FolleFarine .........................................................................................................................................................1

Ouida .......................................................................................................................................................1

BOOK I. DUST....................................................................................................................................................2

CHAPTER I. ............................................................................................................................................2

CHAPTER II. .........................................................................................................................................10

CHAPTER III........................................................................................................................................17

CHAPTER IV........................................................................................................................................23

BOOK II. "Yo contra todos, y todos contra yo."................................................................................................41

CHAPTER I. ..........................................................................................................................................41

CHAPTER II. .........................................................................................................................................46

CHAPTER III........................................................................................................................................48

CHAPTER IV........................................................................................................................................67

CHAPTER V.........................................................................................................................................70

CHAPTER VI........................................................................................................................................79

BOOK III. "L'Artiste est un dieu tomb�, qui se souvient du temps quand il cr�a un monde." ..........................98

CHAPTER I. ..........................................................................................................................................98

CHAPTER II. .......................................................................................................................................102

CHAPTER III......................................................................................................................................110

CHAPTER IV......................................................................................................................................122

CHAPTER V.......................................................................................................................................125

CHAPTER VI......................................................................................................................................129

BOOK IV. "The desire of the moth for the star.".............................................................................................141

CHAPTER I. ........................................................................................................................................141

CHAPTER II. .......................................................................................................................................153

CHAPTER III......................................................................................................................................162

CHAPTER IV......................................................................................................................................166

CHAPTER V.......................................................................................................................................178

CHAPTER VI......................................................................................................................................183

CHAPTER VII. ....................................................................................................................................192

CHAPTER VIII...................................................................................................................................196

CHAPTER IX......................................................................................................................................203

BOOK V. "If I love thee, what is that to thee?" ................................................................................................206

CHAPTER I. ........................................................................................................................................206

CHAPTER II. .......................................................................................................................................212

CHAPTER III......................................................................................................................................224

CHAPTER IV......................................................................................................................................228

CHAPTER V.......................................................................................................................................235

CHAPTER VI......................................................................................................................................243

CHAPTER VII. ....................................................................................................................................250

BOOK VI. "Dust to dust."................................................................................................................................254

CHAPTER I. ........................................................................................................................................254

CHAPTER II. .......................................................................................................................................268

CHAPTER III......................................................................................................................................273

CHAPTER IV......................................................................................................................................285

CHAPTER V.......................................................................................................................................286

CHAPTER VI......................................................................................................................................294

CHAPTER VII. ....................................................................................................................................302

CHAPTER VIII...................................................................................................................................309

CHAPTER IX......................................................................................................................................320

CHAPTER X.......................................................................................................................................320

CHAPTER XI......................................................................................................................................321

CHAPTER XII. ....................................................................................................................................323

BOOK III. "L'Artiste est un dieu tomb�, qui se souvient du temps quand il cr�a un monde."

NOT the wheat itself; not even so much as the chaff; only the dust from the corn. The dust which no one

needs or notices; the mock farina which flies out from under the two revolving circles of the grindstones; the

impalpable cloud which goes forth to gleam golden in the sun a moment, and then is scattered; on the wind;

Only the dust: a mote in the air; a speck in the light; a black spot in the living daytime; a colourless atom in

the immensity of the atmosphere, borne up one instant to gleam against the sky, dropped down the next to lie

Only the dust: the dust that flows out from between the grindstones, grinding exceeding hard and small, as

"It is a nothing, less than nothing. The stones turn; the dust is born; it has a puff of life; it dies. Who cares?

No one. Not the good God; not any man; not even the devil. It is a thing even devildeserted. Ah, it is very

As good a name as any other for a nameless creature. The dust; sharpwinnowed and rejected of all, as less

FolleFarine,she watched the dust fly in and out all day long from between the grindstones. She only

wondered why, if she and the dust were thus kindred and namesakes, the wind flew away with the dust so

The dust was carried away by the breeze, and wandered wherever it listed. The dust had a sweet short

summerday life of its own ere it died. If it were worthless, it at least was free. It could lie in the curl of a

green leaf, or on the white breast of a flower. It could mingle with the golden dust in a lily, and almost seem

to be one with it. It could fly with the thistledown, and with the feathers of the dandelion, on every roving

In a vague, dreamy fashion, the child wondered why the dust was so much better dealt with than she was.

"FolleFarine! FolleFolleFolleFarine!" the other children hooted after her, echoing the name by

which the grim humour of her bittertongued taskmaster had called her. She had got used to it, and answered

It meant that she was a thing utterly useless, absolutely worthless; the very refuse of the winnowings of the

flail of fate. But she accepted that too, so far as she understood it; she only sometimes wondered in a dull

fierce fashion why, if she and the dust were sisters, the dust had its wings whilst she had none.

All day long the dust flew in and out and about as it liked, through the open doors, and among the tossing

boughs, and through the fresh cool mists, and down the golden shafts of the sunbeams; and all day long she

stayed in one place and toiled, and was first beaten and then cursed, or first cursed and then beaten,which

was all the change that her life knew. For herself, she saw no likeness betwixt her and the dust; for that

The great black wheel churned and circled in the brook water, and lichens and ferns and mosses made lovely

all the dark, shadowy, silent place; the red mill roof gleamed in the sun, under a million summer leaves; the

pigeons came and went all day in and out of their holes in the wall; the sweet scents of ripening fruits in

many orchards filled the air; the great grindstones turned and turned and turned, and the dust floated forth to

FolleFarine sat aloft, on the huge wet timbers above the wheel, and watched with her great sorrowful eyes,

and wondered again, after her own fashion, why her namesake had thus liberty to fly forth whilst she had

"Little devil!" cried the miller, "go fetch me those sacks, and carry them within, and pile them; neatly, do you

FolleFarine swung down from the timbers in obedience to the command, and went to the heap of sacks that

There was an immense gladiolus growing near, in the millgarden, where they were; a tall flower all scarlet

and gold, and straight as a palm, with bees sucking into its bells, and butterflies poising on its stem. She stood

a moment looking at its beauty; she was scarce any higher than its topmost bud, and was in her way beautiful,

something after its fashion. She was a child of six or eight years, with limbs moulded like sculpture, and

brown as the brook water; great lustrous eyes, half savage and half soft; a mouth like a red pomegranate bud,

Her only clothing was a little short white linen kirtle, knotted around her waist, and falling to her knees; and

her skin was burned, by exposure to the sun, to a golden brown colour, though in texture it was soft as velvet,

and showed all the veins like glass. Standing there in the deep grass, with the scarlet flower against her, and

purple butterflies over her head, an artist would have painted her and called her by a score of names, and

described for her some mystical or noble fate: as Anteros, perhaps, or as the doomed son of Procne, or as

some child born to the Forsaken in the savage forest of Naxos, or conceived by Persephone, in the eternal

night of hell, whilst still the earth lay black and barren and fruitless, under the ban and curse of a bereaved

But here she had only one name, FolleFarine; and here she had only to labour drearily and stupidly, like the

cattle of the field, and without their strength, and with barely so much even as their scant fare and begrudged

The sunbeams that fell on her might find out that she had a beauty which ripened and grew rich under their

warmth, like that of a red flower bud or a golden autumn fruit. But nothing else ever did. In none of the eyes

that looked on her had she any sort of loveliness. She was FolleFarine; a little wicked beast that only

merited at best a whip and a cruel word, a broken crust and a malediction; a thing born of the devil, and out of

The sacks were all small; they were the property of the peasant proprietors of the district: the department of

Calvados. But though small they were heavy in proportion to her age and power. She lifted one, although

with effort, yet with the familiarity of an accustomed action: poised it on her back, clasped it tight with her

round slender arms, and carried it slowly through the open door of the mill. That one put down upon the

bricks, she came for a second,a third,a fourth,a fifth,a sixth, working doggedly, patiently and

It was a hot day in the late summer: she was panting and burning with exertion; the bloom in her cheeks had

deepened to scarlet; she stood a moment, resting, bathing her face in the sweet coolness of a white tall tuft of

The miller looked round where he worked, amongst his beans and cabbages, and saw.

"Little mule! Little beast!" he cried. "Would you be lazyyou!who have no more right to live at all than

And as he spoke he came towards her. He had caught up a piece of rope with which he had been about to tie

his beans to a stake, and he struck the child with it. The sharp cord bit the flesh cruelly, curling round her bare

She quivered a little, but she said nothing; she lifted her head and looked at him, and dropped her hands to her

sides. Her eyes glowed fiercely; her red curling lips shut tight; her straight brows drew together.

"Little devil! Will you work now?" said the miller. "Do you think you are to stand in the sun and smell at

"Pick up the sacks this moment, little brute," said the miller. "If you stand still a second before they are

housed, you shall have as many stripes as there are sacks left untouched. Oh, h�: do you hear?"

"Do you hear," he pursued. "As many strokes as there are sacks, little wretch. NowI will give you three

FolleFarine still stood mute and immovable, her head erect, her arms crossed on her chest. A small, slender,

bronzehued, halfnude figure amongst the ruby hues of the gladioli and the pure snowlike whiteness of the

She stood in the same attitude, the sacks lying untouched at her feet, a purplewinged butterfly lighting one

He seized her by the shoulder with one hand, and with the other lifted the rope.

It curled round her breast and back, again and again and again; she shuddered, but she did not utter a single

cry. He struck her the ten times; with the same number of strokes as there remained sacks uncarried. He did

not exert any great strength, for had he used his uttermost he would have killed her, and she was of value to

him; but he scourged her with a merciless exactitude in the execution of his threat, and the rope was soon wet

The noonday sun fell golden all around; the deep sweet peace of the silent country reigned everywhere; the

pigeons fled to and fro in and out of their little arched homes; the millstream flowed on, singing a pleasant

song; now and then a ripe apricot dropped with a low sound on the turf; close about was all the radiance of

summer flowers; of heavy rich roses, of yellow lime tufts, of sheaves of oldfashioned comely phlox, and all

the delicate shafts of the graceful lilies. And in the warmth the child shuddered under the scourge; against the

light the black rope curled like a serpent darting to sting; among the sunfed blossoms there fell a crimson

He flung the cord aside amongst the grass. "Daughter of devils!what strength the devil gives!" he

FolleFarine said nothing. Her face was livid, her back bruised and lacerated, her eyes still glanced with

undaunted scorn and untamed passion. Still she said nothing; but, as his hand released her, she darted as

noiselessly as a lizard to the water's edge, set her foot on the lowest range of the woodwork, and in a second

leaped aloft to the highest point, and seated herself astride on that crossbar of timber on which she had been

throned when he had summoned her first, above the foam of the churning wheels, and in the deepest shadow

Then she lifted up a voice as pure, as strong, as fresh as the voice of a mavis in May time, and sang, with

reckless indifference, a stave of song in a language unknown to any of the people of that place; a loud fierce

air, with broken words of curious and most dulcet melody, which rang loud and defiant, yet melancholy, even

in their rebellion, through the foliage, and above the sound of the loud mill water.

"It is a chaunt to the foul fiend," the miller muttered to himself. "Well, why does he not come and take his

own; he would be welcome to it." And he went and sprinkled holy water on his rope, and said an ave or two

Every fibre of her childish body ached and throbbed; the stripes on her shoulders burned like flame; her little

brain was dizzy; her little breast was black with bruises; but still she sang on, clutching the timber with her

hands to keep her from falling into the foam below, and flashing her proud eyes down through the shade of

"Can one never cut the devil out of her?" muttered the miller, going back to his work amongst the beans.

After a while the song ceased; the pain she suffered stifled her voice despite herself; she felt giddy and sick,

but she sat there still in the shadow, holding on by the jutting woodwork, and watching water foam and eddy

The hours went away; the golden day died; the greyness of evening stole the glow from the gladioli and shut

up the buds of the roses; the lilies gleamed but the whiter in the dimness of twilight; the vesper chimes were

The miller stopped the gear of the mill; the grindstones and the waterwheels were set at rest; the peace of

the night came down; the pigeons flew to roost in their niches; but the sacks still lay uncarried on the grass,

The miller stood on his threshold, and looked up at her where she sat aloft in the dusky shades of the leaves.

"Come down and carry these sacks, little brute," he said. "If notno supper for you tonight."

FolleFarine obeyed him and came down from the huge pile, slowly, her hands crossed behind her back, her

She walked straight past the sacks, across the dewladen turf, through the tufts of the lilies, and so silently

The entrance wa a wide kitchen, paved with blue and white tiles, clean as a watercress, filled with the

pungent odour of dried herbs, and furnished with brass pots and pans, with walnut presses, with pinewood

tressels, and with strange little quaint pictures and images of saints. On one of the tressels were set a jug of

steaming milk, some rolls of black bread, and a big dish of stewed cabbages. At the meal there was already

seated a lean, brown, wrinkled, careworn old serving woman, clad in the blue kirtle and the white head gear

FolleFarine said nothing, but moved on, past the food on the board, past the images of the saints, past the

high lancet window, through which the moonlight had begun to stream, and out at the opposite door.

There she climbed a steep winding stairway on to which that door had opened, pushed aside a little wooden

wicket, entered a loft in the roof, loosened the single garment that she wore, shook it off from her, and

plunged into the fragrant mass of daisied hay and of dry orchard mosses which served her as a bed. Covered

in these, and curled like a dormouse in its nest, she clasped her hands above her head, and sought to forget in

Below there was a crucifix, with a bleeding God upon it: there was a little rudely sculptured representation of

the Nativity; there was a wooden figure of St. Christopher; a portrait of the Madonna, and many other

symbols of the church. But he child went to her bed without a prayer on her lips, and with a curse on her

Sleep, for once, would not come to her. She was too hurt and sore to be able to lie without pain: the dried

grasses, so soft to her usually, were like thorns beneath the skin that still swelled and smarted from the stripes

of the rope. She was feverish; she tossed and turned in vain; she suffered too much to be still; she sat up and

stared with her passionate wistful eyes, at the leaves that were swaying against the square casement in the

She listened, all her sense awake, to the noises of the house. There were not many: a cat's mew, a mouse's

scratch, the clickclack of the old woman's step, the shrill monotony of the old man's voice, these were all.

After a while even these ceased; the wooden shoes clattered up the wooden stairs, the house became quite

still; there was only in the silence the endless flowing murmur of the water breaking against the motionless

Neither man nor woman had come near to bring her anything to eat or drink. She had heard them muttering

their prayers before they went to rest, but no hand unlatched her door. She had no disappointment, because

she had had no hope. She had rebellion, because Nature had grafted it in her; but she went no further. She did

not know what it was to hope. She was only a young wild animal, well used to blows, and drilled by them,

As soon as the place was silent, she got out of her nest of grass, slipped on her linen skirt, and opened her

casementa small square hole in the wall, and merely closed by a loose deal shutter, with a hole cut in it,

scarcely bigger than her head. A delicious sudden rush of summer air met her burning face; a cool cluster of

foliage hit her a soft blow across the eyes as the wind stirred it. They were enough to allure her.

Like any other young cub of the woods, she had only two instinctsair and liberty.

She thrust herself out of the narrow window with the agility that only is born of frequent custom, and got

upon the shelving thatch of a shed which sloped a foot or so below, slid down the roof, and swung herself by

the jutting bricks of the outhouse wall on to the grass. The house dog, a brindled mastiff, that roamed loose

all night about the mill, growled and sprang at her; then, seeing who she was, put up his gaunt head and

Ere he went, she caught and kissed him, closely and fervently, without a word. The mastiff was the only

living thing that did not hate her; she was grateful, in a passionate, dumb, unconscious fashion. Then she took

to her feet, ran, as swiftly as she could, along the margin of the water, and leaped like a squirrel into the

The silence, the shadows, the darkness where the trees stood thick, the pale quivering luminance of the moon,

the mystical e�rie sounds that fill a woodland by night, all which would have had terror for tamer and happier

creatures of her years, had only for her a vague entranced delight. Nature had made her without one pulse of

It was still warm with all the balmy breath of midsummer: there were heavy dews everywhere; here and there

on the surface of the water, there gleamed the white closed cups of the lotus; through the air there passed,

now and then, the soft, grey, dim body of a nightbird on the wing; the wood, whose trees were pines, and

limes, and maples, was full of a deep dreamy odour; the mosses that clothed many of the branches hung,

Around stretched the vast country, dark and silent, as in a trance, the stillness only broken by some faint note

The child strayed onward through the trees, insensibly soothed, and made glad, she knew not why, by all the

She stood up to her knees in the shallow freshets that every now and then broke up through the grasses: she

felt the dews, shaken off the leaves above, fall deliciously upon her face and hair; she filled her hands with

the nightblooming marvelflower, and drank in its sweetness as though it were milk and honey; she

crouched down and watched her own eyes look back at her from the dark gliding water of the river.

Then she threw herself on her back upon the mossesso cool and moist that they seemed like balm upon the

bruised hot skinand lay there looking upward at the swift mute passage of the flitting owls, at the stately

flights of the broadwinged moths, at the movement of the swift brown bats, at the soft trembling of the

foliage in the breeze, at the great clouds slowly sailing across the brightness of the moon. All these things

were infinitely sweet to her with the sweetness of freedom, of love, of idleness, of rest, of all things which her

life had never known; so dumbly may the young largeeyed antelope feel the beauty of the forest in the hot

lull of tropic nights, when the speed of the pursuer has relaxed, and the aromatic breath of the panther is no

She lay there long, quite motionless, tracing, with a sort of voluptuous delight, all movements in the air, all

changes in the clouds, all shadows in the leaves. All the immense multitude of ephemeral life which, unheard

in the day, fills the earth with innumerable whispering voices after the sun has set, now stirred in every herb

The silvery ghostlike wing of an owl touched her forehead once. A little dormouse ran across her feet.

Strange shapes floated across the cold white surface of the water. Quaint things, hairy, filmywinged, swam

between her and the stars. But none of these things had terror for her; they were things of the night, with

She was only a little wild beast, they said, the offspring of darkness, and vileness, and rage and disgrace. And

yet, in a vague imperfect way, the glories of the night, its mysterious charm and solemn beauty, its

melancholy and lustrous charm, quenched the fierceness in her dauntless eyes, and filled them with dim

wondering tears, and stirred the halfdead soul in her to some dull pain, some nameless ecstacy, that were not

And then, in her way, being stung by these, and moved, she knew not why, to a strange sad sense of

She raised herself on her knees, and crossed her hands upon her chest, and prayed after the fashion that she

had seen men and women and children pray at roadside shrines and crosses; prayed aloud, with a little

"Oh Devil! if I be indeed thy daughter, stay with me; leave me not alone: lend me thy strength and power,

and let me inherit of thy kingdom. Give me this, oh great Lord, and I will praise thee and love thee always."

She prayed in all earnestness, in all simplicity, in broken, flattering language; knowing no better; knowing

only that she was alone on the earth and friendless, and very hungry and in sore pain, whilst this mighty

unknown King of the dominion of darkness, whose child she ever heard she was, had lost her, or abandoned

The silence of the night alone gave back the echo of her own voice. She waited breathless for some answer,

for some revelation, some reply; there only came the pure cold moon, sailing straight from out a cloud, and

She rose sadly to her feet, and went back along the shining course of the stream, through the grasses and the

As she left the obscurity of the wood and passed into the fuller light, her bare feet glistening, and her

shoulders wet with the showers of dew, a large dark shape flying down the wind smote her with his wings

upon the eyes, lighted one moment on her head, and then swept onward lost in shade. At that moment,

likewise, a radiant golden globe flashed to her sight, dropped to her footsteps, and shone an instant in the

It was but a great goshawk seeking for its prey; it was but a great meteor fading and falling at its due

appointed hour; but to the heated, savage, dreamy fancy of the child it seemed an omen, an answer, a thing of

In legends, which had been the only lore her ears had ever heard, it had been often told he took such shapes

"If he should give me his kingdom!" she thought; and her eyes flashed alight; her heart swelled; her cheeks

burned. The little dim untutored brain could not hold the thought long or close enough to grasp, or sift, of

measure it; but some rude rich glory, impalpable, unutterable, seemed to come to her and bathe her in its heat

and colour. She was his offspring, so they all told her; why not, then, also his heir?

She felt, as felt the goatherd or the charcoalburner in those legends she had fed on, who was suddenly called

from poverty and toil, from hunger and fatigue, from a fireless hearth, and a bed of leaves, to inherit some

Like one of these, hearing the summons to some great unknown imperial power smite all his poor pale barren

life to splendour, so FolleFarine, standing by the water's side in the light of the moon, desolate, ignorant,

brutelike, felt elected to some mighty heritage unseen of men. If this were waiting for her in the future, what

She smiled a little, dreamily, like one who beholds fair visions in his sleep, and stole back over the starlit

grass, and swung herself upward by the tendrils of ivy, and crouched once more down in her nest of mosses.

And either the courage of the spirits of darkness, or the influence of instincts dumb but nascent, was with her;

for she fell asleep in her little loft in the roof as though she were a thing cherished of heaven and earth, and

dreamed happily all through the hours of the slowlyrising dawn: her bruised body and her languid brain and

her aching heart all stilled and soothed, and her hunger and passion and pain forgotten; with the

nightblooming flowers still clasped in her hands, and on her closed mouth a smile.

For she dreamed of her Father's kingdom, a kingdom which no man denies to the creature that has beauty and

IN one of the most fertile and most fair districts of northern France there was a little Norman town, very, very

old and beautiful exceedingly by reason of its ancient streets, its high peaked roofs, its marvelous galleries

and carvings, its exquisite greys and browns, its silence and its colour, and its rich still life.

Its centre was a great cathedral, noble as York or Chartres; a cathedral, whose spire shot to the clouds, and

whose innumerable towers and pinnacles were all pierced to the day, so that they blue sky shone and the birds

of the air flew all through them. A slow brown river, broad enough for market boats and for corn barges, stole

through the place to the sea, lapping as it went the wooden piles of the houses, and reflecting the quaint

shapes of the carvings, the hues of the signs and the draperies, the dark spaces of the dormer windows, the

bright heads of some casementcluster of carnations, the laughing face of a girl leaning out to smile on her

All around it lay the deep grass unshaven, the leagues on leagues of fruitful orchards, the low blue hills

tenderly interlacing one another, the fields of colza, where the white headdress of the women workers

flashed in the sun like a silvery pigeon's wing. To the west there were the deep green woods, and the wide

plains golden with gorse of Arthur's and of Merlin's lands; and beyond, to the northward, was the dim stretch

of the ocean breaking on a yellow shore, whither the river ran, and wither led straight shady roads, hidden

with linden and with poplar trees, and marked ever and anon by a wayside wooden Christ, or by a little

A beautiful, old, shadowy, ancient place: picturesque everywhere; often silent, with a sweet sad silence that

was chiefly broken by the sound of bells or the chaunting of choristers. A place of the Middle Ages still. With

lanterns swinging on cords from house to house as the only light; with wondrous scrollworks and quaint

signs at the doors of all its traders; with monks' cowls and golden croziers and whiterobed acolytes in its

streets; with the subtle smoke of incense coming out from the cathedral door to mingle with the odours of the

fruits and flowers in the marketplace; with great flatbottomed boats drifting down the river under the

leaning eaves of its dwellings; and with the galeries of its opposing houses touching so nearly that a girl

leaning on one could stretch a Provence rose or toss an Easter egg across to her neighbour in the other.

Doubtless, there were often squalor, poverty, dust, filth, and uncomeliness within these old and beautiful

homes. Doubtless often the dwellers therein were housed like cattle and slept like pigs, and looked but once

out the woods and waters of the landscapes round for one hundred times that they looked at their hidden

silver in an old delf jug, or at their tawdry coloured prints of St. Victorian or St. Sc�vola.

But yet much of the beauty and the nobility of the old, simple, restful richhued life of the past still abode

there, and remained with them. In the straight, lithe form of their maidens, untrammelled by modern garb,

and moving with the free majestic grace of forest does. In the vast, dim, sculptured chambers, where the

grandam span by the wood fire, and the little children played in the shadows, and the lovers whispered in the

embrasured window. In the broad marketplace, where the mules cropped the clover, and the tawny awnings

caught the sunlight, and the white caps of the girls framed faces fitted for the pencils of the missal painters,

and the flush of colour form mellow wallfruits and grapeclusters glanced amidst the shelter of deepest

freshest green. In the perpetual presence of their cathedral, which through sun and storm, through frost and

summer, through noon and midnight stood there amidst them, and watched the galled oxen tread their painful

way, and the scourged mules droop their humble heads, and the helpless harmless flocks go forth to the

slaughter, and the old weary lives of the men and women pass through hunger and cold to the grave, and the

sun and the moon rise and set, and the flowers and the children blossom and fade, and the endless years come

and go, bringing peace, bringing war; bringing harvest, bringing famine; bringing life, bringing death; and

beholding these, still said to the multitude in its terrible irony, "Lo! your God is Love."

This little town lay far from the great Paris highway and all greatly frequented tracks. It was but a short

distance from the coast, but near no harbour of greater extent than such as some small fishing village had

made in the rocks for the trawlers. Few strangers ever came to it, except some wandering painters or

antiquaries. It sent its apples and eggs, its poultry and honey, its colza and corn, to the use of the great cities;

Now and then some one of the ovalfaced, blueeyed, lithelimbed maidens of its little homely households

would sigh and flush and grow restless, and murmur of Paris; and would steal out in the break of a warm grey

morning whilst only the birds were still waking; and would patter away in her wooden shoes over the broad,

white, southern road, with a stick over her shoulder, and a bundle of all her worldly goods upon the stick.

And she would look back often, often, as she went; and when all was lost in the blue haze of distance save the

lofty spire which she still saw through her tears, she would say in her heart, with her lips parched and

They came back no more than did the white sweet sheaves of the lilies which the women gathered and sent to

be bought and sold in the cityto gleam one faint summer night in a gilded balcony, and to be flung out the

One amongst the few who had thus gone whither the lilies went, and of whom people would still talk as their

mules paced homewards through the lanes at twilight, had been Reine Flamma, the daughter of the miller of

Ypr�s was a beechenwooded hamlet on the northern out skirt of the town, a place of orchards and wooded

tangle; through which there ran a branch of the brimming river, hastening to seek and join the sea, and caught

a moment on its impetuous way, and forced to work by the grim millwheels that had churned the foambells

there for centuries. The millhouse was very ancient; its timbers were carved all over into the semblance of

shields and helmets, and crosses, and fleurdelis, and its frontage was of quaint parqueted work, black and

It had been handed down from sire to son of the same race through many generationsa race hard, keen,

unlearned, superstitious, and caustictongueda race wedded to old ways, credulous of legend, chaste of

life, cruel of judgement; harshly strong, yet ignorantly weak; a race holding dearer its heirloom of loveless,

joyless, bigoted virtue even than those gold and silver pieces which had ever been its passion, hidden away in

earthen pipkins under old appleroots, or in the crannies of wall timber, of in secret nooks of oaken

Claude Flamma, the last of this toilsome, Godfearing, manbegrudging, Norman stock, was true to the type

He was too ignorant even to read; but priests do not deem this a fault. He was avaricious; but may will

honour a miser quicker than a spendthrift. He was cruel; but in the marketplace he always took heed to give

his mare a full feed, so that if she were pinched of her hay in her stall at home none were the wiser, for she

had no language but that of her wistful black eyes; and this is a speech to which men stay but little to listen.

The shrewd, old, bittertongued, sternliving man was feared and respected with the respect that fear begets;

and in truth he had a rigid virtue in his way, and was proud of it, with scorn for those who found it hard to

He married late; his wife died in childbirth; his daughter grew into the perfection of womanhood under the

cold, hard, narrow rule of his severity and his superstition. He loved her, indeed, with as much love as it was

possible for him ever to feel, and was proud of her beyond all other things; saved for her, toiled for her,

muttered ever that it was for her when at confession he related how his measures of flour had been falsely

weighted, and how he had filched from the corn brought by the widow and the fatherless. For her he had

sinned: from one to whom the good report of his neighbours and the respect of his own conscience were as

the very breath of life, it was the strongest proof of love that he could give. But this love never gleamed one

instant in his small sharp grey eyes, nor escaped ever by a single utterance from his lips. Reprimand, homily,

or cynical rasping sarcasm, was all she ever heard from him. She believed that he despised, and almost hated

At twentytwo Reine Flamma was the most beautiful woman in Calvados, and the most wretched.

She was straight as a pine; cold as snow; graceful as a stem of wheat: lovely and silent; with a mute proud

face, in which the eyes alone glowed with a strange, repressed, speechless passion and wishfulness. Her life

was simple, pure, chaste, blameless, as the lives of the many women of her race who, before her, had lived

and died in the shadow of that waterfed wood had always been. Her father rebuked and girded at her,

continually dreaming that he could paint whiter even the spotlessness of this lily, refine even the purity of this

She never answered him anything, nor in anything contradicted his will; not one amongst all the youths and

maidens of her birthplace had ever heard so much as a murmur of rebellion from her; and the priests said that

such a life as this would be fitter for the cloister than the marriagebed. None of them ever read the warning

that these dark blue slumbering eyes would have given to any who should have had the skill to construe them

right. There were none of such skill there; and so she, holding her peace, the men and women noted her ever

with a curious dumb reverence, and said amongst themselves that the race of Flamma would die well and

"A saint!" said the good old gentle bishop of the district, as he blessed her one summer evening in her father's

house, and rode his mule slowly through the pleasant poplar lanes and breezeblown fields of colza back to

his little quiet homestead, where he tended his own cabbages and garnered his own honey.

The morning after, the miller, rising as his custom was at daybreak, and reciting his paternosters, thanked the

Mother of the World that she had given him thus strength and power to rear up his motherless daughter in

purity and peace. Then he dressed himself in his grey patched blouse, groped his way down the narrow stair,

and went in his daily habit to undraw the bolts and unloose the chains of his dwelling.

There was no need that morning for him; the bolts were already back; the housedoor stood wide open; on

the threshold a brown hen perched pluming herself; there were the ticking of the clock; the chirping of the

He called his daughter's name: there was no answer. He mounted to her chamber: it had no tenant. He

searched hither and thither, in the house, and the stable, and the granary: in the mill, and the garden, and the

wood; he shouted, he ran, he roused his neighbours, he looked in every likely and unlikely place: there was

There was only the howl of the watchdog, who sat with his face to the south and mourned unceasingly.

And from that day neither he nor any man living there ever heard again of Reine Flamma.

Some indeed did notice that at the same time there disappeared from the town one who had been there

through all that spring and summer. One who had lived strangely, and been clad in an odd rich fashion, and

had been whispered as an Eastern prince by reason of his scattered gold, his unfamiliar tongue, his

blackbrowed, stareyed, deephued beauty, like the beauty of the passionflower. But none had ever seen

this stranger and Reine Flamma in each other's presence; and the rumour was discredited as a foulness absurd

and unseemly to be said of a woman whom their bishop had called a saint. So it died out, breathed only by a

few mouths, and it came to be accepted as a fact that she must have perished in the deep fastflowing river by

some false step on the milltimber, as she went at dawn to feed her doves, or by some strange sad trance of

Claudis Flamma said little; it was a wound that bled inwardly. He toiled, and chaffered, and drove hard

bargains, and worked early and late with his hireling, and took for the household service an old Norman

peasantwoman more aged than himself, and told no man that he suffered. All that he ever said was, "She

was a saint: God took her;" and in his martyrdom he found a hard pride and a dull consolation.

It was no mere metaphoric form of words with him. He believed in miracles and all manner of Divine

interposition, and he believed likewise that she, his angel, being too pure for earth, had been taken by God's

own hand up to the bosom of Mary. This honour which had befallen his firstbegotten shed both sanctity and

splendour on his cheerless days; and when the little children and the women saw him pass, they cleared from

this way as from a prince's, and crossed themselves as they changed words with one whose daughter was the

So six years passed away; and the name of Reine Flamma was almost forgotten, but embalmed in memories

of religious sanctity, as the dead heart of a saint is embedded in amber and myrrh.

At the close of the sixth year there happened what many said was a thing devilconceived and wrought out

by the devil to the shame of a pure name, and to the hindrance of the people of God.

One winter's night Claudis Flamma was seated in his kitchen, having recently ridden home his mare from the

The fire burned in ancient fashion on the hearth, and it was so bitter without that even his parsimonious habits

had relaxed, and he had piled some wood, liberally mingled with dry moss, that cracked, and glowed, and

The day's work was over; the old womanservant sat spinning flax on the other side of the fire; the great

mastiff was stretched sleeping quietly on the brick floor; the blue pottery, the brass pans, the oaken presses

that had been the riches of his race for generations, glimmered in the light; the doors were barred, the shutters

closed; around the house the winds howled, and beneath its walls the fretting water hissed.

The miller, overcome with the past cold and present warmth, nodded on his wooden settle and slept, and

The old woman, hearing, looked across at him, and shook her head, and went on with her spinning with lips

that moved inaudibly: she had been wont to say, out of her taskmaster's hearing, that no women who was

beautiful was ever a saint as well. And some thought that this old creature, Marie Pitchou, who had used to

live in a miserable hut on the other side of the wood, had known more than she had chosen to tell of the true

Suddenly a blow on the panels of the door sounded through the silence. The miller, awakened in a moment,

started to his feet and grasped his ash staff with one hand, and with the other the oillamp burning on the

A step crushed the dead leaves without and passed away faintly; there was stillness again; the mastiff went to

On the silence there sounded a small, timid, feeble beating on the wood from without; such a slight fluttering

"It is nothing evil," muttered Flamma. "If it were, evil the beast would not want to have the door opened. It

All this time he was in a manner charitable, often conquering the niggardly instincts of his character to try

and save his soul by serving the wretched. He was a miser, and he loved to gain, and loathed to give; but

since his daughter had been taken to the saints he had striven with all his might to do good enough to be taken

Any crust bestowed on the starveling, any bed of straw afforded to the tramp, caused him a sharp pang; but

since his daughter had been taken he had tried to please God by this mortification of his own avarice and

diminution of his own gains. He could not vanquish the nature that was engrained in him. He would rob the

widow of an ephah of wheat, and leave his mare famished in her stall, because it was his nature to find in all

such saving a sweet savour; but he would not turn away a beggar or refuse a crust to a wayfarer, lest, thus

The miller, setting the lamp down on the floor, gripped more firmly the ashen stick, undrew the bolts, turned

the stout key, and opened the door slowly, and with caution. A loud gust of wind blew dead leaves against his

face; a blinding spray of snow scattered itself over his bent stretching form. In the darkness without, whitened

The dog went up to her and licked her face with kindly welcome. Claudis Flamma drew her with a rough

grasp across the threshold, and went out into the air to find whose footsteps had been those which had

The snow, however, was falling fast; it was a cloudy moonless night. He did not dare to go many yards from

his own portals, lest he should fall into some ambush set by robbers. The mastiff too was quiet which

indicated that there was no danger near, so the old man returned, closed the door carefully, drew the bolts into

their places, and came towards the child, whom the woman Pitchou had drawn towards the fire.

She was a child of four or five years old; huddled in coarse linen and in a little red garment of fox's skin, and

blanched from head to foot, for the flakes were frozen on her and on the hood that covered, gipsylike, her

curls. It was a strange, little, icecold, ghostlike figure, but out of the mass of icicles and whiteness there

glowed great beaming frightened eyes and a mouth like a scarlet berry; the radiance and the contrast of it

The child made no reply; she seemed not to comprehend his meaning. The miller shook her again, and some

"You must have a name," he pursued harshly and in perplexity. "What are you called? Who are you?"

The child suddenly raised her great eyes that had been fastened on the leaping flames, and flashed them upon

Something in that regard pierced him and startled him; he dropped his hand off her shoulder, and breathed

quickly; the old woman gave a low cry, and staring with all her might at the child's small dark, fierce, lovely

Claudis Flamma turned savagely on her as if stung by some unseen snake, and willing to wreak his

"Fool! cease your prating!" he muttered, with a brutal oath. "Take the animal and search her. Bring me what

Then he sat down on the stool by the fire, and braced his lips tightly, and locked his bony hands upon his

knees. He knew what blow awaited him; he was no coward, and he had manhood enough in him to press any

The old woman drew the stranger aside to a dusky corner of an inner chamber, and began to despoil her of

her coverings. The creature did not resist; the freezing cold and long fatigue had numbed and silenced her:

her eyelids were heavy with the sleep such cold produces, and she had not strength, because she had not

consciousness enough, to oppose whatsoever they might choose to do to her. Only now and then her eyes

opened, as they had opened on him, with a sudden lustre and fierceness, like those in a netted animal's

Pitchou seized and searched her eagerly, stripping her of her warm foxskin wrap, her scarlet hood of wool,

her little rough hempen shirt, which were all dripping with the water from the melted snow.

The skin of the young waif was brown, with a golden bloom on it; it had been tanned by hot suns, but it was

soft as silk in texture, and transparent, showing the course of each blue vein. Her limbs were not well

nourished, but they were of perfect shaped and delicate bone; and the feet were the long, arched, slender feet

She allowed herself to be stripped and wrapped in a coarse piece of homespun linen; she was still half frozen,

and in a state of stupor, either from amazement or from fear. She was quite passive, and she never spoke. Her

apathy deceived the old crone, who took it for docility, and who, trusting to it, proceeded to take advantage of

it, after the manner of her kind. About the small shapely head there hung a band of glittering coins; they were

not gold, but the woman Pitchou thought they were, and seized them with gloating hands and ravenous eyes.

The child started from her torpor, shook herself free, and fought to guard themfiercely, with tooth and nail,

as the young fox whose skin she had worn might have fought for its dear life. The old woman on her side

strove as resolutely; long curls of the child's hair were clutched in the struggle; she did not wince or scream,

She was no match, with all her ferocity and fury, for the sinewy grip of the old peasant; and the coins were

torn off her forehead and hidden away in a hole in the wood, out of her sight, where the old peasant hoarded

all her precious treasures of copper coins and other trifles that she managed to secrete from her master's

They were little metal sequins engraved with Arabic characters, chained together after the Eastern fashion. To

The child watched them thus removed in perfect silence; from the moment they had been wrenched away,

and the battle had been finally lost to her, she had ceased to struggle, as though disdainful of a fruitless

contest. But a great hate gathered in her eyes, and smouldered there like a halfstifled fireit burnt on for

When Pitchou brought her a cup of water and a roll of bread, she would neither eat nor drink, but turned her

"Those are just her father's eyes," the old woman muttered. She had seen them burn in the gloom of the

evening through the orchard trees, as the stars had risen, and Reine Flamma listened to the voice that wooed

She let the child be, and searched her soaked garments for any written word or any token that might be on

them. Fastened roughly to the fox's skin there was a faded letter. Pitchou could not read; she took it to her

Claudis Flamma grasped the paper and turned its superscription to the light of the lamp.

He could not read, by yet at sight of the characters his tough frame trembled, and his withered skin grew red

Once, in a time long dead, he had been proud of those slender letters that had been so far more legible than

any that the women of her class could pen, and on beholding which the good bishop had smiled, and passed a

pleasant word concerning her being almost fitted to be his own clerk and scribe.

For a moment, watching those written cyphers that had no tongue for him, and yet seemed to tell their tale so

that they scorched and withered up all the fair honour and pious peace of his old age, a sudden faintness, a

sudden swooning sense seized him for the first time in all his life; his limbs failed him, he sank down on his

seat again, he gasped for breath; he needed not to be told anything, he knew all. He knew that the creature

whom he had believed so pure that God had deemed the earth unworthy of her youth washis throat rattled,

his lips were covered with foam, his ears were filled with a rushing, hollow sound, like the roaring of his own

All at once he started to his feet, and glared at the empty space of the dim chamber, and struck his hands

"She was a saint, I saida saint! A saint in body and soul! And I thought that God begrudged her, and held

The child hearing, and heavy with sleep, and eagerly desiring warmth, as a little frozen beast that coils itself

The shirt fell off her as she moved. Her little naked limbs glimmered like gold in the dusky light; her hair was

as a cloud behind her; her little scarlet mouth was half open, like the mouth of a child seeking its mother's

kiss; her great eyes, dazzled by the flame, flashed and burned and shone like stars. They had seen the same

She came straight to Claudis Flamma as though drawn by that awful and discordant laughter, and by that

leaping ruddy flame upon the hearth, and she stretched out her arms and muttered a word and smiled, a little

He clenched his fist, and struck her to the ground. She fell without a sound. The blood flowed from her

He looked at her where she lay, and laughed once more. "She was a saint!a saint! And the devil begot in

Then he went our across the threshold and into the night, with the letter still clenched in his hand.

The snow fell, the storm raged, the earth was covered with ice and water; he took no heed, but passed through

The old serving woman, terrified in so far as her dull brutish nature could be roused to fear, did what she

knew, what she dared. She raised the little wounded naked creature, and carried her to her own pallet bed;

restored her to consciousness by such rude means as she had knowledge of, and staunched the flow of blood.

She did all this harshly, as it was her custom to do all things, and without tenderness or even pity, for the

sight of this stranger was unwelcome to her, and she also had guessed the message of that unread letter.

The child had been stunned by the blow, and she had lost some blood, and was weakened and stupefied and

dazed; yet there seemed to her rough nurse no peril for her life, and by degrees she fell into a feverish, tossing

slumber, sobbing sometimes in her sleep, and crying perpetually on the unknown name of Phratos.

The old woman Pitchou stood and looked at her. She, who had always known the true story of the

disappearance which some had called death and some had deemed a divine interposition, had seen before that

transparent brown skin, those hues in cheeks and lips like the carnation leaves, that rich, sunfed, dusky

"She is his sure enough," she muttered. "He was the first with Reine Flamma. I wonder has he been the last."

And she went down the stairs chuckling, as the low human brute will at any evil thought.

She went to the fire and threw more wood one, and sat down again to her spinningwheel, and span and

She was not curious: to her, possessing that thread to the secret of the past, which her master and her

townsfolk had never held, it all seemed natural. It was an old, old story; there had been thousands like it; it

The hours passed on; the lamp paled, and its flame at last died out; in the loft above, where the dog watched,

there was no sound; the old woman slumbered undisturbed, unless some falling ember of the wood aroused

She was not curious, nor did she care how the child fared. She had led that deadening life of perpetual labour

and of perpetual want in which the human animal becomes either a machine or a devil. She was a machine;

put to what use she might beto spin flax, to card wool, to wring a pigeon's throat, to bleed a calf to death,

to bake or stew, to mumble a prayer or drown a kitten, it was all one to her. If she had a preference it might

be for the office that hurt some living thing; but she did not care; all she heeded was whether she had pottage

enough to eat at noonday, and the leaden effigy of her Mary safe round her throat at night.

The night went on, and passed away; one gleam of dawn shone through a round hole in the shutter; she

She shook herself and stamped her chill feet upon the bricks, and tottered on her feeble way, with frozen

body, to the house door. She drew it slowly open, and saw by the light of the sun that it had been for some

The earth was everywhere thick with snow; a hoar frost sparkled over all the branches; great sheets of ice

were whirled down the rapid millstream; in one of the leafless boughs a robin sang, and beneath the bough a

cat was crouched, waiting with hungry eager eyes, patient even in its famished impatience.

Dull as her sympathy was, and slow her mind, she started as she saw her master there.

Claudis Flamma was at work; the rough, hard, rude toil which he spared to himself no more than to those

who were his hirelings. He was carting wood; going to and fro with huge limbs of trees that men in youth

would have found it a severe task to move; he was labouring breathlessly, giving himself no pause, and the

sweat was on his brow, although he trod ankle deep in snow, and although his clothes were heavy with

He did not see or hear her; she went up to him and called him by name; he started, and raised his head and

Dull though she was, she was in a manner frightened by the change upon his face; it had been lean, furrowed,

weatherbeaten always, but it was livid now, with bloodshot eyes, and a bruised, broken, yet withal savage

look that terrified her. He did not speak, but gazed at her like a man recalled from some drugged sleep back to

The old woman held her peace a few moments; then spoke out in her own blunt, dogged fashion.

Her mind was not awake enough for any curiosity; she only cared to know if the child stayed: only so much

as would concern her soup kettle, her kneaded dough, her spun hemp, her household labour.

He turned for a second with the gesture that a trapped fox may make, held fast, yet striving to essay a death

grip; then he checked himself, and gave a mute sign of assent, and heaved up a fresh log of wood, and went

on with his labours, silently. She knew of old his ways too well to venture to ask more. She knew, too, that

when he worked like this, fasting and in silence, there had been long and fierce warfare in his soul, and some

So she left him, and passed in to the house, and built up afresh her fire, and swept her chamber out, and

Now, what the letter had been, or who had deciphered it for him, Claudis Flamma never told to any man; and

But the child who had come in the night and the snow tarried at Ypr�s from that time thenceforward.

Claudis Flamma nourished, sheltered, clothed her; but he did all these begrudgingly, harshly, scantily; and he

did all these with an acrid hate and scorn, which did not cease, but rather grew with time.

The blow which had been her earliest welcome was not the first that she received from him by many; and

whilst she was miserable exceedingly, she showed it, not as children do, but rather like some chained and

untamed animal, in fearless stupor and in sudden, sharp ferocity. And this the more because she spoke but a

very few words of the language of the people amongst whom she had been brought; her own tongue was one

For many weeks he said not one word to her, cast not one look at her; he let her lead the same life that was

led by the beetles that crawled in the timbers, or by the pigs that couched and were kicked in the straw. The

woman Pitchou gave her such poor scraps of garments or of victuals as she chose; she could crouch in the

corner of the hearth where the fire warmth reached; she could sleep in the hay in the little loft under the roof;

After that first moment in which her vague appeal for pity and for rest had been answered by the blow that

struck her senseless, the child had never made a moan, nor sought for any solace.

All the winter through she lay curled up on the tiles by the fence, with her arms round the great body of the

dog and his head upon her chest; they were both starved, beaten, kicked, and scourged, with brutal words

The blow on her head, the coldness of the season, the scanty food that was cast to her, all united to keep her

brain stupefied and her body almost motionless. She was like a young bear that is motherless, wounded,

frozen, famished, but which, coiled in an almost continual slumber, keeps its blood flowing and its limbs

When the townsfolk and the peasants came to the mill, and first saw this creature there, with her wondrous

vivid hues, and her bronzed halfnaked limbs, they regarded her in amazement, and asked the miller whence

The avowal was a penance set to himself, but to it he never added more; and they feared his bitter temper and

his caustic tongue too greatly to press it on him, or even to ask him whether his daughter were with the living

With the unfolding of the young leaves, and the loosening of the frostbound waters, and the unveiling of the

violet and the primrose under the shadows of the wood, all budding life revives, and so did hers. For she

could escape from the dead, cold, bitter atmosphere of the silent and loveless house, where her bread was

begrudged, and the cudgel was her teacher, out into the freshness and the living sunshine of the young

blossoming world, where the birds and the beasts and the tender blue flowers and the curling green boughs

were her comrades, and where she could stretch her limbs in freedom, and coil herself among the branches,

and steep her limbs in the coolness of waters, and bathe her aching feet in the moisture of rainfilled grasses.

With the spring she arose, the true forest animal she was; wild, fleet, incapable of fear, sure of foot, in unison

with all the things of the earth and air, and stirred by them to a strange, dumb, ignorant, passionate gladness.

She had been scarce seen in the winter; with the breaking of the year the people from more distant places,

who rode their mules down to mill on their various errands, stared at this child and wondered amongst

"The woman that bore her was one accursed, whom men deemed a saintReine Flamma."

But when they went away, and gossiped amongst themselves by the wayside well or under the awnings of the

market stalls, they said to one another that it was just as they had thought long ago; the creature had been no

better than her kind; and they had never credited the fable that God had taken her, though they had humoured

the miller because he was aged and in his dotage. Whilst one old woman, a withered and witchlike crone,

who had toiled in from the fishing village with a kreel upon her back and the smell of the sea about her rags,

heard, standing in the marketplace, and laughed, and mocked them, these seers who were so wise after the

"You knew, you knew, you knew!" she echoed, with a grin upon her face. "Oh yes! you were so wise! Who,

seven years through, said that Reine Flamma was a saint, and taken by the saints into their keeping? And who

hissed at me for a foulmouthed crone when I said that the devil had more to do with her than the good God,

and that the blackbrowed gipsy, with jewels for eyes in his head, like the toad, was the only master to whom

She mocked them, and they were ashamed, and held their peace; well knowing that indeed no creature

amongst them had ever been esteemed so pure, so chaste, and so honoured of heaven as had been the miller's

Many remembered the "gipsy with the jewelled eyes," and was those brilliant, fathomless, midnight eyes

reproduced in the small rich face of the child whom Reine Flamma, as her own father said, had borne in

shame whist they had been glorifying her apotheosis. And it came to be said, as time went on, that this

unknown stranger had been the fiend himself, taking human shape for the destruction of one pure soul, and

Legend and tradition still held fast their minds in this remote, ancient, and priestridden place; in their belief

the devil was still a living power, traversing the earth and air in search of souls, and not seldom triumphing:

of metaphor or myth they were not ignorant; Satan to them was a personality, terrific, and oftentimes

irresistible, assuming at will shapes grotesque or awful, human or spiritual. Their forefathers had beheld him;

So the henhucksters and poulterers, the cider makers and tanners, the fisherfolk from the seaboard, and the

peasant proprietors from the country round, came at length in all seriousness to regard the young child at

Ypr�s as a devilborn thing. "She was hellbegotten," they would mutter, when they saw her; and they would

The time had gone by, unhappily, as they considered, when men had been permitted to burn such creatures as

this; they knew it and were sorry for it; the world, they thought, had been better when Jews had blazed like

torches, and witches had crackled like firewood; such treats were forbidden now, they knew, but many, for all

that, thought within themselves that it was a pity it should be so, and that it was mistaken mercy in the age

In the winter time, when they first saw her, unusual floods swept the country, and destroyed much of their

property; in the spring which followed there were mildew and sickness everywhere: in the summer there was

a long drought, and by consequence there came a bad harvest, and great suffering and scarcity.

There were not a few in the district who attributed all these woes to the advent of the child of darkness, and

who murmured openly in their huts and homesteads that no good would befall them so long as this offspring

Since, however, the time was past when the broad marketplace could have been filled with a curious,

breathless, eager crowd, and the grey cathedral have grown red in the glare of flames fed by a young living

body, they held their hands from doing her harm, and said these things only in their own inglenooks, and

contented themselves with forbidding their children to consort with her, and with drawing their mules to the

other side of the road when they met her. They did not mean to be cruel; they only acted in their own

selfdefence, and dealt with her as their fellowcountrymen dealt with a cagote"only."

Hence, when, with the reviving year the child's dulled brain awakened, and all the animal activity in her

sprang into vigorous action, she found herself shunned, marked, and glanced at with averted looks of mingled

dread and scorn. "A daughter of the devil!" she heard again and again muttered as they passed her; she grew

to take shelter in this repute as in a fortress, and to be proud, with a savage pride, of her imputed origin.

It made her a little fierce, mute, fearless, reckless, alldaring, and all enduring animal. An animal in her

ferocities, her mute instincts, her supreme patience, her physical perfectness of body and of health. Perfect of

shape and hue; full of force to resist; ignorant either of hope or fear; de siring only one thing, liberty; with

She was at an age when happier creatures have scarce escaped from their mother's arms; but she had not even

thus early a memory of her mother, and she had been shaken off to live or die, to fight or famish, as a young

fox whose dam has been flung to the hounds is driven away to starve in the winter woods, or save himself, if

She was a tame animal only in one thing:she took blows uncomplainingly, and as though comprehending

"The child of the devil!" they said. In a dumb, half unconscious fashion, this fiveyearold creature

wondered sometimes why the devil had not been good enough to give her a skin that would not feel, and

She had always been beaten ever since her birth; she was beaten here; she thought it a law of life, as other

children think it such to have their mother's kiss and their daily food and nightly prayer.

Claudis Flamma did after his manner his duty by her. She was to him a thing accursed, possessed, loathsome,

imbued with evil from her origin; but he did what he deemed his duty. He clothe her, if scantily; he fed her, if

meagrely; he lashed her with all the caustic gibes that came naturally to his tongue; he set her hard tasks to

keep her from idleness; he beat her when she did not, and not seldom when she did, them. He dashed holy

After this light he did his duty. That he should hate her, was to fulfil a duty also in his eyes; he had always

been told that it was right to abhor the things of darkness; and to him she was a thing of utter darkness, a

thing born of the black ruin of a stainless soul, begotten by the pollution and corruption of an infernal

He never questioned her as to her pastthat short past, like the span of an insect's life, which yet had

sufficed to gift her with passions, with instincts, with desires, even with memories,in a word, with

character:a character he could neither change nor break; a thing formed already, for good or for evil,

He never spoke to her except in sharp irony or in curt command. He set her hard tasks of bodily labour which

she did not dispute, but accomplished so far as her small strength lay, with a mute dogged patience, half

In those first winter days of her arrival he called her FolleFarine; taking the most worthless, the most

useless, the most abject, the most despised thing he knew in all his daily life from which to name her; and the

In time she grew to believe that it was really hers; even as in time she began to forget that strange, deep, rich

tongue in which she had babbled her first words, and to know no other tongue than the NormanFrench about

Yet in her there existed imagination, tenderness, gratitude, and a certain wild and true nobility, though the old

man Flamma would never have looked for them, never have believed in them. She was devil born: she was of

Upon his millditch, foul and foetid, refuse would sometimes gather, and receiving the seed of the lily, would

give birth to blossoms born stainless out of corruption: but the allegory had no meaning for him. Had any one

pointed it out to him he would have taken the speaker into his orchard, and said:

"Will the crab bear a fruit not bitter? Will the nightshade give out sweetness and honey? Fool!as the stem

THE little dim mind of the fiveyearold child was not a blank; it was indeed filled to overflowing with

pictures of a country that her tongue could not have told of, even had she spoken the language of the people

A land altogether unlike that in which she had been set down on that bitter night of snow and storm: a land

noble and wild, and full of colour, broken into vast heights and narrow valleys, clothed with green

beechwoods and with forests of oak and of walnut, filled with the noise of torrents leaping from crag to crag,

and of brown mountain streams rushing, broad and angry, through wooded ravines. A land made beautiful by

mossgrown watermills, and lofty greenways of grey rock; and still shadowy pools, in which the bright fish

leaped, and mules' bells that rang drowsily through leafy gorges; and limestone crags that pierced the clouds,

spirelike, and fantastic in a thousand shapes; and high blue crests of snowtopped mountains, whose

pinnacles glowed to the divinest flush of rose and amber with the setting of the sun.

This land she remembered vaguely, yet gloriously, as the splendours of a dream of Paradise rest on the brain

of some young sleeper wakening in squalor, cold, and pain. But the people of the place she had been brought

to could not comprehend her few, shy, sullen words, and her strange imperfect trills of song; and she could

not tell them that this land had been no realm enchanted of fairy or of fiend, but only the forest region of the

Thither, one rich autumn day, a tribe of Spanish gypsies had made their camp. They were a score in all; they

held themselves one of the noblest branches of their wide family; they were people with pure Eastern blood

in them, and all the grace and the gravity of the Oriental in their forms and postures.

They stole horses and sheep; they harried cattle; they stopped the mules in the passes, and lightened their load

of wineskins: they entered the posada, when they deigned to enter one at all, with neither civil question nor

show of purse, but with a gleam of the teeth, like a threatening dog, and the flash of the knife, half drawn out

of the girdle. They were low thieves and mean liars; wild daredevils and loose livers; loathers of labour and

lovers of idle days and plundering nights; yet they were beautiful, with the noble, calm, scornful beauty of the

They could play, too, in heavenly fashion, on their old threestringed viols; and when their woman danced on

the sward by moonlight, under the broken shadows of some Moorish ruin, clanging high their tambourines

above their graceful heads, and tossing the shining sequins that bound their heavy hair, the muleteer or the

herdsman, seeing them from afar, shook with fear, and thought of the tales told him in his childhood by his

grandam of the spirits of the dead Moors that rose to revelry, at midnight, in the haunts of their old lost

Amongst them was a man yet more handsome than the rest, taller and lither still; wondrous at leaping and

wrestling, and all athletic things; surest of any to win a woman, to tame a horse, to strike down a bull at a

blow, to silence an angry group at a wineshop with a single glance of his terrible eyes.

He had left them often to wander by himself into many countries, and at times when, by talent or by

terrorism, he had netted gold enough to play the fool to his fancy, he had gone to some strange city, where

credulity and luxury prevailed, and there had lived like a prince, as his own phrase ran, and gamed and

Those spent, he would always return awhile, and lead the common, roving, thieving life of his friends and

brethren, till the fit of ambition or the run of luck were again on him. Then his people would afresh lose sight

of him to light on him, velvetclad, and winebibbing, in some painter's den in some foreign town, or

And the mystery of his ways endeared him to them; and they made him welcome whenever he returned, and

never quarrelled with him for his faithlessness; but if there were anything wilder or wickeder, bolder or

One day their camp was made in a gorge under the great shadows of the Picos da Europa, a place that they

loved much, and settled in often, finding the chestnut woods and the cliff caverns fair for shelter, the heather

abounding in grouse, and the pools full of trout, fair for feeding. That day Taric returned from a year long

absence, suddenly standing, dark and mighty, between them and the light, as they lay around their soup

"There is a woman in labour, a league back; by the great corktree, against the bridge;" he said to them. "Go

And, with a look to the women which singled out two for the errand, he stretched himself in the warmth of

the fire, and helped himself to the soup, and lay quiet, vouchsafing them never a word, but playing meaningly

with the knife handle thrust into this shirt; for he saw that some of the men were about to oppose his share of

Taric, the strongest and fleetest and most well favoured of them all; Taric, who had slain the bull that all the

matadors had failed to daunt; Taric, who had torn up the young elm, when they needed a bridge over a flood,

as easily as a child plucks up a reed; Taric, who had stopped the fiercest contrabandista in all those parts, and

So they were silent, and let him take his portion of the fire and of the broth, and of the thin red wine.

Meanwhile the two gypsies, Quit� and Zar�, went on their quest, and found things as he had said.

Under the great corktree, where the grass was long and damp, and the wood grew thickly, and an old rude

bridge of unhewn blocks of rock spanned, with one arch, the river as it rushed downward from its limestone

Quit� looked the woman all over hastily, to see if, by any chance, any gold or jewels might be one her; there

were none. There was only an ivory cross on her chest, which Quit� drew off and hid. Quit� covered her with

Zar� wrapped the child in a bit of her woolen skirt, and held it warm in her breast, and hastened to the camp

He laughed, and drew his knife against own brown throat in a significant gesture.

Zar� said no word to him, but she went away with the child under some branches, on which was hung a

tattered piece of awning, orange striped, that marked her own especial resting place.

Out of the group about the fire, one man, rising, advanced, and looked Taric full in the eyes.

Taric, who never let any living soul molest or menace him, answered without offence, and with a savage

"Nothat I swear. I used no foul play against her. Go look at her if you like. I loved hr well enough while

she lived. But what does that matter? She is dead. So best. Women are as many as the mulberries.

"There are few wolves in the Li�bana. Go and bury her if you choose, Phratos."

"I will," the other answered him; and he took his way to the corktree by the bridge.

He was not like his tribe in anything: except in a mutual love for a life that wandered always, and was to no

man responsible, and needed no rooftree, and wanted no settled habitation, but preferred to dwell wild with

the roe and the coney, and to be hungry and unclad, rather than to eat the good things of the earth in

He had not their physical perfection: an accident at his birth had made his spine misshapen, and his gait

halting. His features would have been grotesque in their ugliness, except for the sweet pathos of the eyes and

Amongst a race noted for its singular beauty of face and form Phratos alone was deformed and unlovely; and

yet both deformity and unloveliness were in a way poetic and uncommon; and in his rough sheepskin

garments, knotted to his waist with a leathern thong, and with his thick tangled hair falling down on his

shoulders, they were rather the deformity of the brakehaunting faun, the unloveliness of the moondancing

satyr, than those of a man and a vagrant. With the likeness he had the temper of the old dead gods of the

forest and rivers; he loved music, and could make it, in all its innumerable signs and songs, give a voice to all

creatures and things of the world, of the waters and the woodlands; and for many things he was sorrowful

Though he was misshapen, and even, as some said, not altogether straight in his wits, yet his kin honoured

For he could draw music from the rude strings of his old viol that surpassed their own melodies as far as the

shining of the sun on the summits of the Europa surpassed the trembling of the little lamps under the painted

He was only a gypsy; he only played as the fancy moved him, by a bright fountain at a noonday halt, under

the ruined arches of a Saracenic temple; before the tawny gleam of a vast dim plain at sunrise; in a cool

shadowy court, where the vines shut out all light;; beneath a balcony at night, when the moonbeams gleamed

on some fair unknown face, thrust for a moment from the darkness through the white magnolia flowers. Yet

he played in suchwise as makes women weep, and holds children and dogs still to listen, and moves grown

men to shade their eyes with their hands, and think of old dead times, when they played and prayed at their

And his music had so spoken to himself that, although true to his tribe and all their traditions, loving the

vagrant life in the open air, and being incapable of pursuing any other, he yet neither stole nor slew, neither

tricked nor lied, but found his way vaguely to honesty and candour, and, having found them, clove to them,

so that none could turn him: living on such scant gains as were thrown to him for his music from balconies

and posada windows and wine house doors in the hamlets and towns through which he passed, and making

a handful of pulse and a slice of melon, a couch of leaves and a draught of water, suffice to him for his few

His people reproached him, indeed, with demeaning their race by taking payment in lieu of making thefts;

and they mocked him often, and taunted him, though in a manner they all loved him,the reckless and

bloodstained Taric most, perhaps, of all. But he would never quarrel with them, neither would he give over

his strange ways which so incensed them, and with time they saw that Phratos was a gifted fool, who like

other mad simple creatures, had best be left to go on his own way unmolested and without contradiction.

If, too, they had driven him from their midst, they would have missed his music sorely; that music which

awoke them at break of day soaring up through their roof of chestnut leaves like a lark's song piercing the

Phratos came now to the dead woman, and drew off the boughs, and looked at her. She was quite dead. She

had died where she had first sunk down, unable to reach her promised resting place. It was a damp green

nook on the edge of the bright mountain river, at the entrance of that narrow gorge in which the encampment

The face, which was white and young, lay upward, with the shadows of the flickering foliage on it; and the

eyes, which Quit� had not closed, were large and blue; her hair, which was long and brown, was loose, and

had got wet amongst the grass, and had little buds of flowers and stray golden leaves twisted in it.

Taric, whom many women had loved, had besought many a one thus to share his fierce free life for a little

space, and then drift away out of it by chance, or be driven away from it by his fickle passions, or be taken

In her bosom, slipped in her clothes, was a letter. It was written in a tongue he did not know. He held it

awhile, thinking, then he folded it up and put it in his girdle,it might be of use, who could tell? There was

the child, there, that might live; unless the camp broke up and Zar� left it under a walnut tree to die, with the

last butterflies of the fading summer, which was in all likelihood all she would do.

Nevertheless he kept the letter, and when he had looked long enough at the dead creature, he turned to the

He could only work slowly, for he was weak of body, and his infirmity made all manual toil painful to him.

The sun set whist he was still engaged on it; and it was quite nightfall before he had fully accomplished it.

When the grave was ready he filled it carefully with the golden leaves that had fallen, and the thick

Then he laid the body tenderly down within that forest shroud, and, with the moss like a winding sheet

between it and the earth which had to fall on it, he committed the dead woman to her resting place.

He was a gypsy, and to him a grave under a forest tree and by a mountain stream seemed the most natural rest

at last that any creature could desire or claim. No rites seemed needful to him. and no sense of any neglect,

cruel or unfitting, jarred on him in thus leaving her in her loneliness, with only the cry of the bittern or the

Yet a certain sorrow for this unknown and lost life was on him, Bohemian though he was, as he took up his

mattock and turned away, and went backward down the gorge, and left her to lie there for ever, through rain

and sunshine, through wind and storm, through the calm of the summer and the flush of autumn, and the

wildness of the winter, when the swollen stream should sweep above her tomb, and the famished beasts of the

Taric, knowing the tongue it was written in, and being able to understand the character, looked at it, and read

it through by the light of the flaming wood. When he had done so he tossed it behind, in among the boughs,

It was the letter of Reine Flamma to the miller at Ypr�s, telling him the brief story of her fatal passion, and

imploring from him mercy to her unborn child should it survive her and be ever taken to him.

Remorse and absence had softened to her the harshness and the meanness of her father's character; she only

remembered that he had loved her, and had deemed her pure and faithful as the saints of God. There was no

word in the appeal by which it could have been inferred that Claudis Flamma had been other than a man

much wronged and loving much, patient of heart, and without blame in his simple life.

Phratos took the letter and cherished it. He thought it might some day serve her offspring. This old man's

vengeance could not, he thought, be so cruel to the child as might be the curse and the knife of Taric.

"She must have been beautiful?" said Phratos to him, after a while, that night; "and you care no more for her

Taric stretched his mighty limbs in the warmth of the flame, and made his answer:

"There will be as good grapes on the vines next year as any we gathered this. What does it signify?she was

"She loved me; she thought me a god, a devil, a prince, a chief,all manner of things;the people thought

so, too. She was sick of her life. She was sick of the priests and the beads, and the mill and the market. She

was fair to look at, and the fools called her a saint. When a woman is young and has beauty, it is dull to be

"I met her in the wood one summer night. The sun was setting. I do not know why I cared for herI did. She

was like a tall white lily; these women of ours are only great tawny sunflowers.

"She was pure and straight of life; she believed in heaven and hell; she was innocent as a child unborn; it was

tempting to kill all that. It is so easy to kill it when a woman loves you. I taught her what passion and

freedom and pleasure and torment all meant. She came with me,after a struggle, a hard one. I kept her

loyally while the gold lasted; that I swear. I took her to many cities. I let her have jewels and music, and silk

"But after a bit she pined, and grew dull again, and wept in secret, and at times I caught her praying to the

white cross which she wore on her breast. That made me mad. I cursed her and beat her. She never said

"Then I got poor again, and I had to sell her things one by one. Not that she minded that, she would have sold

her soul for me. We wandered north and south; and I made money sometimes by the dice, or by breaking a

horse, or by fooling a woman, or by snatching a jewel off one of their dolls in their churches; and I wanted to

get rid of her, and I could not tell how. I had not the heart to kill her outright.

"But she never said a rough word, you know, and that makes a man mad. Maddalena or Kara or Rachelany

of them,would have flown and struck a knife at me, and hissed like a snake, and there would have been

blows and furious words and bloodshed; and then we should have kissed, and been lovers again, fast and

fierce. But a woman who is quiet, and only looks at you with great, sad, soft eyes, when you strike

"We were horribly poor at last; we slept in barns and haylofts; we ate berries and drank the brook water. She

grew weak, and could hardly walk. Many I time I have been tempted to let her lie and die in the hedgeway or

on the plains, and I did not,one is so foolish sometimes for sake of a woman. She knew she was a burden

"At last I heard of you in the Li�bana, from a tribe we fell in with on the other side of the mountains, and so

we travelled her on foot. I thought she would have got to the women before her hour arrived. But she fell

down there, and could not stir; and so the end came. It is best as it is. She was wretched, and what could I do

with a woman like that, who would never hearken to another lover, nor give up her dead God on his cross,

nor take so much as a broken crust if it were stolen, nor even show her beauty to a sculptor to be carved in

stonefor I tried to make her do that, and she would not. It is best as it is. If she had lived we could have

done nothing with her. And yet I see her sometimes as I saw her that night, so white and so calm, in the little

His voice ceased, and he took up a horn full of vino clarete; and drained it, and was very still, stretching his

limbs to bask in the heat of the fire. The wine had loosened his tongue, and he had spoken from his

He was thinking of the great blue sightless eyes that he had closed, and of the loose brown hair on which he

Taric, who was sinking to sleep after the long fatigues of a heavy tramp through mountain passes, stirred

And these were the only words of baptism that were spoken over the nameless daughter of Taric the gypsy

That night Phratos called out to him in the moonlight the woman Zar�, who came from under her tent, and

stood under the glistening leaves, strong and handsome, with shining eyes and snowy teeth.

"What matter what Taric wishes. Living or dead, it will not hinder him. A child more or less with us, what is

it? Only a draught of goat's milk or a handful of meal. So little; it cannot be felt. You have a child of your

She had a brown, strong, yearold boy, who kicked his naked limbs on the sward with joy at Phratos' music.

"Then have pity on the motherless creature," said Phratos, wooingly. "I buried that dead woman; and her

eyes, though there was no sight in them, still seemed to pray to mineand to pray for her child. Be merciful,

Zar�. Let the child have the warmth of your arms and the defence of your strength. Be merciful, Zar�; and

your seed shall multiply and increase tenfold, and shall be stately and strong, and shall spread as the branches

of the planetrees, on which the storm spends its fury in vain, and beneath which all things of the earth can

find refuge. For never was a woman' pity fruitless, nor the fair deeds of her days without recompense."

Zar� listened quietly, as the dreamy, poetic, persuasive words stole on her ear like music. Like the rest of her

people, she half believed in him as a seer and prophet; her teeth shone out in a soft sudden smile.

And she went in out of the moonlit leaves and the clear cool, autumn night into the little dark stifling tent,

where the newborn child had been laid away in a corner upon a roughandready bed of gathered dusky

"It is a little cub, not worth the saving; and its dam was not of our people," she said to herself, as she lifted the

"It is for you, my angel, that I do it," she murmured, looking at the sleeping face of her own son.

Outside the tent the sweet strains of Phratos' music rose sighing and soft; and mingling, as sounds mingle in a

dream, with the murmurs of the forest leaves and the rushing of the mountain river. He gave her the only

Zar�, hushing the strange child at her breast, listened, and was halftouched, halfangered.

"Why should he play for this little stray thing, when he never played once for you, my glory?" she said to her

son, as she put the dead woman's child roughly away, and took him up in its stead, to beat together in play his

For even from these, the world's outcasts, this new life of a few hours' span was rejected as unworthy and

Nevertheless, the music played on through the still forest night; and nevertheless, the child grew and throve.

The tribe of Taric abode in the Li�bana or in the adjacent country along the banks of the Deva during the

space of four years and more, scarcely losing in that time the sight, either from near or far, of the rosy peaks

He did not abide with them; he quarrelled with them violently concerning some division of a capture of

wineskins, and went on his own way to distant provinces and cities; to the gambling and the roystering, the

His daughter he left to dwell in the tent of Zar�, and under the defence of Phratos.

Once or twice, in sojourns of a night or two amongst his own people, as the young creature grew in stature

and strength, Taric had glanced at her, and called her to him, and felt the litheness of her limbs and the weight

of her hair, and laughed as he thrust he from him, thinking that, in time to come, shewho would know

nothing of her mother's dead God on the cross, and of her mother's idle weak scruples,might bring him a

fair provision in his years of age, when his hand should have lost its weight against men and his form its

Once or twice he had given her a kick of his foot, or blow with his leathern whip, when she crawled in the

Otherwise he had nought to do with her, absent or present; otherwise he left her to chance and the devil, who

were, as he said, according to the Christians, the natural patrons and sponsors of all love children. Chance and

the Devil, however, had not wholly their way in the Li�bana; for beside them there was Phratos.

Under the wolfskin and pine boughs of Zar�'s tent there was misery very often.

Zar� had a fresh son born to her with each succeeding year; and having a besotted love for her own offspring,

had little but indifference and blows for the stranger who shared their bed and food. Her children, brown and

curly, naked and strong, fought one another like panther cubs, and rode in a cluster like red mountainash

berries in the sheepskin round her waist, and drank by turns out of the pitcher of broth, and slept all together

But the child who had no affinity with them, who was not even wholly of their tribe, but had in her what they

deemed the taint of gentile blood, was not allowed to gnaw her bare bone or her ripe fig in peace if they

wished for it; was never carried with them in the sheepskin nest, but left to totter after in the dust or mud as

best she might; was forced to wait for the leavings in the pitcher, or go without if leavings there were none;

and was kicked away by the sturdy limbs of these young males when she tried to creep for warmth's sake in

amongst them on their fern bed. But she minded all this little; since in the Li�bana there was Phratos.

Phratos was always good to her. The prayer which those piteous dead eyes had made he always answered. He

Many a time, but for his remembrance, she would have starved outright or died of cold in those wild winters,

when the tribe huddled together in the caverns of the limestone, and the snowdrifts were driven up by

northern winds and blocked them there for many days. Many a time but for his aid she would have dropped

on their march and been left to perish as she might on the long sunburnt roads, in the arid midsummers,

when they gypsies plodded on their dusty way through the sinuous windings of hillside paths and along the

rough stones of driedup watercourses, in gorges and passages known alone to them and the wild deer.

When her throat was parched with the torment of long thirst, it was he who raised her to drink from the rill in

the rock, high above, to which the mothers lifted their eager children leaving her to gasp and gaze unpitied.

When she was driven away from the noonday meal by the hungry and clamorous youngsters, who would

admit no share of their partridge broth and stewed lentils, it was he who bruised the maize between the stones

for her eating, and gathered for her the wild fruit of the quince and the mulberry.

When the sons of Zar� had kicked and bruised and spurned her from the tent, he would lead her away to some

shadowy place where the leaves grew thickly, and play her such glad and bouyant tunes that the laughter

seemed to bubble from the listening brooks and ripple amongst the swinging boughs, and make the wild hare

skip with joy, and draw the timid lizard from his hole to frolic. And when they way was long, and the stony

paths cruel to her little bare feet, he would carry her aloft on his misshapen shoulders, where his old viol

always travelled; and would beguile the steep way with a thousand quaint, soft, grotesque conceits of all the

flowers and leaves and birds and animals: talking rather to himself than her, yet talking with a tender

fancifulness, half humour and half pathos, that soothed her tired sense like a lullaby. Hence it came to pass

that the sole creature whom she loved and who had pity for her was the uncouth, crippled, gay, sad, gentle,

Thus the life in the hills of the Li�bana went on till the child of Taric had entered her sixth year.

She had both beauty and grace; she had the old Moresco loveliness in its higher type; she was fleet as the roe,

strong as the young izard, wild as the woodpartridge on the wing; she had grace of limb from the postures

and dances with which she taught herself to keep time to the sweet, fantastic music of the viol; she was shy

and sullen, and fierce and savage, to all save himself, for the hand of every other was against her; but to him,

she was docile as the dove to the hand that feeds it. He had given her a string of bright sequins to hang on her

hair, and when the peasants of the mountains and valleys saw her by the edge of some green woodland pool,

whirling by moonlight to the sound of his melodies, they took her to be some unearthly spirit, and told

wonderful things over their garlic of the elf crowned with stars they had seen dancing on a round lotus leaf in

In the Li�bana she was beaten often, hungry almost always, cursed fiercely, driven away by the mothers,

mocked and flouted by the children; and this taught her silence and ferocity. Yet in the Li�bana she was

happy, for one creature loved her, and she was freefree to lie in the long grass, to bathe in the still pools, to

watch the wild things of the woods, to wander ankle deep in forest blossoms, to sleep under the rocking of

pines, to run against the sweet force of the wind, to climb the trees and swing cradled in leaves, and to look

far away at the snow on the mountains, and to dream, and to love, and to be content in dreaming and loving,

One day in the red autumn, Taric came; he had been wholly absent more than two years.

He was superb to the sight still, with matchless splendour of face and form, but his carriage was more

reckless and disordered than ever, and in his gemlike and nightblack eyes, there was a look of cunning and

His life had gone hardly with him, and to the indolence, the passions, the rapacity, the slothful sensuality of

the gypsywho had retained all the vices of his race whilst losing their virtues of simplicity in living, and of

endurance under hardshipthe gall of a sharp poverty had become unendurable: and to live without dice,

and women, and wine, and boastful brawling, seemed to him to be worse than any death.

The day he returned, they were still camped in the Li�bana; in one of its narrow gorges, overhung with a

thick growth of trees, and coursed through by a headlong hillstream, that spread itself into darkling breadths

and leafy pools, in which the fish were astir under great snowy lilies and a tangled web of water plants.

He strode into the midst of them, as they sat round their campfire lit beneath a shelf of rock, as his wont

was; and was welcomed and fed and plied with such as they had, with that mixture of sullen respect and

incurable attachment which his tribe preserved, through all their quarrels, for this, the finest and the fiercest,

When the meal was done, the young of the tribe scattered themselves in the red evening light under the great

"Which is mine?" he asked, surveying the children. They showed her to him. The sequins were round her

head; she swung on a bough of ash; the pool beneath mirrored her; she was singing as children sing, without

words, yet musically and gladly, catching at the fireflies that danced above her in the leaves.

"In her own fashion,as a flower in the wind," Phratos answered him, with a smile; and willing to woo for

her the good graces of her father, he slung his viol off his shoulders and tuned it, and beckoned the child.

She came, knowing nothing who Taric was; he was only to her a fierceeyed man like the rest, who would

beat her, most likely, if she stood between him and the sun, or overturned by mischance his horn of liquor.

But she danced all alone, and with a grace and a fire that surpassed theirs. She was only a baby still; she had

only her quick ear to guide her, and her only teacher was such inborn instinct as makes the birds sing and the

Yet she danced with a wondrous subtlety and intensity of ardour beyond her years; her small brown limbs

glancing like bronze in the fireglow, the sequins flashing in her flying hair, and her form flung high in air,

like a bird on the wing, or a leaf on the wind; never still, never ceasing to dart, and to leap, and to whirl, and

Taric watched her under his bent brow until the music ceased, and she dropped on the grass spent and panting

After awhile the camp was still; the gypsies slept. Two or three of their men went out to try and harry cattle

by the light of the moon if they should be in luck; two others went forth to set snares for the wood partridges

and rabbits; the rest slumbered soundly, the dogs curled to a watching sleep of vigilant guard in their midst.

Taric alone sat by the dying fire. When all was very quiet, and the stars were clear in the midnight skies, the

"You signed to me," she said to him in a low voice. "You want the child killed?"

"I mean to take her, that is all.See herea month ago, on the other side of the mountains, I met a

fantoccini player. It was at a wineshop, hard by Luzarches. He had a womanchild with him who danced to

his music, and whom the people praised for her beauty, and who anticked like a dancing dog, and who made

a great deal of silver. We got friends, he and I. At the week's end the brat died: some sickness of the throat,

they said. Her master tore his hair and raved; the little wretch was worth handfuls of coin to him. For such

another he would give twelve gold pieces. He shall have her. She will dance for him and me; there is plenty

to be made in that way. The women are fools over a handsome child; they open their larders and their purses.

I shall take her away before sunrise; he says he teaches them in seven days, by starving them and giving them

the stick. She will dance while she is a child. Later onthere are the theatres; she will be strong and

handsome, and in the great cities, now, a woman's comeliness is as a mine of gold ore. I shall take her away

The hard fierce heart of Zar� rebelled against him; she had no tenderness save for her own offspring, and she

had maltreated the stray child many a time; yet the proud liberty and the savage chastity of her race were

"Surely; why not? I will make a dancing dog of her for the peasants' pastime; and in time she will make

dancing dogs of the nobles and the princes for her own sport. It is a brave lifenone better."

The gypsy woman stood, astonished and irresolute. If he had flung his child in the river, or thrown her off a

"Phratos? A rotten fig for Phratos! What can he sayor do? The little beast is mine; I can wring its neck if I

The woman sought in vain to dissuade him; he was inflexible. She left him at last, telling herself that it was

no business of hers. He had a right to do what he chose with his own. So went down and lay down amongst

Taric likewise slept, upon a pile of moss under the ledge of the rock, lulled by the heat of the fire, which, ere

When all was quite still, and his deep quiet breathing told that his slumber was not one easily broken, a man

softly rose from the ground and threw off a mass of dead leaves that had covered him, and stood erect, a dark,

He had heard, and understood all that Taric meant for the present and the future of the child: and he knew that

when Taric vowed to do a thing for his own gain, it were easier to uproot the chain of the Europa than to turn

"It was my doing!" said Phratos to himself bitterly, as he stood there, and his heart was sick and sore in him,

He thought awhile, standing still in the hush of the midnight; then he went softly, with a footfall that did not

waken a dog, and lifted up the skins of Zar�'s tent as they hung over the firpoles. The moonbeams slanting

through the foliage strayed in, and showed him the woman, sleeping among her rosy robust children, like a

mastiff with her litter of tawny pups; and away from them, on the bare ground closer to the entrance, the

"Hush! it is I, Phratos," he murmured over her, and the stifled cry died on her lips.

He lifted her up in his arms and left the tent with her, and dropped the curtain of sheepskin, and went out into

the clear, crisp, autumn night. Her eyes had closed again, and her head had sunk on his shoulder heavy with

sleep; she had not tried to keep awake one moment after knowing that it was Phratos who had come for her;

Taric lay on the ledge of the rock, deaf with the torpor of a halfdrunken slumber, dreaming gloomily; his

Phratos stepped gently past him, and through the outstretched forms of the dogs and men, and across the

diedout embers of the fire, over which the emptied soupkettle still swung, as the nightbreeze blew to and

He went out from their circle and down the path of the gorge in silence, carrying the child. She was folded in

a piece of sheepskin, and in her hair there were still sequins. They glittered in the white light as he went; as

the wind blew, it touched the chords of the viol on his shoulder, and struck a faint musical sighing sound

"No, dear; it is night," he answered her, and she was content and slept againthe strings of the viol sending a

soft whisper in her drowsy ear, each time that the breeze arose and swept across them.

When the morning came, it found him far on his road, leaving behind him the Li�bana.

There followed a bright month of autumn weather. The child was happy as she had never been.

They moved on continually through the plains and the fields, the hills and the woods, the hamlets and the

cities; but she and the viol were never weary. They rode aloft whist he toiled on. Yet neither was he weary,

The earth and the sky were a blaze of russet and purple, and scarlet and gold. The air was keen and swift, and

strong like wine. A summer fragrance blended with a winter frost. The grape harvest had been gathered in,

Sometimes before a wineshop or beneath a balcony, or in a broad marketsquare at evening, Phratos played;

and the silver and copper coins were dropped fast to him. When he had enough by him to get a crust for

himself, and milk and fruit for her, he did not pause to play, but moved on resolutely all the day, resting at

He bought her a little garment of red foxes' furs; her head and feet were bare. She bathed in clear running

waters, and slept in a nest of hay. She saw vast towers, and wondrous spires, and strange piles of wood and

stone, and rivers spanned by arches, and great forests half leafless, and plains red in stormy sunset light, and

towns that lay hid in soft gold mists of vapour; and saw all these as in a dream, herself borne high in air,

wrapped warm in fur, and lulled by the sweet familiar fraternity of the old viol. She asked no questions, she

was content, like a mole or a dormouse; she was not beaten or mocked, she was never hungry nor cold; no

It takes time to go on foot across a great country, and Phratos was nearly always on foot.

Now and then he gave a coin or two, or a tune or two, for a lift on some strawladen waggon, or some

mulecart full of pottery or of vegetables, that was crawling on its slow way through the plains of the marshy

lands, or the poplar lined leagues of the public highways. But as a rule he plodded on by himself, shunning

the people of his own race, and shunned in return by the ordinary populace of the places through which he

travelled. For they knew him to be a Spanish gypsy, by his skin and his garb and his language, and by the

starryeyed Arabfaced child who ran by his side in her red fur and her flashing sequins.

"There is a curse written against all honest folk on every one of those shaking coins," the peasants muttered

She did not comprehend their sayings, for she knew none but her gypsy tongue, and that only very

imperfectly; but she knew by their glance that they meant that she was something evil; and she gripped

The weather grew colder and the ground harder. The golden and scarlet glories of the south and of the west,

their red leafage and purple flowers, gorgeous sunsets and leaping waters, gave place to the level pastures,

The frosts became sharp, and mists that came from unseen seas enveloped them. There were marvelous old

towns; cathedral spires that arose, ethereal as vapour; still dusky cities, aged with many centuries, that

seemed to sleep eternally in the watery halo of the fog; green cultivated hills, from whose smooth brows the

earthtouching clouds seemed never to lift themselves; straight sluggish streams, that flowed with leisurely

laziness through broad flat meadow lands, white with snow and obscure with vapour. For these they had

exchanged the pomp of dying foliage, the glory of crimson fruits, the fierce rush of the mistral, the odours of

the no�lborn violets, the fantastic shapes of the aloes and olives rasing their dark spears and their silvery

The child was chilled, oppressed, vaguely awestruck, and disquieted; but she said nothing; Phratos was

She missed the red forests and the leaping torrents, and the prickly fruits, and the smell of the violets and the

vineyards, and the wild shapes of the cactus, and the old myrtles that were hoary and contorted with age. But

One night, at the close of a black day in midwinter, the sharpest and hardest in cold that hey had ever

encountered, they passed through a little town whose roadways were mostly canals, and whose spires and

roofs and pinnacles and turrets and towers were all beautiful with the poetry and the majesty of a long

The day had been bitter; there was snow everywhere; great blocks of ice choked up the water; the belfry

chimes rang shrilly through the rarified air; the few folks that were astir were wrapped in wool or sheepskin;

through the casements there glowed the ruddy flush of burning logs; and the muffled watchmen passing to

and fro in antique custom on their rounds called out, under the closed houses, that it was the eight of the night

Phratos paused in the town at an old hostelry to give the child a hot drink of milk and a roll of rye bread.

They told it him sullenly and suspiciously: since for a wild gypsy of Spain the shrewd, thrifty, plain people of

He thanked them, and went on his way, out of the barriers of the little town along a road by the river towards

"Art thou cold, dear?" he asked her, with more tenderness than common sense in his voice.

The child shivered under her little fur skin, which would not keep out the searching of the hurricane and the

driving of the snowflakes; but she drew her breath quickly, and answered him, "No."

They came to a little wood, leafless and black in the gloomy night; a dead crow swung in their faces on a

swaying peartree; the roar of the millstream loudly filled what otherwise would have been an intense

He made his way in by a little wicket, through an orchard and through a garden, and so to the front of the

millhouse. The shutters were not closed; through the driving of the snow he could see within. It looked to

An old man sat on one side of the wide heart; an old woman, who span, on the other; the spinningwheel

turned, the thread flew, the logs smoked and flamed, the red glow played on the blue and white tiles of the

chimneyplace, and dance on the pewter and brass on the shelves; from the rafters there hung smoked meats

and dried herbs and strings of onions; there was a crucifix, and below it a little Nativity, in wax and carved

He could not tell that the goodly stores were only gathered there to be sold later at famine prices to a starving

peasantry; he could not tell that the wooden god was only worshipped in a blind, bigoted, brutal selfishness,

that desired to save its own soul, and to leave all other souls to eternal damnation.

He could not tell; he only saw old age and warmth, and comfort; and what the people who hooted him as a

"They will surely be good to her?" he thought. "Old people, and prosperous, and alone by their fireside."

His hear was sore within him, for he had grown to love the child; and to the vagrant instincts of his race the

life of the house and of the hearth seemed like the life of the cage for the bird. Yet Phratos, who was not

altogether as his own people were, but had thought much and often in his own wild way, knew that such a life

was the best for a woman child,and, above all, for a woman child who had such a sire as Taric.

To keep her with himself was impossible. He had always dwelt with his tribe, having no life apart from

theirs; and even if he had left them, wherever he had wandered, there would Taric have followed, and found

him, and claimed the child by his right of blood. There was no other way to secure her from present misery

She stood beside him, still and silent, gazing through the snowflakes at the warmth of the millkitchen

He stooped over her, and pushed between her fur garment and her skin the letter he had found on the breast of

"Thou wilt go in there the old man yonder, and sleep by that pleasant fire tonight," he murmured to her.

"And thou wilt be good and gentle, and even as thou art to me always; and tomorrow at noontide I will

"I will not go without thee," she muttered in the broken tongue of the gypsy children.

There were food and milk, fire and shelter, safety from the night and storm there, she saw; but theses were

nought to her without Phratos. She struggled against her fate as the young bird struggles against being thrust

into the cage,not knowing what captivity means, and yet afraid of it and rebelling by instinct.

He took her up in his arms, and pressed her close to him, and for the first time kissed her. For Phratos, though

tender to her, had no woman's foolishness, but had taught her to be hardy and strong, and to look for neither

caresses nor compassionknowing well that to the love child of Taric in her future years the first could only

"Go, dear," he said softly to her; and then he struck with his staff on the wooden door, and lifting its latch,

unclosed it; and thrust the child forward, ere she could resist, into the darkness of the low entrance place.

