brat
about to imagine she would ever be able to sing like his divine
birds? Really, it was pitiful, such brazen conceit was something to
be proud of, for sure. Furiously he struck at her, and snarled with
laughter when she broke into a storm of weeping. Not that she minded
being beaten, she was used to that, but she sobbed to herself that
Alas Schemp was right, that he knew better than she, and that she
would never be able to sing, like the nightingales, never—unless a
miracle happened.

Such a miracle did happen.

VI

One day as she was going into the tower-room, she started back in
terror at the sight of Alas Schemp leaning against the wall with a
livid face, his eyes fixed in a glassy stare,

"What is it, what's the matter, Uncle?"

"Look," he said. "Look."

In his open palm lay the body of a bird. The best beloved of all the
nightingales was dead. The beadle had just come upon him as he
opened the cage to put in fresh food, lying on the sand-strewn
floor, lifeless, his feathers draggled and dull. Other nightingales
had died at other times but they had been lightly forgotten. They
could easily be replaced when springtime came. But this nightingale
could never be replaced. He was the glory and perfection of the
tower-room aviary. He was supreme and like to no other, grown old in
slavery, but keeping the kingly state of the free wild untouched,
singing like an exiled Dante, singing like a captive Tasso. His
voice rose above the rest to the wedge of night-sky between the
houses till it created an illusion of moonlit solitudes and
illimitable spaces.

The child caught her uncle's hand, she kissed the poor little body
despairingly, and her tears dripped on its wings.

Alas Schemp retreated sobbing—no doubt he was making for the tavern
to drown his grief in the wild fury of Schiedam gin.

But the little girl had made up her mind that the nightingale should
be buried with fitting obsequies. Near the stone that covered the
dust of the great Emperor, she remembered that the paving had
cracked beneath the weight of footsteps, and that it shook every
time it was trodden on.

She went down to the Cathedral, lifted up the piece of stone, and
with her fingers she made a little grave in the brittle cement.

The body of the bird lay close beside her.

She took it up, laid it in the grave, and slid back the stone. The
Emperor and the Nightingale slept side by side. She went to the
Madonna's altar, and brought back a bunch of flowers which she
strewed over the sepulchre. She went to the holy-water stoop, dipped
one of her fingers in the holy water, and sprinkled it on the
sepulchre. Then, kneeling down, she sobbed, for there was no solemn
music to celebrate the last rites; she sobbed, and so sweet, so
wild, so cadenced was her sobbing that now her voice was indeed the
voice of the nightingales. The soul of the dead nightingale sang in
the breast of Luscignole.



  BOOK TWO
I

Now they were both happy, Luscignole and Alas Schemp, she because of
her nightingale-notes, he to hear those nightingale-notes of hers.
He was in such haste to reach the tower-room to listen to her and
the birds that he scarcely gave himself time to grow drink-sodden;
he would rush up the stairs, so slightly intoxicated that he only
occasionally missed his footing. There was something magical to him
in the sound of the little girl's voice. She spun out silver chains
of sound, and uttered long-drawn-out cadences that filled him with
joy and pain. Although he was not soft-hearted by nature, Alas
Schemp could not refrain from loving the little girl who gave him
such delight, and stroking the soft strands of her tossed hair, he
grew to love her as he had loved that dead king of nightingales,
dead and buried under the stone side by side with the Great Emperor.

Others listened to the child-singer as well as he.

On summer nights after the taverns had closed, the bird-lovers
seldom failed to gather in the Cathedral Close, and their delight
was mingled with wonder, for they knew that the sweetest nightingale
was dead, and could not guess that his place had been filled by
Luscignole. They could not help thinking how amazing and perverse it
was that this contemptible creature, nothing but a beadle, repulsive
and a confirmed drunkard, should possess such birds, while
professors, judges, rich townsfolk, people of decent standing had to
content themselves with screaming finches and chattering warblers.
Their one-time admiration was clouded with envy, and as is usually
the way, jealousy gave rise to black suspicions and ugly designs.

Some time ago, there had been a rumour in the town that Alas Schemp,
in order to tame his captives to such a pitch, had had recourse to
illegal practices, perhaps, even to witchcraft. Nobody actually went
to the length of affirming that the beadle had dealings with some
Daemon whose special providence was the tempting of bird-fowlers,
but even those who did not believe in either God or the Devil were
ready with sly insinuations anent those ancient legends concerning
breeders of cormorants, sparrow-hawks and swans who had sold their
souls in exchange for the mystic secrets of their art.

The great ornithologists of Amsterdam, Rotterdam and La Haye would
have been greatly amused by such rumours. They would easily have
guessed by what means (nefarious but not supernatural) Alas Schemp
achieved his ends, and induced his birds to utter such pure and
liquid notes.

But the ignorant citizens were not sufficiently skilled or far-
seeing. When it was solemnly maintained that Alas Schemp had
dealings with the Devil they believed it. Such superstitions were
more common in the town than our enlightened minds can grasp; in
spite of the factory chimneys whose shrill whistles tore the air, in
spite of the wan factory-hands in whose breasts were the demons of
hunger and destitution, it still clings to the superstitions of the
past. The story of that dead Empress who kept beneath her tongue the
wondrous pearl brought by the serpent is still remembered there and
people still recall the legend of the basketful of sea-sand which
Satan bore on his shoulders till the insinuations of an old woman
caused him to drop his load which formed a new hill in the
countryside. Such a town still sunk in mediaeval dreams was ready to
accept the unlikely, even the incredible; the detractors of Alas
Schemp would easily have succeeded in their aim had their idea been
to drag some scandal to light that should bring down the wrath of
the Cathedral Clerics on the beadle, and thus deliver them from the
misshapen dwarf and his nightingales.

The beadle, however, continued to fare between the tavern and the
tower, alternately intoxicated with music, sleep and Schiedam gin,
paying no heed to the plots and counterplots which grew more deadly
hour by hour.

One day the aged beggar woman (who persisted, despite the rare
visitors, in standing before the brazen gate split by the satanic
claw, holding in one hand a pewter cup that served as a begging-bowl
with a copper piece chinking in it) beckoned to Luscignole and
whispered to her:

"Truly a little maid like you, so good and so saintly, always poking
about in the Cathedral too, oughtn't to go on living with a monster
who's in league with the Devil." "Who are you talking about,
please?" said Luscignole. "About Alas Schemp, the beadle."

"But he's my uncle, good mother—is it he who's in league with the
Devil?"

"Everyone in the town knows that. What I can't make out is that when
you've climbed the stairs you haven't caught sight of his tail-end
disappearing, or smelt a whiff of sulphur . . ."

The little girl burst out laughing, but the old hag went on:
"Laughing won't do you any good. What's true's true. You can ask
anyone if it isn't gospel that Alas Schemp has agreed to give his
soul to Satan before ten years are up in exchange for the secrets
that make his birds sing better in their cages than the wild birds
in the woodlands. Besides, you've only got to spy on him when he's
alone with his nightingales. You'll soon see that he doesn't treat
them as other bird-fowlers do, and as for me, I wouldn't be at all
surprised if his nightingales weren't really nightingales, but ugly
imps from the pit . . ."

Luscignole went away thoughtfully. It was certainly queer that such
lovely sounds re-echoed from the cages of Alas Schemp, it was
strange that she herself sang with the voice of the deep forests.
Perhaps it was compassed by some spell. Her small soul was haunted
by the ghosts of fear, as were the far-off pillars, the font, and
the marble tombs of the Cathedral. Though she had hidden herself at
times in the Emperor's sarcophagus, or behind the pillars of the
crypt, she could not always keep out a terrifying thought that some
white form, a phantom perhaps, might glide forth between the graves.
Her mother had often told her how, long ago, the devil had lent vast
sums to an order of poverty-stricken Carmelites who had not
sufficient funds to finish building the Cathedral—perhaps he
sometimes materialised in the holy place where, thanks to the
cunning of a monk, he had been repaid for his loan with the heart of
a she-wolf instead of a Christian soul.

Luscignole's uncle had often terrified her with his drunken furies,
when ferocious grimaces altered his whole aspect; besides, she knew
that he had been seen at night in the streets eating the raw flesh
of gutter-rats. But at the time being he frightened her far more in
a different way. She began to imagine that the hands and garments of
Alas Schemp were impregnated with a singular smell—the reek of soot
and sulphur . . .

At length, one night, she had a dream (or was it a tiny ghost with
shadowy wings that came to her?) of the nightingale she had buried
in the cleft stone at the Emperor's side.

He spoke, or rather, he sang, saying in stammered cadences—for dead
birds murmur so inaudibly—disquieting things: "That Alas Schemp
boded no good to his nightingales, that he loved them, but with an 
evil love, and that she who was so tender-hearted, would do well
never, never to be cruel to those singing captives whose sister she
was . . ." He grew silent, he faded . . .

She woke trembling, her hands pressed to her forehead, and for many
days she brooded over this dream that had come to her . . .

II

From that time forth, she began to spy on Alas Schemp.

It chanced most frequently that, having closed the tower-room door
behind him, and having seated himself on a low chair near the cages,
he paid no notice to a light sound that he took to be the movement
of a nightingale from one twig to another, or the rustle of wings.
But occasionally when the child fell clumsily against the
wainscotting, he got to his feet in a fury, as though he had been
surprised at some evil action, and hurling himself towards
Luscignole, he threatened her with his fist, or actually beat the
poor little sobbing creature. The only way in which she could avert
the battery of blows was to utter her nightingale-notes; instantly
transported, he spared the bird-child when he would unhesitatingly
have beaten the girl-child to death.

But neither threats nor blows could turn her from her purpose.
Whatever might come of it, she would follow the half-understood
council of the nightingale-ghost.

What was it that she hoped to discover? She scarcely knew, though
she was so anxious, and yet so afraid, to make the possible
discovery. Oh, suppose that one day she should suddenly chance to
see, as she peeped in at the door, the phosphorescent glow, the
ghastly red and black of some hideous shape, horned and cloven-
footed, stooping over Alas Schemp as he refilled the food-vessels,
and whispering to him with hardly-moving lips the ingredients of an
infernal potion that would madden the nightingale-souls to a frenzy
of song! Oh, suppose she should chance to see Alas Schemp, sodden
with Schiedam gin to such a pitch that he dared confront demoniac
presences, listening to the words of some kobold or hobgoblin which
held a soundless flute to its lips, and drew music from the birds by
the dumb ripples of its fingers!

Shivers shook her from head to foot at such thoughts; as though she
too were a bird, she seemed to feel a quiver of terrified feathers
over her whole body.

But she could not discover anything really untoward in the aspect of
the beadle, or in his methods of procedure; he drank abominably, as
he had always done, was more or less brutal in his manner towards
her, and only melted, with a rapturous ecstasy in his red eyes,
when, to please him, she mingled her voice with the nightingales.

It was useless to have made a spy-hole in the door with a gimlet
when, even though she remained unseen, she could discover nothing.

She began to think that the old beggar-woman was crazed, and did not
know what she was saying; and that tiny birds who sleep side by side
with Emperors do not really rise from their graves to give advice to
little girls who trill and warble, as they, living, trilled and
warbled . . .

But at last she did come to see something queer about Alas Schemp.
It was the beginning of April. Even in this grey town where mists
mingled with the factory smoke, there were fugitive glimpses of
sunlight; breezes redolent of far-off meadows blew across the sky,
and even frolicked with the lacklustre tresses of the factory-hands
whose straw hats appeared less drooping; the bindweed that climbed
towards the windows of the tower showed tiny green shoots, that were
pale promises of flowers. A swallow uttered its piping cry in the
jaws of a gargoyle—and this heralding cry of a winged creature
marked the change in Alas Schemp.

Far from sleeping the whole morning as was his invariable custom, he
now rose early. From the next room, Luscignole could hear the sound
of his feet on the bare tiles; she also rose as quickly as she
could, and peeped through the spy-hole. She saw a strange sight, not
terrifying in itself, but terrifying because of the fear that was in
her. The bird-fowler stooping down was bending wire to a semi-
circle; he joined two ends together, and tied the four ends very
tightly with another piece of wire. Next, having knotted a piece of
cord to the window-fastening, he threaded in and out about a short
spindle a shuttle of silken threads; they stretched out when he
moved his little finger—and meshes formed, a net began to grow . . .

At the same time, Luscignole saw on the table rounded steel tubes
that looked like sheaths, some fifteen or twenty inches long.

What were all these things for? She had a kind of presentiment of
what use was to be made of them, and yet she could not explain
clearly to herself . . .

Then she noticed that two or three times he shook the earthenware
jars where the flour-mites were kept, that he picked up handfuls of
bran, and stared at them intently. He grinned with delight when a
big black fly crawled up his thumb. Luscignole knew how the flour-
mites are metamorphosed, and the fly did not surprise her. But what
made Alas Schemp so gleeful? She stole away swiftly, for he was
coming towards the door.

Next morning, she was even more puzzled. When she peered through the
spy-hole, her uncle was not to be seen. She ran to the next room
where he slept; it was empty and the bed was in disorder. Alas
Schemp was not in the tower, nor was he in the Cathedral where she
sought him for over an hour. Such an infraction of his usual routine
was absolutely unprecedented.

His manner when he did return was peculiar to a degree.

Towards midday, Luscignole who was keeping watch in a corner of the
great bronze gateway, saw Alas Schemp appear breathlessly, hatless,
twigs in his hair and grass in his beard, his pockets bulging
mysteriously, his coat bulging out over his chest as though it were
concealing something; and although he could hardly be drunk at this
time of day, he looked as though he had come red-handed from some
sinister deed, his face was ghastly and contorted like that of a
murderer who has been wounded during the struggle to the death.

He went hurriedly through the postern-gate, took the winding stairs
three at a time with such haste that at every other minute he
crashed his head against the wall, pushed open the tower-room door,
and slammed it violently behind him.

A key clicked in the lock.

When Luscignole reached the landing, she found the door closed, and
when she put her eye to the spy-hole she was taken aback to see
nothing but darkness; by chance, or purposely, some cloth or curtain
obscured the daylight. All that she could make out was continual
comings and goings in the room, the sound of cages being moved. She
heard the trickling sound of water being poured out, and the little
terrified cry, of a bird who has dashed against something and hurt
itself.

She returned to the Cathedral, weary of her useless watch.

What had happened? What had her uncle been doing away from home that
morning? What was he doing now in the tower-room? She decided to be
patient. In a few hours she would know everything. After supper,
Alas Schemp would go as usual to the tavern, and she could go into
the room, the key of which he invariably, left behind.

She was doomed to be disappointed.

After the meal, when the twilight filtered wanly through the
windows, the beadle did not leave the tower; hurriedly wiping his
mouth, he went back to the aviary-room where he once more shut
himself in, and Luscignole, who had followed him, bruised her head
against the slammed door.

So she would never discover anything. She could not tell what was
going on, even though she had been urged to the revelation by the
nightingale-ghost. Instinctively she lowered her eyes to the spy-
hole, and caught a ray of evening light. The cloth or curtain must
have been shaken down by the crash of the closing door. She stared
through the narrow opening. She so longed to find out what was
happening that she was no longer afraid. She must know the truth,
however horrible that truth might be.

In the shadowy gloom, she saw Alas Schemp go from one wall to
another, and stop by the table as though he were placing something
on it.

Oh what would she do if the night grew altogether dark before that
which was about to be done was done?

But there was the sound of a match being struck; there was a glimmer
of light about Alas Schemp who stood with his back to the door, a
kind of aureole surrounding him. She supposed that he was going to
light a lamp that he had put on the table. No, he turned slightly
round, the match had gone out and his face was in shadow; it was
only a few minutes later that a light, a peculiar light, certainly
not that of a lamp, quivered on his face, his neck, his body and his
hands with a rosy reflection. Luscignole could not mistake whence it
came—charcoal was beginning to glow in the furnace in which she, the
little housewife, used to heat the irons. Why had Alas Schemp lit
the furnace? By the flame that streamed from it, she distinguished
three or four of the steel sheaths she had seen that morning lying
on the table. She could not guess for what purpose they were
intended, yet she sensed that they were tools for some horrible
design; she made out long pipe-stems without bowls, and by the side
of these lay long, shining, slender, sharp-pointed instruments
rather like knitting-needles. The growing light of the brazier threw
a sinister scarlet on these objects, and on the face of Alas Schemp
who leaned forward evilly.

At a movement he made—at that moment he looked more like a devil
than a creature of flesh and blood—the heart of Luscignole
contracted with agony.

Stretching out one of his hands, Alas Schemp poised one of the fine
needles delicately between two fingers, and holding it by one end,
he struck the other into the heart of the glowing embers.

Oh, why was he doing that?

She trembled, tried to control her trembling, fearing that she might
betray her presence by some movement of her shaken body against the
panels of the door.

She kept quite still.

Two or three times, he lifted out the needle whose point was already
red, put it back in the flame once more, and waited. He drew it out
again—now it was no longer red, it was white-hot. Then holding the
needle between the thumb and first finger of his right hand, he took
in the other one of the long white pipe-stems that had no bowl, and
thus armed—armed, yes, but against whom?—with the nail of his ring-
finger he raised the hole-pierced cover of one of the steel tubes.

Out of it appeared the small, wild, ruffled head, the round eyes of
a nightingale.

Luscignole thought she was about to die of terror. Why was that
bird, that darling bird whose sister she was, held captive there?
What was going to be done to him? She foresaw, she grasped that
something unspeakable was about to happen. She wanted to scream, yet
dared not, she could not even avert her panic-stricken gaze.

Constricted in one of the round and narrow tubes in which recently-
snared and untamed birds are kept so that they shall not break their
wings or tear out their plumage, the nightingale remained
motionless, his head held fast between his shrugged wings. Only his
eyes were alive—haggard, deep, wild, forest-sick eyes that would
never again see the dark mysterious woodland. The eyes of the
captive singers, she remembered, did not hold such black lightnings—
they would have looked dead eyes beside such eyes as those. Ah, in
those eyes the grief of exile burned; refusal of slavery and
defiance of the endless night of captivity smouldered in their
depths.

Meanwhile Alas Schemp was . . .

"No! No!" she screamed.

But her scream died unuttered in her constricted throat.

Alas Schemp had heard nothing. His face incarnadined by the fire, he
went about his task.

Very carefully and unerringly, he put the steel tube over one eye of
the nightingale. With the tender circumspection of a mother who
smoothes aside the crib hangings to kiss her baby without waking
him, he blew aside the smoke of the furnace, and now with a light
and skilful touch, he insinuated the white-hot needle through the
hole towards the eye.

She screamed, she screamed.

Perhaps she only thought she screamed, or perhaps, wholly intent on
his horrible task, the inquisitional dwarf was deaf to sound. He
calmly achieved his end, while, she, terror-stricken, in a fury of
despair, clenched her nails into the door as a bird's claws grip the
tree-bark, and stared on in sick horror.

The point reached the eye—she imagined she heard a slight crackling
sound—the feathers bristled on the proud head of the victim whose
whole body shook so violently that two or three times the heavy
steel tube shivered with the shock.

Then, as the needle and pipe-stem were thrown aside, Luscignole saw
a small round eye in which no longer shone the forest-longing, an
eye that was vacant, dead, where nevermore the star-begotten dream
would be reflected. Leisurely Alas Schemp put back the needle in the
brazier as it had grown cool. Two or three times he withdrew it from
the flame to see if it were red, to see if it were white; he waited
patiently.

The child behind the door went mad.

One day, playing in the apse, she had heard a dean say to one of the
archdeacons that the Cathedral had been threatened by the roughs of
the town; the factory-hands, men and women, misery-stricken wretches
grown weary of the apparent deafness of God, sick of the miserliness
of the rich, and the cruelty of the capitalists, had often plotted
to set fire to the Cathedral, the ancient symbol of everlasting
slavery. The half-understood, long-forgotten words of the dean
suddenly sprang into her mind. She forgot the games of hide-and-seek
she had played with the cherubim, she forgot the Madonna with the
battledore hand who had played with her and blessed her; she was
glad now that the little mice had nibbled the charnel-house bones,
and almost sorry that she had darned the shift of the Blessed
Virgin; she longed to see the Cathedral, where such horrors could
take place, crash down in flames. Had she been able, she would have
set it ablaze herself.

Now she knew why it was that Alas Schemp was hated, now she knew why
the old beggar-woman by the bronze gateway had warned her that she
was living with a creature who was in league with the devil. Oh, if
it had been no more than that! But Alas Schemp was a thousand times
viler than if he had but sold his soul in exchange for the
mysterious secrets of bird-lore. He could not even be satisfied with
the cruel delight of caging nightingales; he took them and blinded
them, enclosing them forever in solitary darkness that they might no
more be agonised by the remembrance of their native woodlands,
gilded by the sun, silvered by the moon, and that, forgetting, they
might sing more beautifully, more wildly-sweet.

Now she knew why the nightingale buried side by side with the great
Emperor had appeared to her. Poor little winged ghost who, living,
had suffered the torture that other nightingales must undergo, he
had come to beseech her to spare them the unending night that hung
beneath his seared eyelids.

And as she thought of all this, it seemed to her that being a bird-
child, a day would come when she too must suffer torment, and that a
white-hot needle would be set against her eyes until she, too, could
see no more . . .

What could she do? How could she struggle against the will of Alas
Schemp? As she hesitated in agony, the torturer skilfully inserted
the re-heated needle through the tube towards the nightingale's
remaining eye . .

This time, she uttered a cry of horror and fury that re-echoed in
the silence of the Cathedral, and stumbling down the stairs, pushing
open doors, throwing out her arms with wild gestures, she fled . . .

III

She ran through the night-silent streets. She did not know where she
was going, where she would go. She ran on and on.

For a minute she thought of taking refuge in the Cathedral, of
seeking sanctuary in the cavernous crypts, of begging protection
from the holy angels who had been her friends for so long; she
thought of praying for the safety of her nightingales from the
sacred pity that must still infuse the shift she had darned, the
shift that had once lain so softly on the sweet breast of Mary. And,
perhaps, by the granite slab that lay over the Emperor's bones, the
nightingale-ghost would arise, shrouded in a minute, wan shroud
pierced by a skeleton wing, and would whisper to her what she must
do.

But she was afraid of venturing within reach of Alas Schemp.

Wherever she might hide in the Cathedral, that face incarnadined by
the spluttering fire, that red-hot, white-hot needle-point would
find her out, nor would the dark shadows of the crypt, the
protection of the holy images avail to keep away that dreaded
approach, the touch of a hand on her shoulder, the touch of the
searer of eyes.

She ran on and on. No-one was about. The windows were blank, dead as
the eyes of blinded birds. The night's sorrow was intensified by the
scattered stars in its blue haze. Why did those stars shine when
those eyes in which they were once reflected were forever unseeing?
What could the people, asleep behind the calm walls, be dreaming of
that they did not rise, go forth in arms against the Cathedral, and
rain curses and blows on the foul executioner of the fragile
singers? O Jesu they had all been blinded, some, long months back,
others this very night. Now Luscignole knew everything. She thought
of those eyes so fixed and glazed in the depths of the cages, and in
her despair she reproached herself. Had not she herself known joy of
Alas Schemp's crime? Was it not because he was a fiend that she had
had so much delight of the bird-songs, and was it not because of
that delight that she had longed to sing as they sang? It was to his
black desecration that she owed her nightingale-voice, her
nightingale-voice of which she was so proud.

She ran on and on, throwing her arms out wildly as though to ward
off pursuit. Her tangled locks whose silver-gold was mingled with
the silver-gold of starlight shone like a pale track in the night-
dark streets. Her tresses were like the trail of a minute comet
which is seen swiftly cutting the sky in the far distance. She went
through the soundless, deserted town, through the gloomy outskirts,
seeing from far the red glare of factories and furnaces, and
magnified by her terror, they seemed to become a hundred Alas
Schemps looming gigantic before gigantic braziers, heating red-hot
irons in enormous glowing ovens to burn out the eyes of gigantic
nightingales. Her horror redoubled, she ran faster on and on towards
the unknown, towards the darkness lit by more numerous stars—for
there are more stars over the meadows than above the town from whose
watchful silhouettes they shrink affrighted. Panting, and swaying
unsteadily, she ran on and on. She climbed a slope—it was that very
hillside that had been formed of the devil's sea-sand load—felt she
could go no farther, yet still climbed on, till she slipped and fell
tumbling down the other slope, in utter exhaustion, yet ready to
struggle to her feet again if the threat of Alas Schemp and his red-
hot needles confronted her. But there was nothing to be seen—she was
on the outskirts of a wood where scattered violets gleamed in the
pale moonlight.

Utterly alone, utterly hopeless, what did the desperate little
fugitive thing do?

She sang.

Just as the wildest nightingales sometimes sing on the very day of
their capture, their first despair bordering so closely on hope that
they utter their most enchanting notes (so soon to die away in
silence, never to re-echo again till they are overcome and blinded),
so did she, the bird-child, sing, and her song was so sorrow-laden,
so ecstatically a nightingale-song that all the nightingales of the
wood awoke, and leaving the care of their nests to their dumb mates,
filled the wood with wild music.

Broken with agony and joy, she ceased at last, when they, too,
ceased. A rosy streak of dawn lit the sky as she closed her eyes in
sleep among the ferns that made her a nesting-place.

When she awoke, the wood was delicious—but she remembered it. She
remembered having come here with her mother when she was still a
baby. It was a coppice where the townsfolk picnicked on Sundays, and
they had come to gather flowers, for Luscignole's mother had tried
to earn a few additional farthings to make up for the tapers she
could not sell. And in spite of the rosy light of dawn on the
shivering grasses, in spite of the shreds of mist, like gauzy veils,
that the fairy-dancers had left behind them on the ground, in spite
of the chirping of thrushes and the faint humming of dragonflies, in
spite of the cool green light that filtered through the leaves,
Luscignole wept because she was still so near the town.

She thought that she had put herself forever beyond the reach of
Alas Schemp, but her fragile strength had taken her so short a
distance in her night of flight. What could she do now? Whither
could she go? She was filled with unspeakable terror at the thought
of the beggar-infested highways. Wherever she fled, she would be
taken. It would simply be said that, child-like, she had wanted to
play all night long in the woods—and so everything would be at an
end. She would be led back to the tower where birds were blinded. It
was daylight, and the nightingales sang no more; their silence made
her even more despairing.

Suddenly in the distance there sounded a gay little chime of bells
as if Oberon and all his train of elves were drawing near.

But it was no fantastic elf that appeared—instead, she saw a horse
hung about with bells, a very old piebald horse, lean, dusty, lame
and panting, almost at the end of its tether, and yet somehow, in
spite of everything, it had a lively air as it loomed into the
innocent gaiety of the morning.

Behind the horse, at a bend in the winding road, came a, vehicle on
wheels, a caravan, or something similar, four planks to the right,
four planks to the left, four planks for flooring, covered over
tentwise, beneath which canopy issued oaths, laughter, and a whole
jumble of domestic noises, and from whence sleepy little heads
peered out.

Luscignole stood astonished.

She was most surprised at one of the small heads—its floury face
overhung by a wig from which a tuft of tow stuck out in a comical
manner.

"Clown!" suddenly grunted a voice with the hoarse accents of the
inveterate drunkard. "Clown, tell Polyphemus to stop."

