The music thrilled out upon the silence, catching the
song of the brook in harmony as Goethe caught it in verse,- all
its fresh delicious babble, all its rush of silvery sound, all its cool
and soothing murmur, all its pauses of deep rest.
song of the brook in harmony as Goethe caught it in verse,- all
its fresh delicious babble, all its rush of silvery sound, all its cool
and soothing murmur, all its pauses of deep rest.
Warner - World's Best Literature - v19 - Oli to Phi
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OUIDA
THE SILK STOCKINGS
From Bébée, or Two Little Wooden Shoes'
"IF
F I could save a centime a day, I could buy a pair of stock-
ings this time next year," thought Bébée, locking her shoes
with her other treasures in her drawer the next morning,
and taking her broom and pail to wash down her little palace.
But a centime a day is a great deal in Brabant, when one has
not always enough for bare bread, and when, in the long chill
winter, one must weave thread lace all through the short day-
light for next to nothing at all: for there are so many women in
Brabant, and every one of them, young or old, can make lace,
and if one do not like the pitiful wage, one may leave it and
go and die for what the master lace-makers care or know; there
will always be enough, many more than enough, to twist the
thread round the bobbins, and weave the bridal veils and the
trains for the courts.
"And besides, if I can save a centime, the Varnhart children
ought to have it," thought Bébée, as she swept the dust together.
It was so selfish of her to be dreaming about a pair of stock-
ings, when those little things often went for days on a stew of
nettles.
—
So she looked at her own pretty feet,-pretty and slender
and arched, rosy and fair and uncramped by the pressure of
leather, and resigned her day-dream with a brave heart, as she
put up her broom and went out to weed and hoe and trim and
prune the garden that had been for once neglected the night
before.
"One could not move half so easily in stockings," she thought
with true philosophy, as she worked among the black fresh sweet-
smelling mold, and kissed a rose now and then as she passed
one.
When she got into the city that day, her rush-bottomed chair,
which was always left upside down in case rain should fall in
the night, was set ready for her; and on its seat was a gay,
gilded box, such as rich people give away full of bonbons.
Bébée stood and looked from the box to the Broodhuis, from
the Broodhuis to the box; she glanced around, but no one had
come there so early as she, except the tinker, who was busy
quarreling with his wife, and letting his smelting-fire burn a hole.
in his breeches.
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"The box was certainly for her, since it was set upon her
chair. " - Bébée pondered a moment; then little by little opened
the lid.
Within, on a nest of rose-satin, were two pair of silk stock-
ings! - real silk! - with the prettiest clocks worked up their sides
in color!
Bébée gave a little scream, and stood still, the blood hot in
her cheeks. No one heard her: the tinker's wife, who alone
was near, having just wished Heaven to send a judgment on her
husband, was busy putting out his smoking small-clothes. It
is a way that women and wives have, and they never see the
bathos of it.
The Place filled gradually.
The customary crowds gathered. The business of the day
began underneath the multitudinous tones of the chiming bells.
Bébée's business began too; she put the box behind her with a
beating heart, and tied up her flowers.
It was fairies, of course! but they had never set a rush-
bottomed chair on its legs before, and this action of theirs fright-
ened her.
It was rather an empty morning. She sold little, and there
was the more time to think.
About an hour after noon, a voice addressed her,-
"Have you more moss-roses for me? "
Bébée looked up with a smile, and found some. It was her
companion of the cathedral. She had thought much of the red
shoes and the silver clasps, but she had thought nothing at all of
him.
―
"You are not too proud to be paid to-day? " he said, giving
her a silver franc - he would not alarm her with any more
gold; she thanked him, and slipped it in her little leathern
pouch, and went on sorting some clove-pinks.
"You do not seem to remember me? " he said with a little
sadness.
"Oh, I remember you," said Bébée, lifting her frank eyes.
"But you know I speak to so many people, and they are all
nothing to rae. "
"Who is anything to you? " It was softly and insidiously
spoken, but it awoke no echo.
"Vanhart's children," she answered him instantly. "And old
Annémie by the wharfside - and Tambour-and Antoine's grave
—and the starling - and of course, above all, the flowers. "
## p. 10890 (#98) ###########################################
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OUIDA
"And the fairies, I suppose? though they do nothing for
you. "
She looked at him eagerly:
"They have done something to-day. I have found a box,
and some stockings- such beautiful stockings! Silk ones! Is it
not very odd? "
"It is more odd they should have forgotten you so long.
May I see them? »
"I cannot show them to you now. Those ladies are going to
buy. But you can see them later-if you wait. "
"I will wait and paint the Broodhuis. "
"So many people do that: you are a painter then? "
"Yes-in a way. "
He sat down on an edge of the stall, and spread his things
there, and sketched, whilst the traffic went on around them. He
was very many years older than she; handsome, with a dark
and changeful and listless face; he wore brown velvet, and had
a red ribbon at his throat; he looked a little as Egmont might
have done when wooing Claire.
Bébée, as she sold the flowers and took the change fifty times.
in the hour, glanced at him now and then, and watched the
movements of his hands - she could not have told why.
Always among men and women, always in the crowds of the
streets, people were nothing to her; she went through them as
through a field of standing corn, only in the field she would
have tarried for poppies, and in the town she tarried for no
one.