Then he turned and went swiftly himself through the orchard and wood into the gloom and the storm of the

He knew that to show himself to a northern householder were to do her evil and hurt; for between the

wanderer of the Spanish forests and the peasant of the Norman pastures there could be only defiance,

"I will see how it is with her tomorrow," he said to himself as he faced again the wind and the sleet. "If it be

well with herlet it be well. If not, she must come forth with me, and we must seek some lair where her

wolfsire shall not prowl and discover her. But it will be hard to f ind; for the vengeance of Taric is swift of

And his heart was heavy in him as he went. He had done what seemed to him just and due to the child and her

mother; he had been true to the vow he had made answering the mute prayer of the sightless dead eyes; he

had saved the flesh of the child from the whip of the trainer, and the future of the child from the shame of the

brothel; he had done thus much in saving her from her father, and he had done it in the only way the was

Yet his heart was heavy as he went; and it seemed to him even as though he had thrust some mountain bird

with pinions that would cleave the clouds, and eyes that would seek the sun, and a song that would rise with

the dawn, and a courage that would breast the thunder, down into the darkness of a trap, to be shorn and

"I will see her tomorrow," he told himself; restless with a vague remorse, as though the good he had done

But when the morrow dawned there had happened that to Phratos which forbade him to see whether it were

For Phratos that night, being blinded and shrouded in the storm of snow, lost such slender knowledge as he

had of that northern country, and wandered far afield, not knowing where he was in the wide white desert, on

The violence of the storm grew with the hours. The land was a sheet of snow. The plains were dim and

trackless as a desert. Sheep were frozen in their folds, and cattle drowned amidst the ice in the darkness. All

lights were out, and the warning peals of the bells were drowned in the tempest of the winds.

The land was strange to him, and he lost all knowledge where he was. Above, beneath, around, were the

dense rolling clouds of snow. Now and then through the tumult of the hurricane there was blown a strange

harsh burst of jangled chimes that wailed a moment loudly on the silence and then died again.

At many doors he knocked: the doors of little lonely places standing in the great colourless waste.

"It is a gypsy," the people muttered, and were afraid; and they drew their bars closer and huddled together in

A hundred times he strove to set his steps backwards to the town, and a hundred times he failed; and moved

In the midst of the fields there was a cross, and at the head of the cross hung a lantern. The wind tossed the

light to and fro. It flickered on the head of a woman. She lay in the snow, and her hand grasped his foot as he

And as she spoke, her lips closed together and her throat rattled, and she died.

Phratos stooped down and raised him. He was a child of eight years, and worn with famine and fever, and his

Phratos folded him in his arms, and went on with him: the snow had nearly covered the body of his mother.

All around him were the fields. There was no light, except from the lantern on the cross. A few sheep huddled

near without a shepherd. The stillness was intense. The bells had ceased to ring, or he had wandered far from

The lad was senseless; he muttered drearily foolish words of fever; his limbs hung in a dead weight; his teeth

chattered. Phratos, bearing him, struggled on: the snow was deep and drifted heavily; every now and then he

stumbled and plunged to his knees in a rift of earth or in a shallow pool of ice.

At last his strength, feeble at all times, failed him; his arms could bear their burden no longer; he let the

young boy slip from his hold upon the ground; and stood, breathless and broken, with the snowflakes beating

"The woman trusted me," he thought; she was a stranger, she was a beggar, she was dead. She had no bond

upon him, neither could she ever bear witness against him. Yet he was loyal to her.

He unwound the sheepskin that he wore, and stripped himself of it, and folded it about the sick child, and

with a slow laborious effort drew the little body under the frail shelter of a knot of furze, and wrapped it

Then, with no defence between him and the driving cold, he strove once more to find his road.

He stumbled on as a mule may that being blind and bruised yet holds its way from the sheer instinct of its sad

His veins were frozen; his beard was ice; the wind cut his flesh like a scourge; a sickly dreamy sleepiness

He tried to rouse himself; he was young, and his life had its sweetness; and there were faces he would fain

He drew the viol round and touched its strings; but his frozen fingers had lost their cunning, and the soul of

He kissed it softly as he would have kissed a woman's lips, and put it in his bosom. It had all his youth in it.

Then he stumbled onward yet again, feebly, being a cripple and cold to the bone, and pierced with a million

The endless wilderness of the ploughed lands stretched all around him; where the little hamlets clustered the

storm hid them; no light could penetrate the denseness of that changeless gloom; and the only sound that rose

upon the ghastly silence was the moaning of some perishing flock locked in a flood of ice, and deserted by its

But what he saw and what he heard were not these; going barefoot and blindfold to his death, the things of his

own land were with him; the golden glories of sunsets of paradise; the scarlet blaze of a wilderness of

flowers; the sound of the fountains at midnight; the glancing of the swift feet in the dances; the sweetness of

songs sad as death sung in the desolate courts of the old palaces; the deep dreamy hush of white moons

shining through lines of palms straight on a silvery sea. These arose and drifted before him, and he ceased to

suffer or to know, and sleep conquered him; and he dropped down on the earth noiselessly and powerlessly as

When the morning broke a peasant, going to his labour in the fields while the stormy winter sun rose red over

The boy was warm and living, still beneath the shelter of the sheepskin: Phratos was dead.

The people succoured the child, and nursed and fed him so that his life was saved; but to Phratos they only

"It is only a gypsy; let him lie," they said; and they left him there, and the snow kept him.

His viol they robbed him of, and cast it as a plaything to their children. But the children could make no

And his own land and his own people knew him never again; and never again at evening was the voice of his

viol heard in the stillness; and never again did the young men and the maidens dance to his bidding, and the

tears and the laughter rise and fall at his will, and the beasts and the birds frisk and sing at his coming, and the

THE hottest sun of a hot summer shone on a straight dusty road. An old man was breaking stones by the

wayside; he was very old, very bent, very lean, worn by ninety years if he had been worn by one; but he

struck yet with a will, and the flints flew in a thousand pieces under his hammer, as though the youth and the

When the noon bell rang from a little odd straight steeple, with a slanting roof, that peered out of the trees to

the westward, he laid his hammer aside, threw off his brassplated cap, wiped his forehead of its heat and

dust, sat down on his pile of stones, and took out hard black crust and munched it with teeth that were still

The noontide was very quiet; the heat was intense, for there had been no rainfall for several weeks; there was

one lark singing high up in the air, with its little breast lifted to the sun; but all the other birds were mute and

invisible, doubtless hidden in some delicious shadow, swinging drowsily on tufts of linden bloom, or

The road on either side was lined by the straight forms of endless poplars, standing side by side as sentinels.

The fields were all ablaze on every acre with the gold of ripening corn or mustard, and the scarlet flame of

innumerable poppies. Here and there they were broken by some little house, white or black, or painted in

bright colours, which lifted up amongst its leaves a little tower like a sugarloaf or a carved gable, and a

pointed arch beneath it. Now and then they were divided by rows of trees standing breathless in the heat, or

breadths of apple orchards, some with early fruits already ripe, some with fruits as yet green as their foliage.

Through it all the river ran, silver in the light; with shallow fords, where the deepflanked bullocks drank;

and ever and anon an ancient picturesque bridge of wood, timebronzed and mossembroidered.

The old man did not look round once; he had been on these roads a score of years; the place had to him the

monotony and colourlessness which all long familiar scenes wear to the eyes that are weary of them.

He was ninetyfive; he had to labour for his living; he ate black bread; he had no living kith or kin; no friend

save in the mighty legion of the dead; and he sat in the scorch of the sun; he hated the earth and the sky, the

air and the landscape: why not? They had no loveliness for him; he only knew that the flies stung him and

that the red ants could crawl through the holes in his shoes, and bite him sharply with their little piercing

He sat in such shade as the tall lean poplar gave, munching his hard crusts; he had a fine keen profile and a

long white beard that were thrown out as sharply as a sculpture against the golden sunlight, in which the

gnats were dancing. His eyes were fastened on the dust as he ate; blue piercing eyes that had still something

of the fire of their youth; and his lips under the white hair moved a little now and then, half audibly.

His thoughts were with the long dead years of an unforgotten timea time that will be remembered as long

With the present he had nothing to do; he worked to satisfy the lingering cravings of a body that age seemed

to have lost all power to kill; he worked because he was too much of a man still to beg, and because suicide

looked to his fancy like a weakness, but life for all that was over with him; life in the years of his boyhood

had been a thing so splendid, so terrible, so drunken, so divine, so tragic, so intense, that the world seemed

now to him to have grown pale and grey and pulseless, with no sap in its veins, no hue in its suns, no blood in

For his memory held the days of Thermidor; the weeks of the White Terror; the winter dawn, when the drums

rolled out a King's threnody; the summer nights, when all the throats of Paris cried "Marengo!"

He had lived in the wondrous awe of that abundant time when every hour was an agony or a victory; when

every woman was a martyr or a bacchanal; when the same scythe that had severed the flowering grasses

served also to cleave the fair breasts of the mother, the tender throat of the child; when the ground was purple

with the blue blood of men as with the juices of outtrodden grapes, and when the waters were white with the

bodies of virgins as with the moonfed lilies of summer. And how he sat here by the wayside, in the dust and

the sun, only feeling the sting of the fly and the bite of the ant; and the world seemed dead to him, because so

Through the golden notes of the dancing air and of the quivering sunbeams, whilst high above the lark sang

She was barefooted and barethroated, lithe of movement, and straight and supple, as one who passed her

She walked with the free and fearless measure of the country women of Rome or the desertborn women of

Nubia; she had barely entered his sixteenth year; but her bosom and limbs were full and firm, and moulded

with almost the luxuriant splendor of maturity; her head was not covered after the fashion of the country, but

had a scarlet kerchief wound about, and on it she bore a great flat basket, filled high with fruits and herbs and

flowers; a mass of colour and of blossom, through whose leaves and tendrils her dark level brows and her

great eyes, blue black as a tempestuous night, looked out, set straight against the sun.

She came on, treading down the dust with her long and slender feet, that were such feet as a sculptor would

give his Cleopatra or his Phryne. Her face was grave, shadowed, even fierce; and her mouth, though scarlet as

a berry and full and curled, had its lips pressed close to one another, like the lips of one who has long kept

As she saw the old man her eyes changed and lightened with a smile which for the moment banished all the

gloom and savage patience from her eyes, and made them mellow and lustrous as a southern sun.

She paused before him, and spoke, showing her beautiful white teeth, small and even, like rows of cowrie

The old man started, and looked up with a certain gladness on his own keen visage, which had lost all

"Fool!" he made answer, harshly yet not unkindly. "When will you know that so long as an old man lives so

She spoke in the accent and the language of the province, but with a voice rich and pure and cold; not the

voice of the north, or of any peasantry. She put her basket down from off her head, and leaned against the

He broke off half his dry bread and tendered it to her. She shook her head and motioned it away; yet she was

as hungered as any hawk that has hunted all through the night and the woods, and has killed nothing. The

growing life, the superb strength, the lofty stature of her made her need constant nourishment, as young trees

need it; and she was fed as scantily as a blind beggar's dog, and less willingly than a galley slave.

"Possible!" she said slowly, after awhile. "What is possible? I do not understand."

"You see that lark? It soars there, and sings there. It is possible that a fowler may hide in the grasses; it is

possible that it may be shot as it sings; it is possible that it may have the honour to die in agony to grace a

She mused a moment; her brain was rapid in intuitive perception, but barren of all culture; it took her many

moments to follow the filmy track of a metaphorical utterance. But by degrees she saw his meaning, and the

"Nay; our friends the priests say there is a 'possible' which will giveone daythe fowler who kills the lark

the wings of the lark, and the lark's power to sing Laus Deo in heaven. I do not saythey do."

All the scorn of which her curved lips were capable curled on them, and a deep hate gathered in her eyesa

"Then there is no 'possible' for me," she said bitterly, "if so be that priests hold the gifts of it?"

Marcellin looked up at her from under his bushy white eyebrows; a glance fleet and keen as the gleam of blue

"Yes, there is," he said curtly. "You are a woman child, and have beauty: the devil will give you one."

"Always the devil!" she muttered. There was impatience in her echo of the words, and yet there was an awe

also as of one who uses a name that is mighty and full of majesty, although familiar.

His meaning this time lay too deep for her, and passed her; she stood leaning against the poplar, with her

"If men be devils they are my brethren," she said suddenly: "why do they then so hate me?"

The lark dropped down from heaven, suddenly falling through the air, mute. It had been struck by a

sparrowhawk, which flashed black against the azure of the skies and the white haze of the atmosphere; and

which flew down in the track of the lark and seized it ere it gained the shelter of the grass and bore it away

She was silent yet again; he had told her that old story of the sons born of Eve, and the one whom, hearing it,

At that moment, through the roadway that wound across the meadows and through the corn lands and the

trees, there came in sight a gleam of scarlet that was not from the poppies, a flash of silver that was not from

the river, a column of smoke that was not from the weeds that burned on the hillside.

There came a cloud, with a melodious murmur softly rising from it: a cloud that moved between the high

flowering hedges, the tall amber wheat, the slender poplars, and the fruitful orchards; a cloud that grew larger

and clearer as it drew more near to them, and left the green water meadows and winding field paths for the

It drew closer and closer by slow imperceptible degrees, until it approached them; the old man sat upright,

not taking his cap from his head nor his pipe from his mouth; the young girl cease to lean for rest against the

The Church passed them; the great gilt crucifix held aloft, the scarlet and the white of the robes catch ing

the sunlight; the silver chains and silver censers gleaming; the fresh young voices of the singing children

cleaving the air like a rush of wind; the dark shorn faces of the priests bowed over open books, the tender

The Church passed them; the dust of the parched road rose up in a choking mass; the heavy mist of the

incense hung darkly on the sunlit air; the tramp of the many feet startled the birds from their rest, and pierced

It passed them, and left them behind it; but the fresh leaves were choked and whitened; the birds were

fluttered and affrightened; the old man coughed, the girl strove to brush the dust motes from her smarting

"That is the Church!" said the stonebreaker, with a smile. "Dustterrora choked voiceand blinded

"That is the Church!" he said. "To burn incense and pray for rain, and to fell the forests that were the

The procession passed away out of sight, going along the highway and winding by the course of the river,

calling to the bright blue heavens for rain; whilst the little bells rang and the incense curled and the priest

prayed themselves hoarse, and the peasants toiled footsore, and the eager steps of the choral children trod the

The priests had cast a severer look from out their downdropped eyelids; the children had huddled together,

with their voices faltering a little; and the boy choristers had shot out their lips in gestures of defiance and

opprobrium as they had passed these twain beneath the wayside trees. For the two were both outcasts.

"Didst thou see the man that killed the king?" whispered to another one fair and curlyheaded baby, who was

holding in the sun her little, white, silverfringed banner, and catching the rise and fall of the sonorous

"Didst thou see the daughter of the devil?" muttered to another a handsome golden brown boy, who had left

his herd untended in the meadow to don his scarlet robes and swing about the censer of his village chapel.

And they all sang louder, and tossed more incense on high, and marched more closely together under the rays

of the gleaming crucifix as they went; feeling that they had been beneath the shadow of the powers of

darkness, and that they were purer and holier and more exalted, because they had thus passed by in scorn

So they went their way through the peaceful country with a glory of sunbeams about themthrough the

corn, past the orchards, by the river, into the heart of the old brown, quiet town, and about the foot of the

great cathedral, where they kneeled down int he dust and prayed, then rose and sang the "Angelus."

Then, the tall darkvisaged priest, who had led them all thither under the standard of the golden crucifix,

lifted his voice alone and implored God, and exhorted man; implored for rain and all the blessings of harvest,

The people were moved and saddened, and listened, smiting their breasts; and after a while rising from their

knees, many of them in tears, dispersed and went their ways, muttering to one another:"We have had no

such harvests as those of old since the men that slew a saint came to dwell here;" and answering to one

another:"We had never such droughts as these in the sweet cool weather of old, before the offspring of hell

For the priests had not said to them, "Lo! your mercy is parched as the earth, and your hearts as the heavens

IN the days of his youngest youth, in the old drunken days that were dead, this old stonebreaker Marcellin

had known such life as it is given to few men to knowa life of the soul and the senses; a life of storm and

delight; a life mad with blood and wine; a life of divinest dreams; a life when women kissed them, and bade

them slay; a life when mothers blessed them and bade them die; a life, strong, awful, splendid, unutterable; a

life seized at its fullest and fiercest and fairest, out of an air that was death, off an earth that was hell.

When his cheeks had had a boy's bloom and his curls a boy's gold he had seen a nation in delirium; he had

been one of the elect of a people; he had uttered the words that burn, and wrought the acts that live; he had

been of the Thousand of Marsala; and he had been of the avengers in Thermidor: he had raised his flutelike

voice from the tribune, and he had cast in his vote for the death of a king; passions had been his playthings,

and he had toyed with life as a child with a match; he had beheld the despised enthroned in power, and

desolation left within kings' palaces; he too had been fierce, and glad, and cruel, and gay, and drunken, and

proud, as the whole land was; he had seen the white beauty of the royal women bare in the hands of the mob,

and the throats that princes had caressed kissed by the broad steel knife; he had had his youth in a wondrous

And now,he broke stones to get daily bread, and those who passed him by cursed him, saying:

For he had outlived his time, and the life that had been golden and red at its dawn was now grey and pale as

the ashes of a fire grown cold; for in all the list of the world's weary errors there is no mistake so deadly as

Years before, in such hot summer weather as this, against which the Church had prayed, the old man, going

homewards to his little cabin amidst the fields, had met a little child coming straight towards him in the full

crimson glow of the setting sun, and with the flame of the poppies all around her.

He hardly knew why he looked at her, but when he had once looked his eyes rested there.

She had the hues of his youth about her; in that bloodred light, amongst the bloodred flowers, she made

him think of women's forms that he had seen in all their grace and their voluptuous loveliness clothed in the

red garment of death, and standing on the dusky red of the scaffold as the burning mornings of the summers

The child was all alone before him in that intense glow as of fire; above her there was a tawny sky, flushed

here and there with purple; around her stretched the solitary level of the fields burnt yellow as gold by the

long mouths of heat. There were stripes on her shoulders blue and black from the marks of a thong.

He looked at her, and stopped her, why he hardly knew, except that a look about her, beaten but yet

unsubdued, attracted him. He had seen the look of yore in the years of his youth, on the faces of the nobles he

"Have you been hurt?" he asked her in his harsh, strong voice. She put her heavy load of faggots down and

"Hurt?" She echoed the word stupidly. No one ever thought she could be hurt; what was done to her was

Marcellin leaned on his elm stick, and fastened on her his keen passionless eyes with a look which, for him

"Come to my hut," he said to her. "I know a herb that will take the fret and the ache out of your bruises."

The child followed him passively, half stupidly; he was the first creature that had ever bidden her go with

him, and this rough pity of his was sweet to her, with an amazing incredible balm in it which only those can

know who see raised against them every man's hand, and hear on their ears the mockery of all the voices of

Under reviling, and contempt, and constant rejection, she had become savage as a trapped hawk, wild as an

escaped panther; but to him she was obedient and passive, because he had spoken to her without a taunt and

without a curse, which until now had been the sole two forms of human speech that she had heard.

His little hut was in the midst of those spreading cornfields, set where two pathways crossed each other, and

stretched down the gentle slope of the cultured lands to join the great highwaya hut of stones and plaited

rushes, with of roof of thatch, where the old republican, hardy of frame and born of a toiling race, dwelt in

He took some leaves of a simple herb that he knew, soaked them with water, and bound them on her

shoulders, not ungently, though his hand was so rough with labour, and, as men said, had been so often red

Then he gave her a draught of goat's milk, sweet and fresh, from a wooden bowl; shared with her the dry

black crusts that formed his only evening meal; bestowed on her a gift of a rare old scarlet scarf of woven

wools and eastern broideries, one of the few relics of his buried life; lifted the faggots on her back, so that she

The child bent her head in silence, and kissed his hand quickly and timidly, like a grateful dog that is amazed

"After a forty years' vow I have broken it; I have pitied a human thing," the old man muttered as he stood in

his doorway looking after her shadow as it passed small and dark across the scarlet light of the poppies.

"They call him vile, and they say that he slew men," thought the child, who had long known his face, though

he had never noted hers; and it seemed to her that all mercy lay in her father's kingdomwhich they called

the kingdom of evil. The cool moist herbs slaked the heat of her bruises; and the draught of milk had slaked

"Is evil good?" she asked in her heart as she went through the tall red poppies.

And from that evening thenceforward FolleFarine and Marcellin cleaved to one another, being outcasts

AS the religious gathering broke up and split in divers streams to divers ways, the little town returned to its

accustomed stillnessa stillness that seemed to have in it the calm of a thousand sleeping years, and the

On marketdays and saintdays, days of high feast or of perpetual chaffering, the town was full of colour,

The country people crowded in, filling it with the jingling of mulebells; the fisher people came, bringing

with them the crisp salt smell of the sea and the blue of the sea on their garments; its own tanners and ivory

carvers, and fruiterers, and lacemakers turned out by the hundred in all the quaint variety of costumes which

their forefathers had bequeathed to them, and to which they were still wise enough to adhere. But at other

times when the fishers were in their hamlets, and the peasantry on their lands and in their orchards, and the

townsfolk at their labours in the old renaissance mansions, which they had turned into tanneries, and

granaries, and woolsheds, and workshops, the place was profoundly still; scarcely a child at play in the

When the crowds had gone the priests laid aside their vestments, and donned the black serge of their daily

The crosses and the censers were put back upon their altars, and hung up upon their pillars.

The boy choristers and the little children put their white linen and their scarlet robes back in cupboards and

presses, with heads of lavender and sprigs of rosemary to keep the moth and the devil away, and went to their

fields, to their homes, to their herds, to their paper kites, to their daisy chains, to the poor rabbits they pent in

The town became quite still, the market place quite empty; the drowsy silence of a burning, cloudless

afternoon was over all the quiet places about the cathedral walls, where of old the bishops and the canons

dwelt; grey shady courts; dim open cloisters; houses covered with oaken carvings, and shadowed with the

spreading branches of chestnuts and of limetrees that were as aged as themselves.

Under the shelter of one of the lindens, after the populace had gone, there was seated on a broad stone bench

the girl who had stood by the wayside erect and unbending as the procession had moved before her.

She had flung herself down in dreamy restfulness. She had delivered her burden of vegetables and fruit at a

shop near by, whose awning stretched out into the street like a toadstool yellow with the sun. The heat was

intense; she had been on foot all day; she sat to rest a moment, and put her burning hands under a little rill of

water that spouted into a basin in a niche in the wall. An ancient well, with a stone image of the Madonna

sculptured above, and a wreath of vineleaves in stone running around, in the lavish ornamentation of an age

when men loved loveliness for its own sake, and begrudged neither time nor labour in its service.

She leaned over the fountain, kept so cool by the roofing of the thick green leaves; there was a metal cup

attached to the basin by a chain, and she filled it at the running thread of water, and stooped her lips to it

The day was sultry; the ways were long and white with powdered limestone; her throat was still parched with

the dust raised by the many feet of the multitude; and although she had borne in the great basket which now

stood empty at her side, cherries, peaches, mulberries, melons, full of juice and lusciousness, this daughter of

FolleFarine stooped to the water and played with it, and drank it, and steeped her lips and her arms in it;

lying there on the stone bench, with her bare feet curled one in another, and her slender round limbs full of

the voluptuous repose of a resting panther. The coolness, the murmur, the clearness, the peace, the soft

flowing movement of water, possess an ineffable charm for natures that are passiontossed, feverish, and full

There was a dreary peace about the place, too, which had charms likewise for her; in the dusky arch of the

long cloisters, in the grey lichengrown walls, in the broad pamments of the paven court, in the clusters of

strange delicate carving beneath and below; in the sculptured friezes where little nests that the birds had made

in the spring still rested, and in the dense brooding thickness of the boughs which brought the sweetness and

She stayed there, loath to move; loath to return where a jeer, a bruise, a lifted stick, a muttered curse, were all

As she lay thus, one of the doors in the old houses in the cloisters opened; the head of an old woman was

thrust out, crowned with the high fanshaped comb, and the towering white linen cap, that are the female

The old woman wa the mother of the sacristan, and she, looking out, shrieked shrilly to her son:

"Georges, Georges! come hither. The devil's daughter is drinking the blest water!"

The sacristan was hoeing amongst his cabbages in the garden behind his house, surrounded with clipt yew,

He ran out at his mother's call, hoe in hand, himself an old man, though stout and strong.

The well in the wall was his especial charge and pride; immeasurable sanctity attached to it.

According to tradition, the water had spouted from the stone itself, at the touch of a branch of blossoming

pear, held in the hand of St. Jerome, who had returned to earth in the middle of the fourteenth century, and

dwelt for a while near the cathedral, working at the honourable trade of a cordwainer, and accomplishing

mighty miracles throughout the district. It was said that some of his miraculous power still remained in the

fountain, and that even yet, those who drank on St. Jerome's day, in full faith and with believing hearts, were,

Wherefore on that day, throngs of peasantry flocked in from all sides, and crowded round it, and drank; to the

"Get you gone!" he shouted. "Get you gone, you child of hell! How durst you touch the blessed basin? Do

FolleFarine lifted her head and looked him in the face with her audacious eyes, and laughed; then tossed her

head again, and plunged it into the bright living water, till her lips, and her cheeks, and all the rippling hair

The sacristan, infuriated at once by the impiety and the defiance, shrieked aloud.

"Insolent animal! Daughter of Satan! I will teach you to taint the gift of a saint with the lips of the devil!"

And he seized her roughly with one hand upon her shoulder, and with the other raised the hoe and brandished

the wooden staff of it above her head in threat to strike her; whilst his old mother, still thrusting her lofty

headgear and her wrinkled face from out of the door, screamed to him to show he was a man, and have no

As his grasp touched her, and the staff cast its shadow across her, FolleFarine sprang up, defiance and fury

She seized the staff in her right hand, wrenched it with a swift movement from his hold, and catching his

head under her left arm, rained blows on him from his own weapon with a sudden gust of breathless rage

which blinded him, and lent to her slender muscular limbs, the strength and force of man. Then, as rapidly as

she had seized and struck him, she flung him from her with such violence that he fell prostrate on the

pavement of the court; caught up the metal pail which stood by ready filled, dashed the water over him where

he lay, and turning from him without a word, walked across the courtyard slowly, and with a haughty grace in

all the carriage of her bare limbs, and the folds of her ragged garments; bearing the empty osierbasket on her

In these secluded cloisters, and in the high noontide, when all were sleeping or eating in the cool shelter of

The saints heard, no doubt, but they were too lazy to stir from their niches in that sultry noontide; except the

baying of a chained dog aroused, there was no answer to the outcry, and FolleFarine passed out into the

As she turned into one of the squares that led to the open country, she saw in the distance one of the

guardians of the peace of the town moving quickly towards the cloisters, with his glittering lace shining in the

sun, and his long scabbard clattering upon the stones. She laughed a little as she saw.

"They will not come after me," she said to herself. "Thy are too afraid of the devil."

She crossed the wide scorching square, whose white stones blazed in the glare of the sun.

There was nothing in sight except a stray cat prowling in a corner, and three sparrows quarrelling over a

The quaint old houses round seemed all asleep, with the shutters closed like tired eyelids over their little dim,

aged, orbs of windows. The gilded vanes on their twisted chimneys, and carved parapets, pointed motionless

to the warm south. There was not a sound except for the cawing of some rooks, who built their nests high

Undisturbed she crossed the square, and took her way down the crooked street that led her homeward to the

outlying country. It was an old, twisting, dusky place, with the water flowing through its centre as its only

roadway; and in there were the oldest houses of the town, all of timber, black with age, and carved with the

wonderful florid fantasies and grotesque conceits of the years when a house was to its master a thing beloved

and beautiful, a bulwark, an altar, a heritage, an heirloom to be dwelt in all the days of a long life, and

The street was very silent, the ripple of the water was the chief sound that filled it. Its tenants were very poor,

in many of its antique mansions the beggars shared shelter with the rats and the owls. In one of these

The orange and scarlet flowers of a nasturtium curled up its twisted pilasters; the big, fair clusters of

hydrangea filled up its narrow casements; a breadth of manycoloured saxifrage, with leaves of green and

rose, and blossoms of purple and white, hung over the balcony rail, which five centuries earlier had been

draped with cloth of gold; and a little yellow song bird made music in the empty niche from which the

From the window a woman looked, leaning with folded arms above the rosetipped saxifrage, and beneath

She was a fair woman, white as the lilies, and she had silver pins in her amber hair, and a mouth that laughed

All beautiful things head a fascination for her. This woman above was very fair to see, and she looked at her

as she looked at the purple butterflies in the sun; at the stars shining down through the leaves; at the vast,

dim, gorgeous figures in the cathedral windows; at the happy children running to their mothers with their

hands full of primroses, as she saw them in the woods at springtime; at the laughing groups round the

woodfires in the new year time when she passed a lattice pane that the snowdrift had not blocked; at all the

things that were so often in her sight, and yet with which her life had no part or likeness.

She stood there on the rough flints, in the darkness cast from the jutting beams of the house; and the other

happier creature leaned above there in the light, white and rosehued, and with the silver bells of the pins

"You are old Flamma's granddaughter," cried the other from her leafy nest above. "You work for him all

"And your feet are bare, and your clothes are rags, and you go to and fro like a packhorse, and the people hate

you? You must be a fool. Your father was the devil, they say; why do you not make him give you good

"He will not hear," the child muttered wearily; had she not besought him endlessly with breathless prayers?

"Perhaps; in his fashion. But he pays me ill as yet," and she plucked one of the silver pins from her hair, and

stabbed the rosy foam of the saxifrage through and through with it; for she was but a gardener's wife, and was

"Get you gone," she added quickly, "or I will thrown a stone at you, you witch; you have the evil eye, they

FolleFarine went on her way over the sharp stones with a heavy heart. That picture in the casement head had

made that passage bright to her many a time; and when at last that picture had moved and spoken, it had only

The gardener's wife, leaning there, with the green and gold of the vineleaves brushing her hair, looked after

"That young wretch will be more beautiful than I," she thought; and the thought was bitter to her, as such a

FolleFarine went slowly and sadly through the street with her head dropped, and the large osier basket

She was well used to be pelted with words hard as hailstones, and usually heeded them little, or gave them

back with sullen, fierce defiance. But from this woman they had wounded her; for that bright bower of golden

leaves and scarlet flowers she had faintly fancied some stray beam of light might wander even to her.

She was soon outside the gates of the town, and beyond the old walls, where the bramble and the lichen grew

over the huge stones of ramparts and fortifications, useless and decayed from age.

The country roads and paths, the silver streams and the wooden bridges, the lanes through which the market

mules picked their careful way, the fields in which the whitecapped peasant women and the brindled oxen

were at work, stretched all before her in a radiant air, sweet with the scent of ripening fruits from many

Here and there a wayside crucifix rose dark against the sun; here and there a chapel bell sounded from under

some little peaked red roof. The cattle dozed beside meadow ditches that were choked with wild flowers; the

At the first cottage which she passed, the housewife sat out under a spreading chestnut tree, weaving lace

FolleFarine looked wistfully at the woman, who was young and pretty, and who darted her swift skilled

hand in and out around the bobbins, keeping time meanwhile with a mirthful burden that she sang.

A little way farther on there was winehouse by the roadside, built of wood, vinewreathed, and half hidden in

Out of the lattice there was leaning a maiden with the silver cross on her bosom shining in the sun, and her

meek blue eyes smiling down from under the tower of her white cap. She was reaching a carnation to a

student who stood below, with long fair locks and ruddy cheeks, and a beard yellow with the amber down of

FolleFarine glanced at the pretty picture with a dull wonder and a nameless pain: what could it mean to be

Half a league onward she passed another cottage shadowed by a sycamoretree, and with the swallows

whirling around its tall twisted stone chimneys, and a beurr� pear covering with branch and bloom its old

grey walls. An aged woman sat sipping coffee in the sun, and a young one was sweeping the blue and white

"Art thou well placed, my mother?" she asked, pausing to look tenderly at the withered brown face, on which

"How odd it must be to have anyone to care to hear your voice like that!" she thought; and she went on her

Was she lower than they because she could find no one to care for her or take gladness in her life? or was she

greater than they because all human delights were to her as the dead letters of an unknown tongue?

Down a pathway fronting her, which ran midway between the yellowing seas of wheat and a belt of lilac

clover, and over which a swarm of bees was murmuring, there came a countrywoman, crushing the herbage

under her heavy shoes, ragged, picturesque, sunbrowned, swinging deep brass pails as she went to the herds

on the hillside. She carried a child twisted into the folds of her dress; a boy, half asleep, with his curly head

As she passed, the woman drew her kerchief over her bosom, and over the brown rosy face of the child.

"She shall not look at thee, my darling," she muttered. "Her look withered R�my's little limb." And she

covered the child jealously, and turned aside, so that she should tread a separate pathway through the clover,

In the summer of the previous year, as she had passed the tanyard on the western bank of the river, the

tanner's little son, rushing out in haste, had curled his mouth in insult at her, and clapping his hands, hissed in

a child's love of cruelty the mocking words which he had heard his elders use of her. In answer, she had only

But the child, running out fast, and startled by that regard, had slipped upon a shred of leather and had fallen

The limb, unskilfully dealt with, and enfeebled by a tendency to disease, had never been restored, but hung

limp, crooked, useless, withered from below the knee. Through all the country side the little cripple, R�my,

creeping out into the sun upon his crutches, was pointed out in a passionate pity as the object of her sorcery,

When she had heard what they said she had laughed as she laughed now, drawing together her straight brows

All the momentary softness died in her now as the peasant covered the boy's face and turned aside into the

clover. She laughed aloud, and swept on through the halfripe corn with that swift, harmonious, majestic

movement which was inborn in her, as it is inborn in the deer or the antelope; singing again as she went those

strange wild airs, like the sigh of the wind, which were all the language which lingered in her memory from

To such aversion as this she was too well used for it to be a matter of even notice to her. She knew that she

was marked and shunned by the community amidst which her lot was cast; and she accepted proscription

In this oldworld district, amidst the pastures and cornlands of Normandy, superstition had taken a hold

which the passage of centuries and the advent of revolution had done very little to lessen.

Few of the people could read, and fewer still could write. They knew nothing but what their priests and their

politicians told them to believe. They went to their beds with the poultry, and rose as the cock crew: they

went to mass, as their ducks to the osier and weed ponds; and to the conscription as their lambs to the

They understood that there was a world beyond them, but they remembered it only as the best market for

their fruit, their fowls, their lace, their skins. Their brains were as dim as were their oillit streets at night;

though their lives were content and mirthful, and for the most part pious. They went out into the summer

meadows chaunting aves, in seasons of drought to pray for rain on their parching orchards, in the same

credulity with which they groped through the winter fog, bearing torches and chaunting dirges to gain a

The beauty and the faith of the old Medi�val life were with them still; and its faith were its bigotry and its

They led simple and contented lives; for the most part honest, and amongst themselves cheerful and kindly;

preserving much grace of colour, of costume, of idiosyncracy, because apart from the hueless communism

But they believed in sorcery and in devilry; they were brutal to their beasts, and could be as brutal to their

foes; they were steeped in legend and tradition from their cradles; and all the darkest superstitions of dead

Therefore, believing her a creature of evil, they were inexorable against her; and thought that in being so they

They had always been a religious people in this birth country of the Flamma race; the strong poetic reverence

of their forefathers, which had symbolised itself in the carving of every lintel, corbel, or buttress in their

streets, and in the fashion of every spire on which a weathervane could gleam against the sun, was still in

Their ancestors had burned wizards and witches by the score in the open square of the cathedral place, and

their grandsires and grandams had in brave, dumb, ignorant peasant fashion held fast to the lily and the cross,

and gone by hundreds to the salutation of the axe and the baptism of the sword in the red days of revolution.

They were the same people still; industrious, frugal, peaceful, loyal, wedded to old ways and to old relics,

content on little, and serene of heart; yet, withal, where they feared or where they hated, brutal with the

brutality begotten of abject ignorance. And they had been so to this outcast whom they all called

When she had first come amidst them, a little desolate foreign child, mute with the dumbness of an unknown

tongue, and cast adrift amongst strange people, unfamiliar ways, and chill blank glances, she had shyly tried

in a child's vague instincts of appeal and trust to make friends with the other children that she saw, and to

share a little in the mothers' smiles and the babies' pastimes that were all around her in the glad green world

But she had been denied and rejected with hard words and harder blows; at her coming the smiles had

She was proud, she was shy, she was savage; she felt rather than understood that she was suspected and

reviled; she ceased to seek her own kind, and only went for companionship and sympathy to the creatures of

"Thou art the devil's daughter!" half in sport hissed the youths in the marketplace against her as the little

child went amongst them, carrying a load for her grandsire, heavier than her arms knew how to bear.

"Thou wert plaguespotted from thy birth," said the old man himself, as she strained her small limbs to and

fro the floors of his storehouses, carrying wood or flour or tiles or rushes, or whatever there chanced to need

"Get thee away, we are not to touch thee!" hissed the sixyear old infants at play by the river when she

waded in amidst them to reach with her lither arms the faroff waterflower which they were too timorous to

"The devil begot thee, and my cow fell ill yesterday after thou hadst laid hands upon her!" muttered the old

women, lifting a stick as she went near to their cattle in the meadows to brush off with a broad dockleaf the

So, cursed when she did her duty and driven away when she tried to do good, her young soul had hardened

There were only the fourfooted things, so wise, so silent, so tender of heart, so bruised of body, so innocent,

and so agonised, that had compassion for her, and saved her from utter desolation. In the mild sad gaze of the

cow, in the lustrous suffering eyes of the horse, in the noble frank faith of the dog, in the soft bounding glee

of the lamb, in the unwearied toil of the ass, in the tender industry of the bird, she had sympathy and she had

She saw that they were sinless, diligent, faithful, devoted, loyal servers of base masters; loving greatly, and

So she had grown up for ten years, caring for no human thing, except in a manner for the old man Marcellin,

The priest had striven to turn her soul what they had termed heavenward; but their weapons had been wrath

and intimidation. She would have none of them. No efforts that they or her grandsire made had availed; she

would be starved, thrashed, cursed, maltreated as they would; she could not understand their meaning, or

As years went on they found the contest hopeless, so had abandoned her to the devil, who had made her; and

the daughter of one whom the whole province had called saint had never passed within churchdoors or

known the touch of holy water save when they had cast it on her as an exorcism. And when she met a priest

in the open roads or on the byepaths of the fields, she always sang in loud defiance her wildest melodies.

She did not know who those people had been with whom she had wandered, nor in what land they had dwelt.

But that wondrous free life remained on her remembrance as a thing never to be forgotten or to be known

again; a life odorous with bursting fruits and budding flowers; full of strangest and of sweetest music; spent

for ever under green leaves and suns that had no setting; for ever beside fathomless waters and winding

forests; for ever rhymed to melody and soothed to the measure of deep winds and drifting clouds.

For she had forgotten all except its liberty and its loveliness; and the old gypsy life of the Li�bana remained

with her only as some stray fragment of an existence passed in another world from which she was now an

exile, and revived in her only in the fierce passion of her nature, in her bitter, vague rebellion, in her longing

to be free, in her anguish of vain desires for richer hues and bluer skies and wilder winds than those amidst

At times she remembered likewise the songs and the melodies of Phratos; remembered them when the moon

rays swept across the white breadth of water lilies, or the breath of the spring stole through the awakening

woods; and when she remembered them she weptwept bitterly, where none could look on her.

She never thought of Phratos as a man; as of one who had lived in a human form, and was now lying dead in

an earthly grave. Her memory of him was as of some nameless creature half divine, whose footsteps brought

laughter and music, with eyes bright as a bird's, yet sad as a dog's, and a voice for ever singing; clad in goat's

hair, gigantic and gay: a creature that had spoken tenderly to her, that had bidden her laugh and rejoice, that

had carried her when she was weary; that had taught her to sleep under the dewy leaves, and to greet the

things of the night as soft sisters, and to fear nothing in the whole living world, in the earth, or the air, or the

sky, and to tell the truth though a falsehood were to save the bare feet from flintstones, and naked shoulders

from the stick, and an empty body from hunger and thirst. A creature that seemed to her in her memories

even as the faun seemed to the fancies of the children of the Pir�us; a creature half man and half animal, glad

and grotesque, full of mirth and of music, belonging to the forest, to the brook, to the stars, to the leaves,

This was all her memory; but she cherished it; in the face of the priests she bent her straight black brows and

curled her scornful scarlet lips, but for the sake of Phratos she held one religion; though she hated men she

She went now along the white level roads, the empty basket balanced on her head, her form moving with the

free harmonious grace of desert women, and she sang as she went the old sweet songs of the broken viol.

She was friendless and desolate; she was illfed, she was heavily tasked; she toiled without thanks; she was

ignorant of even so much knowledge as the peasants about her had; she was without a past or a future, and

her present had in it but daily toil and bitter words; hunger, and thirst, and chastisement.

Yet for all that she sang;sang because the vitality in her made her dauntless of all evil; because the

abundant life opening in her made her glad in despite of fate; because the youth, and the strength, and the

soul that were in her could not utterly be brutalised, could not wholly cease from feeling the gladness of the

sun, the coursing of the breeze, the liberty of nature, the sweet quick sense of living.

Before long she reached the spot where the old man Marcellin was breaking his stones.

His pile was raised much higher; he sat astride on a log of timber and hammered the flints on and on, on and

on, without looking up; the dust, where the tramp of the people had raised it, was still thick on the leaves and

the herbage; and the prayers and the chaunts had failed as yet to bring the slightest cloud, the faintest rain

Marcellin was her only friend; the proscribed always adhere to one another; when they are few they can only

brood and suffer, harmlessly; when they are many they rise as with one foot and strike as with one hand.

Therefore, it is always perilous to make the lists of any proscription over long.

The child, who was also an outcast, went to him and paused; in a curious, lifeless, bitter way they cared for

one another; this girl who had grown to believe herself born of hell, and this man who had grown to believe

With the bastard FolleFarine and with the regicide Marcellin the people had no association, and for them no

pity; therefore they had found each other by the kinship of proscription; and in a way there was love between

"You are glad, since you sing!" said the old man to her as she passed him again on her homeward way, and

She sat down a moment beside him, on the bank which was soft with moss, and odorous with wild flowers

"Are they? Look. Yesterday I passed a cottage, it is on the great south road; far away from her. The house

was empty; the people, no doubt, were gone to labour in the fields; there was a wicker cage hanging to the

wall, and in the cage there was a blackbird. The sun beat on his head; his square of sod was a dry clod of bare

earth; the heat had dried every drop of water in his pan; and yet the bird was singing. Singing how? In

torment, beating his breast against the bars till the blood started, crying to the skies to have mercy on him and

to let rain fall. His song was shrill; it had a scream in it; still he sang. Do you say the merle was glad?"

"What did you do?" asked the old man, still breaking his stones with a monotonous rise and fall of his

"He shot up in the air first, then dropped down amidst the grasses, where a little brook which the drought had

not dried was still running; and he bathed and drank and bathed again, seeming mad with the joy of the water.

When I lost him from sight he was swaying among the leaves on a bough over the river; but then he was

Her eyes clouded; she was mute. She vaguely knew the meaning it bore to herself, but it was beyond her to

express it. All things of nature had voices and parables for her, because her fancy was vivid and her mind was

dreamy; but that mind was still too dark, and too profoundly ignorant, for her to be able to shape her thoughts

The bird had spoken to her; by his silence as by his song; but what he had uttered she could not well utter

"And what, think you, the people said when they went back and found the cage empty?" he pursued, still

"That was no though of mine." she said carelessly. "They had done wickedly to cage him; to set him free I

"Good!" said the old man briefly, with a gleam of light over his harsh lean face.

"It was a pity to make you a woman," he muttered, as his keen gaze swept over her.

"A woman!" She echoed the words dully and half wonderingly; she could not understand it in connection

A woman; that was a woman who sat in the sun under the fig tree, working her lace on a frame; that was a

woman who leaned out of her lattice tossing a red carnation to her lover; that was a woman who swept the

open porch of their house, singing as she cleared the dust away; that was a woman who strode on her blithe

She seemed to have no likeness to them, no kindred with them; she, a beast of burden, a creature soulless and

homeless; an animal made to fetch and carry, to be cursed and beaten, to know neither love nor hope, neither

past nor future, but only a certain dull patience and furious hate, a certain dim pleasure in labour and

"It was a pity to make you a woman," said the old man once more. "You might be a man worth something;

but a woman!a thing that has no medium; no haven between hell and heaven; no option save to sit by the

hearth to watch the pot boil and suckle the children, or to go out into the streets and the taverns to mock at

She scarcely knew the meaning of the word. She saw that the female creatures round her were of all shades of

age, from the young girls with their peachlike cheeks to the old crones brown and withered as last year's

nuts; she knew that if she lived on she would be old likewise; but of a future she had no conception, no ideal.

She had been left too ignorant to have visions of any other world hereafter than this one which the lowlying

She had one desire, indeeda desire vague yet fiercethe desire for liberty. But it was such desire as the

bird which she had freed had known; the desire of instinct, the desire of existence, only; her mind was

powerless to conceive a future, because a future is a hope, and of hope she knew nothing.

The old man glanced at her, and saw that she had not comprehended. He smiled with a certain bitter pity.

Yet he saw that the creature who was so ignorant of her own powers, of her own splendours, of her own

possibilities, had even now a beauty as great as that of a lustrous easterneyed passionflower; and he knew

that to a woman who has such beauty as this the world holds out in its hand the tender of at least one

"Many will love you, doubtlessas the wasp loves the peach that he kisses with his sting, and leaves rotten

She was silent again, revolving his meaning; it lay beyond her, both in the peril which it embodied from

others, and the beauty in herself which it implied. She could reach no conception of herself, save as what she

"But all shun me, as even the wasp shuns the bitter oak apple," she said, slowly and dreamily; "who should

She sat mute once more, revolving this strange, brief word in her thoughtsstrange to her, with a promise as

vague, as splendid, and as incomprehensible as the prophecy of empire to a slave.

"The future?" she said, at last. "That means something that one has not, and that is to comeis it so?"

"Something that one never has, and that never comes," muttered the old man, wearily cracking the flints in

two; "something that one possesses in one's sleep, and that is farther off each time that one awakes; and yet a

thing that one sees alwayssees even when one lies adying, they sayfor men are fools."

FolleFarine listened, musing, with her hands clasped on the handles of her empty basket, and her chin

resting upon them, and her eyes watching a maimed butterfly drag its wings of emerald and diamond through

"I dream!" she said, suddenly, as she stooped and lifted the wounded insect gently on to the edge of a leaf.

"Never say so. They will think you mad. That is only what foolish things, called poets, do."

"A foolish thingI tell youmad enough to believe that men will care to strain their eyes, as he strains his,

She was so accustomed to be told, that all she did was unlike to others, and was either wicked or was

senseless, that she saw nothing except the simple statement of a fact in the rebuke which he had given her.

She sat quiet, gazing down into the thick white dust of the road, bestirred by the many feet of mules and men

"I dream beautiful things," she pursued slowly. "In the moonlight most often. I seem to remember, when I

"Rememberwhat should you remember? You were but a baby when they brought you hither."

"So they say. But I might live before, in my father's kingdom. In the devil's kingdom? Why not?"

"Why not, indeed! Perhaps we all lived there once; and that is why we all, through all our lives, hanker to get

"A woman!" she repeated. The word seemed to have no likeness and no fitness with herself.

A womanshe!a creature made to be beaten, and worn at, and shunned, and loaded like a mule, and

"Look you," said the old man, resting his hammer for a moment, and wiping the sweat from his brow. "I have

lived in this vile place forty years. I remember the woman that they say bore youReine Flamma. She was a

beautiful woman, and pure as snow, and noble, and innocent. She wearied God incessantly. I have seen her

stretched for hours at the foot of that cross. She was wretched; and she entreated her God to take away her

monotonous misery, and to give her some life new and fair. But God never answered. He left her to herself. It

Marcellin leaned his hammer on his knee, and his voice rose clear and strong; as it had rung of yore from the

"He looks so, at the least. It is his wisdom, and that is why his following is so large. Nay, I say, when God is

"So often the poor little weak human soul, striving to find the right way, cries feebly for help, and none

"The poor little weak soul is blind and astray in the busy streets of the world.

"It lifts its voice, but its voice is so young and so feeble, like the pipe of a newlyborn bird in the dawn, that

it is drowned in the shouts and the manifold sounds of those hard, crowded, cruel streets, where every one is

for himself, and no man has ears for his neighbour. It is hungered, it is athirst, it is sorrowful, it is blinded, it

"Then the devil, who hearkens always, and who, though all the trumpets blowing their brazen music in the

streets bray in his honour, yet is too wise to lose even the slightest sound of any in distresssince of such are

the largest sheaves of his harvestcomes to the little soul, and teaches it with tenderness, and guides it

towards the paths of gladness, and fills it s lips with the bread of sweet passions, and its nostrils with the

savour of fair vanities, and blows in its ear the empty breath of men's lungs, till that sickly wind seems

"Then is the soul dazzled and captured, and made the devil's for evermore; half through its innocence, half

through its weakness; but chiefly of all because God and man would not hear its cries while yet it was sinless

She had listened with her lips parted breathlessly, and her nightlike eyes dilated. In the years of his youth

the old man had possessed that rare power which can tip words with fire, and send them burning and keen

into the coldest heart; and the power was still there, when it woke up from the stupor of a life of toil, and the

silence of a harsh old age. In the far distant time, when he had been amidst the world of men, he had known

how to utter the words that charmed to stillness a raging multitude. He had not altogether lost this eloquence

at such rare times as he still cared to break his silence, and to unfold the unforgotten memories of a life long

FolleFarine listened, mute and breathless, her eyes uplifted to the sun, where it was sinking westward

through a pomp of golden and of purple cloud. He was the only creature who ever spoke to her as though she

likewise were human; and she followed his words with dumb unquestioning faith, as a dog its master's

He caught in his hand the beautiful diamondwinged butterfly, which now, freed of the dust and drinking in

the sunlight, was poised on a foxglove in the hedge growing near him, and held it against the light.

What is it that moves this creature's wings, and glances in its eyes, and gives it delight in the summer's

"Whoever made it, then, was cruel. If he could give it so much power, why not have given it a little more, so

"You ask what men have asked ten times ten thousand yearssince the world beganwithout an answer.

Because the law of all creation is cruelty, I suppose; because the dust of death is always the breath of life. The

great man, dead, changes to a million worms, and lives again in the juices of the grass above his grave. It

matters little. The worms destroy; the grasses nourish. Few great men do more than the first, or as much as

"But get you homeward," he continued, breaking off his parable; "it is two hours past noon, and if you be late

She nodded her head, and went; he seldom used gentle words to her, and yet she knew, in a way, that he

cared for her; moreover, she rejoiced in that bitter, caustic contempt in which he, the oldest man amidst them,

His words were the only thing that had aroused her dulled brain to its natural faculties; in a manner, from him

she had caught something of knowledgesomething, too, of intellect; he alone prevented her from sinking to

that absolute unquestioning despair which surely ends in idiocy or in selfmurder.

She pursued her way in silence across the fields, and along the straight white road, and across a wooden

There was a gentler lustre in her eyes and her mouth had the faint light of a half smile upon it; she did not

know what hope meant; it never seemed possible to her that her fate could be other than it was, since so long

the messengers and emissaries of her father's empire had been silent and leadenfooted to her call.

Yet, in a manner, she was comforted, for had not two mouths that day bidden her "wait"?

She entered at length the little wood of Ypr�s, and heard that rush and music of the deep mill water, which

Beyond it were the apple orchards and fruit gardens which rendered Claudis Flamma back full recompense

for the toil they cost himrecompense so large, indeed, that many disbelieved in that poverty which he was

wont to aver weighed so hardly and so tightly on him. Both were now rich in all their mature abundance,

since the stream which rushed through them had saved them from the evil effects of the long drought so

severely felt in other districts. The cherry trees were scarlet with their latest fruit; the great pumpkins glowed

amongst their leaves in tawny orange heaps; little russetbreasted bullfinches beat their wings vainly at the

fine network that enshrouded the paler gold of the wall apricots; a grey cat was stealing amongst the delicate

yellows of the pearshaped marrows; where a round green wrinkled melon lay aripening in the sun, a

gorgeous dragonfly was hovering, and a mothermavis, in her simple coif of brown and white and grey, was

Beyond a hedge of prickly thorn the narrower flower garden stretched, spanned by low stone walls, made

venerable by the silvery beards of lichens; and the whole earth was full of colour from the crimson and the

golden gladioli; from the carminehued carnations; from the deepblue lupins, and the Gloire de Dijon roses;

from the green slender stems, and the pure white cups, of the virginal lilies; and from the gorgeous beetles,

with their purple tunics and their shields of bronze, like Grecian hoplites in battle array. While everywhere,

above this sweet glad garden world, the butterflies, purple and jewelled, the redstarts in their ruby coats, the

dainty azurewinged bluewarblers, the goldengirdled wasp with his pinions light as mist, and the

velvetcoated bee with his pleasant harvest song, flew ever in the sunlight, murmuring, poising, praising,

The place was beautiful in its own simple, quiet way; lying in a hollow, where the river tumbled down in tow

or three short breaks and leaps which broke its habitual smooth and sluggish form, and brought it in a sheet of

dark water and with a million foambells against the walls of the millhouse and under the ponderous

The wooden house itself also was picturesque, in the old fashion common when men built their dwellings

slowly and for love; with all its countless carvings black by age, its jutting beams shapen into grotesque

human likeness and tragic masks; its parquetted work run over by the green cups of stoneworks, and its high

roof with deep shelving eave bright with diapered tiles of blue and white and rose, and alive all day with

It was beautiful; and the heart of Reine Flamma's young daughter doubtless would have clung to it, with all a

child's instinct of love and loyalty to its home, had it not been to her only a prisonhouse wherein three bitter

She flung herself down a moment in the garden, on the long grass under a mulberry tree, ere she went in to

She had been on foot since four o'clock in the dawn of that sultry day; her only meal had been a bowl or cold

milk and a hunch of dry bread crushed in her strong small teeth. She always toiled hard at such bodily labour

as was set to her; to domestic work, to the work of the distaff and spindle, of the stove and the needle, they

had never been able to break her; they had found that she would be beaten black and blue ere she would be

bound to it; but against open air exertion she had never rebelled, and she had in her all the strength and the

swiftness of the nomadic race of the Li�bana, and had nought of their indolence and their dishonesty.

She was very hungry, she was again thirsty; yet she did not break off a fruit from any bough about her; she

did not steep her hot lips in any one of the cool juicy apricots which studded the stones of the wall beyond

No one had ever taught her honesty, except indeed in that dim dead time when Phratos had closed her small

hands in his whenever they had stretched out to some forbidden thing, and had said, "Take the goods the gods

give thee, but steal not from men." And yet honest she was, by reason of the fierce proud savage

She wanted many a thing, many a time;nay, nearly every hour that she lived, she wanted those sheer

necessaries which make life endurable; but she had taught herself to do without them rather than owe them by

prayer or plunder to that human race which she hated, and to which she always doubted her own kinship.

Buried in the grass, she now abandoned herself to the bodily delights of rest, of shade, of coolness, of sweet

odours: the scent of the fruits and flowers was heavy on the air; the fall of the water made a familiar

tempestuous music on her ear; and her fancy, poetic still, though deadened by a life of ignorance and toil, was

"The earth and the air are good," she thought, as she lay there watching the dark leaves sway in the foam and

For there was latent in her, all untaught, that old pantheistic instinct of the divine age, when the world was

young, to behold a sentient consciousness in every leaf unfolded to the light; to see a soul in every created

thing the day shines on; to feel the presence of an eternal life in every breeze that moves, in every grass that

grows; in every flame that lifts itself to heaven; in every bell that vibrates on the air; in every moth that soars

Pantheism is the religion of the poet; and nature had made her a poet, though man as yet had but made of her

"The earth and the air are good," she thought, watching the sunrays pierce the purple heart of a

passionflower, the shadows move across the deep brown water, the radiant butterfly alight upon a lily, the

scarletthroated birds dart in and out, through the yellow feathery blossoms of the limes.

Phratos had taught her in her infancy many notes of their various songs, and many ways and means of luring

them to come and rest upon her shoulder and peck the berries in her hands. She had lived so much in the open

fields and amongst the woods that she had made her chief companions of them. She could emulate so deftly

all their voices, from the call of the wood dove to the chant of the blackbird, and from the trill of the

nightingale to the twitter of the titmouse, that she could summon them all to her at will, and have dozens of

It was one of her ways that seemed to the peasantry so weird and magical; and they would come home from

their fields on a spring daybreak and tell their wives in horror how they had seen the devil's daughter in the

red flush of the sunrise, ankledeep in violets, and covered with birds from head to foot, hearing their

One meekeyed woman had dared once to say that St. Francis had done as much, and it had been accredited

to him as a fair action and virtuous knowledge; but she was frowned down and chattered down by her louder

neighbours, who told her that she might look for some sharp judgment of heaven for daring to couple together

But all they could say could not break the charmed communion between FolleFarine and her feathered

She loved them and they her. In the hard winter she had always saved some of her scanty meal for them, and

in the springtime and the summer they always rewarded her with floods of songs and soft caresses from their

There were no rare birds, no birds of moor and mountain, in that cultivated and populous district; but to her

all the little homebred things of pasture and orchard were full of poetry and of character.

The robins, with that pretty air of boldness with which they veil their real shyness and timidity; the strong and

saucy sparrows, powerful by the strength of all mediocrities and majorities; all the dainty families of finches

in their gay apparellings; the plain brown bird that filled the night with music; the gorgeous oriole ruffling in

gold, the gilded princeling of them all; the little blue warblers, the violets of the air; the kingfishers who had

hovered so long over the forgetmenots upon the rivers that they had caught the colours of the flowers on

their wings; the bright blackcaps green as the leaves, with their yellow waistcoats and velvet hoods, the

innocent freebooters of the woodland liberties: all these were her friends and lovers, various as any human

She loved them; they and the fourfooted beasts were the sole things that did not flee from her; and the woeful

and mad slaughter of them by the peasants was to her a grief passionate in its despair. She did not reason on

what she felt; but to her a bird slain was a trust betrayed, an innocence defiled, a creature of heaven struck to

Suddenly on the silence of the garden there was a little shrill sound of pain; the birds flew high in air,

She rose and looked; a line of twine was trembling against the foliage; in its noosed end the throat of the

mavis had been caught; it hung tremblingly and clutching at the air convulsively with its little drawn up feet.

It had flown into the trap as it had ended its joyous song and soared up to join its brethren.

She unloosed the cord from about its tiny neck, set it free, and laid it down upon the ivy: the succour came

too late; the little gentle body was already without breath; the feet had ceased to beat the air; the small soft

head had drooped feebly on one side; the lifeless eyes had started from their sockets; the throat was without

"The earth would be good but for men," she thought, as she stood with the little dead bird in her hand.

Its mate, which was poised on a rose bough, flew straight to it, and curled round and round about the small

slain body, and piteously bewailed its fate, and mourned, refusing to be comforted, agitating the air with

Vain; for the little joyous life was gone; the life that asked only of God and Man a home in the green leaves; a

drop of dew from the cup of a rose; a bough to swing on in the sunlight; a summer day to celebrate in song.

All the winter through, it had borne cold and hunger and pain without lament; it had saved the soil from

destroying larv�, and purified the trees from all foul germs; it had built its little home unaided, and had fed

its nestlings without alms; it had given its sweet song lavishly to the winds, to the blossoms, to the empty air,

to the deaf ears of men; and now it lay dead in its innocence; trapped and slain because human greed

Out from the porch of the millhouse Claudis Flamma came, with a knife in his hand and a basket, to cut

lilies for one of the choristers of the cathedral, since the morrow would be the religious feast of the Visitation

"The tenth bird trapped since sunrise," he said, thinking how shrewd and how sure in their make were these

She said nothing; but the darkness of disgust swept over her face, as he came in sight in the distance.

She knelt down and scraped a hole in the earth; and laid moss in it and put the mavis softly on its green and

fragrant bier, and covered it with handsful of fallen rose leaves and with a spring or two of thyme.

Around her head the widowed thrush flew ceaselessly, uttering sad cries;who now should wander with him

through the sunlight?who now should rove with him above the blossoming fields?who now should sit

with him beneath the boughs hearing the sweet rain fall between the leaves?who now should wake with

him whilst yet the world was dark, to feel the dawn break, ere the east were red, and sing a welcome to the

MEANWHILE Claudis Flamma cut the lilies for the cathedral altars, muttering many holy prayers as he

When the white lily sheaves had been borne away, kept fresh in wet moss, by the young chorister who had

She, standing beside the buried bird, undid the leathern thong about her waist, opened the pouch, and counted

out the coins, one by one, on the flat stone of a water tank amongst the lilies and the ivy.

There were a few silver pieces of slight value and some dozens of copper ones. The fruit had been left at

various stalls and houses in small portions, for it was the custom to supply it fresh each day.

He caught them up with avidity, bit and tested each, counted them again and again, and yet again; after the

"There are two sous short," she answered him curtly. "Twelve of the figs for the tanner Florian were rotten."

"You dare to answer me?animal! I say they had only tasted a little too much of the sun. It only made them

"They were not. You dare to speak! If they had been rotten, they lay under the others; he could not have

"You saw! Who are you?a beggara beasta foul offspring of sin. You dared to show them to him, I

A smile careless and sarcastic curled her mouth; her eyes looked at him with all their boldest, fiercest lustre.

"You have stolen now!" he shrieked, his thin and feeble voice rising in fury at his lost coins and his

discovered treachery. "It is a lie that the figs were rotten; it is a lie that you took but seven sous. You stole the

two sous to buy you bread and honey in the streets, or to get a drink at the wine shops. I know you; I know

you; it is a devil's device to please your gluttonous appetite. The figs rotten!not so rotten as is your soul

would they be though they were black as night and though they stank as river mud! Go back to Denis Florian

She set her teeth in silence; and without a moment's hesitation unloosened the woollen sash knotted round her

The white folds fell from off the perfect curves of her brown arms, and left bare her shining shoulders,

She was not conscious of degradation in her punishment; she had been bidden to bow her head and endure the

lash from the earliest years she could remember. According to the only creed she knew, silence and fortitude

She stood now in the cross lights among the lilies as she had stood when a little child, erect, unquailing, and

ready to suffer; insensible of humiliation because unconscious of sin; and so tutored by severity and exposure

that she had as yet none of the shy shame and the fugitive shrinking of her sex. She had only the boldness to

bear, the courage to be silent, which she had had when she had stood amongst the same tall lilies, in the same

She uncovered herself to the lash as a brave hound crouches to it; not from inborn cowardice, but simply

He had used her as the Greeks the Helots; he always beat her, when she was at fault, to teach her to be

faultless; and, when without offence, beat her to remind her that she was the offspring of humiliation, and a

He took, as he had taken in an earlier time, a thick rope which lay coiled upon the turf ready for the binding

of some straying boughs; and struck her with it, slowly. His arm had lost somewhat of its strength, and his

power was unequal to his will. Still rage for the loss of his copper pieces, and the sense that she had

discovered the fraudulent intention of his small knavery, lent force to his feebleness; as the scourge whistled

through the air and descended on her shoulders it left bruised, swollen marks to stamp its passage, and

Yet to the end she stood mute and motionless, as she had stood in her childhood; not a nerve quivered, not a

limb flinched: the colour rushed over her bent face and her bare chest, but she never made a movement; she

When his arm dropped from sheer exhaustion, she still said not one word; she drew tight once more the sash

The bruised and wounded flesh smarted and ached and throbbed; but she was used to such pain, and bore it as

"Your two sous have brought you bitterness," he muttered with a smile. "You will scarce find my fruit rotten

again in haste. There are bread and beans within; go get a meal; I want the mule to take flour to Barbiz�ne."

She did not go within to eat; the bruises and the burning of her skin made her feel sick and weak. She went

away and cast herself at full length in the shade of the long grasses of the orchard; resting her chin upon her

hands, cooling her aching breast against the soft damp moss; thinking, thinking, thinking, of what she hardly

knew, except, indeed, that she wished that she were dead, like the bird she had covered with the leaves.

He did not leave her long to even so much peace as this; his shrill voice soon called her from her rest; he bade

The animal was saddled with his wooden pack; as many sacks as he could carry were piled upon the

framework; she put her hand upon his bridle, and set out to walk to Barbiz�ne which was two leagues away.

"Work is the only thing to drive the devil that begat her out of her," muttered the miller, as he watched the old

mule pace down the narrow, treeshadowed road that led across the fields: and he believed that he did rightly

It gratified the sharp hard cruelty of temper in him, indeed, but he did not think that in such selfindulgence

he ever erred. He was a bitter, cunning, miserly old man, whose solitary tenderness of feeling and honesty of

pride had been rooted out for ever when he had learned the dishonour of the woman whom he had deemed a

saint. In the ten years of time which had passed since first the little brown largeeyed child had been sent to

seek asylum with him, he had grown harder and keener and more severe with each day that rose.

Her presence was abhorrent to him, though he kept her, partly from a savage sense of duty, partly from the

persuasion that she had the power in her to make the strongest and the cheapest slave he had ever owned. For

the rest, he sincerely and devoutly believed that the devil, in some witchery of human guise, had polluted his

daughter's body and soul, and that it was by the foul fiend and by no earthly lover that she had conceived and

Perhaps, also, as was but natural, he sometime felt more furious against this offspring of hell because ever

and again some gleam of fantastic inborn honour, some strange savage instinct of honesty, would awake in

her and oppose him, and make him ashamed of those small and secret sins of chicanery wherein his soul

He had left her mind a blank, because he thought the body laboured hardest when the brain was still asleep,

which is true; she could not read; she could not write; she knew absolutely nothing.

Yet there was a soul awake in her; there were innumerable thoughts and dreams brooding in her fathomless

eyes; there was a desire in her, fierce and unslaked, for some other life than this life of the packhorse and of

He had done his best to degrade and to brutalise her, and in much he had succeeded; but he had not succeeded

wholly. There was a liberty in her that escaped his thraldom; there was a soul in her that resisted the

She had none of the shame of her sex; she had none of the timorous instincts of womanhood. She had a

savage stubborn courage, and she was insensible of the daily outrages of her life. She would strip bare to his

word obediently, feeling only that it would be feeble and worthless to dread the pain of the lash. She would

bathe in the woodland pool, remembering no more that she might be watched by human eyes than does the

In all this she was brutalised and degraded by her tyrant's bondage: in other things she was far higher than he,

Stupefied as her mind might be by the exhaustion of severe physical labour, it had still irony and it had still

imagination; and under the hottest heats of temptation there were two things which by sheer instinct she

resisted, and resisted so that neither of them had ever been forced on herthey were falsehood and fear.

"It is the infamous strength of the devil!" said Claudis Flamma, when he found that he could not force her to

The prayers of the priests and peoples failed to bring down rain. The wooden Christs gazed all day long on

parching lands and panting cattle. Even the broad deep rivers shrank and left their banks to bake and stink in

The orchards sickened for lack of moisture, and the peasants went about with feverish faces, aguestricken

limbs, and trembling hearts. The corn yielded ill in the hard scorched ground, and when the winter came it

The millhouse at Ypr�s served many purposes. It was a granary, a market, a baker's shop, an usurer's den,

It looked a simple and innocent place. In the summer time it was peaceful and lovely, green and dark and

still, with the blue sky above it, and the songs of birds all around; with its old black timbers, and its

manycoloured orchards, and its pretty leafy gardens, and its grey walls washed by the hurrying stream. But

in the winter it was very dreary, utterly lonely. The water roared, and the leafless trees groaned in the wind,

To the starving, wet, and woebegone peasants who would go to it with aching bones and aching hearts, it

seemed desolate and terrible. They dreaded with a great dread the sharp voice of its masterthe hardest and

For they were most of them his debtors, and so were in a bitter subjugation to him, and had to pay those debts

as best they might with their labour or their suffering; with the best of all their wool, or oil, or fruit; often

with the last bit of silver that had been an heirloom for five centuries, or with the last bit of money buried

away in an old pitcher under their apple tree to be the nest egg of their little pet daughter's dowry.

And yet Claudis Flamma was respected among them; for he could outwit them, and was believed to be very

wealthy, and was a man who stood well with the good saints and with holy Church:a wise man, in a word,

For the most part the population around Ypr�s was thrifty and thriving in a cautious, patient, certain way of

welldoing; and, by this portion of it, the silent old miser was much honoured as man laborious and

penurious, who chose to live on a leek and a rye loaf, but who must have, it was well known, put by large

By the smaller section of itpoor, unthrifty, loosehanded foolswho belied the province of their birth so

far as to be quick to spend and slow to save, and who therefore fell into want and famine and had to borrow

of others their children's bread, the old miller was hated with a hate deeper and stronger because forced to be

mute, and to submit, to cringe, and to be trod upon, in the miserable servitude of the hopeless debtor.

In the hard winter which followed on that sickly autumn these and their like fell farther in the mire of poverty

than ever, and had to come and beg of Flamma loans of the commonest necessaries of their bare living. They

knew that they would have to pay a hundredfold in horrible extortion when the spring and summer should

bring them work, and give them fruit on their trees and crops on their little fields; but they could do no better.

It had been for many years the custom to go to Flamma in such need; and being never quit of his hold, his

The weather towards the season of Noel became frightfully severe; the mill stream never stopped, but all

around it was frozen, and the swamped pastures were sheets of ice. The birds died by thousands in the open

There was dire want in many of the hovels and homesteads, and the bare harvests of a district, usually so

Sickness prevailed because the old people and the children in their hunger ate berries and roots unfit for

human food; the waters swelled, the ice melted, and many homes were flooded, and some even swept away.

Old Pitchou and Claudis Flamma alone were content; the mill wheel never stopped work, and famine prices

FolleFarine worked all that winter, day after day, month after month, with scarcely a word being spoken to

She looked against the snow as strangely as a scarlet rose blossoming in frost there could have done; but the

people that came to and fro, even the young men amongst them, were too used to that dark vivid silent face of

hers, and those lithe brown limbs that had the supple play and the golden glow of the East in them, to notice

them as any loveliness; and if they did note them on some rare time, thought of them only as the marks of a

She was so unlike to themselves that the northern peasantry never dreamed of seeing beauty in her; they

turned their heads away when she went by, striding after her mule or bearing her pitcher from the well with

The sheepskin girt about her loins, the red kerchief knotted to her head, the loose lithe movements of her

beautiful limbs, the sullen fire and fierce dreams in her musing eyes,all these were so unlike themselves

Half the winter went by without a kind word to her from any one except such as in that time of suffering and

scarcity Marcellin spoke to her. So had every winter gone since she had come therea time so long ago that

the memory of Phratos had become so dim to her that she often doubted if he also were not a mere shadow of

Half the winter she fared hardly and ate sparingly, and did the work of the mule and the bullocks: indifferent

and knowing no better, and only staring at the stars when they throbbed in the black skies on a frosty night,

and wondering if she would ever go to them, or if they would ever come to herthose splendid and familiar

yet unknown things that looked on all the misery of the earth, and shone on tranquilly and did not seem to

Time came close on to the new year, and the distress and the cold were together at their height. The weather

A score of times aday she heard them ask bread at the mill, and a score of time saw them given a stone; she

saw them come in the raw fog, pinched and shivering, and sick with ague, and she saw her grandsire deny

them with a grating sarcasm or two, or take from them fifty times its value for some niggard grant of food.

"Why should I think of it, why should I care?" she said to herself; and yet she did both, and could not help it.

There was among the sufferers one old and poor, who lived not far from the mill, by name Manon Dax.

She was a little old hardy brown woman, shrivelled and bent, yet strong, with bright eyes like a robin's, and a

She had been southern born, and the wife of a stone cutter; he had been dead fifty years, and she had seen all

her sons and daughters and their offspring die too; and had now, left on her hand to rear, four young

greatgrandchildren, almost infants, who were always crying to her for food as newborn birds cry in their

She washed a little, when she could get any linen to wash, and she span, and she picked up the acorns and the

nuts, and she tilled a small plot of ground that belonged to her hut, and she grew cabbages and potatoes and

herbs on it, and so kept a roof over her head, and fed her four nestlings, and trotted to and fro in her wooden

shoes all day long, and worked in hail and rain, in drought and tempest, and never complained, but said that

She was anxious about the children, knowing she could not live longthat was all. But then she felt sure that

the Mother of God would take care of them, and so was cheerful; and did what the day brought her to do, and

Now on Manon Dax, as on thousands of others, the unusual severity of the winter fell like a knife.

All the springs near her dwelling were frozen for many weeks; there was no well nearer than half a league;

and half a league out and half a league back every other day over ground sharp and slippery with ice, with

two heavy pails to carry, is not a little when one is over eighty, and has only a wisp of woollen serge between

The acorns and horsechestnuts had all been disputed with her fiercely by boys rough and swift, who foresaw

a time coming in which their pigs would be illfed. The roots in her little garden plot were all black and

The snow drove in through a big hole in her roof. The woods were ransacked for every bramble and broken

bough by reivers younger and more agile than herself; she had nothing to eat, nothing to burn.

The children lay in their little beds of hay and cried all day long for food, and she had none to give them.

"If it were only myself!" she thought, stopping her ears not to hear them; if it had been only herself it would

have been so easy to creep away into the corner among the dry grass, and to lie still till the cold froze the

pains of hunger and made them quiet; and to feel numb and tired, and yet glad that it was all over, and to

The poor are seldom so fortunatethey themselves would say so unhappyas to be alone in their homes.

There were the four small lives left to her by the poor dead foolish things she had loved,small lives that

had been rosy even on so much hunger, and blithe even amidst so much cold; that had been mirthful even at

the flooding of the snowdrift, and happy even over a meal of mouldy crusts, or of hips and haws from the

hedges. Had beenuntil now, when even so much as this could not be got, and when their beds of hay were

soaked through with snowwater; nowwhen they were quite silent, except when they sobbed out a cry for

"I am eightytwo years old, and I have never since I was born asked man or woman for help, or owed man or

woman a copper coin," she thought, sitting by her black hearth, across which the howling wind drove, and

She had often known severe winters, scanty food, bitter living,she had scores of times in her long years

Yet she had borne it all and never asked for an alms, being strong and ignorant, and being also in fear of the

But now she knew that she must do it, or let those children perish; being herself old and past work, and

She would have to die soon, she knew, and she had striven all her lifetime so to live that she might die

This perhaps, she thought sadly, had been only a pride after all; a feeling foolish and wicked, that the good

Any way she knew that she must yield it up and go and ask for something; or else those four small things,

that were like a cluster of red berries on a leafless tree, must suffer and must perish.

"It is bitter, but I must do it," she thought. "Sure it is strange that the good God cares to take any of us to

himself through so sharp a way as hunger. It seems, if I saw His face now, I should say, 'Not heaven for me,

And she rose up on her bent stiff limbs, and went to the pile of hay on which the children were lying, pale and

thin, but trying to smile, all of them, because they saw the tears on her cheeks.

"Be still, my treasures," she said to them, striving to speak cheerily, and laying her hands on the curls of the

eldest born; "I go away for a little while to try and get you food. Be good, Bernardou, and take care of them

Bernardou promised, being four years old himself; and she crept out of the little black door of the hut into the

It was three in the afternoon, nearly dark at the season of midwinter. The business of the day was done.

The people had come and gone, favoured or denied, according to such sureties as they could offer.

The great wheel worked on in the seething water; the master of the mill sat against the casement to catch the

falling light, adding up the sums in his ledgercrooked little signs such as he had taught himself to

All around him in the storehouses there were corn, wood, wool, stores of every sort of food. All around him,

in the room he lived in, there were hung the salt meats, the sweet herbs, and the dried fruits, that he had saved

from the profusion of other and healthier years. It pleased him to know that he held all that, and also withheld

It moved him with a certain saturnine glee to see the hungry wistful eyes of the peasants stare longingly at all

those riches, whilst their white lips faltered out an entreatywhich he denied. It was what he liked; to sit

there and count his gains after his fashion, and look at his stores and listen to the howling wind and driving

hail, and to chuckle to think how lean and cold and sick they were outsidethose fools who had mocked him

To be prayed to for bread, and give the stone of a bitter denial; to be implored with tears of supplication, and

to answer with a grim jest; to see a woman come with children dying for food, and to point out to her the big

brass pans full of milk, and say to her, "All that makes butter for Paris," and then to see her go away wailing

and moaning that her child would die, and tottering feebly through the snowall this was sweet to him.

Before his daughter had gone from him, he had been, though a hard man, yet honest, and had been, though

severe, not cruel; but since he had been aware of the shame of the creature whom he had believed in as an

angel, every fibre in him had been embittered and salted sharp with the poignancy of an acrid hate towards all

living things. To hurt and to wound, and to see what he thus struck bleed and suffer, was the only pleasure

life had left for him. He had all his manhood walked justly, according to his light, and trusted in the God to

whom he prayed; and his God and his trust had denied and betrayed him, and his heart had turned to gall.

The old woman toiled slowly through the roads which lay between her hut and the watermill.

They were roads which passed through meadows and along cornfields, beside streamlets, and amongst little

belts of woodland, lanes and paths green and pleasant in the summer, but now a slough of frozen mud, and

whistled through by northeast winds. She held on her way steadily, stumbling often, and often slipping and

going slowly, for she was very feeble from long lack of food, and the intensity of the cold drove through and

Still she held on, bravely, in the teeth of the rough winds and of the coming darkness, though the weather was

so wild that the poplar trees were bent to the earth, and the little light in the Calvary lamp by the river blew to

and fro, and at last died out. Still she held on, a little dark tottering figure, with a prayer on her lips and a

The snow was falling, the clouds were driving, the waters were roaring in the twilight: she was only a little

black speck in the vast grey waste of the earth and the sky, and the furious air tossed her at times to and fro

like a withered leaf. But she would not let it beat her; she groped her way with infinite difficulty, grasping a

bough for strength, or waiting under a tree for breath a moment, and thus at last reached the millhouse.

Such light as there was left showed her the kitchen within, the stores of wood, the strings of food; it looked to

her as it had looked to Phratos, a place of comfort and of plenty; a strong safe shelter from the inclement

She lifted the latch and crept in, and went straight to Claudis Flamma, who was still busy beneath the window

She stood before him white from the falling snow, with her brown face working with a strong emotion, her

"Flamma," she said simply to him, "we have been neighbours fifty years and morethou and I, and many

have borrowed of thee to their hurt and shame, but I never. I am eightytwo, and I never in my days asked

anything of man or woman or child. But I come tonight to ask bread of you,bread for the four little

children at home. I have heard them cry three days, and have had nothing to give them save a berry or two off

He shut his ledger, and looked at her. They had been neighbours, as she had said, half a century and more;

"Nothingnothing now. There is not a thing in the house except the last hay the children sleep on. But if

thou wilt let me have a littlejust a littlewhile the weather is so hard, I will find means to pay when the

weather breaks. There is my garden; and I can wash and spin. I will pay faithfully. Thou knowest I never

Claudis Flamma got up and walked to the other side of the kitchen. Her eyes followed him with wistful,

Where he went there stood pans of new milk, baskets of eggs, rolls of bread, piles of faggots. Her feeble heart

beat thickly with eager hope, her dim eyes glowed with pleasure and with thankfulness.

"Give these to thy children's children," he said, with a dark smile. "For theseand for no morewill they

She looked at him startled and disquieted, yet thinking that he meant but a stern jest.

"Good Flamma, you mock me," she murmured, trembling; "the babes are little and good. Ah, give me food

quickly, for God's sake! A jest is well in season, but to an empty body and a bitter heart it is like a stripe."

"I give thee the only thing given without payment in this worldadvice. Take it or leave it."

She reeled a little as if he had struck her a blow with his fist, and her face changed terribly, whilst her eyes

"You jest, Flamma! You only jest!" she muttered. "The little children starve, I tell you. You will give me

"I can give nothing. I am poor, very poor," he answered her, with the habitual lie of the miser; and he opened

his ledger again, and went on counting up the dots and crosses by which he kept his books.

His servant Pitchou sat spinning by the hearth: she did not cease her work, nor intercede by a word.

The poor can be better to the poor than any princes; but the poor can also be more cruel to the poor than any

The old woman's head dropped on her breast, she turned feebly, and felt her way, as though she were blind,

She shivered and gasped, and strove to totter on: the children were alone. The winds blew and drove the snow

flakes in a white cloud against her face; the bending trees creaked and groaned as though in pain; the roar of

There was now no light: the day was gone, and the moon was hidden; beneath her feet the frozen earth

She fell down; being so old and so weakly she could not rise again, but lay still with one limb broken under

"The children! the children!" she moaned feebly, and then was still: she was so cold, and the snow fell so

fast; she could not lift herself nor see what was around her; she thought that she was in her bed at home, and

Through the dense gloom around her there came a swiftly moving shape, that flew as silently and as quickly

A voice that was at one timid and fierce, tender and savage, spoke to her through the clouds of driven snow

"Hush, it is I! IFolleFarine. I have brought you my food. It is not muchthey never give me much. Still

it will help a little. I heard what you saidI was in the loft. Flamma must not know; he might make you pay.

The blessed word aroused her from her lethargy; she raised herself a little on one arm, and tried to see

whence the voice came that spoke to her. But the effort exhausted her; she fell again to the ground with a

FolleFarine stood above her; her dark eyes gleaming like a hawk's through the gloom, and full of a curious,

"You cannot get up; you are old," she said, abruptly. "Seelet me carry you home. The children! yes, the

She spoke hastily and roughly; she was ashamed of her own compassion. What was it to her, whether any of

"If I did right, I should let them rot, and spit on their corpses," she thought, with the ferocity of vengeance

Yet she had come out in the storm, and had brought away her food for strangers, though she had been at work

all day long, and was chilled to the bone, and was devoured with a ravenous hunger.

She did not know. She scorned herself. But she was sorry for this woman, so poor and brave, with her

Manon Dax dimly caught the muttered words, and feebly strove to answer them, whilst the winds roared and

"I cannot rise," she murmured; "my leg is broken, I think. But it is no matter. Go you to the little ones;

whoever you are, you are good, and have pity. Go to them, go. It is no matter for me. I have lived my

FolleFarine stood in silence a moment, then she stooped and lifted the old creature in her strong young

Once or twice when she had passed by them, the grandam, tender of heart, but narrow of brain, and believing

all the tales of her neighbours, had drawn the children closer to her, under the wing of her serge cloak, lest the

evil eye that had bewitched the tanner's youngest born, should fall on them, and harm them in like manner.

Nevertheless the evil eyes gleamed on her with a wistful sorrow, as FolleFarine bore her with easy strength

and a sure step, through the frozen woodland ways, as she would have borne the load of wood, or the sack of

Manon Dax did not stir, she did not even strive to speak again; she was vaguely sensible of a slow, buoyant,

painless movement, of a close soft pressure that sheltered her from the force of the winds, of a subtle warmth

that stole through her emaciated aching frame, and made her drowsy and forgetful, and content to be still.

FolleFarine held on her way, as before her Phratos had once held on his; fiercely blown, blinded by the

snow, pierced by the blasts of the hurricane, but sure of foot on the ice as a reindeer, and sure of eye in the

The distance of the road was nothing to her, fleet and firm of step, and inured to all hardships of the weather;

yet it cost her an hour to travel it, heavily weighted as she was, soaked with snowwater, blown back

continually by the opposing winds, and forced to stagger and to pause by the fury of the storm.

The wind had driven open the door. The wailing cries of the children echoed sorrowfully on the stillness,

answered by the bleating of sheep, cold and hungry in their distant folds. The snow had drifted in unchecked;

She felt her way within over the heaps of the snow, and being used by long custom to see in the gloom, as the

nighthaunting beasts and birds can see, she found the bed of hay, and laid her burden gently down on it.

The children ceased their wailing; the two eldest ones crept up close to their grandmother; and pressed their

The clouds drifted a little from the moon which had been so long obscured; it shone for a moment through the

vapour of the heavy sky; the whitened ground threw back the rays increased tenfold; the pale gleam reached

There was a feeble smile upon itthe smile with which her last words had been spoken in the darkness;

The youngest had been suffocated whilst they had been alone, by the snow that had fallen through the roof,

from which its elders had been too small and weakly to be able to drag it out, unaided. She laid it, stiff

already in the cold night, beside the body of its old grandam, who had perished in endeavouring to save it;

they lay together, the yearold child and the aged woman, the broken bud and the leafless bough. They had

She stayed beside the children, who were frightened and bewildered and quite mute. She divided such food as

she had brought between them, not taking any herself. She took off the sheepskin which she wore in winter

tied round her loins as her outdoor garment, and made a little nest of it for the three, and covered them with it.

She could not close the door, from the height of the drifted snow, and the wind poured in all night long,

Now and then the clouds parting a little, let a ray of the moon stray in; and then she could see the quiet faces

"They die of famineand they die saying their 'God is good,'" she thought; and she pondered on it deeply,

The hours of the night dragged slowly on; the winds howled above the trembling hovel; the children sobbed

themselves to sleep at last, lulled by the warmth of the sheepskin, in which they crept together like young

She sat there patiently; frozen and ravenous; yet not drawing a corner of the sheepskin to her own use, nor

She hated the human race, whose hand was always against her. She had no single good deed to thank them

for, nor any single gentle word. Yet she was sorry for that old creature, who had been so bitterly dealt with all

her years through, who had died saying "God was good." She was sorry for those little helpless, unconscious

She forgavebecause she forgotthat in other winters this door had been shut against her as against an

The dawn broke; the sharp grey winter's day came; the storm had lulled; but the whole earth was frostbound

She had to leave them; she was bound to her daily labour at the mill; she knew that if when the sun rose she

were found to be absent, she and they too would surely suffer. What to do for them she could not tell. She had

no friend save Marcellin, who himself was as poor as these. She never spoke to any living thing, except a

sheepdog, or a calf bleating for its mother, or a toilworn bullock staggering over the ploughed clods.

Between her, and all those around her, there were perpetual enmity and mistrust, and scarcely so much of a

common bond as lies in a common humanity. For in her title to a common humanity with them they

At daybreak there passed by the open door in the mist, a peasant going to his cattle in the fields beyond,

pushing through the snow a rude handcart full of turnips, and other winter food.

"Old Manon is dead. Will you tell the people? The children are here, alone, and they starve."

"Manon Dax dead?" he echoed stupidly: he was her nearest neighbour, and he had helped her to fetch her

washingwater sometimes from the well half a league away, and when his wife had been down, with fever

and ague, the old woman had nursed her carefully and well through many a tedious month.

"Yes, I found her on the road, in the snow, last night. She had broken her leg, and she was dead before I got

here. Go and send some one. The little children are all alone, and one of them is dead too."

It was so dark still, that he had not seen at first who it was that addressed him, but slowly, as he stared and

stared, and drew nearer to her, he recognised the scarlet girdle, the brown limbs, the straight brow, the

He feared her, with a great fear rising there suddenly before him, out of that still white world of dawn and

He dropped the handles of his cart and fled; a turn in the road, and the darkness of the morning, soon hid him

from sight. She thought that he had gone to summon his people, and she went back and sat again by the

The peasant flew home as swiftly as his heavy shoes and the broken ice of the roads would allow.

His cabin was at some distance, at a place where, amidst the fields, a few huts, a stone crucifix, some barns

and stacks, and a single wineshop made up a little village, celebrated in the district for its wide spreading

Even so early the little hamlet was awake; the shutters were opened; the people were astir; men were

brushing the snow from their thresholds; women were going out to their fieldwork; behind the narrow

lattices the sleepy eyes and curly heads of children peered, while their fingers played with the fanciful

The keeper of the tavern was unbarring his house door; a girl broke the ice in a pool for her ducks to get at

"What of that?" said his wife, shouldering her broom; a great many had died that winter, and they were so

poor and sharpset with famine themselves, that they had neither bread nor pity to spare.