"Clown" was the floury little face with the tow wig;" Polyphemus"
was the horse. Straddling the ancient nag, "Clown" whispered in its
ear, and Polyphemus answered with a nod of his head.

The caravan stopped.

Out of it came: first of all, a very fat man in a purple robe
embroidered with golden storks—he jumped out very quickly without
touching the step; next, a very old young lady, not at all pretty,
with the paint peeling off her cheek-bones, who looked rather like
an aged dragonfly with her hectic colour and her crackling and
rumpled green gauze; next, a very lanky, supple and emaciated person
who looked like an enormous water-snake in his parti-coloured,
tightly-fitting blue and yellow; after him came three wolves, or
rather, very fierce dogs, and lastly and very leisurely, a huge
white bear with a wagging head. The bear, however, proceeded to
remove his head, and disclosing a sunburnt cheeky little face
remarked: "The best thing about this here bearskin is that it keeps
you warm at this time of day." Now out tumbled three little girls
gaily dressed in spangles. As for Clown, he went on talking to
Polyphemus. Having straddled himself across the horse's neck, he was
obliged to maintain his balance by alternately clutching first at
one ear and then the other.

The fat man in the purple robe embroidered with golden storks, who
was evidently the leader, snorted:

"What an accursed night! Nobody's worse to sleep with than
Cunégonde—she's not satisfied until her legs are half across the
waggon."

Cunégonde was the elderly dragonfly—she answered fretfully:

"You can't stretch yourself out anyhow. Japhet was nearly on top of
me."

"Oh, go on with you," said Japhet who was the White Bear," I suppose
it would have been all one to you if I'd been strangled by the Human
Serpent who's at his tricks even when he's asleep."

The Human Serpent, the lanky, supple individual in the snaky motley,
put in:

"Blame it on the dogs. They really think they are wolves, and I
suppose that it was because they thought I was a real serpent that
they bit me in the calf."

"You think too much of yourself," said the elderly dragonfly acidly.

But it was generally agreed that the bad night had been caused by
the dogs; the dogs, however, took no notice, let themselves be
scolded, and hardly growled.

"Come, let's see to our breakfast," interrupted the fat man.

"Yes, what about breakfast?"

They were unanimous on that question, except Clown (child or dwarf),
who stopped muttering into Polyphemus's left ear.

"Breakfast? What are we going to breakfast off, I should like to
know?"

"There's plenty of food" screamed the Dragonfly in a fright.

"There was plenty of food. We ate it all up in the night, me and the
kids, and the dogs."

There was an angry uproar. But Clown was exaggerating. Half a loaf
of brown bread was discovered in the wagon, besides the remains of a
stew, and a basket of ripe blackberries they had bought out of
kindness the day before from a little girl in the village. A few
minutes later, all these people, this little band of strolling
players making for the neighbouring fair, were seated before the
greensward cloth of the glade, and were greedily devouring the
fragments, amid general laughter, with no desire for better food;
the wolfish-looking dogs, squatting on the violets, gaped with
hunger, waiting for the scraps, while Polyphemus, now that the wagon
was lightened of its load, contentedly munched the flower-sprinkled
grass to which still clung the shredded mists that the fairy dancers
had left.

Hidden behind the trunk of a larch-tree, Luscignole watched these
strange beings, half-fearful, till her astonishment gradually
overcame her alarm. She guessed they must be mountebanks eating
their breakfast on the ground after a night's jolting in the
caravan, and she was sure they could not be wicked because they,
were laughing and joking. Serious-minded people might sneer at them,
but she knew that they would not put out the eyes of helpless birds.
What gave her still more confidence in them was the presence of the
three bespangled little girls, whom she thought lovely; even the
wolves did not look cruel. She grew bolder and bolder, and at
length, going right up to them, she dropped them a pretty curtsy.

"Good-morning," said Luscignole.

"Wherever have you sprung from?" cried the Clown 	in good-natured
surprise.

Being a dwarf, he thought of himself as a giant, and liked to
exercise a kind of indulgent protection.

She took courage because the dogs had not growled, and were looking
at her without anger.

"I came out of the wood," she said.

"And where did you come from before that?"

"From the Cathedral."

To the players accustomed to any and every resting-place, there
seemed nothing out-of-the-way in that, and they did not question her
further. But Japhet, the ruddy-faced urchin in the bearskin asked
her:

"What do you want, kid?"

"I want to come away with you, and be a player like you."

"That's not so simple," said the fat man in the purple, stork-
embroidered robe. "We don't need anyone, for a start. It's a sure
fact that the Human Serpent'll pass out in two or three months
unless drinking fattens him up a bit, but until he does, we don't
want anybody. Besides, you're not half long enough, and not nearly
supple enough to imitate boa-constrictors sliding between chair-
rails."

"And besides, we don't pick up brats on the road," said the
Dragonfly whose years had soured her. "The chit's a thief, for all
we know."

Clown said:

"There's no such thing as a thief. Rich folk pretend there are
thieves to save themselves from giving money to them who've never
had none. Look here, two people go to court—one man's barefooted,
the other's a millionaire. The millionaire says 'That chap there's
taken my watch.' The barefooted man gets sentenced. That's that. But
it's all wrong."

"Yes, it's all wrong," said Japhet.

"What's wrong about it?" demanded Cunégonde.

"It's wrong because if millionaires have watches, it is only because
six thousand years ago they stole them from barefoot folks."

"Stole them? Where?"

"In the Earthly Paradise."

"Rubbish!" said the Dragonfly. "But all the same, we can't carry off
children without knowing something about them . . . or later on, we
shall be accused of stealing child— . . ."

"If kids get stolen, it's the folk that let them stray on the roads
who are to blame," said Clown.

"And besides we don't even know what such children can do in the way
of work," she went on.

"That's true," said the leader. "What can you do, eh, my lovely?"

"Me?" asked Luscignole timidly.

"Yes, you, to be sure."

"I don't know," she said.

"Come, come, so you don't even know what you can do?"

"No."

"But you want to come along of us?"

"Yes."

"Look here, can you dance on the tight-rope?"

"No."

"Can you swing on the trapezes?"

"No."

"Can you ride bareback on a galloping horse?"

"No."

"Can you eat burning tow, swallow swords, or throw knives at a board
without touching anybody standing alongside?"

"Oh, no, no, no, I can't do any of those things."

"Well, then, what do you think we can do with you?"

"I don't know," said Luscignole, hanging her head.

"The best thing she can do," said the Dragonfly," is to go along
home, if she's got a home to go to. There's enough of us to feed
without picking up all the brats we meet. Bah! She isn't even
pretty."

"She must wait till she's as old as you to be pretty," said Clown
shrieking with laughter. "When she's turned fifty, she'll be pretty
all right, eh?"

But Luscignole had gone slowly away, and they finished their meal.
Then they stretched themselves drowsily on the greensward that was
no longer cloth, but coverlet. How pleasant they thought it to lie
there in the morning cool, among real trees, under real sky—eagerly
they inhaled the pure air after the sweating atmosphere of oil-lamps
and the dust of the highways. Sated with food, they sank deeper and
deeper into the soft grass—worn out, the bespangled little girls
lay, sleeping, their heads pillowed on the haunches of the dogs.

But suddenly Japhet exclaimed:

"What's that?"

"What is it?" asked the fat man in purple with a start.

"I don't know for sure," said Japhet. "It's mighty, strange, though.
Nightingales don't usually sing after daybreak, and I never heard a
nightingale sing as this one does . . listen, listen."

Even the sleepiest and weariest of them listened. For beneath the
branches echoed the loveliest song they had ever heard; from the
first note, silence itself grew expectant, and in silver cadences
the wild lost rapture of sound died away in softest closes.

"Oh, how beautifully that bird sings!" said Cunégonde, for even she
was charmed.

Luscignole came from between the trees. She drew close, and said:

"I was that bird."

"You shall come with us," said the fat man in the purple robe
embroidered with golden storks.

And they led her away. Clown, dwarf or child, whispered in the left
ear of Polyphemus: "Ah, now that we have so sweet a singer, you will
soon be eating new-mown hay from mangers of beaten silver."
Xxxxx186
IV

Probably there is no older town in the world than that to which the
mountebanks brought Luscignole for the annual fair which is held
there for two weeks in April.

Scattered over the vine-grown hillside between two crumbling ruins,
one an altar to Bacchus, the other a temple of Minerva, it straggles
down the slope with its cracked and ancient houses, its fragmentary
towers towards the wide peaceful river's placid waters. From afar,
it resembles a great herd of wild black horned rams suddenly
petrified to stone. It is not very big, yet it is too big for its
few inhabitants who, when they venture forth (which is seldom as
though they almost fear that the tottering chimneys may fall and
crush them), move so softly in the eternal twilight of the leaning
houses that they look like wandering ghosts in a ghostly city.
Everything is muted in this town. The barking of a dog is an almost-
forgotten sound, as is the cry of a child from behind the vacant
windows. Only the wind wails mournfully and vaguely between the
houses. No clock strikes the hour. Apart from the pendulum that
tick-tacks in a tall black case in the dining-room of the Hotel de
La Poste, no other clock sounds in the empty silence. But at night-
time, watchmen whom the occasional travellers hear but do not see,
watchmen who may be no more than the uneasy shades of those long
dead once more walking their accustomed way, cry the hours in an
ancient tongue, a harsh, croaking language that no-one any longer
understands.

Even by day, the town is dark. Even in the clear summer hours, it
remains withdrawn and shadowed by the immemorial sadness of the low-
hanging clouds.

But there comes a time when suddenly, as though the black, petrified
herd on the hillside had begun to frolic and gambol, the town
awakes, stirs with life, and comes out of its dreams. A hundred
clocks strike the hour, carrillons of bells peal forth, cabarets and
theatres are opened, the streets resound with footsteps, song and
laughter, while at night rockets light up the altar to Bacchus and
the Temple of Minerva, putting the terrified clouds to flight. With
languid surprise, the slow monotonous river mingles its ripple with
the sounds of idle merriment, and strains of music and the patter of
dancing feet chime with its sliding waves where once the Lorelei
sang.

This awakening is the Annual Fair.

In one respect, the Fair is world-famous, and for this reason it is
the envy of the Fairs of Leipzig, Dresden and Nizhni-Novgorod,
Srinagar and Neuilly, famous though these are.

For it is to this Fair that all the animal-tamers in the world come
to buy wild beasts. Nobody knows why it should be held here rather
than elsewhere. It has no facilities for transport which such a Fair
would seem to demand. No railway stops here, nothing comes this way
but tumbledown old coaches which have been knocked about so much
that they are beyond repair. But nevertheless, hither come from the
shining darkness of India, from the black undergrowth of the Congo
and the steaming marshes of Florida (where coralline serpents with
triple tongues seek for venom in the poisoned hearts of orchids),
wild beasts that bite and tear, and tangled coils of snakes who
lazily dream that they are still wound about their native bamboo
stems that bend beneath their soft weight.

All the beasts that arrive at the town on long flat boats, that look
like rafts, are freshly captured. It is amazing to realise that here
are lions who but a month ago were drinking from their sandy
streams, tigers who have been so short a space behind their hated
bars that they still dream of crushing them between their strong
white teeth. All these beasts, devourers of raw flesh, who have only
occasionally, tasted human blood, the monkeys (for there are stupid,
chattering monkeys among the ferocious crew) and the parrots who
have not yet troubled to learn the speech of man, fill the night
with clamour, with howls and long-drawn-out roars that echo and re-
echo.

There is something rather terrible about this Fair, all this
distracted battering at iron bars, all these smoking jaws with the
licking pink tongues—it seems as though it is the longing and hunger
for jungle and desert, the fury of desecrated forests that burns in
the bloodshot eyes of the wild creatures that are being put up for
sale. But all this goes unheeded, and mountebanks take advantage of
the Fair to which people flock from all directions.

That April when Luscignole had been taken by the strolling players,
the Fair was especially brilliant. The distractions it offered were
remembered and spoken of with wonder many years later. There were
circuses whose wide canvases bellied in the wind, where might be
seen stalwart chargers, with satin saddles trimmed with silver and
gold, who caracoled beneath the feet of star-sprinkled, gauze-clad
bare-back riders; there was a giant who was so enormous that when
his incredibly long-legged trousers were hung from a post they made
a huge double shadow that reached from one side of the road to
another, right up to the top-floor of a very tall house; there was a
dwarf who was so tiny that his minute dwelling-place of painted wood
with twenty multi-coloured windows (through which he would
occasionally put his head, or peer through the skylight) would not
have been large enough for a family of squirrels; a fanfare of
trumpets announced the Wonderful Fat Lady whose leg in a pink cotton
stocking was made to quiver and display her prodigious calf; monkeys
and dogs performed a play in which a baboon was condemned to death
for being a refractory recruit, and who, as he fell before the
firing-squad, held in his paw a half-nibbled lump of sugar; jugglers
with agile fingers darted grapes from one cup to another till they
appeared and disappeared as though they were being patted by a cat's
paw; a tight-rope dancer lightly balanced on the wire, teased a
swinging macaw with the point of her slipper amid a blare of
trombones; Wild Men devoured live rabbits, and Wild Women performed
brazen danses du ventre; Wrestlers threw challenging gauntlets to
blue-smocked butcher-lads; and crazy music burst from the three
dance-tents which exhaled odours of breath and perspiration. The
shooting-galleries cracked sharply, the swings swayed wildly or died
down in slowing semi-circles, while by night, the laughter of
hyenas, the howling of jackals, the miaow-ling of panthers and the
roaring of lions upright before the bars of their cages rose on the
air thick with the reek of oil-cressets and the sulphurous fumes of
fireworks.

But no sooner had the tent—four stakes dug into the ground and a
strip of grey canvas been erected, where the Fat Man in purple with
golden storks was exhibiting the elderly Dragonfly, Japhet, the
Bear-Man, the Clown, child or dwarf (an unrivalled merrymaker) and
the three bespangled little girls riding on the wolf-dogs; no sooner
had it been thrown open to the public than the takings of the other
side-shows began to fall away—even menagerie-owners who had come to
buy orang-outans, elephants, or kingly tigers left the auction for
the little tent which was full to overflowing night and day.

The centre of all this attraction was—Luscignole.

For never had such a singer as she been heard.

There had been singers from distant countries, singers from America
and Spain in theatres and café-chantants, some of whom had
accompanied themselves on the xylophone, others of whom had warbled
to the cooing of flutes; there had come girls in white dresses who
gave a fair imitation of bird-notes by swelling out one cheek, and
putting a finger on one nostril. But even with their eyes shut, the
crowd knew that here was not one of those counterfeits who make use
of tiny whistles of gold or silver hidden between teeth and lip, or
who whistle through a pierced apricot-stone riddled neatly through.

Luscignole was really a nightingale. Even the dullest and most
insensitive thrilled with delicious sadness at the sound of her
voice. They almost thought she must have a bird concealed beneath
the hem of her gown—for how could they know that she was possessed
by the soul of that nightingale who slept in the Cathedral side by
side with the great Emperor?

So great was her success that the proprietor of another travelling-
show, whose booth and seats were almost as elegantly furnished as
those of a real theatre, offered large sums of money to secure
Luscignole for his troupe.

"5000 florins!"

"Are you trying to make game of me?" asked the fat man in purple
with the golden storks.

"6000."

"Pooh!"

"Bah!"

8000.

"Pish!"

"Well, what the devil do you want, then?"

"I want—I want to keep Luscignole."

Nevertheless, as life grew unbearable in the caravan because of the
Dragonfly's furies of jealousy, and as Japhet the Bear, the Human
Serpent and Clown were united in anger at their common humiliation;
as even the three little girls and the dogs growling with spite all
vented their ill-nature on Luscignole, the leader of the troupe
became less obdurate, and finally consented to part with his star
for 10,000 florins, quite a considerable little sum. So Luscignole
was told that after the Fair she would have to go with the
proprietor of the rival show. Go away? At first the thought saddened
her because she had grown accustomed at that hour of the morning
when she was not singing to visit the wild beasts in their cages.

Fragile and delicate as she was, she was strangely drawn to the huge
creatures; there was a queer kind of friendship (that spirit of
kinship that links all wild creatures) between the nightingale-child
and the caged beasts. When there was no-one about, she sang for love
of them, and no longer muttering, they lay down, their heads between
their paws, and stared at her with eyes that held fathomless dreams
of deserts and night-loneliness.

But she realised that in any case after the Fair she would have had
to bid farewell to the animals, scattered and sold, and it mattered
to her little what master she followed. She was even glad of the
change since it would take her still further from Alas Schemp; she
would be happy as long as they let her sing, and as long as she was
always going farther and yet farther from the fiend who burned out
the eyes of birds.

And soon fame, true fame, came to her.

After she had delighted the villagers and the humble townsfolk, she
captivated the big thriving cities where dwell dukes and princes.
Certain of success, the proprietor of the travelling-show had
ventured among genuine lovers of music. The relative grandeur of his
tent had become ostentatious. A famous painter had painted gold-
framed canvases that represented a hundred humiliated nightingales
falling defeated from their branches at Luscignole's feet, while
further on, green, yellow and scarlet-plumed ambassadors, some of
whom resembled gay macaws, and others birds of paradise, were
depicted bowing down before the little girl, for they had come to
ask her hand in marriage with the King of Birdland, the Lyre Bird,
whose portrait was borne by four blackbirds with tilted beaks
looking like four little negro pages, Early in the morning, heralds
on horseback, marvellously bedizened, sounded a fanfare of trumpets
to announce the next performance, and to proclaim the wonder of
Luscignole. In the evenings, the crowd, which consisted, not of poor
folk, but of rich and stately ladies and gentlemen, trampled on
Persian carpets between hangings of ruby velvet. The walls glittered
with satin, gold and sparkling spangles which even outshone the
shimmer of precious stones; the ceiling was a silken sky starred
with diamond rays, and the seats of the boxes, stalls, and even the
pit were richly brocaded.

But what was to be seen on the stage? The curtain went up on a leafy
glade, and disclosed Luscignole standing there quite alone; as soon
as the audience caught sight of her, they were filled with
pleasurable anticipation.

The slender little thing was decked out in a feathered dress—her
smooth locks were the wings of a nightingale, and had it been less
coralline, her pouted mouth would have been a nightingale's beak;
every movement she made was like the first faltering attempt at
flight.

When she began to sing, everyone fell silent.

Her voice had grown in beauty since she had left the Cathedral. She
had over-stepped the limits of the nightingales who sing away their
hearts in the mystic forests. At first she began to chirp very
softly like a newly-hatched baby bird in its nest—it was scarcely
audible, the pale promise of what was to follow. It was more like
the gentle touch of leaf on leaf than the voice of a fledgling. But
soon the notes grew clearer, like those of a young nightingale who
ventures timidly from bough to bough, but whose nest is still a
cradle. Listening to the song of the parent-bird who trills sad
cadences on the branch, he tries to imitate the long ripples and
shakes and raptures, but he only succeeds in chattering falteringly
like the blackcaps. He has not yet come to full maturity, he must
wait till Autumn, when he will fly over the sea to distant lands and
bring back, when springtime comes, the luminous darkness of far-away
skies, the echoing silence of ruined temples, and all the unknown
secrets of virgin forests . . . Then at last, singing by the side of
the brooding hen-bird, his song is uplifted and semi-divine. And
Luscignole became this ethereal voice; from her tiny parted mouth,
as she fluttered her arms just as the nightingale flutters his
wings, issued long-drawn-out, wildly-sweet notes in which all light
and darkness intermingled, till at length she swayed and drooped as
if her very life were ebbing from her . . . Sometimes the body of a
nightingale slain by the ecstasy of his own song is found in the
woods; it seemed that so must Luscignole's heart fail beneath the
rapturous burden of her singing; her eyes grew wide and glazed, she
struggled for breath . . .

But after the last sobbing cadence, she suddenly smiled, and the
audience in a fever of enthusiasm clapped and shouted and pelted her
with flowers.

Her fame grew until it spread to the court of Germany. One gala day
when the opening of a World Exhibition was being celebrated at the
Palace, the Queen Empress summoned Luscignole in company with
distinguished singers from Paris and Munich. It was an overwhelming
honour for the little girl, who, after all, was only a strolling-
player. The strange thing was that hardly any thanks beyond those
courtesy demanded were given to Mallinger, Niemann, Madame Krauss,
or even to Shnorr, the inimitable Tristan—all the praise was for
Luscignole. When she uttered her nightingale-notes, the song of
Tristan to the sun-cry of awaking Brunhilde was forgotten; the
stormy wave of applause was for the Bird-Child alone.

Next day, the Empress Mother sent Luscignole a cedarwood casket
filled with so many dolls and puppets that twenty toyshops might
have been stocked with them; besides these, it contained an army of
leaden soldiers made in Nuremberg, for this very Christian Empress
was also somewhat of an Amazon. The Grand Duke of Weimar sent an
ambassador to the little girl, who, saluting her as one salutes
royalty, presented her with the most delicious sweetmeats that could
be made; they were contained in twenty different bonbonnières, the
least precious of which was a marvel of carved tortoiseshell and
embossed gold. A few days later, the Princess of Wales on her return
to England sent Luscignole a silver-gilt box full of grapes that had
ripened in the royal conservatories. A great many more presents were
showered down on her, playthings, sweets, necklaces, bracelets and
rings, for the courtiers followed the example of their superiors
towards the little girl who had uttered her nightingale-song in the
Cathedral, and in oil-lit booths.

Thus honoured, was she happy? Yes, she was happy. It was so amazing
a turn of fortune's wheel for such an obscure little thing whose
mother had hired out chairs and sold tapers to eke out a living.
Besides, it was pleasant to be praised, it was pleasant to play with
gilded dolls, and eat delicious sweets, it was pleasant to deck
herself out with trinkets when she had earned these delights, earned
them herself with her singing.

Nevertheless she was not completely happy.

She was such a little girl that she was rather overawed by all these
people, by the applause of the kings and queens who praised her. She
remembered the silent Cathedral, the sarcophagus of Augustus where
she had hidden from the cherubim of the bas-reliefs, she remembered
the games of shuttlecock with the Virgin whose uplifted hand blessed
her play, she remembered all her childhood in the friendliness of
the calm stillness, and remembering, she was very often shy among so
much admiration and enthusiasm—she could almost have regretted those
nights when she sang for Alas Schemp in the aviary-room had she not
thought of that hideous white-hot needle spearing through the pale
pipe-stem towards the eyes of the nightingale.

Half bird that she was, she was restless in theatres and reception-
rooms, ill-at-ease within constricting walls. She should be living
in free forests where the free wind sighs among the boughs. She
ought never to have begged the players to take her with them; she
could have escaped Alas Schemp by her own endeavours, and growing
used to drinking only clear water from the pools, and eating the
golden flies or flying ants, she would have become a real
nightingale!

And now a strange desire was born in her—she longed to live in a
cage.

How strange was her desire, since she was sister to those wild
winged birds, strange, and yet natural, for in her breast she bore
the soul of a bird who had long grown resigned to captivity. At
night, before sleep overtook her, as she lay wearied out with the
acclama tions of the town and the plaudits of the court, the thought
of a green shade where she might be both free and captive haunted
her persistently.

She longed to live in a cage that swung from a bough.

Yet in a sense her fame amused her. She was a bird, but she was a
little girl, too, and little girls do not always dislike admiration.
She promised of her own accord to go to Petrograd the following
spring, for the Tsar had told Prince Fedro Schemyl that he wished
for her presence; but what delighted her most of all was that a 
young prince, the King of Thuringia, held in great renown at that
time because of his love for music, had expressed a longing to hear
her.

V

Although he hardly ever concerned himself with matters of state, and
at those hours when he should have been closeted with his ministers,
he was scattering crumbs to the swans floating on the lake in the
residency garden; although he never troubled himself in the
slightest as to his people's welfare, being only occasionally
disturbed by waking dreams—for he rarely slept—of famines that laid
waste the countryside and filled the streets with starving citizens,
no king was ever so beloved. Yet for the momentary pleasure of
building a new palace, or to obtain a proper setting for one of Hans
Hammer's operas, he would calmly have robbed the public treasury of
sums intended for the fortification of towns and the upkeep of the
army; his brutality to his retinue was well-known, as was his
savagery to his friends and his ingratitude to his parents. He never
pardoned the slightest lack of respect, and he was so cruel that
with his own hands he would flay living mice to feed his sparrow-
hawks. And yet no king was ever more beloved.

It was because of his beauty. In the silver panoply he wore when he
reviewed his regiment, mounted on a white horse whose mane was
crinkled like flakes of snow, he was as beautiful as some young Duke
Theseus in an ideal Athens.

There is one infallible instinct in the heart of the people;
obscurely they believe that beauty is the supreme justification for
all weakness and all sin.

There was another reason that made all the women of Thuringia adore
Frederick; the most handsome of men, a power among the powers, no
princess or archduchess would have refused to be the bride of such a
King; following the true fairy-tale tradition, ambassadors with
magnificent retinues arrived at Nunnenberg carrying golden caskets
in which were portraits of young princesses; but instead of waiting
on his throne to receive these embassies, he fled to the mountains
where his old foster-mother dwelt, and shared her brown bread dipped
in milk. He fell in love with no-one, he had never had so much as a
passing tenderness for one of the maids-of-honour, or an idle fancy
for one of those lovely ladies that the devil sends to kings that
their painted mouths may bring about the downfall of nations and the
despair of peoples. No love had ever touched him. But never having
loved, not being in love at the moment, he was ripe and ready for
love. Every woman in the kingdom hoped that one day she might be the
chosen bride, the elected mistress, and if it were likely—thus ran
the thoughts of the maids-of-honour—that one day he should be
attracted by some eligible heiress, it was possible—thus ran the
thoughts of the marriageable young misses—that wandering incognito
through the streets of his capital as was his wont, he might fall in
love with some young person busily feather-stitching at her
casement, and it was not improbable—thus ran the thoughts of the
shepherdesses and goose-girls—that the following Spring, when he
paid a visit to his foster-mother on the mountain, he might grow
enamoured of some wild, uncouth country lass, and bear her off to
his palace in Nunnenberg to be queen or favourite!

So all these impressionable young women turned tenderly and
distractedly towards the King, just as Clytie, of old, turned
towards ardent Apollo.

One day, they were filled with despair. A whisper was abroad that
during his stay in the capital of a far country, Frederick had lost
his heart to the Empress; what added weight to this rumour was the
fact that on his return he had caused a shrine of pink marble to be
set up in one of his gardens, and lingered there in prayer for two
hours every night. To what angel or saint was this shrine dedicated?
It was dedicated neither to angel nor saint. On the embroidered
altar-cloth between the golden chalices and the candlesticks from
which tapers branched like starry flowers, there lay a crystal
casket; in it was a half-opened white rose kept fresh by some
strange miracle of art or science, the embalmed spirit of a flower,
the very rose that the Empress of that far country had one day given
him from the breast of her gown.

So the King was evidently in love and would nevermore have eyes for
his faithful subjects.

But after a few months, the lover, grown careless, came no more to
pray at the shrine; the tapers were no longer lighted, the chalices
grew tarnished; ivy overhung the wan marble, and weeds spread their
tangled tendrils in such barricading greenery across the door that
it could no longer open. Neglected in its dusty sarcophagus the
mummy-flower faded and withered. The court ladies rejoiced with hope
renewed, the young maidens and the peasant-girls took fresh heart.
The King dreamed on, untouched as yet, in the splendour of his
palace, and the fairyland of the mountains.