"This of that!' cried the old man, doggedly, and full of the excitement of his own terrors. "The young devil of

Ypr�s has killed her, that I am sure. She is there in the hut in the dark, with her eyes glaring like coals. And

The girl left her ducks, the wineshopkeeper his door, the women their cabins, and came and stood round the

bearer of such strange news: very welcome news in a raw frostbitten dawn, when a day was beginning that

would otherwise have had nothing more wonderful in it than tidings of how a litter of black pigs throve, and

They were very dull there from year's end to year's end; once a month, may be, a letter would come in from

some soldierson or brother, or a pedlar coming to buy eggs would bring likewise some stray rumour from

the outerworld;beyond this there was no change, they heard nothing, and saw nothing, seldom moving a

The man Flandrin had nothing truly to tell; he had fled horrified to be challenged, in the twilight and the

snow, by a creature of such evil omen. But when he had got an audience, he was too true an orator, and not

such a fool as to lose it for such a little beggarly matter as the truth; and his tongue clacked quickly of all

which his fears and fancies had conceived, until he had talked himself and his listeners into the full belief that

Manon Dax being belated had encountered the evil glance of the daughter of all evil, and had been slain

Now, in the whole neighbourhood, there was nothing too foul to be credible of the begotten of the fienda

fiend whom all the grown men and women remembered so well in his earthly form, when he had come to

ruin poor Reine Flamma's body and soul, with his eyes like jewels, and his strength passing the strength of all

The people listened, gaping, and wonderstruck, and forgetting the bitterness of the cold, being warmed with

those unfailing human cordials of foul suspicion and of gratified hatred. Some went off to their daily labour,

being unable to spare time for more gossip; but divers women who had nothing to occupy them remained

A shrivelled dame, who owned the greatest number of broodhens in the village, and who had only one son,

a priest, and who was much respected and deferred to by her neighbours, spoke first when Flandrin had ended

his tale for the seventh time, it being a little matter to him that his two hungry cows would be lowing all the

"Flandrin, you have said well, beyond a doubt; the good soul has been struck dead by sorcery. But, you have

forgot one thing, the children are there, and that devil of Ypr�s is with them. Wegood Christians and

trueshould not let such things be. Go, and drive her out and bring the young ones hither."

It was very well to say that the devil should be driven out, but it was not so well to be the driver.

"That is as it should be," assented the other woman. "Go, Flandrin, and wewe will take the little souls in

for this day, and then give them to the public charity, better cannot be done. Go."

"But mind that thou dost strike that beast, FolleFarine, sharply!" cried his wife.

"If thou showest her the cross, she will have to grovel and flee," said another.

"Not she," grumbled an old dame, whose son was a priest. "One day my blessed son, who is nearly a saint,

Heaven knows, menaced her with his cross, and she stood straight, and fearless, and looked at it, and said,

'By that sign you do all manner of vileness in this world, and say you are safe to be blest in another; I know!'

"Go, Flandrin," shrieked the women in chorus, "Go! Every minute you waste the little angels are nearer to

"Come yourselves with me, then," said Flandrin, sullenly. "I will not go after those infants, it is not a man's

In his own mind he was musing on a story which his priests had often told him, of swine into which exorcised

devils had entered, and despatched swiftly down a slope to a miserable end; and he thought of his own pigs,

Better, he mused, that Manon Dax's grandchildren should be the devil's prey, than those, his choicest, swine.

The women jeered him, menaced him, flouted him, besought him. But vainlyhe would not move alone. He

had become possessed of the terrors of his own fancy had created; and he would not stir a step for all their

"Let us go ourselves, then!" screamed his wife at length, flourishing above her head the broom with which

she had swept the snow. "Men are ever cowards. It shall never be said of me, that I left those babes to the

There was a sentiment in this that stirred all her companions to emulation. They rushed into their homes,

snatched a shovel, a staff, a broom, a pigstick, each whatever came uppermost, and dragging Flandrin in the

They were not very sure in their own minds, why they went, nor for what they went; but they had a vague

idea of doing what was wise and pious, and they had a great hate in their hearts against the child. They sped

as fast as the slippery road would let them, and their tongues flew still faster than their feet; the cold of the

daybreak made them sharp and keen on their prey, as the air was on themselves; they screamed fable on fable

hoarsely, their voices rising shrilly above the whistling of the winds, and the creaking of the trees, and they

They were in their way virtuous; they were content on very little; they toiled hard from their birth to their

grave; they were most of them chaste wives and devoted mothers, they bore privation steadily, and they

slaved in fair weather and foul without a complaint. But they were narrow of soul, greedy of temper, bigoted

and uncharitable, and, when they thought themselves or their offspring menaced, implacable.

They were of the stuff that would be burned for a creed, and burn others for another creed.

It is the creed of the vast majority of every nation; the priests and lawgivers of every nation have always told

their people that it is a creed holy and honourablehow can the people know that it is at once idiotic and

FolleFarine sat within on the damp hay under the broken roof, and watched the open door.

The children were still asleep. The eldest one in his sleep had turned and caught her hand, and held it.

She did not care for them. They had screamed, and run behind the woodstock, or their grandam's skirts, a

But she was sorry for them; almost as sorry as she was for the little naked woodpigeons when their nests were

scattered on the ground in a tempest, or for the little starveling rabbits when they screamed in their holes for

the soft white mother that was lying, tortured and twisted, in the jaws of a steeltrap.

She was sorry for themhalf roughly, half tenderly sorrywith some shame at her own weakness, and yet

too sincerely sorry to be able to persuade herself to leave them to their fate there, all alone with their dead.

For in the savage heart of Taric's daughter there was an innermost corner wherein her mother's nature slept.

The snow was driven in encircling clouds by the winds, the dense fog of the dawn lifted itself off the

surrounding fields; the branches of the trees were beautiful with hanging icicles; from the meadow hardby

there wailed unceasingly the mournful moaning of Flandrin's cattle, deserted of their master, and hungry in

She heard a distant convent clock strike six: no one came. Yet she had resolved not to leave the children all

alone, though Flamma should come and find her there, and thrash her for her absence from his tasks. So she

After a little she heard the crisp cracking of many feet on the frozen snow and icefilled ruts of the narrow

road; she heard a confused clatter of angry voices breaking harshly on the stillness of the winter morning.

The light was stronger now, and through the doorway she saw the little passionate crowd of angry faces as

For a minute they pausedirresolute, silent, perplexed: at the sight of her they were half daunted; they felt

"What!" she screamed, "nine good Christians fearful of one daughter of hell? Fie! for shame! Look; my

In a moment more, thus girded at and guarded at the same time, they were through the door and stood on the

mud floor of the hearth, close to her, casting hasty glances at the poor dead body on the hearth, whose fires

They came about her in a fierce, gesticulating, breathless troop, flourishing their sticks in her eyes, and

casting at her all their various charges in one breath. Flandrin stood a little aloof, sheepishly on the threshold,

wishing that he had never said a word of the death of Manon Dax to his good wife and neighbours.

"You met that poor saint and killed her in the snow with your witcheries!" one cried.

"A good woman like that!" shrieked a third, "who was well and blithe and praising God only a day ago, for I

"It is as you did with the dear little R�my, who will be lame all his life, through you," hissed a fourth. "You

"Are you alive, my angels?" said a fifth, waking the three children noisily, and rousing their piercing cries.

"Are you alive after that witch has gazed on you? It is a miracle! The Saints be praised!"

FolleFarine stood mute and erect for the moment, not comprehending why they thus with one accord fell

upon her. She pointed to the bodies on the hearth, with one of those grave and dignified gestures which were

"She was cold and hungry," she said curtly, her mellow accent softening and enriching the provincial tongue

which she had learned from those amidst whom she dwelt. "She had fallen, and was dying. I brought her

here. The young child was killed by the snow. I stayed with the rest because they were frightened and alone.

"Thou hast better come away. What canst thou prove?" whispered Flandrin to his wife.

He was afraid of the storm he had invoked, and would fain have stilled it. But that was beyond his power.

The women had not come forth half a league in the howling winds of a midwinter daybreak only to go back

They hissed, they screamed, they hurled their rage at her; they accused her of a thousand crimes; they filled

the hut with clamor as of a thousand tongues; they foamed, they spat, they struck her with their sticks; and

she stood quiet, looking at them, and the old dead face of Manon Dax which lay upward in the dim light.

The eldest boy struggled in the grasp of the peasant woman who had seized him, and stretched his arms,

instead, to the one who had fed him, and whose hand he had held all through his restless slumber in that long

"Look on that;oh infernal thing!" cried Flandrin's wife, lifting up her treasured figure of Peter. "You dare

FolleFarine had shrunk a little as the child had called to her. Its gesture of affection was the first that she had

She laughed aloud as the image of Peter was thrust in her face. She saw it was some emblem and idol of their

faith, devotedly cherished. She stretched her hand out, wrenched it away, trampled on it, and tossed it through

the doorway into the snow, where it sank and disappeared. Then she folded her arms, and waited for them.

There was a loud shriek at the blasphemy of the impious act; then they rushed on her.

They came inflamed with all the fury which abject fear and bigoted hatred can beget in minds of the lowest

and most brutal type. They were strong, rude, ignorant, fanatical peasants, they abhorred her, they believed

no child of theirs safe in its bed while she walked abroad alive. Beside such women, when in wrath and riot,

They set on her with furious force, flung her, trod on her, beat her, kicked her with their woodshod feet,

with all the malignant fury of the female animal that fights for its offspring's and its own security.

Strong though she was, and swift, and full of courage, she had no power against the numbers who had thrown

themselves on her, and borne her backward by dint of their united effort, and held her down to work their

She could not free herself nor return their blows, nor lift herself to wrestle with them; she could only deny

She was mute while the rough hands flew at her, the sticks struck at her, the heavy feet were driven against

her body, the fingers clutched at her long hair, and twisted and tore at itshe was quite mute throughout.

"Prick her in the breast, and see if the devil be still in her. I have heard say there is no better way to test a

Her foes needed no second bidding; they had her already prostrate in their midst, and a dozen eager hands

seized a closer grip upon her, pulled her clothes from her chest, and, holding her down on the mud floor,

The smooth skin baffled them; its rich and tender hues were without spot or blemish.

"What matter; what matter?" hissed Rose Flandrin. "When our fathers hunted witches in the old time, did

"It is the only babe that will ever cling to thee!" she cried, with a laugh, as the nail drew blood above the

She was powerless, defenceless, flung on her back amidst her tormentors, fastened down by treading feet and

clenching hands; she could resist in nothing, she could not stir a limb, still she kept silence, and her proud

The muscles and nerves of her body quivered with a mighty pang, her chest heaved with the torture of

indignity, her heart fluttered like a wounded birdnot at the physical pain, but at the shame of these

women's gaze, the loathsome contact of their reckless touch. The iron pierced deeper, but they could not

Except for her eyes, that glowed with a dusky fire as they glanced to and fro, seeking escape, she might have

"If one were to drive the nail to the head, she would not feel!" cried the women, in furious despair, and were

"There is our notary close at hand, on the road on his mule! Hist! Come out quickly. You know how strict he

is, and how he forbids us ever to try and take the law into our own keeping. Quickas you love your

The furies left their prey, and scattered and fled; the notary was a name of awe to them, for he was a severe

They seized the children, went out with them into the road, closed the hut door behind them, and moved

down the hill; the children wailing sadly, and the eldest trying to get from them and go back.

The women looked mournful and held their heads down, and comforted the little ones; Flandrin himself went

"Is anything amiss?" the old whitehaired notary asked, stopping his favourite grey mule at sight of the little

The women, weeping, told him that Manon Dax was dead, and the youngest infant likewiseof cold, in the

night, as they supposed. They dared to say no other thing, for he had many times rebuked them for their lack

of charity and their bigoted cruelties and superstitions, and they were quaking with fear lest he should by any

"Flandrin, going to his cow, saw her first, and he came to us and told us," they added, crossing themselves

fervently, and hushing little Bernardou, who wanted to get from them and return; "and we have taken the

poor little things to carry them home; we are going to give them food, and warm them awhile by the stove,

and then we shall come back and do all that is needful for the beloved dead who are within."

"That is well. That is good and neighbourly of you," said the notary, who liked them all, having married them

all, and registered their children's births, and who was a good old man though stern; kindly and very honest.

He promised them to see for his part that all needed by the law and by the church should be done for their old

lost neighbour, and then urged his fat mule into a trot, for he had been summoned to a rich man's sick bed in

that early winter morning, and was in haste lest the priest should be beforehand with him there.

"How tender the poor are to the poor! Those people have not bread enough for themselves, and yet they

burden their homes with three strange mouths. Their hearts must be true at the core, if their tongues

The women went on, carrying and dragging the children with them, in a sullen impatience.

"To think we should have had to leave that fiend of Ypr�s!" they muttered in their teeth. "Well, there is one

thing, she will not get over the hurt for days. Her bones will be stiff for many a week. That will teach her to

"Hold thy noise, thou little pig!" cried Flandrin's wife, pushing Bernardou on before her. "Hold thy noise, I

tell you, or I will put you in the black box in a hole in the ground, along with thy greatgrandmother."

But Bernardou wept aloud, refusing to be comforted or terrified into silence. He was old enough to know that

never more would the old kindly withered brown face bend over him as he woke in the morning, nor the old

kindly quavering voice croone him country ballads and cradle songs at twilight by the bright wood fire.

Little by little the women carrying the children crept down the slippery slope, half ice and half mud in the

thaw, and entered their own village, and therein were much praised for their charity and courage.

For when they praise, as when they abuse, villages are loud of voice and blind of eye, much as are the cities.

Their tongues, and those of their neighbours, clacked all day long, noisily and bravely, of their good and their

great deeds; they had all the sanctity of martyrdom, and all the glory of victory, in one.

True, they had left all their house and field work half done;"but the Holy Peter will finish it in his own

good time, and avenge himself for his outrage," mused the wife of Flandrin, sorrowing over her lost Petrus in

the snowdrift, and boxing the ears of little Bernardou, as he huddled in her chimney corner, to make him

When they went back with their priest at noon to the hut of old Manon Dax to make her ready for her burial,

they trembled inwardly lest they should find their victim there, and lest she should lift her voice in accusation

against them. Their hearts misgave them sorely. Their priest, a cobbler's son, and almost as ignorant as

themselves, would be, they knew, on their own side; but they were sensible that they had let their fury hurry

them into acts which could easily be applauded by their neighbours, but not so easily justified to the law.

"For the law is over good," said Rose Flandrin, "and takes the part of all sorts of vile creatures. It will protect

a rogue, a brigand, a bullock, a dog, a witch, a devilanything,except now and then an honest woman."

But their fears were groundless; she was gone; the hut when they entered it had no tenants except the lifeless

When FolleFarine had heard the hut door close, and the steps of her tormentors die away down the hill, she

She had been so suddenly attacked and flung down and trampled on, that her brain had been deadened, and

As she lifted herself slowly, and staggered to her feet, and saw the blood trickle where the nail had pierced

her breast, she understood what had happened to her; and her face grew savage and dark, and her eyes fierce

It was not for the hurt she cared; it was the shame of defeat and outrage that stung her like a whip of asps.

"I tried to help you," she thought. "I was a fool. I might have known how they pay any good done to them."

She was not surprised; her mind had been too deadened by a long course of ill usage to feel any wonder at the

She hated them with the mute unyielding hatred of her race, but she hated herself more because she had

yielded to the softness of sorrow and pity for any human thing; and more still because she had not been

armed and on her guard, and had suffered them to prevail and to escape without her vengeance.

"I will never come abroad without a knife in my girdle again," she thoughtthis was the lesson that her

She went out hardening her heart, as she crept through the doorway into the snow and the wind, so that she

should not leave one farewell word or token of gentleness with the dead, that lay there so tranquil on the

"She lied, even in her last breath!" thought FolleFarine. "She said that her God was good!"

She could hardly keep on her own homeward way. All her limbs were stiff and full of pain. The wound in her

chest was scarcely more than skin deep, yet it smarted sorely and bled still. Her brain was dull, and her ears

were filled with strange noises from the force with which she had been flung backward on her head.

She had given her sheepskin to the children, as before her Phratos had done; and one of the peasants had

carried the youngest away in it. The sharpness of the intense cold froze the blood in her as she crawled

through a gap in the poplar hedge, and under the whitened brambles and grasses, beyond, to get backward to

The sun had risen, but was obscured by fog, through which it shed a dull red ray here and there above the

It was a bitter morning, and the wind, though it had abated, was still rough, and drove the snow in clouds of

powder hither and thither over the fields. She could only move very slowly, very stiffly; the thorns tearing

She wondered, dimly, why she lived. It seemed to her that the devil, when he had made her, must have made

her out of sport and cruelty, and then tossed her into the world to be a scapegoat and a football for any

That she might end her own life never occurred to her; her intelligence was not awake enough to see that she

need not have borne its burden one hour more, so long as there had been one pool in the woods deep enough

to drown her under its green weeds and lily leaves any cool summer night. Nay,that she had but to lie

down, then and there, where she was, beneath the icedropping trees, and let the sleep that weighed so

heavily on her eyelids come, dreamless and painless, and there would be an end of all for her, as for the

frozen rabbits and the birds that strewed the upland meadows, starved and stiff.

She did not know;and had she known, wretched though existence was to her, death would not have allured

her. She saw that the dead might be slapped on their cheek, and could not lift their arm to strike againa

change that would not give her vengeance could have had no sweetness and no succour for her. The change

By tedious and painful efforts, she dragged herself home by the way of the lanes and pastures; hungry, lame,

bleeding, cold and miserable, with her eyes burning, and her hands and her head hot with fever.

She made her way into the millyard and tried to commence her first morning's work; the drawing of water

from the well for the beasts and for the house, and the sweeping down of the old wide court round which the

She never dreamed of asking either for food or pity, either for sympathy or remission of her labours. She set

to work at once, but for the only time since Phratos had brought her thither, the strength and vigour of her

She was sick and weak; her hand sank off the handle of the windlass; and she dropped stupidly on the stone

The mastiff came and licked her face tenderly. The pigeons left the meal flung to them on the snow, and flew

merrily about her head in pretty fluttering caresses. The lean cat came and rubbed its cheek softly against her,

purring all the while. The woman Pitchou saw her, and she called out of the window to her master.

"Where hast been?" he asked sharply of her. "Pitchou says thou hast not lain in thy bed all night long. Is it

FolleFarine lifted her head slowly, with a dazed stupid pain in the look of her eyes.

"And where hast been then?" he asked, through his clenched teeth; enraged that his servant had been quicker

A little of her old dauntless defiance gleamed in her face through its stupor and langour, as she replied to him

"I went after old Manon Dax, to give her my supper. She died in the road, and I carried her home. And the

youngest child was dead too. I stayed there because the children were alone; I called to Flandrin and told him;

he came with his wife and other women, and they said I had killed old Dax; they set on me, and beat me, and

In her glance upward, even in the curtness of her words, there was an unconscious glimmer of appeal, a

vague fancy that for once she might, perhaps, meet with approval and sympathy, instead of punishment and

contempt. She had never heard a kind word from him, nor one of any compassion, and yet a dim unuttered

hope was in her heart, that for once he might condemn her persecutors and pardon her.

But the hope was a vain one, like all which she had cherished since first the door of the millhouse had

Flamma only set his teeth tighter. In his own soul he had been almost ashamed of his denial to his old

neighbour, and had almost feared, that it would lose him the good will of that good heaven which sent him so

mercifully such a sharp year of famine to enrich him. Therefore, it infuriated him, to think that this offspring

He looked at her and saw with grim glee, that she was black and blue with bruises, and that the linen which

"Flandrin and his wife are honest people, and pious," he said, in answer to her. "When they find a wench out

of her bed at night, they deal rightly with her, and do not hearken to any lies that she may tell them of feigned

almsgiving to cover her vices from their sight. I thank them that they did so much of my work for me. They

might well prick thee for a witch; but they will never cut so deep into thy breast, as to be able to dig the mark

There during the dark winter's day, the pain which she endured, with her hunger and the cold of the weather,

made her fall thrice, like a dead thing, on the snow of the court, and the floors of the sheds. But she lay

insensible till the youth in her brought back consciousness, without aid; in those moments of faintness, no

one noticed her save the dog, who came and crept to her to give her warmth, and strove to wake her with the

She did her work as best she might; neither Flamma nor his servant once spoke to her.

"My women dealt somewhat roughly with thy wench at break of day, good Flamma," said the man Flandrin,

meeting him in the lane that afternoon, and fearful of offending the shrewd old man who had so many of his

neighbours in his grip. "I hope thou wilt not take it amiss? The girl maddened my damespitting on her

"The woman did well," said Flamma coldly, driving his grey mare onward through the fog.

Claudis Flamma hardly knew which he was, himself; he held her as the very spawn of hell itself, and yet it

was loathsome to him, that his neighbours should also know, and say, that a devil had been the only fruit of

The next day and the next, and the next again after that, she was too ill to stir; they beat her and called her

names, but it was of no use; they could not get work out of her; she was past it, and beyond all rousing of

They were obliged to let her be. She stayed for nearly four days in the hay in her loft; devoured with fever,

and with every bone and muscle in pain. She had a pitcher of water by her and drank continually, thirstily,

like a sick dog. With rest and no medicine but the cold spring water, she recovered: she had been delirious in

a few of the hours, and had dreamed of nothing but of the old life in the Li�bana, and of the old sweet music

of Phratos. She remained there untended, shivering and feverstricken, until the strength of her youth

returned to her. She rose on the fifth day weaker, but otherwise little the worse; with the soft sad songs of her

There was no work being done at the mill; the wheel stood still, locked fast, for the deep stream was close

bound in ice; frost had returned, and the country was white with snow two feet deep, and bleak and bare, and

Flamma and Pitchou were in the kitchen when she entered it; they looked up, but neither spoke to her. In

being illfor the first time since they had had to do with her,she had committed, for the millionth time, a

There was no welcome for her in that cheerless place, where scarcely a spark of fire was allowed to brighten

the heart, and where the hens, straying in from without, sat with ruffled feathers, chilled and moping, and

There was no welcome for hershe went out into the air, thinking the woods, even at midwinter, could not

The sun was shining through a rift in the stormy clouds, and the white roofs, and the icecrusted waters, and

There were many dead birds about the paths. Claudis Flamma had thought their faminetime a good one, in

She wondered where the dog was who never had failed to greet her,a yard farther on she saw him.

He was stretched stiff and lifeless beside the old barrel that had served him as a kennel; his master had

begrudged him the little straw needful to keep him from the hurricanes of those bitter nights; and he had

perished quietly, without a moan, like a sentinel slain at his postfrozen to death in his old age after a life of

She stood by him a while with dry eyes, but with an aching heart. He had loved her, and she had loved him;

and many a time she had risked a stroke of the lash to save it from his body; and many a time she had sobbed

herself to sleep in her earlier years, with her arms curled round him, as round her only friend and only

She stooped down; kissed him softly on his broad grizzled forehead, and lifted his corpse into a place of

shelter, and covered it tenderly, so that he should not be left to the crows and the kites, until she should be

able to make his grave in those orchards in which he had loved so well to wander, and in which he and she

She shuddered as she looked her last on him; and filled in the snow above his tomb, under the old twisted

pear tree, beneath which, he and she had so often sat together in the long grasses, consoling one another for

scant fare and cruel blows by the exquisite mute sympathy which can exist betwixt the canine and the human

animal when the two are alone, and love and trust each other, only, out of all the world.

Whilst the dog had lived, she had had two friends; now that he slept for ever in the old grey orchard, she had

Her heart ached for a kind glancefor a word that should be neither of hatred or of scorn. It was seldom that

she allowed herself to know such a weakness. She had dauntless blood in her; she came of a people that

despised pity, and who knew how to live hard, and to die hard, without murmur or appeal. Yet she had clung

to the old mastiff, who was savage to all save herself; so she still clung to the old man Marcellin who to all

He was good to her in his own fierce and rugged way; and they had the kinship of the proscribed; and they

loved one another in a strange, silent, savage manner, as a yearling wolf cub and an aged grizzled bear might

love each other in the depths of forest, where the foot of the hunter and the fangs of the hound were alike

She had not seen him for six days. She felt ill, and weak, and cold, and alone. She thought she would go to

him in his hut, and sit a little by his lonely hearth, and hear him tell strange stories of the marvelous time

when he was young, and the world was drunk with a mad sweet dream which had never come true upon

Her heart was in wild revolt, and a fierce futile hate gnawed ever in it. She had become used to the indignities

of the populace, and the insults of all the people who went to and fro her grandsire's place; but each one

pierced deeper and deeper than the last, and left a longer scar, and killed more and more of the gentler and

better instincts which had survived in her through all the brutalising debasement of her life.

She could not avenge the outrage of Rose Flandrin and her sisterhood, and being unable to avenge it, she shut

her mouth and said nothing of it, as her habit was. Nevertheless it festered and rankled in her; and now and

then the thought crossed herwhy not take a flint and a bit of tow, and burn them all in their beds as they

It had a taint of cowardice in it; yet a man that very winter had fired a farmstead for far less an injury, and had

burned to death all who had lain therein that night. Why should she not kill and burn these also? They had

never essayed to teach her to do better, and when she had tried to do good to one of them, the others had set

In the afternoon of this first day of the year she had to pass through their hamlet to seek Marcellin.

The sun was low and red; the dusky light glowered over the white meadows and through the leafless twilight

of the woods; here and there a solitary tree of holly reared itself, scarlet and tall, from the snowdrifts; here

and there a sheaf of arrowy reeds pierced the sheets of ice that covered all the streams and pools.

The little village lay with its dark round roofs, cosy and warm, with all the winter round. She strode through

it erect, and flashing her scornful eyes right and left; but her right hand was inside her skirt. For such was the

lesson which the reward for her charity had taught hera lesson not lightly to be forgotten, nor swiftly to be

In its simple mode, the little place, like its greater neighbours, kept high festival for a fresh year begun.

Its crucifix rose, bare and white, out of a crown of fir boughs and many wreaths of ruddy berries. On its cabin

windows the light of wood cracking and blazing within glowed brightly. Through them she saw many of their

In one the children knelt in a circle round the fire, roasting chestnuts in the embers with gay shouts of

laughter. In another, they romped with their big sheepdog, decking him with garlands of ivy and laurel.

In one little brown room a betrothal party made merry; in another, that was bright with Dutch tiles, and hug

round with dried herbs and fruits, an old matron had her arm round the curly head of a sailor lad, home for a

In the house of Flandrin a huge souppot smoked with savoury odour, and the eyes of his wife were soft with

a tender mirth as she watched her youngestborn playing with a Punch, all bells and bright colours, and saw

In the wineshop, the keeper of it, having taken to himself a wife that day, kept open house to his friends, and

he and they were dancing to the music of a horn and a fiddle, under rafters bedecked with branches of fir,

with manyhued ribands, and with little oillamps that blew to and fro in the noise of the romp. And all

round were the dark still woods, and in the midst rose the crucifix; and above, on the height of the hill, the

"One spark," she thought, playing with the grim temptation that possessed her"one spark on the dry thatch,

Injustice had made her ravenous and savage. When she had tried to do well, and to save life, these people had

She felt a longing to show them what evil indeed she could do, and to see them burn, and to hear them scream

vainly, and then to say to them with a laugh, as the flames licked up their homes and their lives, "Another

Why did she not do it? She did not know; she had brought out a flint and tinder in the pouch that hung at her

She stood still and played with her fancy, and it was horrible and sweet to herso sweet because so horrible.

As she stood thinking, there, and in her fancy seeing the red glare that would light up that peaceful place, and

hearing the roar of the lurid flames that would drown the music, and the laughter, and the children's shouts,

out of the twilight there rose to her a small dark thing, with a halo round its head: the thing was Bernardou,

"I know youyou were good that night. The people all say you are wicked, but you gave us your food, and

This child had never mocked her, but he had screamed and run from her in terror, and had been told a score

"She is dead, Bernardou," she answered him; and her voice was troubled, and sounded strangely to her as she

spoke for the first time to a child without being derided or screamed at in fear.

"Dead! What is that?" sobbed the boy. "She was stiff and cold, I know, and they put her in a hole; but she

would waken, I know she would, if she only heard us. We never cried in the night but she heard in her sleep,

She was silent; she did not know how to answer him, and the strangeness of any human appeal made to her

"Why are you out in the cold, Bernardou?" she asked him suddenly, glancing backward through the lattice of

the Flandrins' house, through which she could see the infants laughing and shaking the puppet with gilded

"They beat me; they say I am naughty, because I want gran'm�re," he said, with a sob. "they beat me often,

and oh! if she knew, she would wake and come. Do tell herdo! Bernardou will be so good, and never vex

His little life had been hard; scant fare, cold winds, and naked limbs had been his portion; yet the life had

been bright and gleeful to him, clinging to his grandam's skirts as she washed at the tub or hoed in the

cabbageground, catching her smile when he brought her the first daisy of the year, running always to her

open arms in any hurt, sinking to sleep always with the singing of her old ballads on his ear.

It had been a little life, dear, glad, kindly, precious to him, and he wept for it; refusing to be comforted by

sight of a gilded puppet in another's hand, or a sugared Jesus in another's mouth, as they expected him to be.

It is the sort of comfort that is always offered to the homeless, and they are always thought ungrateful if they

"I wish I could take you, Bernardou!" FolleFarine murmured, with a momentary softness that was

exquisitely tender in its contrast to her haughty and fierce temper. "I wish I could."

For one wild instant the thought came to her to break from her bonds, and take this creature who was as

lonely as herself, and to wander away and away into that unknown land which stretched around her, and of

which she knew no more than one of the dark leaves knew that grew in the snowfilled ditch.

Her few early years in the Li�bana were too dreamlike and too vaguely remembered to be any guide to her;

and the world seemed only to her in her fancies as a vast plain, dreary and dismal, in which every hand would

be against her, and every living thing be hostile to her. Beside, the long habitude of slavery was on her, and it

is a yoke that eats into the flesh too deeply to be wrenched off without many an effort.

As she stood thinking, with the child's eager hands clasping her skirts, a shrill voice called from the

"Bernardou! Bernardou! thou little plague. Come within. What dost do out there in the dark? Mischief, I will

The speaker strode out, and snatched and bore and clutched him away; she was the sister of Rose Flandrin,

"Thou little beast!" she muttered, in fury. "Dost dare talk to the witch that killed they grandmother? Thou

shalt hie to bed, and sup on a fine whipping. Thank God, thou goest to the hospital tomorrow! Thou woudst

She dragged him in and slammedto the door, and his cries echoed above the busy shouts and laughter of the

Flandrin family, gathered about the tinselled Punch and the sugared Jesus, and the souppot, that stewed

FolleFarine listened awhile, with her hand clenched on her knife; then she toiled onward through the village,

and left it and its carols and carousings behind her in the red glow of the sinking sun.

She thought no more of setting their huts in a blaze; the child's words had touched and softened her; she

remembered the long patient bitter life of the woman who had died of cold and hunger in her eightysecond

"What is their God?" she mused. "They care for him, and he seems to care nothing for them whether they be

Yet her heat was softened, and she would not fire the house in which little Bernardou was sheltered.

His was the first gratitude that she had ever met with, and it was sweet to her as the rare blossom of the

edelweiss to the traveller upon the highest Alpine summitsa flower full of promise, born amidst a waste.

The way was long to where Marcellin dwelt, but she walked on through the fields that were in summer all

The day was over, the evening drew nigh, the sound of innumerable bells in the town echoed faintly from the

On the night of the new year the people had a care that the cattle in the byers, the sheep in the folds, the dogs

in the kennels, the swine in the styes, the old carthorses in the sheds, should have a full meal and a clean

In all the country round there were only two that were forgottenthe dead in their graves, and the daughter

FolleFarine was cold, hungry, and exhausted, for the fever had left her enfeebled; and from the coarse food

At the hut where Marcellin dwelt she knew that she would be sure of one welcome, one smile; one voice that

It would not matter, she thought, how the winds should howl and the hail drive, or how the people should be

merry in their homes and forgetful of her and of him. He and she would sit together over the little fire, and

give back hate for hate and scorn for scorn, and commune with each other, and want no other cheer or

It had been always so since he had first met her at sunset amongst the poppies, then a little child of eight

years old. Every newyear's night she had spent with him in his hovel; and in their own mute way they had

loved one another, and drawn closer together, and been almost glad, though often pitcher and platter had been

She stepped bravely against the wind, and over the crisp firm snow, her spirits rising as she drew near the

only place that had ever opened its door gladly to her coming; her heart growing lighter as she approached the

only creature to whom she had ever spoken her thoughts without derision or told her woes without

His hut stood by itself in the midst of the wide pastures, and by the side of a stream.

A little light was wont to twinkle at that hour through the crevices of its wooden shutter; this evening all was

dark, the outline of the hovel rose like a rugged mound against the white wastes round it. The only sound was

the faroff chiming of the bells that vibrated strangely on the rarefied sharp air.

She crossed the last meadow where the sheep were folded for the night, and went to the door and pushed

A heavy step echoed on the mud floor within; a match was struck, a dull light glimmered; a voice she did not

"It is I, Marcellin," she answered. "It is not night. I am come to be an hour with you. Is anything amiss?"

The door opened slowly, an old woman, whose face was strange to her, peered out into the dusk. She had

been asleep on the settle by the fire, and stared stupidly at the flame of her own lamp.

FolleFarine stood erect, without a quiver in her face or in her limbs; but her teeth shut together like a steel

clasp, and all the rich and golden hues of her skin changed to a sickly ashen pallor.

"Yes, why not?" grumbled the old woman. "To be sure men said that God would never him die, because he

killed St. Louis; but myself I never thought that. I knew the devil would not wait more than a hundred years

for himyou can never cheat the devil, and he always seems stronger than the saintssomehow. You are

Her right hand was clenched on the doorpost, and her right foot was set on the threshold, so that the door

"I am an honest woman and a pious; and it befouls me to dwell where he dwelt," the old peasant hissed in

loud indignation. "I stood out a whole day, but when one is poor and the place is offered quit of rent, what

can one do?and it is roomy and airy for the fowls, and the priest has flung holy water about and purified it,

and I have a Horseshoe nailed up, and a St. John in the corner. But be off with you, and take your foot from

"He was found dead on the road, on his heap of stones, the fourth night from this," answered the old woman,

loving to hear her own tongue, yet dreading the one to whom she spoke. "Perhaps he had been hungered, I do

not know; or more likely the devil would not wait any longer; anyways, he was deadthe hammer in his

hand. Max Li�ben, the man that travels with the wooden clocks, found him. He lay there all night. Nobody

would touch him. They say they saw the mark of the devil's claws on him. At last they got a dungcart, and

took him away before the sun rose. He died just under the great Calvaryit was like his blasphemy. They

have put him in the common ditch. I think it shame to let the man that slew a saint be in the same grave with

all the poor honest folk who feared God, and were Christians though they might be beggars and outcasts. Get

you gone, you be as vile as he. If you want him go ask your father the foul fiend for himthey are surely

"Not but what the devil can get through the chinks," she muttered, as she turned the wick of her lamp up

FolleFarine went back over the snow; blind, sick, feeling her way through the twilight as though it were the

"He died alonehe died alone," she muttered, a thousand times, as she crept shivering through the gloom;

and she knew that now her own fate was yet more desolate. She knew that now she lived alone without one

The death on the open highway; the numbness, and stillness, and deafness to all the maledictions of men; the

shameful bier made at night on the dungcart, amidst loathing glances and muttered curses; the nameless

grave in the common ditch with the beggar, the thief, the harlot, and the murderer;these, which were so

awful to all others, seemed to her as sweet as to sink to sleep on soft unshorn grass, whilst rose leaves are

For she in her youth and in the splendour of her strength, and in the blossom of her beauty, gorgeous as a

passion flower in the sun, envied bitterly the old man who had died at his work on the public road, hated by

Since his death was not more utterly lonely and desolate than was her life; and to all taunts and to all curses

NIGHT had come; a dark night of earliest spring. The wild day had sobbed itself to sleep after a restless life

The sun had sunk, leaving lone tracks of bloodred light across onehalf the heavens.

There was a sharp crisp coldness as of lingering frost in the gloom and the dulness. Heavy clouds, as yet

unbroken, hung over the cathedral and the clustering roofs around it in dark and starless splendour.

Over the great still plains which stretched eastward and southward, black with the furrows of the

scarcebudded corn, the wind blew hard; blowing the river and the many streamlets spreading from it into

foam; driving the wintry leaves, which still strewed the earth thickly, hither and thither in legions; breaking

boughs that had weathered the winter hurricanes, and scattering the tender blossoms of the snowdrops and the

The smell of wet grass, of the woodborn violets, of trees whose new life was waking in their veins, of damp

earths turned freshly upwards by the plough, were all blown together by the riotous breezes.

Now and then a light gleamed through the gloom where a little peasant boy lighted home with a torch some

old priest on his mule, or a boat went down the waters with a lamp hung at its prow. For it grew dark early,

A dim glow from the west, which was still tinged with the fire of the sunset, fell through a great square

window set in a stone building, and striking across the sicklier rays of an oil lamp reached the opposing wall

It was a wall of grey stone, dead and lustreless like the wall of a prisonhouse, over whose surface a spider as

colourless as itself dragged slowly its crooked hairy limbs loaded with the moisture of the place, which was

an old tower, of which the country folk told strange tales, where it stood among the rushes on the left bank of

It crept on its heavy way across the faint crimson reflection from the glow of the sunken sun.

It was fat, wellnourished, lazy, content; its home of dusky silver hung on high, where its pleasure lay in

weaving, clinging, hoarding, breeding. It lived in the dark; it had neither pity nor regret; it troubled itself

neither for the death it dealt to nourish itself, nor for the light without, into which it never wandered; it spun

BOOK III. "L'Artiste est un dieu tomb�, qui se souvient du temps quand il cr�a un monde." 98

It was an emblem of the man who is wise in his generation; of the man whom Cato the elder deemed divine;

of the Majority and the Mediocrity who rule over the earth and enjoy its fruits.

This man knew that was wise; that those who were like to it were wise also; wise with the only wisdom

He had been unwisealways; and therefore he stood watching the sun die, with hunger in his soul, with

For many months he had been half famished, as were the wolves in his own northern mountains in the winter

solstice. For seven days he had only been able to crush a crust of hard black bread between his teeth. For

twenty hours he had not done even so much as this. The trencher on his tressel was empty; and he had not

He might have found some to fill it for him no doubt. He lived amidst the poor, and the poor to the poor are

good, though they are bad and bitter to the rich. But he did not open either his lips or his hands. He consumed

his heart in silence; and his vitals preyed in anguish on themselves without his yielding to their torments.

He was a madman; and Cato, who measured the godliness of man by what they gained, would have held him,

accursed;the madness that starves and is silent for an idea is an insanity, scouted by the world and the

gods. For it is an insanity unfruitful; except to the future. And for the future who cares,save these madmen

It could not speak to him as its fellow once spoke in the old Scottish story. To hear as that captive heard, the

This man had no hope; he had a kingdom indeed, but it was not of earth; and, in an hour of sheer cruel bodily

The spider crawled across the grey wall; across the glow from the vanished sun; across a coil of a dead

passionvine, that strayed loosed through the floor; across the classic shapes of a great cartoon drawn in

Nothing arrested it; nothing retarded it, as nothing hastened it. It moved slowly on; fat, lustreless, indolent,

hueless; reached at length its den, and there squatted aloft, loving the darkness; its young swarming around,

Through the open casement there came on the rising wind of the storm, in the light of the last lingering

sunbeam, a beautiful nightmoth, begotten by some cruel hothouse heat in the bosom of some frail exiled

It swam in on trembling pinions, and alighted on the golden head of a gathered crocus that lay dying on the

stonesa moth that should have been born to no world save that of the summer world of a Midsummer

A shape of Ariel and Oberon; slender, silver, purple, roseate, lustrouseyed, and gossamerwinged.

A creature of woodland waters and blossoming forests; of the yellow chalices of kingcups and the white

breasts of river lilies, of moonbeams that strayed through a summer world of shadows, and dewdrops that

BOOK III. "L'Artiste est un dieu tomb�, qui se souvient du temps quand il cr�a un monde." 99

glistened in the deep folded hearts of roses. A creature to brush the dreaming eyes of a poet, to nestle on the

bosom of a young girl sleeping: to float earthwards on a fallen star, to slumber on a lotus life.

A creature that amidst the still soft hush of woods and waters still tells, to those who listen, of the world when

The moth flew on, and poised on the faded crocus leaves which spread out their pale gold on the level of the

It was weary, and its delicate wings drooped; it was stormtossed, windbeaten, drenched with mist and

frozen with the cold; it belonged to the moon, to the dew, to the lilies, to the forgetmenots, and to the

night; and it found that the hard grip of winter had seized it whilst yet it had thought that the stars and the

summer were with it. It lived before its time,and it was like the human soul, which being born in the

darkness of the world dares to dream of light, and, wandering in vain search of a sun that will never rise, falls

It was beautiful exceedingly; with the brilliant tropical beauty of a life that is shortlived. It rested a moment

on the stem of the pale flower, then with its radiant eyes fastened on the point of light which the lamp thrust

upward, it flew on high; and, spreading out its transparent wings and floating to the flame, kissed it, quivered

There fell among the dust and cinder of the lamp a little heap of shrunken firescorched blackened ashes.

The wind whirled them upward from their rest, and drove them forth into the night to mingle with the

stormscourged grasses, the pale dead violets, the withered snowflowers, with all things frosttouched and

The spider sat aloft, sucking the juices from the fettered flies, teaching its spawn to prey and feed; content in

squalor and in plentitude; in sensual sloth, and in the increase of its body and its hoard.

He watched them both: the success of the spider, the death of the moth; trite as a fable; ever repeated as the

tides of the sea; the two symbols of humanity; of the life which fattens on greed and gain, and the life which

Then he turned and looked at the cartoons upon the wall; shapes grand and dim, the children of his genius, a

His head sank on his chest, his hand tore the shirt away from his breast, which the pangs of a bodily hunger

that he scorned, devoured, indeed, but which throbbed with a pain more bitter than that of even this lingering

and ignoble death. He had genius in him, and he had to die like a wolf on the Armorican wolds, yonder

He had to die for want of the crust that beggars gnawed in the kennels of the city; he had to die of the lowest

"J'avais quelque chose l�!" was, perhaps, the most terrible of all those deathcries of despair which the

guillotine of Thermidor wrung from the lips of the condemned. For it was the despair of the bodily life for the

BOOK III. "L'Artiste est un dieu tomb�, qui se souvient du temps quand il cr�a un monde." 100

When a man clings to life for life's sake, because it is fair and sweet, and good to the sight and the senses,

there may be weakness in his shudder at its threatening loss. But when a man is loth to lose life, although it

be hard and joyless and barren of all delights, because this life gives him power to accomplish things greater

than he, which yet without him must perish, there is the strength in him, as there is the agony, of Prometheus.

With him it must die also: that deep dim greatness within him which moves him, despite himself; that

nameless unspeakable force, which compels him to create and to achieve; that vision by which he beholds

Weary of life indeed he may be; of life material, and full of subtlety; of passion, of pleasure, of pain; of the

kisses that burn, of the laughs that ring hollow, of the honey that so soon turns to gall, of the sickly fatigues

and the tired cloyed hunger that are the portion of men upon earth. Weary of these he may be; but still if the

gods have breathed on him and made him mad, with the madness that men have called genius, there will be

that in him greater than himself, which he knows,and cannot know without some fierce wrench and

pang,will be numbed and made impotent, and drift away, lost for evermore, into that eternal Night which

Life was barren of all delight for him, full of privation, of famine, of obscurity, of fruitless travail and of vain

desire; yet because he believed that he had it in him to be great, or rather because, with a purer and more

impersonal knowledge, he believed that it was within his power to do that which, when done, the world

would not willingly let die, it was loathsome to him to perish thus of the sheer lack of food, as any toothless

He stood opposite to the great white cartoons on which his soul had spent itself; creations which seemed but

vague and ghostly in the shadows of the chamber, but in which he saw, or at the least believed he saw, the

For himself he cared nothing; but for themhe smiled bitterly as he looked: "They will light some

And yet the old passion had so much dominion still that he instinctively went nearer to his latest and

bestbeloved creations, and took the white chalks up and worked once more by the dull sullen rays of the

They would be torn down on the morrow and thrust for fuel into some housewife's kitchenstove. What

He loved them; they were his sole garniture and treasure; in them his soul had gathered all its dreams and all

its pure delights: so long as his sight lasted he sought to feed it on them; so long as his hand had power he

He was devoured by the deadly fangs of long fast; streaks of living fire seemed to scorch his entrails; his

throat and lungs were parched and choked; and ever and again his left hand clenched on the bones of his

naked chest as though he could wrench away the throes that gnawed it. He knew that worse than this would

follow; he knew that tenfold more torment would await him; that limbs as strong, and muscles as hard, and

manhood as vigorous as his, would only yield to such death as this slowly, doggedly, inch by inch, day by

day. He knew; and he knew that he could not trust himself to go through that uttermost torture without once

BOOK III. "L'Artiste est un dieu tomb�, qui se souvient du temps quand il cr�a un monde." 101

lifting his voice to summon the shame of release from it. Shamesince release would needs be charity.

He knew full well; he had seen all forms of death; he had studied its throes, and portrayed its horrors. He

knew that before dawnit might be before midnightthis agony would grow so great that it would conquer

him; and that to save himself from the cowardice of appeal, the shame besought alms, he would have to use

his last powers to drive home a knife hard and sure through his breastbone. Yet he stood there, almost

forgetting this, scarcely conscious of any other thing than of the passion that ruled him.

Some soft curve in a girl's bare bosom, some round smooth arm of a sleeping woman, some fringe of leaves

against a moonlit sky, some broadwinged bird sailing through shadows of the air, some fullorbed lion

rising to leap on the nude soft indolentlyfolded limbs of a dreaming virgin, palmshadowed in the

East;all these he gazed on and touched, and looked again, and changed by some more inward curve or

All these usurped him; appealed to him; were well beloved and infinitely sad; seemed ever in their whiteness

and their loneliness to cry to him,"Whither dost thou go? Wilt thou leave us alone?"

And as he stood, and thus caressed them with his eyes and touch, and wrestled with the inward torment which

grew greater and greater as the night approached, the sudden sickly feebleness of long hunger came upon

him; the gravelike coldness of his fireless chamber slackened and numbed the flowing of his veins; his brain

grew dull and all its memory ceased, confused and blotted. He staggered once, wondering dimly and idly as

men wonder in delirium, if this indeed were death: then he fell backwards senseless on his hearth.

The last glow of day died off the wall. The wind rose louder, driving in through the open casement a herd of

On high the spider sat, sucking the vitals of its prey, safe in its filth and darkness; looking down ever on the

AS the night fell, FolleFarine, alone, steered herself down the water through the heart of the town, where the

buildings were oldest, and where on either side there loomed through the dusk, carved on the black timbers,

strange masks of satyr and of faun, of dragon and of griffin, of fiend and of martyr.

The sea flowing in stormily upon the coast sent the tide of the river inland with a swift impetuous current, to

which its sluggish depths were seldom stirred. The oars rested unused in the bottom of the boat; she glided

She had come from a long day's work, lading and unlading timber and grain for her taskmaster, and his

fellow farmers, at the river wharf at the back of the town, where the little seatrawlers and traders, with their

fresh salt smell and their brown sails crisp from fierce sea winds, gathered for traffic with the corn barges and

Her day's labour was done, and she was repaid for it by the free effortless backward passage home through

the shadows of the waterstreets; where in the overhanging buildings, ever and anon, some lantern swinging

on a cord from side to side, or some open casement arched above a gallery, showed the dark sad wistful face

of some old creature kneeling in prayer before a crucifix, or the gold earrings of some laughing girl leaning

The cold night had brought the glow of woodfires in many of the dwellings of that poor and picturesque

quarter; and showed many a homely interior through the panes of the oriel and lancet windows, over which

brooded sculptured figures seraphwinged, or carven forms helmeted and leaning on their swords.

In one of them there was a group of young men and maidens gathered round the wood nutburning, the

lovers seeking each other's kiss as the kernels broke the shells; in another, some rosy curly children played at

soldiers with the cuirass and sabre which their grandsire had won in the army of the empire; in another,

before a quaint oval oldfashioned glass, a young girl all alone made trial of her wedding wreath upon her

fair forehead, and smiled back on her own image with a little joyous laugh that ended in a sob; in another, a

young bearded workman carved ivory beside his hearth, whilst his old mother sat knitting in a high oak chair;

in another, a sister of charity, with a fair Madonna's face, bent above a little pot of homebred snowdrops,

with her tears dropping on the white heads of the flowers, whilst the sick man, of whom she had charge, slept

and left her a brief space for her own memories, her own pangs, her own sickness, which was only of the

All these FolleFarine saw, going onward in the boat on the gloom of the water below.

She did not envy them; she rather, with her hatred of them, scorned them. She had been freeborn, though now

she was a slave; the pleasures of the home and hearth she envied no more that she envied the imprisoned bird

Yet they had a sort of fascination for her. She wondered how they felt, these people who smiled and span, and

ate and drank, and sorrowed and enjoyed, and were in health and disease, at feast and at funeral, always

together, always bound in one bond of a common humanity; these people, whose God on the cross never

answered them; who were poor, she knew; who toiled early and late; who were heavily taxed; who fared

hardly and scantily; yet who for the main part contrived to be mirthful and content, and to find some sunshine

Just above her was the corner window of a very ancient house, encrusted with blazonries and carvings. It had

been a princebishop's palace; it was now the shared shelter of half a score of lace weavers and of ivory

As the boat floated under one of the casements, she saw that it stood open; there was a china cup filled with

houseborn primroses on the broad sill; there was an antique illuminated Book of Hours lying open beside

the flowers; there was a strong firelight shining from within; there was an old woman asleep and smiling in

her dreams beside the hearth; by the open book was a girl, leaning out into the chill damp night, and looking

She was fair to look at, with dark hair twisted under her towering white cap, and a peachlike cheek and

Into the chamber, unseen by her, a young man stole across the shadows, and came unheard behind her and

bent his head to hers, and kissed her ere she knew that he was there. She started with a little happy cry and

pushed him away with pretty provocation; he drew her into his arms and into the chamber; he shutto the

lattice, and left only a dusky reflection from within shining through the panes made dark by age and dust.

FolleFarine had watched them; as the window closed her head dropped, she was stirred with a mournful,

passionate, contemptuous wonder; what was this love that was about her everywhere, and yet with which she

There had come a great darkness on the river, a surly roughness in the wind; the shutters were now closed in

many of the houses of the waterstreet, and their long black shadows fell across the depth that severed them,

The close of this day was stormy; the wind blew the river swiftly; the heavy raw mists were setting in from

the sea as the night descended. She did not heed these; she liked the wild weather best; she loved the rush of a

chill wind amongst her hair, and the moisture of blown spray upon her face; she loved the manifold

phantasies of the clouds, and the melodies of the blast coming over the sands and the rushes. She loved the

swirl and rage of the angry water, and the solitude that closed in round her with the darkness.

The boat passed onward through the now silent town; only in one other place the light glowed through the

un shuttered lattices that were ruddy and emblematic with the paintings of the Renaissance. It was the

At that season there could bloom neither saxifrage nor carnation; but some greenleaved winter shrub with

rosy laden berries had replaced them, and made a shining frame all round the painted panes.

The fair woman was within; her delicate head rose out of the brown shadows round, with a lamp burning

above it and a little oval mirror before. Into the mirror she was gazing with a smile, whilst with both hands

about her throat she clasped some strings of polished shells brought to her from the sea.

"How white and how warm and how glad she is!" thought FolleFarine, looking upward; and she rowed in

She was growing harder, wilder, worse, with every day; more and more like some dumb fierce forest beast,

Since the night that they had pricked her for a witch, the people had been more cruel to her than ever; they

cast bitter names at her as she went by; they hissed and hooted her as she took her mule through their

villages, or passed them on the road with her back bent under some load of faggots, or of winter food; once or

For it was an article of faith in all the hamlets round that she had killed old Manon Dax. The Flandrins said

so, and they were good pious people who would not lie. Every dusky evening when the peasantry, through

the doors of their cabins, saw the gleam of her bright red girdle and the flash of her hawk's eyes, where she

plodded on through the mist on her tyrant's errands, they crossed themselves and told each other for the

It had hardened her tenfold; it had made her brood on sullen dreams of a desperate vengeance.

Marcellin, too, was gone; his body had been eaten by the quicklime in the common ditch, and there was not

even a voice so stern as his to bid her a good morrow. He had been a harsh man, of dark repute and bitter

tongue; but in his way he had loved her; in his way, with the eloquence that had remained to him, and by the

strange stories that he had told her of that wondrous time wherein his youth had passed, when men had been

as gods and giants, and women either horrible as the Medusa or sublime as the Iphigenia, he had done

something to awaken her mind; to arouse her hopes; to lift her up from the torpor of toil, the lusts of hatred,

the ruinous apathy of despair. But he was dead; and she was alone; and was abandoned utterly to herself.

She mourned for him with a passionate pain that was all the more despairing, because no sound of it could

To and fro continually she went by the road on which he had died alone; by the heap of broken stones, by the

wooden crucifix, by the high hedge and the cornlands beyond. Every time she went the blood beat in her

brain, the tears swelled in her throat; she hated with a hatred that consumed her, and was ready to ripen into

any deadly deed, the people who had shunned him in his life, and in his death derided and insulted him, and

Her heart was ripe for any evil that should have given her vengeance; a dull cold sense of utter desolation and

isolation was always on her; the injustice of the people began to turn her blood to gall, her courage into

It was, in truth, but the despairing desire to live that stirred within her; to know, to feel, to roam, to enjoy, to

suffer still, if need be; but to suffer something else than the endless toil of the fieldox and towhorse,

something else than the unavenged blow that pays the ass and the dog for their services.

The desire to be free grew upon her with all the force and fury inherited from her father's tameless and

everwandering race; if a crime could have made her free she would have seized it.

She was in the prison of a narrow and hated fate; and from it she looked out on the desert of an endless hate,

which stretched around her without one blossom of love, one wellspring of charity, rising in its deathlike

The dreamy imaginations, the fantastic pictures that had been so strong in her in her early years, were still

there, though distorted by ignorance and inflamed by despair. Though, in her first poignant grief for him, she

had envied Marcellin his hardwon rest, his grave in the public ditch of the town, it was not in her to desire to

die. She was too young, too strong, too restless, too impatient, and her blood of the desert and the forest was

What she wanted was to live. Live as the great moor bird did that she had seen float one day over these pale,

pure, blue skies, with its mighty wings outstretched in the calm grey weather; which came none knew

whence, and which went none knew whither; which poised silent and stirless against the clouds; then called

with a sweet wild lovenote to its mate, and waited for him as he sailed in from the misty shadows where the

sea lay; and with him rose yet higher and higher in the air; and passed westward, cleaving the fields of light,

and so vanished;a queen of the wind, a daughter of the sun; a creature of freedom, of victory, of tireless

There was no boat but hers upon the river, which ran high and strong. She left the lights of the town behind

her, and came into the darkness of the country. Now and then the moon shone a moment through the storm

The bells of the cathedral chiming a miserere, sounded full of woe behind her in the still sad air.

There stood but one building between her and her home, a square strong tower built upon the edge of the

stream, of which the peasants told many tales of horror. It was of ancient date, spacious, and very strong. Its

upper chambers were used as a granary by the farmpeople who owned it; the vaulted hall was left unused by

them, partly because the river had been known to rise high enough to flood the floor; partly because legend

had bequeathed to it a ghastly repute of spirits of murdered men who haunted it.

No man or woman in all the country round dared venture to it after nightfall; it was all that the stoutest would

do to fetch and carry grain there at broad day; and the peasant who, being belated, rowed his marketboat

past it when the moon was high, moved his oar with one trembling hand, and with the other crossed himself

The unconscious pantheism breathed into her earliest thoughts, with the teachings of Phratos, made her see a

nameless mystical and always wondrous beauty in every blade of grass that fed on the dew, and with the

light, rejoiced; in every bare brown stone that flashed to gold in bright brook waters, under a tuft of weed; in

every hillside stream that leaping and laughing sparkled in the sun; in every wind that wailing went over the

For such a temper, no shape of the day or the night, no mystery of life or of death can have terror; it can dread

nothing, because every created thing has in it a divine life and an eternal mystery.

As she and the boat passed out into the loneliness of the country, with fitful moon gleams to light its passage,

There were on both sides strips of the silvery inland sands, beds of tall reeds, and the straight stems of

poplars, ghostlike in the gloom. The tide rushed faster; the winds blew more strongly from the north; the

boat rocked, and now and then was washed with water, till its edges were submerged.

She stood up in it, and gave her strength to its guidance; it was all that she could do to keep its course

straight, and steer it so that it should not grate upon the sand, nor be blown into the tangles of the river reeds.

For herself she had no care, she could swim like any cygnet; and, for her own sport, had spent hours in water

at all seasons. But she knew that to Claudis Flamma the boat was an honoured treasure, since to replace it

As she stood thus upright in the little tossing vessel, against the darkness and the winds, she passed the

solitary building; it had been placed so low down against the shore that its front walls, strong of hewn stone,

and deep bedded in the soil, were half submerged in the dense growth of the reeds and of the willowy osiers

which grew up and brushed the great arched windows of its haunted hall. The lower half of one of the seven

latticed windows had been blown wide open; a broad square casement, braced with iron bars, looking out

Her boat was swayed close against the wall, in a sudden lurch, caused by a fiercer gust of wind and higher

wave of the strong tide; the rushes entangled it; it grounded on the sand; there was no chance, she knew, of

setting it afloat again without her leaving it to gain a footing on the sand, and use her force to push it off into

She leaped out without a moment's thought amongst the rushes, with her kirtle girt up close above her knees.

But she was almost as light and sure of foot as a moorgull, when it lights upon the treacherous mosses of a

bog; and standing on the soaked and shelving bank, she thrust herself with all her might against her boat,

She was about to wade to it and spring into it, before the stream had time to move it farther out, when an owl

flew from the open window behind her. Unconsciously she turned her head to look whence the bird had

She saw the wide dark square of the opened casement; the gleam of a lamp within the cavernlike vastness of

The stone sills of the seven windows were level with the topmost sprays of the tall reeds an the willowy

underwood; they were, therefore, level with herself. She saw straight in; saw, so far as the pale uncertain

fusion of moon and lamp rays showed them, the height and width of this legendhaunted place; vaulted and

pillared with timber and with stone; dim and lonely as a cathedral crypt, and with the nightbirds flying to

and fro in it, as in a ruin, seeking their nests in its rafters and in the capitals of its columns.

No fear, but a great awe fell upon her. She let the boat drift on its way unheeded; and stood there at gaze like

She had passed this grain tower with every day or night that she had gone down the river upon the errands of

her taskmaster; but she had never looked within it once, holding the peasants' stories and terrors in the cold

Now, when she looked, she for the first time believedbelieved that the dead lived and gathered there.

White, shadowy, countless shapes loomed through the gloom, all motionless, all noiseless, all beautiful, with

In their midst burned a lamp; as the light burns night and day in the tombs of the kings of the east.

Her colour paled, her breath came and went, her body trembled like a leaf; yet she was not afraid. An ecstasy

of surprise and faith smote the dull misery of her life. She saw at last another world than the world of toil in

which she had laboured without sigh and without hope, as the blinded ox laboured in the brickfield, treading

his endless circles in the endless dark, and only told that it was day by blows.

She had no fear of themthese, whom she deemed the dwellers of the lands beyond the sun, could not be

more cruel to her than had been the sons of men. She yearned to them, longed for them; wondered with

rapture and with awe if these were the messengers of her father's kingdom; if these would have mercy on her,

and take her with them to their immortal homeswhether of heaven or of hell, what mattered it?

She raised herself upon the ledge above the rushes, poised herself lightly as a bird, and with deft soundless

feet dropped safely on the floor within, and stood in the midst of that enchanted world. Stood motionless,

gazing upwards with rapt eyes, and daring barely to draw breath with any audible sigh, lest she should rouse

them, and be driven from their presence. The flame of the lamp, and the moonlight, reflected back from the

foam of the risen waters, shed a strange, pallid, shadowy light on all the forms around her.

"They are the dead, surely," she thought, as she stood amongst them; and she stayed there with her arms

folded on her breast to still its beating, lest any sound should anger them and betray her; a thing lower than

The mists and the shadows between her eyes and them parted them as with a sea of dim and subtle vapour,

through which they looked white and implacable as a summer cloud, when it seems to lean and touch the

They were but the creations of an artist's classic dreams, but to her they seemed to thrill, to move, to sigh, to

gaze on her; to her, they seemed to live with that life of the air, of the winds, of the stars, of silence and

solitude, and all the nameless liberties of death, of which she dreamed when, shunned, and cursed, and

They were indeed the dead: the dead of that fair time when all the earth was young, and men communed with

their deities, and loved them, and were not afraid. When their gods were with them in their daily lives; and

when in every breeze that curled the sea, in every cloud that darkened in the west, in every watercourse that

leaped and sparkled in the sacred cedar groves, in every beesucked blossom of wild thyme that grew purple

by the marble temple steps, the breath and the glance of the gods were felt, the footfall and the voice of the

They were indeed the dead: the dead whodying earliest, whilst yet the earth was young enough to sorrow

for its heroic lives, to embalm them, to remember them, and to count them worthy of lamentperished in

From every space of the sombre chamber some one of these gazed on her through the mist.

Here the silver dove of Argos winged her way through the iron jaws of the dark seagates; here the white Io

wandered, in exile and unresting, for ever scourged on by the sting in her flesh, as a man by the genius in

Here the glad god whom all the woodlands loved, played in the moonlight, on his reeds, to the young stags

that couched at his feet in golden beds of daffodils and asphodel. Here over a darkened land the great

Demeter moved, bereaved and childless, bidding the vine be barren, and the fig trees stay fruitless, and the

seed of the sown furrows lie strengthless to multiply and fill the sickles with the ripe increase.

Here the women of Thebes danced upon Cith�ron in the mad moonless nights, under the cedars, with loose

hair on the wind, and bosoms that heaved and brake through their girdles of fawnskin. Here at this labour, in

Pher�, the sungod toiled as a slave; the highest wrought as the lowest; while wise Hermes stood by and

made mirth of the kingship that had bartered the rod of dominion for the mere music which empty air could

Here, too, the brother gods stood, Hypnos and Oneiros, and Thanatos; their bowed heads crowned with the

poppy and moonwort, the flowering fern, and the amaranth, and, pressed to their lips, a white rose, in the old

sweet symbol of silence; fashioned in the same likeness, with the same winged feet which yet fall so softly,

that no human ears hear their coming; the gods that most of all have pity on men, the gods of the Night and of

These she saw; not plainly, but through the wavering shadows, and the halo of the vapours which floated,

Their lips were dumb, and for her they had no name nor story, and yet they spoke to her with familiar voices.

She knew them, she knew that they were gods, and yet were dead; and in the eyes of the forestgod, who

piped upon his reeds, she saw the eyes of Phratos look on her with their tender laughter and their unforgotten

Just so had he looked so long agoso long!in the deep woods at moonrise, when he had played to the

bounding fawns, to the leaping waters, to the listening trees, to the sleeping flowers.

She sank on her knees, and buried her face in her hands, and weptwept with grief for the living lost for

Tears had rarely sprung to her proud rebellious eyes; she deemed them human things, things of weakness and

of shame; she had thrust them back and bitten her lips till the blood came, in a thousand hours of pain, rather

than that men should be able to see them and exult. The passion had its way for once, and spent itself, and

passed; she rose trembling and pale; with her eyes wet and dimmed in lustre, like stars that shine through

She thought that the gods might rise in wrath against her, even as mortals did, for daring to be weary of her

As she rose, she saw for the first time before the cold hearth the body of a man.

It was stretched straightly out on the stone floor; the chest was bare; upon the breast the right hand was

clenched close and hard; the limbs were in profound repose; the head was lit by the white glimmer from the

In the dim strange light it looked white as marble, colossal as a statue, in that passionless rest, that dread

Instinctively she drew nearer to him; breathless and allured she bent forward and looked closer on his face.

He was a god, like all the rest, she thought; but deadnot as they were dead, with eyes that still rejoiced in

the light of cloudless suns, and with lips that still smiled with a serene benignity and an eternal love,but

dead, as mortals die, without hope, without release, with their breath frozen on their tired lips, and bound on

She leaned down close by his side, and looked on himsorrowful, because, he alone of all the gods was

Looking thus she saw that his hands were clenched upon his chest, as though their latest effort had been to

tear the bones asunder, and wrench out a heart that ached beneath them; she saw that this was not a divine,

but a human form,dead indeed as the rest were, but dead by a man's death of assassination, or disease, or

suicide, or what men love to call the "act of heaven," whereby they mean the selfsown fruits of their own

He was human; with a human beauty; which yet white was cold and golden, full of serenity and sadness, was

like the sungod's yonder, and very strange to her whose eyes had only rested on the sunburnt, pinched, and

That beauty allured her; she forgot that he had against her the crime of that humanity which she hated. He

was too her like some noble forest beast, some splendid bird of prey, struck down by a bolt from some

"The gods slew him because he dared to be too like to themselves," she thought, "else he could not be so

The dreamy intoxication of fancy had deadened her to all sense of time or fact. The exaltation of nerve and

Herself, she was strong; and desolate no more, since the eyes of the immortals had smiled on her, and bade

her welcome there; and she felt an infinite pity on him, inasmuch as with all his likeness to them he yet,

She bent above him her dark rich face, with a soft compassion on it; she stroked the pale heavy gold of his

hair, with fingers brown and lithe, but infinitely gentle; she fanned the cold pain of his forehead, with the

breath of her roselike mouth; she touched him, stroked him, gazed on him, as she would have caressed and

looked on the velvet hide of the stag, the dappled plumage of the hawk, the white leaf of the lily.

A subtle, vague pleasure stole on her, a sharp sweet sorrow moved her,for he was beautiful, and he was

"If they would give him back his life?" she thought; and she looked for the glad forest god playing on his reed

amidst the amber asphodels, he who had the smile and the glance of Phratos. But she could see his face no

The wind rose, the moon was hidden, all was dark save the flicker of the flame of the lamp; the storm had

broken and the rain fell: she saw nothing now but the bowed head of Thanatos, holding the rose of silence to

"One life alone can ransom another. Live immortal with us; or for that dead manperish."

She bowed her head where she knelt in the darkness; the force of an irresistible fate seemed upon her; that

sacrifice which is at once the delirium and divinity of her sex had entered into her.

She was so lowly a thing; a creature so loveless and cursed; the gods, if they took her in pity, would soon

scorn her as men had scorned; whilst he whom they had slain therethough so still, so white and mute, so

powerless,he looked a king amongst men, though the gods for his daring had killed him.

"Let him live!" she murmured. "As for me,I am nothingnothing. Let me die as the Dust dieswhat

The wind blew the flame of the lamp into darkness; the moon still shone through the storm on to the face of

He alone heard. Hethe only friend who, come he early or late, fails no living thing at the last.

He alone remained, and waited for her: he, whom alone of all the godsfor this man's sakeshe chose.

WHEN the trance of her delirious imaginations passed, they left her tranquil, but with the cold of death

seeming to pass already from the form she looked on into hers. She was still crouching by his body on the

He was dead still;or so she thought;she watched him with dim dreaming eyes, watched him as women

She drew the fair glistening hair through her hands; she touched the closed and blueveined eyelids tenderly;

she laid her ear against his heart to hearken for the first returning pulses of the life she had brought back to

It was no more to her the dead body of a man, unknown, unheeded, a stranger, and because a mortal, of

necessity to her a foe. It was a nameless wondrous mystic force and splendour to which she had given back

the pulse of existence, the light of day; which was no more the gods', nor any man's, no more the prey of

death, nor the delight of love; but hershersshared only with the greatness she had bought for him.

Even as she looked on him she felt the first faint flutter in his heart; she heard the first faint breath upon his

His eyes unclosed and looked straight at hers, without reason or lustre in them, clouded with a heavy and

"To dieof hungerlike a rat in a trap!" he muttered in his throat, and strove to rise; he fell back, senseless,

She started; her hands ceased to wander through his hair, and touch his cold lips as she would have touched

the cup of a flower; she rose slowly to her feet. She had heard; and the words, so homely and so familiar in

the lives of all the poor, pierced the wild faiths and visions of her heated brain, as a ray of the clear daybreak

The words were so terrible, and yet so trite; they cleft the mists of her dreams as tempered steel cleaves folds

She muttered the phrase after himshaken from her stupor by its gaunt and common truth.

Her heart rebelled even against her newly found immortal masters, since, being in wrath, they could not strike

him swiftly with their vengeance, but had killed him thus with these lingering and most bitter pangs, and had

As she stooped above him, she could discern the faint earthy cavernous odour, which comes from the languid

She had known that famine odour many a time ere then; in the hut of Manon Dax, and by the hedge rows, and

in the ditches, that made the sick beds of many another, as old, as wretched, and as nobly stubborn against

alms; in times of drought or in inclement winters, the people in all that country side suffered continually from

the hunger torment; she had often passed by men and women, and children, crouching in black and wretched

cabins, or lying fever stricken on the cold stony fields, glad to gnaw a shred of sheepskin, or suck a thorny

All light had died; the night was black with storm; the shadowy shapes were gone; there were the roar of the

rushing river, and the tumult of the winds and rains upon the silence; all she saw was this golden head; this

colourless face; this lean and nerveless hand that rested on the feebly beating heart;these she saw still as

At the words, all the quick resource and self reliance which the hard life she led had sharpened and

strengthened in her, awoke amidst the dreams and passions, and meditations of her mystical faiths, and her

The boldness and the independence of her nature roused themselves; she had prayed for him to the gods, and

to the gods given herself for him; that was wellif they kept their faith. But if they forsook it? The blood

rushed back to her heart with its old proud current; alone, she swore to herself to save him. To save him in the

In the street that day, she had found the half of a roll of black bread. It had lain in the mud, none claiming it: a

sulky lad passed it in scorn, a beggar with gold in his wallet kicked it aside with his crutch; she took it and

put it by for her supper; so often some stripe or some jibe replaced a begrudged meal for her at Flamma's

That was all she had. A crust dry as a bone, which could do nothing towards saving him, could be of no more

use to pass those clenched teeth, and warm those frozen veins, than so much of the wet sand gathered up from

the river shore. Neither could there be any wood, which, if brought in and lit, would burn. All the timber was

green and full of sap, and all, for a score square leagues around, was at that hour drenched with water.

She knew that the warmth of fire to dry the deadly dampness in the air, the warmth of wine to quicken the

chillness and the torpor of the reviving life, were what were wanted beyond all other things. She had seen

famine in all its stages, and she knew the needs and dangers of that fell disease.

There was not a creature in all the world, who would have given her so much as a loaf or a faggot; even if the

As it was, she never even dreamed of it; every human hand,to the rosy fist of the smallest and fairest

child,was always clenched against her; she would have sooner asked for honey from a lot of snakes, or

sought a bed of roses in a swarm of wasps, than have begged mercy or aid at any human hearth.

She knew nothing, either, of an social laws that might have made such need as this, a public care on public

alms. She was used to see men, women, and children perishing of want; she had heard people curse the land

that bore, and would not nourish, them. She was habituated to work hard for every bit or drop that passed her

lips; she lived amidst multitudes who did the same; she knew nothing of any public succour to which appeal

If bread were not forthcoming, a man or a woman had to die for lack of it, as Manon Dax and Marcellin had

done; that seemed to her a rule of fate, against which there was no good in either resistance or appeal.

What could she do? she pondered. Whatever she would do, she knew that she had to do quickly. Yet she

To do anything, she had to stoop herself down to that sin to which no suffering or privation of her own had

All quoted it as her only birthright; all told her that she was imbued with it body and soul; all saw it in her

slightest acts, in her most harmless words; and she abhorred this, the one gift which men cast to her as her

only heirloom, with a strong scornful loathing which stood her in the stead of virtue.

With an instinctive cynicism which moved her con tinually, yet to which she could have given no name, she

had loved to see the children and the maidens,those who held her accursed, and were themselves held so

innocent and just,steal the ripe cherries from the stalk, pluck the forbidden flowers that nodded over the

convent walls, pierce through the boundary fence to reach another's pear, speak a lie softly to the old

greyheaded priest, and lend their ripe lips to a soldier's rough salute, whilst she, the daughter of hell, pointed

at, despised, shunned as a leper, hunted as a witch,kept her hands soilless and her lips untouched.

It was a pride to her, to say in her teeth, "I am stronger than they," when she saw the stolen peach in their

hand, and heard the lying word on their tongue. It had a savage sweetness for her, the will with which she

denied herself the luxurious fruit that, unseen, she could have reached a thousand times from the walls when

her throat was parched and her body empty; with which she uttered the truth, and the truth alone, though it

brought the blows of the cudgel down on her shoulders; with which she struck aside in disdain, the insolent

eyes, and mocking mouths of the youths, who would fain have taught her, that if beggared of all other things,

She hated sin, for sin seemed to her only a human word for utter feebleness; she had never sinned for herself,

as far as she knew; yet to serve this man, on whose face she had never looked before that night, she was ready

She had been so proud of her freedom for all those frailties of passion, and greed, and self pity, with which

the souls of the maidens around her were haunted;so proud, with the chaste, tameless arrogance of the

women of her race, that was bred in their blood, and taught them as their first duty, by the oriental and jealous

She had been so proud!yet the cleanliness of hand and heart, this immunity from her enemies' weakness,

this independence which she had worn as a buckler of proof against all blows, which she had girded about her

as a zone of purity more precious than goldthis, the sole treasure she had, she was about to surrender for

It was a greater gift, and one harder to give, than this mortal life she had offered for his to his gods.

As she kneeled on the stone floor beside him, her heart was torn with a mute and violent struggle; her bent

face grew dark and rigid, her haughty brows knit together in sadness and conflict.

In the darkness he moved a little; he was unconscious, yet ever, in that burning stupor, one remembrance, one

"That the mind of a man can be killed for the want of the food thrown to swine!" he muttered drearily, in the

The words were broken, disjointed, almost inarticulate; but they stung her to action as the spur stings a horse.

She started erect, and crossed the chamber, leapt through the open portion of the casement, and lighted again

without, knee deep in water. She lost her footing and fell, entangled in the rushes; but she rose and climbed in

the darkness to where the roots of an oak stump stretched into the stream, and, gaining the shore, ran as well

as the storm and the obscurity allowed her, along the bank, straight towards Ypr�s.

It was a wild and bitter night; the rushing of the foaming river went by her all the way; the path was flooded;

she was up to her ankles in water at every step, and was often forced to wade through channels a foot deep.

She went on straight towards her home, unconscious of cold, of fatigue, of her wet clinging clothes, of the

water that splashed unseen in the black night up against her face as her steps sank into some shaking strip of

marsh, some brook that, in the rising of the river, ran hissing and swelling to twice its common height.

All she was sensible of was of one inspiration, one purpose, one memory that seemed to give her the wings of

the wind, and yet to clog her feet with the weight of lead,the memory of that white and senseless face,

She reached Ypr�s, feeling and scenting her way by instinct, as a dog does, all through the tumult of the air

and against the force of the driving rains. She met no living creature; the weather was too bad for even a

beggar to be afoot in it, and even the stray and homeless beasts had sought some shelter from a ruined shed or

As softly as a leaf may fall she unloosed the latch of the orchard, stole through the trees, and took her way in

an impenetrable gloom, with the swift sure flight of one to whom the place had long been as familiar by night

The uproar of wind and rain would have muffled the loudest tread. The shutters of the millhouse were all

closed; it was quite still. Flamma and his serving people were all gone to their beds, that they might save by

She passed round to the side of the house, climbed up the tough network of a tree of ivy, and without much

labour loosed the fastenings of her own loft window, and entering there passed through the loft into the body

Opening the door of the landingplace noiselessly, she stole down the staircase, making no more sound than

a hare makes stealing over mosses to its form. The everwakeful lightlysleeping ears of a miser were near at

She went hardily, fearlessly, her mind once set upon the errand. She did not reason with herself, as more

timorous creatures might have done, that being half starved, and paid not at all, as recompense for strong and

continual labour, she was but about to take a just due withheld, a fair wage long overdue. She only resolved

to take what another needed by a violence which she had never employed to serve her own needs, and having

resolved went to execute her resolution with the unhesitating dauntlessness that was bred in her, flesh and

Knowing all the turns and steps of the obscure passages, she quickly found her way to the store chambers

The latter was burnt and the former eaten sparingly and grudgingly, but the store of both was at this season of

It had more than once happened that the mill had been cut off from all communication with the outer world

by floods that had reached its upper casements, and Claudis Flamma was provided against any such

accidents; the more abundantly as he had more than once found it a lucrative matter in such seasons of

inundation to lower provisions from his roof to boats floating below when the cotters around were in dire

FolleFarine opened the shutter of the storeroom and let in the faint grey glimmer from the clearing skies.

A bat which had been resting from the storm among the rafters fluttered violently against the lattice; a

sparrow driven down the chimney in the hurricane flew up from one of the shelves with a twittering outcry.

She paused to open the lattice for them both, and set them free to fly forth into the still sleeping world; then

she took an old rush basket that hung upon a nail, and filled it with the best of such homely food as was to be

found thereloaves, and meats, and rice, and oil, and a flask of the richest winewine of the south, of the

That done, she tied together as large a bundle of brushwood and of faggots as she could push through the

window, which was broad and square, and thrust it out by slow degrees; put her basket through likewise, and

lowered it carefully to the ground; she followed them herself with the agility born of long practice, and

She waited but to close and refasten the shutter from without, then threw the mass of faggots on her

shoulders, and carrying in her arms the osier basket, took her backward way through the orchards to the river.

She was well used to carry burdens as heavy as the mules bore, and to walk under them unassisted fro many

leagues to the hamlets and markets round about. But even her strength of bronze had become fatigued; she

felt frozen to the bone; her clothes were saturated with water, and her limbs were chill and stiff. Yet she

trudged on, unblenching and unpausing, over the soaked earth, and through the swollen water and the reeds,

keeping always by the side of the stream, that was so angry in the darkness; by the side of the grey flooded

She met no living creature except a fox, who rushed between her feet, holding in its mouth a screaming

Once she stumbled and struck her head and breast with a dull blow against a pile of wood which, in the

furious weather, was unseen by her. It stunned her for the instant, but she rallied and looked up with eyes as

used to pierce the deepest gloom as any goshawk's; she discerned the outline of the Calvary, towering high

and weirdlike above the edge of the river, where the priests and people had placed it, so that the boatmen

The lantern on the cross shone far across the stream, but shed no light upon the path she followed.

At its foot she had stumbled and been bruised upon her errand of mercy; the reflection of its rays streamed

across to the opposing shore, and gave help to a boat load of smugglers landing stolen tobacco in a little

"How like their god is to them!" she thought: the wooden crucifix was the type of her persecutors; of those

who flouted and mocked her, who flung and pierced her as a witch; who cursed her because she was not of

The cross was the hatred of the world incarnated to her; it was in Christ's name that Marcellin's corpse had

been cast on the dung and in the ditch; it was in Christ's name that the women had avenged on her the pity

which she had shown to Manon Dax; it was in Christ's name that Flamma had scourged her because she

would not pass rotten figs for sweet. For the name of Christ is used to cover every crime, by the peasant who

cheats his neighbour of a copper coin, as by the sovereign who massacres a nation for a throne.

She left the black cross reared there against the rushes, and plodded on through sand and rain and flood,

The storm abated a little, and every now and then a gleam of moonlight was shed upon the flooded meadows.

She gained the base of the tower, and by means of the length of rope let, by degrees, the firewood and the

basket through the open portion of the window on to the floor below, then again followed them herself.

Her first glance to the desolate hearth showed her that the hours of her absence had brought no change there.

"They have left it all to me," she thought, with the old strange sweet yearning in her heart over this life that

She first flung the faggots and brushwood on the hearth, and set them on fire to burn, fanned by the breath of

the wind. Then she poured out a little of the wine, and kneeled down by him, and forced it drop by drop

The wine was pure and old; it suffused his attenuated frame as with a rush of new blood; under her hand his

She broke bread in the wine and put the soaked morsels to his mouth as softly as she would have fed some

He was unconscious still, but he swallowed what she held to him, without knowing what he did; a slight

warmth gradually spread over his limbs; a strong shudder shook him. His eyes looked dully at her through a

"J'avais quelque chose l�!" he muttered, incoherently, his voice rattling in his hollow chest, as he raised

himself a little on one arm. "J'avais quelque chose l�!" and with a sigh he fell back once morehis head

Amidst the heat and mists of his aching brain, one thought remained with himthat he had created things

greater than himself, and that he died like a dog, powerless to save them. The saddest dying words that the air

ever bare on its breaththe one bitter vain regret of every genius that the common herds of men stamp out

under leaden hoofs, as they slay their mad cattle or their drunken mobsstayed on the blurred confusion of

his mind, which, in its stupor and its helplessness, still knew that once it had been strong to createthat once

it had been clear to recordthat once it had dreamed the dreams that save men from the life of the

swinethat once it had told to the world the truth divested of lies,and that none had seen, none had

There is no more terrible woe upon earth than the woe of the stricken brain, which remembers the days of its

strength, the living light of its reason, the sunrise of its proud intelligence, and knows that these have passed

away like a tale that is told; like a year that is spent; like an arrow that is shot to the stars, and flies aloft, and

falls in a swamp; like a fruit that is too well loved of the sun, and so, oversoon ripe, is dropped from the tree

and forgot on the grasses, dead to all joys of the dawn and the noon and the summer, but still alive to the

sting of the wasp, to the fret of the aphis, to the burn of the drought, to the theft of the parasite.

She only dimly understood, and yet she was smitten with awe and reverence at that endless grief which had

no taint of cowardice upon it, but was pure as the patriot's despair, impersonal as the prophet's agony.

For the first time, the intellect in her consciously awoke. For the first time she heard a human mind find voice

even in its stupor and its wretchedness to cry aloud, in reproach to its unknown Creator:

"I am yours! Shall I perish with the body? Why have you ever bade me desire the light and seek it, if for ever

you must thrust me into the darkness of negation? Shall I be Nothing?like the muscle that rots, like the

bones that crumble, like the flesh that turns to ashes, and blows in a film on the winds? Shall I die so?

Time went by; the chimes from the cathedral tolled dully through the darkness, over the expanse of the flood.

The light from the burning wood shone redly and fitfully. The sigh and moan of the tossed rushes, and of the

water birds, awakened and afraid, came from the outer world on the winds that blew through the desolation of

the haunted chamber. Grey owls flew in the high roof, taking refuge from the night. Rats hurried noiseless

and eager over the stones of the floor, seeking stray grains that fell through the rafters from the granaries

She noticed none of these things; she never looked up nor around: all she heard was the throb of the delirious

words on the silence, all she saw was the human face in the clouded light through the smoke from the flame.

The glow of the fire shone on the bowed head of Thanatos, the laughing eyes of Pan, Hermes' fair cold

derisive face, and the majesty of the Lykeg�n�s toiling in the ropes that bound him to the millstones to grind

But at the gods she barely looked; her eyes were bent upon the human form beside her.

She crouched beside him, half kneeling and half sitting: her clothes were drenched, the fire scorched, the

draughts of air froze, her; she had neither eaten nor drunk since the noon of the day; but she had no other

remembrance than of this life which had the beauty of the sunking and the misery of the beggar.

He lay long, restless, unconscious, muttering strange sad words, at times of sense, at times of folly, but

always, whether lucid or delirious, words of rebellion against his fate, of a despairing lament for the soul in

After awhile the feverish mutterings of his voice grew lower and less frequent; his eyes seemed to become

sensible of the glare of the fire, and to contract and close in a more conscious pain; after a yet longer time he

ceased to stir so restlessly, ceased to sigh and shudder; he grew quite still, his breath came tranquilly, his head

The personal fears, the womanly terrors, which would have assailed creatures at once less savage and less

innocent never moved her for an instant. That there was any strangeness in her action, any peril in this

solitude, she never dreamed. Her heart, bold with the blood of Taric, could know no physical fear; and her

mind at once ignorant and visionary, her temper at once fierce and unselfish, kept from her all thought of

those suspicions, which would fall on and chastise an act like hers; suspicions, such as would have made

women less pure and less dauntless tremble at that lonely house, that night of storm, that unknown fate which

she had taken into her own hands, unwitting and unheeding whether good or evil might be the issue thereof.

To her he was beautiful, he suffered, she had saved him from death, and he was hers: and this was all that she

remembered. She dealt with him as she would have done with some forest beast or bird that she should have

His head had fallen on her, and she crouched unwearied in the posture that gave him easiest rest. With a

touch so light that it could not awaken him, she stroked the lustreless gold of his hair, and from time to time

Innumerable dreams, shapeless, delicious, swept through her brain, as the echoes of some music, faint yet

unutterably sweet, that half arouses and half soothes some sleeper in a grey drowsy summer dawn.

For the first time since the melodies of Phratos had died for ever from off her ear she was happy.

She did not ask wherefore,neither of herself nor of the gods did she question whence came this

wonderflower of her nameless joy. She only sat quiet, and let the hours drift by, and watched this stranger as

Whilst yet it seemed night still, the silence trembled with the pipe of waking birds, the darkness quivered

Over the flood and the fields the first light broke. From the unseen world behind the mist, faint bells rang in

He moved in his sleep, and his eyes unclosed, and looked at her face as it hung above him, like some drooped

It was but the gaze of a moment, and his lids dropped again, weighted with the intense weariness of a slumber

that held all his senses close in its leaden chains. But the glance, brief though it was, had been

conscious;under it a sudden flush passed over her, as the life stirs in the young woodlands at the near

coming of the spring. For the first time since her birth she became wholly human.

A sharp terror made her tremble like a leaf; she put his head softly from her on the ground, and rose,

It was not the gods whom she feared, it was herself. She had never once known that she had beauty, any more

than the flower knows it blowing on the wind. She had passed through the crowds of fair and market, not

knowing why the youths looked after her with cruel eyes all aglow. She had walked through them, indifferent

and unconscious, only thinking that they wanted to hunt her down as an unclean beast, and dared not, because

She had taken a vague pleasure in the supple grace of her own form, as she saw it mirrored in some woodland

pool where she had bathed amidst the waterlilies; but it had been only such an instinctive and unstudied

pleasure as the swan takes in seeing her silver breast shine back to her, on the glassy current adown which she

Now,as she rose and stood, as the dawn broke, beside him, on the hearth, and heard the birds' first waking

notes, that told her the sun was even then touching the edge of the veiled world to light, a hot shame smote

She looked down on herself, and saw that her soaked skirts were knotted above her knees, as she had bound

them when she had leaped from the boat's side; that her limbs were wet and glistening with river water, and

the moisture from the grasses, and the sand and shingle of the shore; and that the linen of her vest, threadbare

with age, left her arms bare to the shoulders, and showed, through its rents, the gleam of her warm brown

A sudden horror came upon her, lest he should awake again and see her as she was;wet, miserable,

She did not know that she had beauty in her; she did not know that even as she was, she had an exquisite

grace in her savage loveliness, as stormbirds have in theirs against the thundercloud and the lightning

She felt a sudden shrinking from all chance of his clearer and more conscious gaze; a sudden agony of shy

dread, and longing to hide herself under the earth, or take refuge in the depths of the waters, rather than meet

the eyes to which she had given back the light of life cast on her in abhorrence and in scorn. That he could

She had been an outcast amongst an alien people too long to dream that any human love or gratitude or praise

could ever fall on her. She had been too long cursed by every tongue, to dream that any human voice could

ever arise in honour or in welcome to a thing so despised and criminal as she. For the gift which she had

given this man too would only live to curse her;that she had known when she had offered it.

She drew her rude garments closer, and stole away with velvet footfall, through the twilight of the dawn; her

With the rising of the day all her new joy was dead. With the waking of the world, all her dreams shrank back

into secrecy and shame. The mere timid song of the linnet in the leafless bushes seemed sharp on her ear,

calling on her to rise and go and toil with the beasts of the share and the shaft, as the creature of labour, of

At the casement, she turned and cast one lingering glance upon him where he slept; then once more she

The sleeper never stirred, but dreamed on motionless, in the darkness and the silence, and the drowsy

He dreamed indeed, of a woman's form, halfbare, golden of hue like a fruit of the south, blue veined, and

flushed to changing rose heats, like an opal's fire; with limbs strong and yet slender, gleaming wet with water,

and brown arched feet shining with silvery sands; with mystical eyes, black as night and amorouslidded;

and a mouth like the halfclosed bud of a flower, which sighing seemed to breathe upon him the fragrance of

dim cedarwoods shrouded in summer rains, of honeyweighted heather blown by moorland winds, of

almond blossoms shed like snow against a purple sea; of all things airborn, sunfed, fair and free.

But he saw these only as in a dream; and, as a dream, when he awakened they had passed.

Though still dark from mists and heavy clouds, the dawn grew on to morning as she went noiselessly away

The rivermeadows were all flooded, and on the opposite banks the road was impassable; but on her side she

could still find footing, for the ground there had a steeper rise, and the swollen tide had not reached in any

public roadway too high for her to wade, or draw herself by the halfmerged bushes through it on the

The low sun was hidden in a veil of water. The old conventbells of all the countryside rang through the

mists. The day was very young as yet; but the life of the soil and the stream was waking as the birds were.

Boats went by on the current, bearing a sad freightage of sheep drowned in the night, and ruined peasants,

whose little wealth of stack and henhouse had been swept down by the unlookedfor tide.

From the distant banks, the voices of women came muffled through the fog, weeping and wailing for some

lost lamb, choked by the water in its fold, or some pretty breadth of garden, just welcome to their sight with

Through the clouds of vapour that curled in a dense opaque smoke from the wet earth, there loomed the

dusky shapes of oxen; their belled horns sending forth a pleasant music from the gloom. On the air there was

an odour from soaked grasses and upturned sods, from the breath of the herds lowing hock deep in water,

from the green knots of broken primrose roots sailing by on the brown rough river.

A dying bush of grey lavender swept by on the stream; it had the fresh earth of its lost garden home still

about it; and in its stems a robin had built her little nest. The nest streamed in tatters and ruin on the wind, the

She held on her way blindly, mutely, mechanically, by sheer force of long habit. Her mind was in a trance:

Yet she went straight home, as the horse being blinded will do, to the place where its patience and fealty have

As she had groped her way through the gloom of the night, and found it, though the light of the roadside

Christ had been turned from her, so in the same blind manner she had groped her way to her own conceptions

of honesty and duty. She hated the bitter and cruel old man, with a slave's hatred, mute and enduring, that

nothing could have changed; but all the same she served him faithfully. She was an untamed animal indeed,

that he had yoked to his ploughshare; but she did her work loyally and doggedly; and whenever she had

shaken her neck free of the yoke, she returned and thrust her head through it again, whether he scourged her

It was partially from the force of habit which is strong upon all creatures; it was partially from a vague

instinct in her to work out her right to the begrudged shelter which she received, and not to be beholden for it

Claudis Flamma screamed at her from the open door of the loft, where he was weighing corn for the grinding.

He cast a foul word at her, new upon his lips. She was silent all the same; her arms crossed on her breast, her

She thought that, very likely, he would kill her for it. Once when she had lost an osier basket, not a hundredth

part of the cost of this vessel, he had beaten her till every bone in her frame had seemed broken for many a

week. But she looked up quietly, standing there amongst the dripping bushes and the cheerless grassy ways.

That she never told a lie, he above in the loft knew by long proof; but this was in his sight only a piece with

the strength born in her from the devil; the devil had in all ages told so many truths to the confusion of the

"I got out to push it off the sand. It had grounded. I forgot it. It went adrift."

"I can! you shall know truly that I can! Go, get the boatfind it above or below wateror to the town

The word smote her with a sudden pang. For the first time her courage failed her. She turned and went in

In the wet daybreak, through the swollen pools and the soaked thickets, she searched for the missing vessel;

knowing well that it would be scarcely less than a miracle which could restore it to her; and that the god upon

For several hours she searched; hungry, drenched, ready to drop with exhaustion, as she was used to see the

She passed many peasants; women on their mules, men in their barges, children searching for such flotsam

and jetsam as the water might have flung upon the land from the little flooded gardens, and the few riverside

cabins, which it had invaded in the night. She asked tidings of the boat from none of these. What she could

not do for herself, it never occurred to her that others could do for her. It was an ignorance that was strength.

At length, to her amaze, she found it; saved for her by the branches of a young tree, which, being blown

down, had fallen into the stream, and had caught the boat hard and fast as in a net.

At sore peril to herself she dislodged it with infinite labour from the entanglement of the boughs, and at

scarce less peril, rowed on her homeward way upon the swollen force of the turbid river; full against the tide

which again was flowing inland, from the sea that beat the bar, away to the northward, in the full sunrise.

It was far on in the forenoon, as she drew near the orchards of Ypr�s, brown in their leaflessness, and with

grey lichens blowing from their boughs, like hoary beards of trembling paupers shaking in the icy breaths of

She saw that Claudis Flamma was at work amidst his trees, pruning and delving in the red and chilly day.

She went up the winding stairs, planks green and slippery with wet river reeds, which led straight through the

"I have found the boat," she said, standing before him; her voice was faint and very tired, her whole body

He turned with his billhook in his hands. There was a leap of gladness at his heart; the miser's gladness over

"It is well for you that you have," he said with bitter meaning. "I will spare you half the stripes:strip."

Without a word of remonstrance, standing before him in the grey shadow of the lichens, and the red mists of

the morning, she pushed the rough garments from her breast and shoulders, and vanquishing her weakness,

"I am guiltythis time," she said to herself as the lash fell:she was thinking of her theft.

A SCORE of years before, in a valley of the far north, a group of eager and silent listeners stood gathered

It was in the green Norwegian spring, when the silence of the winter world had given way to a million sounds

of waking life from budding leaves and nesting birds, and melting torrents and warm winds, fanning the

The little valley was peopled by a hardy race of herdsmen and of fishers; men who kept their goat flocks on

the steep sides of the mountains, or went down to the deep waters in search of a scanty subsistence. But they

were a people simple, noble, grave, even in a manner heroic and poetic, a people nurtured on the old grand

songs of a mighty past, and holding a pure faith in the traditions of a great seasovereignty. They listened,

breathless, to the man who addressed them, raised on a tribune of rough rock, and facing the ocean, where it

stretched at the northern end of the vale; a man peasantborn himself, but gifted with a native eloquence;

halfpoet, halfpreacher; fanatic and enthusiast; one who held it as his errand to go to and fro the land,

raising his voice against the powers of the world, and of wealth, and who spoke against these with a fervour

and force which, to the unlearned and impressionable multitudes that heard him, seemed the voice of a genius

When a boy he had been a shepherd, and dreaming in the loneliness of the mountains, and by the side of the

deep hilllakes far away from any sound or steps of human life, a madness, innocent, and in its way

He believed himself born to carry the message of grace to the nations; and to raise up his voice against those

passions whose fury had never assailed him, and against those riches whose sweetness he had never tasted.

So he had wandered from city to city, from village to village; mocked in some places, revered in others;

protesting always against the dominion of wealth, and speaking with a strange pathos and poetry which

thrilled the hearts of his listeners, and had in it, at times, almost the menace and the mystery of a prophet's

He lived very poorly; he was gentle as a child; he was a cripple and very feeble; he drank at the wayside rills

with the dogs; he lay down on the open fields with the cattle; yet he had a power in him that had its sway over

the people, and held the scoffers and the jesters quiet under the spell of his tender and flutelike voice.

Raised above the little throng upon the bare red rock, with the green fiords and the dim pinewoods

stretching round him as far as his eye could reach, he preached, now to the groups of fishers and herdsmen,

and foresters and hunters; protesting to this simple people against the force of wealth, and the lust of

He told them of what he had seen in the great cities through which he had wandered; of the corruption and the

vileness, and the wantonness; of the greed in which the days and the years of men's lives were spent; of the

amassing of riches for which alone the nations cared, so that all loveliness, all simplicity, all high endeavour,

all innocent pastime, were abjured and derided amongst them. His voice was sweet and full as the swell of the

music as he spoke to them, telling them one of the many fables and legends, of which he had gathered a full

This was the parable he set before them that day, whilst the rude toilers of the forests and the ocean stood

quiet as little children, hearkening with upturned faces and bated breath, as the sun went down behind the

"There lived once in the east, a great king; he dwelt far away, amongst the fragrant fields of roses, and in the

"He was young, he was beloved, he was fair of face and form; and the people as they hewed stone, or brought

water, said amongst themselves, 'Verily, this man is as a god; he goes where he lists, and he lies still or rises

up as he pleases; and all fruits of all lands are culled for him; and his nights are nights of gladness, and his

days, when they dawn, are all his to sleep through or spend as he wills.' But the people were wrong. For this

"His buckler was sown with gems, but his heart beneath it was sore. For he had been long bitterly harassed by

foes who descended on him as wolves from the hills in their hunger, and he ha been long plauged with heavy

wars and with bad rice harvests, and with many troubles to his nation that kept it very poor, and forbade him

to finish the building of new marble palaces, and the making of fresh gardens of delight, on which his heart

was set. So he, being weary of a barren land and of an empty treasury, with all his might prayed to the gods

that all he touched might turn to gold, even as he had heard had happened to some magician long before in

other ages. And the gods gave him the thing he craved; and his treasury overflowed. No king had ever been

"When he stretched out his hand to gather the rose that blossomed in his path, a golden flower scentless and

stiff was all he grasped. When he called to him the carrierdove that sped with a scroll of love words across

the mountains, the bird sank on his breast a carven piece of metal. When he was athirst and shouted to his cup

bearer for drink, the red wine ran a stream of molten gold. When he would fain have eaten, the pulse and

pomegranate grew alike to gold between his teeth. And lo! at eventide, when he sought the silent chambers of

his harem, saying, 'here at least shall I find rest,' and bent his steps to the couch whereon his best beloved

slave was sleeping, a statue of gold was all he drew into his eager arms, and cold shut lips of sculptured gold

"That night the great king slew himself, unable any more to bear this agony; since all around him was

"Now the world is too like that king, and in its greed of gold it will barter its life away.

"Look you,this thing is certainI say that the world will perish, even as that king perished, slain as he was

"The future of the world is written. For God has granted their prayer to men. He has made them rich and their

"When all green places have been destroyed in the builder's lust of gain:when all the lands are but

mountains of brick, and piles of wood and iron:when there is no moisture anywhere; and no rain ever

falls:when the sky is a vault of smoke; and all the rivers reek with poison:when forest and stream, and

moor and meadow, and all the old green wayside beauty are things vanished and forgotten:when every

gentle timid thing of brake and bush, of air and water, has been killed, because it robbed them of a berry or a

fruit:when the earth is one vast city, whose young children behold neither the green of the field nor the

blue of the sky; and hear no song but the hiss of the stream, and know no music but the roar of the

furnace:when the old sweet silence of the countryside, and the old sweet sounds of waking birds, and the

old sweet fall of summer showers, and the grace of a hedgerow bough, and the glow of the purple heather,

and the note of the cuckoo and cushat, and the freedom of waste and of woodland, are all things dead, and

remembered of no man:then the world, like the Eastern king, will perish miserably of famine and of

drought, with gold in its stiffened hands, and gold in its withered lips, and gold everywhere:gold that the

people can neither eat nor drink, gold that cares nothing for them, but mocks them horribly:gold for which

their fathers sold peace and health, and holiness and liberty:gold that is one vast grave."

His voice sank, and the silence that followed was only filled with the sound of the winds in the pinewoods,

The people were very still and afraid; for it seemed to them that he had spoken as prophets speak, and that his

Suddenly on the awestricken silence an answering voice rang, clear, scornful, bold, and with the eager and

"If I had been that king, I would not have cared for woman, or bird, or rose. I would have lived long enough

to enrich my nation, and mass my armies, and die a conqueror. What would the rest have mattered? You are

mad, O Preacher! to rail against gold. You flout a god that you know not, and that never has smiled upon

The speaker stood outside the crowd with a dead seabird in his hand; he was in his early boyhood, he had

long locks of bright hair that curled loosely on his shoulders, and eyes of northern blue, that flashed like steel

The people, indignant and terrified at the cold rough words which blasphemed their prophet, turned with one

accord to draw off the rash doubter from that sacred audience place, but the Preacher stayed their hands with

And he went on his way out from the people with his dead bird, which he had slain with a stone that he might

"Yet he will not give his life for gold," he murmured. "For there is that in him greater than gold, which will

AND the words of the Preacher had come true; so true that the boy Arsl�n, grown to manhood, had dreamed

of fame, followed the genius in him, and having failed to force the world to show faith in him, had dropped

down dying on a cold hearth, for sheer lack of bread, under the eyes of the gods.

The wood smouldered, still warming the stone chamber. The owls that nested in the ceiling of the hall were

beating their wings impatiently against the closed casements, blind with the light and unable to return to their

haunts and homes. The food and the wine stood beside him on the floor; the fire had scared the rats from

He raised himself slowly, and by sheer instinct ate and drank with the avidity of long fast. Then he stared

His first sensation was disappointment, anger, weariness. He did not reason. He only felt.

Little by little a disjointed remembrance came to him. He remembered that he had been famished in the

coldness of the night, had endured much torment of the body, had fallen headlong and lost his consciousness.

He looked stupidly for awhile at the burning logs; at the pile of brambles; at the flask of wine, and the simple

stores of food. He looked at the grey closed window, through which a silvery daylight came. There was not a

sound in the house; there was only the cracking of the wood and the sharp sealike smell of the smoking pine

boughs, to render the place different from what it had been when he last had seen it.

He could recall nothing, except that he had starved for many days; had suffered, and must have slept.

Suddenly his face burned with a flush of shame. As sense returned to him, he knew that he must have

swooned from weakness produced by cold and hunger; that some one must have seen and succoured his

necessity; and that the food which he had half unconsciously devoured must have been the food of alms.

To have gone through all the aching pangs of winter in silence, asking aid of none, only to come to this at

last! To have been ready to die in all the vigour of virility, in all the strength of genius, only to be saved by

charity at the end! To have endured, mute and patient, the travail of all the barren years, only at their close to

He bit his lips till the blood started, as he thought of it. Some eyes must have looked on him, in his

wretchedness. Some face must have bent over him in misery. Some other human form must have been near

his in this hour of his feebleness and need, or this thing could never have been. He would have died alone and

unremembered of man, like a snake in its swamp or a fox in its earth. And such a death would have been to

Death before accomplishments is a failure, yet withal may be great; but life saved by alms is a failure, and a

"Why could they not let me be?" he cried in his soul against those unknown lives which had weighed his own

with the fetters of obligation. "Rather death than a debt! I was content to die; the bitterness was passed. I

And his heart was hard against them. They had stolen his only birthrightfreedom.

Had he craved life so much as to desire to live by shame he would sooner have gone out into the dusky night

and have snatched food enough for his wants from some rich husbandman's granaries, or have stabbed some

So he reasoned; stung and made savage by the scourge of enforced humiliation. Hating himself because, in

obedience to mere animal craving, he had taken and eaten, not asking whether what he took was his own.

He had closed his mouth, living, and had been ready to die mute, glad only that none had pitied him; his heart

hardened itself utterly against this unknown hand which had snatched him from death's dreamless ease and

ungrudged rest, to awaken him to a humiliation that would be as ashes in his teeth so long as his life should

He fancied he was delirious, and had distempered visions of the food so long desired. He knew that he had

been starving longhow long? Long enough for his brain to be weak and visited with phantoms.

Instinctively he touched the long round rolls of bread, the shape of the wine flask, the wicker of the basket:

they were the palpable things of common life; they seemed to tell him that he had not dreamed.

The windows were unshuttered; through them he looked straight out upon the rising daya day rainless and

The faint sunlight of a spring that was still chilled by winter was shed over the flooded fields and swollen

streams; snowwhite mists floated before the languid passage of the wind; and the moist land gave back, as

in a mirror, the leafless trees, the wooden bridges, the belfries and the steeples, and the strange sad bleeding

On all sides near, the meadows were sheets of water, the woods seemed to drift upon a lake; a swan's nest

was washed past on broken rushes, the great silvery birds beating their heavy wings upon the air, and

pursuing their ruined home with cries. Beyond, everything was veiled in the twilight of the damp grey

vapour; a world half seen, half shrouded, lovely exceedingly, filled with all divine possibilities and all hidden

powers: a world such as Youth beholds with longing eyes in its visions of the future.

Beautiful, certainly; in that delicious shadow; in that vague light: in that cloudlike mist, wherein the earth

Beautiful, certainly; all those mystical shapes rising from the sea of moisture which hid the earth and all the

things that toiled on it. It was beautiful, this calm, dim, morning world, in which there was no sound except

the distant ringing of unseen bells; this veil of vapour, whence sprang these fairy and fantastic shapes that

cleft the watery air; the land to the sky, in which all homely things took grace and mystery, and every

It was beautiful; but this landscape had been seen too long and closely by him for it to have power left to

Under that pure and mystical veil of the refracted rain things vile, and things full of anguish, had their

being:cattle in the slaughterhouses; the drunkards in the hovels; disease and debauch and famine; the

ditch, that was the common grave of all the poor; the hospital, where pincers and knives tore the living nerves

in the inquisition of science; the fields, where the women toiled bent, cramped, and hideous; the dumb driven

beasts, patient and tortured, for ever blameless, yet for ever accursed:all these were there beneath that

lovely veil, through which there came so dreamily the slender shafts of spires and the chimes of half heard

He stood and watched it long, so long that the clouds descended and the vapours shifted away, and the pale

sunrays shone clearly over a disenchanted world, where roof joined roof and casement answered casement,

and the figures on the crosses became but rude and illcarved daubs; and the cocks crew to one another, and

the herdsmen swore at their flocks, and the oxen flinched at the goad, and the women went forth to their field

The cold fresh breath of the morning had breathed upon him, and driven out the dull, delicious fancies that

had possessed his brain. The simple truth was plain before him: that he had been seen by some stranger in his

He was thankless; like the sick, to whom unwelcome aid denies the refuge of the grave, calling him back to

suffer, and binding on his shoulders the discarded burden of life's infinite weariness and woes.

He was thankless; for he had grown tired of this fruitless labour, this abortive combat; he had grown tired of

seeking credence and being derided for his pains, while other men prostituted their powers to base use and

public gain, receiving as their wages honour and applause; he had grown tired of toiling to give beauty and

He had grown tired, though he was yet young, and had strength, and had passion, and had manhood.

Tiredutterly, because he was destitute of all things save his genius, and in that none were found to believe.

"I have tried all things, and there is nothing of any worth." It does not need to have worn the imperial purples

and to be lying dying in old age to know thus much in all truth and all bitterness.

"Why did they give me back my life?" he said in his heart, as he turned aside from the risen sun.

He had striven to do justly with this strange, fleeting, unasked gift of existence, which comes, already

He had not spent it in riot or madness, in lewd love or in gambling greed; he had been governed by great

desires, though these had been fruitless, and had spent his strength to a great end, though this had been never

As he turned from looking out upon the swollen stream that rushed beneath his windows, his eyes fell upon

the opposite wall, where the white shapes of his cartoons were caught by the awakening sun.

The spider had drawn his dusty trail across them; the rat had squatted at their feet; the darkness of night had

enshrouded and defaced them; yet with the morning they arose, stainless, noble, undefiled.

Amongst them there was one colossal form, on which the sun poured with its full radiance.

This was the form of a captive grinding at a millstone; the majestic symmetrical supple form of a man who

In his naked limbs there was a supreme power; in his glance there was a divine command; his head was lifted

as though no yoke could ever lie on that proud neck; his foot seemed to spurn the earth as though no mortal

tie had ever bound him to the sod that human steps bestrode: yet at the cornmill he laboured, grinding wheat

The hand which awoke the music of the spheres had been bloodstained with murder; the beauty which had

the light and lustre of the sun had been darkened with passion and with crime; the will which no other on

earth or in heaven could withstand had been bent under the chastisement of Zeus.

He whose glance had made the black and barren slopes of Delos to laugh with fruitfulness and gladness,he

whose prophetic sight beheld all things past, present, and to come, the fate of all unborn races, the doom of

all unspent ages,he, the FarStriking King, laboured here beneath the curse of crime, greatest of all the

With dance and song the Delian maidens still hailed the divinity of L�t�'s son.

The wave of the pure Ionian air still rang for ever with the name of Delphinios.

At Pytho and at Clarus, in Lycia and in Phokis, his oracles still breathed forth upon their fiat terror or hope

into the lives of men; and still in all the virgin forests of the world the wild beasts honoured him wheresoever

they wandered, and the lion and the boar came at his bidding from the deserts to bend their free necks and

Yet he laboured here at the cornmill of Admetus; and watching him at his bondage there stood the slender,

slight, wingfooted Hermes, with a slow, mocking smile upon his knavish lips, and a jeering scorn in his

"O, brother, who would be greater than I! For what hast thou bartered to me the golden rod of thy wealth and

thy dominion over the flocks and the herds? For seven chords strung on a shellfor a melody not even thine

own! For a lyre outshone by my syrinx hast thou sold all thine empire to me. Will human ears give heed to

thy song now thy sceptre has passed to my hands? Immortal music only is left thee, and the vision foreseeing

Thus to the artist by whom they had been begotten the dim white shapes of the deities spoke. Thus he saw

them, thus he heard, whilst the pale and watery sunlight lit up the form of the toiler in Pher�.

For even as it was with the divinity of Delos, so is it likewise with the genius of a man, which, being born of

a god, yet is bound as a slave to the grindstone. Since even as Hermes mocked the Lord of the Unerring Bow,

so is genius mocked of the world, when it has bartered the herds and the grain, and the rod that metes wealth,

And as he looked upon this symbol of his life, the captivity and the calamity, the strength and the slavery of

his existence overcame him; and for the first hour since he had been born of a woman Arsl�n buried his face

He could bend great thoughts to take the shapes that he chose, as the chained god in Pher� bound the strong

kings of the desert and the forest to carry his yoke; yet, like the god, he likewise stood fettered to the mill to

A VALLEY long and narrow, shut out from the rest of the living world by the ramparts of stone that rose on

either side to touch the clouds; dense forests of pines, purple as night, where the erlking rode and the

bearking reigned; at one end mountains, mist, and gloom, at the other end the ocean; brief days with the sun

shed on a world of snow, in which the sounds of the winds and the moans of the wolves alone were heard in

the solitude; long nights of marvelous magnificence with the stars of the arctic zone glowing with an

unbearable lustre above a sea of phosphorescent fire; those were Arsl�n's earliest memoriesthose had made

In that pineclothed Norwegian valley, opening to the sea, there were a few homesteads gathered together

round a little wooden church, with great torrents falling above them, and a profound loneliness around;

There a simple idyllic life rolled slowly on through the late and lovely spring times, when the waters

loosened and the seed sprouted, and the white blossoms broke above the black ground: through the short and

glorious summers, when the children's eyes saw the elves kiss the roses, and the fairies float on the sunbeam,

and the maidens braided their fair hair with blue cornflowers to dance on the eve of St. John: through the long

and silent winters, when an almost continual night brooded over all things, and the thunder of the ocean alone

answered the war of the windtorn forests, and the bloodred blaze of the northern light gleamed over a

white still mountain world, and within doors, by the warm wood fire, the youths sang Scandinavian ballads,

and the old people told strange Sagas, and the mothers, rocking their newborn sons to sleep, prayed God for

In this Alpine valley, hidden amidst stupendous walls of stone, bottomless precipices, and summits that

touched the clouds, there was a cottage even smaller and humbler than most, and closest of all to the church.

It was the house of the pastor. The old man had been born there, and had lived there all the years of his life

save a few that he had passed in a town as a student; and he had wedded a neighbour who, like himself, had

known no other home than this one village. He was gentle, patient, simple, and full of tenderness; he worked

like his people all the week through, in the open weather, amongst his fruittrees, his little breadth of

pasturage, his herbgarden, and his few sheep. On the seventh day he preached to the people the creed that he

himself believed in with all the fond, unquestioning, implicit faith of the young children who lifted to him

He was good; he was old: in his simple needs and his undoubting hopes he has happy; all the living things of

his little world loved him, and he loved them. And fate lit on him to torture him, as it is its pleasure to torture

It sent him a daughter who was fair to sight, and had a voice like music; a form lithe and white, with hair of

gold, and eyes like her own planets. She had never seen any other spot save her own valley; but she had the

old Berserker blood in her veins, and she was restless; the sea tempted her with an intense power; she desired

The simple pastoral work, the peaceful household labours, the girls' garland of alpine flowers, the youths'

singing in the brief rose twilight, the saga told the thousandth time around the lamp in the deep midwinter

silence; these things would not suffice for her. The old Scandinavian madness was her veins. And one day the

sea tempted her too utterly; beyond her strength,as a lover, after a thousand entreaties, one day tempts a

They hardly knew: to these old people the world that lay behind their mountain fortress was a blank. It might

be a paradise; it might be a prison. They could not tell. They suffered their sorrow meekly; they never cursed

her; they did not even curse their fate because they had given life to a woman child.

She wrote them tender and glowing words; she was well, she was proud, she was glad, she had found those

who told her that she had a voice which was as a gift of gold, and that she might sing in triumph to the

nations. Such tidings came from time to time; brief welcome words, first teeming with hope, then delirious

with triumph, yet ever ending with a short sad sigh of conscience, a prayer for pardonpardon for what? The

The slow salt tears of age fell on these glowing pages in which the heart of a young, vainglorious, tender

creature stamped itself; but the old people never spoke of them to others. "She is happy, it does not matter for

us." This was all they said, yet this gentle patience was a martyrdom too sharp to last; when that year closed

The long silent winter came, locking the valley within its fortress of ice, severing it from all the rest of the

breathing human world; and the letters ceased. He would not let them say that she had forgotten; he chose to

think that the severance was due to the wall of snow which was built up between them rather than to any

The sweet sudden Norwegian spring came, all the white and golden flowers breaking up from the hard crust

of the soil, and all the loosened waters rushing with a shout of liberty to join the sea.

The summer followed with the red mountain roses blossoming by the brooks, and the green mountain grasses

blowing in the wind, with the music of the herdbells ringing down the passes, and the sound of the fife and

In the midst of the summer, one night, when all the stars were shining above the valley, and all the children

slept under the roofs with the swallows, and not a soul was stirring, save where here and there a lover

watched a light glow in some lattice underneath the eaves, a halfdead woman dragged herself feebly under

the limetree shadows of the pastor's house, and struck with a faint cry upon the door and fell at her father's

feet, broken and senseless. Before the full day had dawned she had given birth to a male child; and died as

When his dead daughter lay stretched before him in the sunlight, with her white large limbs folded to rest,

and her noble fair face calm as a mask of marble, the old pastor knew littlenothingof what her life

through these two brief years had been. Her lips had scarcely breathed a word since she had fallen senseless

on his threshold. That she had triumph he knew; that she had fallen into dire necessities he saw.

Whether she had surrendered art for the sake of love, or whether she had lost the public favour by some

caprice of the public, whether she had been eminent or obscure in her career, whether it had abandoned her or

she had abandoned it, he could not tell, and he knew too little of the world to be able to learn.

That she had travelled her weary way homeward to her native mountains that her son might not perish among

strangers, he knew; but no more. Nor was more ever known by any living soul. In life there are so many

histories which are like broken boughs that strew the ground after a storm, snapped short at either end, so that

The child whom she had left grew in goodliness and strength and stature, until the people said that he was

like that childking, whom their hero Frithiof raised upon his buckler above the multitude; and who was not

afraid, but boldly gripped the brazen shield, and smiled fearlessly at the noonday sun.

He had his mother's golden Scandinavian beauty; the beauty of sculpture, white as the snow, of unusual

height, and largely moulded; and his free life amidst the icefields and the pinewoods, and on the wild

northern seas, developed both health and strength to their uttermost perfection.

The people admired and wondered at him; they did not love him. The lad was cold, dauntless, silent; he

repelled their sympathies and disdained their pastimes. He chose rather to be by himself than with them. He

was never cruel; but he was never tender; and when he did speak he spoke with a sort of eloquent scorn and

caustic imagery that seemed to them extraordinary in one so young. But his grandfather loved him greatly;

and reared him tenderly and wisely; and braced him with a scholar's lore and with a mountaineer's exposure,

He was a simple childlike broken old man; but in this vigorous youth that unfolded itself beside him his age

seemed to strike fresh root, and he had wisdom and skill enough to guide its development justly. The desire

of his soul was that his grandson should succeed him in the spiritual charge of that tranquil valley, and thus

escaped the dire perils of the cities in which the mother's life had been caught and consumed like a moth's in

flame. But Arsl�n's eyes looked ever across the ocean with that look in them which had been in his mother's,

Moreover, hewho had never beheld but the rude paintings on panels of pine that decorated the little red

He had few and rough means only with which to make his crude and unguided essays; but the delirium of it

was on him, and the peasants of his village gazed awestricken and adoring before the things which he drew

on every piece of pinewood, on every smooth breadth of seaworn granite, on every bare surface of

Whey they asked him what, in his manhood, he would do, he said little. "I will never leave the old man," he

made answer; and he kept his word. Up to his twentieth year he never quitted the valley. He studied deeply,

after his own manner, but nearly all his days were passed in the open air alone; in the pure cold air of the

highest mountain summits, amidst the thunder of the furious torrents; in the black recesses of lonely forests,

where none, save the wolf and the bear, wandered with him; or away on the vast expanse of the sea, where

the storm drove the great arctic waves like scourged sheep, and the huge breakers seized the shore as a

On such a world as this, and in the marvelous nights of the north, his mind fed itself and gained its full

powers. The feeble life of the old man held him to this lonely valley that seemed filled with the coldness, the

mystery, the unutterable terror and majesty of the arctic pole, to which it looked; but, unknown to him, it thus

fettered him likewise where alone the genius in him could take its full shape and full stature.

Unknown to him, in these years it took the depth, the strength, the patience, the melancholy, the virility of the

In the twentieth winter of his life an avalanche engulfed the pastor's house, and the little church by which it

stood; covering both beneath a mountain of earth and snow and rock and riven trees. Some of the timbers

withstood the shock, and the roof remained standing uncrushed above their heads. The avalanche fell some

little time after midnight: there were only present in the dwelling himself, the old man, and a serving woman.

The woman was killed on her bed by the fall of a beam upon her; he and the pastor still lived: lived in

The wooden clock stood erect, uninjured; they could hear the hours go by in slow succession. The old man

was peaceful and even cheerful; praising God often; and praying that help might come to this beloved one.

But his strength could not hold out against the icy cold, the long hunger, the dreadful blank around. He died

ere the first day had wholly gone by, at evensong; saying still that he was content, and still praising God

who had rewarded his innocence with shame, and recompensed his service with agony. For two more days

and nights, Arsl�n remained in his living tomb, enshrouded in eternal gloom, alone with the body of his

grandfather, stretching out his hands ever and again to meet the icy touch rather than be without

On the morning of the third day the people of the village, who had laboured ceaselessly, reached him; and he

As soon as the spring broke, he left the valley and passed over the mountains, seeking a new world. His old

familiar home had become hateful to him; he had no tie to it save two low graves, still snowcovered

underneath a knot of tall stonepines; the Norse passion of wandering was in his veins as it had been in his

mother's before him; he mutely desired freedom, colour, knowledge, art, fame, as she had desired them, and

he went: turning his face from that lowly green nest lying like a lark's between the hills.

He did not go as youth mostly goes, blind with a divine dream of triumph: he went, consciously, to a bitter

combat as the sea kings of old, whose blood ran in his veins, and whose strength was in his limbs, had gone

to war, setting their prow hard against the sharp salt waves and in the teeth of an adverse wind.

He was not without money. The pastor, indeed, had died almost penniless; he had been always poor, and had

given the little he possessed to those still poorer. But the richest landowner in the village, the largest

possessor of flocks and herds, dying childless, had bequeathed his farm and cattle to Arsl�n; having loved the

lad's dead mother silently and vainly. The value of these realised by sale gave to Arsl�n, when he became his

own master, what, in that valley at least, was wealth; and he went without care for the future on this score

into the world of men; his mind full of dreams and the beautiful myths of dead ages; his temper compounded

of poetry and coldness, of enthusiasm and of scepticism; his one passion a supreme ambition, pure as snow in

From that spring, when he had passed away from his birthplace as the winter snows were melting on the

mountain sides, and the mountain flowers were putting forth their earliest buds under the pine boughs, until

the time that he now stood solitary, starving, and hopeless before the mocking eyes of his Hermes, twelve

years had run their course, and all through them he had never once again beheld his native land.

Like the Scandinavian Regner, he chose rather to perish in the folds, and by the fangs, of the snakes that

devoured him than return to his country with the confession of defeat. And despite the powers that were in

In his early youth he had voyaged often, with men who went to the extreme north in search of skins and such

poor trade as they could drive with Esquimaux or Koraks; he had borne their dangers and their poverty, their

miseries and their famine, for sake of seeing what they saw;the pathless oceans of the ice realm, the

trailing pines alone in a white snow world, the red moon fantastic and horrible in a sky of steel, the horned

clouds of reindeer rushing through the endless night, the arch of the aurora spanning the heavens with their

fire. He had passed many seasons of his boyhood in the silence, the solitude, the eternal desolation, and the

mute mystery of that Arctic world, which for no man has either sympathy or story; and in a way he had loved

it, and was often weary for it; in a way its spirit remained with him always; and its inexorable coldness, its

pitiless indifference to men's wants and weakness, its loneliness and its purity, and its scorn, were in all the

works of his hand; blended in a strange union with the cruelty, and the voluptuousness, and the gorgeousness

of colour, which gave to everything he touched the glow and the temper of the east.

Thus, what he did pleased none; being for one half the world too chill, and being for the other half too

The world had never believed in him; and he found himself in the height and maturity of his powers

During these years he had devoted himself to the study of art with an undeviating subservience to all its

He had studied humanity in all its phases; he had studied form with all the rigid care that it requires; he had

studied colour in almost every land that lies beneath the sun; he had studied the passions in all their

deformities, as well as in all their beauties; he had spared neither himself nor others in pursuit of knowledge.

He had tried most vices, he had seen all miseries, he had spared himself no spectacle, however loathsome; he

had turned back from no license, however undesired, that could give him insight into empire over human

raptures and affliction. Neither did he spare himself any labour however costly, however exhausting, to

enrich his brain with that varied learning, that multifarious science which he held needful to every artist who

The hireling beauty of the wanton, the splendour of the sun and sea, the charnel lore of anatomy, the secrets

of dead tongues and buried nations, the horrors of the lazar wards and pesthouses, the glories of golden

deserts and purple vineyards, the flush of love on a young girl's cheek, the rottenness of corruption on a dead

man's limbs, the hellish riot of a brothel, the divine calm of an eastern night; all things alike he studied,

without abhorrence as without delight, indifferent to all save for one end,knowledge and art.

So entirely and undividedly did this possess him that it seemed to have left him without other passions; even

as the surgeon dissects the fair lifeless body of sone beautiful dead women, regardless of loveliness or sex,

intent on the secret of disease, the mystery of formation, which he seeks therein, so did he study the physical

beauty of women and their mortal corruption, without other memories than those of art. He would see the veil

fall from off the limbs of a creature lovely as a goddess, and would think only to himself"How shall I

One night, in the hot, close streets of Damascus, a man was stabbed,a young Maronitewho lay dying in

the roadway, without sign or sound, whilst his assassins fled; the silver Syrian moon shining full on his white

and scarlet robe, his calm, upturned face, his lean hand knotted on the dagger he had been spared no time to

Arsl�n, passing through the city, saw and paused beside him; stood still and motionless, looking down on the

outstretched figure; then drew his tablets out and sketched the serene, rigid face, the flowing, bloodsoaked

robes, the hungry animal mouthing at the wound. Another painter, his familiar friend, following on his steps,

He was not cruel. To animals he was humane, to women gentle, to men serene; but his art was before all

things with him, and with humanity he had little sympathy; and if had passions, they had wakened no more

than as the drowsy tigress wakes in the hot hush of noon, half indifferent, half lustful, to strike fiercely what

But for this absolute surrender of his life, his art had as yet recompensed him nothing.

Men did not believe in him; what he wrought saddened and terrified them; they turned aside to those who fed

His works were great, but they were such as the public mind deems impious. They unveiled human

corruption too nakedly, and they shadowed forth visions too exalted, and satires too unsparing, for them to be

acceptable to the multitude. They were compounded of an idealism clear and cold as crystal, and of a reality

cruel and voluptuous as love. They were penetrated with an acrid satire and an intense despair: the world

caring only for a honied falsehood and a gilded gloss in every art, would have none of them.

So far these twelve long years his labour had been waste, his efforts fruitless. Those years had been costly to

him in purse;travel, study, gold flung to fallen women, sums spent on faithless friends, utter indifference to

whosoever robbed him, so long as he was left in peace to pursue lofty aims and high endeavoursall these

did their common work on wealth which was scanty in the press of the world, though it had appeared

The indifference to fortune in a man of genius looks, to a man of the world, the stupor of idiotcy: from such a

All ways to fame were closed to him, either by the envy of other painters, or by the apathies and the

antipathies of the nations themselves. In all lands he was repulsed; he roused the jealousy of his compeers and

the terror of the multitudes. They hurled against him the old wornout cry that the office of art was to give

pleasure, not pain; and when his money was gone, so that he could no longer, at his own cost, expose his

works to the public gaze, they and he were alike obliterated from the public marts; they had always denied

him fame, and they at last thrust him quickly into oblivion, and abandoned him to it without remorse, and

He could, indeed, with the facile power of eye and touch that he possessed, have easily purchased a

temporary ease and evanescent repute, if he had given the world from his pencil those themes for which it

cared, and descended to the common spheres of common art. But he refused utterly to do this. The best and

greatest thing in him was his honesty to the genius wherewith he was gifted; he refused to prostitute it; he

"This man blasphemes; this man is immoral," his enemies had always hooted against him. It is what the

So the words of the old Skald by his own northern seashores came to pass; and at length, for the sake of art, it

For seven days he had been without food, except the winter berries which he broke off the trees without, and

such handfuls of wheat as fell through the disjointed timbers of the ceiling, for whose possession he disputed

The sheer absolute poverty, which leaves the man whom it has seized without so much as even a crust

wherewith to break his fast, is commoner than the world in general ever dreams. For he was now so poor that

for many months he had been unable to buy fresh canvas on which to work, and had been driven to chalk the

outlines of the innumerable fancies that pursued him upon the bare smooth grey stone walls of the old

He let his life go silently away without complaint, and without effort, because effort had been so long

He accepted his fate, seeing nothing strange in it, and nothing pitiable; since many better men than he had

borne the like. He could not have altered it without beggary or theft, and he thought either of these worse than

There were hecatombs of grain, bursting their sacks, in the lofts above; but when, once on each eighth day,

the maltster owning them sent his men to fetch some from the store, Arsl�n let the boat be moored against the

wall, be filled with barley, and be pushed away again down the current, wihtout saying once to the rowers,

And yet, though like a miser, amidst his gold, his body starved amidst the noble shapes and the great thoughts

that his brain conceived and his hand called into substance, he never once dreamed of abandoning for any

other the career to which he had dedicated himself from the earliest days that his boyish eyes had watched the

Art was to him as mother, brethren, mistress, offspring, religionall that other men hold dear. He had none

of these, he desired none of them; and his genius sufficed to him in their stead.

It was an intense and reckless egotism, made alike cruel and sublime by its intensity and purity, like the

egotism of a mother in her child. To it, as the mother to her child, he would have sacrificed every living

creature; but to it also, like her, he would have sacrificed his very existence as unhesitatingly. But it was an

egotism which, though merciless in its tyranny, was as pure as snow in its impersonality; it was untainted by

any grain of avarice, of vanity, of selfish desire; it was independent of all sympathy; it was simply and

intensely the passion for immortality:that sublime selfishness, that superb madness, of all great minds.

Art had taken him for its own, as Demeter, in the days of her desolation, took the child Demophoon to nurture

him as her own on the food of gods, and to plunge him through the flames of a fire that would give him

immortal life. As the pusillanimous and sordid fears of the mortal mother lost to the child for evermore the

possession of Olympian joys and of perpetual youth, so did the craven and earthly cares of bodily needs hold

the artist back from the radiance of the life of the soul, and drag him from the purifying fires. Yet he had not

been utterly discouraged; he strove against the Metanira of circumstance; he did his best to struggle free from

the mortal bonds that bound him; and, as the child Demophoon mourned for the great goddess that had

nurtured him, refusing to be comforted, so did he turn form the base consolations of the sense and the

appetites, and beheld ever before his sight the ineffable majesty of that Mater Dolorosa who once and for ever

Even now as the strength returned to his limbs and the warmth to his veins, the old passion, the old worship,

The momentary weakness which had assailed him passed away. He shook himself with a bitter impatient

scorn for the feebleness into which he had been betrayed; and glanced around him still with a dull wonder as

to the strange chances which the past night had brought. He was incredulous still; he thought that his fancy,

heated by long fasting, might have cheated him; that he must have dreamed; and that the food and fuel which

Yet reflection told him that this could not be; he remembered that for several weeks his last coin had been

spent; that he had been glad to gather the birds' winter berries to crush beneath his teeth, and gather the

dropped corn from the floor to quiet the calm of hunger; that for many a day there had been no fire on the

hearth, and that only a frame which long sunless northern winters had braced to such hardihood in early

youth, had enabled him to resist and endure the cold. Therefore, it must be charity. Charity!as the hateful

truth came home to him, he met the eyes of the white, slender, winged Hermes: eyes that from out that

His was the old, old storythe rod of wealth bartered for the empty shell that gave forth music.

Hermes, the mischiefmonger, and the trickster of men; the inventive god who spent his days in cajoling his

brethren, and his nights in the mockery of mortals; the messenger of heaven who gave Pandora to mankind;

Hermes, the eternal type of unscrupulous Success, seemed to have voice and cry to him:"Oh fool, fool,

fool! who listens for the music of the spheres, and disdains the only melody that men have ears to hearthe

Arsl�n turned from the great cartoon of the gods in Pher�, and went out into the daylight, and stripped and

plunged into the cold and turbulent stream. Its chilliness and the combat of its current braced his nerves and

When he was clad, he left the graintower with the white forms of its gods upon its walls, and walk slowly

down the banks of the river. Since life had been forced back upon him he knew that it was incumbent upon

his manhood to support it by the toil of his hands if men would not accept the labour of his brain.

Before, he had been too absorbed in his pursuit, too devoted to it, body and soul, to seek to sustain existence

by sheer manual exertion which was the only thing that he had left untried for selfmaintenance. In a manner

too he was too proud; not too proud to labour, but too proud to easily endure to lay bare his needs to the

knowledge of others. But now, human charity must have saved him; a charity which he hated as the foulest

insult of his life; and he had no chance save to accept it like a beggar bereft of all shame, or to seek such work

The country was well known to him, but the people not at all. He had come by hazard on the old ruin where

These serene blue skies, these pale mists, these cornclad slopes, these fields of pleasant of plenteous

abundance, these quiet homesteads, these fruitharvests of this Norman plain were in a contrast intense, yet

soothing, to all that his life had known. These old quaint cities, these little villages that seemed always

hushed with the sound of bells, these quiet streams on which the calm sunlight slept so peacefully, these

green and golden lands of plenty that stretched away to the dim grey distant sea,all these had had a certain

He had abided with them, partly because amidst them it seemed possible to live on a handful of wheat and a

draught of water, unnoticed and unpitied, partly because, having come hither on foot through many lands and

Whilst the little gold he had had on him had lasted he had painted innumerable transcripts of the ancient

buildings, and of its summer and autumnal landscapes. And of latethrough the bitter winterof late it had

When a man knows that his dead limbs will be huddled into the common ditch of the poor, the nameless, and

the unclaimed, and that his dead brain will only serve for soil to feed some little rank wayside poisonous

weed, it will seldom seem of much moment in what earth the ditch be dug, by what feet the sward be trod.

He went on his way seeking work; he did not care what, he asked for any that might serve to use such

strength as hunger had left in him, and to give him his daily bread. But this is a great thing to demand in the

They had their own people in plenty, they had their sturdy, tough, weatherbeaten women, who laboured all

day in rain, or snow, or storm, for a pittance, and they had these in larger numbers than their fieldwork

needed. They looked at him askance; this man with the eyes of Arctic blue and the grave gestures of a king,

who only asked to labour as the lowest amongst them. He was a stranger to them; he did not speak their

tongue with their accent; he looked, with that white beauty and that lofty stature, as though he could crush

"He brings misfortune!" they said amongst themselves; and they would have none of him.

He had an evil name with them. They said at eventide by their woodfires that strange things had been seen

Once he had painted, from the pretty face of a stonecutter's little fair son, a study of the wondrous child

Zagreus gazing in the fatal mirror; the child was laughing, and happy, and healthful at noon, crowned with

carnations and river lilies, and by sunset he was deaddead like the flowers that were still amongst his curls.

Once a girl had hired herself as a model to him for an Egyptian wanton, half a singer and half a

gipsyhandsome, lithe, fantastic, voluptuous: the very night she left the granary she was drowned in

crossing a wooden bridge of the river, which gave way under the heavy tramp of the fantoccini player who

Once he had sketched, for the corner of an oriental study, a rareplumaged bird of the south, which was the

idol of a watercarrier of the district, and the wonder of all the children round: and from that date the bird had

The boy's death had been from a sudden seizure of one of the many ills of infancy; the dancing girl's had

come from a common accident due to the rottenness of old worn watersoaked timber; the mockingbird's

had arisen from the cruelty of captivity and the chills of northern winds; all had been the result of simple

accident and natural circumstance. But they had sufficed to fill with horror the minds of a peasantry always

bigoted and strongly prejudiced against every stranger; and it became to them a matter of implicit credence

that whatsoever living thing should be painted by the artist Arsl�n would assuredly never survive to see the

In consequence, for leagues around they shunned him; not man, nor woman, nor child would sit to him as

models; and now, when he sought the wage of a daily labour amongst them, he was everywhere repulsed. He

At last he turned and retraced his steps, baffled and wearied; his early habits had made him familiar with all

manner of agricultural toil; he would have done the task of the sower, the herdsman, the hewer of wood, or

the charcoalburner; but they would none of them believe this of one with his glance and his aspect; and

He took his way back along the line of the river; the beauty of the dawn had gone, the day was only now

chilly, heavy, with a rank moisture from the steaming soil. Broken boughs and uprooted bushes were floating

The pressure of the air, the humidity, the colourless stillness that reigned throughout, weighed on lungs which

for a score of years had only breathed the pure strong rarified air of the north; he longed with a sudden

passion to be once more amidst his native mountains under the clear steellike skies, and beside the rush of

the vast wild seas. Were it only to die as he looked on them, it were better to die there than here.

He longed, as men in deserts thirst for drink, for one breath of the strong salt air of the north, one sight of the

The crisp cold nights, the heavens which shone as steel, the forests filled with the cry of the wolves, the

mountains which the ocean ceaselessly assailed, the mighty waves which marched erect like armies, the bitter

Arctic wind which like a sabre cleft the darkness; all these came back to him, beloved and beautiful in all

their cruelty, desired by him, with a sick longing for their freshness, for their fierceness, for their freedom.

As he dragged his tired limbs thought the grasses and looked out upon the sullen stream that flowed beside

him, an oar struck the water, a flat black boat drifted beneath the bank, a wild swan disturbed rose with a hiss

The boat was laden with grain; there was only one rower in it, who steered by a string wound round her foot.

She did not lift her face as she went by him; but her bent brow and her bosom grew red, and she cut the water

with a swifter, sharper stroke; her features were turned from him by that movement of her head, but he saw

the eastern outline of the cheek and chin, the embrowned velvet of the skin, the halfbare beauty of the

heaving chest and supple spine bent back in the action of the oars, the long slender and arched shape of the

naked foot, round which the cord was twined;their contour and their colour struck him with a sudden

He had seen such oftentimes, eastwards, on the banks of golden rivers, treading, with such feet as these, the

sands that were the dust of countless nations; bearing, on such shoulders as these earthen watervases that

might have served the feasts of Pharaohs; showing such limbs as these against the curled palm branches and

But here!a face of Asia amongst the cornlands of Northern France? It seemed to him strange; he looked

The boat went on down the stream without any pause; the sculls cleaving the heavy tide with regular and

resolute monotony; the golden piles of the grain and the brown form of the bending figure soon hidden in the

He watched her, only seeing a beggargirl rowing a skiff full of corn down a sluggish stream. There was

nothing to tell him that he was looking upon the saviour of his body from the thralls of death; if there had

The boat glided into the fog which closed behind it; a flock of waterbirds swam out from the rushes and

darted at some floating kernels of wheat that had fallen over the vessel's side; they fought and hissed, and

flapped and pecked amongst themselves over the chance plunder; a large rat stole amidst them unnoticed by

them in their exultation, and seized their leader and bore him struggling and beating the air with

bloodstained wings away to a hole in the bank; a mongrel dog, prowling on the shore, hearing the wild

duck's cries, splashed into the sedges, and swam out and gripped the rat by the neck in bold sharp fangs, and

bore both rat and bird, bleeding and dying, to the land; the owner of the mongrel, a peasant making ready the

ground for colza in the lowlying fields, snatched the duck from the dog to bear it home for his own eating,

and kicked his poor beast in the ribs for having ventured to stray without leave and to do him service without

"The dulcet harmony of the world's benignant law!" thought Arsl�n, as he turned aside to enter the stone

archway of his own desolate dwelling. "To live one must slaughterwhat life can I take?"

At that moment the setting sun pierced the heavy veil of the vapour, and glowed through the fog.

The boat, now distant, glided for a moment into the ruddy haze, and was visible; the water around it, like a

Then the sun sank, the mists gathered closely once more, all light faded, and the day was dead.

He felt stifled and sick at heart as he returned along the reedy shore towards his dreary home. He wondered

dully why his life would not end: since the world would have none of him, neither the work of his brain nor

He was half resolved to lie down in the water there, amongst the reeds, and let it flow over his face and

breast, and kiss him softly and coldly into the sleep of death. He had desired this many times; what held him

back from its indulgence was not "the child within us that fears death," of which Plato speaks; he had no such

misgiving in him, and he believed death to be a simple rupture and end of all things, such as any man had

right to seek and summon for himself; it was rather that the passion of his art was too strong in him, that the

power to create was too intense in him, so that he could not willingly consign the forces and the fantasies of

his brain to that annihilation to which he would, without thought or pause, have flung his body.

As he entered the haunted hall which served him as his paintingroom, he saw a fresh fire of logs upon the

hearth, whose leaping flames lighted the place with cheerful colour, and he saw on the stone bench fresh

A curious emotion took possession of him as he looked. It was less surprise at the fact, for his senses told him

it was the work of some charity which chose to hide itself, than it was wonder as to who, in this strange land,

where none would even let him earn his daily bread, knew enough or cared enough to supply his necessities

thus. And with this there arose the same intolerant bitterness of the degradation of alms, the same ungrateful

hatred of the succour that seemed to class him amongst beggars, which had moved him when he had

There were in him a certain coldness, strength, and indifference to sympathy, which, whilst they made his

greatness as an artist, made his callousness as a man. It might have been sweet to others to find themselves

remembered and pitied by another at an hour when their forces were spent, their fate friendless, and their

hopes all dead. But it was not so to him, he only felt like the desert animal which, wounded, repulses every

There was only one vulnerable, one tender nerve in him, and this was the instinct of his genius. He had been

nurtured in hardihood, and had drawn in endurance with every breath of his native air; he would have borne

physical ills without one visible pang, and would have been indifferent to all mortal suffering; but for the

powers in him, for the art he adored, he had a child's weakness, a woman's softness.

He could not bear to die without leaving behind his life some work the world would cherish.

Call it folly, call it madness, it is both: the ivory Zeus that was to give its sculptor immortality, lives but in

tradition; the bronze Athene, that was to guard the Pir�us in eternal liberty, has long been levelled with the

dust; yet with every age the artist still gives life for fame, still cries, "Let my body perish, but make my work

It was this in him now which stirred his heart with a new and gentler emotion; emotion which, while half

disgust, was also half gladness. The food was almsgiven, since he had not earned it, and yetby means of

this sheer bodily subsistenceit would be possible for him to keep alive those dreams, that strength, by

He stood before the Phoebus in Pher�, thinking; it stung him with a bitter torment; it humiliated him with a

hateful burdenthis debt which came he knew not whence, and which he never might be able to repay. And

yet his heart was strangely moved; it seemed to him that the fate which thus wantonly, and with such curious

persistence, placed life back into his hands, must needs be one that would bear no common fruit.

He bent his head and broke bread, and ate and drank of the red wine:he did not thank God or man as he

broke his fast; he only looked in the mocking eyes of Hermes, and said in his heart:

And Hermes smiled: Hermes the wise, who had bought and sold the generations of men so long ago, in the

golden age, and who knew so well how they would barter away their greatness and their gladness, and their

bodies and their souls, for one sweet strain of his hollow reedpipe, for one sweet glance of his soulless

AT the close of that day Claudis Flamma discovered that he had been robbedrobbed more than once: he

swore and raved and tore his hair for loss of a little bread and meat and oil and a flagon of red wine.

He did not suspect his granddaughter; accusing her perpetually of sins of which she was innocent, he did not

once associate her in thought with the one offence which she had committed. He thought that the window of

his storehouse had been forced from the exterior; he made no doubt that his spoiler was some vagabond

from one of the river barges. By such tramps his henhouse and his applelofts had often previously been

She heard his lamentations and imprecations in unbroken silence; he did not question her; and without a lie

she was able to keep her secret. In her own sight she had done a foul thinga thing that her own hunger had

never induced her to do. She did not seek to reconcile herself to her action by any reflection that she had only

taken what she had really earned a thousand times over by her service; her mind was not sufficiently

instructed, and was of too truthful a mould to be capable of the deft plea of a sophistry.

She could dare the thing; and do it, and hold her peace about it, though she should be scourged to speak; but

she could not tamper with it to excuse it to herself; for this she had neither the cunning nor the cowardice.

Why had she done it?done for a stranger what no pressure of need had made her do for her own wants?

She did not ask herself; she followed her instinct. He allured her with his calm and kingly beauty, which was

like nothing else her eyes had ever seen; and she was drawn by an irresistible attraction to this life which she

had bought at the price of her own from the gods. Yet stronger even than this sudden human passion which

had entered into her was her dread lest he whom she had ransomed from death should know of his debt to

Under such a dread, she never opened her lips to anyone on this thing which she had done. Silence was

natural to her; she spoke so rarely, that many in the province believed her to be dumb; no sympathy had ever

been shown to her to woo her to disclose either the passions that burnt latent in her veins, or the tenderness

Thrice again did she take food and fuel to the watertower undetected, both by the man whom she robbed,

and the man whom she succoured. Thrice again did she find her way to the desolate chamber in its owner's

absence and refill the empty platters and warm afresh the cold blank hearth. Thrice again did Claudis Flamma

note the diminution of his stores, and burnish afresh his old rusty fowlingpiece, and watch half the night on

his dark staircase, and prepare with his own hands a jar of poisoned honey and a bag of poisoned wheat,

which he placed, with a cruel chuckle of grim glee, to tempt the eyes of his spoilers.

But the spoiler, being of his own household, saw this trap set, and was aware of it.

In a week or two the need for these acts which she hated ceased. She learned that the stranger for whom she

thus risked her body and soul, had found a boatman's work upon the water which, although a toil rough and

rude, and but poorly paid, still sufficed to give him bread. Through she was herself so pressed with hunger,

many a time, that as she went through the meadows and hedgerows she was glad to crush in her teeth the

tender shoots of the briars, and the acrid berry of the brambles, she never again, unbidden, touched so much

Flamma, counting his possessions greedily night and morning, blessed the saints for the renewed safety of his

dwelling, and cast forth the poisoned wheat as a thankoffering to the male birds who were for ever flying to

and fro their nested mates in the leafless boughs above the earliest violets, and whose little throats were

strangled even in their glad flood of nuptial song, and whose soft bright eyes grew dull in death ere even they

"Had I never stolen the food, these birds might never have perished," she thought, as she say the rosy throats

of the robins and bullfinches turned upward in death on the turf. She blamed herself bitterly with an aching

The fatality which makes human crime recoil on the innocent creatures of the animal world oppressed her

with its heavy and hideous injustice. Their God was good, they said: yet for her sin and her grandsire's greed

In this mute young lonely soul of hers Nature had sown a strong passion for justice, a strong instinct towards

what was righteous. As the germ of a plant born in darkness underground will, by sheer instinct, uncurl its

colourless tendrils, and thrust them through crevices and dust, and the close structure of mortared stones, until

they reach the light and grow green and strong in it, so did her nature strive, of its own accord, through the

gloom enveloping it, towards those moral laws which in all ages and all lands remain the same, no matter

He nascent mind was darkened, oppressed, bewildered, perplexed, even like the plant which, forcing itself

upward from its cellar, opens it leaves not in pure air and under a blue sky, but in the reek and smoke and

foetid odours of a city. Yet, like the plant, she vaguely felt that light was somewhere; and as vaguely sought

With most days she took her grandsire's boat to and fro the town, fetching or carrying; there was no mode of

transit so cheap to him as this, whose only cost was her fatigue. With each passage up and down the river, she

Sometimes she saw him; once or twice, in the twilight, he spoke to her; she only bent her head to hide her

face from him, and rowed more quickly on her homeward way in silence. At other times, in his absence, and

when she was safe from any detection, she entered the dismal solitudes where he laboured, and gazed in rapt

The service by which he gained his daily bread was on the waters, and took him often leagues awaysimple

hardy toil, amongst fishers and canalcarriers and bargemen. But it left him some few days, and all his

nights, free for art; and never in all the years of his leisure had his fancy conceived and his hand created more

exquisite dreams and more splendid phantasies than now in this bitter and cheerless time, when he laboured

"De belles choses peuvent se faire dans une cave;" and in truth the gloom of the cellar gives birth to an art

Suffering shortens the years of the artist, and kills him oftentimes ere his prime be reached; but in suffering

alone are all great works conceived. The senses, the passions, the luxuries, the lusts of the flesh, the delirium

of the desires, the colours, the melodies, the fragrance, the indolences,all that made the mere "living of

life" delightful, all go to enrich and to deepen the human genius which steeps itself in them; but it is in exile

The grass of the Holy River gathers perfume from the marvelous suns, and the moonless nights, and the

gorgeous bloom of the east, from the aromatic breath of the leopard and the perfume of the fallen

pomegranate, and the sacred oil that floats in the lamps, and the caress of the girlbathers' feet, and the

myrrhdropping unguents that glide from the maidens' bare limbs in the moonlight,the grass holds and

feeds on them all. But not till the grass has been torn from the roots, and been crushed, and been bruised and

Even the imagination of man may be great, but it can never be at its greatest until one serpent, with merciless

fangs, has bitten it through and through, and impregnated it with passion and with poison,that one

Arsl�n had never been more ceaselessly pursued by innumerable phantasies, and never had given to these a

more terrible force, a more perfect utterance, than now, when the despair which possessed him was

absolute,when it seemed to him that he had striven in his last strife with fate, and been thrown never to rise

again,when he kept his body alive by such soulless ceaseless labour as that of the oxen in the

fieldswhen he saw every hour drift by, barren, sullen, painful,when only some dull yet staunch instinct

of virility held him back from taking his own life in the bleak horror of these fruitless days,when it seemed

to him that his oath before Hermes, to make men call him famous, was idle as a sigh of a desert wind through

Yet he had never done greater thingsnever in the long years through which he had pursued and studied art.

With the poor wage that he earned by labour he bought by degrees the tools and pigments lacking to him, and

lived on the scantiest and simplest food, that he might have wherewith in order to render into shape and

And it was on these that the passionate, wondering, halfblinded eyes of FolleFarine looked with awe and

adoration in those lonely hours when, in his absence, she stole into his chamber, and touching nothing,

scarcely daring to breathe aloud, crouched on the bare pavement mute and motionless, and afraid with a fear

Though her own kind had neglected and proscribed her, with one accord, there had been enough in the little

world surrounding her to feed the imaginative senses latent in her,enough of the old medi�val fancy, of

the old ecclesiastical beauty, of the old monastic spirit, to give her a consciousness, through a dumb one, of

Untaught though she was, and harnessed to the dreary millwheel round of a hard physical toil, she yet had

Where the fretted pinnacles rose in hundreds against the sky,where the common dwellings of the poor

were panelled and parquetted and carved in a thousand fashions,where the graceful and the grotesque and

the terrible were mingled in an inextricable, and yet exquisite, confusion,where the grey squat jug that

went to the well, and the jolting beam to which the clothes' line was fastened, and the creaking sign that

swung above the smallest wineshop, and the wooden gallery on which the poorest troll hung out her

manycoloured rags, had all some trace of a dead art, some fashioning by a dead hand,where all these

were, it was not possible for any creature dowered by nature with any poetic instinct to remain utterly

Of the science and the execution of art she was still absolutely ignorant; the powers by which it was created

still seemed a magic incomprehensible, and not human; but its meaning she felt with that intensity which is

Day after day, therefore, she returned and gazed on the three gods of forgetfulness, and on all the

innumerable forms and fables which bore them company; the virgin field of her unfilled mind receiving the

seeds of thought and of fancy that were scattered so largely in this solitude, lying waste, bearing no harvest.

Of these visits Arsl�n himself knew nothing; towards him her bold wild temper was softened to the shyness

She dreaded lest he should ever learn what she had done; and she stole in and out of the old granary, unseen

by all, with the swiftness and the stealthiness which she shared in common with other untamed animals

And this secretin itself so innocent, yet for which she would at times blush in her loneliness, with a cruel

heat that burnt over all her face and framechanged her life, transfigured it from its objectless, passionless,

For the first time she had in her joy and fear; for the first time she became human.

All the week through he wrought perforce by night; the great windows stood wide open to the bright cold

moons of early spring; he worked only with black and white using colour only at sunrise, or on the rare days

Often at nightfall she left her loft, as secretly as a fox its lair, and stole down the river, and screened herself

amongst the grasses, and watched him where he laboured in the mingling light of the moon and of the

She saw these things grow from beneath his hand, these mighty shapes created by him; and he seemed to her

like a god, with the power to beget worlds at his will, and all human life in its full stature out from a little

The contrast of this strength, of this power which he wielded, with the helpless exhaustion of the body in

which she had found him dying, smote her with a sorrow and a sweetness that were like nothing she had ever

known. That a man could summon hosts at his command like this, yet perish for a crust!that fusion of

omnipotence and powerlessness, which is the saddest and strangest of all the sad strange things of genius,

She watched him thus for hours in the long nights of a slowfooted spring, in whose mists and chills and

heavy dews her inured frame took no more harm than did the green corn shooting through the furrows.

She was a witness to his solitude. She saw the fancies of his brain take form. She saw the sweep of his arm

call up on the blank of the wall, or on the pale spaces of the canvas, these images which for her had alike such

majesty and such mystery. She saw the faces beam, the eyes smile, the dancingwomen rise, the foliage

uncurl, the gods come forth from the temples, the nereids glide through the moonlit waters, at his command,

She saw him also in those moments when, conceiving no eyes to be upon him, this man, whom mankind

denied, loosened rein to the bitterness in him; and, standing weary and heartsick before these creations for

which his generation had no sight, and no homage, let the agony of constant failure, of continual defeat,

overcome him, and cursed aloud the madness which possessed him, which drove him on for ever in this

ungrateful service, and would not let him do as other men didtell the world lies, and take its payment out in

Until now she had hated all things, grieved for none, unless, indeed, it were for a galled ox toiling wounded

and tortured on the field; or a trapped bird, shrieking in the still midnight woods.

But now, watching him, hearing him, a passionate sorrow for a human being possessed her. And to her eyes

he was so beautiful in that utter unlikeness to herself and to all men whom she had seen. She gazed at him,

never weary of that cold, fair, golden beauty, like the beauty of his sungod; of those serene deeplidded

eyes, which looked so often past her at the dark night skies; of those lithe and massive limbs, like the limbs of

the gladiator that yonder on the wall strained a lion to his breast in the deadly embrace of combat.

She gazed at him until she loved him with the intense passion of a young and ignorant life, into whose gloom

no love had ever entered. With this love the instinct of her womanhood arose, amid the ignorance and

savagery of her nature; and she crouched perpetually under the screen of the long grass to hide her vigil, and

whenever his eyes looked from his easel outward to the night she drew back, breathless and trembling, she

Meantime, with that rude justice which was in her, she set herself atonement for her faultthe fault through

which those tender little brightthroated birds were stretched dead amongst the first violets of the year.

She laboured harder and longer than ever for her taskmaster, and denied herself the larger half of even those

scanty portions which were set aside for her of the daily fare, living on almost nothing, as those learn to do

who are reared under the roof of the French poor. To his revilings she was silent, and under his blows patient.

By night she toiled secretly, until she had restored the value of that which she had taken.

She was proud of the evil origin they gave her; she had a cynical gladness in her infamous repute; she

scorned women and hated men; yet all the same she kept her hands pure of thefts and her lips pure of lies.

So the weeks went on till the hardness of winter gave way to the breath of the spring, and in all the wood and

orchard around the watermill of Ypr�s the boughs were green with buds, and the ground was pale with

primrosesa spring all the sweeter and more fertile because of the severity of the past winter.

It became midApril. It was marketday for all the country lying round that wondrous cathedralspire, which

shot into the air farreaching and ethereal, like some fountain whose column of water had been arrested aloft

The old quiet town was busy, with a rich sunshine shed upon it, in which the first yellow butterflies of the

Flowergirls, fruitgirls, eggsellers, poultryhucksters, crowds of women, old and young, had jolted in on

their docile asses, throned on their sheepskin saddles; and now, chattering and chaffering, drove fast their

trade. On the steps of the cathedral boys with birds'nests, knifegrinders making their little wheels fly,

cobblers hammering, with boards across their knees, travelling pedlars with knapsacks full of toys and

mirrors, and holy images, and strings of beads, sat side by side in amicable competition.

Here and there a priest passed, with his black robe and broad hat, like a dusky mushroom amongst a bed of

manyhued gillyflowers. Here and there a soldier, all colour and glitter, showed like a gaudy red tulip in

The old wrinkled leathern awnings of the market stalls glowed like copper in the brightness of noon. The red

tiles of the houses edging the great square were gilded with yellow houseleeks. The little children ran hither

and thither with big bunches of primroses or sheaves of blue wood hyacinths, singing. The red and blue

serges of the young girls' bodices were like the gay hues of the anemones in their baskets. The brown faces of

the old dames under the white roofing of their headgear were like the russet faces of the homekept apples

Everywhere in the shade of the flapping leather, and the darkness of the wooden porches, there were the

tender blossoms of the field and forest, of the hedge and garden. The azure of the hyacinths, the pale saffron

of the primroses, the cool hues of the meadow daffodils, the ruby eyes of the cultured jonquils, gleamed

amongst wet rushes, grey herbs, and freshly budded leafage. Plovers' eggs nestled in mosslined baskets;

sheaves of velvetcoated wallflowers poured fragrance on the air; great plumes of lilac nodded on the wind,

and amber feathers of laburnum waved above the homelier masses of mint and marjoram, and sage and

It was high noon, but the women still found leisure time to hear the music of their own tongues, loud as the

clacking of mill paddles. In one corner an eager little group was gathered round the stall of a favourite

flowerseller, who wore a bright crimson gown, and a string of large silver beads about her neck, and a wide

linen cap, that shaded her pretty rosy face as a great snowy mushroom may grow between the sun and a little

She had brown eyes that were now brimming over with tears as she stood surrounded by all the treasures of

spring. She held clasped in her arms a great pot with a young almond tree growing in it, and she was weeping

as though her heart would break, because a tile had fallen from a roof above and crushed low all its pink

"I saw her look at it," she muttered. "Look at it as she passed with her wicked eyes; and a black cat on the

roof mewed to her; and at that moment the tile fell. Oh, my almond tree; oh, my little darling; the only one

out of three I saved through the frosts; the very one that was to have gone this night to Paris."

"Thou art not alone, Edm�e," groaned an old woman, tottering from her nutstall with a heap of ruffled,

bloodstained, brown plumage held up in her hand. "Look! As she went by, my poor brown henthe best

sitter I have, good for eggs with every sunrise from Lent to Noeljust cackled and shook her tail at her; and

at the very instant a huge yellow dog rushed in and killed the blessed birdkilled her in her basket! A great

yellow beast that no one had ever seen before, and that vanished again into the earth like lightning."

"Not worse than she did to my precious R�my," said a tanner's wife, who drew after her, clinging to her

"She hath the evil eye," said an old decrepid man who had served in the days of his boyhood in the Army of

Italy, as he sat washing fresh lettuces in a large brass bowl, by his grandson's herbstall.

"You remember how we met her in the fields last Feastnight of the Three Kings?" asked a youth looking up

from plucking the feathers out from a living, struggling, moaning, goose. "Coming singling through the fog,

like nothing earthly; and a moment later a torch caught little Jocelin's curls and burnt him till he was so

"Surely we remember," they cried in a hearty chorus round the broken almond tree. "Was there not the good

old Dax this very winter killed by her if ever and creature were killed by foul means, though the law would

"And little Bernardou," added one who had not hitherto spoken. "Little Bernardou died a month after his

grandam, in hospital. She had cast her eye on him, and the poor little lad never rallied.

"A jettatrice ever brings misfortune," muttered the old soldier of Napol�on, washing his last lettuce and

"Or does worse," muttered the mother of the crippled child. "She is not for nothing the devil's daughter, mark

"Nay, indeed," said an old woman, knitting from a ball of wool with which a kitten played amongst the

strewn cabbage leaves and the crushed sweetsmelling thyme. "Nay, was it not only this very winter that my

son's little youngest brother threw a stone at her, just for luck, as she went by in her boat through the town;

and it stuck her and drew blood from her shoulder; and that selfsame night a piece of the oaken carvings in

the ceiling gave way and dropped upon the little angel as he slept, and broke his arm above the elbow:she

"If I were sure so, I would think it well to kill her," murmured the youth, as he stifled the struggling bird

"My sister met her going through the standing corn last harvest time, and the child she brought forth a week

after was born blind, and is blind now," said a hardvisaged woman, washing turnips in a brass basin of

"I was blackandblue for a month when she threw me down and took from me that hawk I had trapped; and

she went and fastened my wrist in the iron instead," hissed a boy of twelve, in a shrill piping treble, as he slit

"They say she dances naked by moonlight in the water with imps!" cried a bright little lad who was at play

"She is a witch, there is no doubt about that," said again the old woman who sat knitting on the stone bench in

"And her mother such a saint!" sighed another old dame who was grouping green herbs together for salads.

"If she were only here," swore Edm�e's lover, under his breath, stealing his hand where the silver beads lay,

She had passed through the market with a load of herbs and flowers for one of the chief hostelries in the

square, and was returning with the flat broad basket balanced empty on her head.

Something of their mutterings and curses reached her, but she neither hastened nor slackened her pace; she

came on straightly towards them with her firm step, and her eyes flashing hard against the sun.

She gave no sign that she had heard except that the blood darkened a little in her cheeks, and her mouth shut

close with a haughtier scorn. But the sight of her answering in that instant to their hate, the sight of her with

the sunshine on her scarlet sash and her slender golden limbs, added impulse to their rage.

They had talked themselves into a passionate belief in her as a thing hellborn and unclean, that brought all

manner of evil fates amongst them. They knew that holy water had never reached her; that a church's door

had never opened to her; they had heard their children hoot her many a time unrebuked, they had always

hated her with the cruelty begotten by a timid cowardice or a selfish dread. They were ripe to let their hate

take shape in speech and act. The lover of Edm�e loosened his hand from the silver beads about her throat,

It fell short of her, being illaimed; she did not slacken her speed, nor turn out of her course; she still came

"Who freed the devilbird and put me on the trap?" yelled the boy with the starling.

"Who made my sister bring forth a little beast, blind as a mole?" shrieked the woman, washing in the brazen

"Who is a witchwho dances naked? who bathes with devils at the full moon?" cried the youth who had

plucked the goose bare alive; and he stooped for a pebble, and aimed better than his comrade, and flung it at

"It is a shame to see the child of Reine Flamma so dealt with," murmured the old creature that was grouping

But her voice found no echo. The old soldier even rebuked her. "A jettatrice should be killed for the good of

Meanwhile she came nearer and nearer. The last stone had struck her upon the arm; but it had drawn no

The courage did not touch them; they thought it only the hardihood of a thing that was devilbegotten.

"She is always mute like that; she cannot feel. Strike, strike, strike!" cried the cripple's mother; and the little

cripple himself clapped his small hands and screamed his shrill laugh. The youths, obedient and nothing loth,

rained their stones on her as fast as their hands could fling them. Still she neither paused nor quailed; but

Their impatience and their eagerness made their aim uncertain; the stones fell fast about her on every side,

but one alone struck hera jagged flint that fell where the white linen shirt opened on her chest. It cut the

skin, and the blood started; the children shrieked and danced with delight: the youths rushed at her inflamed

"Stone her to death! stone her to death!" they shouted; she only laughed, and held her head erect and stood

motionless where they arrested her, without the blood once paling in her face or her eyes once losing their

luminous calm scorn. The little cripple clapped his hands, climbing on his mother's back to see the sight, and

his mother screamed again and again above his laughter. "Strike! strike! strike!"

One of the elder lads seized her in his arms to force her on her knees while the others stoned her. The touch

of him roused all the fire slumbering in her blood. She twisted herself round in his hold with a movement so

rapid that it served to free her; struck him full on the eyes with her clenched hand a blow that sent him

stunned and staggering back; then, swiftly as lightning flash, drew her knife from her girdle, and striking out

with it right and left, dashed through the people, who scattered from her path as sheep from the spring of a

Slowly and with her face turned full upon them, she backed her way across the marketplace. The knife,

turned blade outward, was pressed against her chest. None of them dared to follow her; they thought her

She moved calmly with a firm tread backwardbackwardbackward; holding her foes at bay; the scarlet

sash on her loins flashing bright in the sun; her level brows bent as a tiger bends his ere he leaps. They

watched her, huddling together frightened and silent. Even the rabid cries of the cripple's mother had ceased.

On the edge of the great square she paused a moment; the knife still held at her chest, her mouth curled in

But there was not one amongst them who dared lift his hand. There was not so much as a word that answered

She laughed aloud, and waited for their attack, while the bell in the tower above them tolled loudly the

strokes of noon. No one amongst them stirred. Even the shrill pipe of the lame boy's rejoicing had sunk, and

At that moment, through the golden haze of sunbeams and of summer dust that hung above the crowd, she

saw the red gleam of the soldiers of the state; and their heavy tramp echoed on the silence as they hastened to

the scene of tumult. She had no faith in any justice which these would deal her; had they not once dragged

her before the tribunal of their law when she had forced asunder the iron jaws of that trap in the oak wood to

give freedom to the bleeding hawk that was struggling in it whilst its callow birds screamed in hunger in their

She had no faith in them; nor in any justice of men; and she turned and went down a twisting lane shaded

from the sun, and ran swiftly as a doe through all its turns, and down the steps leading to the waterside.

There her boat was moored; she entered it and pulled herself slowly down the river, which now at noontide

was almost deserted, whilst the shutters of the houses that edged it on either side were all closed to keep out

A boatman stretched half asleep upon the sacks in his barge; a horse dozing in his harness on the

towingpath; a homeless child who had no one to call him into shelter from the heat, and who sat and

dappled his little burning feet in the flowing water; these and their like were all there were here to look on

She rowed herself feebly, with one oar gradually out of the ways of the town; her left arm was strained, and,

for the moment, useless; her shoulders throbbed with bruises; and the wound from the stone still bled. She

staunched the blood by degrees, and folded the linen over it, and went on; she was so used to pain, and so

strong, that this seemed to her to be but little. She had passed through similar scenes before, though the

people had rarely broken into such open violence towards her, except that winter's day in the hut of Manon

The sky was cloudless; the air without a breeze. The white blossoms of peachtrees bloomed between the old

brown walls of the wooden houses. In the galleries, between the heads of saints and the faces of fauns, there

were tufts of homebred lilies of the valley and thick flowering bushes of golden genista. The smell of

mignonette was sweet upon the languid breeze, and here and there, from out the darkness of some open

casement, some stoveforced crimson or purple azalea shrub glowed; for the people's merchandise was

flowers, and all the silent waterstreets were made lovely and fragrant by their fair abundance.

The tide of the river was flowing in, the stream was swelling over all the black piles, and the broad smooth

strips of sand that were visible at low water; it floated her boat inward with it without trouble, past the last

houses of the town, past the budding orchards and grey stone walls of the outskirts, past the meadows and the

cornfields and the poplars of the open country. A certain faintness had stolen on her with the gliding of the

vessel and the dizzy movement of the water; pain and the loss of blood filled her limbs with an unfamiliar

weakness; she felt giddy, and half blind, and almost powerless to guide her course.

When she had reached the old granary where it stood amongst the waterdocks and rushes, she checked the

boat almost unconsciously, and let it drift in amidst the reeds and lie there. Then she pulled herself feebly up

through the shallow pools, and across the stone sill of the casement, into the chamber where she had leaned to

live a life that was utterly apart from the actual existence to which chance had doomed her.

It was the height of noon; at such an hour the creator of these things she loved was always absent at the toil

which brought him his daily bread; she knew that he never returned until the evening, never painted except at

The place was her own in the freedom of solitude; all these shapes and shadows in which imagination and

tradition had taken visible shape were free to her; she had grown to love them with a great passion, to seek

She crept into the room; its coolness, its calm, its dimmed refreshing light seemed like balm after the noise of

the busy marketplace and the glare of the cloudless sunshine. A sick sense of fatigue and of feebleness had

assailed her more strongly. She dropped down in the gloom of the place on the broad, cold flags of the floor,

in the deepest shadow, where the light from without did not reach, and beneath the cartoon of the Gods of

Of all the forms with which he had people its loneliness, these had the most profound influence on her in their

fair, passionless, majestic beauty, in which it seemed to her that the man who had begotten them had repeated

his own likeness. For they were all alike, yet unalike; of the same form and feature, yet different even in their

strong resemblance, like elder and younger brethren who hold a close companionship. For Hypnos was still

but a boy with his blueveined eyelids closed, and his mouth rosy and parted like that of a slumbering child,

and above his golden head a star rose in the purple night. Oneiros standing next was a youth whose eyes

smiled as though they beheld visions that were welcome to him; in his hand, amongst the white roses, he held

a black wand of sorcery, and around his bended head there hovered a dim silvery nimbus. Thanatos alone was

a man full grown; and on his calm and colourless face there were blended an unutterable sadness, and an

unspeakable peace; his eyes were fathomless, farreaching, heavy laden with thought, as though they had

seen at once the heights of heaven and the depths of hell; and he, having thus seen, and knowing all things,

had leaned that there was but one good possible in all the universe,that one gift which his touch gave, and

which men in their blindness shuddered from and cursed. And above him and around him there was a great

So the gods stood, and so they spoke, even to her; they seemed to her as brethren, masters, friendsthese

They are the gods of the poor, of the wretched, of the outcast, of the proscribed,they are the gods who

respect not persons nor palaces,who stay with the exile and flee from the king,who leave the tyrant of

the world to writhe in torment, and call a smile beautiful as the morning on the face of a beggar child,who

turn from the purple beds where wealth and lust and brutal power lie, and fill with purest visions the darkest

hours of the loneliest nights, for genius and youth,they are the gods of consolation and of

compensation,the gods of the exile, of the orphan, of the outcasts, of the poet, of the prophet, of all whose

bodies ache with the infinite pangs of famine, and whose hearts ache with the infinite woes of the world, of

And looking at them, she seemed to know them as her only friends,as the only rulers who ever could loose

the bands of her fate and lead her forth to freedomSleep, and Dreams, and Death.

They were above her where she sank upon the stone floor; the shadows were dark upon the ground; but the

sun rays striking through the distant window against the opposite wall fell across the head of the boy Hypnos,

She sat gazing at him, forgetful of her woe, her task, the populace that had hooted her abroad, the stripes that

awaited her at home. The answering gaze of the god magnetised her; the poetic virus which had stirred

dumbly in her from her birth awoke in her bewildered brain. Without knowing what she wanted, she longed

Shadowy fancies passed over her in a tumultuous pageantry; the higher instincts of her nature rose and

struggle to burst the bonds in which slavery and ignorance and brutish toil had bound them; she knew

nothing, knew no more than the grass knew that blew in the wind, than the passionflower knew that slept

unborn in the uncurled leaf; and yet withal she felt, saw, trembled, imagined, and desired, all mutely, all

For the second time the weakness of tears rushed into her fearless eyes, which had never quailed before the

fury of any living thing; her head fell on her chest; she wept bitterly,not because the people had injured

her,not because her wounded flesh ached and her limbs were sore,but because a distance so

immeasurable, so unalterable, severed her from all of which these gods told her without speech.

The sunrays still shone on the bright head of Hypnos, while the stones on which she sat, and her own form,

were dark in shadow; as though the bright boy pitied her, as though he, the world's consoler, had compassion

for this thing so lonely and accursed of her kind, the dumb violence of her weeping brought its own

The drowsy heat of noon, pain, weariness, the faintness of fasting, the fatigue of conflict, the dreamy

influences of that place, had their weight on her. Crouching there half on her knees, looking up ever in the

faces of the three Immortals, the gift of Hypnos descended upon her and stilled her; its languor stole through

her veins; its gentle pressure closed her eyelids; gradually her rigid limbs and her bent body relaxed and

unnerved; she sank forward, her head lying on her outstretched arms, and the stillness of a profound sleep

And Oneiros added his gift also; and a throng of dim, delirious dreams floated through her brain, and peopled

her slumber with fairer things than the earth holds, and made her mouth smile while yet her lids were wet.

Thanatos alone gave nothing, but looked down on her with his dark, sad eyes, and held his finger on his

HER sleep remained unbroken; there was no sound to disturb it. The caw of a rook in the top of the

poplartree, the rushing babble of the water, the cry of a fieldmouse caught amongst the rushes by an otter,

the faroff jingle of mules' bells from the great southern road that ran broad and white beyond the meadows,

the gnawing of the rats in the network of timbers which formed the vaulted roof, these were all the noises that

reached this solitary place, and these were both too faint and too familiar to awaken her.

Heat and pain made her slumber heavy, and the forms on which her waking eyes had gazed made her sleep

full of dreams. Hour after hour went by; the shadows lengthened, the day advanced: nothing came to rouse

her. At length the vesper bell rang over the pastures and the peals of the Ave Maria from the cathedral in the

As the chimes died, Arsl�n crossed the threshold of the granary and entered the desolate place where he had

made his home. For once his labour had been early completed, and he had hastened to employ the rare and

He had almost stepped upon her ere he saw her, lying beneath his cartoons of the sons of Nyx. He paused and

Her attitude had slightly changed, and had in it all the abandonment of youth and of sleep; her face was

turned upward, with quick silent breathings parting the lips; her bare feet were lightly crossed; the linen of

her loose tunic was open at the throat, and had fallen back from her right arm and shoulder: the whole supple

grace and force that were mingled in her form were visible under the light folds of her simple garments. The

sun still lingered on the bright bowed head of Hypnos, but all light had died from off the stone floor where

But in him there arose little curiosity and still less pity; he recognized her as the girl whom, with the face of

old Egypt, he had seen rowing her boatload of corn down the river, and whom he had noticed for her strange

He supposed that mere curiosity had brought her there, and sleep overtaken her in the drowsiness of the first

He did not seek to rouse her, nor to spare her any shame or pain which at her waking, she might feel. He

merely saw in her a barbaric and yet beautiful creature; and his only desire was to use the strange charms in

A smoothplaned panel stood on an easel near; turning it where best the light fell, he began to sketch her

attitude rapidly, in black and white. It was quickly done by a hand so long accustomed to make such

transcripts; and he soon went further to that richer portraiture which colour alone can accomplish. The stone

pavement; the brown and slender limbs; the breadth of scarlet given by the sash about her loins; the upturned

face, whose bloom was as brilliant as that of a red carnation blooming in the twilight of some old wooden

gallery; the eyelids, tearladen still; the mouth that smiled and sighed in dreaming; on the wall above, the

radiant figure of the young god which remained in full sunlight whilst all beneath was dark;these gave a

He worked on for more than an hour, until the wood began to beam with something of the hues of flesh and

blood, and the whole head was thrown out in colour, although the body and the limbs still remained in their

Once or twice she moved restlessly, and muttered a little, dully, as though the perpetual unsparing gaze bent

on her with a scrutiny so cold, and yet so searching, disturbed or magnetized her even in her sleep. But she

never awakened, and he had time to study and to trace every curve and line of the halfdeveloped loveliness

before him with as little as pity, with as cruel an exactitude, as that with which the vivisector tears asunder

the living animal whose sinews he severs, or the botanist plucks to pieces the newborn flower whose

The most beautiful women, who had bared their charms that the might see them live again upon his canvas,

had seldom had power to make his hand tremble a moment in such translation. To the surgeon all sex is dead,

all charm is gone from the female corpse that his knife ravages in search of the secrets of science; and to

Arsl�n the women whom he modelled and pourtrayed were nearly as sexless, nearly as powerless to create

When, in the isolation of the long northern winters, he had sat beside the pinewood that blazed on his hearth

while the wolves howled down the deserted village street, and the snow drifted up and blocked from sight the

last pane of the lattice and the last glimpse of the outer world, he had been more enamoured of the visions

that visited him in that solitude than he had ever been since of the living creatures whose beauty he recorded

He had little passion in him, or passion was dormant; and he had sought women, even in the hours of love,

with coldness and with something of contempt for that licence which, in the days of his comparative

affluence, he had not denied himself. He thought always De ces basiers puissants comme un dictame, De

ces transports plus vifs que des rayons, Que restetil? C'est affruex, � mon �me! Rien qu'un dessin fort p�le

aux trois crayons." And for those glowing colours of passion which burned so hotly for an instant, only so

soon to fade out into the pallor of indifference or satiety, he had a contempt which almost took the place and

He worked on and on, studying the sleeper at his feet, with the passionless keenness of a science that was as

merciless in its way as the science which tortures and slaughters in order to penetrate the mysteries of sentient

She was beautiful in her way, this dark strange foreign child, who looked as though her native home must

have been where the Nile lily blooms, and the black brows of the Sphinx are bent against the sun.

She was beautiful, like a young leopard, like a young python, coiled there, lightly breathing, and mute and

motionless and unconscious. He painted her as he would have painted the leopard or python lying asleep in

the heavy hush of a noon in the tropics. And she was no more to him than these would have been.

The shadows grew longer; the sunlight died off the bright head of the boy Hypnos; the feathery reeds on the

bank without got a red flush from the west; there came a sudden burst of song from a boatload of children

going home from the meadows where they had gathered the first cowslips of the season in great sheaves that

sent their sweetness on the air though the open window as they went by beneath the walls.

The shouts of the joyous singing rang shrilly through the silence; they pierced her ear and startled her from

her slumber; she sprang up suddenly, with a bound like a hart that scents the hounds, and stood fronting him;

her eyes opened wide, her breath panting, her nerves strained to listen and striving to combat.

In the first bewildered instant of her awakening she 0thought that she was still in the marketplace of the

She started afresh at the sound of his voice, and drew her disordered dress together, and stood mute, with her

hands crossed on her bosom, and the blood coming and going under her transparent skin.

She echoed his cowardly word with a halftremulous defiance; the heroism of her nature, which an hour

earlier had been lashed to its fullest strength, cast back the question as an insult; but her voice was low and

husky, and the blood dyed her face scarlet as she spoke. For she feared him; and for the moment she had

forgotten how she had come there and all that had passed, except that some instinct of the longhunted

But he stood between her and the passage outward, and pride and shame held her motionless. Moreover, she

still listened intently: the confused voices of the children still seemed to her like those of the multitude by

whom she had been chased; and she was ready to leap tigerlike upon them, rather than let them degrade her

He looked at her with some touch of interest: she was to him only some stray beggar girl, who had trespassed

into his solitude; yet there was that in her untamed regard, in her wide open eyes, in the staglike grace of her

attitude, in the sullen strength which spoke in her reply, that warmed him to closer notice of all these.