On the day that Luscignole was sent for, she was led without delay
into a very strange garden.

"Mademoiselle," said a young boy in armour who was one of the King's
squires," you cannot see the King, but he sees you, and can hear
you. Sing to him, if you please."

With these words, he withdrew.

Dumbfounded, Luscignole gazed about her.

The garden seemed endless with wide vistas of sky between the leafy
aisles—yet she could hardly breathe there, no wind stirred. She
seemed by magic to have become the one living figure in a painted
landscape, and living, she felt herself in the power of inanimate
things—the height, the spaciousness, constricted her within prison-
walls. Luscignole, bird-child that she was, poising delicately on a
swaying bough, did not consciously know this, but instinctively she
sensed it, and in this vast garden which was yet like an airless
chamber, she panted a little . . .

The very light was not like daylight. Above the treetops, above the
magnolias and cedars, she saw a fiery globe of light that was the
sun; yet its rays were unfamiliar to her and shone strangely.

She began to be afraid. Backing away, she stumbled from the
branches, thought she must fall, balanced herself with thrown-out
arms, and caught at unyielding boughs. The leaves that her fingers
encountered did not seem to be leaves. She turned and touched them
again, and looking more closely saw that they were cut out of
shimmering green silk . . . A song sounded suddenly. She raised her
head and saw a reed-warbler hopping from twig to twig and trilling
passionately. She grew reassured,—it was like meeting a friend in an
alien country—and she ran towards the warbler as she would have run
towards a comrade . . . but she stopped. The flying trilling
creature was not a living feathered bird, it was a mechanical
contrivance such as toy-merchants display on their shelves, and that
throb with song only when a key sets the springs in motion. When
Luscignole drew near, the false warbler disappeared behind a tall
flower that collapsed suddenly with the click of a mousetrap.

Luscignole was utterly distracted. She had only one thought—escape.
She darted down one of the long alleys that were like leafy
archways. But she did not go far, for suddenly she struck her head
against a blue-painted wall which was the sky-vista . . .

She broke into laughter. Now she understood. She had been taken into
a garden that was like one of those painted scenes before which she
had been wont to sing. She would show them that she had not long
been deceived. Had she not been told that the King could both see
and hear her? He must be hidden, she thought, behind some flowery
screen, as people are hidden in the depths of theatre-boxes. She
must be worthy of her laurels. She wound her arm about a tree-trunk,
slid her feet on the sand that was not sand but a fine powder of
stones, and smoothing down her locks that were like nightingale
wings, the bird-child began to sing. She sang most sweetly, not with
the dream-filled infinite wonder of the forest-singers, but with all
her conscious art to please that unseen listener who loved music.
But she could not be artificial for long, and now she became the
lyric spirit of youth, the voice of woodland and cage, she sang for
joy, and her voice sounded ever fresh and strange in her own ears.

As her notes faded out in clear rapture and delight, a voice that
both entreated and commanded said close at her ear:

"Oh, sing again, sing again."

It must be the King who was speaking, the fairy-tale King, the
Prince Charming hidden behind the trickery of some tree, or behind
some corner of the sky that was nothing but a bluish mirror.

She sang again, more sweetly, more rapturously still, until breath
failed her, breath and strength and heart to sing more—in exquisite
sadness, she ceased.

But the voice of the invisible King said more urgently, more
beseechingly:

"Oh, sing again, sing again."

She stood up, overcoming her weakness, and sang again, more
sorrowfully, more mystically till her voice poured out a very
passion of music and she fell exhausted on the grass that was made
of mingled threads of green and gold.

She lay there a long while, exalted and agonised by the outpouring
of her whole being.

A word broke the sad enchantment which must presently be forgotten
with its too-great weight of joy.

"Mademoiselle."

She struggled to her feet, shook the feathers of her mimic plumage
with a birdlike movement, brushed her eyes like a child awaking from
sleep, and turning round, saw, clad in the dazzling white of silver
and snow, a being more handsome than any Prince Charming of
fairyland.

In the first moment of delight, she did not think it could be the
King, even had she remembered that there are kings on earth; she
thought she had wakened in some world where angels love to listen to
nightingales and thank them for their songs. She only knew that she
was happy beyond belief at the sight of that shining figure that had
appeared to her.

She said nothing, she only stared in a kind of enchanted awe. She
saw eyes that were coloured like the sky-vistas in which a thousand
stars had concentrated their light, she saw a necklace of glittering
stars that dazzled her. She stretched out her arms with an
involuntary gesture as though joy had overcome her.

The voice repeated:

"Mademoiselle."

"Sir," she stammered, breaking the spell.

"Sire," he corrected her.

She hung her head. It was the King. She was still enthralled, but a
little of the glamour faded—he was the king whom she had hoped had
been more than a King.

Calmly Frederick said:

"They were right. You sing exquisitely."

She curtsied low.

"Do you like following the strolling-players from town to town?"

"No, Sire."

"Would you like to stay here near me, and to sing for me alone?"

"Oh, how happy I should be!" she said, and ventured to raise her
head. They looked at each other. In each other's eyes, the soul of
each was mirrored, and both were equally pure, equally sad, equally
childlike, and equally cruel—for even in nightingales there is a
strain of cruelty. The bird-child and the king could not turn away
their eyes from one another, as though they saw themselves reflected
each in each.

At length with a start he said:

"Stay here in this garden till I send for you."

"Yes, Sire," she said, and lifting and lowering a canopy of roses,
he disappeared from sight. He disappeared, just as the mechanical
bird had disappeared behind the flower that had collapsed with the
click of a mouse-trap.

When he was gone, her ecstasy faded. She seated herself in the
silken grass beside a cedar-tree, and, troubled, she wondered:

"What is going to happen to me? Shall I be a princess, or will the
King make me sing in Hans Hammer's operas of which he speaks so
much?"

She waited.

The young squire reappeared, and bowing with deep respect, he said:
"Mademoiselle, I pray you to follow me."

She nodded her head, and he led the way, pushing aside the boughs of
the strange garden. Now she found herself in a room with gilded
columns that upheld a ceiling painted with mythological scenes. At a
sign from her guide, she passed between a double line of bedizened
courtiers out of the door, climbed a narrow stair that wound upward
like the stairs of the Cathedral, and entered another vast room full
of antique furnishings such as she had never seen; the squire having
withdrawn, three old dames with white hair beneath long black veils,
whose sombre trailing garments made them look like cross-grained
sisters of some very severe and ancient nunnery, rose from the
ancient chairs, and bowing three times said in one breath:

"Mademoiselle, this will be your apartment until such time as the
dwelling to which his Majesty destines you has been prepared."

VI

She grew weary in the severe apartment.

When night fell, the three ancient dames laid her to sleep in a
great ebony four-poster bed with golden hangings into which were
woven pictures of kings at the head of their red-coated musketeers,
kings receiving kneeling ambassadors, and further on, by the banks
of a river whose waters were being swum by a regiment, there was a
king on horseback—a very handsome king, too, no doubt, though he was
pompous and wore such a huge curled wig that it looked as though it
were made of sun-rays that had been put in curlers overnight.
Luscignole contrasted him in her mind with the young Frederick in
his silver-white, snow-white, lily-white tunic, with his eyes
heavenly-blue beneath his yellow fringe.

In the mornings, the ancient dames—for she saw no-one else—like
melancholy guardian-sisters of a child novice, brought her frothing
chocolate and twenty different dainties, but sweet tooth though she
was, she tasted them indifferently with sighs of weariness that
would have melted a heart of stone—but the ancient dames never
unbent.

The days passed heavily. For Luscignole was not allowed to go to the
windows curtained with heavy brocades through which the daylight
scarcely shone, and through which the clamour of the city never made
itself heard.

Her one distraction was to go into a long narrow gallery lit from
the ceiling that adjoined her room, where she could gaze at the
pictured women that hung on the walls. Some had doll-faces, the pink
and white of powder and cosmetics over-accented by the paint; some
had pale regal faces beneath black coronals of hair, while there
were others clad in strange finery, women of all lands, Russians
with pearly breasts, and white-bosomed Circassians insolently
flaunting their white flesh above, their splendid silken draperies;
there were negresses; whose breasts, to use the brutal mot juste of
Baudelaire, were like the two round halves of a cannon-ball; there
were wantons, their mouths scarlet from recent kisses,, who had
danced at the Porcherons, and supped at La Rapée; there were
favourites of the last century, powdered and perfumed and exquisite,
holding a rose, between two fingers; and there were Queens of long
ago, Doves from Greece, or Serpents from the Nile, the first flax-
fair, the last dark as burnt gold.

For a few hours, Luscignole amused herself with these portraits.
There were forty of them, and she elicited from the three old nuns
that they were a collection of the world's most fair women made by
Frederick I, the poet-king, that wild and extravagant lover who was
grandfather of the present Frederick.

But she soon grew weary—beautiful though they were, and intriguing
as were their varied draperies—having no other company than these,
and had she not been upheld by the hope of the dwelling which was
being made ready for her, she would have pined in the solitary
apartment.

How long, how long this destiny of hers was delayed. Had the King
forgotten her? Had some other nightingale-child who sang better than
she been brought to him? She questioned her guardians vainly, for
they either replied: "Wait!" or: "His Majesty will make all ready in
his own time." But she seemed to have been waiting for uncounted
time, and one night as they were undressing her beside the great
four-posted ebony bed, she made up her mind that if nothing happened
on the morrow, she would no longer endure it, she would tell them
that she could stay no longer, that she must go to the Fairs with
the strolling players, or escape to the forests full of bird-songs.

Now that night after the three old dames had left her, having first
offered her in a crystal cup encrusted with rubies a rosy wine that
would, they assured her, induce sound slumber, she lay utterly
relaxed, her eyes so heavily weighed down that she could not even
think. . soon she slept deeply . . .

But asleep as she was, she still had a glimmering of consciousness.
Things were happening about her, real or unreal, that she vaguely
distinguished through mists of sleep.


 BOOK THREE
I

She was in a cage—in a cage in the heart of the forest.

All about her breathed the wild charm of the sun-drenched woodland,
from all sides rose the fresh scent of grass, the chirping of
nestlings, and the subdued murmurings of distant streams. At last
she was surrounded by the cool whispering trees and the unbroken
solitude.

The cage was very big. Through the bars which were made of young
bark-stripped ash-trees, the fragrance and the incense of the
forest-world was wafted in to her, and with her heart full of joy,
Luscignole understood that by some magic her double dream had come
true: she was a caged nightingale, and yet a nightingale of the
woodland.

Several days slipped by. As she grew accustomed to it, the solitude
seemed even sweeter; sweeter still were the sun-rays and the clear
moonlight. Yet she did not sing; she did not reply to the
nightingales that complained at night in the mysterious darkness,
she did not even answer the nightingale that sang on a bough of her
own oak-tree.

Where did she sleep? She slept on the wide bough that had been
hollowed out like a raft; animal pelts had been strewed there to
keep her from cold.

What did she eat? She ate dainties that were put there to tempt a
little girl while she slept, dainties that would also have pleased a
hungry little bird.

Every morning when she opened her eyes, she could see that the cage
had been tidied, the bars had been dusted, and fresh water had been
poured into the porcelain cups. She was being thought of, she was
being cherished—she was happy because they treated her like a newly-
captive nightingale.

How did she spend the hours? Sitting on one of the crossbars that
was deepest in shadow, she watched the greenflies buzz past, amused
herself with the frolics of the flying ants, pricked up her ears
when the leaves rustled, and trembled when she heard the tread of a
woodcutter in the glade; sometimes she stayed in a corner of her
beloved cage, balancing on one foot, with her feathers ruffled about
her, and stared fixedly before her with round eyes wide-open—she
could not imagine anyone being happier than she.

But what of the King?

The third day after her captivity in the delicious solitude, at that
hour of night when stars spear through the treetops like darts from
a quivering silver bow, she heard the steps of someone drawing near,
and guessing that it was the King, she, the King's Nightingale,
began to sing.

Never had she sung so sweetly. For now all the forest music, the
rhythm of moonbeams gliding from bough to bough, the harmonies of
the infinite silence were in her voice. The mysterious soul of night
and the wildwood sounded in her liquid notes, and the nightingales
themselves fell silent, listening . . .

Then she in her turn grew silent, for a quivering of leaves and a
crackling of twigs told her that the King was going away. It was for
him alone that she sang.

It was for him alone that she sang every night when a sound of
footsteps presaged his coming—she sang until the undergrowth rustled
beneath his retreating steps. How sweet it seemed to her to sing to
such a worshipper of music. She was even glad that he remained
invisible, for unconsciously she preferred to remember him as he had
first appeared to her than to see him again. Luscignole in her
forest would not have changed destinies with the happiest person on
earth.

But one night, asleep on the hollowed bough, she started into sudden
wakefulness. Why? She could not have said. Her plumage ruffled up
with fear, and she felt the instinctive terror of a bird who senses
the sparrowhawk's downward destructive swoop though unable to see
his planing wings.

Branches rustled and swayed as though they were being pushed roughly
aside. Was the King coming back? He did not tread so heavily, with
such a furtive step—the sounds that drew nearer and nearer to
Luscignole, who listened, dismayed and distracted, were like the
movement of some evil-doer, man or beast, cautious and sly. Who
could be coming? Was it someone who intended to work her ill?
Instinctively she felt that never had she been in more deadly
danger. She dared not look between the bars of her cage to see who
might be drawing near. There was the thud of a fall as though the
comer had missed his footing and stumbled on the grass. Then nothing
more. The only sound that broke the silence was the plaint of the
nightingale who sang in Luscignole's oak. And for this bird, her
neighbour (they had grown to know and love each other through
interchange of song), she was as fearful as for herself. For she
knew that the dumb, invisible enemy was still there—he was watching
motionless, waiting ambushed, no doubt for daybreak, to carry out
some evil design. The wind seemed to her laden with a heavy menace.

Sick with fear she could not close her eyes. The nightingale in the
tree was shaken with the same dread, for though he had stopped
singing, he was not asleep. Luscignole distinctly heard him hopping
restlessly from twig to twig like a bird threatened by the forked
tongue of a coiled snake.

Hours trickled away. There was a quiver of rosy light on the smooth
leaves, and gradually the first glow of dawn shivered over the
forest. Mists hung in the windless air, rising from the grassy
hollows where the transient silver of streams flashed, and from the
dewy glade—the forest was still in shadow, the trunks of the oaks
and beeches were like dark columns, and with its leafy canopy, it
was like a great Cathedral dimmed by a blue haze of incense.

As the mists grew insubstantial, and light transfused the gloom,
Luscignole took courage, and looked down to see if she could
distinguish in the underbrush the shape whose threatening
watchfulness she knew. She tried to persuade herself that it was
only some harmless animal who had been prowling about in the night,
and from whom there was nothing to fear. But climbing from the
bough, and pressing her face close to the bars of the cage, she saw
suddenly through the now gauzy and diaphanous mist a dark form, the
body of a man lying face downward in the grass at the foot of the
tree.

For a long while he lay inert. But slowly he raised an arm, and with
long hairy fingers began to pull out tufts of grass—he uprooted a
whole patch, and left a square of brown wet earth.

Luscignole lifted her head—she had heard a rustle of wings. The
nightingale in her tree was stirring restlessly, watching and
wondering, and she saw that he twisted his head among the leaves,
and gazed obliquely at the man. She trembled. She knew how curious
nightingales are, and, skilled in bird-lore, she knew also how
fowlers take advantage of this very curiosity to decoy them into
traps. The unknown watcher by night must be an expert bird-snarer,
and no doubt he was now making ready an ambush into which the
nightingale of the oak would fall.

She longed to make some stir, and terrify the bird into flight. But
he had grown accustomed to the movements she made in her cage, was
used to her little skipping steps and to her laughter, and whatever
she might do would have no effect on him. She grew more and more
uneasy. The noise of retreating footsteps among the twigs and ferns
redoubled her alarm.

She had not been mistaken. The man was no longer there; but pegged
out on the newly-turned square of earth was a wide-spread net and a
needle on whose point a baited worm wriggled and twisted.

Nightingales are as greedy as they are curious. If the bird who was
watching caught sight of the tempting morsel, he would fly down from
the tree, and seize the worm in his beak—and the net would fall on
him, he would flutter his wings in vain in its meshes as the hunter
approached from his hiding-place behind some tree-trunk to snatch
his prisoner.

At this very moment, the nightingale flew from the tree, hopping
from twig to twig with hesitating little skips, his head alert as
though he were about to spread his wings—but he did not take flight,
he went closer and closer to danger. Oh, now he was on the grass,
going nearer and ever nearer—he preened himself, and still seemed
half-inclined to spread his wings, but at last, uneasy and yet
determined, suspicious, and yet starving, he was so close to the net
that one movement of his craned-out beak would have been enough to
make the net fall.

No words could tell Luscignole's terror and pity for the bird that
was about to doom itself to captivity; to captivity and to another
Alas Schemp who would burn out its eyes that it might sing more
sweetly . . .

An idea came to her. She began to sing, but interwoven in her song
was the faint warning cry known to birds as a signal of deadly
danger. The nightingale heard and understood, and with a sudden
sweep of wings soared swiftly away into the maze of leaves overhead
to the safe aisles of the forest. Luscignole had never felt such
joy—she had saved her woodland brother, and he would live freely, he
would sing in the springtime to delight his little mate; she was so
happy that she renewed her passionate nightingale-song.

But her joy was of short duration.

The fowler, returning, gazed upward towards the cage that until that
moment he had not glimpsed among the crowding oakleaves, and
Luscignole, panic-stricken, saw the face of Alas Schemp, saw that he
had seen and recognised her.

It was natural that he should be spying out nightingales in the
spring-green woods, since it was his delight to capture them and
burn out their eyes. No doubt there was an empty cage in the tower
that he longed to fill, and therefore he had come with his nets, and
his steel tubes that did not even leave the choice of death to the
prisoners.

Meanwhile he was eyeing her greedily.

His small fiery eyes glittered with triumph; he stood taut as though
about to spring on her and bear her away,

Luscignole in her terror began to dart wildly like a fear-crazed
bird from corner to corner of her cage; she tore her plumage on the
crossbars, grazed her lips on the bars. But Alas Schemp with a
sinister grin clutched a tree-trunk and began to climb slowly
towards her. One of his hands shot through the openings of the cage.
He was lifting the latch, the door was swinging back, he would have
her for his own, the searer of eyes would take her away . . . She
began to scream, she shrieked desperately for help, and she
stammered the name of the King. But Alas Schemp flung himself into
the cage, and grasped the vainly-resisting child.

"Let me go!"

"Come with me."

"Go away, go away!"

"Come with me, I say."

"You dare not take me."

"Will you come along?"

"I am the King's Nightingale . . ."

"Come this minute, I tell you."

And hugging her against him, silencing her outcry with a hand
smeared across her mouth, he held her under one arm as though she
had been a doll—she was even lighter, being a bird,—then, gripping
the edge of the cage with the other hand, he let himself drop to the
ground, and bore Luscignole away through the forest.

II

Just beyond the frontier, at the foot of the mountain, there is an
inn beside a small round lake that looks quite blue among a dark
ring of fir-trees. It can scarcely be called an inn, for people
rarely stay there. Thievish beggars, lean tramps and guilty prowlers
escaping from Thuringian territory halt there for a breathing-space.
Any chance traveller who does stay in the lonely tavern is liable to
be wakened at night by a dull rumble over the stones and a confusion
of hoarse cries and whispers. If he opens the window and looks out,
he may distinguish in the darkness a gigantic body wrapped in
sacking that is being dragged along on ropes by four or five men—the
burden is the carcass of a stag killed by poachers in the
neighbouring forest, and which they will presently dismember in the
inn-cellar and sell at the market.

A few tables of worn stone on pedestals of unstripped oak are
scattered about the low paved room with its raftered ceiling
frowning down on the charcoal-smeared walls.

After having come through the forest, it was on a bench by one of
these tables that Alas Schemp finally settled himself. As though he
were laying down a load, he set Luscignole beside him on the hard
wood. Dead or senseless, she did not stir. He also sat motionless,
leaning heavily on his elbows, burying his face between his hands in
silence. Only the hoarse mutter of his breathing broke the empty
stillness of the room.

But when the hairy-lipped serving-wench who looked like a cavalryman
in woman's clothes had placed pewter vessels and an over-running
tankard of foaming ale, together with a bottle of Schiedam gin, on
the table, he struck the stone with his fist, and turning to
Luscignole, he said: "Come along, now, drink, will you?"

She shuddered, and slightly raised her head without opening her
eyes. She was wan as dead jasmine blossom; about her pouted lips
that were like a bird's beak, there was a smear of blood where she
had struck herself against the bars, and the draggled feathers of
her plumage gave her the look of a small, despairing bird.

"Come, now, drink," he went on.

"No," she sighed out.

"But I say you shall drink."

He spoke so brutally that she shrank as though from blows. She
started away instinctively, and raised her lids; she uttered a thin
cry, so terrifying did he look. Repulsive as he had always been, he
was now horror incarnate, so heavily did his huge, hairy head weigh
on his flabby wrinkled neck, while his frothing lips and his small
ferocious eyes made him look like a maddened beast. He was dressed
in sordid rags through whose rents his bones protruded like gnarled
stumps.

He understood that he was terrifying the little girl. A fury of rage
shook him. Savagely he took up the Schiedam gin and poured nearly a
quarter of the bottle into his tankard of beer—for now he mixed the
two to intoxicate himself quicker—and drank avidly, his throat
swelling with gurgles. Then laughing hideously, he muttered:

"Now you can see what I've come down to since you left me, you
wretched little brat."

He drank again, and spat out among hiccoughs: Oh, Jesus, what a
dog's life. First of all, the Cathedral was burnt down"

"The Cathedral!" Luscignole cried out.

"Lord only knows how it came about. You can understand sheds and
houses catching alight—there's wood and furniture and stuff enough
to kindle them. But a Cathedral built of stone—no other timber in it
than the deacons' stalls—what could a fire feed on there, eh? They
said it was set afire by the factory-hands who threw cartridges and
bombs under the benches in the nave and below the stairs. But that
doesn't explain how marble and granite came to burn like straw. They
burnt all night long. When I came out of the tavern, the people were
all shouting with amazement and fear, and scarlet tongues were
licking the gargoyles, flames exploded the windows which melted and
ran in streams of colour. The dome crashed in with a thunderclap
that shook the ground, and the bronze gate glowed as red as though
it had all hell blazing behind it."

"Oh, God, Oh, God," said Luscignole sobbing.

For she thought of the gentle Virgin with her uplifted battledore
hand; she thought of the bas-relief Cherubim who had been her
playmates, and above all, she thought of the nightingale buried at
the Emperor's side whose tiny bones must have been crushed by the
mass of falling masonry. Oh, poor, tiny skeleton.

With tears in her voice she said: "But the tower? Was the tower
burnt down, too?"

"The tower burned like everything else. Red flames spat from the
windows."

"But . . . the nightingales . ."

"I rushed up the stairs. But at the first bend the flames sizzled my
hair, scorched my skin and forced me back. I stared up at the
aviary-room window. I couldn't see any flames, but the windows were
red-hot."

"The nightingales! The nightingales!" sobbed Luscignole.

"The glass splintered. I saw the nightingales beating their wings in
the streaming smoke and sparks. They must have escaped from their
charred cages."

"Then they flew away? They're not dead?"

Alas Schemp turned away his head, and in a dull voice went on:

"Yes, they're dead. They struggled to get away from the flames, but
they couldn't tell which way to fly; they hung quivering, fluttered
a little way, came back, and vanished in the devouring smoke . . .
Next day, among the ashes and cinders, I found their charred and
blackened bones . . ."

Luscignole, her eyes hard and dry with anger, shrieked out:

"They couldn't tell which way to fly because they were blind,
because you had burned out their eyes with your needles, devil,
devil, devil!"

The drunkard shed maudlin tears.

"That was why they could not escape, that was why. . ."

But when he had swallowed another few mouthfuls of schiedam, his
rage abruptly returned.

"There was no Cathedral left standing, so there was no need of a
beadle. They wouldn't even let me sleep among the ashes. They'd been
jealous of my nightingales, so now they revenged themselves finely—
nobody offered me so much as a bed in a barn, or a shakedown in a
cellar, nobody offered me alms, not even a mouldy crust of bread.
They even threatened to accuse me along with the factory-hands if I
didn't clear out of town. . . . Idiots! I might have burnt down the
Cathedral, but would I have burned down the tower with my
nightingales, my nightingales who sang so sweetly and were all my
happiness? They drove me away. Hell's fury! those were days and
nights . . . nobody would take pity on me because I'm hideous,
because I'm deformed, because I dribble, and because I don't smell
sweet . . . nobody would hire me as a serving-man, or a dish-washer
or a farm-hand; they wouldn't even let me turn the spit in the
kitchen. I went barefooted, and I tore my feet on the stones and
cobbles; I had no hat, and the brambles snatched at my hair. I was
starving and wretched, I had to set to begging. I used to sit on the
steps of some church or under some doorway holding out my hand all
day long, doubled up to make myself look even more hump-back;
dribbling and drooling so that they should think me epileptic. Folks
are sorry for anything that horrifies them. But I hardly got a sou.
At night I only had enough for a few pots of beer and a half-bottle
of Schiedam gin. Jesus! I was as accursed as if I'd been a hound of
hell. That's how I've been living, that's how I shall go on living.
Sometimes, I have a snatch of happiness. That's when I go snaring
nightingales in the wood with a net I've made. But when I do capture
a bird, what good does it do me? I have to let it go because I
haven't a cage, and even if I had a cage, what wall should I hang it
to?"

With a look of hatred at Luscignole, he gritted through his clenched
teeth:

"But I shan't sleep alone any more in the mud and stones at the
bottom of ditches. . . . Did you think your way of life was going to
last forever? People get to know of things, you brat; people pick up
newspapers in the gutters, and read the news. You had a gay time at
the fairs and at court; you slept softly, didn't you; you ate
delicious tit-bits, and if you'd wanted to, you could have drunk
twenty bottles of Schiedam gin every night. You were the King's
Nightingale, weren't you? . . . They said he even preferred you to
Hans Hammer himself. Hell's thunder, you brat, you treated yourself
a little too well while your old uncle was suffering torments—he was
like a stone crushed to powder by a hundred wheels. But that's all
done with—you shan't lie soft while I lie hard. I came on you by
chance while I was snaring nightingales —a queer idea of your
King's, that, to shut you up in a cage!—and I took you off. I'm your
only kin, you don't belong to no one but me, I can please myself
what I do with you. Princes and Emperors can't stop me from being
your uncle. Besides, we're no longer in your king's kingdom, we're
across the frontier. I'm master. Now you'll be put through it, I can
tell you. I shan't go begging any longer. I'll sit on church steps
and under doorways with folded arms. You'll do the hand-stretching—
or I'll—"

The masculine serving-wench with the bearded lip who looked like a
cavalryman in woman's clothing came back into the room.

"Twenty kreutzers," she said.

"Twenty kicks in your belly!" shouted Alas Schemp staggering up and
striking out with his splay feet.

He fetched her such a blow (for the dwarf when he was drunk had
enormous strength) that falling backwards, the servant wench
measured her length on the tiles.

"Let's get out of here," said Alas Schemp to Luscignole.

And dragging her along with him he made off.

III

They begged their way through country and town, asking for bread at
farmhouse doors, asking for pence beneath the windows of big houses.
They might have slept nearly every night in one of those hovels
where for a few sous the destitute can find shelter—for she looked
so wan and anguished that they would have given her a roof for pity—
but the scanty alms that were put into Luscignole's hand were spent
by him on drink. He scarcely ate, drink served him as food. She
gnawed some crust thrown out into the gutter. She grew emaciated. It
was painful to see her. The feathers of her plumage had fallen out
like those of a moulting bird, but unlike them, they had not grown
again. She had only a poor little shift of clinging woollen stuff
which was soon in rags, and through the rents, the framework of her
bones was visible. Poor little thing, she was so delicate and
fragile. Her cheeks were colourless, her lips were pallid, but
saddest of all were her bare feet scarred by brambles, torn by the
cobblestones—had they not been slippered with dust, they would have
looked raw and bleeding.

Her heart within her was sick with despair. She had been a darling
of kings and queens, she had been clad in fine, gold-embroidered
garments, she had been given toys that a baby princess might have
envied. She had been the nightingale-child of the youngest and most
handsome king of all. And now, homeless, starving, she wandered in
rags in company with a repulsive and brutal deformity.

Yet on the whole Alas Schemp did not treat her too unspeakably. He
threatened her with words, but he seldom beat her, and then only
when he was dead-drunk. He even ceased from beating her at all after
some time, and Luscignole could not but notice that he showed her
occasional kindness. Thus, if they lay in some barn, he would
untruss a bundle of hay that she might lie more softly, and if the
road were sharp with stones he would carry her a short way. If they
were passing through a coppice, he would point out to her the boughs
that were most heavily laden with nuts, the bushes that were most
densely hung with blackberries. One day, after having left her for a
few minutes in a busy street, he came back and offered her cakes
which most probably he had stolen from some baker, but stolen or
not, he offered them to her. She ate them gratefully, and eagerly,
being a little greedy, like the nightingales.

As the days passed, he became less and less brutal, he grew gentle,
almost affectionate. Had he not been so evil, had she not remembered
the white-hot needles sliding through the pipe-stems, she might
almost in the end have grown to love the poor unsightly creature.

But as he softened to her, he began to brood. The sinister light in
his eyes gave place to melancholy. Sometimes, as though he were
suffering from some incurable grief that drink could not alleviate,
he would replace his untouched glass on the table. He seemed
distraught, and fixing his eyes on space, he would sit sunk in
silence like some sick animal. Once he sobbed distractedly between
his interlocked fingers as though he were weeping for the death of a
beloved. Thus, Luscignole was scarcely surprised when one day, as
they stood among the litter of a building-yard, he took her in his
arms, pressed her to his heart with hiccoughing sighs and tears, as
if he had been a mother embracing a long-lost child.

IV

It was a lovely summer night, the sky was sown with scintillating
stars; holding her closer still, he said very softly in her ear, so
softly that she could scarcely hear him:

"I entreat you, I entreat you."

What was he entreating of her? Moved in spite of herself by the
sadness of his voice, she asked him:

"What do you want? What is it that you want?" He repeated:

"I entreat you, I entreat you." And fell silent. The emptiness of
night was all about them. The windows were vacant, the town slept,
and the calm sky smiled down upon them. Why did he not explain? Why
did he not formulate his desire? It was almost as if both were
afraid, he of putting his wish into words, she of hearing it, once
it had been spoken. They sat so still that they seemed to be asleep,
each at the other's side.

He turned a little away from Luscignole, and said in a very low
voice:

"Listen. I am dying of grief. I'm dying of grief. I can't live
without hearing them. I can't go on living without them. I can go
without food and drink, it's all one to me that I'm dressed in
filthy rags. But not to have my nightingales—that's what's gnawing
at my vitals, that's what's killing me. It's strange—I'm a drunkard,
I'm loathsome, rotten . . . but rotten as I am, rotten as I've
always been, they filled me, heart and body and soul, with rapture.
Nobody will ever know how I loved them. Their songs were sweeter to
me than the choiring angels to the damned who have climbed from the
pit to the gates of paradise. Their voices made light and beauty
blossom within me. When their song was ended, I thought I must die
of joy. And now that's all over. I shall never have any more
nightingales. The flames burned the nightingales in the tower. I
shall never rear any others. It's ended, it's ended, and I shall be
wretched, wretched, wretched . . ."

Listening to him, Luscignole softened, for she, too, had loved the
nightingales of the tower.

Then even more beseechingly Alas Schemp said:

"But you, little one, you sing as beautifully as they sang. Perhaps
you sing even more sweetly. Oh, I beseech you, I entreat you, you're
so gentle, and I'm so wretched . . . I have been cruel to you. I've
forced you to beg, I've beaten you, but that's all over. I will beg
for you, and instead of beating you, I will adore you. Save me from
death, sing to me, Luscignole."

He had scarcely finished before she rose to her feet shaken by such
a passion of fury as she had never known.

"Sing to you? Sing to you? Never, never, never," she screamed.

V

He dared no longer entreat her. From the little girl's look and
manner, he knew it was useless. Should he force her to sing by
violence, by redoubled blows, by refusing her scraps to eat while
she grew thinner and thinner? He turned it over in his evil mind.
But he realised that brutality would be idle, for he remembered how
the nightingales had remained dumb for long months in the corners of
their cages. He was right. The child who had sung for the Prince
Charming of that far-off fairyland would not yield the joy of her
enchanted notes to the torturer of her winged brothers. He was being
punished for his crimes by being deprived of the delight he had had
of them. Her thoughts were confused, for she was still but a child
of twelve summers; only one thing was certain—she would never sing,
never, for Alas Schemp.

For some time, they had lived less wretchedly. They no longer went
from village to village, from town to town, but had taken up their
abode in a hamlet near a famous grotto of stalagmites and
stalactites where tourists were plentiful. Standing before the door
of a hovel they had rented in return for a percentage of their
takings, they received abundant alms, he on account of his
deformity, she because of her frail and pitiful looks, and when
everyone had gone, he drank himself blind at the tavern, while
Luscignole, biting at an apple which was her supper, went into the
tumbledown two-roomed hut with its glassless windows, and hole-
pierced roof through which streamed the acrid smoke of the log-fire.

When he reeled home from the tavern, Alas Schemp flung himself on a
heap of dried grass in the larger of the two rooms to sleep off the
effects of ale and Schiedam gin. In the much smaller room,
Luscignole also slept on a bed of grass, but hers was fresh and
fragrant, for she changed it every day as though it had been bed-
linen, and scattered flowers among it whose scent she breathed in as
she slept.

She grew so used to his staggering, hiccoughing, vomiting returns
that they no longer roused her; sleep was the one refuge of her sad
little heart, and she slept sweetly with dreams for playthings. She
dreamed herself back in the Cathedral among the saints and cherubim;
she climbed into the tower and saw the filmed eyes of nightingales
in their cages; then she dreamed of her lost glory, of empresses and
queens, and of the King—once again she was swaying in the cage that
hung from the oak-tree boughs . . .

But one night her dreams were full of terror. Through sleep she
sensed the evil presence grovelling on the grass bed, that evil
presence that had so terrified her when she was the bird-child of
the forest. And now she heard, or thought she heard, a sound very
different to the rustle of parted leaves. It was a thin fluting
noise which pierced her sleeping ear. A memory of that sound which
once before had wakened her to anguished, desperate fear haunted
her, but when or where she had heard it she could not recall . . .
she no longer knew whether she was awake or asleep . . . the
illusion of her drowsy awakening made her believe that she was still
dreaming what was, in fact, actuality. Then fear seized her brutally
by the throat with a strangling clutch. She was thinking of things
unspeakable, she saw them before her eyes. But what things? They
were so appalling that she must, at all costs, escape them . . . she
tried to clamber up from her bed of grasses. But she could not move.
She found that she was bound as closely as though she were in a
tightly-coiled winding-sheet, or in mummy-wrappings, and
involuntarily she thought of the nightingales constricted beyond
movement in the narrow steel tubes . . . she was corded. She had
been tied on her bed of grasses with ropes pegged to the ground, and
fastened to the walls . . . Wide awake now, she opened her eyes
fearfully.

Ponderous, knock-kneed, misshapen, the hobgoblin was stooping in
semi-shadow over a small table where there was a stain of light that
smeared the shadows with the reek of blood.

Luscignole screamed, for she remembered, now she remembered the
glowing brazier, the needles, the pale pipe-stems . . . she
screamed, she could not stir, she screamed, she screamed. Her voice
was muffled by a pad of cotton-wool inserted in her mouth, and
speechless, motionless, she stared at Alas Schemp.

He put first one needle and then another into the brazier, drew them
out, saw that they were only red-hot, put them back till they
whitened—he was busily industrious like a methodical executioner.

But there was no cage, no bird in the hut. Why was he making one
needle, two needles white-hot? Why was she tied to the bed so that
she could not stir hand or foot? Why was she gagged? She widened her
eyes, and watched with increasing terror . . . Oh, Jesus, it could
not be possible that . . .

He turned towards her. He leered at her with drooling mouth. His
eyes glittered so redly in the red glow of the brazier that they
looked like bleeding wounds that had sight. He drew near her,
bending forward, craning his neck, in one hand a white-hot needle,
in the other a pipe-stem. Oh, if she could only scream, if she could
only scream . . . but there was a gag in her mouth .....

With an almost tender smile, Alas Schemp stooped over her, and put
the cool pipe-stem against her quivering eyelid . . .

VI

Travellers who stay in the town where the Cathedral was burnt
invariably visit the remains. They are quite celebrated, and
recommended by all the best Baedekers. An iron grille prevents
ingress to the still-standing walls and the crumbling stones. The
crack made by Satan's claw in the bronze gateway has been so
enlarged by the flames that through it, above the piled-up ruins,
wide vistas of sky are visible. But the travellers do not linger 
among these mournful sights, they perfunctorily thank the guide who
conducts parties round the relics of the Cathedral, and as they file
away, they nearly all give alms to a hideous drooling hunchback for
whom a pale little girl with filmed and vacant eyes asks for
charity. She is blind—she has a white cataract. She can see nothing,
nothing, nothing. She begs. Those dead eyes in that wan child-face
are pitiful beyond words.

Alas Schemp and Luscignole have returned to that city where the
nightingale tower once stood silhouetted against the sky. They sit
all day on a bench by the railings. They are the Cathedral's
official beggars, and it is not until night falls and the advent of
a traveller is unlikely that they return to the wretched den where
for some time they have been living. Before he enters, Alas Schemp
stops at some tavern. He sits down, she stands motionless while he
drinks. She seems to see everything through the nothingness of her
eyes. When Alas Schemp is drunk, they go away. He can scarcely walk,
he reels and staggers, but she upholds him and guides him on the
well-known path, the blind leading the spiritually-blind. Hapless
creatures, he to be so soul-cankered, she to be so tormented. Yet
they are not so wretched as might be supposed. In the hovel, Alas
Schemp tumbles grovelling on the boards but he does not sleep, for
Luscignole, near the window, lit by a moon-gleam that comes from
afar, from the forest, the forest-solitudes, suddenly breaks into
her nightingale-song. She sings most sweetly, both to charm the
drunkard, and for her own delight. When she had sight, she never
sang so passionately, and so mystically. She is lifted to ecstasy by
her own song, and she no longer agonises in the torture she has
undergone, no longer grieves for the skies, the trees, the unseen
woodlands. Unconsciously she has bowed down to that implacable
decree which exacts suffering and shadow and loneliness in exchange
for the perfect flowering of unearthly beauty.



NUMBER 56
From " Rue Des Filles-dieu, 56, Ou L'heautonparateroumene"
Translated by Phyllis Megroz.
I

"Brunois! Brunois! For goodness' sake, Charles, don't fidget so. You
keep grinding your teeth; you're all in a cold sweat. Cover yourself
up. What's the matter with you? Wake up, open your eyes. You're as
white as a sheet. Your throat is as swollen as if you were going to
choke. It throbs and throbs. Oh, are you going to die? Wake up,
Charles; do try and rouse yourself!"

His nightshirt in rags, the grey hairs bristling on his body, M.
Charles Brunois drew himself from the sheets and sat upright. His
clay-coloured face worked and twitched like the face of a corpse
galvanised by electricity; his chest swelled as though it would
burst. With his eyes shut fast, he stiffened with a constriction of
all his muscles, but suddenly, with a cry that burst from him as
wine gushes from a cask, he relaxed limply on the bed, his throat
loosened, his arms powerless in the reaction from the seizure.

Madame Aurélie Brunois, an old woman whose grey hair straggled from
her frilled night-cap, leaned over the bed, and white with fear,
heedless of the chill of the floor against her bare feet, gazed at
her husband in the silence of the commonplace room—the usual
conglomeration of mahogany, repp, and framed lithographs —where the
twinkling night-light grew dim in the dawn's greenish glow filtering
in brokenly through the slats of the blind.

"Do for mercy's sake speak now that you are better," she stammered.
"What is it? What's the matter? Answer me."

Without raising his lids, he muttered in a voice that oozed like a
thick stream through his loose lips:

"I—I don't know."

"Did you have a nightmare?"

"Yes—perhaps. Yes, yes, I had a nightmare. I saw 	things. I did
things, . . . things that . . ."

"What? What things?"

"Things that were--"

"That were—?"

"Unspeakable."

His forehead was beaded with drops of sweat that dripped down like
tears.

"But what were these unspeakable things?"

He repeated: "Unspeakable!

"But what? What? What?"

He creased his forehead in a supreme effort of concentration, but
the frown disappeared in the failure of his attempt.

"I can't remember."

"Brunois, try—listen to me. First of all, what time did you come
home? I was asleep, I didn't hear you go to bed. Tell me what time
you came in."

"I don't know."

Slightly irritated, his wife said: "You don't seem to know
anything."

"You're right. I don't know anything."

"Oh, rack your brains. Didn't you dine with Richond?"

"Richond?"

"Good heavens! You're mad! You don't even know Richond now, your
friend Richond, your old partner. He had to go to Havre at 11.45. He
came to say goodbye just as we were sitting down to dinner, and took
you along to the restaurant with him."

"Oh yes, Richond . . . Yes, I dined at the restaurant with Richond."

"Aha!"

"Yes . . ."

"Yes, and didn't you eat something that disagreed with you,
something that you couldn't digest? "

"I—I don't know . . ."

"Then you got drunk? You're not used to drinking. You got drunk on
champagne on the top of brandy."

"No, not on champagne . . . with—yes, with brandy."

"That's it, then. And it made you ill?"

"Ill—yes, I was ill . . ."

"And where did you go after dinner?"

"Do you mean with Richond?"

"Of course."

"I didn't go anywhere with Richond."

"With whom, then?"

"I don't know."

"You must have been dead drunk then, you beast."

" Yes—dead drunk . . ."

"Out with it now. Where did you go? What did you do?"

"I—I—I—things that . . ."

He had straightened himself, he was livid, he shivered as though he
were in a fever of torment, he shuddered out through his chattering
teeth:

"Unspeakable things . . ."

Madame Aurélie in her fright lost her head. She had but one thought:
to get a doctor. But they had no maid, a charwoman came in the
morning and left at midday. To ask the concierge to fetch a doctor,
she must leave her husband by himself. She hesitated, haggard with
indecision, she looked at her husband's clothes lying in disorder on
a chair. Instinct bade her move them and search amongst them for
some clue. She lifted them, shook them; his trousers were there, and
his waistcoat, but where was his coat? Now, where was his coat? No,
it wasn't here. What, could Charles have come home in his shtirt-
sleeves? Stupefied, she turned and confronted him.

His face the colour of lead, his hair in confusion, he was repeating
monotonously through white lips:

"Unspeakable . . . unspeakable . . ."

She threw herself on the bed.

"You'll end by driving me crazy. What is it that is so unspeakable?
What have you done that's so unspeakable?"

"I—I—I . . ."

His mouth dropped open in an agony of suspense. "I did—"

A groan broke from him, and he fell back on the tumbled sheets. He
uttered no further word, made no further movement. Slack, heavy,
without consciousness, he lay there inert, his ghastly face lit by
the green dawn, his skin no longer even wrinkling. He slept the
sleep of the dead-drunk, of the dead; the only sign of life was his
heavy breathing which sometimes rose to the shrill sound of a small
dog being tortured, sometimes deepened to a hoarse muttering like
that of a sated animal.

Madame Aurélie, her eyes starting out of her head with terror,
stared at him in the livid light of morning, in whose glow the pin-
point flame of the night-light wavered and grew dim.

II

A few hours' sleep restored him. Towards midday he made a good meal
in the best of tempers. Without exactly remembering what he had done
after leaving the restaurant (drunk as a lord, no doubt), he could
make a guess at it, theory taking the place of actual remembrance.
Good God, at forty-five a man isn't absolutely played out,
especially after a bottle of Chambertin. He knew that much—Richond
and he had drunk Chambertin, enormously expensive and excellent in
proportion. The probability of some prank induced by the Burgundy
and the after-dinner talk fascinated and intrigued him, and made him
wink slyly: at the same time, he was slightly annoyed. If the frolic
had been amusing, as he supposed, he would have liked to be able to
recall it with all its details. He smiled at the thought of the
'details'. Never mind, it was amusing even to be sure of the fact
that he had been amused, and more than once he was on the point of
laughing aloud when he realised what a gay dog he must have been.

As for Madame Brunois, she soon roused herself from her sulks at the
beginning of the meal to poke fun at him.

Older than her husband, whom she knew to be sincerely and deeply
attached to her, she was indulgent to him, still youngish as he was, 
and so hard-working that without allowing himself a day's rest or
pleasure, he had sweated for twenty-five years in a wholesale
hardware shop until he had saved up the yearly income on which they
lived in comfort in the entresol of a house in the Rue Legendre in
the Batignolles. He had certainly earned the right to amuse himself
nowadays once or twice a year when occasion arose. Was she jealous?
Not in the least. Never pretty, even in her youth, she had always
been home-maker and companion rather than sweetheart, and she was
not going to get up in the air at fifty-three years old because
Brunois had committed some folly. But she had been angry with him
because of the deadly terror into which he had thrown her the night
his coat had disappeared. Is it possible that drink can plunge a man
into such straits of forgetfulness? It must have a very bad effect
on his character.

"Not at all, not at all" cried M. Brunois in great spirits, and to a
music-hall tune he hummed a song of Boileau's, the only thing he
could remember of his three years' studies at Etampes University:
If Bourdaloue, a trifle strict,
Says, "You must live like Benedict,"
States Escobar: "For health a man
Must sometimes play at Don Juan."
(Si Bourdalone, un peu sévère
Nous dit: craignez la volupté
Escobar, lui dit-on, mon père,
Nous la permet pour la santé!)

What also worried Madame Aurélie was the fact that he simply could
not remember how he had passed the evening: even so complete an
intoxication could scarcely explain so equally complete a loss of
memory. Ignorant as she was, she had heard of those terrible
illnesses which kill all intellectual powers, and transform a strong
and healthy person into a drooling, speechless and helpless idiot.
She shuddered at the idea of her dearly-loved, energetic husband
being pushed about by her in a bath-chair like an ancient baby.

She had thought aloud, and he burst out laughing. Oh lord, there was
no danger of that. Of course, it does happen through excessive
drinking, or following on violent excitement.

"Excitement?" she interrupted. "Did you experience any excitement?"

He could not restrain a somewhat fatuous smile.

"The point is," he said, "that for one reason or another, one may
suffer from a partial amnesia"—(he had read the scientific articles
in the papers, and used this technical and mysterious word to
impress his wife)—"without there being any need to worry about the
future."

He quoted examples.

A very curious instance had occurred in his own family. His
grandfather, when quite a young man, had sailed from Havre for New
York on a business journey. On the third day out the weather was
frightful. "And grandfather was so terrified that when he reached
America he had entirely forgotten everything that had happened from
the beginning of the storm to the hour of landing. All the same, it
did not prevent his doing excellent business in New York, or living
to the age of eighty-two in full possession of his senses."

Madame Aurélie tossed her head. "In full possession of his senses,
indeed!"

"Certainly he was in full possession of his senses!"

"Then it's perfectly sensible to want to fire a pistol at any man
who doesn't speak to you in the street? You know this isn't the
first time you've quoted your grandfather to me."

M. Brunois smiled. "Yes, on certain days, my poor grandfather did
get into a rage; but only when he had been annoyed. He was as gentle
as a lamb—as long as nobody annoyed him. Come, Aurélie, don't you
know lots of people like that—people who grow furious, and scold and
sulk because they have been inadvertently irritated? I think that
without going very far . . ."

She laughingly shrugged her shoulders. At heart, being no longer
anxious, she was no longer vexed. She yielded after lunch to a small
glass of Benedictine. It cheered her. She looked with amused
tolerance at her husband, who had played at being young. When he
pushed his chair up to hers, dug her in the ribs and said
banteringly, with almost a leer: "Come now, admit that what really
worries you is that I did not wake you when I came in," she answered
"You old rascal!" The meal finished in light-hearted chatter in the
dining-room with its polished walnut reflecting the light, while the
canaries whose cages hung by the open window trilled themselves
hoarse in the sunny air from the garden.

When the coffee was finished and the two little glasses emptied,
Madame Aurélie went about her household tasks, clearing away the
dishes and scolding into activity the charwoman in the kitchen,
while Monsieur Brunois, pushing an easy-chair near the window,
installed himself in it, first taking from the marble mantelpiece
the unfolded paper; stretching out his legs, he tore the band, and
began to read in the glow of perfect comfort induced by the pleasant
process of digestion in the fresh air, surrounded by the songs of
his canaries and the scent exhaled by the rose-bushes.

III

"Aurélie."

"Well?"

"Aurélie, Aurélie!"

"Well, what is it?"

"Come here."

"Whatever is the matter? What are you shouting 	like that for?"

She came back to the dining-room, in her blue cooking-apron which
came up to her neck, her dress turned up 	in front and rolled into
her apron strings.

M. Brunois in great excitement brandished the paper, which quivered
in the air.

"There's been another!" he said.

"Another what?"

"Another crime."

"Is that all you've got to tell me? Crimes aren't unusual in Paris."

"No--but —"

"Don't you read enough extraordinary happenings every day in the
papers?"

"Yes, but this is—"

"What's unique about this one?"

"Look for yourself."

She came to him, and condescended to take the paper, in no way
interested.

"Where is it?"

"Page 3, at the bottom of the second column."

"Right." She began to read aloud. M. Brunois, leaning earnestly
forward, with one hand on each arm of the chair, watched her with a
steady look, moving his own lips as though he were spelling out the
words his wife was uttering.

This is what she read:

"Late last night it was rumoured that there had been a murder in the
Rue Poissonnière. One of our reporters was immediately on the spot,
and has telephoned us to say that at about ten o'clock the notice of
the neighbours and of the, at this hour few, passers-by was
attracted by cries and entreaties coming from a furnished apartment
house, No. 56 Rue des Filles-Dieu. Then a window was opened on the
third storey and a woman threw herself—or was thrown—out onto the
pavement. When she was picked up, her face entirely disfigured and
cut to pieces by the stones, she was dead. There is a possibility
that it was not the fall which caused her death. On the body, which
was taken into a dispensary in the Rue de Cléry, a doctor, who had
been hastily summoned, found three wounds, all fairly deep. One was
on the neck and two were beneath the left breast; they appear to
have been inflicted by a very slender and sharp-pointed knife. The
curious thing is that the identity of the victim is disputed.
Although the face is mutilated by cuts and contusions, several
people in the district believe the woman to be a certain Félicie
Bonheur, a street-walker, also known as the Big Jewess, who did in
fact often make use of a room on the third floor of the house where
the crime was committed. But the manageress of the hotel—who is also
the concierge—states that Félicie did not go to the hotel that
evening, and that she never had a dress like that in which the dead
woman was clothed. No suspicion is yet entertained as to the
perpetrator or perpetrators of the crime."

"Well, what about it?" said Madame Aurélie, interrupting herself.
"It's only the usual story of cruelty and filth that's continually
cropping up amongst those sort of people."

M. Brunois, less excited, was now lying back in his chair. He
crossed his legs, and said, almost indifferently:

"As a matter of f act, you're right. There's nothing particularly
interesting about it."

"Nothing whatever. Have you looked at the late news?"

"No."

"There's no longer even a mystery. Listen." She read:

"Latest News: The murderer has just been arrested. He is a notorious
lounger in the district, where he is known by the name of 'Eudoxe le
Marin . He had gone into an estaminet about an hour after the crime
and had been thrown out for making a disturbance and taken to the
police-station in the Rue d'Aboukir. He was drunk at the time. When
the inspector asked him if he knew Félicie Bonheur, he said: 'The
Big Jewess? She's my girl, even if I did settle her score this
evening.' Thus it is definitely established that the murdered woman
is Félicie Bonheur, and the whole affair which at one time may have
seemed mysterious, boils down to a bloody encounter between a
prostitute and a pimp—the inevitable commonplace story. To-morrow
morning after the usual proceedings Eudoxe le Marin will be finally
committed to gaol."

"You see," said Madame Aurélie.

"O Lord, yes, a commonplace story. The paper's right. I hadn't read
to the end, you know . . . But now that the murderer and the woman's
identity are known . . . Besides, those sort of people don't concern
us. The woman's dead, the man will be guillotined. That'll be two
good-for-nothings less in the world."

"Yes, and if all the undesirables would do for each other like that
. . ."

"It would be all the better for decent people."

Whereupon Madame Aurélie went back to her kitchen, and M. Brunois,
feeling very self-righteous and contented, stretched himself out in
the chair, and slightly holding up the paper, went on reading.
Passing over the news items, he glued his eyes to the serial.

The retired hardware merchant had conceived a violent liking for
romances in his leisure hours. At one time he had been passionately
fond of detective stories, particularly those about Edgar Allan
Poe's Dupin, in which the secret-service men watch, follow up and
finally capture uncapturable criminals; it was no doubt the
influence of such books that had made him notice such a mediocre
crime. But the serial in the Petit Journal soon filled him with
softer emotions. It was about a young girl, who having been stolen
on the day of her birth, was later on adopted by her real mother
without either of them being aware of the fact. This situation led
to very touching scenes between the two women, inevitably drawn to
one another though without knowing why. M. Brunois' eyes soon filled
with sympathetic tears, and little by little, soothed as much by
these gentle sentiments as by the pleasant process of digestion, he
let the paper fall, and dozed into a smiling sleep. His lids rose
and fell monotonously over his prominent china-blue eyes—at length
they closed altogether. His broad good-humoured mouth alternately
opened and shut. In the corner of one of his nostrils, the hairs of
a big wart added a rather ludicrous touch to his guileless
expression. The breeze from the garden and the scent of the roses
surrounded the honest sleeper with coolness and fragrance. His even
breathing caused a wasp which was flying in and out of the window to
re-double its buzzing.