"Why are you in this place?" he asked her, slowly. "You were asleep here when I came, more than an hour

The singing of the children was waxing fainter, as the boat floated from beneath the wall on its homeward

way into the town. She ceased to fancy these cries the cries of her foes, and recollection began to revive in

"Why did you come?" he repeated, musing how he should persuade her to return to the attitude sketched out

She returned his look with the bold truthfulness natural to her, joined with that apprehensiveness of

chastisement which becomes second nature to every creature that is for ever censured, cursed, and beaten for

"I came to see those," she answered him, with a backward movement of her hand, which had a sort of

reverence in it, up to the forms of the gods above her. The answer moved him; he had not thought to find a

feeling so high as this in this ragged, lonely, sunburnt child; and, to the man for whom, throughout a youth of

ambition and of disappointment, the world had never found the voice of favour, even so much appreciation as

lay in this outcast's homage had its certain sweetness. For a man may be negligent of all sympathy for

himself, yet never, if he be poet or artist, will he be able utterly to teach himself indifference to all sympathy

She coloured at the unconcealed contempt that lay in his last word; her head drooped; she knew that they

were much to herfriends, masters, teachers divine and full of pity. But she had no language in which to tell

him this; and if she could have told him, she would have been ashamed. Also, the remembrance of those

benefits to him, of which he was ignorant, had now come to her through the bewilderment of her thoughts,

Her eyes dropped under his; the strange love she bore him made her blind and giddy and afraid; she moved

restlessly, glaring round with the halftimid, halffierce glances of a wild animal that desires to escape and

Watching her more closely, he noticed for the first time the stains of blood upon her shoulder, and the bruise

But the reply to him told nothing: he had been too shunned by the populace, who dreaded the evil genius

which they attributed to him, to have been told by them of their fancies and follies; and he had never essayed

to engage either their companionship or their confidence. To be left to work, or to die, in solitude undisturbed

was the uttermost that he had ever asked of any strange people amidst whom he had dwelt.

She paused a moment, glancing still hither and thither all round, as a trapped bird glances, seeking his way

"I think so," she muttered; "and yetI have had their little children in my reach, many a time by the water

He looked at her more earnestly than he had done before. The repressed passion that glanced under her

straight dusky brows, the unspoken scorn which curled on her mouth, the nervous meaning with which her

hands clenched on the folds of linen on her breast, attracted him; there was a force in them all which aroused

his attention. There were in her that conscious power for ferocity, and that contemptuous abstinence from its

exercise, which lie so often in the fathomless regard of the lion; he moved nearer to her, and addressed her

"Who are you?" he asked, "and why have these people such savage violence against you?"

They were but words to herempty and meaningless. She knew that he beat her more often because she told

truth or refused to cheat. For aught that she was sure of, she might be wrong, and he right.

Arsl�n looked at her musingly. All the thought he had was to induce her to return to the attitude necessary to

He put a few more questions to her; but the replies told him little. At all times silent, before him a thousand

emotions held her dumb. She was afraid, besides, that at every word he might suspect the debt he owed to

her, and she dreaded its avowal with as passionate a fear as though, in lieu of the highest sacrifice and

service, her action had been some crime against him. She felt ashamed of it, as of some unholy thing; it

seemed to her impious to have dared to give him back a life that he had wearied of, and might have wished to

She had never imagined what fear meant until she had looked on this man's face. Now she dreaded, with an

apprehension which made her start like a criminal at every sound, lest he should ever know of this gift of life

which, unbidden, she had restored to him: which, being thus given, her instinct told her he would only take as

Perfect love casts out fear, runs the tradition; rather, surely, does the perfect love of a woman break the

courage which no other thing could ever daunt, and set foot on the neck that no other yoke would ever touch.

By slow degrees he got from her such fragments of her obscure story as she knew. That this child, so

friendless, illtreated, and abandoned, had been the saviour of his own existence, he never dreamed. A

creature beaten and half starved herself could not, for an instant, look to him one likely to have possessed

Besides, his thoughts were less with her than with the interrupted study on his easel, and his one desire was to

induce her to endure the same watch upon her, waking, which had had power to disturb her even in her

unconsciousness. She was nothing to him, save a thing that he wished to turn to the purpose of his artlike a

flower that he plucked on his way through the fields, for the sake of its colour, to fill in some vacant nook in a

"You have come often here?" he asked her, whilst she stood before him, flushing and growing pale, irresolute

and embarrassed, with her hands nervously gathering the folds of her dress across her chest, and her sad,

"Beat you? Amongst what brutes have you lived? Tell me, why did you care to come?"

"They are beautiful, and they speak to me," she murmured, with a pathetic, apologetic timidity in her voice.

"Do they? They have few auditors. But you are beautiful, too, in your way. Has no one ever told you so?"

She glanced at him halfwistfully, halfdespairingly; she thought that he spoke in derision of her.

"You," he answered. "Why not? Look at yourself here: all imperfect as it is, you can see something of what

Her eyes fell for the first time on the broad confused waves of dull colour, out of whose depths her own face

arose, like some fair drowned thing tossed upward on a murky sea. She started with a cry as if he had

She had looked at her own limbs floating in the opaque water of the bathing pool, with a certain sense of their

beauty wakening in her; she had tossed the soft, thick, goldflecked darkness of her hair over her bare

shoulder, with a certain languor and delight; she had held a knot of poppies against her breast, to see their

hues contrast with her own white skin;but she had never imagined that she had beauty.

He watched her, letting the vain passion he thus taught her creep with all its poison into her veins.

He had seen such wonder and such awed delight before in Nubian girls with limbs of bronze and eyes of

night, who had never thought that they had lovelinessthough they had seen their forms in the clear water of

the wells every time that they had brought their pitchers thither, and who had only awakened to that sweet

supreme sense of power, and of possession when first they had beheld themselves live again upon his canvas.

Frightened she knew not why, and utterly ashamed to have lain thus in his sight, to have slept thus under his

eyes, yet filled with ecstasy, to think that she was lovely enough to him to be raised amidst those marvelous

"Well thenlet me paint you there," he said, after a pause. "I am too poor to offer you a reward for it. I have

"I want nothing," she interrupted him, quickly, while a dark shadow, half wrath, half sorrow, swept across her

"I cannot boast the same. But, since you care for all these hapless things that are imprisoned here, do me,

their painter, this one grace. Lie there, in the shadow again, as you were when you slept, and let me go on

A glory beamed over all her face. Her mouth trembled, her whole frame shook like a reed in the wind.

"If you care!" she said, brokenly, and paused. It seemed to her impossible that this form of hers, which had

been only deemed fit for the whip, for the rope, for the shower of stones, could have any grace or excellence

in his sight; it seemed to her impossible that this face of hers, which nothing had ever kissed except the rough

tongue of some honest dog, and which had been blown on by every storm wind, beaten on by every summer

"Certainly I care. Go yonder and lie as you were lying a few moments agothere in the shadow, under these

She was used to give obediencethe dumb unquestioning obedience of the packhorse or the sheepdog,

and she had no idea for an instant of refusal. It was a great terror to her to hear his voice and feel his eyes on

her, and be so near to him; yet it was equally a joy sweeter and deeper than she had ever dreamed of as

possible. He still seemed to her like a god, this man under whose hand flowers bloomed, and sunrays

smiled, and waters flowed, and human forms arose, and the gracious shapes of a thousand dreams grew into

He motioned her with a careless, gentle gesture, as one motions a timid dog, to the spot over which the three

brethren watched hand in hand; and she stretched herself down passively and humbly, meekly as the dog

stretches himself to rest at his master's command. Over all her body the blood was leaping; her limbs

shuddered; her breath came and went in broken murmurs; her brighthued skin grew dark and white by turns;

she was filled with a passionate delight that he had found anything in her to desire or deem fair; and she

quivered with a tumultuous fear that made her nervous as any panting hare. Her heart beat as it had never

One living creature had found beauty in her; one human voice had spoken to her gently and without a curse;

one man had thought her a thing to be entreated and not scorned;a change so marvelous in her fate

transfigured all the world for her, as though the gods above had touched her lips with fire. But she was mute

and motionless; the habit of silence and of repression had become her second nature: no statue of marble

could have been stiller, or in semblance more lifeless, than she was where she rested on the stones. Arsl�n

noticed nothing of this; he was intent upon his work. The sun was very near its setting, and every second of

its light was precious to him. The world indeed he knew would in all likelihood never be the wiser or the

richer for anything he did; in all likelihood he knew all these things that he created were destined to moulder

away undisturbed save by the rats that might gnaw, and the newts that might traverse, them. He was buried

here in the grave of a hopeless penury, of an endless oblivion. They were buried with him; and the world

Still, having the madness of genius, he was as much the slave of his art as though an universal fame had

With a deep breath that had half a sigh in it he threw down his brushes when the darkness fell. While he

wrought, he forgot the abject bitterness of his life; when he ceased work, he remembered how hateful a thing

He thanked her with a few words of gratitude to her for her patience, and released her from the strain of the

She rose slowly with an odd dazzled look upon her face, like one coming out of great darkness into the full

blaze of day. Her eyes sought the portrait of her own form, which was still hazy and unformed, amidst a mist

of varying hues: that she should be elected to have a part with those glorious things which were the

companions of his lowliness seemed to her a wonder so strange and so immeasurable that her mind still could

For it was greatness to her: a greatness absolute and incredible. The men had stoned, the women cursed, the

children hooted her; but he selected herand her alonefor that supreme honour which his hand could

Not noticing the look upon her face he placed before her on the rude bench, which served in that place for a

table, some score of small studies in colour, trifles brilliant as the rainbow, birds, flowers, insects, a leaf of

fern, an orchid in full bloom, a nest with a blue warbler in it, a few peasants by a wayside cross, a child at a

well, a mule laden with autumn fruitanything which in the district had caught his sight or stirred his fancy.

"There is nothing else here," he added. "But since you care for such things, take as may of them as you will as

Her face flushed up to the fringes of her hair; her eyes looked at the sketches in longing. Except for the

scarlet scarf of Marcellin, this was the only gift she had ever had offered her. And all these reproductions of

the world around her were to her like so much sorcery. Owning one, she would have worshipped it, revered

it, caressed it, treasured it; her life was so desolate and barren that such a gift seemed to her as handsfull of

She stretched out her arms in one quick longing gesture; then as suddenly withdrew them, folding them on

her chest, whilst her face grew very pale. Something of its old dark proud ferocity gathered on it.

"I want no payment," she said, huskily, and she turned to the threshold and crossed it.

She spoke almost suddenly; there was a certain sharpness and dulness of disappointment at her heart. She

wanted, she wished, she knew not what. But not that he should offer her payment.

"Can you return tomorrow? or any other day?" he asked her, thinking of the sketch unfinished on the sheet

of pinewood. He did not notice the beating of her heart under her folded arms, the quick gasp of her breath,

She moved away from him across the threshold as she spoke; she was not afraid of the people, but she was

afraid of this strange, passionate sweetness, which seemed to fill her veins with fire and make her drunk and

She drew herself with a rapid movement from him and sprang into her boat where it rocked amidst the rushes

against the steps; in another instant she had thrust it from its entanglement in the reeds, and pulled with swift,

Night was near and the darkness soon enclosed it; the beat of the oars sounding faintly through the silence of

Like Persephone she had eaten of the fatal pomegranate seed, which, whether she would or no, would make

her leave the innocence of youth, and the light of the sun and the blossoms of the glad green springtime

world, and draw her footsteps backward and downward to that hell which none,once having entered

She had drifted away from him into the shadows of evening as they died from the shore and the stream into

He thought no more of pursuing her than he thought of chasing the melted shadows.

Returning to his chamber he looked for some minutes at the panel where it leaned against the wall, catching

"If she should not come, it will be of little moment," he thought. "I have nearly enough for remembrance

And he went away from the painting, and took up charcoal and turned to those anatomical studies whose

severity he never spared himself, and for whose perfecting he pursued the science of form even in the bodies

From the moment that his hand touched the stylus he forgot her; for she was no more to him than a chance

bird that he might have taken from its home amidst the ripe red autumn foliage and caged for a while to study

its grace and colour, its longing eye and drooping wing; and then tossed up into the air again, when he had

done with it, to find its way to freedom, or to fall into the fowler's snare;what matter which?

THE boat went on into the darkness under the willow banks, past the great Calvary, whose lanthorn was just

She knew by heart the old familiar way; and the water was as safe to her as the broadest, straightest road at

noonday. She loved it best thus; dusky: half seen; muttering on through the silence; full of the shadows of the

clouds and of the boughs; black as a fresh dug grave where some ruined wall leaned over it; broken into liitle

silvery gleams where it caught the light from a saint's shrine or a smith's forge.

By day a river is but the highway of men; it is but a public bridge betwixt the country and the town; but at

night it grows mystical, silent, solitary, unreal, with the sound of the sea in its murmurings and the peace of

death in its calm; at night, through its ceaseless whisperings, there always seem to arise echoes from all the

voices of the drowned multitudes of the ocean whence it comes, and from all the voices of the living

It was quite dark when she reached the landing steps; the moon was just rising above the sharp gables of the

millhouse, and a lanthorn was moving up and down behind the budded boughs as Claudis Flamma went to

At the jar of the boat against the steps he peered through the branches, and greeted her with a malignant

reprimand. He timed her services to the minute; and here had been a full halfday of the spring weather

wasted, and lost to him. He drove her indoors with sharp railing and loud reproaches; not waiting for an

answer, but heaping on her the bitterest terms of reviling that his tongue could gather.

In the kitchen a little lowburning lamp lit dully the poverty and dreariness of the place, and shed its orange

rays on the illtempered, puckered, gloomy face of the old woman Pitchou sitting at her spindle; there was a

curious odour of sundried herbs and smokedried fish that made the air heavy and pungent; the great

chimney yawned black and fireless; a starveling cat mewed dolorously over an empty platter; under a

tawdrycoloured print of the Flight into Egypt, there hung on a nail three dead blackbirds, shot as they sang

the praises of the spring; on a dresser, beside a little white basin of holy water, there lay a grey rabbit, dead

likewise, with limbs broken and bleeding from the trap in which it had writhed helpless all through the

The penury, dulness, and cruelty, the hardness, barrenness, and unloveliness of this life in which she abode

had never struck her with a sense so sharp as that which now fell on her; crossing the threshold of this dreary

place after the shadows of the night, the beauty of the gods, the voice of praise, the eyes of Arsl�n.

She came into the room, bringing with her the cool fragrance of damp earth, wet leaves, and wild flowers; the

moisture of the evening was on her clothes and hair; her bare feet sparkled with the silvery spray of dew; her

eyes had the look of blindness yet of lustre that the night air lends; and on her face there was a mingling of

puzzled pain and of rapturous dreaming wonder, which new thought and fresh feeling had brought there to

The old woman, twirling a flaxen thread upon her wheel, looked askance at her, and mumbled"like

mother, like child." The old man, catching up the lamp, held it against her face, and peered at her under his

"A whole day wasted!" he swore for the twentieth time, in his teeth. "Beast! What hast thou to say for

The old dogged ferocity gathered over her countenance, chasing away the softened perplexed radiance that

"Nothing! nothing!" he echoed after her. "Then we will find a way to make thee speak. Nothing!when

three of the clock should have seen thee back hither at latest, and five hours since then have gone by without

account. You have spent it in brawling and pleasurein shame and iniquityin vice and in violence, thou

She spoke with steady contemptuous calm. She disdained to seek refuge from his fury by pleading the

injuries that the townsfolk had wrought her; and of the house by the river, she would not have spoken though

"Five hours, five mortal hours, stolen from me, your lawful work left undone that you may riot in some secret

abomination that you dare not to name. Say where you have been, what you have done, you spawn of hell, or

She looked him full in the eyes as she spoke, with the look in her own that a bull's have when he lowers his

"As you choose! Ohho! You would speak as queens speakyoua thing less than the worm and the

emmet. As you chooseyou!who have not a rag on your back, not a crust of rye bread, not a leaf of salad

to eat, not a lock of hay for your bed, that is not mineminemine. As you choose. You!you thing

begotten in infamy; you slave; you beggar; you sloth! You are nothingnothing less than the blind worm

that crawls in the sand. You have the devil that bred you in you, no doubt; but it shall go hard if I cannot

As he spoke he seized her to strike her; in his hand he already gripped an oak stick that he had brought in

with him from his timberyard, and he raised it to rain blows on her, expecting no other course than the

dumb, passive, scornful submission with which she had hitherto accepted whatsoever he had chosen to do

But in lieu of the creature, silent and stirless, who before had stood to receive his lashes as though her body

were of bronze or wood, that felt not, a leonine and superb animal sprang up in full rebellion. She started out

of his grasp, her lithe form springing from his seizure as a willow bough that has been bent to earth springs

She caught the staff in both her hands, wrenched it by a sudden gesture from him, and flung it away to the

farther end of the chamber; then she turned on him as a hart turns brought to bay.

Her supple body was erect like a young pine; her eyes flushed with a lustre he had never seen in them; the

breath came hard and fast through her dilated nostrils; her mouth curled and quivered.

"Touch me again!" she cried aloud, while her voice rang full and imperious through the stillness. "Touch me

So sudden was the revolt, so sure the menace, that he old man dropped his hands and stood and gazed at her

aghast and staring; not recognizing the mute, patient, doglike thing that he had beaten at will, in this stern,

fearless, splendid, terrible creature, who faced him in all the royalty of wrath, in all the passion of

He could not tell what had altered her, what had wrought this transformation, what had changed her as by

sorcery; he could not tell that what had aroused a human soul in her had been the first human voice that she

had listened to in love; he could not tell that her body had grown sacred to her because a stranger had called

her beautiful, and that her life for the first time had acquired a worth and dignity in her sight because one man

He could not tell; he could only see that for the first time his slave had learned somewhere, and in some wise,

what freedom meant; and had escaped him. This alone he saw; and, seeing it, was startled and afraid.

She waited, watching him some moments, with cold eyes of disdain, in which a smouldering fire slept, ready

There was not a sound in the place; the woman spinning stopped her wheel, wondering in a halfstupid,

savage fashion; the lean cat ceased its cries; there was only the continual swish of the water in the sluices

under the wall without, and the dull ticking of the old Black Forest clock, that kept a fitful measure of the

days and nights in its cracked case of painted wood, high up, where the thyme, and the sage, and the onions

FolleFarine stood still, her left hand resting on her hip, her lips curved scornfully and close, her face full of

passion, which she kept as still as the dead birds hanging on the wall; whilst all the time the tawny smoky

hues of the oil lamp were wavering with an odd fantastic play over her head and limbs.

Before this night, she had always taken every blow and stripe patiently, without vengeance, without effort, as

she saw the mule and the dog, the horse and the ox, take theirs in their pathetic patience, in their noble

fortitude. She had thought that such were her daily portion as such as was the daily bread she broke.

But now, since she had awakened with the smile of the gods upon her, now, she felt that sooner than endure

again that indignity, that outrage, she would let her tyrant kill her in his hate, if so he chose, and cast her body

to the millstream, moaning through the trees beneath the moon; the water, at least, would bear her with it,

tranquil and undefiled, beneath the old grey walls and past the eyes of Arsl�n.

There was that in her look which struck dumb the mouth, and held motionless the arm, of Claudis Flamma.

Caustic, savage, hard as his own ash staff though he was, he was for the moment paralysed and unmanned.

Some vague sense of shame stirred heavily in him; some vague remembrance passed over him, that,

whatsoever else she might be, she had been once borne in his daughter's bosom, and kissed by his daughter's

lips, and sent to him by a dead woman's will, with a dead woman's wretchedness and loneliness as her sole

He passed his hands over his eyes with a blinded gesture, staring hard at her in the dusky lamplight.

He was a strong and bitter old man, made cruel by one great agony, and groping his way savagely through a

dark, hungry, superstitious, ignorant life. But in that moment he no more dared to touch her than he would

have dared to tear down the leaden Christ from off its crucifix, and trample it under foot, and spit on it.

He turned away, muttering in his throat, and kicking the cat from his path, while he struck out the light with

"Get to thy den," he said, with a curse. "We are abed too late. Tomorrow I will deal with thee."

She went without a word out of the dark kitchen and up the ladderlike stairs, up to her lair in the roof. She

said nothing; it was not in her nature to threaten twice, or twice protest; but in her heart she knew that neither

the next day, nor any other day, should that which Arsl�n had called "beauty," be stripped and struck whilst

From the time of her earliest infancy, she had been used to bare her shoulders to the lash, and take the stripes

as food and wages; she had no more thought to resist them than the brave hound, who fears no foe on earth,

has to resist his master's blows; the dull habits of a soulless bondage had been too strong on her to be lightly

broken, and the resignation of the loyal beasts that were her comrades, had been the one virtue that she had

She had tasted the freshness of liberty, and the blood burned like fire in her face as she remembered the

There was no mirror in her little lair in the gabled eaves; all the mirror she had ever known had been that

which she had shared with the waterlilies, when together she and they had leaned over the smooth dark

surface of the millpond. But the moon streamed clearly through the one unshuttered window, a moon full

and clear, and still cold; the springtide moon, from which the pale primroses borrow those tender hues of

theirs, which never warm or grow deeper, however golden be the sun that my shine.

Its colourless crescent went sailing past the little square lattice hole in the wall; masses of gorgeous cloud,

white and black, swept by in a fresh west wind; the fresh breath of a spring night chased away the heat and

languor of the day; the smell of all the blossoms of the spring rose up from wood and orchard; the cool,

drowsy murmuring of the millstream beneath was the only sound on the stillness, except when now and then

The moonbeams fell about her where she stood; and she looked down on her smooth skin, her glistening

shoulders, her lustrous and abundant hair, on which the wavering light played and undulated. The most

delicious gladness that a woman's life can know was in tumult in her, conflicting with the new and deadly

sense of shame and ignorance. She learned that she was beautiful, at the same time that she awoke to the

"Beautiful!" she muttered to herself, "only as a poppy as a snake, as a night moth are

And her heart was heavy, even amidst all its pleasure and triumph, heavy with a sense of utter ignorance and

The poppy was snapped asunder as a weed, the snake was shunned and cursed for his poison, the night moth

was killed because his nature had made him dwell in the darkness; none of the three might have any fault in

truth in them; all of the three might have only the livery of evil, and no more; might be innocent, and ask only

to breathe and live for a little brief space in their world, which men called God's world.

Yet were they condemned by men, and slain, being what they were, although God made them.

IN the room below, the old Norman woman who did not fear her taskmaster, unbarred the shutter to let the

moon shine in the room, and by its light put away her wheel and work, and cut a halved lettuce up upon a

The old man knelt down before the leaden image, and joined his knotted hands, and prayed in a low, fierce,

The clock kept fitful and uncertain time; it had been so long imprisoned in the gloom there among the beams

and cobwebs, and in this place life was so dull, so colourless, so torpid, that it seemed to have forgotten how

time truly went, and to wake up now and then with a shudder of remembrance, in which its works ran madly

The old woman ended her supper, munching the lettuceleaves thirstily in her toothless mouth, and not

casting so much as a crumb of the crusts to the cat, who pitifully watched, and mutely implored, with great

ravenous ambercircled eyes. Then she took her stick and crept out of the kitchen, her wooden shoes

"Prayer did little to keep holy the other one," she muttered; "unless, indeed, the devil heard and answered."

But Claudis Flamma for all that prayed on, entreating the mercy and guidance of heaven, whilst the gore

dripped from the dead rabbit, and the silent song birds hung stiff upon the nail.

"Thou hast a good labourer," said the old woman, Pitchou, with curt significance, to her master, meeting him

in the raw of the dawn, on the morrow, as he drew the bolts from his housedoor. "Take heed that thou dost

not drive her away, Flamma. One may beat a saddled mule safely, but hardly so a wolf's cub."

She passed out of the door as she spoke with mop and pail to wash down the paved court outside; but her

When FolleFarine came down the stairs in the crisp, cool, sweet smelling spring morning that was breaking

through the mists over the land and water, he motioned to her to break her fast with the cold porridge left

from overnight, and looking at her from under his bent brows with a glance that had some apprehension

underneath its anger, apportioned her a task for the early day with a few bitter words of command; but he

molested her no farther, nor referred ever so faintly to the scene of the past night.

She ate her poor and tasteless meal in silence, and set about her appointed labour without protest. So long as

she should eat his bread, so long, she said to herself, would she serve him. Thus much the pride and honesty

He watched her furtively under his shaggy eyebrows. His instinct told him that this nameless, dumb, captive,

desert animal, which he had bound as a beast of burden to his millwheels, had in some manner learned her

strength, and would not long remain content to be thus yoked and driven. He had blinded her with the

blindness of ignorance, and goaded her with the good of ignominy; but for all that, some way her bandaged

eyes had sought and found the light, some way her numbed hide had thrilled and swerved beneath the barb.

"She also is a saint; let God take her!" said the old man to himself in savage irony, as he toiled amongst his

His heart was ever sore and in agony because his God had cheated him, letting him hold as purest and holiest

among women the daughter who had betrayed him. In his way he prayed still; but chiefly his prayer was a

passionate upbraiding, a cynical reproach. Shehis beloved, his marvel, his choicest of maidens, his fairest

and coldest of virgins,had escaped him and duped him, and been a thing of passion and of foulness, of

treachery and of lust, all the while that he had worshipped her. Therefore he hated every breathing thing;

therefore he slew the birds in air song, the insects in their summer bravery, the lamb in its gambols, the rabbit

in its play amidst the primroses. Therefore he cried to the God whom he still believed in, "Thou lettest that

which was pure escape me to be defiled and be slaughtered, and now Thou lettest that which is vile escape

And now and then, in this woe of his which was so pitiful and yet so brutal, he glanced at her where she

laboured amongst the unbudded vines and leafless fruit trees, and whetted a sickle on the whirling grindstone,

and felt its edge, and thought to himself, "She was devil begotten. Would it not be well once and for all to rid

men of her?" For, he reasoned, being thus conceived in infamy and branded from her birth upward, how

Where she went at her labours, to and fro amongst the bushes and by the glancing water, she saw the steel

Not sending her out on any of the errands to and fro the country, which had a certain pleasure to her, because

she gained by them liberty and air, and the contentment of swift movement against fresh blowing winds. Nor

did her send her to the town. He employed her through ten whole hours in outdoor garden labour, and in

fetching and carrying from his yard to his lofts, always within sight of his own quick eye, and within call of

She did not revolt. She did what he bade her do swiftly and well. There was no fault to find in any of her

When the last sack was carried, the last sod turned, the last burden borne, the sun was sinking, he bade her

roughly go indoors and winnow last year's wheat in the store chambers till he should bid her cease.

She came and stood before him, her eyes very quiet in their look of patient strength.

"I have worked from daybreak through to sunset," she said, slowly to him. "It is enough for man and beast.

Before he could reply she had leaped the low stone wall that parted the timberyard from the orchard, and

He muttered a curse, and let her go. His head drooped on his breast, his hands worked restlessly on the stone

"There is hell in her," he said to himself. "Let her go to her rightful home. There is one thing"

"There is one thing?" echoed the old woman, hanging washed linen out to dry on the boughs of the

"One thing. I have made the devil work for me hard and well ten whole years through!"

"The devil!" mumbled the woman Pitchou, in contemptuous iteration. "Dost thou think the devil was ever

such a fool as to work for thy wage of blows and of black bread? Why, he rules the world, they say! And how

FolleFarine fled on, through the calm woodlands, through the pastures where the sleek herds dreamed their

days away, through the young wheat and the springing colza, and the little fields all bright with promise of

The league was but as a step to her, trained as her muscles were to speed and strength until her feet were fleet

as are the doe's. When she had gained her goal then only she paused, stricken with a sudden shyness and

An instinct, rather than a thought, turned her towards a little grasshidden pool behind the granary, whose

water, never stirred save by a pigeon's rosy foot, or by a timid plover's beak, was motionless and clear as any

Instinct, rather than thought, bent her head over it, and taught her eyes to seek her own reflection. It had a

certain beauty that fascinated wonder in it to her with a curious indefinable attraction. For the first time in her

life she had thought of it, and done such slight things as she could to make it greater. They were but

few,linen a little whiter and less coarsethe dust shaken from her scarlet sash; her bronzehued hair

burnished to richer darkness; a knot of wild narcissi in her bosom gathered with the dew on them as she came

This was all; yet this was something; something that showed the dawn of human impulses, of womanly

desires. As she looked, she blushed for her own foolishness; and, with a quick hand, cast the white wood

flowers into the centre of the pool. It seemed to her now, though only a moment earlier she had gathered

them, so senseless and so idle to have decked herself with their borrowed loveliness. As if for such things as

Arsl�n stood with his face turned from her, bending down over a trestle of wood.

He did not hear her as she approached; she drew quite close to him and looked where she saw that he looked;

down on the wooden bench. What she saw were a long falling stream of light hued hair, a grey still face,

closed eyes, and naked limbs, which did not stir save when his hand moved them a little in their posture, and

She did not shudder nor exclaim; she only looked with quiet and incurious eyes. In this life of the poor such a

It did not even seem strange to her to see it in such a place. He started slightly as he grew sensible of her

He looked at her in surprise seeing that this utter lack of interest or curiosity was true and not assumed; that

awe, and reverence, and dread, and all emotions which rise in human hearts before the sight or memory of

"There are many indeed," he made answer, slowly. "Just there is the toughest problemit is the insect life of

the world; it is the clouds of human ephemer�, begotten one summer day to die the next; it is the millions on

millions of men and women born, as it were, only to be choked by the reek of cities, and then fade out to

She looked wearily up at him, not comprehending, and, indeed, he had spoken to himself and not to her; she

lifted up one corner of the cere cloth and gazed a little while at the dead face, the face of a girl young, and in

"It is Fortis, the ragpicker's daughter," she said, indifferently, and dropt back the sheltering cloth. She did

not know what nor why she envied, and yet she was jealous of this white dead thing that abode there so

"Yes," he answered her. "It is his daughter. She died twenty hours ago,of low fever, they sayfamine, no

She felt no sorrow for the dead girl; the girl had mocked and jibed her many a time as a dark witch

"The dead sit to me often," he said, with a certain smile that had sadness and yet coldness in it.

"A few;most they keep. See,I paint death; I must watch it to paint it. It is dreary work, you think? It is

not so to me. The surgeon seeks his kind of truth; I seek mine. The man Fortis came to me on the river side

last night. He said to me, 'You like studying the dead, they say; have my dead for a copper coin. I am

starving;and it cannot hurt her.' So I gave him the cointhough I am as poor as heand I took the dead

woman. Why do you look like that? It is nothing to you; the girl shall go to her grave when I have done with

She bent her head in assent. It was nothing to her; and yet it filled her with a cruel feverish jealousy, it

She did not care for the body lying thereit had been but the other day that the dead girl had shot her lips

out at her in mockery and called her names from a balcony in an old ruined house as the boat drifted past

it;but there passed over her a dreary shuddering remembrance that she, likewise, might one day lie thus

before him and be no more to him than this. The people said that he who studied death, brought death.

The old wistful longing that had moved her, when Marcellin had died, to lay her down in the cool water and

let it take her to long sleep and to complete forgetfulness, returned to her again. Since the dead were of value

to him, best, she thought, be of them, and lie here in that dumb still serenity, caressed by his touch and his

regard. For, in a manner, she was jealous of this woman, as of some living rival who had, in her absence,

Any ghastliness or inhumanity in this search of his for the truth of his art amidst the frozen limbs and rigid

muscles of a corpse, never occurred to her. To her he was like a deity; to her these poor weak shreds of

broken human lives, these fragile empty vessels, whose wine of life had been spilled like water that runs to

She would have thought no more of grudging them in his employ and in his service than priests of Isis or of

Eleusis would have begrudged the sacrificed lives of the beasts and birds that smoked upon their temple

altars. To die at his will and be of use to him;this seemed to her the most supreme glory fate could hold;

"Why do you look so much at her?" he said at length. "I shall do her no harm; if I did, what would she

"I was not thinking of her," she answered slowly, with a certain perplexed pain upon her face. "I was thinking

I might be of more use to you if I were dead! You must not kill me, because men would hurt you for that; but

He started at the strangeness and suddenness of the words spoken steadily and with perfect sincerity and

simplicity in the dialect of the district, with no sense in their speaker of anything unusual being offered in

them. His eyes tried to search the expression of her face with greater interest and curiosity than they had ever

For the innumerable emotions awakening in her were only dimly shadowed there, and had in them the

confusion of all imperfect expressions. He could not tell whether here there was a great soul struggling

through the bonds of an intense ignorance and stupefaction, or whether there were only before him an animal

"Why should you think of death?" he said at last. "Is your life so bitter to you?"

She pointed to the corpse which the last sunrays were brightening, till the limbs were as alabaster and the

"That was a womana creature that is white and rose, and has yellow hair and laughs in the faces of men,

and has a mother that kisses her lips, and sees the children come to play at her knees. I am not one. I am a

His mouth smiled with a touch of sardonic humour, whose acrimony and whose irony escaped her.

"How should I tell? If you covet the title claim it,you have a right,you are a woman!"

"Always a woman," he echoed as he pointed to the god Hermes. "And there is your creator."

"Yes. He made Woman; for he made her mind out of treachery and her words out of empty wind. Heph�stus

made her heart, fusing for it brass and iron. Their work has worn well. It has not changed in all these

ages!But what is your history? Go and lie yonder, where you were last night, and tell me your story while I

She obeyed him and told him what she knew; lying there, where he had motioned her, in the shadow under

the figures of the three grandsons of Chaos. He listened, and wrought on at her likeness.

The story, as she told it in her curt imperfect words, was plain enough to him, though to herself obscure. It

It awakened a certain compassion for her in his heart, which was rarely moved to anything like pity. For to

him nature was so much and man so little, the one so majestic and so exhaustless, the other so small and so

ephemeral, that human wants and human woes touched him but very slightly. His own, even at their darkest,

moved him rather to selfcontempt than to selfcompassion, for these were evils of the body and of the

As a boy he had had no ear to the wail of the frozen and famishing people wandering homeless over the waste

of drifted snow, where but the night before a village had nestled in the mountain hollow; all his senses had

been given in a trance of awe and rapture to the voices of the great winds sweeping down from the heights

through the pineforests, and of the furious seas below, gnashing and raging on the wreckstrewn sand. It

was with these last that he had had kinship and communion, these endured always; but for the men they slew,

what were they more in the great sum of time than forestleaves or ocean driftwood?

And, indeed, to those who are alive to the nameless, universal, eternal soul which breathes in all the grasses

of the fields, and beams in the eyes of all creatures of earth and air, and throbs in the living light of

palpitating stars, and thrills through the young sap of forest trees, and stirs in the strange loves of windborne

plants, and hums in every song of the bee, and burns in every quiver of the flame, and peoples with sentient

myriads every drop of dew that gathers on a harebell, every bead of water that ripples in a brookto these

the mortal life of man can seem but little, save at once the fiercest and the feeblest thing that does exist; at

once the most cruel and the most impotent; tyrant of direst destruction and bondsman of lowest captivity.

Hence, pity entered very little into his thoughts at any time; the perpetual tortures of life did indeed perplex

him, as it perplexes every thinking creature, with wonder at the universal bitterness that taints all creation, at

the universal death whereby all forms of life are nurtured, at the universal anguish of all existence which

daily and nightly assails the unknown God in piteous protest at the inexorable laws of inexplicable miseries

and mysteries. But because such suffering was thus universal, therefore he almost ceased to feel pity for it; of

the two he pitied the beasts far more than the human kind:the horse staggering beneath the lash in all the

feebleness of hunger, lameness, and old age; the ox bleeding from the goad on the hard furrows, or stumbling

through the hooting crowd, blind, footsore, and shivering, to its last home in the slaughterhouse; the dog,

yielding up its noble life inch by inch under the tortures of the knife, loyally licking the hand of the vivisector

while he drove his probe through its quivering nerves; the unutterable hell in which all these gentle, kindly

and longsuffering creatures dwelt for the pleasure or the vanity, the avarice or the brutality of men,these

he pitied perpetually, with a tenderness for them that was the softest thing in all his nature.

But when he saw men and women suffer he often smiled, not ill pleased. It seemed to him that the worst they

could ever endure was only such simple retribution, such mere fair measure of all the agonies they cast

Therefore he pitied her now for what repulsed all others from herthat she had so little apparent humanity,

and that she was so like an animal in her strength and weakness, and in her ignorance of both her rights and

wrongs. Therefore he pitied her; and there was that in her strange kind of beauty, in her halfsavage,

halftimid attitudes, in her curt, unlearned, yet picturesque speech, which attracted him. Besides, although

solitude was his preference, he had been for more than two years utterly alone, his loneliness broken only by

the companionship of boors, with whom he had not had one thought in common. The extreme poverty in

which the latter months of his life had been passed, had excluded him from all human society, since he could

have sought none without betraying his necessities. The almsseeking visit of some man even more famished

and desperate than himself, such as the ragpicker who had brought the dead girl to him for a few brass

coins, had been the only relief to the endless monotony of his existence, a relief that made such change in it

In FolleFarine for the first time in two long, bitter, colourless, hated years, there was something which

aroused his interest and his curiosity, some one to whom impulse led him to speak the thoughts of his mind

with little concealment. She seemed, indeed, scarcely more than a wild beast, halftamed, inarticulate,

defiant, shy, it might be even, if aroused, ferocious; but it was an animal whose eyes dilated in quickening

sympathy with all his moods, and an animal whom, at a glance, he knew would, in time, crawl to him or

He talked to her now, much on the same impulse that moves a man, long imprisoned, to converse with the

spider that creeps on the floor, with the mouse that drinks from his pitcher, and makes him treat like an

intelligent being the tiny flower growing blue and bright between the stones, which is all that brings life into

The prison door once flung open, the sunshine once streaming across the darkness, the fetters once struck off,

the captive once free to go out again amongst his fellows, thenthe spider is left to miss the human love that

it has learnt, the mouse is left to die of thirst, the little blue flower is left to fade out as it may in the stillness

and the gloom alone. Then they are nothing: but while the prison doors are still locked they are much.

Here the gaoler was poverty, and the prison was the world's neglect, and they who lay bound were high

hopes, great aspirations, impossible dreams, immeasurable ambitions, all swathed and fettered, and straining

And in these, in their bondage, there were little patience, or sympathy, or softness, and to them, even nature

itself at times looked horrible, though never so horrible, because never so despicable as humanity. Yet, still

even in these an instinct of companionship abided; and this creature, with a woman's beauty, and an animal's

"Why were women ever made then?" she said, after awhile, following, though imperfectly, the drift of his last

words, where she lay stretched, obedient to his will, under the shadow of the wall.

He smiled the smile of one who recalls some story he has heard from the raving lips of some friend

"Once, long ago, in the far East, there dwelt a saint in the desert. He was content in his solitude: he was holy

and at peace: the honey of the wild bee and the fruit of the wild tamarisk tree sufficed to feed him; the lions

were his ministers, and the hyenas were his slaves; the eagle flew down for his blessing, and the winds and

the storms were his messengers; he had killed the beast in him, and the soul alone had dominion; and day and

"Years went with him thus, and he grew old, and he said to himself, 'I have lived content; so shall I die

purified, and ready for the kingdom of heaven.' For it was in the day when that wooden god, who hangs on

the black cross yonder, was not a lifeless effigy as now, but a name of power and of might, adjuring, while

his people smiled under torture, and died in the flame, dreaming of a land where the sun never set, and the

song never ceased, and the faithful for ever were at rest. So the years, I say, went by with him, and he was

"One night, when the thunder rolled and the raintorrents fell to the door of his cave there came a wayfarer,

fainting, sickly, lame, trembling with terror of the desert, and beseeching him to save her from the panthers.

"He was loth, and dreaded to accede to her prayer, for he said, 'Wheresoever a woman enters, there the

content of man is dead.' But she was in dire distress, and entreated him with tears and supplications not to

turn her adrift for the lightning and the lions to devour: and he felt the old human pity steal on him, and he

opened the door to her, and bade her enter and take sanctuary there in God's name.

"But when she had entered, age, and sickness, and want fell from off her, her eyes grew as two stars, her lips

were sweet as the rose of the desert, her limbs had the grace of the cheetah, her body had the radiance and the

"And she laughed in his beard, and cried, saying 'Thou thinkest thou hast lived, and yet thou hast not loved?

Oh sage! oh saint! oh fool, fool, fool!' then into his veins there rushed youth, and into his brain there came

madness; the life he had led seemed but death, and eternity loathsome since passionless; and he stretched his

arms to her and sought to embrace her, crying, 'Stay with me, though I buy thee with hell.' And she stayed.

"But when the morning broke she left him, laughing, gliding like a phantom from his arms, and out into the

red sunlight, and across the desert sand, laughing, laughing, always, and mocking him whilst she beckoned.

He pursued her, chasing her through the dawn, through the noon, through the night. He never found her; she

"He searched for her in every city, and in every land. Some say he searches still, doomed to live on through

Arsl�n had a certain power over words as over colour. Like all true painters, the fibre of his mind was

sensuous and poetic, though the quality of passionate imagination was in him welded with a coldness and a

stillness of temper born in him with his northern blood. He had dwelt much in Asiatic countries, and much of

the philosophies and much of the phraseology of the East remained with him. Something even there seemed

in him of the mingled asceticism and sensualism, the severe selfdenial, with the voluptuous fancy of the

saints who once had peopled the deserts in which he had in his turn delighted to dwell, free and lonely,

scorning women and deserting man. He spoke seldom, being by nature silent; but when he did speak his

She listened breathless, with the colour in her cheeks and the fire brooding in her eyes, her unformed mind

catching the swift shadowy allegories of his tale by force of the poetic instincts in her.

No one had ever talked to her thus; and yet it seemed clear to her and beautiful, like the story which the great

sunflowers told as they swayed to and fro in the light, like the song that the bright brook water sung as it

Her breath came with a sharp, swift, panting sound. She was blinded with the new light that broke in on her.

"Why not? You are the devil's daughter, you say. Of such are men's kingdom of heaven!"

She pondered long upon his answer; she could not comprehend it; she had understood the parable of his

narrative, yet the passion of it had passed her by, and the evil shut in it had escaped her.

"Always!" he made answer, still with that same smile as of one who remembers hearkening to the delirious

ravings round him in a madhouse through which he has walkedhimself sanein a bygone time.

"I do not want love," she said, suddenly, while her brain, half strong, half feeble, struggled to fit her thoughts

to words. "I want, I want, to have power as the priest has on the people when he says, 'pray!' and they pray."

"Power!" he echoed, as the devotee echoes the name of his god. "Who does not? But do you think the woman

that tempted the saint had none? If ever you reach that kingdom such power will become yours."

A proud glad exultation swept over her face for a moment. It quickly faded. She did not believe in a future.

How many times had she not, since the hand of Claudis Flamma first struck her, prayed with all the passion

of a child's dumb agony that the dominion of her Father's power might come to her. And the great Evil had

never hearkened. He, whom all men around her feared, had made her no sign that he heard, but left her to

"I have prayed to the devil again and again and he will not hear," she muttered. "Marcellin says that he has

"He has too much to do to hear all. All the nations of the earth beseech him. Yonder man on the cross they

adjure with their mouths indeed; but it is your god only whom in their hearts they worship. See how the

"But since they give the Christ so many temples, why do they raise none to the devil?"

"Chut! No man builds altars to his secret god. Look you: I will tell you another story. Once, in an Eastern

land, there was a temple dedicated to all the deities of all the peoples that worshipped under the sun. There

were many statues and rare ones; statues of silver and gold, of ivory, and agate, and chalcedony, and there

were altars raised before all, on which every nation offered up sacrifice and burned incense before its

"Now, no nation would look at the god of another; and each people clustered about the feet of its own fetish,

"The noise was fearful, and the feuds were many, and the poor king, whose thought it had been to erect such

a temple, was confounded, and very sorrowful, and murmured, saying'I dreamed to beget universal peace

and tolerance and harmony; and lo! there come of my thoughts nothing but discord and war.'

"Then to him there came a stranger, veiled, and claiming no country, and he said, 'You were mad to dream

religion could ever be peace, yet, be not disquieted; give me but a little space and I will erect an altar whereat

"The king gave him permission; and he raised up a simple stone, and on it he wrote, 'To the Secret Sin!' and,

being a sorcerer, he wrote with such a curious power, that showed the inscription to the sight of each man, but

"And each man forsook his god, and came and kneeled before this nameless altar, each bowing down before

it, and each believing himself in solitude. The poor forsaken gods stood naked and alone; there was not one

She listened; her eloquent eyes fixed on him, her lips parted, her fancy fantastic and full of dreams,

strengthened by loneliness, and unbridled through ignorance, steeping itself in every irony and every

phantasy, and every shred of knowledge that Chance, her only teacher, cast to her.

She sat thinking, full of a vague sad pity for that denied and forsaken God on the cross, by the river, such as

she had never felt before; since she had always regarded him as the symbol of cruelty, of famine and of

hatred; not knowing that these are only the colours which all deities alike reflect from the hearts of the

"If I had a god," she said, suddenly. "If a god cared to claim meI would be proud of his worship

"All women have a god; that is why they are at once so much weaker and so much happier than men."

"Their name is legion. Innocent women make gods of their offspring, of their homes, of their housework, of

their duties; and are as cruel as tigresses meanwhile to all outside the pale of their temples. Othersless

innocentmake gods of their own forms and faces; of bright stones dug from the earth, of vessels of gold

and silver, of purple and fine linen, of passions, and vanities, and desires; gods that they consume themselves

for in their youth, and that they curse, and beat, and upbraid in the days of their age. Which of these gods will

She thought gravely some moments again. Although a certain terse and even poetic utterance was the shape

which her spoken imagination naturally took at all times, ignorance and solitude had made it hard for her

"I do not know," she said, wearily afresh. "Marcellin says that every God is deaf. He must be deafor very

cruel. Look; everything lives in pain; and yet no God pities and makes an end of earth. I wouldif I were

He. Look; at dawn, the other day, I was out in the wood. I came upon a little rabbit in a trap; a little, pretty,

soft, blackandwhite thing, quite young. It was screaming in its horrible misery'; it had been screaming all

night. Its thighs were broken in the iron teeth; the trap held it tight ; it could not escape, it could only

screamscreamscream. All in vain. When I had set it free it was mangled as if a wolf had gnawed it: the

iron teeth had bitten through the fur, and the flesh, and the bone; it had lost so much blood and it was in so

much pain, that it could not live. I laid it down in the braken, and put water to its mouth, and did what I

could; but it was of no use. It had been too much hurt. It died as the sun rose; a little, harmless, shy creature,

and only asked to nibble a leaf or two, or sleep in a little round hole, and run about merry and free. How can

"Child,men care for a god only as a god means good to them. Men are heirs of heaven, they say; and, in

right of their heritage, they make life hell to every living thing that dares dispute the world with them. You do

not understand that,tut! You are not human then. If you were human, you would begrudge a blade of grass

She did not understand him; but she felt that she was honoured by him, and not scorned as others scorned her,

for being thus unlike humanity. It was a bitter perplexity to her, this earth on which she had been flung amidst

an alien people; that she should suffer herself seemed little to her, it had become as a second nature; but the

sufferings of all the innumerable tribes of creation, things of the woods, and the field, and the waters, and the

sky, that toiled and sweated and were hunted, and persecuted and wrenched in torment, and finally perished

to gratify the appetites or the avarice of humanity, these sufferings were horrible to her always: inexplicable,

"Only those Three," he answered her, as he motioned towards the three brethren that watched above her.

"Mine?a Moloch who consumes my offspring, yet in whose burning brazen hands I have put them and

She looked at him in awe and in reverence. She imagined him the priest of some dark and terrible religion,

for whose sake he lapsed his years in solitude and deprivation, and by whose powers he created the wondrous

"Those are gentler gods?" she said timidly, raising her eyes to the brethren above her. "Do you neverwill

"I have ceased to worship them. In timewhen the world has utterly beaten meno doubt I shall pray to

one at least of them. To that one, see, the eldest of the brethren, who holds his torch turned downwards."

And Thanatos she knew would not betray her; for Thanatos keeps all the secrets of menhe, who alone of

the gods reads the truths of men's souls, and smiles, and shuts them in the hollow of his hand, and lets the

braggart Time fly on with careless feet, telling what lies he will to please the world a little space. Thanatos

holds silence and can wait;for him must all things ripen, and, at last, to him must all things fall.

WHEN she left him that night, and went homeward, he trimmed his lamp and returned to his labours of

casting and modelling from the body of the ragpicker's daughter. The work soon absorbed him too entirely

to leave any memory with him of the living woman. He did not knowand had he known would not have

heededthat instead of going on her straight path back to Ypr�s she turned again, and, hidden amongst the

rushes upon the bank, crouched half sitting and half kneeling, to watch him from the riverside. It was all

dark and still, without; nothing came near, except now and then some hobbled mule turned out to forage for

his evening meal, or some nightbrowsing cattle straying out of bounds. Once or twice a barge went slowly

and sullenly by, its single light twinkling across the breadth of the stream, and the voice of its steersman

calling huskily through the fog. A drunken peasant staggered across the fields singing snatches of a

republican march that broke roughly on the silence of the night. The young lambs bleated to their mothers in

the meadows, and the bells of the old clock towers in the town chimed the quarters with a Laus Deo in which

She remained there undisturbed amongst the long grasses and the tufts of the reeds, gazing always into the

dimlylighted interior where the pale rays of the oil flame lit up the white forms of the gods, the black

shadows of the columns, the shapes of the wrestling lion and the strangled gladiator, the grey stiff frame and

hanging hair of the dead body, and the bending figure of Arsl�n as he stooped above the corpse and pursued

To her there seemed nothing terrible in a night thus spent, in a vigil thus ghastly; it seemed to her only a part

of his strength thus to make death,men's conqueror,his servant and his slave; she only begrudged every

passionless touch that his grasp gave to those frozen and rigid limbs which he moved to and fro like so much

clay; she only envied with a jealous thirst every cold caress that his hand lent to that loose and lifeless hair

He did not see; he did not know. To him she was no more than any bronzewinged, goldeneyed insect that

should have floated in on a night breeze and been painted by him and been cast out again upon the darkness.

He worked more than half the nightworked until the small store of oil he possessed burned itself out, and

left the hall to the feeble light of a young moon shining through dense vapours. He dropped his tools, and

rose and walked to and fro on the width of the stone floor. His hands felt chilled to the bone with the contact

of the dead flesh; his breathing felt oppressed with the heavy humid air that lay like ice upon his lungs.

The dead woman was nothing to him. He had not once thought of the youth that had perished in her; of the

laughter that hunger had hushed for ever on the colourless lips; of the passion blushes that had died out for

ever on the ashen cheeks; of the caressing hands of mother and of lover that must have wandered amongst

that curling hair; of the children that should have slept on that white breast so smooth and cold beneath his

hand. For these he cared nothing, and thought as little. The dead girl for him had neither sex nor story; and he

had studied all phases and forms of death too long to be otherwise than familiar with them all. Yet a certain

glacial despair froze his heart as he left her body, lying there in the flicker of the struggling moonbeams, and,

himself, pacing to and fro in his solitude, suffered a greater bitterness than death in his doom of poverty and

The years of his youth had gone in fruitless labour, and the years of his manhood were gliding after them, and

yet he had failed so utterly to make his mark upon his generation that he could only maintain his life by the

common toil of the common handlabourer, and, if he died on the morrow, there would not be one hand

stretched out to save any one work of his creation from the housewife's fires or the limeburner's furnace.

Cold to himself as to all others, he said bitterly in his soul, "What is Failure except Feebleness? And what is it

He told himself that harsh and inexorable truth a score of times, again and again, as he walked backward and

He told himself that he was a madman, a fool, who spent his lifetime in search and worship of a vain eidolon.

He told himself that there must be in him some radical weaknesses, some inalienable fault, that he could not

in all these years find strength enough to compel the world of men to honour him. Agony overcame him as he

thought and thought and thought, until he scorned himself; the supreme agony of a strong nature that for once

mistrusts itself as feebleness, of a great genius that for once despairs of itself as selfdeception.

Had he been the fool of his vanities all his youth upward; and had his fellowmen been only wise and clear

of sight when they had denied him and refused to see excellence in any work of his hand? Almost, he told

He paused by the open casement, and looked outward, scarcely knowing what he did. The mists were heavy;

the air was loaded with damp exhalations; the country was profoundly still; abovehead only a few stars

glimmered here and there through the haze. The peace, the silence, the obscurity were abhorrent to him; they

seemed to close upon him, and imprison him; far away were all the colour and the strength and the strain and

the glory of living; it seemed to him as though he were dead also, like the woman on the tressel yonder; dead

in some deep sea grave where the weight of the waters kept him down and held his hands powerless, and shut

his eyelids from all sight, while the living voices and the living footsteps of men came dimly on his ear from

the world above; voices not one of which uttered his name; footsteps, not one of which paused by his tomb.

It grew horrible to himthis deathinlife, to which in the freshness of manhood he often himself

"Oh, God!" he, who believed in no God, muttered half aloud, "Let me be without love, wealth, peace, health,

gladness, all my life longlet me be crippled, childless, beggared, hastened to the latest end of my

days,give me only to be honoured in my works; give me only a name that men cannot, if they wish, let die.

Whether any ear greater than man heard the prayer, who shall say? Daily and nightly, through all the

generations of the world, the human creature implores from his Creator the secrets of his existence, and asks

in vain. There is one answer indeed; but it is the answer of all the million races of the universe, which only

cry, "We are born but to perish; is Humanity a thing so high or pure that it should not claim exemption for the

One mortal listener heard, hidden amongst the hollow sighing rushes, bathed in moonlight and the mists; and

the impersonal passion which absorbed him found echo in this inarticulate imperfect soul, just wakened in its

obscurity to the first faint meanings of its mortal life, as a nestbird rouses in the dawn to the first faint pipe

She barely knew what he sought, what he asked, and yet her heart ached with his desire, and shared the

What kind of life he craved in the ages to come; what manner of remembrance he yearned for from the

unborn races of men; what thing it was which he besought should be given to him in the stead of all love, all

peace, all personal woes and physical delights, she did not know; the future to her had no meaning; and the

immortal fame which he craved was an unknown god, of whose worship she had no comprehension; and yet

she vaguely felt that what he sought was that his genius still should live when his body should be destroyed,

and that those mute, motionless, majestic shapes which arose at his bidding should become characters and

speak for him to all the generations of men when his own mouth should be sealed dumb in death.

This hunger of the soul which unmanned and tortured him, though the famine of the flesh had had no power

to move him, thrilled her with the instinct of its greatness. This thirst of the mind, which could not slake itself

in common desires or sensual satiety, or any peace and pleasure of the ordinary life of man, had likeness in it

to that dim instinct which had made her nerves throb at the glories of the changing skies, and her eyes fill

with tears at the sound of a bird's singing in the darkness of dawn, and her heart yearn with vain nameless

longing as for some lost land, for some forgotten home, in the radiant hush of earth and air at sunrise.

He suffered as she suffered; and a sweet newborn sense of unity and of likeness stirred in her amidst the

bitter pity of her soul. To her he was as a king: and yet he was powerless. To give him power she would have

"The gods gave me life for him," she thought. "His life instead of mine? Will they forget?Will they

And where she crouched in the gloom beneath the bulrushes she flung herself down prostrate in supplication,

"Oh, Immortals!" she implored in benighted, wistful, passionate faith, "remember to give me his life and take

mine. Do what you choose with me; forsake me, kill me; cast my body to fire, and my ashes to the wind; let

me be trampled like the dust, and despised as the chaff; let me be bruised, beaten, nameless, hated always; let

me always suffer and always be scorned; but grant me this one thingto give him his desire!"

For unless the gods gave him greatness, she knew that vain would be the gift of lifethe gift of mere length

Her mind had been left blank as a desert, whilst in its solitude dreams had sprung forth windsown like

wayside grasses, and vague desires wandered like wild doves; but although blank the soil was rich and deep

Because she had dwelt sundered from her kind, she had learned no evil; a stainless though savage innocence

had remained with her. She had been reared in hardship and inured to hunger until such pangs seemed to her

scarce worth the counting, save perhaps to see if they had been borne with courage and without murmur. On

her, profoundly unconscious of the meaning of any common luxury or any common comfort, the passions of

natures more worldlywise, and better aware of the empire of gold, had no hold at any moment. To toil dully

and be hungry and thirsty, and fatigued and footsore, had been her daily portion. She knew nothing of the

innumerable pleasures and powers that the rich command. She knew scarcely of the existence of the simplest

forms of civilization: therefore she knew nothing of all that he missed through poverty; she only perceived,

Her mind was profoundly ignorant; her character trained by cruelty only to endurance: yet the soil was not

rank, but only unfilled, not barren, but only unsown; nature had made it generous, though fate had left it

untilled; it grasped the seed of the first great idea cast to it and held it firm, until it multiplied tenfold.

The imagined danger to them which the peasants had believed to exist in her had been as a strong buckler

between the true danger to her from the defilement of their companionship and example; they had cursed her

as they had passed, and their curses had been her blessing. Blind instincts had always moved in her to the

Left to herself, and uncontaminated by humanity, because proscribed by it, she had known no teachers of any

sort save the winds and the waters, the sun and the moon, the daybreak and the night, and these had breathed

into her an unconscious heroism, a changeless patience, a fearless freedom, a strange tenderness and

callousness united. Ignorant though she was, and abandoned to the darkness of all the superstitious and the

sullen stupor amidst which her lot was cast, there was yet that in her which led her to veneration of the

He desired not happiness, nor tenderness, nor bodily ease, nor sensual delight, but only this one thinga

name that should not perish from amongst the memories of men. And this desire seemed to her sublime,

divine; not comprehending it, she yet revered it. She, who had seen he souls of the men around her set on a

handful of copper coin, a fleece of wool, a load of fruit, a petty pilfering, a low gain in commerce, saw the

greatness of a hero's sacrifice in this supreme selfnegation which was willing to live unloved, and die

forsaken by his kind, so that only the works of his hand might endure, and his thoughts be uttered in them

It is true that the great artist is as a fallen god who remembers a time when worlds arose at his breath, and at

his bidding the barren lands blossomed into fruitfulness; the sorcery of the thyrsus is still his, though

The powers of lost dominion haunt his memory; the remembered glory of an eternal sun is in his eyes, and

makes the light of common day seem darkness; the heartsickness of a long exile weighs on him; incessantly

he labours to overtake the mirage of a loveliness which fades as he pursues it. In the poetic creation by which

the bondage of his material life is redeemed, he finds at once ecstasy and disgust, because he feels at once his

strength and weakness. For him all things of earth and air, and sea and cloud, have beauty; and to his ear all

He is as a god, since he can call into palpable shape dreams born of impalpable thought; as a god, since he

has known the truth divested of lies, and has stood face to face with it, and been not afraid; a god thus. But a

cripple, inasmuch as his hand can never fashion the shapes that his vision beholds; an alien, because he has

lost what he never will find upon earth; a beast, since ever and again his passions will drag him to wallow in

the filth of sensual indulgence; a slave, since oftentimes the divinity that is in him breaks and bends under the

devilry that also is in him, and he obeys the instincts of vileness, and when he would fain bless the nations he

Some vague perception of this dawned on her; the sense was in her to feel the beauty of art, and to be awed

by it though she could not have told what it was, nor why she cared for it. And to the man who ministered to

it, who ruled it, and yet obeyed it, seemed to her ennobled with a greatness that was the grandest thing her

blank and bitter fate had known. This was all wonderful, dreamful, awful to her, and in a half savage, half

poetic way, she comprehended the one object of his life, and honoured it without doubt or question.

No day from that time passed without her spending the evening hours under the roof of the haunted

She toiled all the other hours through, from the earliest time that the first flush of day lightened the starlit

skies; did not he toil too? But when the sun set she claimed her freedom; and her rulers did not dare to say her

A new and wondrous and exquisite life slowly opened to her; the life of the imagination.

All these many years since the last song of Phratos had died off her ear, had been spent by her with no more

culture and with no more pleasure than the mule had that she led with his load along the miry ways in the

sharp wintertime. Yet even through that utter neglect, and that torpor of thought and feeling, some wild

natural fancy had been astir in her, some vague sense wakened that brought to her in the rustle of leaves, in

the sound of waters, in the curling breath of mists, in the white birth of lilies, in all the notes and hues of the

openair world, a mystery and a loveliness that they did not bear for any of those around her.

Now, in the words that Arsl�n cast to heroften as idly and indifferently as a man casts bread to frozen birds

on snow, birds that he pities and yet cares nothing forthe old religions, the old beliefs, became to her living

truths and divine companions. The perplexities of the world grew little clearer to her, indeed; and the miseries

of the animal creation no less hideous a mystery. The confusion of all things was in no wise clearer to her;

even, it seemed, it deepened and grew more entangled. He could imbue her with neither credulity nor

contentment; for he possessed neither, and despised both, as the fool's paradise of those who, having climbed

The weariness, the unrest, the desire, the contempt of such a life as his can furnish anodyne neither to itself

nor any other. But such consolations and possessionsand these are limitlessas the imagination can

create, he placed within her reach. Before, she had dreameddreamed all through the heaviness of toil and

the gall of tyranny; but she had dreamed as a goatherd may upon a mistswept hill by the western seas, while

all the earth is dark, and only its dim fugitive waking sounds steal dully on the drowsy ear. But now, through

the myths and parables which grew familiar to her, she dreamed almost as poets dream, bathed in the full

flood of a setting sun on the wild edge of the Campagna; a light in which all common things of daily life

grow glorious, and through whose rosy hues the only sound that comes is some rich dulcet bell which slowly

The land was no more mute to her, no more only a hard and cruel place of labour and of butchery, in which

all creatures suffered and were cursed. All things rose to have their story and their symbol for her; Nature,

remaining to her that one sure solace and immeasurable mystery which she had feebly felt it even in her

childhood, was brought closer to her, and seemed fuller of compassion. All the forms and vices of the fair

dead years of the world seemed to grow visible and audible to her, with those marvelous tales of the old

In the people around her, and in their faiths, she had no belief; she wanted a faith, and found one in all these

She had never thought that there had been any other generation before that which was present on earth with

herself; any other existence than this narrow and sordid one which encircled her home.

That men had lived who had fashioned those a�rial wonders of the cathedral spires, and stained those vivid

hues in its ancient casements, had been a fact too remote to be known to her, though for twelve years her eyes

Through Arsl�n the exhaustless annals of the world's history opened before her, the present ceased to matter

to her in its penury and pain; for the treasuryhouses of the golden past were opened to her sight.

Most of all she loved the myths of the Homeric and Hesiodic ages; and every humble and homely thing

became ennobled to her and enriched, beholding it through the halo of poetry and of tradition.

When, aloft in the red and white appleblossoms sparrows pecked and screamed, and spent the pleasant

summer hours above in the flowerscented air in shrill dispute and sharp contention, she thought that she

heard in their noisy notes the arrogant voice of Alcyone. When the wild hyacinths made the ground purple

beneath the poplars and the pines, she saw in them the transformed loveliness of one who had died in the

fulness of youth, at play, in a summer's noon, and died content, because stricken by the hand of the greatest

and goodliest of all the gods, the god that loved him best. As the cattle, with their sleek red hides and curling

horns, came through the fogs of the daybreak, across the level meadows, and through the deep dockleaves

they seemed to her no more the mere beasts of stall and share, but even as the milkwhite herds that grazed

All night, int he heart of the orchards, when the song of the nightingales rose on the stillness, it was no longer

for her a little brown bird that sang to the budding fruit and her closed daisies, but was the voice of �don

bewailing her son through the ages, or the woe of Philomela crying through the wilderness. When through the

white hard brilliancy of noonday the swift swallow darted down the beams of light, she saw no longer in it an

insecthunter, a housenesting creature, but saw the shape of Procne, slaughterhaunted, seeking rest and

finding none. And when she went about her labours, hewing wood, drawing water, bearing the corn to the

grindstones, leading the mules to the millstream, she ceased to despair. For she had heard the old glad story

of the children of Zeus who dwelt so long within a herdsman's hut, nameless and dishonoured, yet lived to go

back crowned to Thebes and see the beasts of the desert and the stones of the streets rise up and obey the

Arsl�n in his day had given many evil gifts, but this one gift that he gave was pure and full of solace; this gift

of the beauty of the past. Imperfect, obscure, broken in fragments, obscured by her own ignorance, it was

indeed when it reached her; yet it came with a glory that time could not dim, and a consolation that ignorance

"WHAT has come to that evil one? She walks the land as though she were a queen," the people of Ypr�s said

to one another, watching the creature they abhorred as she went through the town to the riverstair or to the

A perpetual radiance shone in the dark depths of her eyes; a proud elasticity replaced the old sullen defiance

of her carriage; her face had a sweet musing mystery and dreaminess on it; and when she smiled, her smile

was soft, and sudden, like the smile of one who bears fair tidings in her heart unspoken.

Even those people, dull and plodding and taciturn, absorbed in their small trades or in their continual field

labour, were struck by the change in her, and looked after her, and listened in a stupid wonder to the sonorous

songs in an unknown tongue that rose so often to her lips as she strode amongst the summer grasses or led the

They saw, even with their eyes purblind from hate, that she had thrown off their yoke, and had escaped from

their narrow world, and was happy with some rich, mute, nameless happiness that they could neither evade

The fall of evening always brought her to him; he let her come, finding a certain charm in that savage temper

which grew so tame to him; in that fierce courage which to him was so humble; in that absolute ignorance

which was yet so curiously blended with so strong a power of fancy and so quick an instinct of beauty. But he

let her go again with indifference, and never tried by any word to keep her an hour later than she chose to

stay. She was to him like some handsome, dangerous beast that flew at all others and crouched to himself. He

had a certain pleasure in her colour and her grace; in making her great eyes glow, and seeing the light of a

As she learned to hear more often the sound of her own voice, and to use a more varied and copious

language, a rude eloquence came naturally to her; and, when her silence was broken, it was usually for some

terse, vivid, picturesque utterance which had an artistic interest for him. In this simple and monotonous

province, with its tedious sameness of life and its green arable country that tired a sight fed in youth on the

grandeur of cloudreaching mountains and the tumults of icetossing seas, this creature so utterly unlike her

kind, so golden with the glow of tawny desert suns, and so strong with the liberty and the ferocity and the

dormant passion and the silent force of some free forest animal, was in a way welcome.

All things were so new and strange to her; all the common knowledge was so utterly unknown to her; all

other kinds of life were so unintelligible to her; and yet with all her ignorance, she had so swift a fancy, so

keen an irony, so poetic an instinct, that it seemed to him when he spoke with her that he talked to some

He like to make her smile; he liked to make her suffer; he liked to inflame, to wound, to charm, to tame her;

he liked all these without passion, rather with curiosity than with interest, much as he had liked in the season

of his boyhood to ruffle the plumage of a captured seabird; to see its eye sparkle, and then grow dull and

flash again with pain, and then at the last turn soft with weary, wistful tenderness, having been taught at once

She was a bronzed, barefooted, fleetlimbed young outcast, so he told himself, with the scowl of an habitual

defiance on her straight brows, and the curl of an untamable scorn upon her rich red lips, and a curious

sovereignty and savageness in her dauntless carriage; and yet there was a certain nobility and melancholy in

her that made her seem like one of a great and fallen race; and in her eyes there was a look repellant yet

appealing, and lustrous with sleeping passion, that tempted him to wake what slumbered there.

But in these early springtide days he suffered her to come and go as she listed, without either persuasion or

The impassioned reverence which she had for the things he had created was only the untutored, unreasoning

He had been alone so long; and so long had passed since any cheek had flushed and any breast had heaved

under the influence of any one of those strange fancies and noble stories which he had pictured on the walls

of his lonely chamber. He had despaired of and had despised himself; despised his continual failure,

despaired of all power to sway the souls and gain the eyes of his fellowmen. It was a little thinga thing so

little that he called himself a fool for taking any count of it; yet the hot tears that dimmed the sight of this

young barbarian who was herself of no more value than the milldust that drifted on the breeze, the soft

vague breathless awe that stole upon her as she gazed at the colourless shadows in which his genius spent

itself, these were sweet to him with a sweetness that made him ashamed of his own weakness.

She had given the breath of life back to his body by an act of which he was ignorant; and now she gave back

the breath of hope to his mind by a worship which he contemned even whilst he was glad of it.

Meanwhile the foul tongues of her enemies rang with loud glee over this new shame which they could cast at

"She has found a lover,oh ho!that brown wicked thing. A lover meet for her;a man who walks abroad

in the moonless nights, and plucks the mandrake, and worships the devil, and paints people in their own

likeness, so that as the colour dries the life wastes!" So the women screamed after her often as she went; she

nothing understanding or heeding, but lost in the dreams of her own waking imagination.

At times such words as these reached Claudis Flamma, but he turned a deaf ear to them: he had the wisdom

of the world in him, though he was only an old miller who had never stirred ten leagues from his home; and

whilst the devil served him well, he quarrelled not with the devil. In a grim way, it was a pleasure to him to

think that the thing he hated might be accursed body and soul: he had never cared either for her body or her

soul; so that the first worked for him, the last might destroy itself in its own darkness:he had never

The pride and the honesty and the rude candour and instinctive purity of this young life of hers had been a

perpetual hindrance and canker to him: begotten of evil, by all the laws of justice, in evil she should live and

die. So Flamma reasoned; and to the sayings of his countryside he gave a stony ear and a stony glance.

She never once, after the first day, breathed a word to Arsl�n about the treatment that she received at Ypr�s. It

was not in her nature to complain; and she abhorred even his pity. Whatever she endured, she kept silence on

it; when he asked her how her grandsire dealt with her, she always answered him"it is well enough with

And in a manner she had learned how to keep her tyrant at bay. He did not dare to lay hands on her now that

her eyes had got that new fire, and her voice that serene contempt. His wolfcub had shown her teeth, at last,

at his lash; and he did not venture to sting her to revolt with too long use of scourge and chain. So she

obtained more leisure; and what she did not spend in Arsl�n's tower she spent in acquiring another artshe

There was an old herbseller in the marketplace who was not so harsh to her as the others were, but who

had now and then for her a rough kindly word out of gentleness to the memory of Reine Flamma. This

woman was better educated than most, and could even write a little. To her FolleFarine went.

"See here," she said: "you are feeble and I am strong. I know every nook and corner in the woods. I know a

hundred rare herbs that you never find. I will bring you a basketful of them twice in each week, if you will

The old woman hesitated. "It were as much as my life is worth to have you seen with me. The lads will stone

my window. Still." The wish for the rare herbs and, and the remembrance of the fatigue that would be

spared to her rheumatic body by compliance, prevailed over her fears. She consented.

Three times a week FolleFarine rose while it was still dark, and scoured the wooded lands and the

mossgreen orchards and the little brooks in the meadows in search of every herb that grew. She knew those

green places which had been her only kingdom and her only solace as no one else knew them; and the old

Now and then a labourer earlier than the rest, or as a vagrant sleeping under a hedgerow, saw her going

through the darkness with her green bundle on her head, or stooping amongst the watercourses ankle deep in

rushes, and he crossed himself and went and told how he had seen the Evil Spirit of Ypr�s gathering the

poisonweeds that made ships founder, and strong men droop and die, and women love unnatural and

horrible things, and all manner of woe and sickness overtake those whom she hated.

It was his habit to be abroad when others slept: studies of the night and its peculiar loveliness entered largely

into many of his paintings; the beauty of water rippling in the moonbeam, of grey weeds blowing against the

first faint red of dawn, of dark fields with sleeping cattle and folded sheep, of pools made visible by the shine

of their folded white lilies, these were all things he cared to study. The earth has always most charm, and least

pain, to the poet or the artist when men are hidden away under their roofs. Then they do not break its claim

with either their mirth or their brutality; then the vile and revolting coarseness of their works, that blot it with

so much deformity, is softened and obscured in the purple breadths of shadow and the dim tender gleam of

Sometimes the shepherd going to his flocks, or the housewife opening her shutter in the wayside cabin, or the

huckster driving early his mule seawards to meet the fish that the nighttrawlers had brought, saw them

together thus, and talked of it; and said that these two, accursed of all honest folk, were after some unholy

workcoming from the orgy of some witches' sabbath, or seeking some devil's root that would give them

For these things are still believed by many a peasant's hearth, and whispered darkly as night closes in and the

Wading in the shallow streams, with the breeze tossing her hair, and the dew bright on her sheaf of herbs,

FolleFarine paid thus the only wages that she could for leaning the art of letters.

One day he had said to her, half unconsciously, "If only you were not so ignorant!"and since that day she

had set herself to clear away her ignorance little by little, as she would have cleared brushwood with her

It was the sweetest hour which she had ever known when she was able to stand before him and say, "The

It was love that had entered into her, but a great love, full of intense humility, of supreme selfsacrifice; a

love that unconsciously led her to chasten into gentleness the fierce soul in her, and to try and seek light for

A gipsychild working for bread at a little millhouse in these Norman woods,what use would be to her

beauty of thought, grace of fancy, the desire begotten of knowledge, the poetry learned from the past?

Still, he gave her these; partly because he pitied her, partly because in his exhaustion and solitude this

And yet he thought so little of her, and chiefly, when he thought of her, chose to perplex her or to wound her,

that he might see her eyes dilate in wondering amaze, or her face quiver and flush, and then grow dark, with

She was a study to him, as was the scarlet rose in the garden ways, or the purplebreasted pigeon in the

woods; he dealt with her as he would have dealt with the flower or the bird if he had wished to study them

more nearly, by tearing the rose open at its core, or casting a stone at the bluerock on the wing.

This was not cruelty in him; it was only habithabit, and the callousness begotten by his own continual pain.

The pain as of a knife for ever thrust into the loins, of a cord for ever knotted hard about the temples, which is

the daily and nightly penalty of those mad enough to believe that they have the force in them to change the

sluggard appetites and the hungry cruelties of their kind into a life of high endeavour and divine desire.

He held that a man's chief passion is his destiny, and will shape his fate, roughhew his fate as circumstance or

as hazard may. His chief, his sole passion was a great ambitiona passion pure as crystal, since the

eminence he craved was for his creations, not for his name: yet it had failed to compel the destiny that he

believed to be his own; and every hour he seemed to sink lower and lower into oblivion, further and further

from the possibility of any fulfillment of his dreams; and the wasted years of his life fell away one by one

into the gulf of the past, vain, unheard, unfruitful, as the frozen words on the deck of the ship of Pantagruel.

"What is the use?" he muttered, half aloud, one day before his paintings. "What is the use? If I die tomorrow

they will sell for so much rubbish to heat a bakery store. It is only a mad waste of hourswaste of colour, of

canvas, of labour. The world has told me so, many years. The world always knows what it wants. It selects

unerringly. It must judge better than I do. The man is a fool, indeed, who presumes himself to be wiser than

all his generation. If the world will have nothing to do with you, go and hang yourselfor if you fear to do

that, dig a ditch or a grave for a daily meal. Give over dreams. The world knows what it wants, and if it

wanted you would take you. It has brazen lungs to shout for what it needs; the lungs of a multitude. It is no

use what your own voice whispers you unless those great lungs also shout before you, Hosannah."

So he spoke to himself in the bitterness of his soul, standing before his cartoons in which he had put all the

genius there was in him, and which hung there unseen save by the spider that wove and the moth that flew

FolleFarine, who was that day in his chamber, looked at him with the wistful farreaching comprehension

"Of a winter night," she said, slowly, "I have heard old Pitchou read aloud to Flamma, and she reads of their

God, the one they hang everywhere on the crosses here; and the story ran that the populace scourged and

nailed to death the one whom they knew afterwards, when too late, to have been the great man that they

looked for, and that, being bidden to make their choice of one to save, they chose to ransom and honour a

thief: one called Barabbas. Is it true?If the world's choice were wrong once, why not twice?"

Arsl�n smiled; the smile she knew so well, and which had no more warmth than the ice floes of his native

"Why not twice? Why not a thousand times? A thief has the world's sympathies always. It is always the

Barabbasthe trickster in talent, the forger of stolen wisdom, the bravo of political crime, the huckster of

plundered thoughts, the charlatan of false art, whom the vox populi elects and sets free, and sends on his way

rejoicing. 'Will ye have Christ or Barrabas?' Every generation is asked the same question, and every

generation gives the same answer; and scourges the divinity out of its midst, and finds its idol in brute force

She only dimly comprehended, not well knowing why her words had thus roused him. She pondered awhile,

"But the end?" she asked. "The dead God is the God of all these people round us now, and they have built

great places in his honour, and they bow when they pass his likeness in the highway or the market place. But

"His end? In Syria maybe the vultures picked his bones, where they lay whitening on the plainsthose times

were primitive, the world was young. But in our day Barabbas lives and dies in honour, and has a tomb that

stares all men in the face, setting forth his virtues, so that all who run may read. In our day Barabbasthe

Barabbas of money greeds and delicate cunning, and the theft which has risen to science, and the

assassination that kills souls and not bodies, and the crime that deals moral death and not material deathour

Barabbas, who is crowned Fraud in the place of mailed Forcelives always in purple and fine linen, and

He spoke with a certain fierce passion that rose in him whenever he thought of that world which had rejected

him, and had accepted so many others, weaker in brain and nerve, but stronger in one sense, because more

dishonest; and as he spoke he went straight to a wall on his right where a great sea of grey paper was

"Hush! be quiet," he said to her, almost harshly, "I have thought of something."

And he took the charcoal and swept rapidly with it over the dull blank surface till the vacancy glowed with

The scene around him vanished utterly from his sight. The grey stone walls, the square windows through

which the fading sun rays fell, the level pastures and sullen streams, and paled skies without; all faded away

All the empty space about him became peopled with many human shapes that for him had breath and being,

though no other eye could have beheld them. The old Syrian world of eighteen hundred years before arose

and glowed before him. The things of his own life died away, and in their stead he saw the fierce flame of

eastern suns, the gleaming range of marble palaces, the purple flush of pomegranate flowers, the deep colour

of oriental robes, the soft silver of hills olive crested, the tumult of a city at high festival. And he could not

rest until all he thus saw in his vision he had rendered as far as his hand could render it; and what he drew

A great thirsty, heated, seething crowd; a crowd that had manhood and womanhood, age and infancy, youths

and maidens, within its ranks; a crowd in whose faces every animal lust and every human passion were let

loose; a crowd on which a noon sun without shadow streamed; a sun which parched and festered and

engendered all corruption in the land on which it looked. This crowd was in a city, a city on whose flat roofs

the myrtle and the cistus bloomed; above whose walls the plumes of olives waved; upon whose distant slopes

the darkling cedar groves rose straight against the sky, and on whose loft temple plates of gold glistened

against the shining heavens. This crowd had scourges, and stones, and goads in their hands; and in their midst

they led one clothed in white, whose head was thorncrowned, and whose eyes were filled with a god's pity

And triumphant in the throng, whose choice he was, seated aloft upon men's shoulders, with a purple robe

thrown on his shoulders, there sat a brawny, grinning, bloated, jibbering thing, with curled lips and savage

eyes, and satyr's leer: the creature of greed, of lust, of obscenity, of brutality, of avarice, of desire. This thing

the people followed, rejoicing exceedingly, content in the guide whom they had chosen, victorious in the

fiend for whom they spurned a deity; crying, with wideopen throats and brazen lungs, "Barabbas!"

There was not a form in all this closepacked throng which had not a terrible irony in it, which was not in

itself a symbol of some appetite or vice, for which women and men abjure the godhead in them.

A gorged drunkard lay asleep with his amphora broken beneath him, the stream of the purple wine lapped

eagerly by ragged children. A moneychanger had left the receipt of custom, eager to watch and shout, and a

A miser had dropped a bag of gold, and stopped to catch at all the rolling pieces, regardless in his greed how

the crowd trampled and trod on him. A mother chid and struck her little brown curly child, because he

A priest of the temple, with a bloodstained knife thrust in his girdle, dragged beside him, by the throat, a

A dancing woman with jewels in her ears, and half naked to the waist, sounding the brazen cymbals above

On one of the flat roof tops, reclining on purple and fine linen, looking down on the street below from the

thick foliage of her citron boughs and her red Syrian roses, was an Egyptian wanton; and leaning beside her,

tossing golden apples in her bosom, was a young centurion of the Roman guard, languid and laughing, with

And thus, in like manner, every figure bore its parable: and above all was the hard, hot, cruel, cloudless sky

of blue, without one faintest mist to break its horrible serenity, whilst high in the azure ether and against the

sun, an eagle and a vulture fought, locked close, and tearing at each other's breasts.

Six nights this conception occupied him. His days were not his own, he spent them in a rough mechanical

labour which his strength executed while his mind was far away from it; but the nights were all his, and at the

end of the sixth night the thing arose, perfect as far as his hand could perfect it; begotten by a chance and

ignorant word as have been many of the greatest works the world has seen;oaks sprung from the acorn a

When he had finished it his arm dropped to his side, he stood motionless; the red glow of the dawn lighting

The artist, for one moment of ecstasy, realises the content of a god when, resting from his labours, he knows

It is only for a moment; the greater the artist the more swiftly will discontent and misgiving overtake him, the

more quickly will the feebleness of his execution disgust him in comparison with the splendour of his ideals;

the more surely will hethough the world ring with applause for himbe enraged and derisive and

But while the moment lasts it is a rapture; keen, pure, intense, surpassing every other. In it, fleeting though it

be, he is blessed with a blessing that never falls on any other creature. The work of his brain and of his hand

Arsl�n knew that joy as he looked on the work for which he had given up sleep, and absorbed in which he

He had known no rest until he had embodied the shapes that pursued him. He had scarcely spoken, barely

slumbered an hour; tired out, consumed with restless fever, weak from want of sleep and neglect of food, he

had wrought on, and on, and on, until the vision as he had beheld it lived there, recorded for the world that

As he looked on it he felt his own strength, and was glad: he had faith in himself, though he had faith in no

other thing; he ceased to care what other fate befell him, so that only this supreme power of creation

His lamp died out; the bell of a distant clock chimed the fourth hour of the passing night.

The day broke in the east, beyond the grey levels of the fields and plains; the dusky crimson of the dawn rose

over the cool dark skies; the light of the morning stars came in and touched the visage of his fettered

He knew that in it lay the best achievement, the highest utterance, the truest parable, that the genius in him

had ever conceived and put forth;and he knew too that he was as powerless to raise it to the public sight of

men as though he were stretched dead beneath it; he knew that there would be none to heed whether it rotted

there in the dust, or perished by moth or by flame; unless illness should befall him, and it should be taken

There, on the wall, he had written with all the might there was in him, his warning to the age in which he

lived, his message to future generations, his claims to men's remembrance after death: and there were none to

Great things, beautiful things, things of wisdom, things of grace, things terrible in their scorn and divine in

their majesty, rose up about him, incarnated by his mind and his handand their doom was to fade and

wither without leaving one human mind the richer for their story, one human soul the nobler for their

A year of labour, and the cartoon could be transferred to the permanent life of the canvas; and he was a

master of colour, and loved to wrestle with its intricacies as the mariner struggles with the storm.

"But what were the use?" he pondered as he stood there. "What the use to be at pains to give it its full life on

All labours of his art were dear to him, and none wearisome: yet he doubted what it would avail to commence

If the world were never to know that it existed, it would be as well to leave it there on its grey sea of paper, to

be moved to and fro with each wind that blew through the broken rafters, and to be brushed by the wing of

Across the chamber FolleFarine stole noiselessly. She had come and gone thus a score of times through

those six nights of his vigil; and he had seldom seen her, never spoken to her; now and then she had touched

him, and placed before him some simple meal of herbs and bread, and he had taken it half unconsciously, and

drunk great draughts of water, and turned back again to his work, not noticing that she had brought to him

She came to him without haste and without sound, and stood before him and looked;looked with all her

The dawn was brighter now, red and hazy with curious faint gleams of radiance from the sun, that as yet had

She stood and gazed at it. She had watched it all grow gradually into being out from the chaos of dull spaces

and confused lines. This art, which could call life from the dry wastes of wood and paper, and shed perpetual

light where all was darkness, was ever to her an alchemy incomprehensible, immeasurable; a thing not to be

criticised or questioned, ut adored in all its inscrutable and majestic mystery.

To her it could not have been more marvellous if his hand had changed the river sand to gold, or his touch

had wakened the dead cornflowers to bloom afresh as living asphodels. But now for once she forgot the

sorcery of the art in the terror and the pathos of the story it told; now for once she forgot, in the creation, its

All she saw was the face of the Christ,the pale bent face, in whose eyes there was a patience so perfect, a

pity so infinite, a reproach that had no wrath, a scorn that had no cruelty. She had hated the Christ on the

cross, because he was the God of the people she hated, and in whose name they reviled her. But this Christ

moved her strangelythere, in the light, alone; betrayed and forsaken, while the crowd rushed on, lauding

Ignorant though she was, the profound meaning of the parable penetrated her with their ironies and with their

"Does it move you so?" he said, slowly. "Wellthe world refuses me fame; but I do not know that the world

"The world?" she echoed. "The world? You care for the worldyou?who have painted that?"

He had drawn the picture in all its deadly irony, in all its pitiless truth, only himself to desire and strive for

the wine streams, and the painted harlotry, and the showers of gold, and the false gods, of a worldly success.

It was not for the first time that the dreamy utterances of this untrained and imperfect intelligence had struck

"Care? I?" he answered her. "We, who call ourselves poets or painters, can see the truth and can tell itwe

are prophets so far; but when we come down from our Horeb we hanker for the fleshpots and the dancing

women, and the bags of gold, like all the rest. We are no better than those we preach to; perhaps we are

She did not hear him; and had she heard, would not have comprehended. Her eyes were still fastened on the

picture, and the blood in her cheeks faded and glowed at every breath she drew, and in her eye there was the

wistful wondering, trustful reverence, which shone in those of the child, who, breaking from his mother's

arms, and regardless of the soldier's stripes, clung to the feet of the scourged captive, and there kneeled and

The sun had fully risen; the day was red and clear; the earth was hushed in perfect stillness, the only sounds

"And yet I desire nothing for myself," he thought. "I would lie down and die tomorrow, gladly, did I know

Yet he knew that to desire a fame after death, was as idle as to desire, with a child's desire, the stars.

For the earth is crowded full with clay gods and false prophets, and fresh legions for ever arriving to carry on

the old strife for supremacy; and if a man pass unknown all the time that his voice is audible, and his hand

visible, through the sound and smoke of the battle, he will dream in vain of any remembrance when the gates

When the world was in its youth, it had leisure to treasure its recollections; even to pause and look back; and

to see what flower of a fair thought, what fruit of a noble art, it might have overlooked or left downtrodden.

But now it is so old, and is so tired; it is purblind and heavy of foot; it does not notice what it destroys; it

desires rest, and can find none; nothing can matter greatly to it; its dead are so many that it cannot count

them; and being thus worn and dulled with age, and suffocated under the weight of its innumberable

And the prayer that to the heart of a man seems so freshly born from his own desire, what is it on the weary

ear of the world, save the same old, old cry which it has heard through all the ages, empty as the sound of the

SHE was his absolute slave; and he used his influence with little scruple. Whatever he told her she believed:

With little effort Arsl�n persuaded her that to lend her beauty to the purpose of his art was a sacrifice pure

and supreme; repaid, it might be, with immortality, like the immortality of the Mona Lisa. It was ever painful

and even loathsome to her to give her beauty to the merciless imitations of art; it stung the dignity and purity

that were inborn in the daughter of an outlawed people; it wounded, and hurt, and humiliated her. She knew

that these things were only done that one day the eyes of thousands and of tens of thousands might gaze on

them; and the knowledge was hateful to her. But as she would have hewn wood or carried water for him, as

she would have denied her lips the least morsel of bread that his might have fed thereon, as she would have

gone straight to the river's edge at his bidding, and have stood still for the stream to swell and the floods to

He painted or sketched her in nearly every attitude, and rendered her the centre of innumerable stories.

He placed her form in the crowd of dancingwomen that followed after Barabbas. He took her for

Persephone, as for Phryne. He couched her on the bleak rocks and the seasands of barren Tenedos. He made

her beauty burn through the purple passion vines and the roses of silence of the Venusberg. He pourtrayed her

as Daphne, with all her soft human form changing and merging into the bitter roots and the poisonous leaves

of the laurel that was the fruit of love. He drew her as L�na, whose venal lips yet, being purified by a perfect

He sketched her in a hundred shapes and for a hundred stories, taking her wild deerlike grace, and her

supple mountainbred strength, and her beauty that had all the richness and the freshness that sun and wind

and rain and the dews of the nights can give, taking these as he in other years had taken the bloom of the

grape, the blush of the seashell, the red glow of the desert reed, the fleeting glory of anything that, by its life

Of all the studies he made from herhe all the while cold to her as any priest of old to the bird that he

seethed in its blood on his altars of sacrifice,those which were slightest of all, yet of all pleased him best,

were two twin studies which were fullest of that ruthless and unsparing irony with which in every stroke of

In the first, he painted her in all the warm, dreaming, palpitating slumber of youth, asleep in a field of

poppies: thousands of the brilliant blossoms were crushed under her slender, pliant, folded limbs; the intense

scarlet of the flowers burned everywhere, above, beneath, around her; purple shadow and amber light

contended for the mastery upon her; her arms were lightly tossed above her head; her mouth smiled in her

dreams; over her a butterfly flew, spreading golden wings to the sun; against her breast the great crimson

cups of the flowers of sleep curled and glowed; amongst them, hiding and gibbering and glaring at her with

elfin eyes, was the Red Mouse of the Brockenthe one touch of pitiless irony, of unsparing cynicism, that

stole like a snake through the hush and the harmony and the innocence of repose.