IV

It was the habit of M. Charles Brunois, especially in summer, to go
for a short stroll in the outlying streets before supper; he would
stop very interestedly in front of the curio-shops, though he never
bought anything.

That day, he went as usual. He stopped a long while outside the
shops on the corner of le Rue Lepic; he gazed at the flower-painted
pottery, tested the weight of the brass fire-dogs red with rust, and
rang a scale on a number of steel dishes with his middle finger. He
became absorbed in the contemplation of a coloured lithograph in a
small bamboo frame, which represented Mazeppa bound with cords to a
maddened steed; with great earnestness he studied the rhymed
inscription beneath the picture, saying in a low voice:

"But what made him go to a tavern so near the house where he had
just murdered Félicie?" His eyes never strayed from the inscription
as he continued: "I can understand his confessing to the crime, as
he was drunk. I can let that pass, even though it's ridiculous.
Apparently he could and did accuse himself, but the extraordinary
thing is that his first thought was not to avoid discovery by
leaving the scene of his crime, but to court it by going in to drink
at an estaminet where he was known. Was he trying to establish an
alibi? No—the news of the murder was already out when he went in."
He had ceased staring at the picture and was now looking fixedly at
a warped and broken carriage-lamp which had only one flawed and
dusty pane of glass intact out of four. Slightly louder, he went on:
"Really, it's not at all obvious. What do the proofs against Eudoxe
le Marin amount to? His own confession, and the fact that he had
relations with Félicie Bonheur, who was murdered. That's all right;
but suppose that, being drunk, he spoke wildly? And suppose that it
was not Félicie Bonheur who was murdered? After all, her identity
has not been established . . ." He was mechanically fingering a
number of old keys, blackened and fastened to a ring, as if he were
counting them; he muttered: "I don't care what they say. Something
tells me that Eudoxe le Marin is not the murderer."

A paper-boy shouted: "Paper! Three o'clock edition! Mystery in the
Rue des Filles Dieu! Who murdered Félicie Bonheur? Eudoxe le Marin
discharged!"

M. Brunois, swelling with self-applause, gave a start, called the
paper-boy, and buying a paper, read with feverish haste:

"What did I say? What did I say?" he exclaimed, and almost running,
he hurried home. The neighbours were astonished, never having seen
him exert himself so violently.

As he went into the dining-room, Madame Aurélie was putting supper
on the table. M. Brunois, perspiring and out of breath, but
triumphant, announced as if it were a delightful bit of news:

"Well, he didn't do it!"

"What are you talking about?"

"I say he didn't do it."

"Who do what?"

"Eudoxe. Eudoxe wasn't the murderer."

"Eudoxe?"

"Eudoxe le Marin. He's innocent, here you are, read it, he's
discharged. I was on the right track this time."

And he walked up and down the room in an ecstasy of delight over his
sagacity, brandishing the fluttering paper in the air. Madame
Aurélie, understanding at length to what he alluded, shrugged her
shoulders.

"How absurd you are to get into such a state over an affair that's
no concern of yours. What does matter to you if the man's innocent
or guilty?"

"What? What does it matter to me if—"

He suddenly broke off short in astonishment. Incidentally, why was
he taking so much interest in at episode so alien and so far removed
from his sphere of life? When his wife called: "Come and sit down,"
he sat down, rather shamefacedly, and drank his soup in silence. Yet
he could not shake off his preoccupation —he had a longing to talk
about the mysterious affair, and to make excuses to his wife and to
himself.

"Well, we might as well talk about that as about anything else," he
said. "It's the topic of the moment, everybody's wondering about it,
guessing how it happened; it's amusing."

"Oh, if it amuses you!" said Madame Aurélie, helping herself to some
more soup. "But you know, I don't agree with you, I'm positive that
wretch was the murderer."

"Rubbish! Eudoxe hasn't had the shadow of a hand in this crime.
That's been proved, definitely proved."

M. Brunois had regained all his excitement, he was re-reading the
paper lying open on the table, putting into his own words the gist
of the report.

"Follow me," he said. "You'll understand. The magistrate cross-
examined Eudoxe this morning: 'So you admit that you assassinated
your mistress, the woman Félicie Bonheur, at about ten o'clock last
night in a house of ill-fame in the Rue des Filles Dieu?' Do you
know what Eudoxe did then? He laughed. He almost split his sides
with laughter. He couldn't answer, he was laughing so. The
magistrate frowned. 'You're committing contempt of court.' Eudoxe
went on laughing. Finally he explained. He could not have killed
Félicie at ten o'clock yesterday, seeing that nearly all the
evening, from eight o'clock to 10.45, he had been in a crêmerie in
the Rue Vieille-du-Temple, whence he had not stirred, and where a
score of people had spoken to him. They only had to ask the owner
and his wife and Fifi Romain and fat Adèle, la Cadenasse—anybody who
was there. As to Félicie, he had seen her, yes, that night in that
identical crêmerie—they had dined together, but she had left him
after they had had their coffee, as the night was her busy time. It
was true that she was to have rejoined him later on to go with him
to Vauxhall, only she hadn't turned up. That was why, out of
patience, and a trifle drunk (it's so boring to wait without
drinking anything), he had gone, after 10.45, to the Poissonnière
quarter; he had thought he might meet her at the pub in the Rue St.
Foy. But he hadn't met her, and he had been chucked out because he
had vented his rage on the tables and the bottles ranged on the
counter. So he could not have killed Félicie since he had not even
seen her since supper. They had only to send for the crêmerie crowd
to establish his alibi.

"Well, what about it?" said Madame Aurélie. "What does his saying
all this prove? He's telling lies, that's all. He said he was the
murderer at the police-station."

"Yes, that's a serious obstacle!" cried M. Brunois, delighted that
his wife should at last show some interest in the mysterious crime,
and highly pleased that he could over-rule her arguments. "That's
exactly what the judge said. But you'll see. Just listen to this."
He put his finger on the page at the top of a column and read:

"'Yet according to your own story, you settled Félicie Bonheur's
score last night!'"

"He certainly said so," said Madame Aurélie.

"He certainly said so. But that proves nothing. Here we are: 'Yes,
your worship, I settled the bitch's account all right. That's to
say, I gave her a thrashing because she'd been out on the loose for
three days. I must tell you that I loved her, I loved Félicie. She
was blood of my blood, bone of my bone, and she had to truckle under
to me—I put my foot down about her going about with other men, I
did, so she got a good hiding for that last escapade of hers, and I
guaranteed her a better one still if she didn't come and meet me and
go to Vauxhall. But kill her? Not I! Not on my life. I loved her too
much for that, and whoever's done her in had better keep out of my
way—you won't have to try him, I'll settle his hash in double quick
time!'"

Although the reporter had underscored the accent of truth in Eudoxe
le Marin's words, Madame Aurélie would not own herself convinced.

"Every criminal tries to clear himself by inventing some such story
. . ."

"But, good heavens, there is no question here of an invented story.
The magistrate called witnesses. Seven witnesses, mark you, I'm not
making it up, it's printed here, seven witnesses can testify that
Eudoxe was still at the crêmerie in the Rue Vieille du Temple at ten
o'clock last night."

"Fine witnesses—fat Adèle, la Cadenasse, Fifi Romain —prostitutes
and fly-by-nights. If you're going to believe what those people say
. . ."

"What about the police then? Mustn't we believe the police?"

"Police?"

"Yes."

"Which police?"

"Those who were on duty in the Rue Vieille-du-Temple and who saw
Eudoxe come out of the crêmerie a little before eleven o'clock, not
earlier."

"Who said they saw him?"

"They did."

"They did?"

"Certainly. You can read their statement." He put the paper under
her nose, then folding his arms and drawing himself up proudly, as
though he were on a pedestal, he shouted: "Now then, what have you
to say to that?"

"That— that—"

She got up; they had finished dinner while they had been talking,
and began to clear away.

"Yes, what do you say to that?"

"I say that you annoy me, and that I've something better to do than
to keep thinking about such horrors."

Thereupon she turned her back on him, and knelt down to put back the
sugar-basin, the decanter and the unused napkins in the sideboard
cupboard.

For a minute M. Brunois gave his wife rather a sarcastic look.
Really, she had never been particularly bright, and although she was
a good sort, she was as obstinate as a mule. Then, thoughtfully, he
began to pace up and down the room.

His puckered forehead, the fixed look of his half-shut eyes, showed
the intensity of his preoccupation.

He only roused himself from his brown study to look at the clock. It
struck eight. He took up his hat.

"Now where are you off to?" demanded Madame Aurélie.

"I'm—"

"Yes, where are you going?"

The truth was that he wanted to go out and buy the latest editions
of the evening papers—they were sure to contain fresh details of the
Rue des Filles-Dieu affair.

But he lied. "Where do you suppose I'm going? I'm going to have a
game of dominoes at the Cafe Guerbois." "All right, only don't be
too late."

"No, no."

He went to the door with an air of indifference, without hurrying.
But he was scarcely on the landing than he clutched at the banisters
and went down the stairs with enormous strides.



V

For several days the enquiries instituted by M. Legrandin, the
examining magistrate, led to nothing more than the probability
(which was entirely lacking in significance) that the murderer,
after having committed the crime, had escaped, not by the passage
leading into the street (when he must have run into the excited
crowd), but by the other end of a kind of yard or rather a narrow
passage, whose door gave on to the Rue St. Spire, a blind alley
always deserted at night.

Every day a new clue was followed, only to be abandoned on the next.

Questioned several times, but no longer as a suspect—for no further
doubts were entertained of his complete innocence—Eudoxe le Marin
had been unable to throw any more light on the matter. He maintained
that Félicie Bonheur, vicious in her cups, but otherwise easy-going,
had no enemies, but lived on good terms with the women of the
neighbourhood and their protectors. Did this argue a crime like
those of the Prado and Pranzini? Had some casual stranger whom
Félicie Bonheur had picked up, murdered her in order to rob her?
What made this conjecture unlikely was the fact that the unfortunate
woman, spent what money Eudoxe did not extort from her on drink, and
was known to possess neither money nor jewellery. Never attractively
clothed, always wearing the same old dresses she had worn for a
year, going out as she did with her hair in curlers, there was
nothing about her likely to arouse thoughts of profitable murder.
The recollection of an affair somewhat similar in its details woke
suspicions of some family drama; enquiries were made about Félicie's
relations. The people of the quarter had never heard of any. Only
Eudoxe remembered that she had a sister who was either in service or
in a shop in the outskirts of Paris or the suburbs, a sister much
younger than herself, extremely pretty, and absolutely or almost
straight; she occasionally came of an evening to see Félicie—but he
had never seen her, and all that he knew about her, which amounted
to nothing, he had learned from his mistress, who had probably lied
to make out that she came of decent people, or for some such reason.

The only thing that seemed certain after a week of uncertainty was
the fact that the murdered woman really was Félicie Bonheur.

It will be recalled that at first this was doubtful. The testimony
of those who had first seen the victim lost much of its value from
the fact that her fall onto the stones of the roadway had almost
completely disfigured her; and the concierge who obstinately
maintained that her tenant had not come to the hotel on the evening
of the crime, and who declared that the clothing of the murdered
person was unknown to her, could not explain how anyone else could
have obtained access to Félicie's room, or say who could have taken
the key of this particular room from the lodge.

But all doubts were put an end to by the non-appearance of Félicie
Bonheur. There was no reason for her to hide, therefore she must be
dead. Moreover, the concierge began to waver: yes, it was possible, 
she seemed to remember now, that she had gone out a little before
ten o'clock, and during her absence Félicie might have taken her key
and have gone up alone or accompanied into her room.

In short, the identity of the victim was sufficiently clearly
established, all the more so since her underclothes, her chemise,
knickers and handkerchief all bore the initials F.B. The judge
ordered the body to be buried after an autopsy which revealed
nothing new, and fully confirmed the statement of Dr. X. to the
effect that the three wounds, all mortal, had been inflicted by a
very slender and sharp-pointed knife.

M. Brunois remained in doubt as to the victim's identity much longer
than any other reader of the daily papers. To tell the truth, he had
no idea why this doubt should persist. Perhaps the name "Félicie
Bonheur" signifying joy and happiness struck him as curiously out of
harmony with her bloody ending, perhaps that was it. Apart from
that, he had to give in to the weight of evidence, and it was at a
time when he had finally repudiated all uncertainty that he went to
the dispatch offices of the Figaro.

A portrait of the victim, taken the day after the crime, was on
exhibition there, together with a photograph of Félicie Bonheur
taken two month earlier, and sent to the paper by Eudoxe le Marin.

It was only with difficulty—for the crowd was wedged tightly in the
room—that M. Brunois managed to get near the wall. Finally he
succeeded in doing so.

Over the shoulders of the curious sightseers, his eyes, fell at
first on the photograph submitted by Eudoxe, and even before he had
read the lettering beneath it, he had recognised Félicie Bonheur.
Nothing out of the way in that. This woman, no beauty, too fat, with 
coarse lips, her hair in curlers, wearing an old brown frock over
her uncorseted figure and pendulous bosom had been so often
described in the papers; moreover, all these fly-by-nights were more
or less alike.

He moved still further forward, using his elbows in his eagerness to
see the other picture, that taken after the murder.

He shuddered.

It was a natural revulsion in the good man, gentle-minded and
kindly, so easily stirred to emotion, at the sight of the rigid
corpse, with the gash in its neck—the wounds beneath the breast were
not visible, as the dress was fastened—the face so torn and blood-
stained that it was literally masked by contusions. His uplifted
hands shook, his mouth worked like that of a terrified monkey.

Then, suddenly, his whole aspect changed. He stiffened, his arrested
eyes widened, and stretching out his arms, he said as if he were
making a statement.

"It isn't she!"

As he spoke in a loud voice, he attracted the attention of several
people, notably that of a mean-faced man with an untidy beard, a
round hat worn at a wrong angle, and a tightly buttoned dirty
overcoat.

But M. Brunois continued without noticing that he had been observed:
"No, it isn't she, it isn't Félicie Bonheur, no, no, no."

At this the man in the dirty overcoat said abruptly: "Why do you say
that, eh?"

M. Brunois was silent, either because he had not heard or because he
could make no answer.

The man repeated: "I'm asking you why you say that isn't Félicie
Bonheur?"

This time, and with an explosive suddenness, M. Brunois exclaimed:
"Why, because—" He stopped.

He could not remember what he had been going to say; he thought in
vain, something was reeling in his head. It was over in a minute. He
looked at the people about him, smiling calmly. But he was in no
hurry to reply; he himself could not conceive why he had called out
so positively: "It isn't she!"

He explained it to himself when he had had a closer view of the dead
woman's picture.

The decent dress, clean except where the blood and mud had stained
it, the virginally banded hair, which even the death-agony had not
ruffled, the modestly buttoned bodice, the little white collar, in
fact, the whole appearance of the victim had nothing in common with
the get-up and appearance of Félicie Bonheur in the adjacent
picture, and generally contradicted the mixture of disorder,
boldness and extravagance which is associated with the lowest class
of prostitute.

Ingenuously, and not without considerable pride in his own powers of
observance, M. Brunois detailed his reasons to his interlocutor.
They convinced no one. People shrugged their shoulders. The good man
was drivelling. There was certainly a difference of dress in the two
photographs, but that proved nothing. That sort of woman sometimes
puts on a modest air to attract men, and so far as could be judged
beneath the wounds the faces were identical. The noses were the
same, the eyebrows were similarly arched, the hair grew in the same
way, and near the left ear, on the cheek, the same mark on the skin
was clearly visible. M. Brunois could not deny these resemblances,
but tossing his head, he seemed to attach no importance to them, and
suddenly, with the look of someone who has taken a resolve, he
walked out rapidly, without another word.

No doubt remained to him. In spite of general opinion, it was not
Félicie Bonheur who had been murdered.

Rather up in the air, he rubbed his hands and told himself he would
have made a famous detective. Being only a humble citizen, he would
fulfil his duty as a citizen by seeing justice done.

The inquiry could have no satisfactory result as long as it was
based on a false starting-point. The murderer had not been found,
because he was only being sought for among those people who had in
one way or another been in touch with Félicie Bonheur. It was
indispensable to discover first of all who the vicitm really was;
that achieved, the arrest of the criminal must speedily follow.

He entered a café and asked for writing materials. He took the pen,
but wrote only one line: "To the examining magistrate: Your Worship—
"

He tried to find phrases and sentences.

To tell the truth, when he came to put it into words, his conviction
no longer seemed strong enough to be shared with any one. The
reasons that he had given in the dispatch office just now were not
very convincing after all, especially when opposed to such
contradictory resemblances.

He did not admit himself in the wrong. He was sure that he was not
in the wrong. Since he had been right in his assumption of Eudoxe's
innocence why should he be less intuitive concerning the supposed
victim?

But really he had not enough proof; no, at the moment he really had
not enough proof, and thoughtfully, he dropped the pen . . .

Someone whom he had not seen was standing on the pavement and
watching him through the window of the café; it was the mean-faced
man with the untidy beard and the dirty overcoat.

VI

The next day, towards nine in the morning, Madame Aurélie woke with
an exclamation of surprise; her husband, standing before the
wardrobe, had just buttoned his coat. He had already put on his hat—
a top-hat, though it was summer. There was a solemn and ceremonial
look about his dress and manner.

"What's the meaning of this? Why are you going out this morning got-
up like that?"

He said that he was going to the funeral of an old merchant who was
one of the domino players at the Café Guerbois.

"Are you? You didn't tell me about it last night, did you?"

No, as a matter of fact he had forgotten to mention it last night.
It had only come into his mind this morning. He could not possibly
get out of following the procession, and he was late already. He
would have to go straight to the church. He kissed his wife, told
her not to worry if he did not get back till the afternoon or a
little later; there would probably be a breakfast for the mourners
after the service. Then he went out. He walked with a firm step; his
bearing was studied and important.

Once again M. Brunois had lied. All the Café Guerbois domino players
were in excellent health. He had invented the funeral in order to
avoid the mocking remarks of his wife to whom, as it chanced, he had
not mentioned the mystery in the Rue des Filles-Dieu for several
days. The truth was that as he had not sufficient proof to prevent a
miscarriage of justice, he wanted to get hold of equally striking
evidence, and inspired, no doubt, by recollections of detective
stories, he was going to reconstruct the crime for himself.

He climbed into a carriage.

"Rue des Filles-Dieu."

According to formula, he must begin from the beginning, that is to
say, the first step was to visit the scene and the vicinity of the
crime, and draw out the nearest neighbours.

"What number?" asked the driver.

M. Brunois knew perfectly well, of course, that Félicie Bonheur had
lived at No. 56 in the Rue des Filles-Dieu, but he said: "Stop at
No. 20"—a subtle thought on which he congratulated himself. He might
have attracted attention to himself if he had got out at the house
where the crime had been committed, and it is easier to make
observations when one is inconspicuous.

On the way he memorised clearly the principal points on which he
must focus his enquiries, co-ordinated them in his mind, and put on
one side the suppositions thrown out by the daily papers, so that no
preconceived idea might break in on the distinctness of the
impressions he was about to receive, or might lead him to put a
false construction on the particulars he was about to gather. On the
other hand, he considered his own theories to be indisputable facts.
As for instance:

"A woman who was not Félicie Bonheur had received three knife
wounds, and had been picked up dead and unrecognisable on the
pavement."

Such were his facts.

To establish the victim's identity, and to discover the real
murderer, who was not Eudoxe le Marin.

Such was his aim.

A few minutes later they had left the main boulevards, and had
turned into the maze of narrow streets and blind alleys, which
twist, unwind and come back to the same point, and then wind back
again between the Rue Poissonnière and the Porte St. Denis. M.
Brunois betrayed no interest in this somewhat notorious district,
though, stay-at-home as he was, he had had very little occasion to
visit it. Without thinking them strange and unusual, he turned a
contemptuous eye on the tumbledown hovels that adjoined occasional
new houses, hovels that gaped open, whose filthy plaster was peeling
off, whose windows, smothered in crimson curtains, swung half-open
on a chain, where, between the fluttering blinds, a naked arm or a
shock of red hair could be seen; he turned a contemptuous eye on the
wretched little shops whose contents were ripped out in a stream of
loose vegetables, rags, materials hanging up, and on the sordid
drinking-places whose fronts were painted blood-red.

He should have felt at least a sensation of novelty in the face of
these unaccustomed sights. But he experienced no such emotion.

He soon discovered the reason for this indifference. It was because
this obscene corner of Paris appeared to him absolutely identical
with what he had heard about it, especially after the sordid crime.

One thing only struck him as abnormal, and that was the daylight
shining on such hideousness and vileness; at night-time everything
would have seemed perfectly in keeping; no doubt this was on account
of the fact that in his mind the appearance of the place (so
completely identified with the crime which made it even more
sinister) was inevitably associated with the thought of that night
darkness in which the murder had been committed.

As they turned into the Rue des Filles-Dieu, he called: "Stop here,
driver."

At his words, they halted, not in front of a door, but before a
street lamp. Neither to right nor left did the houses bear either
the number which he had given to the driver, or that of the house he
had come to inspect.

What whim had made him stop the carriage? He did not know. Curious,
this sudden instinct which had made him call "Stop!"

Behind the lamp-post, between a façade and a jutting wall, there was
a rather deep recess which at night, despite the adjacent light,
must be extremely dark—one of those corners in low neighbourhoods
where lurk prostitutes, whose greasy hands shoot out to stop the
passer-by with a stream of filthy promises.

What made M. Brunois call up this picture? Was it because he had
seen some such women in some such corner . . .? When? Oh, well,
often at night on his way home after a game of dominoes at the Café
Guerbois.

He got out of the carriage and paid the driver.

As he was in the Rue des Filles-Dieu, he would walk to No. 56.

But once on the pavement, he stood still. This spot interested him—
this shadowy angle, this meeting-place which must be so dark at
night shut in between the façade and the wall.

If the murdered woman had been a street-walker, if the murderer had
been some prowling drunkard out for a debauch—(A drunkard? Yes, the
idea of a drunken assassin had come to him all at once because of
the number of drinking-places he had seen in the vicinity) —then the
two might have met in some such place, probably in this very place,
since it was so close to the house where the crime had actually been
committed.

Possibly, after a few brief words had been interchanged, the woman
going in front, the drunken man reeling against the shuttered shop-
fronts, they had gone towards the hotel . . .

Surely, surely, it might have—must have—happened thus. And M.
Brunois, following his idea, which was literally taking shape before
him, skirted the walls with an uncertain step as if he wished to
imitate the person whom his imagination had evoked.

He stopped abruptly before a chemist's shop. Like a flash of
lightning, the thought had come into his head that there had been a
quarrel between the man and the woman, here, in this road, on this
pavement, here, here, here in the rosy glow of the enormous jar,
which was now extinguished, but which must flare at night.

This hypothesis, he told himself, was quite feasible, the shop being
only a few paces from the house.

But what had suggested to him the idea of a quarrel in the road
between the two people who had met? He asked himself this question,
and could not at first answer it . . . He had it! Nothing simpler—it
happens so often, he had seen it happen dozens of times—those
disputes near the door of some wretched den between a prostitute and
a passer-by on account of the money extorted, or for some other
reason.

For some other reason.

He was inclined to think that in this particular case, money had not
been the reason.

Perhaps the woman had refused to have anything to do with a drunken
man? But that sort is not so refined as all that; perhaps she was of
the class that refrains at certain hours from accosting passers-by
and refuses to go with them into the dubious houses where, moreover,
other women await their turn? And perhaps the drunkard, having
conceived a desire for her when she had solicited him in the recess
behind the street lantern, was angered by her refusal?

M. Brunois had such extraordinary faith in himself that he admitted
as proved facts the wildest and most chimerical theories, which were
either the result of incidents he had seen in the road, or
recollections from the newspapers.

He could have sworn that the woman had not gone into the hotel with
the drunken man, that they had separated under the rays of the rosy
jar.

On the other hand, he was not satisfied with the idea that she was
only a decoy to lead men up to the door.

Perhaps she had a rendezvous to keep with her lover, or with a
protector, jealous, according to his fashion . . .

M. Brunois could hardly restrain a cry of triumph: he remembered the
statement of Eudoxe le Marin.

On the day of the crime, Eudoxe had ordered Félicie Bonheur to come
and join him in the crêmerie in the Rue Vieille du Temple; the woman
who had accosted the drunkard (she could have been no other than
Félicie Bonheur, alias the Big Jewess) had left him in the lurch,
fearing her lover's fists if she were over-late.

Thus the truth fitted in marvellously with M. Brunois' suppositions.

But the Big Jewess had not seen why someone else should not profit
by her loss. She had told the met-by-chance to go to her room at No.
56, third floor, such-and-such a door—he had only to go straight up
and ask no questions of the concierge, and in her room he would find
someone else, much younger and prettier than herself, a friend who
had come to see her, a relation of hers . . .

M. Brunois struck his forehead violently, and cried out: "Her
sister!", and sure of having guessed correctly, swelled with pride.

But he soon had to confess that, correct or otherwise —he would have
betted that he was correct—this new theory was nothing to be proud
of; it was not by mere reasoning that he had come to the conclusion
that the Big Jewess had a sister younger and prettier than herself,
since Eudoxe had spoken of this sister, still virtuous and very
pretty, who was either a servant or a shop-girl in the suburbs of
Paris or the provinces, and who sometimes came in the evening to see
her sister. What M. Brunois had prided himself on as being the
result of extraordinary intuition was, after all, only a
recollection. With this slight set-back to his pride and his
acuteness, he was soon reassured by the thought that among the facts
he had gathered in his enquiries, there were many that he owed
entirely to his personal acumen, and he eagerly followed out the
line of his deductions.

So, then, after a short quarrel, followed by a reconciliation, the
Big Jewess and the drunken man had separated before the chemist's
shop, he to proceed to the house indicated to him, she to rejoin
Eudoxe le Maria. This was what the man had done—this was what he
must have done. M. Brunois increased his steps, moving faster,
swaying slightly in imitation of the person he was imagining.

To be sure he was not to be pitied, that drunkard, for in place of a
common street-walker, not even in her first youth, he was to find a
young woman, almost virtuous (Eudoxe's statement), to sum up—a bit
of fluff good enough for a king. Yet at heart, he must have been
conscious of remorse . . . What was this? Why did M. Brunois suppose
that at that moment the drunkard was already conscious of remorse?
Was he confusing the state of mind that must have followed the crime
with that preceding it? This explanation did not satisfy him. He
held to his idea that the destined murderer had here, in this very
road, felt the prick of guilt—he held with strange tenacity to this
idea—but at the same time, it seemed to him that the feeling of
guilt must have sprung from reasons not connected with the crime.

What reasons?

Frequenters of street-women do not shrink from the idea of an
episode in a dubious hotel . . . That was obvious. But what was the
proof that the drunken man (he no longer called him a "drunkard ") 
was a libertine by nature, a frequenter of low orgies? Others
besides those base wretches are tempted by the scent of musk—a
perfume exhaled by some woman who accosts them at some street
corner. They may be perfectly respectable persons, too, middle-class
men of usually decent and sober habits, who are attracted from time
to time by the opportunity of idle and inexpensive pleasure. A
little escapade, discreet and harmless—one takes precautions,
naturally—is not at all inconceivable, especially after a meal at a
restaurant with one's friends, who, either to celebrate some lucky
business stroke, or to drink success to an undertaking, have ordered
the best wine to be had. A meal with friends—or a single friend.

It isn't necessary to be with a crowd in order to enjoy a good meal,
drink heartily and be a little light-headed in consequence—burgundy,
especially, fills one's brain with moonshine—there's nothing like
burgundy to put moonshine into one's brain, and when good wine puts
moonshine into one's brain, a mere suggestion of woman is enough. So
that probably the man who had wandered into the Poissonnière quarter
on the night of the crime was a worthy citizen—some retired business
man, maybe—not a profligate at all, but a little over the eight with
Pommard or Chambertin; and if this were so, it was easy to see why
he might have been conscience-stricken, and why he might have
hesitated before this door, almost resolving to turn back. At this
minute, M. Brunois halted, and leaned his shoulder against a
shutter, so vividly was he living in imagination. For, no doubt,
this chance libertine was a married man, and that was why he had
stopped irresolute on the edge of vice.

At the idea of those bought kisses in a house of ill-fame, he had
remembered his wife, not pretty, but so good, so old a friend, who
was waiting for him, her head on the pillow, her eyes on the hands
of the clock. And as one is very emotional when one is drunk, he had
shed maudlin tears between his fingers that shook with his shaking
body. Luckily, few people passed this way, and those who were about
took no notice of him. Moreover, drunken tears are soon dried, and
the good fellow must suddenly have burst out laughing—(M. Brunois
moved briskly away from the shutter and started to walk again) —and
with burning eyes and moist lips, no longer mindful of his wife
waiting in bed for him in their room furnished with mahogany and
decorated with lithographs, had broken into a run—there's no sin in
a little amusement sometimes—had run till he was almost out of
breath towards the hotel that was quite close, towards the low
wicket-gate, where M. Brunois stopped, panting, without even having
seen on a window on the ground floor the figures 56 in white on a
background of blue enamel.

However, it was not at all extraordinary that he should have come to
a standstill there before he had seen the number. For standing
opposite a scarlet-painted estaminet with intricate bar arrangements
that looked like the knotted entrails of an enormous brass dragon,
whose façade was decorated here and there with long mirrors which
reflected the road, the gutter, the pavement and the passers-by, the
doubtful and sordid-looking hotel with its small windows smothered
in red cotton-cloth, its overhanging first floor, and the narrow
passage door between the dirty plaster walls, had every appearance
of a scene of crime. Clever M. Brunois could not be led astray.

Nevertheless, he stood thinking, in no haste to push open the
wicket-gate.

As he was anxious to see the stairs that the murderer had climbed,
and the room where the murder had been committed, should he go to
the concierge simply as a curious sightseer (and, indeed, that was
all he was), or should he give some reason that would allow him to
examine the inmates of this sinister house at his leisure and
without any chatter to distract him? He decided on the second
alternative. But what reasons could he give? The most likely one of
all. Though it is scarcely customary to live in these dens, it is
quite usual to hire a room for a few hours for other than sleeping
purposes. He would simply imply that he had arranged to meet a woman
here, and that as he had arrived first, he would wait for her. A
little brazenness and a fatuous air being called for, he went
towards the concierge's office with a leer and a jovial look, no
doubt with the very manner which the person with whom he was
identifying himself had assumed on the fatal evening.

"Certainly, sir, certainly," said the concierge, who was in her
fifties, fat, perspiring, with a bristly grey moustache, "there is a
room vacant on the entresol—the best room in the house."

Standing in the doorway of the lodge, he made no attempt to take
stock of the speaker. Singularly enough, he scarcely looked at her,
and though she could no doubt have furnished him with interesting
details of the bloody affair which was filling his mind, the idea of
questioning her did not occur to him. Was it because, in the light
of his recent discoveries, he scorned to follow the usual police
methods, was it that he was too proud to use anything other than his
own intuition to guide him in his investigations? The fact remained
that he was not concerned with the concierge. Craning forward, his
eyes widening with intentness, he eagerly surveyed the walls of the
passage, the dirty brass knob of a narrow spiral staircase, and each
ascending step. He was too preoccupied to answer . . . Then turning
sharply round, he stretched his hand towards the small board where a
number of keys with brass numbers hung from hooks; he grasped one
abruptly.

"Oh no, no, Monsieur," said the concierge," don't take No. 13. That
room wouldn't do for Monsieur. It isn't nicely furnished, the bed
isn't big enough, and it's on the third floor. And besides, goodness
only knows, it isn't a pleasant room after that business—you know
what I mean, Monsieur—after that business that was in all the papers
. . ."

To tell the truth, M. Brunois was filled with a vast admiration, not
unmixed with astonishment, for the instinct that had guided him in
his difficult researches. It seemed that without any indication
whatever—just by an extraordinary chance (there was something
miraculous about it)—he had put his hand instantly and without
hesitation on the key of the very room where the sister of the Big
Jewess had been murdered. He was almost minded to admit that there
must be some supernatural element in it (he had at one time been
addicted to spiritualism); he had not remembered that those who are
gifted with superior intelligence, as a means to an end are always
assisted in their task by favourable circumstances—Destiny loves to
be of service to genius—and M. Brunois, after so many successes,
could not refrain from bridling a little.

But it was only a brief intoxication.

At bottom—he had to admit it—there had been nothing so very
wonderful in his having stretched out his hand towards that key and
no other. The figure 13 cut into the small brass oval had quite
naturally attracted his eyes,—and the appropriateness of the unlucky
number had associated itself with the horror of the crime. Hence his
instinctive gesture—nothing could be more easily explained.

Meanwhile he kept the key.

"That's all right," he said, his hat tilted a little to one side at
a rakish angle," So much the better if the bed isn't big when the
woman's pretty. Isn't that so, Madame? You'll see, she'll be here
soon, she's very pretty. I'll take No. 13—I've set my heart on it."

And he put a ten-franc piece into the concierge's hand.

"Oh," she said," it's just as Monsieur pleases. I was only saying
that . . . If Monsieur will follow me, I'll show him the way . . .
Take care, the stairs are rather dark and narrow . . ."

"I know, I know."

"Monsieur knows?"

Now, what had made him say "I know"? Well, of course, you don't
expect to find stucco walls in this sort of house or plenty of sun
or artificial light and a wide staircase with easily-climbed steps.

"Don't bother, Madame," he said. "I can find the room by myself. On
the third floor, you said?"

"Second door in the little passage."

"To the left?"

"To the left. Exactly. Then Monsieur has been in the house before?"

He started, then stood motionless, his whole body tense, and with a
glassy eye, in a voice that was addressed to nobody, he repeated
slowly, vaguely and stupidly: "Been . . . in the house . . . before
. . ."

But all at once, coming out of this short daze, he said gaily: "All
right, all right, to the left, then. Thank you, Madame, thank you."

He had thought at first that the door must be to the left, but had
soon ceased to wonder why he had thought so. The number of the room
was 13—an uneven number, and is there not a kind of analogy in
uneven numbers with any kind of incompleteness, any kind of
awkwardness and clumsiness that exists on the "sinister" side? That 
was why, yes, that was why he had immediately guessed that the door
was on that side. How well that ominous and threatening "13" fitted
in. He was pleased with this subtle reasoning, taking note of it and
analysing himself. He was as much interested in his own mentality as
if it were a very subtle study of character in a novel; he seemed to
be reading himself.

While the concierge in her lodge was muttering "That's an eccentric
gentleman, for sure", he was climbing the lower stairs on the first
floor, where from a narrow, half-open bay window, a sickly twilight
straggled in, overcast by a dusty steel reflector.

He suddenly felt quite dashing, like a man who has dined well and is
going to visit a woman.

Ah, after a good meal, there's nothing to be compared with a little
blonde girl, plump as a partridge, made for hearty caresses. The
slimmer ones are amusing too. They are even more amusing, more
stimulating. She must have been quite slender and small, with a
scarcely formed breast, being so young, and practically untouched,
that sister of Félicie Bonheur's, in that room upstairs, room No.
13.

What entertained M. Brunois in his investigations was the ease with
which he put himself in the place of the person he was going to
deliver into the hands of the law. He had thoroughly identified
himself with that other, and had got into his skin, as the saying
is, so completely that he was certain of thinking and acting just as
he must have thought and acted. The other one, eh? Of course, the
other one. And this incarnation, which had already assisted him so
materially, would assist him still more effectively.

He burst out laughing, for on turning the staircase, he had narrowly
escaped falling full length. It was the fatuous laugh of a drunken
man who has just escaped breaking his neck. He continued climbing in
the semi-darkness, slightly broken by a window on the first-floor
landing, and he reeled from the banister to the wall, striving to be
just like that other must have been. If he succeeded in getting
along, he was triumphant; but alternately he was mournful because of
the poor woman who was waiting at home, her wakeful eyes on the
hands of the clock. But why shouldn't one have a good time? The
devil knows one isn't a graven image. And still ascending, a
fragment of a cabaret song came to his lips: "Oh Mat, old Mat, what
are you at?" . . . He reached the second storey. "Oh Mat, old Mat .
. ." he panted, took another hold of the banister: "What are you
at?" And in high spirits at his song, he began his climb once more:
"Oh Mat, old Mat . . ."

In a few minutes he was about to be anything but bored . . . ("What
are you at?") in bed with the filly—(" Oh Mat, old Mat" . . .) and
he hurried on, taking the steps by twos, and he turned into the
passage, and he saw the door on the left, and he opened it, and
shouting coarsely: "What are you at?" he was met full on the face by
the blood-red reflection of a crimson curtain!

The scarlet curtain at the solitary window stained the floor, the
wall-paper, the table-cloth, the chairs, the marble toilet-table,
the basin, the bed, with the bloody scarlet of murder . . .

All bespattered with murder, M. Brunois uttered a cry. For it was
enough to drive an honest, decent, peaceable married man out of his
wits to find himself suddenly in this dreadful incarnadined room,
which only lacked the victim bleeding from neck and breast—and yet
she was not lacking, for he imagined he saw her —he did see her—Oh
God, he would go out of his mind . . .

In a paroxysm of terror, he turned, rushed out onto the stairs,
beating the air, reached the lodge, did not go through the door into
the street, but impelled by he knew not what instinct, crossed the
small courtyard to the narrow open passage that led to the impasse
St. Spire ("Monsieur, monsieur!" screamed the concierge); heard
nothing, running all the time ("You're going the wrong way,
Monsieur, that's not the way!"), gained the wall, pushed open the
door and fled . . .

Then it was that the old woman, very much astonished, muttered:
"Well . . . well . . . could it have been . . . by any chance . .
.?" And running into the road, she called a neighbour from the fruit
shop. "Will you look after my place for a minute?" Then as quickly
as she could, because of a suspicion that had just entered her head,
she hurried to the police-station in the Rue de Cléry, while M.
Brunois was stumbling wildly down the blind alley.

VII

He kept on running, running between the double line of water-casks
that made the narrow alley still narrower, to the astonishment of
the waiters rinsing out the wine-bottles in the backyards, and to
the accompaniment of shrill laughter that issued from half-open
windows, where women in pink or blue kimonos leaned out, the make-up
on their faces under their red mops of hair, horribly obvious by
daylight.

He went on running, lost, distraught, panting for breath, stumbling
into a wall or a cart or a passer-by as he went, so unspeakable was
the fear with which the sight of that horrible room had filled him,
so great was his desire to put as much distance as he could, at all
costs, between it and himself.

VIII

Poor unfortunate M. Brunois, so easy-going, peaceable and gentle,
rather a dreamer because of his many leisure hours, rather romantic
and subtle because of the detective stories he had read in comfort
in the evenings—so long as the crime in the Rue des Filles-Dieu had
remained unreal for him, in spite of its reality, so long as it had
no more substance than the fiction of Emile Gaboriau and M. Jules
Mary, it had interested him without disturbing him;—it had amused
him. It had been a distraction, affording him considerable
satisfaction in his monotonous life, to play the part of one who
might rise up at a given moment and say to the police and the judge:
"You're all idiots! What you haven't been able to discover, I've
discovered—and it isn't my profession either!" After which he would
withdraw, proud and dignified, amongst gasps of stupefaction and
congratulations, and he would be sought out so that he might be
properly recompensed, and he would be offered posts where he might
exercise for the public good and his own glory his almost-miraculous
powers of intuition. To sum up, the whole affair had been a harmless
way of passing the time, and had given him some interest in life; it
had been a guessing game, a rebus to be solved, whose reward would
no doubt be very much the same as the triumph of that Oedipus who
had won the first prize in the "games and pastimes" competition, and
who had received a weekly supplement.

But now he had seen the crime at close quarters; he had seen the
horrible room in the red shadow of its curtains. And it was no
longer a chapter in a novel, it was no longer an innocent riddle—it
was actual murder, real blood, living and tangible horror that had
almost touched him. And so he had fled, was still fleeing, in a
terror like that of a guilty man who had been led to the scene of
his crime, in an even wilder terror, perhaps, for a man who has been
a murderer must be more or less accustomed to see red on the walls
and on the tablecloth, while a guileless, gently-dispositioned
person like himself, so easily moved to pity, so much in dread of
any form of cruelty (he would rather have died of hunger in some
backyard than throttle a chicken)—for him, the sight of that room,
reeking with murder, had been unspeakable. How senseless he had been
to read the Petit Journal, how wise he would have been to have let
himself be guided by his wife's advice.

He ran, he panted, he perspired, sure that he w'as going to be
seriously ill. It had all come because he had insisted on following
the trail, like a plain-clothes detective. As if murders were any
concern of his. Oh God, that room, that room! He could not keep his
mind from the picture of the man going in, of the man hurling
himself into the onslaught, of the man raising the knife and
striking . . . He was running, running, running, panting, perspiring
. . .

At the end of an alley there were some muddy excavations, strewn
with bits of wood, rubble and broken stones, the site of interrupted
building activities; in front of an unfinished wall, a heap of sand
was mounded up and hollowed out like a miniature crater caked by a
plastery mass of cold lime.

Passing in front of this sand-heap, M. Brunois was tempted to take
off his coat and throw it down

What? What was this? His coat? Take it off? Throw it down . . .
there? . . .

Yes, because running had made him so hot . . .

But what wouldn't Aurélie have said? She'd made enough fuss about
that other coat, the one that had been lost on the night he had
dined with Richond, and that he had been obliged to replace
immediately with another from the shop.

He had stopped running because of the passers-by who were now more
numerous and better dressed; he had emerged from the alleys and by-
ways into the neighbouring quarter, which was busy and crowded, but
not sordid.

But his hurried and jerky steps, as though he were keeping his
impulse to run within bounds, tired him scarcely less than his
erstwhile mad rush.

His chest rose and fell, like that of an actor in a melodrama, and
with a fixed and haggard look, he saw that dreadful room once more,
and big beads of sweat appeared on his forehead, beneath his
temples, beneath his eyes . . .

He neared a wall fountain. He approached it, stretched out his open
palms, washed them in the trickling water, bathed his face, and
experienced that delicious coolness which cleanses . . . and calms .
. .

What a curious notion that was, to be sure. Does a respectable
person like himself usually wash in the open streets? Of all the
extraordinary things that had happened to him, this was the most
extraordinary of all. Good gracious, you don't wash at a public
fountain when you're a respectable person with a decent income. That
sort of thing's all right for homeless vagabonds and loafers who
have spent the night on benches . . . or for blood-smeared murderers
who long to wash away their guilt .. . Ah! Perhaps the Rue des
Filles-Dieu murderer had washed at this very fountain? Even as he
had, perhaps, thrown his coat on the heap of sand among the stony
tracks of the half-built house . . .

Once more, M. Brunois could not help admiring the really
overwhelming cleverness through whose medium he overtook, guessed
and repeated every act of the criminal, and his pride advised him to
continue an investigation which he was so obviously destined to
carry to a conclusion.

But the sight of the crime-soaked room had impressed him too cruelly
to allow him to continue an adventure which would, no doubt, have
even worse horrors in store for him.

Besides, the fresh water had cooled him down; now he was walking
with even step, not too quickly. He saw that he was in the Rue
d'Aboukir, near the boulevard where he would find a cabstand.

He breathed freely and once more became self-possessed. No, no, a
thousand times no! He would not lay himself out to the utmost to aid
the course of justice. It was all the same to him whether they found
the murderer or whether they didn't. He had slipped back again to
the gentle jog-trot of everyday life. Ouf! That was over. He
straightened his hair, which had become disordered in his flight,
fastened up his coat, his new coat, and reached the boulevard, no
different in appearance from the people strolling there, climbed
into a cab, gave his address, remained pensive during, the journey
in a somnolent state almost devoid of thought (the usual condition
after any violent emotion), reached home, and was a little confused
when Madame Aurélie asked him: "Well, wasn't there a dinner for the
mourners, then?"

However, remembering the excuse he had given for his early morning
sortie, he soon recovered.

"No. After the burial we all went away."

And with that, he took off his best things, slipped on a dressing-
gown, and sat down to the table on which the daily woman had just
placed an omelette.

The chirping of the canaries, the scent of the roses, and the
fragrance of the garden came through the window open to the
sunlight. Oh, how good it was to be at home; he wouldn't start
gadding about again after affairs that were no concern of his.

IX

Like an animal that retreats into its den, and draws into the
shadow, never to venture out again, M. Brunois withdrew into his
safe and simple life, into his usual domestic self. He would desist
in future from acting too knowingly, from wanting to be a Lecocq.
That kind of entertainment was a little too overpowering in its
emotional surprises. To every man his calling—his was to get up
late, enjoy a good breakfast, have a rest, loaf away an hour, an
hour and a half, on the outlying boulevards to put an edge to his
appetite, to take a hand at cards with his wife, or to play dominoes
with his friends of the Café Guerbois, and go to bed sharp on the
stroke of ten with a "Good-night, Aurélie, sleep well", already half
asleep himself.

In order to make sure that his stupid caprice should not take
possession of him again, M. Brunois forbade the daily woman to bring
the Petit Journal. Thus it happened that five or six days after he
had become re-absorbed in his customary existence, he had lost all
interest in the mysterious crime that had so preoccupied him. He
would not even have crossed the road to learn the name of the actual
murderer, and he would soon have completely forgotten that an
unfortunate woman had been killed in the Rue des Filles-Dieu.
Moreover, he had never been better in health, had never rejoiced in
such a hearty appetite. "Charles, Charles you're getting quite a
corporation!"—thus Madame Aurélie—and with his mouth open he slept
placidly and dreamlessly, as the even rhythm of his breathing
showed, for twelve hours on end, the round of the clock.

One night, he suddenly sat bolt upright. In a corner of the room, as
though in a hollow of the wall, the wick of the night-light
spluttered redly above a rounded shadow, and died out like the
flickering eye of a tormented screech-owl; and, his elbow on his
knee, his chin on his wrist, his gaze towards the empty darkness and
solitude, he muttered:

"The extraordinary thing is that such a crime could have been
committed by a peace-loving man, a man of a gentle, decent and
timorous disposition. What would be quite in accordance with a
brutal, good-for-nothing used to knife-play is out of keeping with a
respectable citizen. And yet—that's been proved, that's been
established—the murderer is such a man. What could have driven him
to a crime so alien to his nature, to his type? Drunk? Yes, of
course he was drunk, but although drink may put queer ideas into a
good fellow's head, ideas of "getting off", it doesn't put into his
head a fierce desire to cut somebody's throat, to commit a bloody
murder. I admit that in room 13 there must have been a quarrel
between the Big Jewess's sister and the visitor, but that's no
reason why he should hurl himself on her, strike her once in the
throat and twice in the breast. What could have possessed him? What
could have filled him with such latent rage that it only needed a
spark to flare out? That's what needs explaining. Come, let me
think. Somebody must surely have annoyed or crossed him in the
course of the evening. I'm positive of that. But where? Who?" He
shrugged his shoulders.

"I've got it! I've got it! How stupid not to have thought of it
earlier. He had dined at a restaurant with friends, or a friend—
that's also been proved and established—on the occasion of some
successful business affair, or some journey. Well, after the
dessert, there's an argument. He, that other, had not been bad-
tempered, he had only wanted his joke; but ill-timed jests and words
that both stung and irritated, had worked him into a rage. Though
you are the easiest-going man alive, you lose patience in the long
run if you are tried too much; you can't contain yourself. Every day
you meet them—the sort of people who, though they're so gentle they
wouldn't harm a fly, mustn't be worked up. Grandfather was like
that. Now everything's clear—the discussion became a dispute. There
were angry words, insults, perhaps an interchange of blows across
the plates and glasses. Possibly after that the man who had been so
infuriated, dashed to his feet in a blind rage, and seized from the
table a bottle, a decanter . . . or a knife . . ."

M. Brunois started.

"A knife, a knife! One of those small, very slender and sharp-
pointed knives they have in restaurants . . . the very knife with
which later on he wounded and killed the sister of the Big Jewess.
The doctor stated that the wounds appeared to have been inflicted by
a very slender, very sharp-pointed knife; and why should the
murderer, a law-abiding citizen who certainly never went out armed,
have such a weapon on him if he had not taken it from the restaurant
table, if he hadn't carried it away, inadvertently, no doubt, when
he hurriedly left his friend. For fear that if he stayed any longer,
he might strike an unlucky blow?"

Perspiring, M. Brunois felt his heart beat violently, so strongly
was he affected by his vivid reconstruction of the preliminaries to
the crime, so elated was he at his own perspicacity.

He controlled himself and succeeded in not moving. He mustn't wake
Aurélie, asleep at his side. He went on speaking, or rather,
thinking, his lips moving soundlessly.

"And after that? After he left the restaurant, what did he do? Oh,
that's not very hard to guess. Soothed by the fresh air, the gay
glitter of the still-lighted shops (it couldn't have been later than
nine or half-past, as the crime was committed at ten o'clock),
thankful, moreover, that he had done his friend no injury, he began
to stroll along the streets, looking at the shop-windows and making
signs to the shop-girls. He was still furious, of course,—those
black rages aren't over so quickly—but his fury was now mingled with
a softer emotion; it teased and tickled him, he wanted to laugh.
Burgundy was the devil, ha, ha, ha,—and presently, exhilarated by
the wine and the pretty grimaces of the shop-girls behind the glass
windows, he left the wide, well-lit, crowded streets, and buried
himself in an obscure neighbourhood where, in the darkness and
solitude and mystery, there was a chance of a likely encounter, a
pleasant encounter, and so, in a corner, he finds Félicie Bonheur,
and she will not go in with him because Eudoxe is waiting for her,
but she shows him the hotel in Rue des Filles-Dieu, tells him the
number of a room where he will find another woman, much younger and
prettier than herself, and so he goes to the hotel, passing the
untenanted lodge, and he climbs up the stair, and he sees 13 on the
door in the passage, and with a song on his lips he goes into the
room, into the room, the room!"

M. Brunois had not only thought the last words, he had spoken,
almost shouted them.

"E-eh, what is it, what's the matter with you?" Half-awake, Madame
Aurélie was speaking, raising herself towards him.

"Nothing. I turned over, that's all. I woke you up; go to sleep
again, my dear."

She put her head on the pillow and snored very softly.

With clenched teeth, he went on: "Yes, he went in. He went in
singing, with the knife in his pocket, the knife . . . and then . ."

He did not finish.

"Then . . . then . . ."

He had lost the thread, he felt himself unable to guess why, having
once entered the room, the man should have murdered its occupant.
You are drunk, you are jolly, you see a pretty girl beside a bed,
and you don't want to kill her, the devil knows! Quite the reverse!
You talk to her smilingly, you take her hands, you make her sit
beside you, or on your knees, you stroke her hair, her neck, you
begin cuddling her, and as she doesn't resist, as she, too, smiles,
as she allows you to do as you please . . .

"But no, that's just it!" exclaimed M. Brunois guardedly. "That's
just it, she doesn't allow you to do as you please! She wasn't a bad
lot like the Big Jewess. A servant or a shop-girl, quite young, and
nearly virtuous—no, virtuous. I'm sure of that. Eudoxe stated that
to the judge, and Félicie Bonheur said the same to the man in front
of the chemist's shop. If the little one, so slender and pretty,
with her simple and modest air (aha, what did I say in front of the
second photograph in the dispatch office?), if the poor little thing
was at the hotel that evening, it was only because she had come to
see her sister . . . her sister the Big Jewess, who must have been
both infuriated and humiliated by her innocence of men, and who had
thought it amusing to send a man in to her. Yes, she had sent a man,
the first she had met, as a joke, so as to have a hearty laugh—so
that the unfortunate little girl should go the way of all the rest.
Yes, yes, yes," went on M. Brunois with the enthusiasm of a miser
who digs up his treasure by small degrees. "But Félicie's sister
would not take part in the joke. She refused, she grew angry, she
would not let herself be touched. Then he, excited by this pretty
child who tore herself out of his arms, and ran about the room and
screamed, he lost control of himself, he became like a madman. His
desire, coupled with the wine, drove him crazy, and his anger after
the dispute at the restaurant not yet appeased, went to his head,
filled his mouth and his eyes, like burning spirit. He caught hold
of the girl, who eluded him again, he seized her once more by the
window. "You won't?" "No" "You won't?" "No, no, leave me alone.
Help, help! I'm not the kind of girl you think. My sister deceived
you. Let me be—help, help, help!" And she bit him, and dug her nails
into his eyes. Then he took the knife out of his pocket, and he
struck Françoise . . ."

M. Brunois stiffened with stupefaction.

Françoise? Why had he said "Françoise"? Whence had the idea sprung
that the victim's name was Françoise?

That the murderer had known her name was possible, the Big Jewess
might have told him, or even the poor little thing herself. But he—
what had made him suppose it was Françoise, how did he know this
name, that had not been mentioned in Eudoxe le Marin's statement?

He thought for a long, long while, staggered at last by the
intuitions which at every moment of his investigations sprang into
his mind . . . And this time they had given him a name, a plain fact
that could not be deduced from anything else . . .

But he smiled . . . After all, he wasn't a magician or a
clairvoyant. He was no more than an intelligent man, clear-sighted
and skilled in drawing inferences from the slightest indications. If
he had thought of the name Françoise, it was simply because he had
read in the papers that the clothes of the dead woman had been
marked with the initials F.B. This dead woman (Bonheur, but not
Félicie) must either be called Flora, Francine—or Françoise, most
likely Françoise—a sober kind of name, and she wasn't a gay sort,
but in a shop or in service in some middle-class household.

He continued his train of thought, his forehead between his hands,
his eyes open in the blackness (for the night-light had just gone
out), and revelations crowded upon him.

The drunken man struck Françoise in the neck and breast with the
small pointed knife, which he drew out, reddened. She, not yet dead,
approached the window, screaming, shrieking, broke the glass with
her fist, screaming, screaming, pushed it open, threw herself out,
while the murderer, distraught, prepared to strike again if anyone
intercepted his flight, tumbled down the stairs (just as he had done
the other day), did not reach the road, escaped by the narrow
uncovered passage, hurled himself into the blind alley, ran, ran
between the water-casks, panted, perspired, could go no further,
stopped, out of breath, saw in a ray of moonlight blood on his
sleeves and his buttons, noticed at the same time at the end of an
alley bits of wood, rubble and broken stones in some muddy
excavations, a building-site, where a heap of sand in front of a
half-finished wall was rounded up and hollowed out like a kind of
miniature crater in which lime was still smoking; took off, or
rather, snatched off, his bloody coat, his tell-tale coat, and threw
it onto the smoking lime which would burn it, destroy it; stamped it
down in blind fury with his feet . . .