In the second there was still the same attitude, the same solitude, the same rest, but the sleep was the sleep of

Stretched on a block of white marble, there were the same limbs, but livid and lifeless, and twisted in the

contortions of a last agony: there was the same loveliness, but on it the hues of corruption had already stolen;

the face was still turned upward, but the blank eyes stared hideously, and the mouth was drawn back from

teeth closely clenched; upon the stone there lay a surgeon's knife and a sculptor's scalpel; between her lips the

All the beauty was left still, but it was left ghastly, dis coloured, ruined,ready for the mockery of the clay,

for the violation of the knife,ready for the feast of the blindworm, for the narrow home dug in darkness

And these two pictures were so alike and yet so unlike, so true to all the glory of youth, so true to all the

ghastliness of death, that they were terrible; they were terrible even to the man who drew them with so

Only to her they were not terrible, because they showed his power, because they were his will and work. She

had no share in the shudder, which even he felt, at that visible presentment of corruption to which her beauty

in its human perfection was destined: since it pleasured him to do it, that was all she cared.

She would have given her beauty to the scourge of the populace, or to the fish of the sea, at his bidding. She

She was content that he should deal with her in all things as he would. That such pourtrayals of her were

cruel she never once thought: to her all others had been so brutal that the cruelties of Arsl�n seemed soft as

To be for one instant a thing in the least wished for and endeared was to her a miracle so wonderful, and so

"Is that all the devil has done for you?" cried the gardener's wife from the vinehung lattice, leaning out

"It was scarcely worth while to be his offspring if he deal you no better gifts than that. He is as niggard as the

saints arethe little mean beasts. Do you know that the man who paints you brings death they saysooner

FolleFarine, beneath the dense brown shadows cast from the timbers of the leaning houses, raised her eyes;

the eyes smiled, and yet they had a look in them that chilled even the mocking, careless wanton temper of the

The gardener's wife laughed aloud, the silver pins shaking in her yellow tresses.

"Wellthe devil gives strength, no doubt. But I will not say much for the devil's wage. A fine office he set

youhis daughterto lend yourself to a painter's eyes like any wanton that he could hire in the

marketplace for a drink of wine. If the devil do no better than that for youhis own begotten,I will

cleave close to the saints and the angels henceforth, though they do take all the gems and the gold and the

The boat had passed on with slow and even measure; no words of derision which they could cast at her had

power to move her any more than the fret of the ruffling rooks had power to move the cathedral spires around

The old dull, grey routine of perpetual toil was illumined and enriched. If any reviled her, she heard not. If

any flung a stone at her, she caught it and dropped it on the grass, and went on with a glance of pardon. When

the rude children ran after her footsteps bawling and mouthing, she turned and looked at them with a

dreaming tenderness in her eyes that rebuked them and held them silenced and afraid. Now, she hated none;

nor could she envy any. The women were welcome to their little joys of hearth and home; they were welcome

to look for their lovers across the fields with smiling eyes shaded from the sun, or to beckon their infants

from the dusky orchards to murmur fond foolish words and stroke the curls of flaxen down,she begrudged

Base usage cannot make base a creature that gives itself nobly, purely, with unutterable and exhaustless love;

and whilst the people in the country round muttered at her for her vileness and disgrace, she, all unwitting and

made proud, raised high above the reach of taunt and censure by a deep and speechless joy that rendered

hunger, and labour, and pain, and brutal tasks, and jibing glances indifferent to hernay, unfeltwent on

her daily ways with a light richer than the light of the sun in her eyes, and in her step the noble freedom of

She was proud as with the pride of one selected for some great dignity; graced with the grace that a supreme

devotion and a supreme ignorance made possible to her. He was as a god to her; and she had found favour in

his sight. Although by all others despised, to him she was beautiful; a thing to be desired, not abhorred; a

creature not cursed for daring to have a breath of mortal life, but thought worthy of life eternal amidst the

deathless children of his genius. It seemed to her so wonderful that, night and day, in her heart she praised

God for itthat dim unknown God of whom no man had taught her, but whom she had vaguely grown to

dream of and to honour, and to behold in the setting of the sun, and in the flux of the sea, and in the mysteries

Of shame to her in it she had no thought: a passion strong as fire in its force, pure as crystal in its

unselfishness, possessed her for him, and laid her at his feet to be done with as he would.

She would have crouched to him like a dog; she would have worked for him like a slave; she would have

killed herself if he had bidden her without a word of resistance or a moan of regret. To be touched by him one

moment as his hand moved some wave of her hair or some fold of her drapery, as he studied an outline or

changed an attitude, was to her the greatest glory life could know. To be a pleasure to him for one hour, to see

his eyes tell her once, however carelessly or coldly, that she had any beauty fit for his pourtrayal, was to her

To him she was no more than the cluster of grapes to the wayfarer, who brushes their bloom off and steals

their sweetness, then casts them down to be trampled on, by whosoever the next comer be. But to this

creature, who had no guide except her instincts of passion and sacrifice, who had no guard except the pure

scorn that had kept her from the meanness and coarseness of the vices around her, this was unintelligible,

unsuspected; and if she had understood it, she would have accepted it mutely, in that abject humility which

To be of use to him,to be held of any worth to him, to have his eyes find any loveliness to study in

her,to be to him only as the flower which he broke from the stem to copy its bloom on his canvas, and then

cast out on the sand to wither as it would,this, even this, seemed to her the highest fate to which she could

That he only borrowed the colour of her cheek and the outline of her limbs, as he had borrowed a thousand

times ere then the venal charms of the dancingwomen of taverns and playhouses, and the hireling graces of

the wanton who strayed in the public ways, was a knowledge that never touched her with its indignity. To her

his art was a religion, supreme, passionless, eternal, whose sacrificial fires ennobled and consecrated all that

"Though I shall die as the leaf dies in my body, yet I shall live for ever embalmed amidst the beauty of his

ONE day, while the year was still young, though the first thunderheats of the early summer had come, he

"Is it possible that you do not know?" he asked, in utter wonder"you who have lived all these years within

"The man has never lived yet who could tellin fit language. Poseidon is the only one of all the old gods of

Hellas who still lives and reigns. We will go to his kingdom. Sight is better than speech."

So he took her along the slow course of the inland water through the osiers and the willows, down to where

It was true what she had said, that she had never even beheld the sea. Her errands had always been to and fro

between the mill and the quay in the town, no farther; she had exchanged so little communion with the people

of the district that she knew nothing of whither the barges went that took away the corn and fruit, nor whence

the big boats came that brought the coals and fish; when she had a little space of leisure to herself she had

wandered indeed but never so far as the shore; almost always in the woods and the meadows, never where the

river, widening as it ran, spread out between level banks, until, touching the sea, it became a broad estuary.

She had heard speak of the sea, indeed, as of some great highway on which men travelled incessantly to and

fro; as of something unintelligible, remote, belonging to others, indifferent and alien to herself.

When she had thought of it at all, she had only thought of it as probably some wide canal black with mud and

dust, and edged by dull pathways slippery and toilsome, along which tired horses towed heavy burdens all

Of the beauty and the mystery, of the infinite sweetness and solace of the sea, she knew no more than she

A few leagues off, where the stream widened into a bay and was hemmed in by sandbanks in lieu of its flat

green pastures, there was a little fishing town, built under the great curve of beetling cliffs, and busy with all

the stir and noise of mart and wharf. There the sea was crowded with many masts and ruddy with redbrown

canvas; and the air was full of the salt scent of rotting seaweed, of stiff sails spread out to dry, of great

shoals of fish poured out upon the beach, and of dusky noisome cabins, foulsmelling, and made hideous by

He took her halfway down the stream whilst it was still sleepily beautiful with pale grey willows and green

meadow land, and acres of silvery reeds, and here and there some quaint old steeple or some applehidden

roofs on either side its banks. But midway he left the water and stretched out across the country, she beside

him, moving with that rapid, lithe, and staglike ease of limbs which have never known restraint.

Some few people passed them on their way; a child, taking the cliffroad to his home under the rocks, with a

big blue pitcher in his hands; an old man, who had a fishingbrig at sea and toiled up there to look for her,

with a grey dog at his heels, and the smell of saltwater in his clothes; a goatherd, clad in rough skins wool

outward, and killing birds with stones as he went; a woman, with a blue skirt and scarlet hose, and a bundle

of boughs and brambles on her head, with here and there a stray winter berry glowing red through the tender

green leafage; all these looked askance at them, and the goatherd muttered a curse, and the woman a prayer,

and gave them wide way through the stunted furze, for they were both of them accursed in the people's sight.

"You find it hard to live apart from your kind?" he asked her suddenly as they gained the fields where no

human habitation at all was left, and over which hung, in the radiance of the sunlit skies, the pale crescent of

"Yeslike this. To see no child smile, to hear no woman gossip, no man exchange good morrow with you. Is

"What does it matter? It is best so. One is free. One owes nothingnot so much as a fair word. That is well."

She spoke quietly, with the firm and simple consciousness of force, which has as little of vanity in it as it has

"To live apart," she said, after a pause, in which he had not answered. "I know what you meannow. It is

wellit is well with those men you tell me of when the world was young, who left all other men and went to

live with the watercourse and the wild dove, and the rose and the palm, and the great yellow desert; was it not

"So well with them that men worshipped them for it. But there is no such worship now. The cities are the

kingdom of heaven; not the deserts; and he who hankers for the wilderness is stoned in the streets as a fool.

And how should it be well with you, who have neither wild rose nor wild dove for compensation, but are only

"See here.There is a pretty golden thing in the west road of the town who fears me horribly, Yvonne, the

pottery painter's daughter. She says to her father at evening, 'I must go read the offices to old Mother Margot;'

and he says, 'Go, my daughter; piety and reverence of age are twin blossoms off one stem of a tree that grows

"And she goes; not to Margot, but to a little booth where there is dancing and singing and brawling, that her

"There is an old man at the corner of the marketplace, Ryno, the fruit seller, who says that I am accursed,

and spits out at me as I pass. He says to the people as they go by his stall, 'See these peaches, they are smooth

and rosy as a child's cheek; sweet and firm; not their like betwixt this and Paris. I will let you have them

cheap, so cheap; I need sorely to send money to my sick son in Africa.' And the people pay, greedily; and

when the peaches are home they see a little black speck in each of them, and all save their bloom is

"There is a woman who makes lace at the windows of the house against the fourth gate; Marion Silvis; she is

white and sleek, and blueeyed; the priests honour her, and she never misses a mass. She has an old blind

mother whom she leaves in her room. She goes out softly at nightfall, and she slips to a wineshop full of

soldiers, and her lovers kiss her on the mouth. And the old mother sits moaning and hungry at home; and a

night ago she was badly burned, being alone. Nowis it well or not to be hated of those people? If I had

loved them, and they me, I might have become a liar, and have thieved, and have let men kiss me, likewise."

She spoke with aa thoughtful and fierce earnestness, not witting of the caustic in her own words, meaning

simply what she said, and classing the kisses of men as some sort of weakness and vileness, like those of a

theft and a lie; as she had come to do out of a curious, proud, true instinct that was in her, and not surely from

She in her way loved the man who walked beside her; but it was a love of which she was wholly

unconscious; a pity, a sorrow, a reverence, a cultus, a deification, all combined, that had little or nothing in

common with the loves of human kind, and which still left her speech as free, and her glance as fearless, with

He knew that; and he did not care to change it; it was singular, and gave her half her charm of savagery and

"You are only a barbarian; how should you understand that the attractions of civilization lie in its

multiplications of the forms of vice? Men would not bear its yoke an hour if it did not in return facilitate their

sins. You are an outcast from it;so you have kept your hands honest and your lips pure. You may be right

"At leastI would not be as they are," she answered him with a curl of the mouth, and a gleam in her eyes:

the pride of the old nomadic tribes, whose blood was in her, asserting itself against the claimed superiority of

the tamed and hearthbound racesblood that ran free and fearless to the measure of boundless winds and

rushing waters; that made the forest and the plain, the dawn and the darkness, the flight of the wild roe and

the hidingplace of the woodpigeon, dearer than any rooftree, sweeter than any nuptial bed.

She had left the old life so long;so long that even her memories of it were dim as dreams, and its language

had died off her lips in all save the broken catches of her songs; but the impulses of it were in her, vivid and

ineradicable, and the scorn with which the cowed and timid races of shed and of homestead regarded her, she,

"I would not be as they are!" she repeated. "To sit and spin; to watch their soup pot boil; to spend their days

under a close roof; to shut the stars out, and cover themselves in their beds, as swine do with their straw in the

sty; to huddle altogether in thousands, fearing to do what they will, lest the tongue of their neighbour wag

evil of it; to cheat a little and steal a little, and lie always when the false word serves them, and to mutter to

themselves, 'God will wash us free of our sins,' and then to go and sin again stealthily, thinking men will not

see and sure that their God will give them a quittance;that is their life. I would not be as they are."

And her spirits rose, and her earliest life in the Li�bana seemed to flash on her for one moment clear and

bright through the veil of the weary years, and she walked erect and swiftly through the gorse, singing by his

"This tameless wild doe would crouch like a spaniel, and be yoked as a beast of burden,if I chose."

She was beautiful in her way; barbaric, dauntless, innocent, savage; he cared to hurt, to please, to arouse, to

And yet she was most lovely in her own wild fashion, like a young desert mare, or a seagull on the wing; and

he wondered to himself that he cared for her no more, as he moved beside her through the thickets of the

He had tossed aside the hair of dead women and pourtrayed the limbs and the features of living ones till that

ruthless pursuit had brought its own penalty with it; and the beauty of women scarcely moved him more than

did the plumage of a bird or the contour of a marble. His senses were drugged, and his heart was dead; it was

As they left the cliff road for the pathless downs that led toward the summit of the rocks, they passed by a

little wayside hut, red with climbing creepers, and all alone on the sandy soil, like the little nest of a

Through its unclosed shutter the light of the sun streamed on to the pathway; the interior was visible. It was

very poor; a floor of mud, a couch of rushes; a hearth on which a few dry sticks were burning; walls

lichencovered and dropping moisture. Before the sticks, kneeling and trying to take them burn up more

brightly to warm the one black pot that hung above them, was a poor peasant girl, and above her leaned a

man who was her lover, a fisher of the coast, as poor, as hardy, and as simple as herself.

In the man's eyes the impatience of love was shining, and as she lifted her head, after breathing with all her

strength on the smoking sticks, he bent and drew her in his arms and kissed her rosy mouth and the white lids

that drooped over her blue smiling northern eyes. She let the fuel lie still to blaze or smoulder as it would,

and leaned her head against him, and laughed softly at his eagerness. Arsl�n glanced at them as he passed.

"Poor brutes!" he muttered. "Yet how happy they are! It must be well to be so easily content, and to find a

FolleFarine, hearing him, paused, and looked also. She trembled suddenly, and walked on in silence.

A new light broke on her, and dazzled her, and made her afraid: this forestborn creature, who had never

The ground ascended as it stretched seaward, but on it there were only wide dull fields of colza or of grass

Above them was the cloudless weary blue; below them was the faint parched green; other colour there was

none; one little dusky panting bird flew by pursued by a kite; that was the only change.

She asked him no questions; she walked mutely and patiently by his side; she hated the dull heat, the

colourless waste, the hard scorch of the air, the dreary changelessness of the scene. But she did not say so. He

A league onward the fields were merged into a heath, uncultivated and covered with short prickly furze; on

the brown earth between the stunted bushes a few groats were cropping the burntup grasses. Here the slope

grew sharper, and the earth seemed to rise up between the sky and them, steep and barren as a houseroof.

Her feet ached, and her heart throbbed; her limbs were heavy like lead in the heat and the toil. But she did not

tell him so. She would have dropped dead from exhaustion rather than have confessed to him any weakness.

The sun was slanting towards the west; the skies seemed like brass; the air was sharp, yet scorching; the dull

brown earth still rose up before them like a wall; they climbed it slowly, and painfully, their hands and their

teeth filled with its dust, which drifted in a cloud before them. He bade her close her eyes, and she obeyed

him. He stretched his arm out and drew her after him up the ascent which was slippery from drought and

She opened her eyes with the startled halfquestioning stare of one led out from utter darkness into a full and

Then with a great cry, she sank down on the rock, trembling, weeping, laughing, stretching out her arms to

the new glory that met her sight, dumb with its grandeur, delirious with its delight.

Before her dazzled sight all its beauty stretched, the blueness of the waters meeting the blueness of the skies;

radiant with all the marvels of its countless hues; softly stirred by a low wind that sighed across it; bathed in a

glow of gold that streamed on it from the westward; rolling from north to south in slow sonorous measure,

The lustre of the sunset beamed upon it; the cool fresh smell of its water shot like new life through all the

scorch and stupor of the day; its white foam curled and broke on the brown curving rocks and wooded inlets

of the shores; innumerable birds, that gleamed like silver, floated or flew above its surface; all was still, still

as death, save only for the endless movement of those white swift wings and the murmur of the waves, in

which all meaner and harsher sounds of earth seemed lost and hushed to slumber and to silence.

The sea alone reigned, as it reigned in the young years of the earth when men were not; as, may be, it will be

its turn to reign again in the years to come, when men and all their works shall have passed away and be no

He was glad that it should awe and move her thus. The sea was the only thing for which he cared; or which

had any power over him. In the northern winters of his youth he had known the ocean, in one wild night's

work, undo all that men had done to check and rule it, and burst through all the barriers that they had raised

against it, and throw down the stones of the altar and quench the fires of the hearth, and sweep through the

fold and the byre, and flood the cradle of the child and the grave of the grandsire.

He had seen its storms wash away at one blow the corn harvests of years, and gather in the sheep from the

hills, and take the life of the shepherd with the life of the flock. He had seen it claim lovers locked in each

other's arms, and toss the fair curls of the firstborn as it tossed the riband weeds of its deeps. And he had felt

small pity; it had rather given him a certain sense of rejoicing and triumph to see the water laugh to scorn

those who were so wise in their own conceit, and bind beneath its chains those who held themselves masters

Other men dreaded the sea and cursed it; but he in his way loved it almost with passion, and could he have

chosen the manner of his death would have desired that it should be by the sea and through the sea; a death

cold and serene and dreamily voluptuous; a death on which no woman should look and in which no man

He watched her now for some time without speaking. When the first paroxysm of her emotion had exhausted

itself, she stood motionless, her figure like a statue of bronze against the sun, her head sunk upon her breast,

her arms outstretched as though beseeching that wondrous bright ness which she saw to take her to itself

and made her one with it. Her whole attitude expressed an unutterable worship. She was like one who for the

"What is it you feel?" he asked her suddenly. He knew without asking; but he had made it his custom to

dissect all her joys and sufferings with little heed whether he thus added to either.

At the sound of his voice she started, and a shiver shook her as she answered him slowly, without

Her head dropped on her breast; great tears rolled silently down her cheeks; her arms fell to her sides; she

shivered again and sighed. She knew all that she had lostthis is the greatest grief that life holds.

"You never knew," he made answer. "There was only a sandhill between you and all this glory; but the

She had for once no remembrance of him; nor any other sense save of this surpassing wonder that had thus

burst on herthis miracle that had been near her for so long, yet of which she had never in all her visions

She was quite silent; sunk there on her knees, motionless, gazing straight, with eyes unblenching, at the light.

There was no sound near them, nor was there anything in sight except where above against the deepest azure

of the sky two curlews were circling around each other, and in the distance a single ship was gliding, with

sails silvered by the sun. All signs of human life lay far behind; severed from them by those steep scorched

slopes swept only by the plovers and the bees. And all the while she looked slow tears gathered in her eyes

and fell, and the loud hard beating of her heart was audible in the hushed stillness of the upper air.

"Give me that pain," she muttered, "sooner than any joy. Pain? Pain? it is life, heaven, liberty!"

For suddenly those words which she had heard spoken around her, and which had been to her like the

mutterings of the deaf and the dumb, became real to her with a thousand meanings.

Men use them unconsciously, figuring by them all the marvels of their existence, all the agonies of their

emotions, all the mysteries of their pangs and passions, for which they have no other names; and even so she

Passionless himself, except in the pursuit of his art, the passions of this untrained and intense nature had

interest for himthe cold interest of analysis and dissection, not of sympathy. As he pourtrayed her physical

beauty scarcely moved by its flush of colour and grace of mould, so he pursued the development of her mind

The seagulls were lost in the heights of the air; the ship sailed on into the light till the last gleam of its canvas

vanished; the sun sank westward lower and lower till it glowed in a globe of flame upon the edge of the

water; she never moved; standing there on the summit of the cliff, with her head drooped upon her breast, her

form thrown out dark and motionless against the gold of the western sky, on her face still that look of one

The sun sank entirely, leaving only a trail of flame across the heavens; the waters grew grey and purple in the

shadows; one boat, black against the crimson reflections of the west, swept on swiftly with the inrushing

tide; the wind rose and blew long curls of seaweed on the rocks; the shores of the bay were dimmed in a

heavy mist, through which the lights of the little hamlets dimly glowed, and the distant voices of fishermen

calling to each other as they drew in their deepsea nets came faint and weirdlike.

Still she never moved; the sea at her feet seemed to magnetize her, and draw her to it with some unseen

"This is but a landlocked bay," he said, with some contempt; he who had seen the white aurora rise over the

untraversed ocean of an Arctic world, "and it lies quiet enough there, like a duck pool, in the twilight. Tell

On her there had vaguely come of late the feeling that she had only exchanged one tyranny for another; that,

leaving the dominion of ignorance, she had only entered upon a slavery still sterner and more binding. In

every vein of her body there leaped and flashed and lived the old free blood of an everlawless, of an

oftencriminal, race, yet, though with its instincts of rebellion so strong in her, making her break all bonds

and tear off all yokes, she was the slave of a slavesince she was the slave of love. This she did not know;

He heard with a certain pity. He was bound himself by the chain of poverty and of the world's forgetfulness,

and he had not even so much poor freedom as lies in the gilded imprisonment of fame.

"It is not free," was all he answered her. "It obeys the laws that govern it, and cannot evade them. Its flux and

reflux are not liberty, but obediencejust such obedience to natural law as our life shows when it springs

into being and slowly wears itself out and then perishes in its human form to live again in the motes of the air

and the blades of the grass. There is no such thing as liberty; men have dreamed of it, but nature has never

The words passed coldly over her: with her senses steeped in that radiance of light, that divinity of calm, that

breadth of vision, that trance of awe, the chilliness and the bitterness of fact recoiled from off her intelligence,

"It is so free!" she murmured, regardless of his words, "if I had only knownI would have asked it to take

me so long ago. To float dead on itas that bird floatsit would be so quiet there: and it would not fling me

Her voice was dreamy and gentle. The softness of an indescribable desire was in it.

"Is it too late?" he said, with that cruelty which cha racterised all his words to her. "Can you have grown in

He was silent; the brief innocent words rebuked him. They said, so clearly yet so unconsciously, the influence

that his life already had gained on hers, whilst hers was to him no more than the brown seaweed was to the

With one longing backward look she obeyed him, moving like a creature in a dream, as she went away, along

the side of the cliff through the shadows, while the goats lying down for their night's rest started and fled at

ONE evening, a little later, he met her in the fields on the same spot where Marcellin first had seen her as a

The lands were all yellow with saffron and emerald with the young corn; she balanced on her head a great

brass jar; the red girdle glowed about her waist as she moved: the wind stirred the folds of her garments; her

feet were buried in the shining grass; clouds tawny and purple were behind her; she looked like some

She was of a beauty so uncommon, so strange, and all that was his for his art:a great artist, whether in

words, in melody, or in colour, is always cruel, or at the least seems so, for all things that live under the sun

Art is so vast, and human life is so little. It is to him only supremely just that the insect of an hour should be

sacrificed to the infinite and eternal truth which must endure until the heavens themselves shall wither as a

scroll that is held in a flame. It might have seemed to Arsl�n base to turn her ignorance, and submission to his

will, for the gratification of his amorous passions; but to make these serve the art to which he had himself

abandoned every earthly good was in his sight justified, as the deathagonies of the youth whom they decked

with roses and slew in sacrifice to the sun, were in the sight of the Mexican nation.

The youth whom the Mexicans slew, on the high hill of the city, with his face to the west was always the

choicest and the noblest of all the opening flower of their manhood: for it was his fate to be called to enter

into the realms of eternal light, and to dwell face to face with the unbearable brightness without whose rays

the universe would have perished frozen in perpetual night. So the artist, who is true to his art, regards every

human sacrifice that he renders up to it; how can he feel pity for a thing which perishes to feed a flame that he

The steel that he draws out from the severed heart of his victim he is ready to plunge into his own vitals; no

"What are you thinking of tonight?" he asked her where she came through the fields by the course of a little

"I was thinking,I wonder what the reed felt that you told me of,the one reed that a god chose from all its

"Ah?you see there are no reeds that make music nowadays; the reeds are only good to be woven into

"Not that I know; it is the fault of men most likely who find the chink of coin in barter sweeter music than the

song of the syrinx. But what do you think the reed felt then?pain to be so sharply severed from its

A troubled sigh parted her lips; these old fables were fairest truths to her, and gave a grace to every humblest

thing that the sun shone on, or the waters begat from their foam, or the winds blew with their breath into the

"I was trying to think. But I cannot be sure. These reeds have forgotten. They have lost their soul. They want

nothing but to feed among the sand and the mud, and grow in millions together, and shelter the toads and the

newts,there is not a note of music in them allexcept when the wind rises and makes them sigh, and then

Arsl�n looked at her where she stood; her eyes resting on the reeds, and the brook at her feet; the crimson

heat of the evening all about her, on the brazen amphora, on the red girdle on her loins, on the thoughtful

parted lips, on the proud bent brows above which a golden butterfly floated as above the brows of Psyche.

"Look: away over the fields, there comes a peasant with a sickle; he comes to mow down the reeds to make a

"Nothing at all;that I know. But you seem to envy that reedso long agothat was chosen?"

"Are you so sure? The life of the reed was always pleasant;dancing there in the light, playing with the

shadows, blowing in the winds; with the cool waters all about it all day long, and the yellow daffodils and the

"How do you know?" she murmured. "Rather,it was born in the sands, amongst the stones, of the chance

winds, of the stray germs,no one asking, no one heeding, brought by a sunbeam, spat out by a toadno

one caring where it dropped. Rather,it grew there by the river, and such millions of reeds grew with it, that

neither waters nor winds could care for a thing so common and worthless, but the very snakes twisting in and

out despised it, and thrust the arrows of their tongues through it in scorn. And thenI think I see!the great

god walked by the edge of the river, and he mused on a gift to give man, on a joy that should be a joy on the

earth for ever; and he passed by the lily white as snow, by the thyme that fed the bees, by the gold heart in the

arum flower, by the orange flame of the tall sandrush, by all the great waterblossoms which the sun kissed,

and the swallows loved, and he came to the one little reed pierced with the snakes' tongues, and all alone

amidst millions. Then he took it up, and cut it to the root, and killed it;killed it as a reedbut breathed

into it a song audible and beautiful to all the ears of men. Was that death to the reed?or life? Would a

thousand summers of life by the waterside have been worth that one thrill of song when a god first spoke

Her face lightened with a radiance to which the passion of her words was pale and poor; the vibrations of her

voice grew sonorous and changing as the sounds of music itself; her eyes beamed through unshed tears as

The reaper came nearer to them through the rosy haze of the evening, and cast a malignant eye upon them,

"The reeds only fall now for the market." He said, with a smile that was cruel. "And the gods are all

She did not understand; but her face lost its colour, her heart sunk, her lips closed. She went on, treading

down the long coils of the wild strawberries and the heavy grasses wet with the dew.

The glow from the west died, a young moon rose, the fields and the skies grew dark.

In this stray offspring of a cruel chance, Hermes, pitiful for once, had given him a reed through which all

But Hermes, when he gives such a gift, leaves the mortal on whom he bestows it to make or to miss the music

as he may; and to Arsl�n, his reed was but a reed as the rest werea thing that bloomed for a

summerevea thing of the stagnant water and drifting sanda thing that lived by the breath of the

winda thing that a man should cut down and weave in a crown for a day, and then cast aside on the stream,

and neither regret nor in anywise remembera reed of the river, as the rest were.

"ONLY a little gold!" he thought, one day, looking on the Barabbas cartoon. "As much as I have flung away

on a dancingwoman, or the dancingwoman on the jewel for her breast. Only a little gold, and I should be

The thought escaped him unawares in broken words, one day, when he thought himself alone.

This was a perpetual torture to him, this captivity and penury, this aimlessness and fruitlessness, in which his

years were drifting, spent in the dull bodily labour that any brainless human brute could execute as well as he,

consuming his days in physical fatigue in order that a roof he despised might cover him, and a bread which

was bitter as gall to him might be his to eat; knowing all the while that the real strength which he possessed,

the real power that could give him an empire amidst his fellows, was dying away in him as slowly but as

So little!just a few handfuls of that wealth that cheats and wantons, fools and panders, gathered and

scattered so easily in that world with which he had now no more to do than if he were lying in his

grave,and having this little, he would be able to compel the gaze of the world, and arouse the homage of its

His boyhood had been spent in a healthgiving and simple training, amidst a strong and hardy mountain

people. It was nothing to him to make his bed on straw; to bear hunger unblenchingly; to endure cold and

In the long nights of a northern winter he had fasted for weeks on a salted fish and a handful of meal; on the

polar seas he had passed a winter iceblocked, with famine kept at bay only by the flesh of the seal, and men

None of the physical ills of poverty could appal him; but its imprisonment, its helplessness, the sense of utter

weakness, the impotence to rise and go to other lands and other lives, the perpetual narrowness and darkness

in which it compelled him to abide, all these were horrible to him; he loathed them as a man loathes the irons

"If I had only money!" he muttered, looking on his Barabbas, "ever so littleever so little!"

For he knew that if he had as much gold as he had thrown away in earlier times to the Syrian beggar who had

sat to him on his housetop at Damascus, he could go to a city and make the work live in colour, and try once

more to force from men that wonder and that fear which are the highest tributes that the multitude can give to

There was no creature in the chamber with him, except the spiders that wove in the darkness among the

The birds were singing in the thickets of the water's edge; a blue kingfisher skimmed the air above the rushes,

and a dragonfly hunted insects over the surface of the reeds by the shore; the swallows, that built in the

In the breadth of shadow still cast across the stream by the walls of the tower, the marketboat of Ypr�s

glided by, and the soft splash of the passing oars was a sound too familiar to arouse him.

But, unseen, FolleFarine, resting one moment in her transit to look up at that grim grey pile in which her

paradise was shut, watching and listening with the finestrung senses of a great love, heard through the open

casement the muttered words which, out of the bitterness of his heart, escaped his lips unconsciously.

"It is with him as with the great black eagle that they keep in the bridgetower, in a hole in the dark, with

wings cut close and a stone tied to each foot," she thought, as she went on her way noiselessly down with the

She knew nothing of all that he remembered in the years of his pastof all that he had lost, whilst yet young,

as men should only lose their joys in the years of their old age; she knew nothing of the cities and the habits

To her it had always seemed strange that he wanted any other life than this which he possessed.

To her, the freedom, the strength, the simplicity of it, seemed noble, and all that the heart of a man could

Going forth at sunrise to his daily labour on the broad golden sheet of the waters, down to the sight and the

sound and the smell of the sea, and returning at sunset to wander at will through the woods and the pastures

in the soft evening shadows; free to watch and pourtray with the turn of his wrist the curl of each flower, the

wonder of every cloud, the smile in any woman's eyes, the gleam of any moonbeam through the leaves; or to

lie still on the grass, or the sand by the shore, and see the armies of the mists sweep by over his head, and

hearken to the throb of the nightingale's voice through the darkness, and gather the coolness of the dews in

the hollow of his hand, and let the night go by in dreams of worlds beyond the stars;such a life as this

A life in the air, on the tide, in the light, in the wind, in the sound of salt waves, in the smell of wild thyme,

with no roof to come between him and the sky, with no need to cramp body and mind in the cage of a

streeta life spent in the dreaming of dreams, and full of vision and thought as the summer was full of its

blossoms and fruits,it seemed to her the life that must needs be best for a man, since the life that was

She knew nothing of the lust of ambition, of the desire of fame, of the ceaseless unrest of the mind which

craves the world's honour, and is doomed to the world's neglect; of the continual fire which burns in the

hands which stretch themselves in conscious strength to seize a sceptre, and remain empty, only struck in the

She had no conception of themof the weakness and the force that twine one in another in such a temper as

his. She was at once above them and beneath them. She could not comprehend that he who could so bitterly

disdain the fleshpots and the wineskins of the common crowd, yet could stoop to care for that crowd's

But yet this definite longing which she overheard in the words that escaped him she could not mistake; it was

a longing plain to her, one that moved all the dullest and most brutal souls around her.

All her years through she had seen the greed of gold, or the want of it, the twin rulers of the only little

dominion that she knew. Money, in her estimate of it, meant only some little sum of copper pieces, such as

could buy a hank of flax, a load of sweet chestnuts, a stack of wood, a swarm of bees, a sack of autumn fruits.

What in cities would have been penury, was deemed illimitable riches in the homesteads and cabins which

"A little gold!a little gold!" she pondered ceaselessly, as she went on down the current.

She knew that he only craved it, not to purchase any pleasure for his appetites or for his vanities, but only as

the lever whereby he would be enabled to lift off from him that iron weight of adverse circumstances which

"A little gold!" she said to herself again and again as the boat drifted on to the town, with the scent of the

mulberries, and the herbs, and the basket of roses, which were its cargo for the market, fragrant on the air.

It seemed so slight a thing, and the more cruel because so slight, to stand thus between him and that noonday

splendour of fame which he sought to win, in his obscurity and indigence, as the blinded eagle in his den still

"What use for the gods to have given him back life," she thought, "if they must give him thus with it the

It was a gift as poisoned, a granted prayer as vain, as the immortality which they had given to Tithonus.

Had she been willing to steal from Flamma, she could have taken it as soon as the worth of the load which

she carried should have been paid to her; but by a theft she would not serve Arsl�n now. No gifts would she

She pondered and pondered, cleaving the waters with regular measures, and gliding under the old stone

When she brought the boat back up the stream at noonday, her face had cleared; her mouth smiled; she rowed

In the marketplace that day she had heard two women talk together, under the shade of their great red

"Aye, in luck indeed, for the boy to rout up the old peartree and find those queer coins beneath it. The tree

had stood there all my father's and grandfather's time, and longer too, for aught I know, and now one ever

dreamed there was any treasure at the root; but he took a fancy to dig up the tree; he said it looked like a

"No,only a few little shabby, bent pieces. But the lad took them up to the Prince Sartorian, and he is

always crazed about the like; and he sent us for them quite a roll of gold, and said that the coins found were,

"Sartorian will buy any rubbish of that sort. For my part, I think if one buried a brass button only long

"They say there are marble creatures of his that cost more than would dower a thousand brides, or pension a

thousand soldiers. I do not know about that. My boy did not get far in the palace; but he said that the hall he

waited in was graven with gold and precious stones. One picture he saw in it was placed on a golden altar, as

if it were a god. To worship old coins, and rags of canvas, and idols of stone like that,how vile it is! while

The women were from a fardistant village, and had not the infinite horror of her felt by those who lived in

She gave them thanks for their answers, and turned away in silence with a glow at her heart.

"What is that wicked one thinking of now, that she asks for such as the Prince Sartorian?" said the women,

crossing themselves, repentant that they had so far forgotten themselves as to hold any syllable of converse

"Maybe she knows that Sartorian will give yet more gold for new faces than for old coins; andhow

"I go to Rioz myself in two days' time with the mules," she thought; and her heart rose, her glance lightened,

she moved through the people with a step so elastic, and a face so radiant from the flush of a new hope, that

That night, when the millhouse was quiet, and the moonbeams fell through all its small dim windows and

chequered all its wooden floors, she rose from the loft where she slept, and stole noiselessly down the steep

It was a little dark chamber, with jutting beams and a casement that was never unclosed. On a nail hung the

blue woolen skirt and the linen cap of the woman's working dress. In a corner was a little image of a saint and

On a flock pallet the old wrinkled creature slept, tired out with the labour of a long day amongst the

cabbagebeds and rows of lettuces, muttering as she slept of the little daily peculations that were the sweet

She cared for her soulcared very much, and tried to save it; but cheating was dear to her, and cruelty was

natural: she tricked the fatherless child in his measure of milk for the tenth of a sou, and wrung the throat of

Pichou started, struggled, glared with wideopen blinded eyes, and gasped in horrible fear.

"Listen! The night I was brought here you stole the sequins off my head. Give them back to me now, or I will

The grip of her left hand on the woman's throat, and the gleam of her knife in the right, were enough, as she

Old Pitchou struggled, lied, stammered, writhed, strove to scream, and swore her innocence of this theft

which had waited eleven years to rise against her to Mary and her angels; but in the end she surrendered, and

tottered on her shuddering limbs, and crept beneath her bed, and with terror and misery brought forth from

her secret hole in the rafters of the floor the little chain of shaking sequins.

It had been of no use to her: she had always thought it of inestimable value, and could never bring herself to

part from it, visiting it night and day, and being perpetually tormented with the dread lest her master should

FolleFarine seized it from her silently, and laugheda quiet cold laughat the threats and imprecations of

"How can you complain of me, without telling also of your own old sin?" she said, with contempt, as she

quitted the chamber. "Shriek away as you choose: the chain is mine, not yours. I was weak when you stole it;

I am strong enough now. You had best not meddle, or you will have the worst of the reckoning."

And she shut the door on the old woman's screams and left her, knowing well that Pitchou would not dare to

She slipped the sequins in her bosom, and went back to her own bed of hay in the loft.

There was no sound in the darkness but the faint piping of song birds that felt the coming of day long ere the

grosser senses of humanity could have seen a glimmer of light on the black edge of the eastern clouds.

She sat on her couch with the sequins in her hand, and gazed upon them. They were very precious to her. She

had never forgotten or ceased to desire them, though to possess herself of them by force had never occurred

to her until that night. Their theft had been a wrong which she had never pardoned, yet she had never avenged

As she held them in her hand for the first time in eleven years, a strong emotion came over her.

The time when she had worn them came out suddenly in sharp relief from the haze of her imperfect

The mists of the mountains, the smell of the chestnutwoods, the curl of the white smoke amongst the leaves,

the sweet wild strains of the music, the mad grace of the old Moorish dances, the tramp through the hill

passes, the leap and splash of the tumbling waters,all arose to her for one moment from the oblivion in

The tears started to her eyes; she kissed the little glittering coins, she thought of Phratos.

The gipsy who had been found dead in the fields had been forgotten by the people before the same snows

Flamma could have told her; but he had never spoken one word in all her life to her, except in curt reprimand

or in cruel irony. All the old memories had died out; and no wanderers of her father's race had ever come into

the peaceful and pastoral district of the northern seaboard, where they could have gained no footing, and

The sight of the little band of coins, which had danced so often amongst her curls under the moonlit leaves in

the Li�bana to the leaping and tuneful measures of the viol, moved her to a wistful longing for the smile and

"I would never part with them for myself," she thought; "I would die of hunger firstwere it only myself."

And still she was resolved to part with them; to sell her single little treasurethe sole gift of the only

creature that had ever loved her, even in the very first hour that she had recovered it.

The sequins were worth no more than any baby's woven crown of faded daisies; but to her, as to the old

"I go to Rioz with the two mules, at daybreak tomorrow, with flour for Flamma. It is a town, larger than the

"Do? What should you do?" he answered her, with inattention and almost impatience; for his heart was sore

She looked at him very wistfully, and her mouth parted a little as though to speak; but his repulse chilled the

ON the morrow, before the sun was up, she set out on her way, with the two mules, to Rioz. It was a town

Both the mules were heavily laden with as many sacks as they could carry: she could ride on neither; she

The road was not a familiar one to her; she had only gone thither some twice or thrice, and she did not find

the way long, being full of her own meditations and hopes, and taking pleasure in the gleam of new waters,

and the sight of fresh fields, and the green simple loveliness of a pastoral country in late summer.

She met few people; a marketwoman or two on their asses, a walking pedlar, a shepherd, or a

The day was young, and none but the countrypeople were astir. The quiet roads were dim with mists; and

But as the morning advanced the mists lifted, the sun grew powerful; the roads were straight and without

It was midday when she entered Rioz; a town standing in a dell, surrounded with apple orchards and fields of

corn and colza, with a quaint old square tower of the thirteenth century rising amongst its roofs, and round

She led her fatigued and thirsty beasts through the nearest gateway, where a soldier sat smoking, and a girl in

a blue petticoat and a scarlet bodice talked to him, resting her hands on her hips, and her brass pails on the

She left the sacks of flour at their destination, which was a great bakehouse in the centre of the town; stalled

the mules herself in a shed adjoining the little crazy wineshop where Flamma had bidden her bait them, and

The wineshop had for sign a white pigeon; it was tumbledown, dusky, halfcovered with vines that grew

loose and entwined each other at their own fancy; it had a little court in which grew a great walnuttree; there

was a bench under the tree; and the shelter of its boughs was cool and very welcome in the full noon heat.

The old woman who kept the place, wrinkled, shrivelled, and cheery, bade her rest there, and she would bring

But FolleFarine, with one wistful glance at the shadowing branches, refused, and asked only the way to the

The woman of the tavern looked at her sharply, and said, as the marketwoman had said, "What does the like

"I want to know the way to it. If you do not tell it, another will," she answered, as she moved out of the little

The old woman called after her that it was out by the west gate, over the hill through the fields for more than

two leagues: if she followed the wind of the water westward, she could not go amiss.

"What is this baggage wanting to do with Sartorian?" she muttered, watching the form of the girl as it passed

"Some evil, no doubt," answered her assistant, a stalwart wench, who was skinning a rabbit in the yard. "You

know, she sells bags of wind to founder the ships, they say, and the wicked herb, bon plaisir, and the philtres

Her old mistress, going within to toss a fritter for one of the mendicant friars, chuckled grimly to herself.

"No one would ask the road there for any good; that is sure. No doubt she has heard that Sartorian is a choice

In a little satchel she carried some halfscore of oilsketches that Arsl�n had given her, rich, graceful,

shadowy thingsgirl's faces, coils of foilage, river rushes in the moonlight, a purple passionflower

blooming on a grey ruin; a child, goldenheaded and barelimbed, wading in brown waters;things that had

caught his sight and fancy, and had been transcribed, and then tossed aside, with the lavish carelessness of

She asked one or two peasants, whom she met, her way; they stared, and grumbled, and pointed to some

distant towers rising out of the wooden slopes,those they said were the towers of the dwelling of Sartorian.

One henhuckster, leading his ass to market with a load of live poultry, looked over his shoulder after her,

"There goes a handsome piece of porcelain for the old man to lock in his velvetlined cupboards."

The words came to the ear of FolleFarine: when wondered what they could mean; but she would not turn

Her feet were weary, like her mules'; the sun scorched her; she felt feeble, and longed to lie down and sleep;

but she toiled on up the sharp ascent that rose in cliffs of limestone above the valley where the river ran.

At last she came to gates that were like those of the cathedral, all brazen, blazoned, and full of scrolls and

shields. She pushed one openthere was no one there to say her nay, and boldly entered the domain which

At first it seemed to be only like the woods at home; the trees were green, the grass was long, the birds sang,

the rabbits darted. But byandby she went farther; she grew bewildered; she was in a world strange to her.

Trees she had never seen rose like the pillars of temples; gorgeous flowers, she had never dreamed of, played

in the sun; vast columns of water sprang aloft from the mouths of golden dragons or the silver breasts of

dolphins; nude women, wondrous and white and still, stood here and there amidst the leafy darkness. She

A magnoliatree was above her; she stooped her face to one of its great fragrant creamy cups and kissed it

softly. A statue of Clytie was beside her; she looked timidly up at the musing face, and touched it, wondering

A fountain flung up its spray beside her; she leaned and caught it, thinking it so much silver, and gazed at it

She walked on like one enchanted, silently, thinking that she had strayed into some sorcerer's kingdom: she

was not afraid, but glad. She walked on for a long while, always amongst these mazes of leaves, these

splendours of blossom, these cloudreaching waters, these marble forms so motionless and thoughtful.

At last she came on the edge of a great pool, fringed with the bullrush and the lotus, and the white

pampasgrass, and the flamelike flowering reed, of the East and of the West. All around, the pool was

sheltered with dark woods of cedar and thickets of the seapine. Beyond them stood afar off a great pile that

seemed to her to blaze like gold and silver in the sun. She approached it through a maze of roses, and

ascended a flight of marble steps on to a terrace. A doorway was open near. She entered it.

She was intent on the object of her errand, and she had no touch of fear in her whole temper.

Hall after hall, room after room, opened to her amazed vision; an endless spectacle of marvellous colour

stretched before her eyes: the wonders that are gathered together by the world's luxury were for the first time

On the velvet of the floors her steps trod as firmly and as freely as on the moss of the orchard at Ypr�s. Her

eyes glanced as gravely and as fearlessly over the frescoed walls, the gilded woods, the jewelled cups, the

It was not in the daughter of Taric to be daunted by the dazzle of mere wealth. She walked through the

splendid and lonely rooms wondering, indeed, and eager to see more; but there was no spell here such as the

gardens had flung over her. To the creature free born in the Li�bana no life beneath a roof could seem

At the end of the fourth chamber, which she traversed, she paused before a great picture in a heavy golden

frame; it was the seizure of Persephone. She knew the story, for Arsl�n had told her of it.

She saw for the first time how the pictures that men called great were installed in princely splendour: this was

A little lamp, burning perfume with a silvery smoke, stood before it: she recalled the words of the woman in

the marketplace; in her ignorance, she thought the picture was worshipped as a divinity; as the people

worshipped the great picture of the Virgin that they burned incense before in the cathedral.

She looked, with something of gloomy contempt in her eyes, at the painting which was mantled in massive

gold, with purple draperies opening to display it; for it was the chief masterpiece upon those walls.

"And he cares for that!" she thought, with a sigh half of wonder, half of sorrow.

She did not reason on it, but it seemed to her that his works were greater hanging on their bare walls where

She turned and saw a small and feeble man, with keen and humorous eyes, and an elfin face, delicate in its

She stood silent, regarding him; herself a strange figure in that lordly place, with her brown limbs, her bare

"Even I," he said with a smile. "I regret that I please you no more. May I ask to what I am indebted for your

He spoke with goodhumoured irony, taking snuff whilst he looked at the lustrous beauty of this barefooted

gypsy, as he thought her, whom he had found thus astray in his magnificent chambers.

"How did you come in hither? You care for pictures, perhaps, since you seem to feed on them like some

"I know of finer than yours," she answered him coldly, chilled by the amused and malicious ridicule of his

tone into a sullen repose. "I did not come to see anything you have. I came to sell you these: they say in

He took them, seeing at once that they were of no sort of value; such things as he could buy for a few coins in

"They are mine. If you want such things, as they say you do, take them and give me their valuethat is all."

"Yes. I came three leagues today. I heard a woman from near Rioz say that you liked such things. Take

"That is none of your business. If you think that I stole them, say so. If you want them, buy them. One or the

"You can be very fierce," he said to her. "Be gentle a little, and tell me whence you came, and what story you

"I have not come here to speak of myself," she said obstinately. "Will you take the coins, or leave them?"

"I will take them," he said; and he went to a cabinet in another room and brought out with him several shining

Her eyes fastened on the money entranced; she touched it with a light, halffearful touch, and then drew back

"Quite sure," he said with a smile. He offered her in them some thirty times their value.

She paused a moment, incredulous of her own good fortune, then darted on them as a swallow at a gnat, and

took them and put them to her lips, and laughed a sweet glad laugh of triumph, and slid them in her bosom.

"I am grateful," she said simply; but the radiance in her eyes, the laughter on her mouth, the quivering

excitement in all her face and form, said the same thing for her far better than her words.

"That is my affair," she answered him, all her pride rising in arms. "What concerned you was their value."

Fairly rebuked. But say is this all you came for? Wherever you came from, is this all that brought you here?"

She looked awhile in his eyes steadily, then she brought the sketches from their hidingplace. She placed

He took them to the light and scanned them slowly and critically; he knew all the mysteries and intricacies of

art, and he recognised in these slight things the hand and the colour of a master. He did not say so, but held

She had drawn near him, her face flushed with intense expectation, her longing eyes dilated, her scarlet lips

quivering with eagerness. That he was a stranger and a noble was nothing to her: she knew he had wealth; she

"See here!" she said, swiftly, the music of her voice rising and falling in breathless, eloquent intonation.

"Those things are to the great works of his hand as a broken leaf beside your gardens yonder. He touches a

thing and it is beauty. He takes a reed, a stone, a breadth of sand, a woman's face, and under his hand it grows

glorious and gracious. He dreams things that are strange and sublime; he has talked with the gods, and he had

seen the worlds beyond the sun. All the day he works for his bread, and in the grey night he wanders where

none can follow him; and he brings back marvels and mysteries, and beautiful, terrible stories that are like the

sound of the sea. Yet he is poor, and no man sees the things of his hand; and he is sick of his life, because the

days go by and bring no message to him, and men will have nothing of him; and he has hunger of body and

hunger of mind. For me, if I could do what he does, I would not care though no man ever looked on it. But to

him it is bitter that it is only seen by the newt, and the beetle, and the nighthawk. It wears his soul away,

because he is denied of men. 'If I had gold, if I had gold!' he says, always, when he thinks that none can hear

Her voice trembled, and was still for a second; she struggled with herself and kept it clear and strong.

"He must not know: he would kill himself if he knew; he would sooner die than tell any man. But, look you,

you drape your pictures here with gold and with purple, you place them high in the light; you make idols of

them, and burn incense before them. That is what he wants for his: they are the life of his life. If they could

be honoured, he would not care, though you should slay him tomorrow. Go to him, and make you idols of

his; they are worthier gods than ours. And what his heart is sick for is to have them seen by men. Were I he, I

She shivered as she spoke; in her earnestness and eagerness, she laid her hand on the stranger arm, and held it

there; she prayed, with more passion than she would have cast into any prayer to save her own life.

He understood the meaning that ran beneath the unconscious extravagance of her faithful and impassioned

He is called Arsl�n; he lives in the granarytower, by the river, between the town and Ypr�s. He comes from

the north, far awayvery, very far, where the seas are all ice and the sun shines at midnight. Will you make

the things that he does to be known to the people? You have gold; and gold, he says, is the compeller of

The name was not utterly unknown to him; he had seen works signed with it at Paris and at Romestrange

things of a singular power, of an union of cynicism and idealism, which was too sensual for one half the

"I live at the watermill of Ypr�s. They say that Reine Flamma was my mother. I do not know: it does not

"What does it matter? Any name is only a little puff of breathless than the dust, anyhow."

"A Communista Socialist. You know what that is. You would like to level my house to the ashes, I fancy,

"No," she said simply, with a taint of scorn, "I do not care to do that. If I had cared to burn anything it would

have been the Flandrin's village. It is odd that you should live in a palace and he should want for bread; but

"You are no respecter of persons, that is certain. Come in another chamber and take some wine, and break

"The thought is good of you," she said, more gently than she had before spoken. "But I never took a crust out

"But when a man, old and ugly, asks a woman that is young and beautiful, on which side lies the charity

"I do not favour fine phrases," she answered curtly, returning his look with a steady indifference.

"You are hard to please in anything, it would seem. Well, come hither, a moment at least."

She hesitated a moment; then thinking to herself that to refuse would seem like fear, she followed him

She moved through all the magnificence of the place with fearless steps, and meditative glances, and a grave

measured easy grace, as tranquil and as unimpressed as though she walked through the tall ranks of the

It was all full of the colour, the brilliancy, the choice adornment, the unnumbered treasures, and the familiar

luxuries of a great noble's residence; but such things as these had no awe for her.

The mere splendours of wealth, the mere accumulation of luxury, could not impress her for an instant; she

passed through them indifferent and undaunted, thinking to her self, "However they may gild their roofs, the

Only, as she passed by some dream of a great poet cast in the visible shape of sculpture or of painting, did her

glance grow reverent and humid; only when she recognised amidst the marble forms, or the pictured stories,

some one of those dear gods in whom she had a faith as pure and true as ever stirred in the heart of an Ionian

child, did she falter and pause a little to gaze there with a tender homage in her eyes.

"Let me tempt you," he said to her when they reached the breakfastchamber. "Sit down with me and eat and

drink. No? Taste these sweetmeats at the least. To refuse to break bread with me is churlish."

"I never owed nay man a crust, and I will not begin now," she answered obstinately, indifferent to the blaze

of gold and silver before her, to the rare fruits and flowers, to the wine in their quaint flagons, to the

She was sharply hungered, and her throat was parched with the heat and the dust, and the sweet unwonted

odours of the wines and the fruits assailed all her sense; but he besought her in vain.

She poured herself out some water into a goblet of ruby glass, rimmed with a band of pearls, and drank it, and

set the cup down as indifferently as though she had drunk from the old wooden bowl chained amongst the ivy

"Your denial is very churlish," he said, after many a honeyed entreaty, which had met with no other answer

from her. "How shall you bind me to keep bond with you, and rescue your Northern Regner from his cave of

She looked at him from under the dusky cloud of her hair, with the golden threads gleaming on it like

"A word that needs compelling," she answered him curtly, "is broken by the heart before the lips give it. It is

"I have seen a great toadstool spring up all in one night, after rain, so big, and so white, and so smooth, and so

round,and I knew its birth was so quick, and its growth was so strong, because it was a false thing that

"Wellwhen men speak overquick and overfair, what is that but the toadstool that springs from their

"Suspicion? That is a thing that steals in the dark and is afraid. I am afraid of nothing."

He mused a moment whether he should offer her back her sequins as a gift; he thought not. He divined aright

that she had only sold them because she had innocently believed in the fulness of their value. He tried to

She was young; she had a beautiful face, and a form like an Atalanta. She wore a scarlet sash girt to her loins,

and seemed to care for colour and for grace. There was about her a dauntless and imperious freedom. She

could not be indifferent to all those powers which she besought with such passion for another.

He had various treasures shown to her,treasures of jewels, of gold and silver, of fine workmanship, of

She looked at them tranquilly, as though her eyes had rested on such things all her days.

"They are beautiful, no doubt," she said simply. "But I marvel that youbeing a mancare for such things

"Nay; I care to give them to beautiful women, when such come to me,as one has come today. Do me one

trifling grace; choose some one thing at least out of these to keep in remembrance of me."

"If I think your bread would soil my lips, is it likely I should think to touch your treasure with my hands and

He knew how to wait for a netted fruit to ripen under the rays of temptation: gold was a forcing heatslow,

She watched him with musing eyes that had a gleam of scorn in them, and yet a certain apprehension.

He looked at her surprised, and for the moment perplexed; then he laughedhis little low cynical laugh.

"I do not know. You look like itthat is all. He has made one sketch of me as I shall be when I am dead; and

the Red Mouse sits on my chest, and it is glad. You see that, by its glance. I never asked him what he meant

by it. Some evil, I think; and you look like it. You have the same triumph in your eye."

"He has painted you so? I must see that. But believe me, FolleFarine, I shall wish for my triumph before

"I must go," she said abruptly. "The mules wait. Remember him, and I will remember you."

"Wait, have you thought what a golden key for him will do for you when it unlocks you eagle's cage and

She did not understand; when she had come on this eager errand, no memory of her own fate had retarded or

"Ah, yes!" she said, with a little low, glad breath, and the blaze of a superb triumph in her eyes. "He has

painted me in a thousand ways. I shall live as the rose lives, on his canvasa thing of a day that he can make

The keen elfin eyes of the old man sparkled with a malign mirth; he had found what he wantedas he

"And so, if this dust of oblivion blots out his canvas for ever from the world's sight, your beauty will be

blotted with it? I see. Well, I can understand how eager you are to have your eagle fly free. The fame of the

"Fornarina? One who, like you, gave the day's life of a rose, and who got eternal fire for it,as you think to

She started a little, and a tremulous pain passed over the dauntless brilliance of her face, and stole its colour

"I?" she murmured. "Ah, what does it matter for me? If there be just a little placeanywherewherever my

life can live with his on the canvas, so that men say once now and then, in all the centuries, to each other,

'See, it is truehe thought her worthy of that, though she was less than a grain of dust under the hollow of

The old man was silent; watching her, the mockery had faded from his eyes; they were surprised and

contemplative. She stood with her head drooped, with her face pale, an infinite yearning and resignation stole

into the place of the exultant triumph which had blazed there like the pale light of morning a moment earlier.

She had lost all remembrance of time and place; the words died softly, as in a sigh of love, upon her lips.

"But, if you were sure that even thus much would be denied to you; if you were sure that, in casting your

eagle loose on the wind, you would lose him for ever in the heights of a heaven you would never enter

yourself; if you were sure that he would never give you one thought, one wish, one memory, but leave every

trace of your beauty to perish as fast as the damp could rot or the worm could gnaw it; if you were sure that

his immortality would be your annihilation, say, would you still bid me turn a gold key in the lock of his

She roused herself slowly from her reverie, and gazed at him with a smile he could not fathom; it was so far

She was thinking of the night when she had found a man dying, and had bought his life back for him, with

For the past was sacred to her, and the old wild faith to her was still a truth.

"What is that to you?" she asked, briefly. "If you turn the key, you will see. It was not of myself that I came

Before he had perceived what she was about to do, she had left his side, and had vanished through one of the

He sent his people to search for her on the terraces and lawns, but vainly; she was fleeter than they, and had

WHEN she had outrun her strength, for the moment, and was forced to slacken her speed, she paused to take

breath on the edge of the wooded lands. She looked neither to right nor left; on her backward flight the waters

had no song, the marble forms no charm, the wonderflowers no magic for her as she went; she had no ear

for the melodies of the birds, no sight for the paradise of the rosehung ways; she had only one thought

The cruelty of his words had stabbed her with each of their slow keen words as with a knife; the sickness of a

mortal terror had touched her for the instant, as she had remembered that it might be her fate to be not even so

But with the first breath of the outer air the feebleness passed. The strength of the passion that possessed her

"What will it matter how or when the gods take my life, so only they keep their faith and give me his?" she

And her step was firm and free, and her glance cloudless, and her heart content, as she went on her homeward

She was so young, she was so ignorant, she was still so astray in the human world about her, that she thought

"A little gold," he had said; and here she had ithonest, clean, worthy of his touch and usage.

Her heart leaped to the glad and bounding music of early youth, youth which does not reason, which only

believes, and which sees the golden haze of its own faiths, and thinks them the promise of the future, as

young children see the golden haze of their own hair and think it the shade of the angels' wings above their

When she at length reached the millhouse the sun had sunk; she had been sixteen hours on foot, taking

nothing all the while but a roll of rye bread that she had carried in her pouch, and a few watercresses that

Yet when she had housed the grain, and turned the tired animals into their own nook of meadow to graze and

rest for the night, she entered the house neither for repose nor food, but flew off again through the dusk of the

She had no remembrance of hunger, nor thirst, nor fatigue; she had only a buoyant sense of an ecstatic joy;

she felt as though she had wings, and clove the air with no more effort than the belated starling which flew by

"A little god," he had said; and in her bosom, wrapped in a green chestnut leaf, were there not the little,

broad, round, glittering pieces which in the world of men seemed to have power to gain all love, all honour,

"Phratos would have wished his gift to go so," she thought to herself, with a swift, penitent, remorseful

For a moment she paused and took them once more out of their hidingplace, and undid the green leaf that

enwrapped them, and kissed them and laughed, the hot tears falling down her cheeks, where she stood alone

in the fields amid the honeysmell of the clover in the grass, and the fruitfragrance of the orchards all about

"A little gold!a little gold!" she murmured, and she laughed aloud in her great joy, and blessed the gods

No sorcerer, she thought, ever had power wider than this wealth bestowed on her. She did not know; she had

no measurement. Flamma's eyes she had seen glisten over a tithe of such a sum as over the riches of an

She slipped them in her breast again and ran on past the reeds silvering in the rising moon, past the waters

quiet on a windless air, past the dark Christ who would not look,who had never looked, or she had loved

Breathless and noiseless she severed the reeds with her swift feet, and lightly as a swallow on the wing

He stood before the cartoon of the Barabbas, touching it here and there with his charcoal, adding those latest

thoughts, those aftergraces, with which the artist delights to caress his picture, with a hand as soft and as

lingering as the hand with which a mother caresses the yellow sunshine of her firstborn's curls.

His face as he stood was very pale, passionless, weary, with a sadness sardonic and full of scorn for himself

on his mouth, and in his eyes those dreams which went so farso farinto worlds whose glories his hand

"You must rot," he thought. "You will feed the rat and the mouse; the squirrel will come and gnaw you to line

his nest; and the beetle and the fly will take you for a spawningbed. You will serve no other endsince you

are mine. And yet I am so great a fool that I love you, and try to bring you closer and closer to the thing I see,

and which you are not, and never can be. For what man lives so happy as to see the Canaan of his

ideals,save as Moses saw it from afar off, only to raise his arms to it vainly, and die?"

There came a soft shiver of the air, as though it were severed by some eager bird.

She came and stood beside him, a flash like the sunrise on her face, a radiance in her eyes more lustrous than

any smile; her body tremulous and breathless from the impatient speed with which her footsteps had been

He turned and looked at her, ignorant of her meaning, astonished at her sudden presence there.

"Here is the gold!" she murmured, her voice rising swift and clear, and full of the music of triumph with

which her heart was thrilling. "'A little gold,' you said, you remember?'only a little.' And this is much.

"Gold?" he echoed again, shaken from his trance of thought, and comprehending nothing and remembering

"Yes! It is mine," she said, her voice broken in its tumult of ecstasy"it is mineall mine. It is no charity,

no gift to me. The chain was worth it, and I would only take what it was worth. A little gold, you said; and

now you can make the Barabbas live for ever upon canvas, and compel men to say that it is great."

As the impetuous, tremulous words broke from her, she drew the green leaf with the coins in it from her

bosom, and thrust it in to his hand, eager, exultant, laughing, weeping, all the silence and the control of her

The touch of the glittering pieces against his hands stung him to comprehension; his face flushed over all its

"Yes, mine entirely; mine indeed!" she answered, with a sweet, glad ring of victory in her rejoicing voice. "It

is true, quite true. They were the chains of sequins that Phratos gave me when I used to dance to his music in

the mountains; and I have sold them. 'A little gold,' you said; 'and the Barabbas can live for ever.' Why do

In the last words her voice lost all its proud exultation, and sank low, with a dull startled wonder in it.

His gesture of refusal she had not noticed. But the language his glance spoke was one plain to her. It terrified

In it there was disgust, anger, loathing, even horror;and yet there was in it also an unwonted softness,

"What do you think that I have done?" she murmured under her breath. "The gold is minemine honestly. I

have not stolen it, nor begged it. I got it as I say. Why will you not take it? Why do you look at me so?"

She grew white to the lips, all the impetuous, radiant tumult of her innocent rapture frozen into terror.

"I have done nothing wrong," she murmured with a piteous wistfulness and wonder"nothing wrong,

"It is impossible! Good God! Was I not low enough already? How dared you think a thing so vile of me?

He had no thought that he was cruel; he had no intent to terrify or hurt her; but the sting of this last and

lowest humiliation was so horrible to all the pride of his manhood, and so bitterly reminded him of his own

abject poverty; and with all this there was an emotion in him that he had difficulty to controlbeing touched

by her ignorance and by her gift as few things in his life had ever touched him.

She stood before him trembling, wondering, sorely afraid; all the light had died out of her face; she was very

"You will not take it?" she said at last, in a hushed, fearful voice, like that of one who speaks in the sight of

"Take it!" he echoed. "I could sooner kill a man out yonder and rob him. Can you not understand? Greater

shame could never come to me. You do not know what you would do. There may be beasts that fall as low,

no doubt, but they are curs too base for hanging. Have I frightened you? I did not mean to frighten you. You

mean well and nobly, no doubtno doubt. You do not know what you would do. Gifts of gold from man to

man are bitter, and sap the strength of the receiver; but from woman to man they areto the man shameful.

Her face burned duskily; she moved with a troubled confused effort to get away from his gaze.

"No," she said in her shut teeth. "I do not know what you mean. Flamma takes all the gold I make. Why not

"Flamma is your grandsireyour keeperyour master. He has a right to do as he chooses. He gives you

food and shelter, and in return he takes the gains of your labour. But I,what have I ever given you? I am a

stranger to you, and should have no claim on you, if I could be base enough to seek one. I am hideously poor.

I make no disguise with you,you know too well how I live. But can you not see?if I were mean enough

to take the worth of a crust from you, I should be no more worthy of the very name of man. It is for the man

She heard him in silence, her face still dark with the confused pain on it of one who has fallen or been struck

"I do not see," she muttered. "Whoever has, gives; what does it matter? The folly in me was its littleness: it

"Little or great,the riches of empires, or a beggar's dole,there could be no difference in the infamy to

me. Have I seemed to you a creature so vile or weak that you could have a title to put such shame upon me?"

Out of the bitter passion of his soul, words more cruel than he had consciousness of rose to his lips and

She said nothing; her teeth clenched, her face changed as it had used to do when Flamma had beaten her.

She said nothing, but turned away; and with one twist of her hand she flung the pieces through the open

"What madness? What have you done? You throw your gold away to the riverswamp for me, when I have

not a shred worth a copperpiece to pay you back in their stead! I did not mean to hurt you; it was only the

truth,you could not have shamed me more. You bring on me an indignity that I can neither requite nor

revenge. You have no right to load me with debts that I cannot paywith gifts that I would die sooner than

receive. But, then, how should you know?how should you know? If I wounded you with sharp words, I did

There was a softness that was almost tenderness in his voice as he spoke the last phrases in his selfreproach;

but her face did not change, her eyes did not lose their startled horror; she put her hand to her throat as though

"You cannot do wrongto me," she muttered, true, even in such a moment, to the absolute adoration which

Then, ere he could stay her, she turned, without another word, and fled out from his presence into the dusk of

The rushes in the moonlight sighed where they grew by the waterside above the sands where the gold had

A thing more precious than gold was dead; and only the reeds mourned for it. A thing of the river as they

were, born like them from the dust, from the flood, from the wind and the foam; a thing that a god might

THE day broke tranquilly. There was a rosy light over all the earth. In the cornlands a few belated sheaves

stood alone in the reapingground, while children sought stray ears that might still be left amongst the wild

flowers and the stubble. The smell of millions of ripening autumn fruits filled the air from the orchards. The

women going to their labour in their fields, gave each other a quiet good day; whilst their infants pulled down

the blackberry branches in the lanes or bowled the early apples down the roads. Great clusters of black grapes

were already mellowed on the vines that clambered over cabin roof and farmhouse chimney. The chimes of

the earliest bells sounded softly from many a little steeple bosomed in the rolling woods.

An old man going to his work passed by a girl lying asleep in a hollow of the ground, beneath a great tree of

berries. She was lying with her face turned upward; her arms above her head; her eyelids were wet; her

mouth smiled a dreamy tenderness; her lips murmured a little inaudibly; her bosom heaved with fast uneven

In the elder thicket little chaffinches were singing, and a misselthrush gave late in the year a song of the

April weather. The east was radiant with the promise of a fair day, in which summer and autumn should be

wedded with gorgeous pomp of colour, and joyous chorus of the birds. The old man roughly thrust against

"Get up!" he muttered, "Is it for the like of you to lie and sleep at daydawn? Get up, or your breath will

poison the grasses that the cattle feed on, and they will die of an elfshot, surely."

She raised her head from where it rested on her outstretched arms, and looked him in the eyes and smiled

unconsciously; then glanced around and rose and dragged her steps away, in the passive mechanical

There was a shiver in her limbs; a hunted terror in her eyes; she had wandered sleepless all night long.

"Beast," muttered the old man, trudging on with a backward glance at her. "You have been at a witches'

sabbath, I dare be bound. We shall have fine sickness in the styes and byres. I wonder would a silver bullet

hurt you, as the fables say? If I were sure it would, I would not mind having my old silver flagon melted

She went on through the long wet rank grass, not hearing his threats against her. She drew her steps slowly

and lifelessly through the heavy dews; her hand was sunk; her lips moved audibly, and murmured as she

"May be some one has shot her this very daydawn," thought the peasant, shouldering his axe as he went

down into the little wood to cut ashsticks for the market. "She looks half dead already; and they say the

The old man guessed aright. She had received her mortal wound; though it was one bloodless and tearless,

The sense of some great guilt was on her, as she stole through the rosy warmth of the early morning.

She had thought to take him liberty, honour, strength, and dominion among his fellowsand he had told her,

"What right have you to burden me with debt unasked?" he had cried out against her in the bitterness of his

She had wandered on and on, aimlessly, not knowing what she did all the night through, hearing no other

He had told her she was in act so criminal, and yet she knew herself in intent so blameless; she felt like those

of whom she had heard in the old Hellenic stories, who had been doomed by fate, guiltless themselves, to

work some direful guilt, which had to be, out to its bitter end, the innocent yet the accursed instrument of

On and on, through the moonlight she had fled, when she had left the watertower that night; down the slope

of the fields, through the late blossoms of the poppies, and the feathery haze of the ripened grasses tossed in

waves from right to left; the long shadows of the clouds upon the earth, chasing her like the spectre hosts of

She had dropped at last like a dying thing, broken and breathless on the ground.

There she crouched, and hid her face upon her hands; the scorch of an intolerable shame burned on it.

She did not know what ailed her; what consumed her with abhorrence of herself. She longed for the earth to

yawn and cover her; for the lilies asleep in the pool, to unclose and take her amidst them. Every shiver of a

leaf, under a nightbird's passage, every motion of the water, as the willow branches swept it, made her start

Not a breath of wind was stirring, not a sound disturbed the serenity of the early night; she heard no voice but

the plaintive cry of the cushat. She saw "no snakes but the keen stars," which looked on her cold and

Yet she was afraid; afraid with a trembling horror of herself; she who had once never known one pulse of

The thrill of a newborn, inexplicable, cruel consciousness stole like fire through her. She knew now that she

loved him with that strange mystery of human love which had been for ever to her until now a thing apart

from her, denied to her, half scorned, half yearned for; viewed from afar with derision, yet with desire, as a

All the light died; the moon rose; the while lilies shared in its pallid rays; the night birds went by on the wind.

She never stirred; the passionate warmth of her frame changed to a deadly cold; her face was buried in her

hands; ever and again she shivered, and glanced round, as the sound of a hare's step or the rustle of a bough

The calm nightworld around her, the silvery seas of reeds, the dusky woods, the moon in its ring of golden

vapour, the flickering foilage, the gleam of the glowworm in the dew, all the familiar things amidst which her

feet had wandered for twelve summers in the daily measure of those beaten tracks; all these seemed suddenly

She longed for the day to dawn again, though day was but an hour dead. And yet she felt that at the first break

The bitterness, the cruelty, the passion of his reproaches, stung with their poison, as, in her vision of the reed,

she had seen the barbed tongues of a thousand snakes striking through and through the frail, despised,

She had thought that as the god to the reed, so might he to her say hereafter, "You are the lowliest and least of

all the chanceborn things of the sands and the air, and yet through you has an immortal music arisen,"and

Towards dawn, where she had sunk down in the moss, and in the thickets of elder and thornwhere she had

made her bed in her childhood many a summer night, when she had been turned out from the doors of the

millhouse; there for a little while a fitful exhausted sleep came to her; the intense exhaustion of bodily

fatigue overcoming and drugging to slumber the fever and the wakefulness of the mind. The thrush came out

of the thorn, while it was still quite dark, and the morning stars throbbed in the skies, and sang his daysong

In her sleep she smiled. For Oneiros was merciful; and she dreamed that she slept folded close in the arms of

Then the old peasant trudging to his labour in the obscurity of the early day saw her, and struck at her with

his foot and woke her roughly, and muttered, "Get thee up; is it such beggars as thee that should be abed

She opened her eyes, and smiled on him unconsciously, as she had smiled in her brief oblivion. The passion

of her dreams was still about her; her mouth burned, her limbs trembled; the air seemed to her filled with

Then she remembered; and shuddered; and arose, knowing the sweet, mad dream, which had cheated her, a

She did not heed the old man's words, she did not feel his hurt; yet she obeyed him, and left the place, and

dragged herself feebly towards Ypr�s by the sheer unconscious working of that instinct born of habit which

takes the ox or the ass back undriven through the old accustomed ways to stand beside their ploughshare or

Where the stream ran by the old millsteps the river reeds were blowing in the wind, with sunrays playing

in their midst, and the silver wings of the swallows brushing them with a swift caress.

"I thought to be the reed chosen by the gods!" she said bitterly in her heart, "but am I not worthyeven to

For she would have asked of fate no nobler thing than thisto be cut down as the reed by the reaper, if so be

that through her the world might be brought to hearken to the music of the lips that she loved.

She drew her aching weary limbs feebly through the leafy ways of the old millgarden. The first leaves of

autumn fluttered down upon her head; the last scarlet of the roses flashed in her path as she went; the

winelike odours of the fruits were all about her on the air. It was then fully day. The sun was up; the bells

At the millhouse, and in the millyard, where usually everyone had arisen and were hard at labour whist the

dawn was dark, everything was still. There was no sign of work. The light blazed on the panes of the

casements under the eaves, but its summons failed to arouse the sleepers under the roof.

The bees hummed around their houses of straw; the pigeons flew to and fro between the timbers of the walls

and the boughs of the fruit trees. The mule leaned his head over the bar of the gate, and watched with wistful

eyes. The cow in her shed lowed, impatient for some human hands to unbar her door, and lead her forth to her

green clovered pasture. A dumb boy, who aided in the working of the mill, sat astride of a log of timber,

kicking his feet amongst the long grasses, and blowing thistles down above his head upon the breeze.

The silence and the inactivity startled her into a sense of them, as no noise or movement, curses of blows,

could have done. She looked around stupidly; the windowshutters of the housewindows were closed, as

The lad left off blowing the thistle feathers on the wind, and grinned, and answered on his hands:

And he grinned again, and laughed, as far as his uncouth and guttural noises could be said to approach the

She stared at him blankly for awhile, bewildered and shaken from the stupor of her own misery. She had

He had seemed a man formed to live on and on and on unchanging for generations; he was so hard, so

unyielding, so hale, so silent, so callous to all pain; it had ever seemed to herand to the country

round,that death itself would never venture to come to wrestle with him. She stood amongst the red and the

purple and the russet gold of the latest summer flowers in the millgarden, where he had scourged her as a

little child for daring to pause and cool her burning face in the sweetness of the white lilies. Could that

All was quite still. Nothing stirred, except the silvery gnats of the morning, and the bees, and the birds in the

leaves. There seemed a strange silence everywhere, and the great wheels stood still in the millwater; never

within the memory of any in that countryside had those wheels failed to turn at sunrise, unless locked by a

She hastened her steps, and went within. The clock ticked, the lean cat mewed; other sound there was none.

She left her wooden shoes at the bottom step, and stole up the steep stairs. The woman Pitchou peered with a

"Where hast been all night?" she whispered in her grating voice; "thy grandsire lies adying."

"Aye," muttered the old peasant. "He had a stroke yester'night, as he came from the corn fair. They brought

"Hush!" muttered the girl fiercely; and she dropt down on the topmost step, and rested her head on her hands.

She had nothing to grieve for; and yet there was that in the coarse congratulations which jarred on her and

She thought on Manon Dax dead in the snow; she thought of the songbirds dead in the traps; she thought of

the poor comingcomingcomingthrough so many winters to beg bread, and going away with empty

hands and burdened hearts, cursing God. Was this deathbed all their vengeance? It was poor justice, and

"Will he leave her the gold or no?" she questioned in herself; musing whether or no it were better to be civil

to the one who might inherit all his wealth, or might be cast adrift upon the worldwho could say which?

After awhile FolleFarine rose silently and brushed her aside, and went into the room.

It was a poor chamber; with a bed of straw and a rough bench or two, and a wooden cross with a picture of

the Ascension hung above it. The square window was open, a knot of golden pear leaves nodded to and fro; a

On the bed Claudis Flamma lay; dead already, except for the twitching of his mouth, and the restless

wanderings of his eyes. Yet not so lost to life but that he knew her at a glance; and, as she entered, glared

upon her, and clenched his numbed hands upon the straw, and with a horrible effort in his almost lifeless

limbs, raised the right arm, that alone had any strength or warmth left in it, and pointed at her with a shriek:

"She was a sainta saint: God took her. So I said:and was proud. While all the while man begot on her

Then with a ghastly rattle in his throat, he quivered, and lay paralysed again; only the eyes were alive, and

It was the first time that she had ever said the word. Her voice lingered on the word, as though loth to leave

He lay and looked at her, motionless, impatient, lifeless; save only for the bleak and bloodshot stare of the

"Try and speak to me of my motheronceonce," she murmured, with a pathetic longing in her voice.

A shudder shook his frozen limbs. He made no answer, he only glared on her with a terrible stare that might

Old Pitchou stretched her head from the corner, as a hooded snake from its hole.

"Ask where the money is hid," she hissed in a shrill whisper. "Askaskwhile he can yet understand."

"Tell me of my mother;tell me, tell me," she muttered. Since a human love had been born in her heart, she

had thought often of that mother whose eyes had never looked on her, and whose arms had never held her.

His face changed, but he did not speak; he gasped for breath, and lay silent; his eyes troubled and confused; it

might be that in that moment remorse was with him, and there arose the vain regrets of cruel years.

It might be that dying thus, he knew that from his hearth, as from hell, mother and child had both been driven

A little bell rang softly in the orchard below the casement; the clear voice of a young boy singing a canticle

crossed the voice of the linnet; there was a gleam of silver in the sun. The Church bore its Host to the dying

She went out without resistance; she was oppressed and stupefied; she went to the stairs, and there sat down

The door of the chamber was a little open, and she could hear the murmurs of the priest's words, and smell

"One crust in loveto the poorin the deadly winters, had been better worth than all this oil and prayer,"

she thought. And she could see nothing but the old famished face of Manon Dax in the snow and the

The offices of the Church ceased; there reigned an intense stillness; a stillness as of cold.

He had sprung half erect, and with his arms outstretched, gazed at the gladness and the brightness of the day.

With one last supreme effort, he raised the crucifix which the priests had laid upon his bare anointed breast,

and held it aloft, and shook it, and spat on it, and cast it forth from him broken on the ground.

Even Thou art a lie!" he criedit was the cry of the soul leaving the body,with the next moment he fell

In that one cry his heat had spoken; the cold, hard heart that yet had shut one great love and one great faith in

Since who could render him back on earth, or in the grave, that pure white soul he had believed in?

She went away from the house and down the stairs, and out into the ruddy noon. She took her way by instinct

to the orchard, and there sat down upon a mossgrown stone within the shadow of the leaves.

From where she sat she could see the lattice window, and the gabled end of the chamber, where the linnet

sang, and the yellow fruit of the peartree swung. All about was the drowsy hot weather of the fruit harvest;

Never, in all the years that they had dwelt together beneath one roof, had any good word or fair glance been

given her; he had nourished her on bitterness, and for his wage paid her a curse. Yet her heart was sore for

All things seemed clear to her, now that a human love had reached her; and this man also, having loved

She forgot his brutality, his avarice, his hatred; she remembered only that he had loved, and I his love been

fooled, and so had lost his faith in God and man, and had thus staggered wretchedly down the darkness of his

life, hating himself and every other, and hurting every other human thing that touched him, and crying ever in

Whether any soul of his lived again, or whether body and mind both died for ever, what would it benefit all

those whom he had slain?the little fair birds, poisoned in their song; the little sickly children, starved in the

long winters; the miserable women, hunted to their grave for some small debt of fuel or bread; the wretched

It had been woe for him that his love had wronged him, and turned the hard excellence of his life to stone: but

none the less had it been woe to them to fall and perish, because his hand would never spare, his heart would

Her heart was sick with the cold, bitter, and inexorable law, which had let this man drag out his seventy

years, cursing and being cursed; and lose all things for a dream of God; and then at the last, upon his

"It is so cruel! It is so cruel!" she muttered, where she sat with dry eyes in the shade of the leaves, looking at

For there is nothing so cruel in life as a Faith;the Faith, whatever its name may be, that draws a man on all

his years through on one narrow path, by one tremulous light, and then at the last, with a laughdrowns him.

THE summer day went by. No one sought her. She did not leave the precincts of the still millgardens; a sort

of secresy and stillness seemed to bind her footsteps there, and she dreaded to venture forth, lest she should

The notary had put seals upon all the cupboards and desks. Two hired watchers sat in the little darkened room

above. Some tapers burned beside his bed. The great clock ticked heavily. All the house was closed. Without

burned the great roses of the late summer, and the scorch of a cloudless sun. The wheels of the mill stood

still. People came and went; many women amongst them. The death of the miller of Ypr�s was a shock to all

his countryside. There was scarce a face that did not lighten, as the peasants going to their labour, met one

No woman came across the meadows with a little candle, and kneeled down by his body, and wept and

blessed the stiff and withered hands for the good that they had wrought, and for the gifts that they had given.

The hot dayhours stole slowly by; all was noiseless there where she sat, lost in the stupefied pain of her

thoughts,: in the deep shadow of the leaves, where the first breath of the Autumn had gilded them and varied

No one saw her; no one remembered her, no one came to her. She was left in peace, such peace as is the lot of

those for whose sigh no human ear is open, for whose need no human hand is stretched.

Once indeed, at noonday, the old servingwoman sought her, and forced on her some simple meal of crusts

"For who can tell?" the shrewd old Norman crone thought to herself, "who can tell? She may get all the

treasure: who knows? And if so, it will be best to have been a little good to her this day, and to seem as if one

For Pitchou, like the world at large, would pardon offences, if for pardon she saw a sure profit in gold.

"Whom will he have left all the wealth to, think you," the old peasant muttered, with a cunning glitter in her

sunken eyes, standing by her at noon, in the solitude, where the orchards touched the millstream.

"The wealth, whose wealth?" FolleFarine echoed the word stupidly. She had had no thought of the hoarded

savings of that long life of theft and of oppression. She had had no remembrance of any possible inheritance

which might accrue to her by this sudden death. She had been too long his goaded and galled slave to be able

"Aye, his wealth," answered the woman, standing against the water with her wooden shoes deep in

dockleaves and grass, gazing, with a curious eager grasping greed in her eyes, at the creature whom she

always done her best to thwart, to hurt, to starve, and to slander. "Aye, his wealth. You, who look so sharp

after your bits of heathen coins, cannot for sure pretend to forget the value he must have laid by, living as he

lived all the days from his youth upward. There must be a rare mass of gold hid away somewhere or

anotherthe notary knows, I supposeit is all in the place, that I am sure. He was too wise ever to trust

money far from home; he knew well it was a gadabout, that once you part with never comes back to you. It

must be all in the secret places; in the thatch, under the hearthstone, in the rafters, under the bricks. And,

maybe, there will be quite a fortune. He made so much, and he lived so near. Where think you it will go?"

"It should go to the poor. It belongs to them. It was all coined out of their hearts and their bodies."

She muttered the word dreamily; and raised her aching eyelids, and stared in stupefaction at the old, haggard,

"Pshaw! You cannot cheat me that way," said the woman, moving away through the orchardbranches,

muttering to herself. "As if a thing of hell like you ever served like a slave all these years, on any other hope,

than the hope of the gold! Well,as for me, I never pretend to lie in that fashion. If it had not been for the

hope of a share in the gold, I would never have eaten for seventeen years the old wretch's mouldy crusts and

She hobbled, grumbling on her way back to the house, through the russet shadows and the glowing gold of

FolleFarine sat by the water, musing on the future which had opened to her with the woman's words of

Before another day had sped, it was possible,so even said one who hated her, and begrudged her every bit

and drop that she had taken at the miser's boardpossible that she would enter into the heritage of all that

One night earlier, paradise itself would have seemed to open before her with such a hope; for she would have

hastened to the feet of Arsl�n, and there poured all treasure that chance might have given her, and would have

cried out of the fulness of her heart, "Take, enjoy, be free do as you will. So that you make the world of men

own your greatness, I will live as a beggar all the years of my life, and think myself richer than kings!"

But now, what use would it be, though she were called to an empire? She would not dare to say to him, as a

day earlier she would have said with her first breath, "All that is mine, is thine."

She would not even dare to give him all and creep away unseen, unthanked, unhonoured into obscurity and

Yet as she sat there lonely amongst the grasses, with the great millwheels at rest in the water and the

swallows skimming the surface, that was freed from the churn and the foam of the wheels as though the day

of Flamma's death had been a saint's day, the fancy which had been set so suddenly before her, dazzled her,

and her aching brain and her sick despair, could not choose but play with it despite themselves.

If the fortune of Flamma came to her, it might be pos sible, she thought, to spend it so as to release him

from his bondage, without knowledge of his own; so to fashion with it a golden temple and a golden throne

for the works of his hand, that the world, which as they all said worshipped gold, should be forced to gaze in

And yet he had said greater shame there could come to no man, than to rise by the aid of a woman. The apple

of life, however sweet and fair in its colour and savour, would be as poison in his mouth if her hand held it.

That she knew, and in the humility of her great and reverent love, she submitted without question to its

At night, she went within to break her fast, and try to rest a little. The old peasant woman served her silently,

and for the first time willingly. "Who can say?" the Norman thought to herself, "Who can say? She may yet

"If only I could know who gets the gold?" she muttered. Her sole thought was the money; the money that the

notary held under his lock and seal. She wished now that she had dealt better with the girl sometimes; it

With earliest dawn FolleFarine fled again to the refuge of the wood. She shunned, with the terror of a

hunted doe, the sight of people coming and going, the priests and the gossips, the sights and the sounds, and

Beyond the walls of the foilage, she saw the shrouded window, the flash of the crucifix, the throngs of the

mourners, the glisten of the white robes. She heard the deep sonorous swelling of the chants; she saw the little

precession come out from the doorway and cross the old wooden bridge, and go slowly through the sunlight

of the meadows. Many of the people followed, singing, and bearing tapers; for he who was dead had stood

well with the Church, and from such there still issues for the living a fair savour.

No one came to her. What had they to do with her? a creature unbaptised, and an outcast?

She watched the little line fade away, over the green and golden glory of the fields. She did not think of

herselfsince Arsl�n had looked at her, in his merciless scorn, she had had neither past nor future.

It did not even occur to her, that her home would be in this place no longer; it was as natural to her, as its

burrow to the cony, its hole to the fox. It did not occur to her, that the death of this her tyrant could not but

She waited in the woods all day; it was so strange a sense to her to be free of the bitter bondage that had lain

on her life so long; she could not at once arise and understand the meaning of her freedom; she was like a

captive soldier, who had dragged the cannonball so long, that when it is loosened from his limb, the limb

She was thankful, too, for the tortured beasts, and the hunted birds; she fed them, and looked in their gentle

eyes, and told them that they were free. But in her own heart one vain wish only achedshe thought

The people returned, and then after awhile all went forth again; they and their priests with them. The place

was left alone. The old solitude reigned; the sound of the wooddove only filled the quiet.

The day grew on; in the orchards it was already twilight, whilst on the waters and in the open lands farther

away the sun was bright. There was a wicket close by under the boughs: a bridlepath ran by, mossgrown,

From the gleam of the twisted fruit trees a low flutelike noise came to her ear in the shadow of the solitude.

"FolleFarine,I go on your errand. If you repent there is time yet to stay me. Saydo you bid me still set

She, startled, looked up into the roofing of the thick foilage; she saw shining on her with a quiet smile the

eyes which she had likened to the eyes of the Red Mouse. They scanned her gravely and curiously: they

She was silent; the blood of an intolerable shame burned in her face; she had not thought that she had

"Ah! You fancied I did not know your design when you came so bravely to sell your Moorish dancinggear.

Oh, FolleFarine!female things, with eyes like yours, must never hope to keep a secret?"