M. Brunois was neither an idiot nor a fool, and he was not, on the
whole, so carried away as to over-rate himself. He conceived quite
rationally that if, at this peaceful hour, lying in bed beside his
wife, the thought had come to him that the murderer, distracted by
his deed, had passed before the building-site, had stopped by the
sand-heap, had there hidden his bloody overcoat, it was because he
himself had, the other day, stopped at the same spot, and had been
tempted on account of the heat to take off his coat. Yes, of course,
this was obviously why he had imagined all that.

But although this imagined proceeding had sprung from causes
entirely unconnected with the crime, that did not imply that it was
not entirely a probable proceeding in connection with the crime.
Quite the reverse.

Why had he, Brunois,—after the horror of the glimpsed room—fled by
the blind alley and not by the road? Was it not to avoid passing the
lodge where the concierge was no doubt lying in wait? Well, the
murderer, with far better reasons, might have—must have—been
determined by the same apprehension.

Why had he, Brunois, after having fled between the water-casks,
halted before the building-site? Because he could go no further,
being out of breath. Well, the murderer must also have been
breathless with running, and (however unlike men may be, their
breathing powers are more or less similar), he might have—he must
have —stopped to regain his breath at the same spot.

Why had he, Brunois, been tempted there to take off his coat?
Because he was hot, because he was in a sweat. Well, the murderer,
at that moment, might have —must have—been hot, and in snatching off
his coat, he had an additional and terrifying reason—the bloody
sleeve, the bloody buttons . . .

Thus everything that M. Brunois had done and experienced confirmed
the logic of his theories as to what the murderer had also done and
experienced, and he continued to follow up the man, the murderer, in
his mind, with his head throbbing between his hands, his eyes glued
on the night-darkness already becoming greenish with the approach of
dawn.

He saw him in his shirt-sleeves, a white streak in the night, grow
more and more distant, disappear, re-appear, and again grow distant,
till he rushed to the fountain to wash his hands . . . (as it was in
that direction, the murderer must have noticed the fountain), then,
a little quietened, with a hope of safety, he saw him reach the
populated streets, the boulevards where there are cab-stands, and
where you can lose yourself in the crowd; and then everything was
blotted out, complete blankness ensued . . . he had reached the very
apex of nothingness.

He turned his mind back.

He concentrated on the realities he had just verified. One in
particular attracted him, chained him, absorbed him. The coat.

Yes, the murderer's coat, the coat thrown on the sand-heap, buried
in the smoking lime.

It was so extraordinary (in spite of the help which the analogy of
his own adventure to that of the criminal had given him), it was so
amazing that he had guessed how the murderer had snatched off his
blood-stained coat and hidden it at that particular moment of his
flight, that the meed of praise he deserved made him wonder if he
deserved it—and yet he could not absolutely credit such phenomenal
clairvoyance.

He would have given everything he had to be sure of the fact that
the murderer of Françoise had really thrown off his coat in that
very place . . . For that certainty—besides filling him with a
legitimate and overweening vanity—would be a confirmation of all his
other hypotheses, which had been based on his investigations . . .

Well, why shouldn't he make sure? No doubt the hot lime—now cooled
down—must have corroded, burnt up, consumed, so to speak, the cloth
of the coat . . . yet possibly not entirely; there must be a few
ashes, a few rags of the stuff, perhaps, a few feathery, greyish
shreds; and those fragments, even if he had to dig in the lime with
his fingers, he meant to find . . . if they existed. But in the day-
time, there were people passing. They would see him near the sand-
heap, reaching out his hands, burying his fingers in the cracks . .
. they would wonder . . .

The livid light of morning shed wavering rays through the wind-
shaken blinds onto the face of the clock. Four o'clock—Madame
Aurélie was a sound sleeper who never woke till broad daylight. He
would just have time to go to the building-site near the Impasse St.
Spire. Noiselessly, and very cautiously, he stretched one leg out of
the sheets, pulled himself up, his feet on the bed-rail, groped for
his clothes, found them, and, holding his breath, began to dress.

X

Soaked with rain, the abandoned building-site with its scattered
stones, and its area broken here and there by shadowed pits, looked
like a ruined necropolis in the silence and solitude of the livid
dawn; the half-finished walls seemed to be the rigid silhouettes of
time-old ghosts who had risen from the excavations and had been
petrified there by very fear of themselves; beams of wood lying full
length bridged over the gaping hollows; the flight of a cat,
slinking out of sight, woke the thought of some treacherous hyena,
the carrion devourer of bones and flesh; and between the clustered
shadows of the neighbouring houses, the whole place had an aspect of
desolation and ghastly melancholy.

There was a noise of stones trampled underfoot. Stooping, with his
hand over his eyes, M. Brunois appeared, a dense black apparition in
the pale light. Occasionally he turned his head to see if he were
being followed. What would he have replied if someone had risen up,
a night-watchman of the building-site, or a police-constable, and
had suddenly asked him: "What are you doing here?" But there was no
one, the place was like a deserted cemetery under the waning night.
The nocturnal prowler kept on walking, finding his way, knowing
where he was going. He saw the heap of sand, rounded and hollowed
out like a miniature crater. Over it the dreary whiteness of the
plaster had flowed in a smooth stream, cracking in places. With
another backward glance—no-one was following him, watching him —M.
Brunois knelt down (sinking waist-high in the damp and treacherous
sand), and craning his neck, he stuck his nails into the cracks of
the hardened lime, and began to search for the remains of the coat.
But the irregular gaps, bristling with sharp ridges that grazed his
skin, were so small that he could not insert the whole of his hand.
By means of a key which he took from his pocket he was forced to
scrape the edges and enlarge the crevice, till he finally succeeded
in scraping away a quite considerable mass of whitish substance,
beneath which his nails scratched at a crisper layer of lime.

But he found nothing, not a fragment, not a shred of stuff,
absolutely nothing.

He was terribly depressed. So he had been mistaken in supposing that
the murderer had buried his bloody coat here. If so, all his other
theories, so patiently and logically founded on facts observed with
such subtle skill, were also valueless. At this thought his
depression increased. It would be horrible to realise that at every
step of his minute investigations he had been at fault. What a
downfall! How humiliating? No, he couldn't possibly be wrong. And in
an access of rage, he tore up here, there and everywhere, now with
his fists and now with the key, the mass of lime.

Something soft, light and pliable slipped between his fingers. He
struck his whole hand in more deeply, and withdrew it full of a kind
of greyish, powdery, flaky substance. It was the remains of the
material. Yes, yes, it was the remains of the coat which had lain
buried for several days. Stooping once more over the widened crack,
he saw, not in the chalky pallor, but a little further to the left
in the sand itself, a fragment with a button attached to it that the
calcinating lime had not been able to reach. It was indisputably a
piece of the murderer's coat. He picked it up and stood on the sand-
heap, swelling with triumph, and at the risk of waking the sleepers
behind the neighbouring windows, he brandished his arms in the air
and uttered a shout of victory.

XI

When, once more in bed beside his still sleeping wife, M. Brunois
woke towards nine in the morning, his first thought was to go at
once to the police-court, and to share the truly miraculous fruits
of his investigations with the judge. Aha, now he really had proofs.
The little bit of cloth, which he had put under his pillow, which he
touched with his hand, was no idle fancy, but confirmed to the
utmost all his theories. He swelled with pride and complacency as he
thought of the magistrate's amazement, and the praise with which he
would be loaded. And what about his wife who had jeered at him from
the beginning? She would have to bow down to him as well, she would
have to acknowledge the super-intelligence that he had displayed. He
had a good mind to tell her at once . . .

On second thoughts, no. He would not at present speak to either his
wife or the magistrate. Certainly his task, worthy of the highest
enconiums, was nearly finished. But only nearly finished. He had
reconstructed all the preliminaries of the crime, he knew the
smallest details of the crime, he even knew the name of the murdered
woman; but he did not know the murderer.

Though he knew what sort of man he was, he did not know who he was,
or where he was. To deserve admiration to the utmost, he must find
that out. He would find it out.

Scarcely was he up than much to his wife's surprise, he shut himself
up in the drawing-room. "What's up with him now?" she asked herself.
"He's been quite all right for the last few days, now something's
got hold of him again. Whatever can it be?" She peered at him
through the keyhole, and saw that he was writing. As a matter of
fact, he was setting out a report in which he had detailed minutely
every occurrence connected with his inquiries. This took him at
least two hours; when he had written the last line, he put the paper
in his pocket, asked for some breakfast, bolted it at a great rate,
without a word to Madame Aurélie who, astonished and alarmed, dared
not say a word, but stared at him open-mouthed. After which, he went
out without even saying where he was going.

He was going to the Rue des Filles-Dieu.

He was fully aware of the rash but overwhelming desire which forces
criminals to revisit the scene or the vicinity of their crimes. His
idea was to take up a position in some café or estaminet quite close
to No. 56, where he could watch the passers-by, and he was sure—so
clear a picture had he formed of the man who must be the murderer—
that if he dared to prowl about this spot, he was bound to recognise
him.

There happened to be—he remembered—at the corner of the road
opposite the hotel, a red-fronted estaminet with an imposing bar,
whose intricate arrangements looked like the knotted entrails of a
disembowelled brass dragon, and about whose crimson façade mirrors 
had been placed, reflecting the pavements, the road and the passers-
by.

M. Brunois seated himself at a small round table inside the
estaminet, almost at the door, ordered a glass of sherry, and
waited, his eyes glued on the hotel on the opposite side of the
street. Nobody could either go in or out of it without being seen by
him.

The first afternoon passed without incident. The landlord of the
estaminet, after some surprise at his persistent presence, no longer
heeded it, thinking no doubt that his visitor was some supervisor of
public morals, making notes of the women of the neighbourhood. No
matter of outside interest.

For a minute M. Brunois' attention was drawn to a rather badly-
dressed individual with a mean face, an untidy beard, a round hat
and dirty overcoat, who passed two or three times in front of No.
56, and who directed a stealthy glance in the direction of the
estaminet. This person, with his sly and sordid look, seemed not
unfamiliar to M. Brunois. But he was not by any possible chance the
murderer. No, no, the murderer was quite different. A worthy
citizen, rather fat, and paunchy.

No luck to-day, and the observer withdrew, rather sulkily.

But he returned the next day, and every day after that for a week.
Without results. Nobody passed who resembled M. Brunois'
preconceived picture of the murderer.

Towards the close of the eighth afternoon, an idea, which should
have occurred sooner, came to him. If the guilty man was wandering
at large about the neighbourhood, he must have had the thought of
entering the estaminet so that he could sit at his ease and survey
the sordid house he had stained with blood. But the presence of a
stranger seated near the door was enough to make him suspicious and
drive him away. M. Brunois realised that his observation post was
useless, and made up his mind to look for another, further away,
more secluded and less conspicuous.

He paid for his drink, got up, opened the door, crossed the road
slantwise, turned back at the sound of rapid footsteps, the
footsteps of someone who is running . . . and in one of the tall
glasses of the crimson facade he saw the profile, the swiftly-
vanishing reflection of a man . . . of a man who was—who was—the
murderer!

Oh, M. Brunois was sure he could not be mistaken. The man who had
appeared and disappeared in the mirror was the murderer himself, and
he hurled himself towards the estaminet where the man, after he had
passed the mirror, must have entered. No, the place was empty. On
the contrary, the man must certainly have turned the corner and
vanished into the alley. M. Brunois dashed in that direction—the
alley was deserted. Had the criminal escaped, after all? Full of
anger, M. Brunois stamped his. foot, bit his nails, alone in the
alley, quite alone . . .

But at least he had seen the murderer, and even though his reflected
face in the glass had been swiftly obliterated, his quick eye had
visualised every feature, the whole aspect of the man down to the
smallest detail —yes, down to the smallest detail—and hurriedly he
went back, anxious to add the description of the murderer to his
already minute and convincing report.

XII

On Monday, September 15th, 188-, at eleven o'clock in the morning,
M. Brunois presented himself at the entrance of the Palais de
Justice, was directed by a guard standing on duty near the gate,
went towards the left, and climbed a wide staircase which turned at
right angles.

Very dignified and haughty, M. Brunois appeared perfectly happy. He
was evidently forcing himself to maintain a serious demeanour, a
moderate carriage suitable to a person who is about to carry out
some exceedingly solemn mission; but his secret elation betrayed
itself by his beatifically-open mouth and his sparkling eyes.

He went up, looking straight in front of him; he never noticed that
a mean-faced man with an untidy beard and a dirty overcoat was
following him with an expression of amazement.

He reached the great corridor where witnesses and accused are seated
on wooden benches between the doors of the examining magistrates'
courts, and going up to a uniformed official who was standing behind
a sort of pulpit, he asked:

"Can I see M. Legrandin, the examining magistrate?"

"Have you got a summons?"

"No, here's my card." He handed it over, and added: "You can tell
him I've come about that business in the Rue des Filles-Dieu." M.
Brunois' manner and accent were almost regal.

"Very good, sir," said the official, and crossing the corridor, he
pushed open a door, disappeared, and came back almost immediately.

M. Brunois at that moment was so convinced of his own importance
that he took it quite as a matter of course to be received
immediately, even though he had no appointment . . . Every door must
open without delay to the man who had come to assist justice in its
course of retribution.

He went in.

He bowed with rather condescending politeness to the judge, who had
risen, and to the clerk of the court, who had not moved. He did not
notice that M. Legrandin's face betrayed the most profound
astonishment, nor did he notice that he was not invited to sit down.

"Monsieur," said the judge," you have come to . . .to .	"

"I have come," said M. Brunois," to bring you the fullest, the most
complete and conclusive details of the crime in the Rue des Filles-
Dieu."

Deliberately he drew the papers from his pocket, unfolded them, and
in a loud and ringing voice, with magisterial accents, he began to
read his report, while M. Legrandin and the clerk exchanged
stupefied glances.

The report related with minute particulars the dinner of the
murderer-to-be at the restaurant with his friend, his intoxication,
the dispute, the purloined knife, the stroll before the still-lit
shops, the meeting with Félicie Bonheur in a dark corner, her advice
to go to No. 56, Room 13, where there was a young person, her own
sister, called Francoise Bonheur, the withdrawal of Félicie (if the
latter had not reappeared since the crime it was obviously because,
having been partly responsible, she feared to be implicated), the
murderer's arrival at the house, his ascent of the staircase with a
song on his lips, his entry into the room, the resistance of
Francoise Bonheur, the violent quarrel, the three wounds, one in the
neck, two in the breast, the dying girl opening the window and
throwing herself into the road, the flight of the murderer along the
impasse St. Spire, the bloody overcoat hidden under the smoking lime
. . .

At this juncture, M. Brunois stopped reading; he drew from his fob a
fragment of cloth with a button attached to it, and said:

". . . the bloody coat, of which this is the only piece I was able
to find."

And triumphantly, he looked at the magistrate and the clerk—at the
spectacle of justice assisted and overcome by himself.

After a moment's silence, during which he stared the speaker out of
countenance, M. Legrandin said:

"Quite so; most of the facts you have set out have already been
officially confirmed . . ."

M. Brunois winced. He had not read the papers for many days; so it
seemed that after having followed false trails for a considerable
time, the police had finally got on the scent. It displeased him.

However, the judge added: "But many facts, which we were not aware
of, and which you have given us to-day, are absolutely credible."

M. Brunois grew calmer. Come, the value of his investigations was
being recognised. It was less than he had hoped, but still it was
something. And he smiled.

"But have you any detailed description of the murderer himself?"
asked the judge. "Do you know his name?"

M. Brunois went on smiling. "His name? Well, I must confess I don't
know his name. But I have his description, as detailed, as exact as
possible."

"His description?"

"Yes, your worship."

And, his whole face radiant with victory, M. Brunois recited his
report; there was no need to read it, he knew it by heart:

"The murderer," he said," is a man of 44 to 45 years of age; he is
rather stout, without being obese; he dresses, not fashionably, but
very neatly, in a black overcoat; he wears a top hat. He is going
grey, he has very large, prominent blue eyes, and thick lips; his
whole appearance suggests gentleness, kind-heartedness, a peaceful
and secure existence. Distinguishing mark: near the left nostril is
a mole, or rather, a wart with rather thick hairs . . ."

Abruptly the judge said: "Unhappy man, you are describing yourself!"

"Myself?"

M. Brunois would have fallen to the floor if, as he swayed, he had
not struck a chair into which he sank with folded arms. He sat
there, his face blank, his eyes filled with madness.

He understood, he understood.

After the judge's hideously revealing words, his mind had become
like a room which, endowed with consciousness, has its dense
darkness suddenly illumined by a fierce light, and sees itself in
all its entirety with everything that it contains.

Everything, everything, he understood everything. He had committed
the crime! Yes, he had done it while he was drunk, after the dinner
with Richond; then he had forgotten it, absolutely forgotten it. No,
not absolutely forgotten it, since, without knowing why, he had been
absorbed by the crime in the Rue des Fines-Dieu. And what, during
his investigations, he had taken to be discoveries due to his
subtlety, was nothing more than his sub-conscious recollection of
the details of his crime, the details of his flight! And finally, it
was his own image in the estaminet mirror that had led him to
describe the murderer.

And suddenly—while the judge, having rung, had summoned a police-
sergeant, who was followed by the mean-faced detective with the
untidy beard—M. Brunois broke into desperate sobbing; poor man, so
gentle, so kind, so full of self-horror, he was thinking of his
wife, and of the assizes, and of the verdict, and of the scaffold;
and he went on sobbing and sobbing with heavy sobs, not daring to
hope that a recommendation to mercy would spare him death or
transportation . . .

He did, however, benefit from a recommendation to mercy, thanks to
the report of the specialist who held him to be mentally
irresponsible for his actions, less on account of his intoxication
on the night of the murder than because of the state of mind that
subsequently led him to be his own betrayer and accuser. Thanks also
to the defence by Maître Flor Delestang, an admirable defence, even
though somewhat inclined to be pedantic, since the speaker several
times referred to his client as the "Heautonparateroumenos."

FINIS

"From Dr. Elysee Beuriot's clear, concise and conclusive report,
which, as has been seen, proved irresponsibility, it was evident
that the accused's acquittal was no longer in doubt. M. Flor
Delestang's pleading could have been dispensed with. But in that
event, we should have lost a remarkable piece of oratory. Though it
was rather marred in places by pedantry (carried away by his
classical recollections, the defending counsel went so far as to
call his client the "heautonparateroumenos" (self-accuser), his
defence was one of the finest that has ever been heard.—Extract from
the Gazette des Tribunaux, Jan. 17, 188-.



A WAYSIDE VILLAGE
From "Un Village Près de la Route". Translated by Phyllis Megroz.

THE following history—note that I say history, and not story—I have
already intended writing twenty times, and twenty times I have been
prevented from carrying out my intention by the interruption of work
from one cause or another, by the intervention of some more pressing
inspiration, or by a dozen different reasons. Moreover, several
circumstances not irrelevant to the foregoing interruptions (and of
which I shall write later) have made me believe that some mysterious
Will, manifesting itself in these various hindrances, is opposed to
this history being made known. Obviously an absurd supposition. What
Will? It could only be super-human since it operates through chance,
and to believe, unless one were out of one's senses, that a Being,
or Beings, of finer substance than man, could have any interest
whatever in keeping secret, or only known to a few, an authenticated
incident (unless for an hour a common insanity possessed eight
people) is rather too ridiculous. Besides, there was nothing serious
or solemn about this particular incident that could class it as a
wonder worthy of the name, and its extraordinary unreality is hardly
sufficient to redeem it from mediocrity and futility . .

But, then, why is it that every one of those eight people who on
that night were gathered together, why is it that every one of them
has been afraid or unable to prove to himself whether this incident
were nightmare or actuality? Why did they all forbear to mention it
to each other on the following day, and why do I feel after such a
lapse of time (for twenty-three years have trickled away since that
night) why am certain that I shall disturb them profoundly, shake
them to the soul by recalling to them an episode at first productive
of so much merriment that it exhausted them with uncontrollable
laughter? Why, if I ask them for their testimony, will they try to
evade a direct answer, stammering out with a smile that they can't
say yes or no—just as they would reply if some tactless person
mentioned something of no particular importance but of which,
nevertheless, it would be better not to speak. And why have I never
succeeded in putting this episode on paper—it is no more than an
episode—and why even to-day, now that I have scrawled the first few
lines, do I still feel uncertain of ever coming to the end?

I shall write rapidly, not bothering about style; I shall not move
from my writing-table to reach for a cigar, or stop to cast a glance
at my favourite bookshelf. I shall not even read over what I have
written. I am like a traveller who hastens because he is not sure of
his way . . .

I

Munich before the War.[Note:The Franco-German War of 1870.] It was
about nine o'clock, possibly a little later. But it was certainly
not yet ten o'clock. We were coming out of the theatre where
Wagner's "Valkyrie" had been given for the first time. As I have
said, we were a little group of eight—an already-distinguished
French Composer; a judge recently initiated into Grand Opera, of
which he had become an ardent devotee; a woman, a noted singer, one
of the leading lights of the French School; a Hungarian
Kappelmeister who was to conduct "Die Meistersinger" at Bayreuth; an
Austrian dilettante, a friend of Wagner's, who had speedily become
ours; the subtle and word-gifted Villiers de l'Isle Adam; another
less-known French poet; and last and least, myself. Note that we had
dined before going to the theatre—that's to say, about four hours
previously—so that the idea of our having been put in a state of
mind to credit the incredible by a few glasses of wine can be
discounted. Our only intoxication proceeded from the sublime music
we had just heard. We were filled with calm, joyful, serene ecstasy.
Not to lose, among noisy crowds, the exaltation born of Wagner's
music, we decided not to go to the Café de L'Opera, adjoining the
theatre, where we usually supped, and so skirted the
Maximilianstrasse, wide and far-reaching, which was already silent
between the lighted clamour of the cafés.

At the extreme end of the Maximilianstrasse, a broad bridge with
wide arches spanned the almost-dried-up river; small, slimy pools
scarcely rippled between sandy eyots, and beneath the first arch,
the river was dammed up, forming a canal with a swift and glistening
current. We strolled on the bridge, talking enthusiastically, and
made our way towards the then-unfinished statue on the further bank,
of rose-coloured granite, if my memory is correct, and which had a
smiling look in the moonlight.

Now on the bridge something happened. Something absurd and
extraordinary. It was what might be called a comic miracle. And why,
after all, should not the supernatural be occasionally comic? Why
shouldn't the uncanny sometimes wish to assume a humorous aspect?
Why, being laughable, should a miracle be less terrifying, less of a
miracle? But man is so convinced that the super-human never loses
its solemnity that he is very little in awe of what amuses him.

Yet a shiver ran down my spine because of that incident on the
bridge, and it seemed to me in the light of the street-lamps that
uneasy smiles twitched at the lips of my companions . . .

A gust of wind had blown away the hat—a top hat—of the French
composer who happened to be walking beside me, talking away in great
good spirits. At that time he was given to spontaneous bursts of
animal spirits, the mischievous glee of a schoolboy playing truant.
He burst out laughing as his hat flew away, and while we too were
all laughing at the small incident, he shouted: "Wait! Wait!"

He had glimpsed in an opening of the parapet a narrow flight of
stone steps that led down to the practically dry river-bed.

"I'm going to fetch my hat."

He vanished, and we waited for him, already deep again in
conversation.

A man who had ascended the bridge by another flight of stairs, on
the further side, came up to us and holding out something round and
black which we could scarcely distinguish in the semi-darkness, said
in French:

"Gentlemen, here is the hat."

We supposed he was a lock-keeper, or something of the kind, who,
having seen our friend's hat blow away, had hurried to retrieve it
in the hope of some trifling tip. But no, he went away without
asking for anything, having bidden us good-night. He had given the
hat to me; I called to the composer who must be still scrabbling
about in the mud:

"Come on up! Come along, we've got your . . ."

I never finished. Our friend had just reappeared. Seven cries of
astonishment greeted him. For on his  head was his hat, which he had
found, so he told us, at the foot of an arch, spotted with mud, but
anyway, his own hat! And as I raised my arms in amazement, a second
gust of wind blew away the other hat, the hat that I was holding in
my hands, the hat that the vanished stranger had brought us;—where
it went, we never discovered.

It was possible, of course,—for the mutations of chance are
infinite—it was possible that two top hats had been blown
simultaneously into the river-bed, and that a stranger had good-
naturedly picked up one and brought it to us while our friend was
picking up the other; none the less, it must be allowed that there
was something rather uncanny in this coincidence, and if its
grotesqueness, to which was added, perhaps, our instinctive desire
not to read too much into it (since we all carry in ourselves a
dread of the unexplainable) had not made us laugh hysterically, I
believe that not even the most sceptical of us could have helped
being strangely affected. As for myself, I have always held that
this strange "miracle", explainable or otherwise, amazing, anyhow,
was sent by destiny or a particular fate to pave the way for the far
more extraordinary happening that was to befall us that evening; it
was sent that we might be in a fit state of mind to endure the other
incident, that was likewise laughable and childish, and yet
decidedly miraculous, that incident whose reality or unreality not
one of us has ever been able, or has dared to ascertain, and about
which, until now, I have found it impossible to write.

But I must write about it, I intend to write about it, and I swear
that I will write the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the
truth; those who were present at the time, who saw what I saw,
touched what I touched, will bear me witness . . .

II

Still shaken by rather nervous laughter, we had come to the other
end of the bridge. We turned to the left, and walked along the bank
of the parched river where here and there occasionally slimy pools
reflected the moon, Having almost forgotten the adventure of the two
hats, we were praising in ardent terms, with absolute panegyrics of
enthusiasm and adoration, the incomparable masterpiece we had just
heard, and with which we were still thrilling. The beautiful singer
who honoured us with her company uttered in the starry silence the
wildly-piercing cry of the Valkyries riding their steeds across the
fiery clouds. But suddenly one of us,—it was the French composer . .
.

Someone is ringing at my door. Who can it be? Oh yes, it's seven
o'clock, the friends I invited to dine with me have arrived. I must
stop writing and join them. Once again, it's impossible for me to
continue. Why? Why? Yet I've made up my mind that I will continue,
that this incident must be written; I shall finish it to-morrow, or
the day after, if I can . . .