She never answered; she had risen and stood rooted to the ground, her head hung down, her breast heaving,

the blood coming and going in her intolerable pain, as though she flushed and frozen under a surgeon's probe.

"What did he say to you?" pursued her questioner. "There should be but one language possible from a man of

She was strong to speak the truth inflexibly to the full; for its degradation to herself she knew was honour to

the absent. It showed him strong and cold and untempted, preferring famine and neglect and misery to any

The old man, leaning on the wooden bar of the gate amongst the leaves, looked at her long and thoughtfully.

"You are very loyal. I think your Northern god was only thus cold because your gift was such a little one,

She quivered from head to foot; but her courage would not yield, her faith would not be turned.

"Need a man hate the dust under his foot?" she muttered in her teeth; "Because it is a thing too lowly for him

The old man watched her with calm approving eyes, as he might have watched a statue of bronze. He was a

great man, a man of much wealth, of wide power, of boundless selfindulgence, of a keen serene wisdom,

which made his passions docile ministers to his pleasure, and never allowed them any mastery over himself.

He was studying the shape of her limbs, the hues of her skin, the lofty slender stature of her form, and the

cloud of her hair that was like the golden gleaming mane of a young desert mare.

"All these in Paris," he was thinking. "Just as she is, with just the same bare feet and limbs, the same

untrammelled gait, the same flash of scarlet round her loins, only to the linen tunic a hem of gold, and on the

breast a flame of opals. Paris would say that even I had never in my many years done better. The poor

barbarian! she sells her little brazen sequins, and thinks them her only treasure, whilst she has all that! Is

But he spake none of his thoughts aloud. He was too wary to scare the prey he meant to secure with any

"Well," he said, simply, "I understand; your eagle, in recompense for your endeavours to set him free, only

tears your heart with his talons? It is the way of eagles. He has wounded you sorely. And the wound will

"Oh, no, you are very strong! So is a lioness; but she dies of a man's wound sometimes. He has been very

"He has done as he thought it right to do. Who shall lay blame on him for that?"

"Your loyalty says so ; you are very brave, no doubt. But tell me, do you still wish this man, who wounds you

"Why not? Only this: that once he is let loose your very memory will be shaken from his thoughts as the dust

She thought she did not let him see the agony he dealt her; she stood unflinching, her hands crossed upon her

breast, her head drooped, her eyes looking far from him to where the fading sunlight gleamed still upon the

"No doubt," he echoed. "And yet I think you hardly understand. This man is a great artist. He has a great

destiny, if he once can gain the eye and the ear of the world. The world will fear him, and curse him always;

he is very merciless to it; but if he once conquer fame, that fame will be one to last as long as the earth lasts.

That I believe. Well, give this man what he longs for and strives for, a life in his fame which shall not die so

long as men have breath to speak of art. What will you be in that great drunken dream of his, if once we make

it true for him? Not even a remembrance, FolleFarine. For though you have fancied that you, by your

beauty, would at least abide upon his canvas, and so go on to immortality with his words and name, you seem

not to know that so much also will do any mime who lets herself for hire on a tavern stage, or any starveling

who makes her daily bread by giving her face and form to a painter's gaze. Child! what you have thought

noble, men and women have decreed one of the vilest means by which a creature traffics in her charms. The

first lithelimbed model that he finds in the cities will displace you on his canvas and in his memory. Shall he

She listened dumbly; her attitude unchanging, as she had stood in other days, under the shadow of the

The words were barely audible, but they were inflexible, as they were echoed through her locked teeth.

The eyes of her tormentor watched her with a wondering admiration; yet he could not resist the pleasure of an

added cruelty, as the men of the torturechambers of old strained once more the fair fettered from of a female

captive, that they might see a little longer those bright limbs quiver, and those bare nerves heave.

"Well; be it so if you will it. Only think long enough. For strong though you are, you are also weak; for you

are of your mother's sex, FolleFarine. You may repent. Think well. You are no more to him than your

eponymus, the milldust. You have said so to yourself. But you are beautiful in your barbarism; and here you

are always near him; and with a man who has no gold to give, a woman need have few rivals to fear. If his

heart eat itself out here in solitude, soon or late, he will be yours, FolleFarine. A man, be he what he will,

cannot live long without some love, more or less, for some woman. A little while, and your Norsegod alone

here, disappointed, embittered, friendless, galled by poverty, and powerless to escape, will turn to you, and

find a sweetness on your lips, a balm in your embrace, an opium draught for an hour, at least, in that

wonderful beauty of yours. A woman who is beautiful, and who has youth, and who has passion, need never

fail to make a lovelight beam in the eyes of a man, if only she know how to wait, if only she be the sole

blossom that grows in his pathway, the sole fruit within the reach of his hands. Keep him here, and soon or

late, out of sheer despair of any other paradise, he will make his paradise in your breast. Do you doubt?

Child, I have known the world many years, but this one thing I have ever known to be stronger than any

strength a man can bring against it to withstand itthis one thing which fate has given you, the bodily beauty

His voice ceased softly in the twilightthis voice of Mephistopheleswhich tempted her but for the sheer

sole pleasure of straining this strength to see if it should breakof deriding this faith to see if it would

She stood abased in a piteous shamethe shame that any man should thus read her heart,which seemed to

burn and wither up all liberty, all innocence, all pride in her, and leave her a thing too utterly debased to bear

And yet the terrible sweetness of the words tempted her with such subtle force: the passions of a fierce,

amorous race ran in her blood,the ardour and the liberty of an outlawed and sensual people were bred with

her flesh and blood,to have been the passiontoy of the man she loved for one single day,to have felt for

one brief summer night his arms hold her and his kisses answer hers, she would have consented to die a

hundred deaths in uttermost tortures when the morrow should have dawned, and would have died rejoicing,

He might be hers! The mere thought, uttered in another's voice, thrilled through her with a tumultuous

He might be hersall her owneach pulse of his heart echoing hers, each breath of his lips spent on her

own. He might be hers!she hid her face upon her hands; a million tongues of fire seemed to curl about her

She was a friendless, loveless, nameless thing, and she had but one idolatry and one passion, and for this joy

that they set to her lips she would have given her body and her soul. Her soulif the gods and man allowed

her oneher soul and all her life, mortal and immortal, for one single day of Arsl�n's love. Her soul, for

Not for this had she sold her life to the godsnot for this; not for the raptures of passion, the trance of the

What she had sworn to them, if they saved him, was for ever to forget in him herself, to suffer dumbly for

"Choose," said the soft wooing voice of her tempter, while his gaze smiled on her through the twilight. "Shall

he consume his heart here in solitude till he loves you perforce, or shall he go free amongst the cities of men,

The chance words that he used, by the mere hazards of speech, cut the bonds of passion which were binding

As the river reed to the god, so she had thought that her brief span of life might be to the immortality of his;

was this the fulfilling of her faith? To hold him here with his strength in chains, and his genius perishing in

darkness, that she, the thing of an hour, might know delight in the reluctant love, in the wearied embrace, of a

She shook the deadly sweetness of the beguilement off her as she would have shaken an asp's coils off her

"What have you to do with me?" she muttered, feebly, while the fierce glare of her eyes burned through the

gloom of the leaves. "Keep your word; set him free. His freedom let him useas he will."

Then, ere he could arrest her flight, she hand plunged into the depths of the orchards, and was lost in their

Sartorian did not seek to pursue her. He turned and went thoughtfully and slowly back by the grassgrown

footpath through the little wood, along by the river side, to the watertower. His horses and his people waited

"The Red Mouse does not dwell in that soul as yet. That sublime unreasonthat grand barbaric madness!

And yet both will fall to gold, as that fruit falls to the touch," he thought, as he brushed a ripe yellow pear

from the shelter of the reddening leaves, and watched it drop, and crushed it gently with his foot, and smiled

as he saw that though so golden on the rind, and so white and so fragrant in the flesh, at the core was a rotten

He had shaken it down from idleness; where he left it, crushed in the public pathway, a swarm of ants and

flies soon crawled, and flew, and fought, and fastened, and fed on the fallen purity, which the winds had once

THROUGH the orchards, as his footsteps died away, there came a shrill scream on the silence, which only

It was the voice of the old servingwoman, who called on her name from the porch.

In the old instinct, born of long obedience, she drew her self wearily through the tangled ways of the gardens

She had lost all remembrance of Flamma's death, and of the inheritance of his wealth. She only thought of

those great and noble fruits of a man's genius which she had given up all to save; she only thought

ceaselessly, in the sickness of her heart, "Will he forget?forget quitewhen he is free?"

The peasant standing in the porch with arms akimbo, and the lean cat rubbing ravenous sides against her

shoes, peered forth from under the rich red leaves of the creepers that shrouded the pointed roof of the

Her wrinkled face was full of malignity; her toothless mouth smiled; her eyes were full of a greedy triumph.

Before her was the shady, quiet, leafy garden, with the water running clear beneath the branches; behind her

was the kitchen with its floor of tiles, its strings of food, its woodpiled hearth, its crucifix, and its images of

She looked at the tired limbs of the creature whom she had always hated for her beauty and her youth; at the

droop of the proud head, at the pain and the exhaustion which every line of the face and the form spoke so

plainly; at the eyes which burned so strangely as she came through the grey pure air, and yet had such a look

"She has been told," thought the old servingwoman. "She has been told, and her heart breaks for the gold."

"Come within," she said, with a grim smile about her mouth. "I will give thee a crust and a drink of milk.

None shall say I cannot act like a Christian; and tonight I will let thee rest here in the loft, but no longer. With

FolleFarine looked at her with blind eyes, comprehending nothing that she spoke.

"You called me?" she asked, the old mechanical formula of servitude coming to her lips by sheer unconscious

"Ay, I called. I would have thee to know that I am mistress here now; and I will have no vile things gad about

in the night so long as they eat of my bread. Tonight thou shalt rest here, I say; so much will I do for sake of

thy mother, though she was a foul light o'love; when all men deemed her a saint; but tomorrow thou shalt

FolleFarine gazed at her, confused and still, not comprehending; scarcely awake to the voice which thus

adjured her; all her strength spent and bruised, after the struggle of the temptation which had assailed her.

The familiar place reeled around her. The saints and the satyrs on the carved gables grinned on her horribly.

The yellow houseleek on the roof seemed to her so much gold, which had a tongue, and muttered, "You

All the green, shadowy, tranquil ways grew strange to her; the earth shook under her feet; the heavens circled

around her:and Pitchou, looking on her, thought that she was stunned by the loss of the miser's treasure!

She!in whose whole burning veins there ran only one passion, in whose crushed brain there was only one

The old woman stretched her head forward, and cackled out eager, hissing, tumultuous words.

"Hast thou not heard? No? Well, see then. Some said you should be sent for, but the priest and I said No.

Neither Law nor Church count the lovebegotten. Flamma died worth forty thousand francs, set aside all his

land and household things. God rest his soul! He was a man. He forgot my faithful service, true, but the good

almoner will remember all that to me. Forty thousand francs! What a man! And hardly a nettled boiled in oil

"Ah, ah! I know. So you dared to hope too? Oh fool! What thing did ever he hate as he hated your shadow on

the wall? The money, and the lands, and the thingsevery coin, every inch, every crumbis willed away to

the Bishop, to the holy Bishop in the town yonder, to hold for the will of God and the glory of his kingdom.

And masses will be said for his soul, daily, in the cathedral; and the gracious almoner has as good as said that

the mill shall be let to Fra�vron, the baker, who is old and has no women to his house; and that I shall dwell

here and manage all things, and rule Fra�vron, and end my days in the chimney corner. And I will stretch a

point and let you lie in the hay tonight, but tomorrow you must tramp, for the devil's daughter and Holy

FolleFarine heard her stupidly, and stupidly gazed around; she did not understand. She had never had any

other home, and, in a manner, even in the apathy of a far greater woe, she clove to this place; to its

"Go!"she looked down through the aisles of the boughs dreamily; in a vague sense she felt the sharpness of

desolation which repulses the creature whom no human heart desires, and whom no human voice bids stay.

"Yes. Go; and that quickly," said the peasant, with a sardonic grin. "I serve the Church now. It is not for me

to harbour such as thee; nor is it fit to take the bread of the poor and the pious to feed lips as accursed as are

thine. Thou may'st lie here tonightI would not be over harshbut tarry no longer. Take a sup and a bit,

The old woman watched her shadow pass across the threshold, and away down the garden paths between the

green lines of the clipped box, and vanish beyond the fall of drooping fig boughs and the walls of ivy and of

laurel; then with a chuckle she poured out her hot coffee, and sat in her corner and made her evening meal

well pleased; comfort was secured her for the few years which she had to live, and she was revenged for the

"How well it is for me that I went to mass every Saint's day," she thought, foreseeing easy years and plenty

FolleFarine mounted the wooden ladder to the hayloft which had been her sleepingchamber, there took the

little linen and the few other garments which belonged to her, folded them together in her winter sheepskin,

and sent down the wooden steps once more, and out of the millgarden across the bridge into the woods.

She had no fixed purpose even for the immediate hour; she had not even a tangible thought for her future. She

acted on sheer mechanical impulse, like one who does sane things unconsciously, walking abroad in the

trance of sleep. That she was absolutely destitute scarcely bore any sense to her. She had never realised that

this begrudged roof and scanty fare, which Flamma had bestowed on her, had, wretched though they were,

yet been all the difference between home and homelessnessbetween existence and starvation.

She paused a moment on the river's edge, and turned and looked back at the mill and the house. Form where

she stood, she could see its brown gables and its peaked roof rising from masses of orchard foilage, and green

garden leaves; further round it, closed the dark belt of the deep chestnut woods.

She had been hated by those who dwelt there, and had there known only pain, and toil, and blows, and bitter

words. And yet the place itself was dear to her; its homely and simple look, its quiet garden ways, its dells of

leafy shadow, its bright and angry waters, its furred and feathered creatures that gave it life and

Such as it was, her life had been bound up with it; and though often its cool pale skies and level lands had

been a prison to her, yet her heart clove to it in this moment when she left itfor ever. She looked once at it

long and lingeringly, full in the light of the rising sun; then turned and went on her way.

She walked slowly through the cool evening shadows, while the birds fluttered about her head. She did not

comprehend the terrible fate that had befallen her. She did not think that it was horrible to have no canopy but

The fever of conscious passion which had been born in her, and the awe of the lonely death that she had

witnessed, were on her too heavily, and with too dreamy and delirious an absorption, to leave any room in her

Some vague expectancy of some great horror, she knew not what, was on her. She was as in a trance, her

brain was giddy, her eyes blind. Though she walked straightly, bearing her load upon her head, on and on as

through the familiar paths, she yet had no goal, no sense of what she meant to do, or whither she desired to

The people were still about, going from their work in the fields, and their day at the townmarket, to their

homesteads and huts. Every one of them cast some word at her. For the news had spread by sunset over all

They were spoken in idleness, but they were sharp, flouting, merciless arrows of speech, that struck her

hardly as the speakers cast them, and laughed, and passed by her. She gave no sign that she heard, not by so

much as the quiver of a muscle or the glance of an eye; but she, nevertheless, was stung by them to the core.

For they showed her how worthless and friendless a thing had dared to dream that she might be of service to

Not one of them, man or boy, but made a mock of her as they trooped by through the purpling leaves or the

tall seedgrasses. Not one of them, mother or maiden, that gave a gentle look at her, paused to remember that

she was homeless, and knew no more where to lay her head that night than any sick hart driven from its kind.

She met many in the soft grey and golden evening, in the fruithung ways, along the edge of the meadows;

fathers with their little children running by them, laden with plumes of nightshade; mothers bearing their

youngest born before them on the high sheepskin saddle; young lovers talking together as they drove the old

cow to her byre; old people counting their market gains cheerily; children paddling kneedeep in the brooks

for cresses. None of them had a kindly glance for her;all had a flouting word. There was not one who

offered her so much as a draught of milk; not one who wished her so much as a brief goodnight.

"She will quit the country now; that is one good thing," she heard many of them say of her. And they spoke

of Flamma, and praised him; saying, how pure as myrrh in the nostrils was the death of one who feared God.

The night came on nearer; the ways grew more lonely; the calf bleating sought its dam, the sheep folded

down close together, the lights came out under the lowly roofs; now and then from some open window in the

distance there came the sound of voices singing together; now and then there fell across her path two

She paused on a little slip of mossgreen timber that crossed the water in the open plain, and looked down at

herself in the shining stream. None desired hernone remembered her; none said to her, "Stay with us a

"Surely I must be vile as they say, that all are against me!" she thought; and she pondered wearily in her heart

That brief delirious trance of joy that had come to her with the setting of the last day's sun, had with the sun

sunk away. The visions which had haunted her sleep under the thorntree whilst the thrush sang, had been

killed under the cold and bitterness of the waking world. She wondered, while her face grew red with shame,

what she had been mad enough to dream of in that sweet, cruel slumber. For himshe felt that sooner than

What was she to him?a barbarous, worthless, and unlovely thing, whose very service was despised, whose

"I would live as a leper all the days of my life, if, first, I might be fair in his sight one hour!" she thought; and

she was unconscious of horror or of impiety in the ghastly desire, because she ahd but one religion, thisher

She crossed the little bridge, and sat down to rest on the root of an old oak on the edge of the fields of

The evening had fallen quite. There was a bright moon on the edge of the plain. The cresset lights of the

cathedral glowed through the dusk. All was purple and grey and still. There were the scents of heavy earths

and wild thymes and the breath of grazing herds. The little hamlets were but patches of darker shade on the

soft brown shadows of the night. White seamists, curling and rising chased each other over the dim world.

She could not weep, as other creatures could. The hours drew on. She had no home to go to; but it was not for

Afar off, a step trod down the grasses. A hawk rustled through the gloom. A rabbit fled across the path. The

boughs were put aside by a human hand; Arsl�n came out from the darkness of the woods before her.

With a sharp cry she sprang to her feet and fled, on one passionate reasonless instinct to hide herself for ever

Before her was the maze of the poppyfields. In the moonlight their blossom, so gorgeous at sunset or at

noon, lost all their scarlet gaud and purple pomp, and drooped like discrowned kings stripped bare in the

Their colourless flowers writhed and twined about her ankles. Her brown limbs glistened in the gleam from

the skies. She tightened her red girdle round her loins and ran, as a doe runs to reach the sanctuary.

Long withes of trailing grasses, weeds that grew amongst the grasses, caught her fleet feet and stopped her.

The earth was wet with dew. A tangle of boughs and brambles filled the path. For once, her sure steps failed

Ere he could touch her, she rose again. The scent of the wet leaves was in her hair. The raindrops glistened

on her feet. The light of the stars seemed in her burning eyes. Around her were the gleam of the night, the

She was like a creature born from the freshness of dews, from the odour of foilage, from the hues of the

clouds, from the foam of the brooks, from all things of the woods and the water. In that moment she was

"If only she could content me!" he thought. If only he cared for the song of the reed by the river!

But he cared nothing at all for anything that lived; and a pursuit that was passionless of a thing that was

helpless, seemed to him base; and his feet were set on a stony and narrow road where he would not encumber

his strength with a thing of her sex, lest the burden should draw him backward one rood on his way.

He had never loved her; he never would love her; his eyes were awake to her beauty, indeed, and his reason

owned it beyond all usual gifts of her sex. But his senses remained cold to it: he had used it in the service of

his art, and therein had scrutinised, and pourtrayed, and debased it, until it had lost to him all that fanciful

sanctity, all that halfmysterious charm, which arouse the passion of love in a man to a woman.

So he let her be, and stood by her in the dusk of the night with no light in his own eyes.

"Do not fly from me," he said to her. "I have sought you, to ask your forgiveness, and"

She stood silent, her head bent; her hands were crossed upon her chest in the posture habitual to her under

any pain; her face was shrouded in the shadow; her little bundles of clothes had dropped on the grasses, and

was hidden by them. Of Flamma's death and of her homelessness he had heard nothing.

"I was harsh to you," he said, gently. "I spoke, in the bitterness of my heart, unworthily. I was stung with a

Her voice was very faint, and left her lips with effort; she did not look up; she stood bloodless, breathless,

swaying to and fro, as a young tree which has been cut through near the root sways ere it falls. She knew well

"You are generous, and you shame meindeedthus," he said with a certain softness as of unwilling pain

This greatness in her, this wondrous faithfulness to himself, this silence, which bore all wounds from his

hand, and was never broken to utter one reproach against him, these moved him. He could not choose but see

that this nature, which he bruised and forsook, was noble beyond any common nobility of any human thing.

"I have deserved little at your hands, and you have given me much," he said slowly. "I feel base and

She did not move, nor cry out, nor make any sign of pain, but standing there her form curled within itself, as

a withered fern curls, and all her beauty changed like a fresh flower that is held in a flame.

She did not look at him; but waited, with her head bent, and her hands crossed on her breast as a criminal

His nerve nearly failed him; his heart nearly yielded. He had no love for her; she was nothing to him. No

more than any one of the dark, nude, savage women who had sat to this art on the broken steps of ruined

Temples of the Sun; or the antelopeeyed creature of desert and plain who had come before him in the light

of the East, and had passed as the shadows passed, and, like them, were forgotten.

She was nothing to him. And yet he could not choose but thinkall this mighty love, all this majestic

strength, all this superb and dreamy loveliness, would die out here, as the evening colours had died out of the

He knew that he had but to say to her, "Come!" and she would go beside him, whether to shame or ignominy,

or famine or death, triumphant and rejoicing as the martyrs of old went to the flames, which were to them the

He knew that there would not be a blow his hand could deal which could make her deem him cruel; he knew

that there would be no crime which he could bid her commit for him which would not seem to her a virtue; he

knew that for one hour of his love she would slay herself by any death he told her; he knew that the deepest

wretchedness lived through by his side would be sweeter and more glorious than any kingdom of the world or

heaven. And he knew well that to no man is it given to be loved twice with such love as this.

Yet,he loved not her; and he was, therefore, strong, and he drove the deathstroke home, with pity, with

"A stranger came to me an hour or more ago," he said to her; and it seemed even to him as though he slew a

life godlier and purer and stronger than his own,"an old man, who gave no name. I have seen his facefar

away, long agoI am not sure. The memory is too vague. He seemed a man of knowledge, and a man

critical and keen. That study of youthe one amongst the poppies,you remembertook his eyes and

pleased him. He bore it away with him, and left in its stead a roll of paper moneymoney enough to take me

back amongst mento set me free for a little space. Oh, child! you have seenthis hell on earth kills me. It

is a death in life. It has made me brutal to you sometimes; sometimes I must hurt something, or go mad."

She was silent; her attitude had not changed, but all her loveliness was like one of the poppies that his foot

had trodden on, discoloured, broken, ruined. She stood as though changed to a statue of bronze.

He looked on her, and knew that no creature had ever loved him as this creature had loved. But of love he

"I have been cruel to you," he said, suddenly. "I have stung and wounded you often. I have dealt with your

beauty as with this flower under my foot. I have had no pity for you. Can you forgive me ere I go?"

"You have no sins to me," she made answer to him. She did not stir; nor did the deadly calm on her face

change; but her voice had a harsh metallic sound, like the jar of a bell that is broken.

He was silent also. The coldness and the arrogance of his heart were pained and humbled by her pardon of

them. He knew that he had been pitiless to herwith a pitilessness less excusable than that which is born of

the fierceness of passion and the idolatrous desires of the senses. Man would have held him blameless here,

because he had forborn to pluck for his own this red and gold reed in the swamp; but he himself knew well

that, nevertheless, he had trodden its life out, and so bruised it, as he went, that never would any wind of

"When do you go?" she asked. Her voice had still the same harsh broken sound in it. She did not lift the lids

of her eyes; her arms were crossed upon her breast;all the ruins of the trampled poppyblossom were

The church chimes, far away in the darkness, tolled the ninth hour. She stood passive, colourless as the

poppies were, bloodless from the thick, dull beating of her heart. The purple shadow and the white stars

swam around her. Her heart was broken; but she gave no sign. It was her nature to suffer to the last in silence.

He stretched his arms to her, and drew her into them, and kissed the dewladen weight of her hair, and the

curling lithe from, whence all warmth had died, and the passionate loveliness, which was cast to him, to be

"Oh, child, forgive me, and forget me," he murmured. "I have been base to you,brutal, and bitter, and cold

oftentimes;yet I would have loved you, if I could. Love would have been youth, folly, oblivion; all the

nearest likeness that men get of happiness on earth. But love is dead in me, I think, otherwise"

She burned like fire, and grew cold as ice in his embrace. Her brain reeled; her sight was blind. She trembled

Suddenly she cast her arms about his throat, and clung to him, and kissed him in answer with that strange,

mute, terrible passion with which the lips of the dying kiss the warm and living face that bends above them,

Then she broke from him, and sprang into the maze of the moonlit fields, and fled from him like a stag that

bears its deathshot in it, and knows it, and seeks to hide itself and die unseen.

He pursued her, urged by a desire that was cruel, and a sorrow that was tender. He had no love for her; and

yetnow that he had thrown her from him for everhe would fain have felt those hot mute lips tremble

For the life that lay before him he needed all his strength, all his coldness, all his cruelty. And she was only a

frail female thinga reed of the river, songless, and blown by the wind as the rest were.

He returned to his solitude, and lit his lamp, and looked on the creations which alone he loved.

"They shall live,or I will die," he said in his own heart. With the war to which he went what had any

Else might the wise god had said, "Many reeds grow together by the river, and men tread them at will, and

none are the worse. But in one reed of a million song is hidden; and when a man carelessly breaks that reed in

WHEN the dawn came, it found her lying face downward among the rushes by the river. She had run on, and

on, and on blindly, not knowing where she fled, with the strange force which despair lends; then suddenly

had dropped, as a young bull drops in the circus with the steel sheathed in its brain. There she had remained

It was quite lonely by the waterside. A crane among the sedges, an owl on the wind, a waterlizard under the

stones, such were the only moving things. It was in a solitary bend of the stream; its banks were green and

quiet; there were no dwellings near; and there was no light anywhere, except the dull glow of the lamp above

No one found her. A young fox came and smelt at her, and stole frightened away. That was all. A sharp wind

rising with the reddening of the east blew on her, and recalled her to consciousness after many hours. When

her eyes at length opened, with a blank stare upon the greyness of the shadows, she lifted herself a little and

The first rays of the sun rose over the dim blue haze of the horizon. She looked at it and tried to remember,

A little beetle, green and bronze, climbed in and out amongst the sand of the rivershore; her eyes vacantly

followed the insect's aimless circles. She tried to think, and could not; her thoughts went feebly and madly

round and round, round and round, as the beetle went in his maze of sand. It was all so grey, so still, so chill,

she was afraid of it. Her limbs were stiffened by the exposure and dews of the night. She shivered and was

She rose a little, staggering and blind, and weakened by the loss of blood; she crept feebly to the edge of the

stream, and washed the stains from her lips, and let her face rest a little in the sweet, silent, flowing water.

Then she sat still amidst the long rushlike grass, and thought, and thought, and wondered why life was so

tough and merciless a thing, that it would ache on, and burn on, and keep misery awake to know itself even

She was still only half sensible of her wretchedness. She was numbed by weakness, and her brain seemed

The little beetle at her feet was busied in a yellower soil than sand. He moved round and round in a little

dazzling heap of coins, and trembling paper thin as gauze. She saw it without seeing for awhile; then, all at

once, a knowledge flashed on her. She saw that the money had fallen from her tunic. She guessed the

truththat in his last embrace he had slid into her bosom half that sum whereof he had spoken as the ransom

Her bloodless face grew scarlet with an immeasurable shame. She would have suffered far less if he had

Better that, when he had kissed her, he had covered her eyes softly with one hand, and with the other driven

Gold!such wage as men flung to the painted harlots gibing at the corners of the streets!

The horror of the humiliation filled her with loathing of herself. Unless she had become shameful in his sight,

She gathered herself slowly up, and stood and looked with blind aching eyes at the splendour of the sunrise.

Her one brief dream of gladness was severed sharply, as with a sword, and killed for ever.

She did not reasonall thought was stunned with her; but as a woman, who loves looking on the face she

loves, will see sure death written there long ere any other can detect it, so she knew, by the fatal and unerring

instinct of passion, that he was gone from her as utterly and as eternally as though his grave had closed on

She did not even in her own heart reproach him. Her love for him was too perfect to make rebuke against him

possible to her. Had he not a right to go as he would, to do as he chose, to take her or leave her, as best might

seem to him? Only he had no right to shame her with what he had deemed shame to himself; no right to insult

She gathered herself slowly up, and took his money in her hand, and went along the river bank.

She had no knowledge at first; but, as she moved against the white light and the cool currents of the morning

air, her brain cleared a little. The purpose which had risen in her slowly matured and strengthened; without its

sustenance she would have sunk down and perished, like a flower cut at the root.

Of all the world that lay beyond the pale of those golden and russet orchards and scarlet lakes of blowing

Cities, he had often said, were as fiery furnaces that consumed all youth and innocence which touched them:

for such as she to go to them was, he had often said, to cast a luscious and golden peach of the summer into

the core of a wasp's nest. Nevertheless, her mind was resolute to follow him,to follow him unknown by

him; so that, if his footsteps turned to brighter paths, her shadow might never fall across his ways; but so that,

if need were, if failure still pursued him, and by failure came misery and death, she would be there beside

To follow him was to her an instinct as natural and as irresistible as it is to the dog to track his master's

She would have starved ere she would have told him that she hungered. She would have perished by the

roadside ere ever she would have cried to him that she was homeless. She would have been torn asunder for a

meal by wolves ere she would have bought safety or succour by one coin of that gold he had slid in her

But to follow him she never hesitated: unless this had been possible to her, she would have refused to live

another hour. The love in her, at once savage and sublime, at once strong as the lion's rage and humble as the

camel's endurance, made her take patiently all wrongs at his hands, but made her powerless to imagine a life

In her unconscious agony of the night gone by, she had run far and fast ere she had fallen; and now, upon her

waking, she had found herself some league from the old millwoods, and further yet from the tower on the

She was weak, and the way seemed very long to her; ever and again, too, she started aside and hid herself,

thinking each step were his. She wanted to give him back his gold, yet she felt as though one look of his eyes

It was long, and the sun was high, ere she had dragged her stiff and feeble limbs through the long grasses of

the shore and reached the ruined granary. Crouching down, and gazing through the spaces in the stones from

which so often she had watched him, she saw at once that the place was desolate.

The great Barabbas, and the painted panels and canvases, and all the pigments and tools and articles of an

artist's store, were gone: but the figures on the walls were perforce left there to perish. The early light fell full

The bound Helios working at the mill, with white Hermes watching, mute and content,Persephone

crouching in the awful shadow of the dread winged King,the Greek youths, with doves in their breasts and

golden apples in their hands,the women dancing upon Cith�ron, in the moonlight,the young gladiator

wrestling with the Libyan lion,all the familiar shapes and stories that made the grey walls teem with the

old sweet life of the heroic times, were thereleft to the rat and the spider, the dust and the damp, the slow,

The days would come and go, the suns would rise and set, the nights would fall, and the waters flow, and the

To her they were living things, beautiful and divine; they were bound up with all the hours of her love; and at

their feet she had known the one brief dream of ecstacy that had sprung up for her, great and golden as the

She held them in a passionate tendernessthese, the first creatures who had spoken to her with a smile, and

had brought light in to the darkness of her life. She flung herself on the ground and kissed its dust, and prayed

for them in an agony of prayerprayed for them that the hour might come, and come quickly, when men

would see the greatness of their maker, and would remember them, and seek them, and bear them forth in

honour and in worship to the nations. She prayed in an agony; prayed blindly, and to whom she knew not;

prayed, in the sightless instinct of the human heart, towards some greater strength which could bestow at once

Nor was it so much for him as for them that she thus prayed: in loving them she had reached the pure and

impersonal passion of the artist. To have them live, she would have given her own life.

Then the bonds of her torment seemed to be severed; and, for the first time, she fell into a passion of tears,

and stretched there on the floor of the forsaken chamber, wept as women weep upon a grave.

When she arose, at length, she met the eyes of Hypnos and Oneiros and Thanatosthe gentle gods who give

They were her dear gods, her best beloved and most compassionate; yet their looks struck coldly to her heart.

Sleep, Dreams, and Death,were these the only gifts with which the gods, being merciful, could answer

AT the little quay in the town many boats were lading and unlading, and many setting their sails to go

southward with their loads of eggs or of birds, of flowers, of fruit or of herbage; all smelling of summer rain

and the odours of freshly ploughed earths turned up with the nest of the lark and the root of the cowslip laid

She lost herself in its little busy crowd, and learned what she needed without any asking, in turn, question of

There was a little boat, with an old man in it, loaded with Russian violets from a flowerfarm.

The old man was angered and in trouble: the lad who steered for him had failed him, and the young men and

boys on the canals were all too busy to be willing too the voyage for the wretched pittance he offered. She

"I will steer for you, then," she said to him; and leaped down amongst his fragrant freight. He was a stranger

to her, and let her be. She did for him as well as another, since she said that she knew those waters well.

He was in haste, and, without more words, he loosened his sail, and cut his moorrope, and set his little

vessel adrift down the waterways of the town, the violets filling the air with their odours and blue as the

All the old familiar streets, all the dusky gateways and dim passages, all the ropes on which the lanterns and

the linen hung, all the wide carved stairways waterwashed, all the dim windows that the women filled with

pots of ivy and the song of birds,she was drifting from them with every pulse of the tide, never again to

return; but she looked at them without seeing them, indifferent, and having no memory of them; her brain,

The broad flatbottomed boats were coming in at sunrise, in each some cargo of green food or of farm

produce: a strong girl rowing with bare arms, and the sun catching the white glint of her headgear. Boys

with coils of spotted birds' eggs, children with lapsful of woodgathered primroses, old women nursing a

wicker cage of cackling hens or hissing geese, mules and asses, shaking their bells and worsted tassels,

bearing their riders high on sheepskin saddles,these all went by her on the river, or on the towingpath, or

All of these knew her well; all of these sometime of another had jeered her, jostled her, flouted her, or fled

from her. But no one stopped her. No one cared enough for her to care even to wonder where she went.

She glided out of the town, and along the banks she knew so well, and passed the wood and the orchards of

Ypr�s. But what at another time would have had pain for her, and held her with the bonds of a sad familiarity,

now scarcely moved her. One great grief and one great passion had drowned all these lesser woes, and

At noon the old man gave her a little fruit and a crust as part of her wage; she tried to eat them, knowing she

They left the course of the stream that she knew, and sailed further than she had ever sailed; passed towns

whose bells were ringing, and noble bridges gleaming in the sun, and watermills black and gruesome, and

bright orchards and vineyards heavy with the promise of fruit. She knew none of them. There were only the

water flowing under the keel, and the blue sky above, with the rooks circling in it, which had the look of

The twilight fell; still the wind served, and still they held on; the mists came, white and thick, and stars rose,

and the voices from the shores sounded strangely, with here and there a note of music or the deep roll of a

So she drifted out of the old life into an unknown world. But she never once looked back. Why should

When it was quite night, they drew near to a busy town, whose lights glittered by hundreds and thousands on

the bank. There were many barges and small boats at anchor in its wharves, hanging out lanterns at their

The old man bade her steer his boat amongst them, and with a cord he made it fast.

"You cheated me," she said, briefly; and she climbed the boat's side, and shaking the violets off her, set her

She had thought that the boat would bring her straight to Paris; and, once in Paris, she had thought that it

would be as easy to trace his steps as it had been in the little town that she had left. She had had no sense of

distanceno knowledge of the size of cities; the width, and noise, and hurry, and confusion of this one

She stood like a young lost dog upon the flags of the landingplace, not knowing whither to go, nor what to

The old man, busied in unlading his violets into the wicker kreels of the women waiting for them, took no

There were incessant turmoil, outcry, and uproar round the landingstairs, where large cargoes of beetroot,

cabbages, and fish were being put on shore. The buyers and the sellers screamed and swore; the tawny light

of oillamps flickered over their furious faces; the people jostled her, pushed her, cursed her, for being in the

way. She shrank back in bewilderment and disgust, and walked feebly away from the edge of the river, trying

The people of the streets were too occupied to take any heed of her. Only one ragged little boy danced before

her a moment, shrieking, "The gipsy! the gipsy! Good little fathers, look to your pockets!"

But she was too used to the language of abuse to be moved by it. She went on, as though she were deaf,

through the yelling of the children and the chattering and chaffering of the trading multitude.

There was a little street leading off the quay, picturesque and ancient, with parquetted houses and quaint

painted signs; at the corner of it sat an old woman on a wooden stool, with a huge fan of linen on her head

like a mushroom. She was selling roasted chestnuts by the glare of a little horn lantern.

"That depends. My boy went up there on foot last summer; he is a young fool, blotting and messing with ink

and paper, while he talks of being a great man, and sups with the rats in the sewers! He, I think, was a week

walking it. It is pleasant enough in fair weather. But youyou are a gipsy. Where are your people?"

She did not know even what this epithet of gipsy, which they so often cast at her, really meant. She

remembered the old life of the Li�bana, but she did not know what manner of life it had been; and since

Phratos had left her there, no one of his tribe or of his kind had been seen in the little Norman town among

"If you are too bad for them, you must be bad indeed! You will do very well for Paris, no doubt."

And she began to count her chestnuts, lest this stranger should steal any of them.

"Will you show me which is the road to take?" she asked. Meanwhile the street boy had brought three or four

of his comrades to stare at her; and they were dancing round her with grotesque grimace, and singing, "Houpe

The woman directed her which roads to go as well as she could for the falling darkness, and she thanked the

woman and went. The street children ran at her heels like little curs, yelling and hissing foul language; but

she ran too, and was swifter than they, and outstripped them, the hardy training of her limbs standing her in

How far she ran, or what streets she traversed, she could not tell; the chestnutseller had said. "Leave the

polestar behind you," and the star was shining behind her always, and she ran south steadily.

Great buildings, lighted casements, high stone walls, groups of people, troopers drinking, girls laughing, men

playing dominoes in the taverns, women chattering in the coffeehouses, a line of priests going to a

deathbed with the bell ringing before the Host, a line of soldiers filing through great doors as the drums beat

the return into barracks,thousands of these pictures glowed in her path a moment, with the next to fade and

give place to others. But she looked neither to the right or left, and held on straightly for the south.

Once or twice a man halloed after her, or a soldier tried to stop her. Once, going through the gateway in the

southern wall, a sentinel challenged her, and levelled his bayonet only a second too late. But she eluded them

all by the swiftness of her apparition, and she got out safe beyond the barriers of the town, and on to the road

that led to the country,a road quiet and white in the moonlight, and bordered on either side with the tall

poplars and the dim, bare, reapen fields which looked to her like dear familiar friends.

It was lonely, and she sat down on a stone by the wayside and rested. She had no hesitation in what she was

doing. He had gone south, and she would go likewise; that she might fail to find him there, never occurred to

her. Of what a city was she had not yet any conception; her sole measurement of one was the little towns

To have been cheated of Paris, and to find herself thus far distant from it appalled her, and made her heart

But it had no power to make her hesitate in the course she took. She had no fear and no doubt: the worst thing

that could have come to her had come already; the silence and the strength of absolute despair were on her.

Besides, a certain thrill of liberty was on her. For the first time in all her life she was absolutely free, with the

She was no longer captive to one place, bondslave to one tyranny; she was no longer driven with curses and

commands, and yoked and harnessed every moment of her days. To her, with the blood of a tameless race in

her, there was a certain force and elasticity in this deliverance from bondage, that lifted some measure of her

great woe off her. She could not be absolutely wretched so long as the open sky was above her, and the smell

She had that love which is as the bezoar stone of fablean amulet that makes all wounds unfelt, and death a

thing to smile at in derision. Besides, there was in her veins a certain thrill of the sweetness of liberty. She

was no longer captive to one place, or bound in the old bonds of servitude. She was freewith the freedom

Without some strong impulsion from without, she might never have cut herself adrift from the tyranny that

had held her down from childhood; and even the one happiness she had known had been but little more than

But now she was freeabsolutely free; and in the calm, cool nightin the dusk and the solitude, with the

smell of the fields around her, and above her the stars, she knew it and was glad,glad even amidst the woe

She sat awhile by the roadside and counted his gold by the gleam of the stars, and put it away securely in her

girdle, and drank from the brook beside her, and tried to eat a little of the bread which the old boatman had

But the crust choked her; she felt hot with fever, and her throat was parched and full of pain.

The moon was full upon her where she sat; the red and white of her dress bore a strange look; her face was

colourless, and her eyes looked but the larger and more lustrous for the black shadows beneath them, and the

"You are a handsome wench," said the wayfarer, who was elderly and of pleasant visage; "too handsome, a

The old reserve clung to her and fenced her secret in, as the prickles of a cactus hedge may fence in the

FolleFarine's lips grew whiter, and she shrank a little; but she answered, steadily:

"No! And at your age; and handsome as a ripe, red apple,with your skin of satin, and your tangle of hair!

"And mean to walk all night? Pooh! Come home with me, and sup and sleep. I live hard by, just inside the

FolleFarine opened her great eyes wide. It was the first creature who had ever offered her hospitality. It was

an old woman, too; there could be nothing but kindness in the offer, she thought; and kindness was so strange

"Because I must go on to Paris; I cannot lost an hour. Nevertheless, it is good of you."

"Oh, ho! the red apple must go to Paris. No other market grand enough! Is that it?"

"But stay with me tonight. The roads are dangerous. There are vagrants and illlivers about. There are great

fogs, too, in this district; and you will meet drunken soldiers and beggars that will rob you. Come home with

me. I have a pretty little place, though poor; and you shall have such fare as I give my own daughter. And

maybe you will see two or three of the young nobles. They look in for a laugh and a songall innocent: my

"You are too good; but I cannot come. As for the road, I am not afraid. I have a good knife, and I am strong."

She spoke in all unconsciousness, in her heart thankful to this, the first human creature that had ever offered

The woman darted one sharp look at her, venomous as an adder's bite; then bade her a short goodnight, and

went on her way to the gates of the town. FolleFarine rose up and walked on, taking her own southward

She was ignorant of any peril that she had escaped. She did not know that the only animals which prey upon

She was very tired; long want of sleep, anguish, and bodily fatigue made her dull, and too exhausted to keep

long upon her feet. She looked about her for some place of rest; and she knew that if she did not husband her

strength, it might fail her ere she reached him, and stretch her on a sickbed in some hospital of the poor.

She passed two of three cottages standing by the roadside, with light gleaming through their shutters; but she

did not knock at any one of them. She was afraid of spending her three copper coins; and she was too proud

Byandby when came to a little shed, standing where no house was. She looked in it, and saw it full of the

last season's hay, dry and sweetsmelling, tenanted only by a cat rolled round in slumber.

She crept into it, and laid herself down and slept, the bright starry skies shining on her through the open space

that served for entrance, the clatter of a little brook under the poplar trees the only sound upon the quiet air.

Footsteps went past twice or thrice, and once a waggon rolled lumbering by; but no one came thither to

With one of her coins she bought a loaf and a draught of milk, at a hamlet through which she went. She was

surprised to find that people spoke to her without a curse or taunt, and dealt with her as with any other human

Insensibly with the change of treatment, and with the fresh sweet air, and with the brisk movement that bore

her on her way, her heart grew lighter, and her old dauntless spirit rose again.

She would find him, she thought, as soon as ever she entered Paris; and she would watch over him, and only

But her thoughts went no further. She shut the future out from her; it appalled her. Only one thing was clear

before herthat she would get him the greatness that he thirsted for, if any payment of her body or her soul,

A great purpose nerves the life it lives in, so that no personal terrors can assail, nor any minor woes afflict it.

Hunger, thirst, fatigue, hardship, danger,these were all in her path, and she had each in turn; but not one of

To reach Paris, she felt that she would have walked through flames, or fasted forty days.

For two days and nights she went ondays cloudless, nights fine and mild; then came a day of stormsharp

hail and loud thunder. She went on through it all the same, the agony in her heart made the glare of lightning

and the roar of winds no more to her than the sigh of an April breeze over a primrose bank.

A party of tramps crossing a meadow set on her, and tried to insult her; she showed them her knife, and with

A dirty and tattered group of gipsies, squatting in a dry ditch under a tarpaulin, hailed her, and wanted her to

join with them and share their broken food. She eluded them with disgust; they were not like the gitanos of

At a little wayside cabin, a girl, with a bright rosy face, spoke softly and cheerily to her, and bade her rest

awhile on the bench in the porch under the vines; and brought out some white pigeons to show her; and asked

her, with interest, whence she came. And she, in her fierceness and her shyness, was touched, and wondered

She met an old man with an organ on his back, and a monkey on his shoulder. He was old and infirm. She

carried his organ for him awhile, as they went along the same road; and he was gentle and kind in return, and

made the route she had to take clear to her, and told her, with a shake of his head that Paris would either be

hell or heaven to such as she. And she, hearing, smiled a little, for the first time since she had left Ypr�s, and

thoughtheaven or hell, what would it matter which, so long as she found Arsl�n?

Of Dante she had never heard; but the spirit of the "questi chi mai da me non piu diviso" dwells untaught in

Once, at night, a vagrant tried to rob her, having watched her count the gold and notes which she carried in

her girdle. He dragged her to a lonely place, and snatched at the red sash, grasping the money with it; but she

was too quick for him, and beat him off in such a fashion that he slunk away limping, and told his fellows to

beware of her; for she had the spring of a cat, and the stroke of a swan's wing.

On the whole, the world seemed better to her than it had done: the men were seldom insolent, taking warning

from the look in her flashing eyes and the straight carriage of her flexible frame; and the women more than

Many peasants passed her on their marketmules, and many carriers' carts and farmwaggons went by along

Sometimes their drivers called to her to get up, and gave her a lift of a league or two on their piles of grass, or

straw, or amongst their crates of cackling poultry, as they made their slow way between the lines of the trees,

All this while she never touched the gold that he had given her. Very little food sufficed to her: she had been

A load carried, a lost sheep fetched in, some wood hewn and stacked, a crying calf fed, a cabbagepatch dug

or watered, these got her the simple fare which she fed on; and for lodging she was to none indebted,

preferring to lie down by the side of the cows in their stalls, or under a stack against some little blossoming

The people had no prejudice against her: she found few foes, when she had left the district that knew the story

of Reine Flamma; they were, on the contrary, amused with her strange picturelike look, and awed with the

Sometimes it chanced to her to get no tasks of any sort to do, and at these times she went without food: touch

On the road she did what good she could; she walked a needless league to carry home a child who had broken

his leg in a lonely lane; she sought, in a foggy night, for the straying goat of a wretched woman; she saved an

infant from the flames in a little cabin burning in the midst of the green fields: she did what came in her path

She had been nine days on the road, losing her way at times, and having often wearily to retrace her steps.

On the tenth day she came to a little town lying in a green hollow amidst woods.

It had an ancient church; the old sweet bells were ringing a last midday mass; a crumbling fortress of the

Angevine kings gave it majesty and shadow; it was full of flowers and of trees, and had quaint, quiet, grey

streets, hilly and shady, that made her think of the streets round about the cathedral of her mother's birthplace,

When she entered it, noon had just sounded from all its many clocks and chimes. The weather was hot, and

she was very tired. She had not eaten any food, save some berries and green leaves, for more than forty hours.

She had been refused anything to do in all places; and she had no moneyexcept that gold of his.

There was a little tavern, vineshaded, and bright with a lateflowering rose that hid its casements. She asked

there, timidly, if there were any task she might do,to fetch water, to sweep, to break wood, to drive or to

Through the square window she could see fooda big juicy melon cut in halves, sweet yellow cakes, warm

and crisp from the oven, a white chicken, cold and dressed with cresses, a jug of milk, an abundance of bread.

Nine days of sharper privation than even that to which she had been inured in the penury of Ypr�s had made

her cheeks hollow and her limbs fleshless; and a continual consuming heat and pain gnawed at her chest.

She sat on a bench that was free to all wayfarers, and looked at the food in the tavernkitchen. It tempted her

with the animal ravenousness begotten by long fast. She wanted to fly at it as a starved dog flies. A

"Will you give me a little work?" she murmured. "Anythinganythingso that I may get bread."

FolleFarine rose and walked wearily away. She could not bear the sight of the food; she felt that if she

looked at it longer she would spring on it like a wolf. But to use his gold never occurred to her. She would

have bitten her tongue through in famine ere she would have taken one coin of it.

As she went, being weak from long hunger and the stroke of the sunrays, she stumbled and fell. She

recovered herself quickly; but in the fall the money had shaken itself from her sash, and been scattered with a

"Oh, h�! the wicked liar!to beg bread while her waistband is stuffed like a turkey with chestnuts! What a

The woman cried loud; there were halfadozen stout servingwenches and stablelads about in the little

street, with several boys and children. Indignant at the thought of an attempted fraud upon their charity, and

amazed at the flash and the fall of the money, they rushed on her with shrieks of rage and scorn, with missiles

of turf and stone, with their brooms raised aloft, or their dogs set to rage at her.

She had not time to gather up the coins and notes; she could only stand over them and defend them. Two

beggarboys made snatch at the tempting heap; she drew her knife to daunt them with the sight of it. The

people shrieked at sight of the bare blade; a woman selling honeycomb and lots of honey at a bench under a

limetree raised a cry that she had been robbed. It was not true; but a street crowd always loves a lie, and

The beggarlads and the two servingwenches and an old virago from a cottagedoor near set upon her, and

scrambled together to drive her away from the gold and share it. Resolute to defend it at any peril, she set her

heel down on it, and, with her back against the tree, stood firm; not striking, but with the point of the knife

One of the boys, maddened to get the gold, darted forward, twisted his limbs round her, and struggled with

her for its possession. In the struggle he wounded himself upon the steel. His arm bled largely; he filled the

Before five minutes had gone by she was seized, overpowered by numbers, cuffed, kicked, upbraided with

every name of infamy, and dragged as a criminal up the little steep stony street in the blaze of the noonday

sun, whilst on each side the townsfolk looked out from their doorways and their balconies, and cried out:

"What is it? Oh, h�! A brawling gipsy, who has stolen something, and has stabbed poor little Fr�ki, the blind

To which the groups called back again, "Yes. A thief of a gipsy, begging alms while she had stolen gold on

her. She has stabbed poor little Fr�ki, the blind cobbler's grandson: yes; we think he is dead."

And the people above, in horror, lifted their hands and eyes, and shouted afresh, "Au violon!au violon!"

Meanwhile the honeyseller ran beside them, crying aloud that she had been robbed of five broad gold

It was a little sunny countryplace, very green with trees and grass, filled usually with few louder sounds

But its stones were sharp and rough; its voices were shrill and fierce; its gossips were cruel and false of

tongue; its justice was very small, and its credulity was measureless. A girl, barefoot and bareheaded, with

eyes of the East, and a knife in her girdle, teeth that met in their youngsters' wrists, and gold pieces that

scattered like dust from her bosom,such an one could have no possible innocence in their eyes, such an one

was condemned so soon as she was looked at, when she was dragged amongst them up their hilly central

She had had money on her, and she had asked for food in the plea of being starved; that was fraud plain

enough, even for those who were free to admit that the seller of the honeypots had never been overtrue of

speech, and had never owned so much as five gold pieces ever since her first bees had sucked their first spray

No one had any mercy on a creature who had money, and yet asked for work; as to her guilt, there could be

She was hurried before the village tribune, and cast into the cell where all accused waited their judgement.

It was a dusky, loathsome place, dripping with damp, half underground, strongly grilled with iron, and

smelling foully from the brandy and strong smoke of two drunkards who had been its occupants the previous

She did not resist. It was not her nature to rebel futilely; and they had fallen on her six to one, and had bound

The little den was visible to the highway through a square low grating. Through this they came and stared,

and mouthed, and mocked, and taunted, and danced before her. To bait a gipsy was fair pastime.

Everywhere, from door to door, the blind cobbler, with his little son, and the woman who sold honey told

their tale,how she had stabbed the little lad and stolen the gold that the brave bees had brought their

mistress, and begged for food when she had money enough on her to buy a rich man's feast. It was a tale to

enlist against her all the hardest animosities of the poor. The village rose against her in all its little homes as

If the arm of the law had not guarded the entrance of her prisoncell, the women would have stoned her to

death, or dragged her out to drown in the pond:she was worse than a murderess in their sight; and one

weak man, thinking to shelter her a little from their rage, quoted against her her darkest crime when he

Outside there were cool woods, flowerfilled paths, broad fields of grass, children tossing blowballs down

the wind, lovers counting the leaves of yelloweyed autumn daisies; but within there were only foul smells,

intense nausea, cruel heats, the sting of a thousand insects, the buzz of a hundred carrionflies, muddy water,

When they day had gone down, and the people had tired of their sport and left her a little while, an old feeble

man stole timidly to her, glancing round lest any should see his charity and quote is as a crime, and tendered

her through the bars with a gentle hand a little ripe autumnal fruit upon a cool green leaf.

She took the grapes, and thanked him lovingly and thankfully; cooled her aching, burning, dustdrenched

"Hush! it is nothing," he whispered, frightenedly, glancing over his shoulder lest any should see. "But tell

"Inhuman?" he murmured. "Oh childoh child, tell any tale you will, save such a tale as that."

And he stole away sorrowful, because sure that for his fruit of charity she had given him back a lie.

He shambled away, afraid that his neighbours should see the little thing which he had done.

It began to grow dark. She felt scorched with fever, and her head throbbed. Long hunger, intense fatigue, and

all the agony of thought in which she had struggled on her way, had their reaction on her. She shivered where

she sat on the damp straw which they had cast upon the stones; and strange noises sang in her ears, and

strange lights glimmered and flashed before her eyes. She did not know what ailed her.

The dogs came and smelt at her, and one little early robin sang a twilight song in an elderbush near. These

Byandby, when it was quite night, they opened the grated door and thrust in another captive, a vagrant

whom they had found drunk or delirious on the high road, and whom they locked up for the night, that on the

He threw himself heavily forward as he was pushed in by the old soldier whose place it was to guard the

She shrank away into the furthest corner of the den, and crouched there, breathing heavily, and staring with

She thoughtsurely they could not mean to leave them there alone, all the night through, in the horrible

The slamming of the iron door answered her; and the old soldier, as he turned the rusty key in the lock,

grumbled that the world was surely at a pretty pass, when two tramps became too coy to roost together. And

he stumbled up the ladderlike stairs of the guardhouse to his own little chamber; and there, smoking and

drinking, and playing dominoes with a comrade, dismissed the prisoners from his recollection.

Meanwhile, the man whom he had thrust into the cell was stretched where he had fallen, drunk or insensible,

She, crouching against the wall, as though praying the stones to yield and hold her, gazed at him with horror

and pity that together strove in the confusion of her dizzy brain, and made her dully wonder whether she were

The bright moon rose on the other side of the trees beyond the grating; it fell across the figure of the vagrant

whom they had locked in with her, as in the wildbeast shows of old they locked a lion with an antelope in

She saw the looming massive shadow of an immense form, crouched like a couching beast; she saw the fire

of burning, wideopen, sullen eyes; she saw the restless, feeble gesture of two lean hands, that clutched at the

barren stones with the futile action of a chained vulture clutching at his rock; she saw that the man suffered

horribly, and she tried to pity himtried not to shrink from himtried to tell herself that he might be as

guiltless as was herself. But she could not prevail; nature, instinct, youth, sex, sickness, exhaustion, all

conquered her, and broke her strength. She recoiled from the unbearable loathsomeness of such association;

she sprang to the grated aperture, and seized the iron in her hands, and shook it with al her might, and tore at

it, and bruised her chest and arms against it, and clung to it convulsively, shriek after shriek pealing from her

A stray dog came and howled in unison; the moon sailed on behind the trees; the old soldier above slept over

his toss of brandy; at the only dwelling near they were dancing at a bridal, and had no ear to hear.

The passionate outcries wailed themselves to silence on her trembling mouth; her strained hands gave way

from their hold on the irons; she grew silent from sheer exhaustion, and dropped in a heap at the foot of the

iron door, clinging to it, and crushed against it, and turning her face to the night without, feeling some little

sense of solace in the calm, clear moon;some little sense of comfort in the near presence of the dog.

Meanwhile the dusky prostrate form of the man had not stirred. He had not spoken, save to curse heaven and

earth and every living thing. He had not ceased to glare at her with eyes that had the red light of a tiger's in

He was a man of superb stature and frame; he was worn by disease and delirium, but he had in him a wild,

leonine, tawny beauty still. His clothes were of rags, and his whole look was of wretchedness; yet there was

about him a certain reckless majesty and splendour still, as the scattered beams of the white moonlight broke

Of a sudden he spoke aloud, with a glitter of terrible laughter on his white teeth and his flashing eyes. He was

"The fourth bull I had killed that Easter day. Look! do you see? It was a red Andalusian. He lamed three

picadors, and ripped the bellies of eight horses,a brave bull; but I was one too many for him. She was

there. All the winter she had flouted over me and taunted me; all the winter she had cast her scorn at methe

beautiful brown thing, with her cruel eyes. But she was there when I slew the great red bullstraight above

there, looking over her fan. Do you see? And when my sword went up to the hilt in his throat, and the brave

blood spouted, she laughed such a little sweet laugh, and cast her yellow jessamine flower at me, down in the

blood and the sand there. And that night the red bull died, the rope was thrown from the balcony! Soso!

Only a summer ago; only a summer ago!" Then he laughed loud again; and, laughing, sang

"Avezvous vu en Barcelonne Une belledame, au sein bruni, P�le comme un beau soir d'automne? C'est ma

maitresse, ma lionne, La Marchesa d'Amag�i." The rich loud challenge of the lovesong snapped short in

two. With a groan and a curse he flung himself on the mud floor, and clutched at it with his empty hands.

"Wine!wine!" he moaned, lying athirst there as the red bull had lain on the sands of the circus; longing for

the purple draughts of his old feastnights, as the red bull had longed for the mountainstreams, so cold and

Then he laughed again, and sang old songs of Spain, broken and marred by discordtheir majestic melodies

Then for awhile he was quiet, moaning dully, staring upward at the white face of the moon.

After a while he mocked itthe cold, chaste thing that was the meek trickster of so many moleeyed lords.

Through the terror and the confusion of her mind, with the sonorous melody of the tongue, with the flaming

darkness of his eyes, with the wild barbaric dissolute grandeur of this shattered manhood, vague memories

Of deep forests whose shade was cool even in midsummer and midday; of glancing torrents rushing through

their beds of stone; of mountain snows flushing in sunset toll the hues of the mountain roses that grew by

millions by the riverwater; of wondrous nights, sultry and serene, in which women with flashing glances

and bare breasts danced with their spangled anklets glittering in the rays of the moon; of roofless palaces

where the Crescent still glistened amidst the colours of the walls; of marble courts where only the oleander

kept pomp and the wild figvine held possession; of a dead nation which at midnight thronged through the

tombs of its kings, and passed in shadowy hosts through the fated land which had rejected the faith and the

empire of Islam; sowing as they went upon the bloodsoaked soil of Spain the vengeance of the dead in

pestilence, in anarchy, in barren passions, in endless riot and revolt, so that no sovereign should ever sit in

peace on the ruined throne of the Moslem, and no light shine ever again upon the people whose boast it once

had been on them the sun in heaven never set:all these memories floated before her, and only served to

There he lay deliriousa madman chained there at her feet, so close in the little den, that, shrink as she

would against the wall, she could barely keep from the touch of his hands as they were flung forth in the air,

And there was no light except the fire in his eyes; except the flicker of the moonbeam through the leaves.

She spent her strength in piteous shrieks. They were the first cries that had ever broken from her lips for

human aid; and they were vain. The guard above slept heavy with brandy and a dotard's dreams. The village

She crouched in the farthest corner, when her voice had spent itself in the passion of appeal.

Beside its horror, all the wretchedness and bondage of her old life seemed like peace and freedom.

Writhing in pain and frenzy, the wounded drunkard struck herall unconscious of the blowacross her

He had ceased to shout his amorous songs, and vaunt his lustful triumphs. His voice was hollow in his throat,

"In the little green woodin the little green wood," he muttered. "Hark! do you hear the millwater run? She

looked so white and so cold; and they all called her a saint. What could a man do but kill that? Does she cry

out against me? You say so? You lie. You liebe you devil or god. You sit on a great white throne and

judge us all. So they say. You can send us to hell? . . . . Well, do. You shall never wring a word from her to

my hurt. She thinks I killed the child? Naythat I swear. Phratos knew, I think. But he is dead;so they

say. Ask him . . . . My brown queen, who saw me kill the red bull,are you there too? Aye. How the white

jewels shine in your breast! Stoop a little, and kiss me. So! Your mouth burns; and the yellow jessamine

flowerthere is a snake in it. Look! You love me? ohho!what does your priest say, and your lord?

Love!so many of you swore that. But she,she standing next to her god there,I hurt her most, and yet

When, at daylight, the people unbarred the prisondoor, they found the sightless face of the dead mean lying

full in the light of the sun: beside him the girl crouched with a senseless stare in the horror of her eyes, and on

FOR many months she knew nothing of the flight of time. All she was conscious of were burning intolerable

pain, continual thirst, and the presence as of an iron hand upon her head, weighing down the imprisoned

brain. All she saw in the horrible darkness, which no ray of light ever broke, was the face of Thanatos, with

the white rose pressed against his mouth, to whom endlessly she stretched her arms in vain entreaty, but who

said only, with the passionless pity of his gaze, "I come in my own time, and neither tarry nor hasten for any

She lived, as a reed torn up from the root may live, by the winds that waft it, by the birds that carry it, by the

sands that draw its fibres down into themselves, to root afresh whether it will or no.

"The reed was worthy to die!the reed was worthy to die!" was all that she said, again and again, lying

staring with her hot distending eyes into the void as of perpetual night, which was all that she saw around her.

The words were to those who heard her, however, the mere meaningless babble of madness.

When they had found her in the cell of the guardhouse, she was far beyond any reach of harm from them, or

any sensibility of the worst which they might do to her. She was in a delirious stupor, which left her no more

sense of place, or sound, or time than if her brain had been drugged to the agonies and ecstasies of the

They found her homeless, friendless, nameless; a thing accursed, destitute, unknown; as useless and as

rootless as the dead Spanish vagrant lying on the stones beside her. They cast him to the public ditch; they

sent her to the public sick wards, a league away; an ancient palace, whose innumerable chambers and whose

vast corridors had been given to a sisterhood of mercy, and employed for nigh a century as a public hospital.

In this prison she lay without any sense of the passing of hours and days and months.

The accusation against her fell to the ground harmless; no one pursued it: the gold was gonesomewhere,

She was borne, senseless, to the old hospice in the great, dull, saintly, historic town, and there perished from

Once or twice the sister of charity who had the charge of her sought to exorcise the demon tormenting this

stricken brain and burning body, by thrusting into the hands that clenched the air a leaden image or a cross of

sacred wood. But those heathen hands, even in delirium, threw those emblems away always, and the captive

"The old gods are not dead; they only waitthey only wait! I am theirstheirs! They forget, perhaps. But I

remember. I keep my faith; they must keep theirs, for shame's sake. Heaven or hell? what does it matter? Can

it matter to me, so that he has his desire? And that they must give, or break faith, as men do. Persephone ate

the pomegranate,you knowand she went back to hell. So will Iif they will it. What can it matter how

the reed dies?by fire, by steel, by storm? what matter, so that the earth hear the music? Ah, God! the

reed was found worthy to die!And II am too vile, too poor, too shameful even for that!"

And then her voice would rise in a passion of hysteric weeping, or sink away into the feeble wailing of the

brain, mortally stricken, and yet dimly sensible of its own madness and weakness; and all through the hours

she, in her unconsciousness, would lament for thisfor this alonethat the gods had not deemed her worthy

of the stroke of death by which, through her, a divine melody might have arisen, and saved the world.

For the fablewhich had grown to hold the place of so implicit a faith to herwas in her delirium always

present with her; and she had retained no sense of herself except as the bruised and trampled reed which man

All the late autumn and the early winter came and went; and the cloud was dark upon her mind, and the pain

When the winter turned, the darkness in which her reason had been engulphed began to clear, little by little.

As the first small trill of the wren stirred the silence in the old elm boughs; as the first feeble gleam of the

new year sunshine struggled through the matted branches of the yews; as the first frail blossom of the pale

hepatica timidly peeped forth in the damp mossgrown walls without, so consciousness slowly returned to

her. She was so young; the youth in her refused to be quenched, and recovered its hold upon life as did the

She awakened to strength, to health, to knowledge; she awoke thus blinded and confused, and capable of little

save the sense of some loathsome bondage, of some irreparable loss, of some great duty which she had left

She saw four close stone walls around her; she saw her wrists and her ankles bound; she saw a hole high

above her head, braced with iron bars, which served to let in the few pallid streaks of daylight which alone

ever found their way thither; she saw a black cross in one corner, and before it two women in black, who

She tried to rise and could not: being fettered. She tore at the rope on her wrists with her teeth like a young

They essayed to soothe her, but in vain; they then made trial first of threats, than of coercion; neither affected

her; she bit at the knotted cords with her white strong teeth, and, being unable to free herself, fell backward

So much escaped her;but her secret she was still strong to keep buried in silence in her heart, as she had

Her old strength, her old patience, her old ferocity and stubbornness and habits of mute resistance had revived

in her with the return of life and reason. Slowly she remembered all things,remembered that she had been

accused and hunted down as a thief and brought thither into this prison, as she deemed it, where the closeness

of the walls pent her in and shut out the clouds and the stars, the water and the moonrise, the flicker of the

green leaves against the gold of sunset, and all the liberty and loveliness of earth and air for which she was

devoured by a continual thirst of longing, like the thirst of the caged lark for the fair heights of heaven.

So when they spoke of their god, she answered always as the lark answers when his gaolers speak to him of

But they thought this madness no less, and kept her bound there in the little dark stone den where no sound

ever reached, unless it were the wailing of a bell, and no glimpse of the sky or the trees could ever come to

At length they grew afraid of what they did. She refused all food; she turned her face to the wall; she

stretched herself on her bed of straw motionless and rigid. The confinement, the absence of air, were a living

death to the creature whose lungs were stifled unless they drank in the fresh cool draught of winds blowing

unchecked over the widths of the fields and forests, and whose eyes ached and grew blind unless they could

gaze into the depths of freeflowing water, or feed themselves in farreaching sight upon the radiant skies.

The errant passions in her, the inborn instincts towards perpetual liberty, and the life of the desert and of the

mountains which came with the blood of the Zingari, made her prisonhouse a torture to her such as is

If this wild moorbird died of selfimposed famine rather than live only to beat its cut wings against the four

walls of their pent prisonhouse, it might turn ill for themselves; so the religious community meditated. They

She turned for the first time and lifted her face from the straw in which she buried it, and looked them in the

"If a Christian swear it,it must be a lie," she said, with the smile that froze their timid blood.

But she accepted the food and the drink which they brought her, and broke her fast, and slept through many

hours; strengthened, as by strong wine, by that one hope of freedom beneath the wide pure skies.

She asked them on awakening what the season of the year was then. They told her it was the early spring.

"The spring," she echoed dully,all the months were a blank to her, which had rolled by since that red

autumn evening, when in the cell of the guardhouse the voice of Taric had chaunted in drink and delirium

"Yes. It is spring," they said; and one sister, younger and gentler than the rest, reached from its place above

the crucifix the bough of the golden catkins of the willow, which served them at their holy season as an

She looked at the drooping grace of the branches, with their buds of amber, long and in silence; then with a

passion of weeping she turned her face from them as from the presence of some intolerable memory.

All down the shore of the river, amongst the silver of the reeds, the willows had been in blossom when she

"Stay with us," the women murmured, drawn to her by the humanity of those, the first, tears that she had ever

shed in her imprisonment. "Stay with us; and it shall go hard if we cannot find a means to bring you to eternal

He would care nothing for peace on earth or in heaven, she knew. What she had sought to gain for

himwhat she would seek still when once she should get freewas the eternal conflict of a great fame in

the world of men. Since this was the only fate which in his sight had any grace or any glory in it.

They kept their faith with her. They opened the doors of her prisonhouse and bade her depart in peace,

She reeled a little dizzily as the first blaze of the full daylight fell on her. She walked out with unsteady steps

into the open air where they took her, and felt it cool and fresh upon her cheek, and saw the blue sky above

The gates which they unbarred were those at the back of the hospital, where the country stretched around.

She was left alone on a road outside the great building that had been her prisonhouse; the road was full of

light, it was straight and shadowless; there was a tall tree near her full of leaf; there was a little bird fluttering

All these little things came to her like the notes of a song heard far awayfar awayin another world. They

There was a little yellow flower growing in a tuft of grasses straight in front of her; a little wayside weed; a

She fell on her knees in the dust by it, and laughed and wept, and quivering, kissed it and blessed it that it

grew there. It was the first thing of summer and of sunshine she had seen so long.

Like a hunted animal she stumbled to her feet and fled from him; winged by the one ghastly terror that they

They had said that she was free: but what were words? They had taken her once; they might take her twice.

The intense fear that possessed her lent her irresistible force. She coursed the earth with the swiftness of a

hare. She took no heed whence she went; she only knew that she fled from the one unutterable horror of that

It was a level green silent country which was round her, with little loveliness and little colour; but as she went

She tossed her head back to watch the flight of a single swallow; she caught a handful of green leaves and

buried her face in them. She listened in a very agony of memory to the rippling moisture of a little brook. She

followed with her eyes the sweeping vapours of the rainclouds, and when a west wind rose and blew a

cluster of loose apple blossoms between her eyesshe could no longer bear the passionate pain of all the

longlost sweetness, but flinging herself downward, sobbed with the ecstasy of an exile's memories.

"Ah God!" she thought, "I know nowone cannot be utterly wretched whilst one has still the air and the

And she arose, calmer, and went on her way; wondering, even in that hour, why men and women trod the

daily measures of their lives with their eyes downward and their ears choked with the dust; hearkening so

little to the sound of the breeze in the grasses, looking so little to the passage of the clouds against the sun.

When the first blindness and rapture of her liberty had a little passed away, and abated in violence, she stood

in the midst of the green fields and the fresh woods, a strange, sad, lonely figure of absolute desolation.

Her clothes were in rags; her red girdle had been changed by weather to a dusky purple; her thick clustering

hair had been cut to her throat; her radiant hues were blanched, and her immense eyes gazed woefully from

beneath their heavy dreamy lids, like the eyes of an antelope whom men vainly starve in the attempt to tame.

She knew neither where to go nor what to do. She had not a coin nor a crust upon her. She could not tell

where she then stood, nor where the only home that she had ever known might lie.

She had not a friend on earth and she was seventeen years old, and was beautiful and was a woman.

She stood and looked; she did not weep; she did not pray; her heart seemed frozen in her. She had the gift she

The light was obscured by the clouds, great sweet rain clouds which came trooping from the west. Woods

were all round, and close against her were low brown cattle, cropping clovered grass. Away on the horizon

was a vague, vast golden cloud, like a million threads of gossamer glowing in the sun.

She echoed the name with a great sob, and crossed her hands upon her breast, and in her way thanked God.

She had exhausted the scanty strength which she owned in her first flight; she could go but slowly; and the

roads were heavy across the ploughed lands, and through the edges of the woods. She walked on and on till it

grew dusk, then she asked of a woman weeding in a field how far it might be yet to Paris.

She grew deadly cold with fear. She was weak, and she had no hope that she could reach it before dawn; and

she had nothing with which to buy shelter for the night. She could see it still; a cloud, now as of fireflies,

upon the purple and black of the night; and in a passionate agony of longing she once more bent her limbs

To her the city of the world, the city of the kings, the city of the eagles, was only of value for the sake of this

It was useless. All the strength she possessed was already spent. The feebleness of fever still sang in her ears

The woman glanced at her and slammedto the door. At another and yet another she tried; but at neither had

she any welcome; they muttered of the hospitals and drove her onward. Finally, tired out, she dropped down

on the curled hollow of an old oak stump that stood by the wayside, and fell asleep, seeing to the last through

The night was cold; the earth damp; it was far on into night; she stretched her limbs out wearily and sighed,

and dreamed that Thanatos touched her with his asphodels, and whispered, "Come."

WHEN she awoke she was no longer in the open air by the roadside, with the grey of the falling night about

her, and the wet leaves for her bed. She was in a white painted chamber, sweet with many roses, hung with

deep hues of violet, filled with gold and colour and sculpture and bronze, duskily beautiful and dimly lighted

On the wall nearest her hung all alone a picture,a picture of a girl asleep in a scarlet blaze of poppies,

above her head a purple butterfly, and on her breast the Red Mouse of the Brocken.

Opposite to it beside the hearth, watching her with his small brilliant eyes, and quite motionless, sat the old

man Sartorian, who had kept his faith with her, though the gods had not kept theirs.

And the picture and the reality grew confused before her, and she knew not which was herself and which her

painted likeness, nor which was the little red mouse that gibbered among the red flowers, and which the little

old man who sat watching her with the fire gleams bright in his eyes; and it seemed to her that she and the

picture were one, and he and the mouse were one likewise; and she moaned and leaned her head on her hands

The heat of the chamber and the strong nourishment which they had poured down her throat when she was

insensible of anything they did to her, had revived the life in her. Memory and sense returned slowly to her;

what first awakened her was her one passionate desire, so intense that it became an instinct stifling every

other, to go on her way to the city that had flashed in its golden glory on her sight one moment, only the next

"Paris!" she muttered mechanically, as she lifted her face with a hopeless bewildered prayer.

"Tell me the way to Paris," she muttered instinctively, and she tried to rise and walk, not well knowing what

"Ahh. Women are the only peaches that roll of their own accord from the wall to the wasp's nest."

At the sound of his voice her eyes opened wide upon him; she knew his face again.

"In my house," he said simply. "I drove by you when you lay on the roadside. I recognised you. When people

dream of immortality they generally die in a ditch. You would have died of a single night out there. I sent my

"Is this Rioz?" She could not comprehend, a horror seized her lest she should have strayed from Paris back

"No. It is another home of mine;' smaller, but choicer may be. Who has cut your hair close?"

"Well; I am not sure but that you are handsomer,almost. A sculptor would like you more now,what a

head you would make for an Anteros, or an Icarus, or a Hyacinthus. Yesyou are best so. You have been

She could not answer; she only stared at him blankly, with sad, mindless, dilated eyes.

He looked at her awhile, then rose and went and sent his handwomen, who took her to an inner chamber, and

bathed and attended her with assiduous care; she was stupefied and knew not what they did.

They served her tenderly. They bathed her tired limbs and laid her as gently as though she were some

She had no force to resist. Her eyes were heavy, and her senses were obscured. The potence of the draught

which they had forced through her lips, when she had been insensible, acted on her as an anodyne. She sank

back unconsciously, and she slept again, all through the night and half the day that followed.

Through all the hours she was conscious at intervals of the fragrance of flowers, of the gleams of silver and

gold, of the sounds of distant music, of the white calm gaze of marble fauns and dryads, who looked on her

from amidst the coolness of hanging foilage. She who had never rested on any softer couch than her truss of

hay or heap of bracken, dreamed that she slept on roses. The fragrance of innumerable flowers breathed all

around her. A distant music came through the silence on her drowsy ear. For the first time in her life of toil

At noon she awoke, crying aloud that the Red Mouse claimed her soul from Thanatos.

When her vision cleared, and her dream passed away, the music, the flowers, the colour, the coolness, were

all real around her. She was lying on a couch as soft as the rosebeds of Sybaris. About her were the luxuries

and the graces amidst which the rich dwell. Above her head, from a golden height, a painted Eros smiled.

The light, on to which her startled eyes opened, came to her veiled through soft, rosy hues; the blossom of

flowers met her everywhere, glided lattices and precious stones, and countless things for which she knew

neither the name nor use, and wondrous plants, with birds like living blossoms on the wing above them, and

the marble heads of women, rising cold and pure above the dreamy shadowsall the colour, and the charm,

and the silence, and the grace of the life that is rounded by wealth was around her.

She lay silent and breathless awhile, with wide open eyes, motionless from the languor of her weakness and

the confusion of her thoughts, wondering dully, whether she belonged to the hosts of the living or the dead.

She was in a small sleeping chamber, in a bed like the cup of a lotus; there was perfect silence round her,

except for the faint faroff echo of some music; a drowsy subtle fragrance filled the air, the solemn measure

of a clock's pendulum deepened the sense of stillness; for the first time in her life she learned how voluptuous

a thing the enjoyment of simple rest can be. All her senses were steeped in it, lulled by it, magnetised by it;

and, so far as every thought was conscious to her, she thought that this was deathdeath amidst the fields of

Suddenly her eyes fell on a familiar thing, a little picture close at hand, the picture of herself amidst the

She leapt from the bed, and fell before it, and clasped it in her arms, and wept over it and kissed it, because it

had been the work of his hand, and prayed to the unknown gods to make her suffer all things in his stead, and

to give him the desire of his soul. And the Red Mouse had no power on her, because of her great love.

She arose from that prayer with her mind clear, and her nerves strung; she remembered all that had chanced

"Where are my clothes?" she muttered to the servingwomen who watched beside her. "It is broad day;I

They craved her to wear the costly and broidered stuffs strewn about her; masterpieces of many an eastern

and southern loom; but she put them all aside in derision and impatience, drawing around her with a proud

loving action the folds of her own poor garments. Weatherstained, torn by bush and briar, soaked with night

dew, and discoloured by the dye of many a crushed flower and bruised berry of the fields and woods, she yet

would not have exchanged these poor shreds of woven flax and goats' wool against imperial roves, for poor

The women tended her gently, and pressed on her many rare and fair things, but she would not have them;

She was troubled and bewildered, but she had no fear; for she was too innocent, too wearied, and too

desperate with that deathless courage, which having borne the worst that fate can do, can know no dread.

She stood with her arms folded on her breast, drawing together the tattered folds of the tunic, gazing at the

luxury, and the blended colour of the room. So softly, that she never heard his footfall, the old man entered

She looked up, and met the eyes of Sartorian. They smiled again on her with the smile of the Red Mouse.

The one passion which consumed her was stronger than any fear or any other memory: she only thoughthis

She sprang forward and grasped his arm with both hands, with the seizure of a tigress; her passionate eyes

"I gave him his golden key;how he should use it, that was not in our bond. But, truly, I will make another

"Of your Norsegod? nay, nothing. An eagle soars too high for a man's sight to follow, you

The eagle often soared so highso highthat the icy vapours of the empyrean froze them dead, and they

She stood stunned and confused: her horror of Sartorian was struggling into life through the haze in which all

things of the past were still shrouded to her dulled remembranceall things save her love.

"Rest awhile," he said, gently. "Rest; and we maywho knows?learn something of your northern god.

She leaned on one of the cushioned couches, calm, motionless, negligent, giving no sign that she saw the

chamber round her to be any other than the wooden barn or thatched cattlesheds of the old millhouse; her

feet were crossed, her limbs were folded in that exquisite repose which is inborn in races of the East; the

warmth of the room, and the long hours of sleep had brought the natural bloom to her face, the natural lustre

He surveyed her with that smile which she had resented on the day when she had besought pity of him for

He laughed his low humorous laugh that displeased her so bitterly, though it was soft of tone.

"Pooh! do you not know yet? A female thing, as beautiful as you are, makes hers everything she looks upon?"

"And an empty one you think. On my soul! no. Everything you see here is yours, if it please you."

She laughed a little; with the warmth, the rest, the wonder, the vague sense of some unknown danger, her old

skill and courage rose. She knew that she had promised to be grateful always to this man; otherwise,oh,

"Why?" she answered, "why? Oh, only this: when I bought a measure of pears for Flamma in the

marketplace, the seller of them would sometimes pick me out a big yellow bonchr�tien, soft as butter,

sweet as sugar, and offer it to me for myself. Well, when he did that, I always knew that the weight was short,

or the fruit rotten. This is a wonderful pear you would give me; but is your measure false?"

He looked at her with a curious wonder and admiration; he was angered, humbled, incensed, and allured, and

yet he was glad; she looked so handsome thus with the curl on her quiet lips, and her spirited head fit for a

He was an old man; he could bear to pause and rightly appreciate the charm of scorn, the spur of irony, the

goad of hatred. He knew the full value of its sharp spears to the wonderblooming aloe.

He left the subject for a happier moment, and seating himself, opened his hands to warm them by the wood

fire, still watching her with that smile, which for its very indulgence, its very banter, she abhorred.

He saw her whole face change as with a blow, and her body bend within itself as a young tree bends under a

"Of course he went. You would have him set free," he said, with the little low laugh still in his throat. "Did I

not say you must dream of nothing else if once you had him freed. You would be full of faith; and unbar your

eagle's prisonhouse, and then, because he took wing through the opendoor, you wonder still. That is not

"I do not wonder," she said, with fierce effort stifling her misery. "He had a right to do as he would: have I

"No. You are very faithful still, I see. Yet, I cannot think that you believed my prophecy, or youa woman

had never been so strong. You think I can tell you of his fate? Nay, on my soul I know nothing. Men do not

speak his name. He may be dead;you shrink? So! can it matter so much? He is dead to you. He is a great

man, but he is a fool. Half his genius would give him the fame he wants with much greater swiftness than the

whole ever will. The world likes talent, which serves it. It hates genius, which rules it. Men would adore his

technical treatment, his pictorial magnificence, his anatomical accuracy; but they will always be in awe of his

intensity of meaning, of his marvellous fertility, of his extraordinary mingling of the chilliest of idealism, and

the most unsparing of sensualities,but I talk idly. Let us talk of you; see, I chose your likeness, and he let

He looked at her keenly. He could measure the superb force of this unblenching and mute courage.

"In any other creature such an humility would be an hypocrisy. But it is not so in you. Why will you carry

yourself as in an enemy's house? Will you not even break your fast with me? Nay, that is sullen, that is

barbaric. Is there nothing that can please you? See here,all women love these; the gipsy as well as the

She took them; old oriental jewels lying loose in an agate cup on a table near; there were amongst them three

great sapphires, which in their way were priceless, from their rare size and their perfect colour.

Her mouth laughed with its old scorn. She, who had lost life, soul, earth, heaven, to be consoled with the

glass beads of a bauble! This man seemed to her more foolish than any creature that had ever spoken on her

"Three sparrow's eggs are as big and almost as blue, among the moss in any month of May!"

"It will come as it comes," she answered with the fatalism and composure that ran in her eastern blood.

She told him, briefly; she wanted to hide that she had suffered aught, or had been in any measure coldly dealt

with, and she spoke with the old force of a happier time, seeking rather to show how well it was with her that

she should thus be free, and have no law save her own will, and knew that none lived who could say to her,

Almost she duped him, she was so brave. Not quite. His eyes had read the souls and senses of women for half

a century; and none had ever deceived him. As he listened to her he knew well that under her desolation and

But he accepted her words as she spoke them. "Perhaps you are wise to take your fate so lightly," he said to

her. "But, do you know that it is a horrible thing to be alone and penniless and adrift, and without a home or a

"It is worse when one is a woman, and old; but who pities it then?" she said with the curt and caustic meaning

She shuddered a little; no female creature that is beautiful and vigorous and young can coldly brook to look

straight at the doom of age; death is far less appalling, because death is uncertain, mystical, and may still

She spoke calmly, leaning down on one of the cushioned benches by the hearth, resting her chin on her hand;

her brown slender feet were crossed one over another, her eyelids were heavy from weakness and the

warmth of the room; the soft dim light played on her tenderly; he looked at her with a musing smile.

"No beautiful woman need ever be poor," he said, slowly spreading out the delicate palms of his hands to the

"I know!" she gave a quick gesture of her head, tired, insolent, indifferent; and a terrible darkness stole over

her face; what matter how beautiful she might be, she had no beauty in her own sight, for the eyes of Arsl�n

had dwelt on her, cold, calm, unmoved, whilst he had said, "I would love youif I could."

"You know your value," Sartorian said drily. "Well then, why talk of poverty and of your future together?

She rose and stood before him in the rosy glow of the fire that bathed her limbs until they glowed like jade

"No beautiful woman need be poornono beautiful woman need be honest, I dare say."

"Your lover drew a grand vision of Barabbas. Wellwe choose Barabbas still, just as Jerusalem chose; only

now, our Barabbas is most often a woman. Why do you rise? It is a wet day, out there, and, for the spring

Her face burned; she hung her head instinctively. She sank down again on the seat which she had quitted. The

old horror of shame which she had felt by the water side under the orchards bent her strength under this man's

unmerciful passion. She knew that he had her secret, and the haughty passion and courage of her nature

"Ungrateful! I did what you asked of me. I unloosed your Othyr of Art to spend his strength as he will, in

essaying to raise a storm blast which shall have force enough to echo through the endless tunnels of the time

"Ah! if you thought that I should offer him the half of my possessions you were disappointed, no doubt. But

you forgot that 'that' would not sell in the world, as yet, for a handful of wheat."

"Are your blue stones of less worth, because I, being ignorant, esteem them no more value than three

"My poor jewels! Well, stay here tonight, you need rest, shelter, and warmth; and tomorrow you shall go

as poor as you came, if you wish. The world is very hard. The world is always winterto the poor," he

Despite herself she shuddered; he recalled to her that the world was close at handthe world in which she

"A hard world, to those who will not worship its gods," he repeated, musingly. "And you astray in it, you

poor barbarian, with your noble madness, and your blindness of faith and of passion. Do you know what it is

"Do I know?" her voice suddenly gathered strength and scorn, and rang loud on the stillness. "Do you? The

empty dish, the chill stove, the frozen feet, the long nights, with the roof dripping rain, the sour berries and

hard roots that mock hunger, the mud floors, with the rats fighting to get first at your bed, the bitter black

months, whose saints' days are kept by new pains, and whose holy days are feasted by fresh diseases. Do I

He did not answer her; he was absorbed in his study of her face; he was thinking how she would look in Paris

in some theatre's spectacle of Egypt, with anclets of dull gold and a cymar of dead white, and behind her a

"What a fool he must have been," he thought, as his eyes went from her to the study of her sleeping in the

"You remember unlovely things," he said aloud. "No, I do not know them; and I should not have supposed

that you, who did, could so much have cared to know them more, or could have clung to them as the only

"I do not knowto be always in the open air and to be quite free, and for ever to see the sun."

"Not a low ideal. You must await the Peruvian Paradise. Meanwhile there is a day spring that represents the

"Ah!" she could not deride this god, for she knew it was the greatest of them all; when the rod of riches had

been lost, had not the FarStriking King himself been brought low and bound down to a slave's drudgery?

The small, keen, elfin, satiric face bent on her did not change from its musing study, its slow vigilant smile;

holding her under the subtle influence of his gaze, Sartorian began to speak,speak as he could at choice,

with accents sweet as silver, slow words persuasive as sorcery. With the terse, dainty, facile touches of a

master, he placed before her that world of which she knew no more than any one of the reeds that blew by the

He painted to her that life of all others, which was in most vital contrast and unlikeliness to her own; the life

of luxury, of indolence, of carelessness, of sovereignty, of endless pleasure, and supreme delight; he painted

to her the years of a woman rich, caressed, omnipotent, beautiful, supreme, with all the world before her from

which to choose her lovers, her playthings, her triumphs, her victories, her cruelties, and her seductions.

He painted the long cloudless invigorating day of such a favourite of fortune, with its hours winged by love

and its laughter rhymed to music, and its wishes set to gold; the same day for the same woman, whether it

were called of Rome or of Corinth, of Byzantium or of Athens, of Babylon or of Paris, and whether she

herself were hailed hetaira or imperatrix. He drew such things as the skill of his words and the deep

knowledge of his many years enabled him, in language which aroused her even from the absorption of her

wretchedness, and stirred her dull disordered thoughts to a movement of restless discontent, and of strange

He let his words dwell silently on her mind, awhile: then suddenly he asked her,

She thought"envy them? she? what could she envy save the eyes that looked on Arsl�n's face?" "What

were the use?" she said aloud; "all my life I have seen that all things are for others; nothing is for me."

"Your life is but just opening. Henceforth you shall see all things for you, instead."

"And you know that everyone's hand is against you because you are nameless and bastard, and come of a

For a moment he was silent. The simple, pathetic acceptance of the fate that made her namemerely

because hersa symbol of all things despised, and desolate, and forsaken, touched his heart and moved him

to a sorrowful pity. But the pity died, and the cruelty remained alive behind it.