III

I said that I would finish this "story". I will finish it. But not
without difficulty. The gathering storm weighs on my brain. Beneath
the skin of my temples where the veins are swelling, there is an
insistent throbbing like a blacksmith hammering on an anvil with
Cyclopean strength, and the rapid stroke of an insect's antennae. My
head feels as though it must fall on the table, fall, twirl, spin,
roll out of the window and bounce on the cobbles below. How
delicious it would be to stretch myself out, a pillow behind my
neck, my eyes half-closed to the light, my lips parted to inhale
some cool scent; how pleasant it would be if I could just set down
in a lazily care-free mood some tale that would neither weary you
nor me. But I have sworn to carry out my design. I will tell you
what happened near the road by the arid river's edge. I will not
believe that this weight on my forehead, this fever that makes the
pen in my hand tremble, this terrifying lack of concentration before
the blank page which seems to lengthen out and lengthen out, are
brought about by some mysterious Will, by a Will that is opposed to
the coming-to-light of the incident that occurred that night. I have
already stated that I did not believe in the existence of such a
Will; I still affirm it. I put it to you, what difference can it
make to a super-human intelligence whether anything so futile, so
little significant be related or not? Yet ordinarily at this time of
day I am in the right mood for work, my head is clear, my hand
steady. It is curious that precisely to-day, precisely at the moment
when I am about to write the long-projected history, I am suddenly
filled with weakness, while a sick headache throbs like a
blacksmith's hammer-strokes beneath the skin of my temples, till I
long, not to write or to think, but to sleep.

IV

I will write. I have taken every precaution not to be disturbed. The
doors of my room are locked and double-locked. My man has orders not
to admit anyone who may ring. There are enough cigars in the
Japanese cabinet, so I shall not have to interrupt myself to fetch
more. Matches? Yes, within reach, near the ink-stand. I shall write,
I intend to write, I am writing . . .

How far had I got? I don't remember. Yet usually I pride myself
justly on my memory which was always extremely quick and correct. If
I leave a sentence unfinished one day, I have been able to complete
it, without turning back, on the next. But to-day, I can't remember
at all.

The instalment I wrote last week is on the piano. I kept it, and put
it there close to the table. I thought I might possibly need it. I
need only stretch out my hand. But I don't stretch out my hand. Just
see how one yields to childishness at times. One movement would be
enough. I shan't make that movement.

Why? Because I'm afraid that the Echo de Paris just over there may 
not be the number I want. It might be, possibly it might be, a back-
number. What would that prove? Nothing, obviously, or at any rate,
nothing much except that I have made a mistake, that I thought I saw
my story when I saw nothing of the kind. Such mistakes occur every
day, even when one is very much on the qui vive, even when one has
taken every care that no mistake shall occur, as I have taken every
care to-day. It would really prove nothing if some mischievous
spirit ever on the alert had replaced the paper in which I wrote the
first chapters of this history by quite another paper. No,
decidedly, that would prove nothing . . . so I will reach out my
hand, take the paper, and re-read my beginning . . . no, it's
unnecessary because after all I can remember where I left off . .

V

We had left the bridge where the episode of the two hats had so
amused us. A mere coincidence after all, this episode. Wasn't it
only a coincidence, and no more? Every day like incidents occur
which, though they at first call forth exclamations of amazement,
later appear perfectly natural and normal. I am almost ashamed of
having mentioned so trifling an affair. As to that, you may be sure
we didn't attach to it any out-of-the-way significance. As a matter
of fact, it simply struck us as humorous. So it was, of course. Just
think! Two top-hats in the dry river-bed at the self-same moment! It
would be even too ridiculous in a farce. But it was certainly a
farcical coincidence. Our thoughts were already on other things. As
regards myself, I can assure you that I was thinking of something
else, that I was forcing myself to think of something else. The
beautiful voice of the singer woke the echoes with the wild appeal
of the Valkyries, and above the long road, above the town, and above
the dim solitude of the plain the still night hovered like a great
blue bird between whose spread wings, the stars glimmered.

The French composer (it is chiefly on his account that I have
hesitated so long before writing this history, knowing how terribly
his dreamy genius is shaken by the breath of mystery), the French
composer had for some little time been walking slightly ahead of us.
For a minute we lost sight of him in the gloom, and staring into the
shadows, I was tempted to think that he had retraced his steps
towards the town when a peal of laughter, a second peal and another
and another rang wildly in the silence. Where was our friend? What
had made him laugh so loudly, so repeatedly, so continuously? We
quickened our steps. At length we saw him. His hand on the rail of a
decaying wooden bridge, not by the river, but on the plain which
extended beyond the road, he was shaking, jerking and twisting
himself in a paroxysm of mirth. His laughter, now deep, now shrill,
now broken in little ripples and gusts sounded like the mad music of
a distracted Paganini.

"I say, what's the matter? What's up? What can you see down there?
What on earth's making you laugh like that?"

One of us (Villiers De l'Isle Adam I think) asked—I knew he was
wrong to ask it, I don't know why I knew it was wrong, but I
realised it instantaneously from his voice which sounded, not gay
and indifferent, but strained—one of us asked:

"Can you see a third hat down there?"

The more I think of it, the more I feel convinced that such a
question at such a moment was ill-timed . . .

But we had come up to the musician, and already all of us, like
himself, were helpless with laughter. Really no sight could have
been more amazing, more farcical, more absurd . . .

Just imagine . . .

Down below the road, four or five yards from the wooden bridge,
under the starry sky the dim deserted plain was dotted as far as we
could see with tiny houses no bigger than dog-kennels, tiny gardens
no bigger than handkerchiefs, tiny churches no bigger than twelve
inches high (on the steeple of one I noticed a weathercock
considerably smaller than a sparrow), tiny stables, tiny sheds, tiny
farms, tiny cottages, tiny manors, in fact a deserted, absolutely
deserted village, a liliputian village, miraculous, yet real. It was
so extraordinarily queer, all those miniature buildings extending as
far as the eye could see in the complete solitude, that we uttered
amazed exclamations, rocked and swayed with laughter till merriment
finally overcame us.

But a minute later, something else happened.

The composer had caught sight of a narrow stairway of slats, much
more like a ladder than a stairway, that wound downwards to the
plain. He started clambering down it, we followed uproariously,
still laughing spasmodically, and we tumbled through the miniature
village like a band of children let loose from school. We climbed
the garden-walls, jumped feet foremost over the fences, and seated
ourselves on thatched and slated roofs as though they were rather
low benches. The windows barely reached our knees. I collided with a
church-porch, and narrowly avoided a nasty sprain. "Come along, come
along, come over here and look!" we called, each wanting to show the
other some new miracle of minuteness. The Austrian dilettante was
staring at pig-troughs from which mice could scarcely have fed; the
magistrate had discovered a stadthaus from whose gateway a cuckoo
could scarcely have fluttered; small as her feet were, the singer
could only put one at a time in the shady walk of a park which was
just large enough for the spread of a single dwarf rose-bush. Round
tiny flower-beds, there were tiny circles of garlanded box. On his
knees before a church, the Hungarian Kappelmeister just avoided
smashing the rose-window with his watch-chain. I knocked with a
slightly-elevated boot on the door of an elegant villa; the
composer, doubling himself up as much as he could was whistling down
the chimney of a tiny building which came up to his thigh—it was the
village memorial —and running about hither and thither, frolicking
and shouting, the eight of us broke the empty silence of the night
with joyful peals of laughter.

We stopped laughing.

At a casement—a casement, it is true, somewhat higher than the
majority of windows—a light had appeared behind a curtain, lamplight
or candlelight, and a whitish shape had showed, like someone moving
. .

But laughter once more overcame us, louder and louder and wilder
still—and so overpowering, so uncontrollable, so irresistible was
our merriment that even now, as I sit writing quietly at my table,
the very remembrance is enough to set me off, to make me hold my
sides with laughter. I must walk about the room to calm myself down.
I'll finish later on . .

VI

I am sitting down once more. But I shan't finish this "story" to-
day. I have stopped laughing. I'm quite collected. But the outburst
has made my headache worse—it beats with hammer-strokes beneath the
skin of my temples. That's why I've stopped writing. That's the only
reason. Don't think I'm afraid to go on with this comic, farcical,
childish narrative. Why should I be afraid? . . .

If I have stopped writing, it's not on account of what happened when
I was pacing up and down the room.

For something did happen. Nothing very much—another coincidence, a
pure coincidence. You can judge for yourselves—nothing more than a
coincidence.

You haven't forgotten that one of those who was with us on that
night is now no longer amongst us. He is in that unknown land where
everything, and the reason for everything, is known. I loved and
admired him. So there was nothing very out-of-the-ordinary in my
finding one of his books open on the edge of the mantel-shelf. To
tell the truth, I don't remember having taken it out of my bookcase
these last few days. I would have wagered that I had not touched it
for a couple of months and that it was on the third shelf between
Edgar Allan Poe and Jean Paul Richter. But I should have lost my bet
because there it was, open. So I must have put it there—for if not
I, who else? No, there's nothing yet out-of-the-ordinary in finding
a certain book open on the edge of the mantelshelf, and it is not so
very out-of-the-ordinary, either, that as I was pacing up and down
to control my laughter, my eye should have fallen on the open page
and caught a few words. No doubt these words surprised at a first
glance before I had time to remember that they were part of a
dialogue in one of the stories (I forget which):

"My dear man, my dear, good man, let that alone ...'

But that's not the reason why I'm knocking off work for to-day. I
haven't in the least construed those words: as the advice of that
friend who has left us for that country where everything is known.
I'm leaving off because my headache's unbearable. That's all. I
shall soon finish this "story". The day after to-morrow. Not to-
morrow. To-morrow, I'm giving a poetry recital. But it will
certainly be before long. Next week, yes, I will definitely finish
my "story" next week.

VII

This time, I shall really come to the end. Whatever happens, I shall
finish it now. To tell the truth, I hesitated just now—I was on the
verge of writing some other story, something amusing and absurd
which would have made you smile. In what way can it interest you to
know that on that far-away night there was a Lilliputian village on
the plain? But the mere possibility that my fear of boring you with
this little history is no more than an excuse, an artifice of my
weak will to prevent me from carrying out my intention makes me
continue . . . there is really very little more to tell. I shall
have done in a few lines. And then I shall think no more of it. I
don't know why, but I feel I shall be at peace, very much at peace—
the peace that follows the completion of a dangerous undertaking—as
soon as I have finished, as soon as I have got it out of my mind . .
.

VIII

I have already told you how wild and uncontrollable laughter had
once more overcome us in the midst of the tiny houses. We ran madly
about between the buildings, straddled the roofs, and clambered over
the walls. But at that casement a little higher than the rest a
light reappeared behind the curtain, lamplight or candlelight, and
for the second time a whitish form showed, like some being moving 
very slowly . . .

Mouth agape, eyes wide, feet rooted to the ground, I stared at this
light as though I had suddenly turned to stone. As a heard no more
laughter, no more sound of any kind near me, my companions must have
been staring likewise, as thunderstruck, as petrified as myself.

And the being (what Being? Something resembling a nightcap outlined
the pallor of a vaguely-delineated face), disappeared, came back,
disappeared, came back again; no doubt, with an upheld lamp, he was
pacing to and fro in the house. But reappearing for the third time,
he stood motionless as though he had seen us, and as though he also
were watching intently. I now heard sounds near me, but not the
sound of laughter. I heard the noise of painful breathing, harsh,
constricted as though it were being literally torn from agonised
lungs mingled with the shrill wailing crescendo of someone in fear,
someone in deadly fear, someone who is about to die of fear . . .
oh, so fear had locked my companions also in its grip, my companions
towards whom I dared not turn my head, to whom I dared not utter a
word. So they also too were in the stranglehold of a heretofore-
inexperienced terror; they too, were stiff and cold, frozen to icy
images.

The living Thing, the Being who stood behind the milky curtains of
the casement was motionless for a long while. Then, with a slow
movement that brought the lamp within closer range, he pushed open
the window, and an arm with a luminous hand, an arm from which hung
a ghastly rag was stretched towards us with a sweeping gesture as
though it were warning us off . . . How was it that, hurling
ourselves simultaneously towards the narrow slatted stairway,
pushing and jostling one another, we were so soon able to regain the
road by the river-bank? In less than a few minutes, we reached the
decaying wooden bridge; and with rapid steps the eight of us made
towards the town. We did not speak. We avoided each other's eyes.
What horror haunted my companions? Were they still in the throes of
terror? Did they press onwards without wasting time in idle words or
glances, because their one thought was to put as much distance as
possible between themselves and the plain where the little village
was spread out, the little village where a ghostly hand had thrown
open a curtained casement? Speaking for myself, my forehead drenched
with sweat, shaking spasmodically with a nervous tremor, I longed
with every fibre of my being to reach the town, the town with its
big houses, lighted, tenanted, substantial, the dwelling-place of
the normal.

Having crossed the bridge—the bridge where the incident of the two
hats had so much amused us—we turned into the Maximilianstrasse. I
was beginning to be myself once more. I walked less rapidly, and
breathed more easily. You can imagine that once calmed down and
collected I was far from believing that there was anything really
supernatural in the existence (actual or illusory) of that little
wayside village inhabited by only one solitary being. Obviously
there must be some natural explanation for it which anyone could
give us. My companions were evidently possessed by the same thought.
They had slowed down at the same moment as myself. They exchanged
looks and smiles, and I guessed it would not be long before they
began to speak of the thing that having at first made us laugh
immoderately, ended in terror. It was without any obvious confusion
and in almost ironical tones (the tone in which one" gets back" so
to speak, on the unusual which has made a fool of one) that the
Austrian dilettante hazarded: "It was very queer . . . but you know
we were all a little besides ourselves with music, and possibly . .
." To tell the truth, the suggestion that eight people had been the
victims of a common hallucination found very little favour. We all
agreed that we really had seen, really had touched the tiny houses,
the tiny churches and the tiny farms. The amusing village did exist.
Therefore it must exist naturally. The practical-minded magistrate
put forth the theory that perhaps some animal-breeder ("Of
infinitesimal animals, then", objected Villiers de L'Isle Adam) had
in a spirit of caprice constructed miniature buildings made to
represent human habitations to house his stock. There was something
feasible in this, some possibility of truth that satisfied, or
seemed to satisfy, two or three of us. But the French composer
tossed his head. "That's not the explanation," he said," I've solved
the puzzle. This curious village must be one of Louis of Bavaria's
freaks. In spite of his very reasonable and commendable love of
opera, he was a bit crack-brained, and must have had this
Lilliputian hamlet constructed just as he might have ordered the
erection of a colossal Brobdingnagian city to amaze his eyes."

A sigh of satisfaction escaped us all.

The French composer had guessed it. Here was a clear explanation of
everything. After all, there was nothing fantastic in our adventure.
The being who had appeared at that casement somewhat higher and
wider than the rest must have been some keeper of the village whom
we had disturbed by our laughter, and who had warned us away. It was
absurd that we hadn't immediately jumped to the simple and plausible
truth. We had no doubt left . . . not a single doubt . . . even
though it was rather surprising that we should have been in Munich
for over a month without having been told of such an extraordinary
fantasy of the King's . . . But of course it was all quite clear,
and going into the Café de L'Opéra where we usually supped, we made
sure that the first person we questioned would answer in such a way
as to confirm the French composer's theory in full.

We were never more mistaken in our lives. As soon as we started
questioning a Bavarian musician whom we knew slightly, and who was
sitting at an adjacent table, he looked at us with an angry
expression as though he thought that we were mad, or that we were
making game of him. I insisted, I pictured as best I could the
things we had seen, I told him how we had laughed, admitted our
terror . . . The musician got up, and ordered the waiter to take his
glass to a table at the other end of the room. "He didn't understand
you," said the Kappelmeister. "You speak German so badly and he
hardly knows any French." At this moment Ottilia, the pretty
waitress, rather inclined to familiarity with strangers, brought the
plates and napkins for our supper. Usually she understood us with
perfect complacency, and somehow or other, managed to mangle our
language into meaning. I asked her if she knew the little wayside
village which had probably been built by the King. She spluttered
with laughter, kept on giggling and all that we could get from her
was "Oh lord, of lord, what funny folk you Frenchies are!" Other
tentative questions met with similar answers. Nobody know whether
the King had built a Lilliputian village out of caprice, nobody
seemed to know about this village so near to the town. Only one old
man, first alto at the Theatre Royal, a gentle creature with soft
eyes generally held to be a confirmed drunkard, accorded us any
appearance of attention. For a minute we thought he was going to
produce an explanation, but with a melting look, he wagged his head,
and murmuring: "Ah, children, children!" he hurried out of the
restaurant as though we had alarmed him. At that, we ceased our
inquiries, and lowering our eyes to our plates, isolated, nervous,
and restless in the noise of the room, watched, it seemed, by
hostile glances, we finished our meal in silence.
. . . . .

Of course, the obvious thing was to have gone back next day in broad
daylight, to see whether the tiny houses were there or not there—
prove them real or illusory, and supposing that they did exist,
question any passer-by about them, speak to the" being" who had
ordered us away from the casement.

We ought to have done that.

But we didn't.

Not one of us did this simple little thing, not one of us crossed
the bridge and followed that road. Why? I don't know. I can honestly
say that I don't know. Were my companions hindered by more urgent
matters, were they haunted by some apprehension of how the thing
that had been so strange and terrifying by night might seem by
daylight? However that might be, they all left Munich without going
back along the path we had taken after the first performance of the
"Valkyries". As for myself, it was certainly not fear, no, it was
certainly not fear (what fear could I have felt?) that prevented my
taking such a leisurely walk. But on the next day I had to write a
criticism of Wagner's opera which took up all my time. The next few
days were devoted to social affairs, and then an unexpected telegram
recalled me immediately to France. It's true that ten years later I
was in Munich again, and I ought then to have gone towards that
plain where we had seen the Lilliputian village. I can even say that
a desire to know more about this extraordinary reality or illusion
had been one of the motives that had brought me to the Bavarian
capital. But I had no time to satisfy my curiosity, no time at all.
I don't know what the reason was, I've forgotten it, I'm not even
sure that I knew it ten years ago. When you are travelling,
everything seems such a confusion of hurried arrivals and
departures. Only one thing is certain, and that is that I have never
discovered, never shall discover, I believe, the explanation of that
little wayside village . . .



THE COUGH
From "La Peur dans L'Isle". Translated by Phyllis Mégroz.

FROM a literary point of view, the unexplainable is taboo. I am
perfectly well aware of the fact that no writer has any business to
concern himself with supernatural circumstances unless at some point
in his narrative he is able to produce an explanation which must be
plausible, even if it is fantastic. (Theodore de Banville maintained
that such an explanation should be forthcoming in the first few
lines, a point on which he differed from Charles Baudelaire.) So
much the better, however, if the explanation is a material one. The
weird, yet never phantasmagoric, tales of Edgar Allan Poe succeed
precisely because of the skill with which he reduces disconcertingly
abnormal circumstances to an every-day level. Although there is
rather too great an analogy between this process and the old-
fashioned guessing-games, we have had so many masterpieces from his
pen that we have no right to criticise his methods. But, to sum up,
readers would be quite justified in accusing an author of childish
mystification and a wretched kind of ingenuity if, after having
caught and rivetted their attention, after having excited their
interest by an accumulation of miraculous happenings, he suddenly
refused to divulge the secret, and left them guessing.

Similar reproaches have already been levelled at me because of my
previous story: "A Wayside Village", and I should richly deserve
them had I written it simply as an exercise in literature, and not,
as I repeatedly warned my readers, as the plain facts of an incident
to which there were seven witnesses besides myself; an incident, as
I affirmed, that would not, and indeed could not, be denied by any
of those seven witnesses, as it was in every particular undeniable
and true. It would have been perfectly simple for me to invent some
whimsical conclusion, some logical ending to fit that bizarre and
burlesque episode of a journey, for the habit of imagining things,
far from making the mind sterile, only increases its inventive and
creative faculties. But out of regard for the truth, out of regard
for the fear I experienced at the time, I would not make this
concession. For this reason, I have refrained from rereading my
strictly-truthful narrative, lest I might be tempted to make
artistic, but fallacious, emendations. You must have noticed several
flaws, which, so I am told, are not usual in my work. My hope was
that a few awkward phrases here and there might be taken as
additional proofs of my sincerity.

And yet you were unconvinced. Have you never sensed behind some
inexplicable event, that may be either grotesque or awe-inspiring,
the brooding intent of a vague and invisible circle of beings (are
they beings?) forever watchful of humanity, always eager to manifest
themselves, but just as anxious for concealment when the prying
impetuousness of our reason is about to catch them unawares and drag
them into the broad daylight of verification. I myself have often
experienced an ever-closer contact (which was never an actual
presence), to which I reacted with either discomfort or anticipation
according to whether my soul were swayed by terror or hope of the
unknown, and I retain remembrances of shuddering emotions,
pleasurable or the reverse, which could never have been the outcome
of any human approach . . .

At the time of this particular episode, I was just twenty-one, and
my heart was broken. I had had an abortive love-affair. Nothing is
harder to bear than this, yet in after-years, when their passions
are extinct, a great many men are apt to laugh at their former
troubles, and to doubt their very existence. Such men are like a
person with an amputated limb who denies the pain it caused him
before its amputation. But the heart of a poet lives on as long as
his dream endures, and he must eternally bewail his ancient wrongs.

Thus it chanced that at that time my greensickness drove me to forgo
my ambition and desires, and to seclude myself from my fellow-men.
My one wish was to bury myself in some wilderness like the
wilderness within me. This wilderness I found, not far from Paris,
in a slip of an island locked between the scarcely diverging forks
of a river. Jostled among crowds, it is impossible to realise how
close at hand complete solitude may be found—a few hours' walk and
one is utterly alone. This island, which was to be my refuge was too
small for any village to be built on it, too bleak—a mere sterile
rock—to be cultivated, too unattractive—barren of trees and grass—
for a tea-garden to be set up with swings and skittles. As soon as
the ferry had gone back, I found myself really alone. I discovered
ramshackle platelayer's hut where I could sleep. I had brought along
provisions in tin boxes, a few bottles of wine, and several packets
of tobacco, quite sufficient for the period of retreat I intended to
make in this deserted spot, in whose silence and solitude I might
perhaps find peace.

What would be the use of my writing all this if it were not true?
What good would it do me to invent such a commonplace story of a
betrayed lover turned misanthropist and misogynist? Those of you who
have known me for years will certainly remember the morbid obstinacy
which kept me away from my friends and my dearest pursuits for a
whole month. I am putting down things as they were without any
pretence to literature, and every detail of the story is true, even
that which appears absolutely incredible, that which woke me in the
middle of the twelfth night . . .

Once alone, I was not conscious of boredom, or of a longing for
crowds. I hardly looked towards the banks of the river whose
scarcely-diverging streams locked the island; I never had the
slightest desire to hail the ferryman and scull to the neighbouring
village where the boatmen sang on Sundays. I was quite content to be
on my island, communing with my grief, questioning it and answering
it; we were excellent company, my grief and I. I would walk for a
long while across the sand or shingle, or sit idly on a rock
overhanging the water. Far from longing for colour and sound, I
congratulated myself that here were neither birds nor flowers. The
nights were especially welcome to me because of the absolute
stillness—the river flowed so languidly, the wind hardly stirred the
leaves of the sparse trees, the sky was so overweighted with
voiceless shadows—yes, I loved the nights because of the unbroken
infinite quiet. And in the centre of the deserted island, which was
like a ghostless graveyard, I lay in the hut on my bed of dried
grasses, my bed that, built up of wooden planks, almost looked like
a coffin . . .

How soundly I slept. Tired out with my long walks, weighed down with
my sorrowful thoughts, I would throw myself on my bed, and sleep
long and dreamlessly. Eleven nights I slept till dawn without
stirring. But towards the middle of the twelfth night, I woke . . .

I woke with a start. I sat up straining my eyes in the gloom, my
heart thudding. What had wakened me  so abruptly? I did not know. It
was useless to ask myself: "Why have I wakened so abruptly?" I did
not know. At length I vaguely remembered a noise whose sudden sound
must have disturbed me. But what sort of noise? I did not know. Oh,
well, I must have had nightmare. I lay down again, to bury myself
deeply in the delicious nirvana of sleep.

But I started up. I had suddenly remembered what had shattered my
rest.

It was the sound of a cough. Someone, I was convinced, had coughed
in the night, breaking the empty silence of the island.

But obviously that was impossible.

Wasn't I alone, absolutely alone in the still night, in the complete
solitude of the island?

Yet I certainly had heard a cough.

I smiled.

Probably I myself had coughed in my sleep. I must have caught cold
that evening on the river-bank. It was my own cough that had so
disturbed me.

I smiled again, and this time sank into oblivion. How delicious it
was to wake at sunrise, how delicious was the morning with its
welcome solitude, how delicious had been my night's rest. But
towards the middle of the thirteenth night, I once more started into
wakefulness on my bed of grass, like a soldier waking to the bugle-
call, and petrified, terror-stricken, a shiver running down my
spine, I heard someone coughing, coughing, coughing . . . Could I
still be dreaming? No, I knew I was not dreaming, knew I was not
asleep. Was I out of my senses? No, I was quite normal. Then who was
it I heard coughing? There was no-one on the island, and as so faint
a sound could hardly reach me from the villages or the road along
the river, what could this cough be, from whom did it proceed? I
felt myself grow colder, while an icy tremor shook me, and icy sweat
trickled down my forehead. For the cough was appalling. Sometimes it
shrilled out like childish whooping-cough; it broke out at irregular
intervals in fits and starts, and jagged across the night like a
fingernail scratching on glass; sometimes it was the hoarse cough of
asthmatic senility wheezing and thickening to a glug-glug-glug. It
was so distinct that it must come from quite near, terribly near.
Someone was coughing in the hut, yes in the hut itself, and yet
there was a strange, mysterious quality in the sound that made it
seem far-off and distant. For one dreadful moment I thought it
proceeded from under me, that I must be lying on someone, child or
greybeard, who had been oppressed by my weight to this frenzy of
coughing. Next, shuddering and perspiring, I imagined that some way
off a little boy, must be agonising in the convulsions of croup, or
a centenarian be emitting his death-rattle. I jumped from my bed,
and went out into the darkness. I had a suspicion that during the
evening some old vagabond with one of those unfortunate little
creatures who are forced to beg had, unknown to me, landed on the
island, and that both of them, chilled and wretched, were now
coughing one after the other, and then simultaneously at the foot of
some tree. But I could see no-one. The shadows were unpeopled.
Moreover, as soon as I quitted the hut, the coughing had ceased. I
went back and lay down and listened . . . nothing, not another
sound, it was all over . . . silence . . . Worn out with terror, I
fell asleep . . .
.	.	.	.	.	.

But every night, the coughing, the paroxysm of coughing, the
persistent, terrifying, lacerating spasm of coughing began again,
sometimes shrill like a child's cough, sometimes hoarse like an old
man's, and always it sounded strangely close and, as strangely,
distant. I listened for hours on end, fear-stricken, dripping with
icy sweat. Occasionally it stopped. I breathed freely. Could it be
that at last the child or the greybeard who had coughed was dead?
But soon, with an even more terrifying effect after the pause, the
rattling clamour shattered the night afresh, shattered the night, my
shuddering self, my whole being, till I, too, choked in terror
obsessed by that agonised coughing. Oh, you can realise that when
daylight freed me from torment, and I was normal again, I tried to
explain to myself that hateful nocturnal sound. But there was
nothing—nothing to explain it. There was no sea-eagle with its
horrible, sobbing laughter on the island, no cavity from which the
wind could issue with a hollow roar, no fissure in the rock where
the water might eddy and wail in gusts . . . the nearest village was
too distant for the sound of a living being's cough to reach my ears
. . . And yet, every night at the same hour, the cough, the
indescribable cough splintered the silence of the solitary island .
. .