"Wellbe FolleFarine still. Why not? But let FolleFarine mean no longer a beggar, an outcast, a leper, a

thing attainted, proscribed, and for ever suspected; but let it mean on the ear of every man that hears it the

name of the most famous, the most imperious, the most triumphant, the most beautiful woman of her time; a

Her breath came and went as she listened: the blood in her face flushed and paled; she trembled violently, and

her whole frame seemed to dilate and strengthen and vibrate with the electric force of that subtlest

"Yes, you. All that I say to you shall be: homeless, tribeless, nameless, nationless, thought you stand there

The wondrous promise swept her fancy for the moment on the strong current of its imagery, as a river sweeps

a leaf. This empire hers?hers?when all mankind had driven and derided her and shunned her sight and

touch, and cursed and flouted her, and barely thought her worthy to be called "thou dog!"

"All that I say you shall be; andthe year is all winter for the poor, FolleFarine."

The light on her face faded; a sudden apprehension tightened at her heart; on her face gathered the old fierce

deadly antagonism which constant insult and attack had taught her to assume on the first instant of menace as

She knew not what evil threatened; but vaguely she felt that treason was close about her.

"If you do not mock me," she said slowly, "if you do nothow will you make me what you promise?"

The darkness and the perplexed trouble deepened on her face; she rose and stood and looked at him, her teeth

shut together with a quick sharp ring, her straight proud brows drew together in stormy silence; all the tigress

in her was awoke and rising ready to spring; yet amidst that dusky passion, that withering scorn of doubt,

there was an innocent pathetic wonder, a vague desolation and disappointment, that were childlike and

"This is a wondrous pear you offer me!" she said bitterly. "And so cheap?it must be rotten somewhere."

With a sudden unconscious instinctive action her hand sought her knife, but the girdle was empty; she sprang

erect, her face on fire with a superb fury, her eyes blazing, like the eyes of a wild beast's by night, a

"I ask more,that I should pluck it with clean hands, and eat of it with pure lips. Strange quibble for a

beggar,homeless, penniless, tribeless, nationless? So you think, no doubt. But we who are born outlawed

He watched her with a musing smile, a dreamy calm content; all this tempest of her scorn, all this bitterness

of her disdain, all this whirlwind of her passion and her suffering, seemed but to beguile him more and make

"She would be a great creature to show to the world," he thought, as he drooped his head and watched her

through his halfclosed eyelids, as the Red Mouse watched the sleeper in the poppies. "Let you go?" he said

"Ah, ah! It is never wise to threaten, FolleFarine. I do not threaten. You are foolish; you are unreasonable;

and that is the privilege of a woman. I am not angered at it. On the contrary; it adds to your charm. You are a

beautiful, reckless, stubborn, half mad, half savage creature. Passion and liberty become you,become you

like your ignorance and ferocity. I would not for worlds that you should change them."

"Oh fool! the winter will be hard,and you are bare of foot,and you have not a crust!"

"Ah! Go?to beg your way to Paris, and to creep through the cellars and the hospitals till you can see your

lover's face, and to crouch a moment at his feet to hear him mutter a curse on you in payment for your

pilgrimage; and then to slit your throat or hisin your despair, and lie dead in all your loveliness in the

"Or else, more like, come back to me in a week's time and say, 'I was made but now I am wise. Give me the

golden pear. What matter a little speck? What is golden may be rotten; but to all lips it is sweet."

She stood at bay before him, pale in her scorn of rage, her right hand clenched against her breast, her eyes

breathing fire, her whole attitude instinct with the tempest of contempt and loathing, which she held down

thus, passive and almost wordless, because she once had promised never to be thankless to this man.

He gazed at her and smiled, and thought how beautiful that chained whirlwind of her passions looked; but he

did not touch her nor even go nearer to her. There was a dangerous gleam in her eyes that daunted him.

Moreover he was patient, humorous, gentle, cruel, wiseall in one; and he desired to tame and to beguile

her, and to see her slowly drawn into the subtle sweetness of the powers of gold; and to enjoy the yielding of

each moral weakness one by one, as the southern boy slowly pulls limb from limb, wing from wing, of the

"I will let you gosurely," he said, with his low grim laugh. "I keep no woman prisoner against her will. But

"You will have never a glance of pity, never a look of softness, from your northern god; he has no love for

For the first time she quailed as though struck by a sharp blow; but her voice remained inflexible and serene.

"I can live without love or pity, as I can without home or gold. Once for all,let me go."

"I will let you go," he said slowly, as he moved a little away. "I will let you go in seven days' time. For seven

days you shall do as you please; eat, drink, be clothed, be housed, be feasted, be served, be beguiledas the

rich are. You shall taste all these things that gold gives, and which you, being ignorant, dare rashly deride and

refuse. If when seven days end you still choose, you shall go, and as poor as you came. But you will not

Ere she knew his intent he had moved the panel and drawn it behind him, and left her alone,shut in a trap

That night, when the night without was quite dark, she knelt down before the study of the poppies, and kissed

it softly, and prayed to the unknown God, of whom none had taught her in anywise, yet whose light she still

had found, and followed in a dim wondering imperfect fashion, as a little child lost in the twilight of some

pathless wood, pursues in trembling the gleam of some great still planet looming far above her through the

AT sunrise a great peacock trailing his imperial purple on the edge of a smooth lawn, pecked angrily at a torn

fragment of a scarlet scarf; a scarf that had been woven in his own eastern lands, but which incensed his

sight, fluttering there so idly, as it seemed, on the feathery sprays of a little low almond tree that grew by the

The water was broad, and full of lily leaves and of rare reeds and rushes; it had been so stemmed and turned

by art that it washed the basement walls and mirrored the graceful galleries and arches of the garden palace,

Twenty feet above the level of the gardens, where the peacock swept in the light, there was an open

casement, a narrow balcony of stone; a group of pale human faces looking out awestricken. A leap in the

nightthe night wet and moonless,waters a fathom deep,a bed of sand treacherous and shifting as the

ways of love. What could all these be save certain death? Of death they were afraid; but they were more

On the wall the Red Mouse sat amongst the flowers of sleep; he could have told; he who for once had heard

But the Red Mouse never tells any secret to men; he has lived too long in the breast of the women whom men

The sun came from the east, and passed through the pale stricken faces that watched from the casement, and

"Love is stronger than I. When he keeps his hands pure, where he guards the door of the soul, I enter not. I sit

outside and watch, and watch, and watch. But it is time lost. Love is strong; the door is barred to me."

"That is strange to hear. My sister, the Moon, has told me oftentimes that Eros is your panderalways."

"And yet I have heard that it is your boast that into every female soul you enter at birth, and dwell there unto

IN the dark of night she had leapt to what, as she thought, would prove her grave; but the waters with

humanlike caprice had cast her back upon the land with scarce an effort of her own. Given back thus to life,

whether she would or no, she by sheer instinct stumbled to her feet and fled as fast as she could in the wet

gloomy night through the grassy stretches of the unknown gardens and lands in which she found herself.

She was weighted with her soaked clothes as with lead, but she was made swift by terror and hatred, as

though Hermes for once had had pity for anything human, and had fastened to her feet his own winged

She ran on and on, not knowing whither; only knowing that she ran from the man who had tempted her by the

The rains were ceaseless, the skies had no stars, in the dense mist no lights, far or near, of city or planets, of

palace or house, were seen. She did not know where she went; she only ran on away and away, anywhere,

When the daybreak grew grey in the heavens, she paused, and trembling crept into a cattle shed to rest and

take breath a little. She shrank from every habitation, she quivered at every human voice; she was

afraidhorribly afraidin those clinging vapours, those damp deathly smells, those ghostly shadows of the

That old man with the elf's eyes, who had tempted her, was he a god too, she wondered, since he had the rod

that metes power and wealth? He might stretch his hand anywhere, she supposed, and take her.

The gentle cattle in their wooden home made way for her, and humbly welcomed her. She hid herself

amongst their beds of hay, and in the warmth of their breath and their bodies. She was wet and wretched, like

any half drowned dog; but the habits of her hardy life made cold and hunger and exposure almost powerless

to harm her. She slept from sheer exhaustion of mind and body. The cattle could have trodden her to death, or

tossed her through the open spaces of their byres, but they seemed to know, they seemed to pity; and they

stirred so that they did not brush a limb of her, nor shorten a moment of her slumbers.

A herdswoman, entering with the loud harsh clash of brazen pails, kicked her in the loins, and rated her

furiously for daring to rest there. She arose at the kick, and went out from the place passively, not well

The morning was warm and radiant; the earth and the trees were dripping with the rains of the night; the air

was full of sweet odours, and of a delicious coldness. As far as she saw there was no token far or near of the

gleaming cloud of the city of her dreams. She ventured to ask at a wayside cabin is she were near or far to

The woman of the cottage looked up searchingly from the seat before the porch, and for answer cried to her:

She had lost for the time the mental force, and even the physical force, to resent or to persevere; she was

weak with hunger and bewildered with her misery. She had only sense enough left to rememberand be

The sun beat on her head, the road was hard, and sharp set with flint; she was full of pain, her brain throbbed

with fever and reeled with weakness; a sudden horror seized her lest she might die before she had looked

She saw the dusky shade of a green wood; by sheer instinct she crept into it as a stricken deer into its

She sat in the darkness of the trees in the coolness of the wood, and rested her head on her hands, and let the

The winter had gone by; its many months had passed over her head whilst she was senseless to any flight of

night or day; death might have taken the prey which it had once been robbed of by her; in all this weary

season, which to her was as a blank, his old foes of failure and famine might have struggled for and

vanquished him, she not being by; his body might lie in any plagueditch of the blameless poor, his hand

might rot fleshless and nerveless in any pit where the world cast its useless and dishonoured dead; the mould

of his brain might make a feast for eyeless worms, not more stone blind that was the human race he had

essayed to serve; the beauty of his face might be a thing of loathsomeness from which a toad would turn. Oh,

God! would death never take her likewise? Was she an outcast even from that one tribeless and uncounted

That God whom she had loved, whom she had chosen, whose eyes had been so full of pity, whose voice had

murmured: "Nay, the wise know me as man's only friend":even he, Thanatos, had turned against her and

Vague memories of things which she had heard in fable and tradition, of bodies accursed and condemned to

wander for ever unresting and wailing of spirits, which for their curse were imprisoned in a living flesh that

they could neither lose nor cast away so long as the world itself endured; creatures that the very elements had

denied, and that were too vile for fire to burn, or water to drown, or steel to slay, or old age to wither, or death

to touch and take in any wise. All these memories returned to her, and in her loneliness she wondered if she

She did not know, indeed, that she had done any great sin; she had done none willingly, and yet all people

"Never wrestle with Fate. He throws the strongest, soon or late. And your fate is shame; it was your birth gift,

it will be your burial cloth. Can you cast if off? No. But you can make it potent as gold, and sweet as honey if

And she had not chosen; yet of any nobility in the resistance she did not dream. She had shut her heart to it by

the unconscious instinct of strength, as she had shut her lips under torture, and shut her hand against gold.

She sat there in the wood, roofless, penniless, friendless, and every human creature was against her. Her

temper had spoken only the bare and bleak truth. A dog stoned and chased and mad could be the only living

The sun of noon was bright above head in a cloudless sky, but in the little wood it was cool and shady, and

had the moisture of a heavy morning dew. Millions of young leaves had uncurled themselves in the warmth.

Little butterflies, some azure, some yellow, some white, danced in the light. Brown rills of water murmured

under the grasses, the thrushes sang to one another through the boughs, and the lizard darted hither and

A little distance from her there was a group of joyous singers who looked at her from time to time, their

laughter hushing a little, and their simple carousal under the green boughs broken by a nameless chilliness

and involuntary speculation. She did not note them, her face being bowed down upon her hands, and no

sound of the thrushes' song or of the human singers' voices rousing her from the stupefaction of despair which

One of them at length rose up and went hesitating a step or two forwards; a girl with twinkling feet, clad gaily

"Come and sit with us a moment. You are in the damp and the gloom; we are so pleasant and sunny there.

They saw that she was unspeakably wretched; that some great woe or shock had recently fallen on her, and

given her glance that startled horror and blanched her rich skin to an ashen pallor, and frozen, as it were, the

"Come with us," they urged. "We too go to Paris. We are poor. We follow art. We will befriend you."

She was deaf to them long; being timid and wild of every human thing. But they were urgent; they were

eloquent; these young girls with their bright eyes; these men who spoke of art; these wanderers who went to

In the end they pressed on her their companionship. They too were going to Paris; they spoke of perils she

would run, of vouchers she would need: she wondered at their charity, but in the end walked on with

They were mirthful gentle people, so she thought; they said they followed art; they told her she could never

enter Paris nameless and alone: so she went. The chief of the little troop watched wonderingly her step, her

posture, her barbaric and lustrous beauty, brilliant still even through the pallor of grief and the weariness of

fatigue; of these he had never seen the like before and he knew their almost priceless value in the world, and

"Listen," he said suddenly to her. "We shall play tonight at the next town. Will you take a part?"

Walking along through the glades of the wood, lost in thought, she started at his voice.

"I meanwill you share yourself with us? We will give you no words. It will be quite easy. What money we

make we divide amongst us. All you shall do shall be to stand and be looked atyou are beautiful and you

She made a weary sign of assent. Beautiful? What could it matter if she were so, or if she were not, what

these men thought of it? The beauty that she owned, though so late a precious possession, a crown of glory to

her, had lost all its fairness and all its wonder since it had been strengthless to bind to hers, the only heart in

which she cared to rouse a throb of passion, since it had been unworthy to draw upon it with any lingering

He looked at her more closely; this was a strange creature, he thought, who being a woman and in her first

youth could thus acknowledge her own loveliness with so much candour, yet so much indifference.

That afternoon they halted at a little town that stood in a dell across the fields, a small place lying close about

It was almost dusk when they entered it; but it was all alive with lights and shows, and trumpets and banners;

it was the day of a great fair, and the merrygorounds were whirling, and the trades in gilded cakes and

puppets of sugar were thriving fast, and the narrow streets were full of a happy and noisy peasant crowd.

They were well known and well liked there; the people clustered by dozens round them, the women greeting

them with kisses, the children hugging the dogs, the men clamouring with invitations to eat and to drink and

They bade her watch them at their art in a rough wooden house outside the wine tavern.

She stood in the shadow and looked as they bade her, while the mimic life of their little stage began and lived

To the mind which had received its first instincts of art from the cold, lofty passionless creations of Arsl�n,

from the classic purity and from the divine conception of the old Hellenic ideal, the art of the comic stage

could seem but poor and idle mimicry; gaudy and fragrantless as any painted rose of paper blossoming on a

The crystal truthlessness, the barbaric liberty, the pure idealism of her mind and temper revolted in contempt

from the visible presentment and the varicoloured harlequinade of the comic actor's art. To her, a note of

song, a gleam of light, a shadowy shape, a veiled word, were enough to unfold to her passionate fancy a

world of dreams, a paradise of faith and of desire; and for this very cause she shrank away, in amazement an

disgust, from this realistic mockery of mere humanity, which left nothing for the imagination to create, which

spoke no other tongue than the common language of human quips and jests. It could not touch her, it could

not move her; it filled her,so far as she could bring herself to think of it at all,with a cold and wondering

"It is no art. It is human always. It is never divine. There is neither heaven nor hell in it. It is all earth."

"What has given you such thoughts as that?" they said, in their impatience and mortification.

"I have seen great things," she said simply, and turned away and went out into the darkness, and

She who had knelt at the feet of Thanatos, and who had heard the songs of Pan amidst the rushes by the river,

and had listened to the charmed steps of Persephone amidst the flowers of the summer;could she honour

If only she might live a little longer space to serve and suffer for them and for him still; of fate she asked

That night there was much money in the bag. The players pressed a share upon her; but she refused.

It was with exceeding difficulty that they ended in persuading her even to share their simple supper.

The players were in high spirits; their chief ordered a stoup of bright wine, and made merry over it with gayer

The men and women of the town came in and out with merry interchange of words. The youths of the little

bourg chattered light amorous nonsense; the young girls smiled and chattered in answer; whilst the actors

Now and then a dog trotted in to salute the players' poodles; now and then the quaint face of a pig looked

The door stood open; the balmy air blew in; beyond, the stars shone in a cloudless sky.

She sat without in the darkness, where no light fell amongst the thick shroud of one of the blossoming boughs

of pear trees, and now and then she looked and watched their laughter and companionship, and their gay and

"All fools enjoy!" she thought; with that bitter wonder, that aching disdain, that involuntary injustice, with

which the strong sad patience of a great nature surveys the mindless merriment of lighter hearts and brains

They came to her and pressed on her a draught of wine, a share of the food, a handful of the honeyed cates of

their simple banquet; even a portion of their silver and copper pieces with which the little leathern sack of

She remained without in the gloom amongst the cool blossoming branches that swayed abovehead in the

still night, while the carousal broke up and the peasants went on their way to their homes, singing along the

dark streets, and the lights were put out in the winehouse, and the trill of the grasshopper chirped in the

"You will die of damp, roofless in the open air this moonless night," men, as they passed away, said to her in

"The leaves are roof enough for me," she answered them: and stayed there with her head resting on the roll of

her sheepskin; wideawake through the calm dark hours; for a bed within she knew that she could not pay,

At daybreak when the others rose she would only take from them the crust that was absolutely needful to

keep life in her. Food seemed to choke her as it passed her lips,since how could she tell but what his lips

That morning, as they started, one of the two youths who bore their travelling gear and the rude appliances of

their little stage upon his shoulders from village to village when they journeyed thusbeing oftentimes too

poor to permit themselves any other mode of transit and of porteragefell lame and grew faint and was

She raised the weight upon her back and head as she had been wont to do the weights of timber and of corn

In vain they remonstrated with her; she would not yield, but carried the wooden framework and the folded

"You would have me eat of your supper last night. I will have you accept of my payment today," she said,

For this seemed to her a labour innocent and just, and even full of honour whatever men might say: had not

They journeyed far that day, along straight sunlit highways, and under the shadows of green trees. The fields

were green with the young corn and the young vines; the delicate plumes of the first blossoming lilacs

At noonday the players halted and threw themselves down beneath a poplar tree, in a wild rose thicket, to eat

The shelter they had chosen was full of fragrance from rain drops still wet upon the grasses, and the budding

rose vines. The hedge was full of honeysuckle and tufts of cowslips; the sun was warmer; the mildeyed

cattle came and looked at them; little redstarts picked up their crumbs; from a white vinehung cottage an old

But her heart was sick and her feet weary, and she asked always,"Where is Paris?"

At last they showed it her, that gleaming golden cloud upon the purple haze of the horizon.

She crossed her hands upon her beating breast, and thanked the gods that they had thus given her to behold

"You look at Paris," he said after a time. "There you may be great if you will."

"Aye," he made answer seriously. "Even you! Why not? There is no dynasty that endures in that golden city

She started and shuddered a little; she thought that she saw the Red Mouse stir amidst the grasses.

"What would it serve me to be known to all the world and remembered by all the ages of men if he

THAT night they halted in a little bright village of the leafy and fruitful zone of the cityone of the fragrant

and joyous pleasureplaces amongst the woods where the students and the young girls came for draughts of

milk and plunder of primroses, and dances by the light of the spring moon, and lovewords murmured as

She scarcely heard. She only knew that here it was that Arsl�n had declared that fameor deathshould

The golden cloud dissolved as she drew near to it. A great city might be beautiful to others; to her it was only

as its gilded cage is to a mountain bird. The wilderness of roofs, the labyrinth of streets, the endless walls of

stone, the ceaseless noises of the living multitude, these were horrible to the freeborn blood of her; she felt

blinded, caged, pent, deafened. Its magnificence failed to daunt, its colour to charm, its pageantry to beguile

her. Through the glad and gorgeous ways she went, wearily and sick of heart, for the rush of free winds and

the width of free skies, as a desertborn captive, with limbs of bronze and the eyes of the lion, went fettered

The little band with which she travelled wondered what her eyes so incessantly looked for, in that perpetual

intentness with which they searched every knot of faces that was gathered together as a swarm of bees

clusters in the sunshine. They could not tell; they only saw that her eyes never lost that look.

"Is it the Past or the Future that you search for always?" the shrewdest of them asked her.

She shuddered a little, and made him no answer. How could she tell which it was?whether it would be a

She minded poverty so little. She was as content on a draught of water and a bunch of cress as others are on

rarest meats and wines. She bore bodily fatigue with an Arab's endurance and indifference. She seemed to

care little whether suns beat on her, or storms drenched her to the bone; whether she slept under a roof, or the

boughs of a tree; whether the people hissed her for a foreign thing of foul omen, of clamoured aloud in the

By night she toiled ceaselessly for her new masters; docile, patient, enduring, laborious, bearing the yoke of

this labour as she had borne that of her former slavery, rather than owe a crust to alms, a coin to the gaze of a

crowd. But by the day she searched the city ceaselessly and alone, wandering, wandering, always on a quest

For amidst the millions of faces that met her gaze, Arsl�n's was not; and she was too solitary, too ignorant,

and locked her secret too tenaciously in her heart, to be able to learn tidings of his name.

So the months of the spring and the summer time went by; it was very strange and wondrous to her.

The human world seemed suddenly all about her; the quiet earth, on which the cattle grazed, and the women

threshed and ploughed, and the sheep browsed the thyme, and the mists swept from stream to sea, this was all

gone; and in its stead there was a world of tumult, colour, noise, change, riot, roofs piled on roofs, clouds of

dust yellow in the sun, walls peopled with countless heads of flowers and of women; throngs, various of hue

as gardenbeds of blown anemones; endless harmonies and discords always rung together from silver bells,

and brazen trumpets, and the clash of arms, and the spray of waters, and the screams of anguish, and the

laughs of mirth, and the shrill pipes of an endless revelry, and the hollow sighs of a woe that had no rest.

For the world of a great city, of "the world as it is man's," was all about her; and she loathed it, and sickened

in it, and hid her face from it whenever she could, and dreamed, as poets dream in fever of pathless seas and

tawny fields of weeds, and dim woods filled with the song of birds, and cool skies brooding over a purple

moor, and all the silence and the loveliness and the freedom of "the world as it is God's."

She said no more; but he thought, just so had he seen a rosecrested goldeneyed bird of the great savannahs

look, shut in a cage in a showman's caravan, and dying slowly, with dulled plumage and drooped head, while

the street mob of a town thrust their fingers through the bars and mocked it, and called to it to chatter and be

"Show your beauty oncejust once amidst us on the stage, and on the morrow you can choose your riches

and your jewels from the four winds of heaven as you will," the players urged on her a hundred times.

Her beautyit was given to the gods, to take or to leave, in life or death, for him.

The months went on; she searched for him always. A horrible unending vigil that never seemed nearer its

end. Vainly, day by day, she searched the crowds and the solitudes, the gates of the palaces and the vaults of

the cellars. She thought she saw him a thousand times; but she could never tell whether it were truth or fancy.

She never met him face to face; she never heard his name. There is no desert wider, no maze more unending,

She ran hideous peril with every moment that she lived; but by the strength and the love that dwelt together in

her she escaped them. Her sad, wide, open, pathetic eyes ever searched only for his face and saw no other;

her ear, ever strained to listen for one voice, was dead to every accent of persuasion or of passion.

When men tried to tell her she was beautiful, she looked them full in the eyes and laughed, a terrible dreary

laugh of scorn that chilled them to the bone. When the gay groups on balconies, that glanced golden in the

sun, flung sweetmeats at her, and dashed wine on the ground, and called to her for her beauty's sake to join

them, she looked at them with a look that had neither envy nor repugnance in it, but only a cold mute

One day a great sculptor waylaid her, and showed her a pouch full of money and precious stones. "All that,

and more, you shall have, if you will let me make a cast of your face and your body once." In answer, she

One day a young man, unlike to all the ragged and toilworn crowds that alone beheld her, came in those

crowded quarters of the poor, and watched her with eyes aglow like those of the youth in the old

marketsquare about the cathedral, and waylaid her, later, in solitude, and slid in her palm a chain studded

"I am rich," he murmured to her. "I am a prince. I can make your name a name of power, if only you will

"I have no hunger," she said, carelessly. "Go, ask those that have to your feast."

And she gave no other phrase in answer to all the many honeyed and persuasive words with which in vain he

One day, in the green outskirts of the city, passing by under a gilded gallery, and a wide window full of

flowers, and hung with delicate draperies, there looked out the fair head of a woman, with diamonds in the

ears, and a shroud of lace about it, while against the smiling scornful mouth a jewelled hand held a rose; and

"Has the devil not heard you yet, that you still walk barefoot in the dust on the stones, and let the sun beat on

your head? O fool! there is gold in the air, and gold in the dust, and gold in the very gutter here, for a

And the face was the face, and the voice the voice, of the gardener's wife of the old town by the sea.

She raised, to the gilded balcony above, her great sorrowful musing eyes, full of startled courage: soon she

"Does that brazen scroll shade you better than did the trellised vine?" she said, with her voice ascending clear

in its disdain. "And are those stones in your breast any brighter than the blue was in the eyes of your child?"

The woman above cast the rose at her and laughed, and withdrew from the casement.

She set her heel on the rose, and trod its leaves down in the dust. It was a yellow rose, scentless and

comelyan emblem of pleasure and wealth. She left it where it lay, and went onward.

The sweet sins, and all their rich profits, that she might take as easily as she could have taken the rose from

The gilded balcony, the velvet couch, the jewels in the ears, the purple draperies, the ease and the affluence

and the joys of the sights and the senses, these to her were as powerless to move her envy, these to her

seemed as idle as the blowballs that a child's breath floated down the current of a summer breeze.

When once a human ear has heard the whispers of the gods by night steal through the reeds by the river,

never again to it can there sound anything but discord and empty sound in the tinkling cymbals of brass, and

the fools' bells of silver, in which the crowds in their deafness imagine the songs of the heroes and the music

"There are only two trades in a city," said the actors to her, with a smile as bitter as her own, "only two

tradesto buy souls and to sell them. What business have you here, who do neither the one nor the other?"

There was music still in this trampled reed of the river, into which the gods had once bidden the stray winds

and the wandering waters breathe their melody; but there, in the press, the buyers and the sellers only saw in

it a frail thing of the sand and the stream, only made to be woven for barter, or bind together the sheaves of

Byandby they grew so impatient of this soul which knew its right errand so little that it would neither

accept temptation itself nor deal it to others, they grew so impatient to receive that golden guerdon from

passion and evil which they had foreseen as their sure wage for her when they had drawn her with them to the

meshes of the city, that they betrayed her, stung and driven into treachery by the intolerable reproach of her

They took a heavy price, and betrayed her to the man who had set his soul upon her beauty, to make it live

naked and vile and perfect for all time in marble. She saved herself by such madness of rage, such fury of

resistance, as the native tigress knows in the glare of the torches or the bonds of the cords.

She smote the sculptor with her knife; a tumult rose round; voices shouted that he was stabbed; the men who

had betrayed her raised loudest the outcry. In the darkness of a narrow street, and of a night of tempest, she

fled from them, and buried herself in the dense obscurity which is one of the few privileges of the outcasts.

It was very poor, this quarter where she found refuge; men and women at the lowest ebb of life gathered there

together. There was not much crime; it was too poor even for that. It was all that piteous, hopeless class that

is honest, and suffers and keeps silentso silent that no one notices when death replaces life.

Here she got leave to dwell a little while in the topmost corner of a high tower, which rose so high, so high,

that the roof of it seemed almost like the very country itself. It was so still there, and so fresh, and the clouds

seemed so near, and the pigeons flew so close about it all day long, and at night so trustfully sought their

In a nook of it she made her home: it was very old, very desolate, very barren; yet she could bear it better

She could see the sunrise and the sunset; she could see the rainmists and the planets; she could look down

on all the white curl of the smoke; and she could hear the bells ring with a strange peculiar sweetness striking

straight to her ear across the wilderness of roofs. And then she had the pigeons: they were not much, but they

were something of the old fresh country life; and now and then they brought a head of clover or a spray of

grass in their beaks; and at sight of it the tears would rush into her eyes, and though it was pain, it yet a

She maintained herself still without alms, buying her right to live there, and the little food that sufficed for

her, by one of those offices in which the very poor contrive to employ those still poorer than themselves.

They slept so heavily, those people who the weight of twenty hours' toil, the pangs of hunger, and the chills

of cold upon them, whenever they laid down, and who would so willingly have slept for ever with any night

they laid their heads upon their sacks of rags. But, so long as they woke at all, they needed to wake with the

first note of the sparrows in the dark. She, so long used to rise ere ever the first streaks of the day were seen,

roused scores of them; and in payment they gave her the right to warm herself at their stove, a handful of

their chestnuts, a fragment of their crust, a little copper pieceanything that they could afford or she would

consent to take. A woman, who had been the reveilleuse of the quarter many years, had died; and they were

glad of her;"Her eyes have no seep in them," they said; and they found that she never failed.

It was a strange tradeto rise whilst yet for the world it was night, and go to and fro the dreary courts, up

and down the gloom of the staircases, and in and out the silent chambers, and call all those sons and

daughters of wretchedness from the only peace that their lives knew. So often she felt loath to wake them; so

often she stood beside the bundle of straw on which some dreaming creature, sighing and smiling in her

sleep, murmured of her home, and had not the heart rudely to shatter those mercies of the night.

It was a strange sad office, to go alone amongst all those sleepers in the stillness that came before the dawn,

and move from house to house, from door to door, from bed to bed, with the one little star of her lamp lone

They were all so poor, so poor, it seemed more cruel than murder only to call them from their rest to work,

and keep alive in them that faculty of suffering which was all they gained from their humanity.

Her pity for them grew so great that her heart perforce softened to them also. Those strong men gaunt with

famine, those white women with their starved children on their breasts, those young maidens worn blind over

the needle or the potter's clay, those little children who staggered up in the dark to go to the furnace, or the

wheel, or the powdermill, or the potatofields outside the walls,she could neither fear them nor hate

them, nor do aught save sorrow for them with a dumb, passionate, wondering grief.

She saw these people despised for no shame, wretched for no sin, suffering eternally, though guilty of no

other fault than that of being in too large numbers on an earth too small for the enormous burden of its

endless woe. She found that she had companions in her misery, and that she was not alone under that bitter

scorn which had been poured on her. In a manner she grew to care for these human creatures, all strangers,

yet whose solitude she entered, and whose rest she roused. It was a human interest, a human sympathy. It

Neither poverty nor wretchedness could dull the lustrous, deephued, flowerlike beauty that was hers by

nature. As she ascended the dark stone stairs with the little candle raised above her head, and knocking low

entered the place where they slept, the men and the children alike dreamed of strange shapes of paradise and

"When she wakes us the children never cry," said a woman whom she always summoned an hour before

dawn to rise and walk two leagues to a distant factory. It was new to her to be welcomed, it was new to see

the children smile because she touched them. It lifted a little the ice that had closed about her heart.

It had become the height of the summer. The burning days and the sultry nights poured down on her bare

head and blinded her, and filled her throat with the dust of the public ways, and parched her mouth with the

All the while in the hard hot glare she searched for one voice. All the while in the hard brazen din she listened

She wandered all the day, half the night. They wondered that she woke so surely with every dawn; they did

not know that seldom did she ever sleep. She sought for him always;sought the busy crowds of the living;

As she passed through the endless ways in the wondrous city; as she passed by the vast temples of art; as she

passed by the open doors of the sacred places which the country had raised to the great memories that it

treasured; it became clearer to herthis thing of his desires,this deathless name amidst a nation, this

throne on the awed homage of a world for which his life had laboured and striven, and sickened for and

The great purpose, the great end, to which he had lived grew tangible and present to her; and in her heart, as

she went, she said ever, "Let me only die as the reed died;what matter,so that only the world speak his

One night she stood on the height of the leads of the tower. The pigeons had gone to roost; the bells had

swung themselves into stillness; far below the changing crowds were moving ceaselessly, but to that calm

altitude no sound arose from them. The stars were out, and a great silver moon bathed half the skies in its

white glory. In the stones of the parapet windsown blossoms blew to and fro heavy with dew.

The day had been one of oppressive heat. She had toiled all through it, seekingseekingseekingwhat

she never found. She was covered with dust; parched with thirst; footweary; sick at heart. She looked down

Turning in the gloom she faced Sartorian. A great terror held her mute and breathless there; gazing in the

paralysis of horror at this frail life, which was for her the incarnation of the world, and by whose lips the

world said to her,"Come, eat and drink, and sow your garments with gems, and kiss men on the mouth

whilst you slay them, and plunder and poison, and laugh and be wise. For all your gods are dead; and there is

"You must be tired, surely," the old man said, with soft insistence. "You never find what you seek; you are

always alone, always hungered and poor; always wretched,FolleFarine. Ah! you would not eat my golden

He said so little; and yetthese slow subtle brief phrases pierced her heart with the full force of their odious

meaning. She leaned against the wall, breathing hard and fast, mute, for the moment paralysed.

"You fled away from me that night. It was heroic, foolish, mad. Yet I bear no anger against it. You have not

loved the old dead gods for nought. You have the temper of their times. You obey them; though they betray

She gazed at him, fascinated by her very loathing of him, as the bird by the snake.

"Who told me, that you dwell here? The sun has a million rays; so has gold a million eyes; do you not know?

There is nothing you have not done that has not been known to me. But I can always wait;FolleFarine.

You are very strong; you are very weak, of course;you have a faith; and you follow it; and it leads you on

and on, on and on, and one day it will disappearand you will plunge after it,and it will drown you. You

seek for this man and you cannot find even his grave. You are like a woman who seeks for her lover on a

battlefields. But the world is a carnage where the vultures soon pick bare the bones of the slain, and all

"NayI came to see your beauty, your icegod tired soon; but I. My golden pear would have been better

vengeance for a slighted passion than this beggar's quarter, and these wretched rags."

She held her misery and her shame, and her hatred alike down under enforced composure.

"There is no shame here," she said, between her teeth. "A beggar's quarters, perhaps; but there poor copper

He smiled with that benignant pity, with that malign mockery, which stung her so ruthlessly.

"No shame? Oh, FolleFarine, did I not tell you, that, live as you may, shame will always be your garment in

life and in death? Youa thing beautiful, nameless, homeless, accursed, who dares to dream to be innocent

likewise! The world will clothe you with shame, whether you choose it or not. But the world, as I say, will

give you one choice. Take its red robe boldly from it, and weight it with gold and encrust it with jewels.

Believe me, the women who wear the white garments of virtue will envy you the red robe bitterly, then."

Her arms were crossed upon her breast; her eyes gazed at him with the look he had seen in the gloom of the

"Nay; I came to see your beauty, FolleFarine. Your northern god soon tired, I say; but I. Look yonder a

moment," he pursued; and he motioned downward to where the long lines of light gleamed in the wondrous

city which was stretched at their feet; and the endless murmur of its eternal sea of pleasure floated dimly to

them on the soft night air. "See here, FolleFarine: you dwell with the lowest; you are the slave of the street

mobs; no eyes see you except those of the harlot, the beggar, the thief, the outcast; your wage is a crust and a

copper coin; you have the fate of your namesake, the dust, to wander a little while, and then sink on the

stones of the streets. Yet that you think worthy and faithful, because it is pure, alike, of alms and of vice. Oh,

beautiful fool! what would your lost lover say if beholding you here, amidst the reek of the mob and the

homage of thieves? He would say of you the most bitter thing that a man can say of a woman: 'She has sunk

into sin, but she has been powerless to gild her sin, or make it of more profit than her innocence.' And a man

has no scorn like the scorn which he feels for a woman who sells her soulat a loss. You see?ah! surely

She shook like a leaf where she stood, with the yellow and lustrous moonlight about her. She sawshe saw

now! And she had been mad enough to dream that if she lived in honesty, and by labour that she loathed won

back, with hands clean of crime as of alms, the gold which he had left as the wages of her beauty, and found

him and gave it to him without a word, he would at least believebelieve so much as this, that her hunger

had been famine, and her need misery, and her homelessness that of the stray dog which is kicked from even

a ditch, and hunted from even a graveyard: but that through it all she had never touched one coin of that cruel

"You see?" pursued the low, flutelike moaning mockery of her tormentor's voice. "You see? You have all

the shame: it is your birthright; and you have nothing of the sweetness which may go with shame for a

woman who has beauty. Now, look yonder. There lies the world, which when I saw you last was to you only

an empty name. Now you know itknow it, at least, enough to be aware of all you have not, all you might

have in it, if you took my golden pear. You must be tired, FolleFarine,to stand homeless under the gilded

balconies; to be footsore in the summer dust amongst the rolling carriages; to stand outcast and famished

before the palace gates; to see the smiles upon a million mouths, and on them all not one smile upon you; to

show yourself hourly amongst a mob, that you may buy a little bread to eat, a little straw to rest on! You must

She was silent where she stood in the moonlight, with the clouds seeming to lean and touch her, and far

beneath the blaze of the myriad of lights shining through the soft darkness of the summer night.

"You must be tired. Now, eat of my golden pear; and there, where the world lies yonder at our feet, no name

shall be on the mouths of men as your name shall be in a day. Through the crowds you shall be borne by

horses fleet as the winds; or you shall lean above them from a gilded gallery, and mock them at your fancy

there on high in a cloud of flowers. Great jewels shall beam on you like planets; and the only chains that you

shall wear shall be links of gold, like the chains of a priestess of old. Your mere wish shall be as a sorcerer's

wand, to bring you the thing of our idlest desire. You have been despised!what vengeance sweeter than to

see men grovel to win your glance, as the swine at the feet of Circe? You have been scorned and accursed!

what retribution fuller than for women to behold in you the sweetness and magnificence of shame, and

through you, envy, and fall, and worship the Evil which begot you? Has humanity been so fair a friend to you

that you can hesitate to strike at its heart with such a vengeanceso symmetrical in justice, so cynical in

irony? Humanity cast you out to wither at your birth,a thing rootless, nameless, only meet for the snake

and the worm. If you bear poison in your fruit, is that your fault, or the fault of the human hands that cast the

chancesown weed out on the dunghill to perish? I do not speak of passion. I use no amorous phrase. I am

old and illfavoured; and I know that, any way, you will for ever hate me. But the rage of the desertbeast is

more beautiful than the meek submission of the animal timid and tame. It is the lioness in you that I care to

chain; but your chains shall be of gold, FolleFarine; and all women will envy. Name your price, set it high

as you will; there is nothing that I will refuse. Nay, even I will find your lover, who loves not you; and I will

let you have your fullest vengeance on him. A noble vengeance, for no other would be worthy of your

strength. Living or dead, his genius shall be made known to men; and, before another summer comes, all the

world shall toss aloft in triumph the name that is now nothing as the dust is;nothing as you are,

On the height of the rooftops all was still; the stars seemed to beam close against her sight; below was the

infinite space of the darkness, in which lines of light glittered where the haunts of pleasure lay; all creatures

near her slept; the windsown plants blew to and fro, rooted in the spaces of the stones.

As the last words died softly on the quiet of the air, in answer, she reached her hand upward, broke off a tuft

of the yellow wallblossom, and cast it out with one turn of her wrist down into the void of the darkness.

"What do I say?" she said, slowly. "What? Well, this: I could seize you, and cast you down into the dark

below there, as easily as I cast that tuft of weed. And why I hold my hand I cannot tell; it would be just."

And she turned away and walked from him in the gloom, slowly, as though the deed she spake of tempted

THE poverties of the city devoured her incessantly, like wolves; the temptations of the city crouched in wait

for her incessantly, like tigers. She was always hungry, always heartsick, always alone; and there was always

at her ear some tempting voice, telling her that she was beautiful and was a fool.

Yet she never dreamed once of listening, of yielding, of taking any pity on herself.

Was this virtue? She never thought of it as such; it was simply instinct; the instinct of a supreme fidelity, in

Once or twice, through some lighted casement in some lamplit wood, where the little gay boats flashed on

fairy lakes, she would coldly watch that luxury, that indolence, that rest of the senses, with a curl on her lips,

"To wear soft stuffs and rich colours, to have jewels in their breasts, to sleep in satin, to hear fools laugh, to

have both hands full of gold, that is what women love," she thought; and laughed a little in her cold wonder,

and went back to her high cage in the tower, and called the pigeons in from the rooftops at sunset, and kissed

their purple throats, and broke amongst them her one dry crust, and, supperless herself, sat on the parapet and

She was ignorant, she was friendless, she was savage, she was very wretched; but she had a supreme love in

A hundred times the Red Mouse tried to steal through the lips which hunger, his servile and unfailing

minister, would surely, the Red Mouse thought, disbar and unclose to him sooner or later.

"You will tire, and I can wait, FolleFarine," the Red Mouse had said to her, by the tongue of the old man

He was patient, he was wise; he believed in the power of gold, and had no faith in the strength of a woman.

He knew how to waitunseen, so that this rare bird should not perceive the net spread for it in its wildness

Only in the dark cheerless mists, when she rose to go amongst the world of the sleeping poor at her threshold,

she would step on some gift worthy of a queen's acceptance, without date or word, gleaming there against the

When she climbed to her hole in the roof at the close of a day, all pain, all fatigue, all vain endeavour, all

bootless labour to and fro the labyrinth of streets, there would be on her bare bench such fruit and flowers as

Dorothea might have sent from Paradise, and curled amidst them some thin leaf that would have bought the

When in the dusk of the night she went, wearily and footsore, through the byways and over the sharp set

flints of the quarters of the outcasts and the beggars, sick with the tumult and the stench and the squalor,

parched with dust, worn with hunger, blind with the endless search for one face amidst the millions, going

homeoh, mockery of the word!to a bed of straw, to a cage among the roofs, to a handful of rice as a

meal, to a night of loneliness and cold and misery; at such a moment now and then through the gloom a voice

The mill dust; the reed by the river; the nameless, friendless, rootless thing that her fate made her, should

have been so weak, and so lightly blown by every chance breezeso the Red Mouse told her; should have

asked no better ending than to be wafted up a little while upon the winds of praise, or woven with a golden

Yet she was so stubborn and would not; yet she dared deride her tempters, and defy her destiny, and be

And though the Red Mouse lies often in Love's breast, and is cradled there a welcome guest, yet when Love,

once in a million times, shakes off his sloth, and flings the Red Mouse with it from him, he flings with a hand

In one of the first weeks of the wilder weather, weather that had the purple glow of the autumnal storms and

the chills of coming winter on it, she arose, as her habit was, ere the night was altogether spent, and lit her

She had barely tasted food for many hours. All the means of subsistence that she had were the few coins

Often these went in dept to her, and begged for a little time to get the piece or two of base metal that they

owed her; and she forgave them such debts always, not having the heart to take the last miserable pittance

from some trembling withered hand which had worked through fourscore years of toil, and found no payment

but its wrinkles on its palm; not having the force to fill her own plate with crusts which could only be

purchased by the hunger cries of some starveling infant, or by the barter of some little value less cross of

ivory or rosary of berries long cherished in some aching breast after all else was lost or spent.

She had barely tasted food that day, worst of all she had not even a few grains to scatter to the hungry pigeons

as they had fluttered to her on the housetop in the stormy twilights as the evening fell.

She had lain awake all the night hearing the strokes of the bells sound the hours, and seeming to say to her as

"Dost thou dare to be strong, thou? a grain of dust, a reed of the river, a Nothing?"

When she rose, and drew back the iron staple that fastened her door, and went out on the crazy stairway, she

struck her foot against a thing of metal. It glitter in the feeble beams from her lamp.

She took it up; it was a little precious casket, such as of old the Red Mouse lurked in, amongst the pearls, to

She was already tired, tired with the horrible thirsty weariness of the young lioness starved and cramped in a

An old crone sat on a niche on the wall. She thrust her lean bony face, lit with wolf's eyes through the gloom.

"Are you not tired?" she muttered in the formula taught her. "Are you not tired, FolleFarine?"

"If I be, what of that?" she answered, and she thrust the case away to the feet of the woman, still shut, and

She knew what she did, what she put away. She had come to know, too, what share the sex of her mother

takes in the bringing to the lips of their kind the golden pear that to most needs no pressing.

"If I had only your face, and your chances," had said to her that day a servinggirl, young, with sallow

cheeks, and a hollow voice, and eyes of fever, who lived in a den lower down on the stairway.

"Are you mad that you hunger here when you might hang yourself with diamonds like our Lady of Atocha?"

cried a dancingwoman with sullen eyes and a yellow skin from the hither side of the mountains, who

So, many tongues hissed to her in different fashions. It seemed to many of them impious in one like her to

dare to be stronger than the gold was that assailed her, to dare to live up there among the clouds; and hunger,

and thirst, and keep her silence, and strike dumb all the mouths that tried to woo her down, and shake aside

It was a bitter windy morning; the rain fell heavily; there were no stars out, and the air was sharp and raw.

She was too used to all changes of weather to take heed of it, but her thin clothes were soaked through, and

her hair was drenched as she crossed the courts and traversed the passages to reach her various employers.

The first she roused was a poor sickly woman sleeping feverishly on an old rope mat; the second an old man

wrestling with nightmare as the rain poured on him through a hole in the roof, making him dream that he was

The third was a woman so old that her quarter accredited her with a century of age; she woke mumbling that

The fourth was a little child not seven; he was an orphan, and the people who kept him sent him out to get

herbs in the outlying villages to sell in the streets, and beat him if he let other children be beforehand with

him. He woke sobbing; he had dreamed of his dead mother, and cried out that it was so cold, so cold.

There were scores like them at whose doors she knocked, or whose chambers she entered. The brief kind

"Why do they not die?" she wondered; and she thought of the dear gods that she had loved, the gods of

Truly there were no gifts like their gifts; and yet men knew their worth so little!but thrust Hypnos back in

scorn, dashing their winecups in his eyes; and mocked Oneiros, calling him the guest of lovesick fools and

of mad poets; and against Thanatos strove always in hatred and terror as against their dreaded foe.

It was all dark. The little light she bore scarcely shed its rays beyond her feet. It was all still. The winds

sounded infinitely sad amongst those vaulted passages and the deep shafts of the stairways. Now and then a

woman's voice in prayer or a man's in blasphemy echoed dully through the old halfruined buildings.

Otherwise an intense silence reigned there, where all save herself were sleeping.

And sometimes she had not the heart to waken them; when there was a smile on some wan, worn face that

never knew one in its waking hours; or when some childless mother in her lonely bed in sleeping fancy drew

This morning when all her tasks were done, and all the toilers summoned to another day of pain, she retraced

her steps slowly, bearing the light aloft, and with its feeble rays shed on the colourless splendour of her face,

and on her luminous dilated troubled eyes that were for ever seeking what they never found.

A long vaulted passage stretched between her and the foot of the steps that led to the tower; many doors

opened on it, the winds wailed through it, and the ragged clothes of the tenants blew to and fro upon the

swaying cords. She traversed it, and slowly mounted her own staircase, which was spiral and narrow, with

little loopholes ever and again that looked out upon the walls, and higher on the roofs, and higher yet upon

It was dark still; great low rainclouds floated by; a little caged bird stirred with a sad note; nightly rains

It was so still there in the dusk she knew, even in this wild autumn night, which there would be so purple with

leaf shadow, so brown with embracing branches, so grey with silvery faint mists, so lily white with virgin

And yet she stayed on in this, which was to her the deepest hell, stayed on because hein life or

She started as a hand touched her softly, where she stood looking through the narrow space. The eyes of

"Do you shrink still?" he said, gently. "Put back your knife; look at me quietly; you will not have the

casket?very well. Your strength is folly; yet it is noble. It becomes you. I do you good for ill. I have had

She quivered from head to foot; the grey walls reeled round her; she feared, she hoped, she doubted, she

believed. Was it hell? Was it heaven? She could not tell. She cared not which, so that only she could look

"Living," he answered her, and still he smiled. "Living. Come with me, and see how he has used the liberty

She staggered to her feet and rose, and held her knife close in the bosom of her dress, and with passionate

"Your knife will sheathe itself in my body, I know. Nay, I have never lied to you. One cannot wear a velvet

glove to tame a lioness. Come with me; fear nothing, FolleFarine. Come with me, and see with your own

"You are a barbarian; and so you are heroic always. I would not lie to you, and here I have no need. Come; it

is very near to you. A rood of stone can sever two lives, though the strength of all the world cannot unite

She gripped the knife closer, and, with feet that stumbled as the feet of a dumb beast that goes out to its

slaughter, followed him, through the dark and narrow ways. She had no fear for herself; she had no dread of

treachery or peril; for herself she could be strongalways: and the point of the steel was set hard against her

She was sick and cold and white with terror as she went. She dreaded the unknown thing her eyes might look

upon. She dreaded the truth that she had sought to learn all through the burning months of summer, all

through the horrors of the crowded city. Was it well with him, or ill? Had the gods remembered at last? Had

the stubborn necks of men been bent to his feet? Was he free?free to rise in the heights of lofty desire, and

They passed in silence through many passage ways of the great stone hive of human life in which she dwelt.

"If you find him in a woman's armslost in a sloth of passionwhat then? Will you stay still, let him have

In the gloom he saw her stagger as though struck upon the head. But she rallied and gazed at him in answer

"What is that to you?" she said, in her shut teeth. "Show me the truth: as for himhe has a right to do as he

This passion, so heroic even in its barbarism, so faithful even in its wretchedness, so pure even in its

By his lips the world spoke: the world which, to a creature nameless, homeless, godless, friendless, offered

only one choiceshame or death; and for such privilege of choice bade her be thankful to men and to their

He led her through many vaulted ways, and up the shaft of a stone stairway in a distant side of the vast pile,

which, from holding many habitants of kings and monks and scholars, had become the populous home of the

"Wait here," he said, and drew her backward into a hollow in the wall. It was nearly dark.

As she stood there in the darkness looking down through the narrow space, there came a shadow to her

through the glooma human shadow, noiseless and voiceless. It ascended the shaft of the stairs with a silent

swift tread and passed by her and went onward; as it passed, the rays of her lamp were shed on it, and her

It was pale as death; his head was sunk on his breast; his lips muttered without the sounds of words, his fair

hair streamed in the wind; he moved without haste, without pause, with the pulseless haste, the bloodless

She had heard men talk of those who being dead yet dwelt on earth and moved amidst the living. She had no

thought of him in that moment save as amongst the dead. But he, dead or living, could have no horror for her;

he, dead or living, ruled her as the moon the sea, and drew her after him, and formed the one law of her life.

She neither trembled nor prayed, nor wept nor laughed, nor cried aloud in her inconceivable joy. Her heart

She was silent in the breathless silence of an unspeakable awe; and with a step as noiseless as his own she

glided in his path through the deep shaft of the stairs, upward and upward through the hushed house, through

the innumerable chambers, through the dusky shadows, through the chill of the bitter dawn, through the close

hive of the sleeping creatures, up and up, into the very roof itself, where it seemed to meet the low and lurid

A doorway was open; he passed through it; beyond it was a bare square place through which there came the

feeblest rays of dawn, making the yellow oil flame that burned in it look dull and hot and garish. He passed

into the chamber and stood still a moment, with his head dropped on his chest and his lips muttering sounds

The light fell on his face; she saw that he was living. Crouched on his threshold, she watched him, her heart

leaping with a hope so keen, a rapture so intense, that its very strength and purity suffocated her like some

He walked in his sleep; that sleep so strange and so terrible, which drugs the sense and yet stimulates the

brain: in which the sleeper moves, acts, remembers, returns to daily habits, and resorts to daily haunts, and

The restless brain, unstrung by too much travail and to little food, had moved the limbs unconsciously to their

old haunts and habits; and in his sleep, though sightless and senseless, he seemed still to know and still to

suffer. For he moved again after a moment's rest, and passed straight to the wooden tressels on which a great

He sank down on a rough bench in front of it, and passed his hand before the picture with the fond caressing

gesture with which a painter shows to another some wave of light, some grace of colour, and then sat there,

stupidly, steadfastly, with his elbows on his knees and his head on his hands, and his eyes fastened on the

It was a rugged, desolate, windblown chamber, set in the topmost height of the old pile, beaten on by all

snows, drenched by all rains, rocked by all storms, bare, comfortless, poor to the direst stretch of poverty,

close against the clouds and with the brazen bells and teeming roofs of the city close beneath.

She saw his face once more. She had dwelt by him for many weeks, and no sense of his presence had come to

her, no instinct had awakened in him towards the love which clung to him with a faithfulness only as great as

She, praying always to see this man once more, and diehad been severed from him by the breadth of a

stone as by an ocean's width; and hedoomed to fail always, spending his life in one endeavour, and by that

one perpetually vanquishedhe had had no space left to look up at a nameless creature with lithe golden

limbs, about whose head the whitewinged pigeons fluttered at twilight on the housetop.

His eyes had swept over her more than once; but they had had no sight for her; they were a poet's eyes that

saw for ever in fancy faces more amorous and divine, limbs lovelier and more lilylike, mouths sweeter and

One passion consumed him, and left him not pause, nor breath, nor pity, nor sorrow for any other thing. He

rested from his work and knew that it was good; but this could not content him, for this his fellowmen

There was scarcely any light, but there was enough for her to read his story bythe story of continual

Yet where she hid upon the threshold her heart beat with wildest music of recovered joy: she had found him,

No woman leaned upon his breast; no soft tossed hair bathed his arms, no mouth murmured against his own.

He was alone. Her only rival was that one great passion with which she had never in her humility dreamed to

Dead he might be to all the world of men, dead in his own sight by a worse fate than any death could give:

but for her he was living,to her what mattered failure or scorn, famine or woe, defeat or despair?

She crouched upon his threshold now, and trembled, with the madness of her joy, and courted its torture. She

dared not creep and touch his hand, she dared not steal and kneel a moment at his feet.

He had rejected her. He had had no need of her. He had left her with the first hour that freedom came to him.

He had seen her beauty, and learned its lines and hues, and used them for his art, and let it go again, a soulless

thing that gave him no delight; a thing so slight that he had thought it scarcely worth his while even to break

it for an hour's sport. This was what he had deemed her; that she knew. She accepted the fate at his hands

with the submission that was an integral part of the love she bore him. She had never thought of equality

between herself and him; he might have beaten her, or kicked her, as a brute his dog, and she would not have

To find him, to watch him from a distance, to serve him in any humble ways she might; to give him his soul's

desire, if any barter of her own soul could purchase it,this was all she asked. She had told him that he

She crouched on his threshold, not daring to breathe aloud lest he should hear her.

In the dull light of dawn and of the sickly lamp she saw the great canvas on the tressels that his eyes, without

seeing it, yet stared at;it was the great picture of the Barabbas, living its completed life in colour: beautiful,

She knew then how the season since they had parted had been spent with him; she knew then, without any

telling her in words, how he had given up all his nights and days, all his scant store of gold, all leisure and

comfort and peace, all hours of summer sunshine and of midnight cold, all laughter of glad places, and all

pleasures of passion or of ease, to render perfect this one work by which he had elected to make good his

And she knew that he must have failed; failed always; that spending his life in one endeavour, circumstance

had been stronger than he, and had baffled him perpetually. She knew that it was still in vain that he gave his

peace and strength and passions, all the golden years of manhood, and all the dreams and delights of the

senses; and that, although these were a treasure which once spent came back nevermore to the hands which

scattered them, he had failed to purchase with them, though they were his all, this sole thing which he

"I will find a name or a grave," he had said, when they had parted: she, with the instinct of that supreme love

which clung to him with a faithfulness only equalled by its humility, needed no second look upon his face to

see that no gods had answered him save the gods of oblivion;the gods whose pity he rejected and whose

For to the proud eyes of a man, looking eaglewise at the faroff sun of a great ambition, the coming of

Thanatos could seem neither as consolation nor as vengeance, but only as the crowning irony in the mockery

A day broke full of winds and of showers, with the dark masses of clouds tossed roughly hither and thither,

and the bells of the steeples blown harshly out of time and tune, and the wet metal roofs glistening through a

He sank awhile into profound stupor, sitting there before his canvas, with his head dropped and his eyelids

closed. Then suddenly a shudder ran through him; he awoke with a start, and shook off the lethargy which

drugged him. He rose slowly to his feet, and looked at the open shutters, and saw that it was morning.

"Another dayanother day!" he muttered, wearily; and he turned from the Barabbas and flung himself face

Waitedfor what? She did not know. She did not dare even to steal to him and touch his hand with even

such a timid caress as a beaten dog ventures to give the hand of the master who has driven it from him.

For even a beaten dog is a creature less humble and timid than a woman that loves and whose love is rejected.

He took up a palette ready set, and went to a blank space of canvas and began to cover it with shapes and

shadows on the unconscious creative instinct of the surcharged brain. Faces and foilage, beasts and scrolls,

the heads of gods, the folds of snakes, forms of women rising from flames and clouds, the flowers of Paradise

blossoming amidst the corruption and tortures of Antenora. All were cast in confusion, wave on wave, shape

on shape, horror with loveliness, air with flame, heaven with hell, in all the mad tumult of an artist's dream.

With a curse he flung his brushes from him, and cast himself face downward on his bed of straw.

The riot of fever was in his blood. Famine, sleepless nights, opiates with which he had lulled the pangs of

vain desires, unnatural defiance of all passions and all joys, the pestilence rife in the crowded quarter of the

poor,all these had done their work upon him. He had breathed in the foul air of plaguestricken places,

unconscious of its peril; he had starved his body, reckless of the flight of time; he had consumed his manhood

in one ceaseless, ruthless, and absorbing sacrifice; and Nature, whom he had thus outraged, and thought to

outrage with impunity as mere bestial feebleness, took her vengeance on him and cast him here, and mocked

"A deathless name?Oh, madman. A little breath on the mouths of men in all the ages to come?Oh, fool!

Hereafter, you cry? oh, fool!heaven and earth may pass away, like a scroll that is burnt into ashes, and

the future you live for may never comeneither for you nor the world. What you may gainwho shall say?

There came an old lame woman by, laboriously bearing a load of firewood. She passed beside the threshold.

"You look yonder," she said, resting her eyes on the stranger crouching on the threshold. "Are you anything

"He has no friends," muttered the cripple. "No human being has ever come to him; and he has been here

many months. He will be madvery soon. I have seen it before. Those men do not die. Their bodies are too

strong. But their brains go,look you. And their brains go, and yet they liveto fourscore and ten many a

FolleFarine shivered where she crouched in the shadow of the doorway; she still said nothing.

The crone mumbled on indifferent of answer, and yet pitiful, gazing into the chamber.

"I have watched him often; he is fair to look atone is never too old to care for that. All winter, spring, and

summer he has lived so hard:so cold too and so silentpainting that strange thing yonder. He looks like a

kinghe lives like a beggar. The picture was his god,see you. And no doubt he has set his soul on

famemen will. All the world is mad. One day in the spring time it was sent somewherethat great thing

yonder on the tressels,to be seen by the world, no doubt. And whoever its fate lay with would not see any

greatness in it, or else no eyes would look. It came back as it went. No doubt they knew best;in the world.

That was in the spring of the year. He has been like this ever since. Walking most nights;starving most

The speaker raised her pails and went slowly, muttering as she limped down each steep stair:

"There must hang a crown of stars, I supposesomewheresince so many of them for ever try to reach one.

"The woman says aright," the voice of Sartorian murmured low against her ear. She had forgotten that he was

near from the first moment that her eyes had once more fed themselves upon the face of Arsl�n.

"The woman says aright," he echoed softly. "This man will perish; his body may not die, but his brain

She looked up with a gleam of incredulous hope; she was yet so ignorant; she thought there might yet be

ways by which one life could buy another's from the mercy of earth, from the pity of heaven.

"Ah!" she murmured with a swift soft trembling eagerness. "If the gods would but remember!and take me

"Ay, truly, the gods forget. But if you would give yourself to death for him, why not do a lesser thing?give

A scarlet flush burnt her from head to foot. For once she mistook his meaning. She thoughthow could a

beauty that he who perished there had scorned, have rarity or grace in those cold eyes, or force or light

"See youwhat he lacks is only the sinew that gold gives. What he has done is great. The world rightly

seeing must fear it; and fear is the highest homage the world ever gives. But he is penniless; and he has many

foes; and jealousy can with so much ease thrust aside the greatness which it fears into obscurity, when that

greatness is marred by the failures and the feebleness of poverty. Genius scorns the power of gold: it is

wrong; gold is the war scythe on its chariot, which mows down the millions of its foes and gives free passage

to the suncoursers, with which it leaves those heavenly fields of light for the gross battlefields of earth."

"Nay, not so. I was to set him free: to find his fame or his grave; as he might. He will soon find one, no doubt.

Nay; you would make no bond with me, FolleFarine. You scorned my golden pear. Otherwisehow great

his genius is! That cruel scorn, that burning colour, that icelike coldness! If the world could be brought to

see them once aright, the world would know that no powers greater than these have been amongst it for many

ages. But who shall force the world to look?who? It is so deaf, so slow of foot, so blind, unless the film

The cruel skill of his words cast on her all the weight of this ruin which they watched.

Her love must need be weak, her pledge to the gods must needs be but imperfectly redeemed, since she, who

had bade them let her perish in his stead, recoiled from the lingering living death of any shame, if such could

"Nay; it were easy. He has many foes. He daunts the world and scourges it. Men hate him, and thrust him into

oblivion. Yet it were easy!a few praises to the powerful, a few bribes to the base, and yonder thing once

lifted up in the full light of the world, would make him greatbeyond any man's disputefor ever. I could

do it, almost in a day; and he need never know. But then you are not tired,FolleFarine!"

She writhed from him, as the doe struck to the ground writhes from the hounds at her throat.

"Ah! you are but weak, after all, FolleFarine. You would die for that man's single sakeso you say; and yet

it is not him whom you love. It is yourself. If this passion of yours were great and pure, as you say, would

you pause? Could you ask yourself twice if what you think your shame would not grow noble and pure

beyond all honour, being embraced for his sake? Nay; you are weak, like all your sex. You would die, so you

say. To say it is easy; but to live, that were harder. You will not sacrifice yourselfso. And yet it were

greater far, FolleFarine, to endure for his sake in silence one look of his scorn, than to brave, in visionary

phrase, the thrusts of a thousand daggers, the pangs of a thousand deaths. Kill you!vain words cost but

little. But to save him by sacrifice that he shall never acknowledge; to reach a heroism which he shall ever

regard as cowardice; to live and see him pass you by in cold contempt, while in your heart you shut your

secret, and know that you have given him his soul's desire, and saved the genius in him from a madman's cell

and from a pauper's graveah! that is beyond you; beyond any woman perhaps. And yet your love seemed

He left in her soul the barbed sting of remorse. He had made her think her faith, her love, her strength, her

sinless force, were but the cowardly fruit of cruellest selflove, that dared all things in words,yet in action

To save him by any martyrdom of her body or her soul, so she had sworn; yet now! Suddenly she seemed

When daybreak came fully over the roofs of the city, it found him senseless, sightless, dying in a garret: the

only freedom that he had reached was the delirious liberty of the brain, which, in its madness, casts aside all

All the day she watched beside him, there, amidst the brazen clangour of the bells and scream of the rough

In the gloom of the place, the burning colour of the great canvas of Jerusalem glowed in s wondrous pomp

and power against all the grey, cold poverty of that wretched place. And the wanton laughed with her lover

on the housetop; and the thief clutched the rolling gold; and the children lapped the purple steam of wasted

wine; and the throngs flocked after the thief, whom they had elected for their god; and ever and again a stray

flickering ray of light flashed from the gloom of the desolate chamber, and struck upon it till it glowed like

flame;this mighty parable, whereby the choice of the people was symbolised for all time; the choice

eternal, which never changes, but for ever turns from all diviner life to grovel in the dust before the Beast.

The magnificence of thought, the glory of imagination, the radiance of colour which the canvas held, served

only to make more naked, more barren, more hideous the absolute desolation which reigned around. Not one

grace, not one charm, not one consolation had been left to the life of the man who had sacrificed all things to

the inexorable tyranny of his genius. Destitution, in its ghastliest and most bitter meaning, was alone his

recompense and portion. Save a few of the tools and pigments of his art, and a little opium in a broken glass,

When her eyes had first dwelt upon him lying senseless under the gaze of the gods, he had not been more

absolutely destitute than he was now. The hard sharp outlines of his fleshless limbs, the sunken temples, the

hollow cheeks, the heavy respiration which spoke each breath a pang,all these told their story with an

He had dared to scourge the world without gold in his hand wherewith to bribe it to bear his stripes; and the

world had been stronger than he, and had taken its vengeance, and had cast him here powerless.

All the day through she watched beside himwatched the dull mute suffering of stupor, which was only

broken by fierce unconscious words muttered in the unknown tongue of his birth country. She could give him

no aid, no food, no succour; she was the slave of the poorest of the poor; she had not upon her even so much

as a copper piece to buy a crust of bread, a stoup of wine, a little cluster of autumn fruit to cool his burning

lips. She had nothing,she, who in the world of men had dared to be strong, and to shut her lips, and to keep

her hands clean, and her feet straight; she, whose soul had been closed against the Red Mouse.

If she had gone down amongst the dancing throngs, and rioted with them, and feasted with them, and lived

vilely, they would have hung her breast with gems, and paved her path with gold. That she knew; and she

Where she kneeled beside his bed she drew his hands against her hearttimidly, lest consciousness should

come to him and he should curse her and drive her thence;and laid her lips on them, and bathed them in the

scorching dew of her hot tears, and prayed him to pardon her if it had been weakness in her,if it had been

feebleness and selfpity thus to shrink from any abasement, any vileness, any martyrdom, if such could have

She did not know; she felt astray and blind, and full of guilt. It might beso she thoughtthat it was thus

the gods had tested her; thus they had bade her suffer shame to give him glory; thus they had tried her

Herself, she was so utterly nothing in her own sight, and he was so utterly all in all; her life was a thing so

undesired and so valueless, and his a thing so great and so measureless in majesty, that it seemed to her she

might have erred in thrusting away infamy, since infamy would have brought with it gold to serve him.

Dignity, innocence, strength, pridewhat right had she to these, what title had she to claim themshe who

To perish for him anyhowthat was all that she had craved in prayer of the gods. And she watched him now

all through the bitter day; watched him dying of hunger, of fever, of endless desire, of continual failure,and

was helpless. More helpless even than she had been when first she had claimed back his life from Thanatos.

Seven days she watched thus by him amidst the metal clangour of the bells, amidst the wailing of the autumn

She moistened his lips with a little water: it was all he took. A few times she left him and stole down amidst

the people whom she had served, and was met by a curse from most of them; for they thought that she tended

some unknown fever which she might bring amidst them, so they drove her back and would hear naught of

her. A few, more pitiful than the rest, flung her twice or thrice a little broken bread; she took it eagerly, and

fed on it, knowing that she must keep life in her by some food, or leave him utterly alone. For him she had

laid down all pride; for him she would have kissed the feet of the basest or sued to the lowest for alms.

And when the peoplewhose debts to her she had often forgiven, and whom she had once fancied had borne

her a little lovedrove her from them with harshest reviling, she answered nothing, but dropped her head

and turned and crept again up the winding stairs to kneel beside his couch of straw, and wonder, in the

bewildered anguish of her aching brain, if indeed evil were good,since evil alone could save him.

Seven days went by; the chimes of the bells blown on the wild autumn winds in strange bursts of jangled

sound; the ceaseless murmur of the city's crowd surging ever on the silence from the far depths below;

sunrise and moonrise following one another with no change in the perishing life that she alone guarded,

whilst every day the light that freshly rose upon the world found the picture of the Barabbas, and shone on the

Every night during those seven days the flutelike voice of her tempter made hated music to her ear. It asked

"He dies there," he said, slowly resting his tranquil musing gaze upon the bed of straw. "It is a pity. So little

would save him still. A little wine, a little fruit, a little skill,his soul's desire when his sense returns. So

littleand he would live, and he would be great; and the Barabbas would scourge the secret sins of the

nations, and the nations, out of very fear and very shame, would lift their voices loud and hail him prophet

Her strength was broken as she heard. She turned and flung herself in supplication at his feet.

She did not move; her upraised face spoke without words the passion of her prayer.

"I am but a mortal,FolleFarine. Can I open the gates of the tomb, or close them?"

"Ah! you learn at last that there is but one god? You have been slow to believe,FolleFarine."

She clung to him; she writhed around him; she kissed with her soilless lips the base dust at his feet.

"You hold the keys of the world; you can save the life of his body; you can give him the life of his soul. You

are a beast, a devil, a thing foul and unclean, and without mercy, and cruel as a lie; and therefore you are the

thing that men follow, and worship, and obey. I know!I know! You can save him if you will!"

She laughed where she was stretched upon the ground, a laugh that stayed the smile upon his mouth.

Where she was stretched face downward at his feet she shuddered, as though the folds of a snake curled

The hours passed; she did not move; stretched there, she wrestled with her agony as the fatepursued

wrestled with their doom on the steps of the temple, while the dread Eumenides drew round them and

She arose and went to Arsl�n's side as a dying beast in the public roadway under a blow staggers to its feet to

"Let him die!" she muttered, with lips dry as the lips of the dead. "Let him die!"

An old creature, with a vulture's eyes and bony fingers, and rags that were plaguestricken with the poisons

of filth and of disease, had followed and looked at her in the doorway, and kicked her where she lay.

"He owes me twenty days for the room," he muttered, while his breath scorched her throat with the fumes of

drink. "A debt is a debt. Tomorrow I will take the canvas; it will do to burn. You shiver?fool! If you

chose, you could fill this garret with gold this very night. But you love this man, and so you let him perish

He went away through the blackness and the stench, muttering, as he struck his staff upon each stair:

She heard and shivered, and looked at the bed of straw, and on the great canvas of the Barabbas.

Before another day had come and gone, he would lie in the common ditch of the poor, and the work of his

If she tried once more? If she sought human pity, human aid? Some deliverance, some mercy,who could

say? might yet be found, she thought. The gods were dead; but menwere they all more wanton than the

For the first time in seven days she left his side to go forth into the living world.

She rose and staggered for the garret, down the stairway, into the lower stories of the wilderness of wood and

She traced her way blindly to the places she had known. They closed their doors in haste, and fled from her in

They had heard that she had gone to tend some madman plaguestricken with some nameless fever; and

One woman she stayed, and held with timid, eager hands. Of this woman she had taken nothing all the

"Have pity!" she muttered. "You are poor, indeed, I know; but help me. He dies there!"

The others said the same, some less harshly, some more harshly. Twice or thrice they added:

"You beg of us, and send the jewels back? Go and be wise. Make your harvest of gold whist you can. Reap

Not one amongst them braved the peril of a touch of pity; not one amongst them asked the story of her woe;

and when the little children ran to her their mothers plucked them back, and cried:

In all this labyrinth of roofs, in all these human herds she yet thought, "Surely there must be some who pity?"

Her brain was on fire, and her heart seemed frozen; her lips moved without sound, and unconsciously shaped

So slight a thing, they said, and yet high above reach as Aldebaran, when it glistened through the storm wrack

Why could he have not been content, as she had been, with the rush of the winds over the plains, the strife of

the flood and the hurricane, the smell of the fruithung ways at night, the cool green shadows of the summer

woods, the courses of the clouds, the rapture of the keen air blowing from the sea, the flight of a bird over the

tossing poppies, the day song of the lark,all these were life enough for her; were freedom, loveliness,

companionship, and solace. Ah, God! she thought, if only these had made the world of his desires likewise.

And even in her ghastlier grief her heart sickened for them in vain anguish as she wentthese the pure joys

The lamps flickered through the watery darkness. Beggars and thieves and harlots jostled her in the narrow

"It must be Hellthe hell of the Christians," she muttered, as she stood alone on the flints of the roads, in the

rancid smell, in the hideous riot, in the ghastly mirth, in the choking stench, in the thick steam of the

darkness, whose few dull gleams of yellow light served to show the false red on a harlot's cheek, or the

She moved on with slow unconscious movement of her limbs; her hair blew back, her eyes had a pitiless

wonder in their vacant stare; her bloodless face had the horror in it that Greek sculptors gave to the face of

those whom a relentless destiny pursued and hunted down; ever and again she looked back as she went, as

though some nameless, shapeless, unutterable horror were behind her in her steps.

The people called her mad, and laughed and hooted her; when they had any space to think of her at all.

"A little food, a little wine, for pity's sake," she murmured; for her own needs she had never asked a crust in

charity, but for his,she would have kissed the mud from the feet of any creature who would have had thus

In answer they only mocked her, some struck her int he palm of her outstretched hand. Some called her by

foul names; some seized her with a drunken laugh, and cursed her as she writhed from their lewd hold; some,

and these often women, whispered to her of the bagnio and the brothel; some muttered against her as a thief;

one, a youth, who gave her the gentlest answer that she had, murmured in her ear, "a beggar? with that face?

She went on through the sulphurous yellow gare, and the poisonous steam of these human styes, shuddering

from the hands that grasped, the voices that wooed her, the looks that ravished her, the laughs that mocked

It was the hell of the Christians; it was a city at midnight; and its very stones seemed to arise and give tongue

in her derision and cry, "Oh, fool, you dreamt of a sacrifice which should be honour; of a death, which should

be release; of a means whereby through you the world should hear the old songs of the gods? Oh, fool! We

are Christians here: and we only gather the reeds of the river to bruise them and break them, songless and

After a little space they widened, and the lights multiplied, and through the rushing rains she saw the gay

On a gust of wind there came a breath of fragrance from a root of autumn blossom in a balcony. The old

sweet woodland smell smote her as with a blow; the people in the street looked after her.

She came to a broad place, which even in that night of storm was still a blaze of fire, and seemed to her to

laugh through all its marble mask, and all its million eyes of golden light. A cruel laugh which mocked and

"The seven chords of the lyre; who listens, who cares, who has ears to hear? But the rod of wealth all women

kiss, and to its rule all men crawl; for ever. You dreamt to give him immortality?fool! Give him

Under one of the burning cressets of flame there was a slab of stone on which were piled, bedded in leaves,

all red and gold, with pomp of autumn, the fruit of the vine in great clear pyramids of white and purple;

tossed there so idly in such profusion from the past vintage time, that a copper coin or two could buy a feast

for half a score of months. Some of the clusters rotted already from their over ripeness.

She looked at them with the passionate woful eyes of a dog mad with thirst, which can see water and yet

cannot reach it. She leaned towards them, she caught their delicious coldness in her burning hands, she

"He dies there!" she muttered, lifting her face to the eyes of the woman guarding her. "He dies there; would

you give me a little cluster, ever such a little one, to cool his mouth, for pity's sake?"

The woman thrust her away, and raised, shrill and sharp through all the clamour of the crowd, the cry of thief.

A score of hands were stretched to seize her, only the fleetness of her feet saved her. She escaped from them,

She had done all she could; she had made one effort, for his sake; and all living creatures had repulsed her.

None would believe; none would pity; none would hear. Her last strength was broken, her last faint hope had

In her utter wretchedness she ceased to wonder, she ceased to revolt, she accepted the fate which all men told

"It was I who was mad," she thought, "so mad, so vain, to dream that I might ever be chosen as the reed was

She went back to the place where he laydying, unless help came to him. She climbed the stairway, and

stole through the foulness and the darkness of the winding ways, and retraced her steps, and stood upon his

She had been absent but one hour; yet already the last, most abject, most wretched penalty of death had come

The night was wet. The rain dropped through the roof. The rats fought on the floor and climbed the walls.

A palsied crone, with ravenous hands; sheared the locks of his fair hair, muttering, "They will fetch a stoup of

The old man who owned the garret crammed into a wallet such few things of metal, or of wood, or of paper,

as were left in the utter poverty of the place, muttering as he gathered the poor shreds of art, "They will do to

burn; they will do to burn. At sunrise I will get help and carry the great canvas down."

The rats hurried to their holes at the light; the hag let fall her shears, and fled through an opening in the wall.

"Tomorrow I will have the great canvas," he said, as he passed out, bearing his wallet with him. "And the

students will give me a silver bit, for certain, for that fine corpse of his. It will make good work for their

And he grinned in her eyes as he passed her. A shiver shook her; she said nothing; it seemed to her as though

She set down her lamp, and crossed the chamber, and kneeled down beside the straw that made his bed.

She knew that the world gave her one chanceone only. She knew that men alone reigned, and that the gods

She flung herself beside him on the straw and wound her arms about him, and laid his head to rest upon her

Greatness would come to him, and the dominion of gold; and the work of his hands would pass amidst the

treasures of the nations; and he would live and arise and say, "the desire of my heart is mine,"and yet he

would never know that one creature had so loved him that she had perished more horribly than by death to

If he lived to the uttermost years of man, he would never know how, body and soul, she had passed away to

Amidst the folded lilies, on the white waters, as the moon rose,she laughed to think how she had

sometimes dreamed to slay herself in such tender summer peace for him. That was how women perished

when men loved, and loved enough to die with them, their lips upon each other's to the last. But she

Death in peace; sacrifice in honour; a little memory in a human heart; a little place in a great hereafter; there

A martyrdom in shame; a life in ignominythese were all to which she might aspireso they said.

Upon his breast women would sink to sleep; amongst his hair their hands would wander, and on his mouth

their sighs would spend themselves. Shut in the folded leaves of the unblossomed years some dreams of

She loved him with that fierce and envious force which grudged the wind its privilege to breathe upon his

lips, the earth its right to bear his footsteps, which was for ever jealous of the mere echo of his voice,

avaricious of the mere touch of his hand. And when she gave him to the future, she gave him to other eyes,

that would grow blind with passion, meeting his; to other forms, that would burn with sweetest shame

beneath his gaze; to other lives, whose memories would pass with his to the great Hereafter, made immortal

Almost it was stronger than her strength. Almost she yielded to the desire which burned in her to let him

die,and die there with him,and so hold him for ever hers, and not the world's; his and none other's in the

eternal unison of the grave, so that with hers his beauty should be consumed, and so that with hers his beauty

should be shut from human sight, and the same corruption feed together on their hearts.

Almost she yielded; but the greatness of her love was stronger than its vileness, and its humility was more

It seemed to her,mad, and bruised, and stunned with her misery,that for a thing so worthless and

loveless and despised as she to suffer the deadliest shame to save a life so great as his was, after all, a fate

For herwhat could it matter?a thing baser than the dust,whether the feet of men trampled her in scorn

a little more, a little less, before she sank away into the eternal night wherein all things are equal and all

"Did I not declare aright? Over every female thing you are victorioussoon or late?"

"Nay, not so. For the soul still is closed against me; and the soul still is pure. But this men do not see, and

ERE another year had been fully born, the world spoke in homage and in wonder of two things.

The one,a genius which had suddenly arisen in its midst, and taken vengeance for the long neglect of bitter

years, and scourged the world with pitiless scorn until, before this mighty scourge which it had dared once to

deride and deny, it crouched trembling; and wondered and did homage; and said in fear, "Truly this man is

The other,the bodily beauty of a woman; a beauty rarely seen in open day, but only in the innermost

recesses of a sensualist's palace; a creature barefooted, with chains of gold about her ankles, and loose white

robes which showed each undulation of the perfect limbs, and on her breast the fires of a knot of opal; a

creature in whose eyes there was one changeless look, as of some desert beast taken from the freedom of the

air and cast to the darkness of some unutterable horror; a creature whose lips were for ever mute, mute as the

One day the man whom the nations at last had crowned, saw the woman whom it was a tyrant's pleasure to

place beside him now and then, in the public ways, as a tribune of Rome placed in his chariot of triumph the

Across the clear hot light of noon the eyes of Arsl�n fell on hers for the first time since they had looked on

"So soon?" he murmured, and passed onward, whilst the people made way for him in homage.

He had his heart's desire. He was great. He only smiled to thinkall women are alike.

Her body shrank, her head dropped, as though a knife were thrust into her breast.

But her lips kept their silence to the last. They were so strong, they were so mute; they did not even once cry

The golden flowers of the willows blew in the low winds; the waters came and went; the moon rose full and

Two winters had drifted by, and one hot drowsy summer since their creator had forsaken them, and all the

white still shapes upon the walls already had been slain by the cold breath of Time. The green weeds waved

in the empty casements; the chancesown seeds of thistles and of bellflowers were taking leaf between the

square stones of the paven places; on the deserted threshold lichens and brambles climbed together; the filmy

ooze of a rank vegetation stole over the loveliness of Persephone and devoured one by one the divine

offspring of Zeus; about the feet of the bound sun king in Pheroe and over the calm serene mockery of

Hermes' smile the grey nets of the spiders' webs had been woven to and fro, across and across, with the lacing

of a million threads, as Fate weaves round the limbs and covers the eyes of mortals as they stumble blindly

from their birthplace to their grave. All things, the damp and the dust, the frost and the scorch, the newts and

the rats, the fret of the flooded waters, and the stealing sure inroad of the mosses that everywhere grew from

the dews and the fogs, had taken and eaten, in hunger or sport, or had touched, and thieved from, then left,

The three gods alone remained; who being the sons of eternal night, are unharmed, unaltered, by any passage

of the years of earth. The only gods who never bend beneath the yoke of years; but unblenchingly behold the

nations wither as uncounted leaves, and the lands and the seas change their places, and the cities and the

empires pass away as a tale that is told; and the deities that are worshipped in the temples alter in name and

In the still cold moonlit air their shadows stood together. Hand in hand; looking outward through the white

night mists. Other gods perished with the faith of each age as it changed; other gods lived by the breath of

men's lips, the tears of prayer, the smoke of sacrifice. But they,their empire was the universe.

In every young soul that leaps into the light of life rejoicing blindly, Oneiros has dominion; and he alone. In

every creature that breathes, from the conqueror resting on a field of blood, to the nest bird cradled in its bed

of leaves, Hypnos holds a sovereignty which nothing mortal can long resist and live. And Thanatos,to him

belong every created thing, past, present, and to come; beneath his feet all generations lie; and in the hollow

of his hand he holds the worlds; though the earth be tenantless, and the heavens sunless, and the planets

shrivel in their courses, and the universe be shrouded in an endless night, yet through the eternal desolation

Thanatos still will reign, and through the eternal darkness, through the immeasurable solitudes, he alone will

Deathless as themselves their shadows stood; and the worm and the lizard and the newt left them alone and

dared not wind about their calm clear brows, and dared not steal to touch the roses at their lips, knowing that

ere the birth of the worlds these were and when the worlds shall have perished these still will reign on:the

slow, sure, soundless, changeless ministers of an eternal rest, of an eternal oblivion.

A late light strayed in from the grey skies, pale as the primrose flowers that grew amongst the reeds upon the

shore; and found its way to them, trembling; and shone in the farseeing depths of their unfathomable eyes.

With the faint gleam of the tender evening, there came across the threshold a human form, barefooted,

bareheaded, with broken links of golden chains gleaming here and there upon her limbs, with white robes

hanging heavily, soaked with dews and rains; with sweet familiar smells of nightborn blossoms, of wet

leaves, of budding palmboughs, of dark seedsown fields, and the white flower foam of orchards, shedding

their fragrance from her as she moved. Her face was bloodless as the faces of the gods; her eyes had a look of

blindness; her lips were close locked together; her feet stumbled often, yet her path was straight.

She had hidden by day, she had fled by night; all human creatures had scattered themselves from her in fear.

She had made her way, blindly but surely through the cool air; through the shadows and the grasses; through

the sighing sounds of bells; through the pastures, where the herds were grazing; through the daffodils blowing

in the shallow brooks; through all the things for which her heart had been athirst so long, and which she

Too late for any coolness of fresh grass beneath her limbs to give them rest; too late for any twilight song of

misselthrush or merle to touch her dumb dead heart to music; too late for any kiss of clustering leaves to

heal the shame that blistered on her lips and withered all their youth. And yet she loved them: loved them

never yet more utterly than now when she came back to them, faithful as Persephone to the pomegranate

She crossed the threshold, whilst the reeds that grew in the water by the steps bathed her feet and blew

together against her limbs, sorrowing for this life so like their own, which had dreamed of the songs of the

The bonds of silence were loosened; the lips dumb so long for love's sake found voice, and cried out:

"How longhow long? Wilt thou never take pity, and stoop and say 'Enough?' I have kept faith; I have kept

silence to the end. The gods know. My life for his; my soul for his. So I said; so I have given. I would not

have it otherwise. See: I am glad, I am proud, I am strong. See, I have never spoken. The gods have let me

perish in his stead. Nay; I suffer nothing. What can it matter for me? Nay; I thank thee that thou hast given

my vileness to be the means of his glory. He is great, he has his desire; and II am less than the dust. What

matter? He must not know; he must never know. And one day I might be weak, or mad, and speak. Take me

whilst still I am strong. A little while ago, in a space in the crowds, he saw me. 'So soon!' he said,and

smiled. And yet I live! Keep faith with me; keep faith at last. Slay me now, quickly, for pity's sake; lest once I

Thanatos, in answer, laid his hand upon her lips; and sealed them, and their secret with them, mute for

On the shores of the river the winds swept through the reeds; and, sighing amidst them, mourned, saying:

"A thing as free as we, and as fair as ye, is dead; a thing whose joys were made, like ours, from song of the

birds, from sight of the sun, from sound of the waters, from smell of the fields; from the tossing spray of the

white fruit blossoms, from the play of the grasses at sunrise, from all the innocent liberties of earth and air.

She has perished as a trampled leaf, as a broken shell, as a rose that falls in the public ways, as a star that is

cast down an autumn night. She has died as the dust dies; and none sorrow. What matter? Men are wise, and

The moon shone cold and clear. The breath of the wild thyme and the willow flowers was sweet upon the air.

The leaves blew together, murmuring. The shadows of the clouds were dark upon the stream.

The noisome creatures of the place stole away trembling; the nameless things begotten by loneliness and

gloom glided to their holes, as though afraid; the blind newts crept into the utter darkness afar off; the cool

winds alone hovered near her, and moved her hair, and touched her limbs with all the fragrance of forest and

plain, of the young year and the blossoming woods, of the green garden ways and the silvery sea.

The lives of the earth, and the air, and the waters, alone mourned for this life which was gone from amidst

them; free, even in base bondage; pure, though every hand had cast defilement on it; incorrupt, amidst

IN the springtide of the year three reapers cut to the roots the reeds that grew by the river.

They worked at dawn; the skies were grey, the still and silvery stream flowed inward slowly; the air was

filled with the dreamy scent of white fruit blossoms; in the hush of the daybreak the song of a lark thrilled the

Resting from their labours with the rushes slain around them, theylooking idly withinsaw her lying

The gleam of the gold on her limbs conquered their fear. They ventured in and looked on her, and timorously

touched her and turned her face to the light of the coming day. Then they saw that she was dead.

"It is that evil thing of Ypr�s," they muttered one to another; and stood looking at one and another and at

"It were a righteous act to thrust her in a grave," they murmured to each other at the last,and paused.

"Ay, truly," they agreed, "otherwise she may break the bonds of Death and rise again and haunt us always;

"It were a sin," one murmured, "it were a sin to bury the pure good gold in the darkness. Even if it come from

The three reapers waited a little, still afraid; then hastily, as men slaughter a thing they fear may rise against

them, they stripped the white robes from her, and drew off the anklets of gold from her feet, and the chains of

When they had stripped her body bare, they were stricken with a terror of the dead creature whom they had

violated with their theft; and being consumed with dread lest any, as the day grew lighter, should pass by

there and see what they had done, they went out in trembling haste, and together dug deep down into the wet

sands, where the reeds grew, and dragged her naked body to the air, and thrust it down there, into its

Then, with the gold, they hurried to their homes, leaving the reeds which they had reaped to wither in the

The waters rose and smoothed the ruffled soil, and rippled in a sheet of silver over the shore, and effaced all

The reeds blew together by the river, now red in the daybreak, now white in the moonrise, and the winds

The seasons came and went; the waters rose and sank; in the golden flowers of the willows the young birds

made music with their wings; the softfooted things of brake and bush stole through the leaves, and drank at

the edge of the stream, and fled away over the wet grey sand: the people passed down the slow current of the

tides with lilysheaves of the flowering spring, with ruddy fruitage of the summer meads, with yellow

harvest of the autumn fields, passed singing, smiting the reapen rushes as they went.

For Thanatos alone knew. Thanatos who watched by day and night the slain reeds sigh, fruitless and rootless,

in the empty air; Thanatos, who by the cold, sad patience of his gaze, spake, saying:

"I am the only pity of the world. And even I,to every mortal thing I come, too early, or too late."

16. BOOK III. "L'Artiste est un dieu tomb�, qui se souvient du temps quand il cr�a un monde.", page = 102