―――――――
She dealt with men as with women: simply, truthfully, frankly,
with the innocent fearlessness of a child. When they told her
she was pretty, she smiled; it was just as they said that her
flowers were sweet.
But this man's hands moved so swifty; and as she saw her
Broodhuis growing into color and form beneath them, she could
not choose but look now and then, and twice she gave her change
wrong.
He spoke to her rarely, and sketched on and on in rapid
bold strokes the quaint graces and massive richness of the Mai-
son du Roi.
There is no crowd so busy in Brabant that it will not find
leisure to stare. The Fleming or the Walloon has nothing of
the Frenchman's courtesy: he is rough and rude; he remains
a peasant even when town-bred, and the surly insolence' of the
## p. 10891 (#99) ###########################################
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"Gueux" is in him still. He is kindly to his fellows, though
not to beasts; he is shrewd, patient, thrifty, industrious, and good
in very many ways, but civil never.
A good score of them left off their occupations and clus-
tered round the painter, staring, chattering, pushing, pointing,
as though a brush had never been seen in all the land of
Rubens.
Bébée, ashamed of her people, got up from her chair and
rebuked them.
"O men of Brussels, fie then, for shame! " she called to them.
as clearly as a robin sings. "Did never you see a drawing be-
fore? and are there not saints and martyrs enough to look at
in the galleries? and have you never some better thing to do
than to gape wide-mouthed at a stranger? What laziness - ah!
just worthy of a people who sleep and smoke while their dogs
work for them! Go away, all of you; look, there comes the gen-
darme, it will be the worse for you. -Sir, sit under my stall;
they will not dare trouble you then. "
-
He moved under the awning, thanking her with a smile;
and the people, laughing, shuffled unwillingly aside and let him
paint on in peace. It was only little Bébée; but they had spoilt
the child from her infancy, and were used to obey her.
The painter took a long time. He set about it with the bold
ease of one used to all the intricacies of form and color, and he
had the skill of a master. But he spent more than half the
time looking idly at the humors of the populace, or watching
how the treasures of Bébée's garden went away one by one in
the hands of strangers.
Meanwhile, ever and again, sitting on the edge of her stall,
with his colors and brushes tossed out on the board, he talked
to her; and with the soft imperceptible skill of long practice in
those arts, he drew out the details of her little simple life.
There were not always people to buy; and whilst she rested
and sheltered the flowers from the sun, she answered him will-
ingly, and in one of her longer rests showed him the wonderful
stockings. .
"Do you think it could be the fairies? " she asked him a lit-
tle doubtfully.
It was easy to make her believe any fantastical nonsense; but
her fairies were ethereal divinities. She could scarcely believe
that they had laid that box on her chair.
## p. 10892 (#100) ##########################################
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OUIDA
"Impossible to doubt it! " he replied unhesitatingly. "Given
a belief in fairies at all, why should there be any limit to what
they can do? It is the same with the saints, is it not? "
"Yes," said Bébée thoughtfully.
The saints were mixed up in her imagination with the fairies
in an intricacy that would have defied the best reasonings of
Father Francis.
"Well, then, you will wear the stockings, will you not? Only,
believe me, your feet are far prettier without them. "
Bébée laughed happily, and took another peep in the cozy
rose-satin nest. But her little face had a certain perplexity.
Suddenly she turned on him.
"Did not you put them there? »
"I never! "
"Are you quite sure? »
«<
Quite; but why ask? »
"Because," said Bébée, shutting the box resolutely and push-
ing it a little away, "because I would not take it if you did.
You are a stranger, and a present is a debt, so Antoine always
said. "
"Why take a present, then, from the Varnhart children, or
your old friend who gave you the clasps ? "
"Ah, that is very different. When people are poor, very, very
poor, equally poor, the one with the other, little presents that
they save for and make with such a difficulty are just things
that are a pleasure; sacrifices: like your sitting up with a sick
person at night, and then she sits up with you another year
when you want it. Do you not know? "
"I know you talk very prettily. But why should you not
take any one else's present, though he may not be poor? "
"Because I could not return it. "
"Could you not? "
The smile in his eyes dazzled her a little; it was so strange,
and yet had so much light in it: but she did not understand him
one whit.
"No; how could I? " she said earnestly. "If I were to save
for two years, I could not get francs enough to buy anything
worth giving back; and I should be so unhappy, thinking of the
debt of it always. Do tell me if you put those stockings there? "
"No," he looked at her, and the trivial lie faltered and died
away; the eyes, clear as crystal, questioned him so innocently.
## p. 10893 (#101) ##########################################
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10893
"Well, if I did? " he said frankly, "you wished for them:
what harm was there? Will you be so cruel as to refuse them
from me? ”
The tears sprang into Bébée's eyes. She was sorry to lose
the beautiful box, but more sorry he had lied to her.
"It was very kind and good," she said regretfully. "But I
cannot think why you should have done it, as you had never
known me at all. And indeed, I could not take them, because
Antoine would not let me if he were alive; and if I gave you a
flower every day all the year round I should not pay you the
worth of them—it would be quite impossible; and why should
you tell me falsehoods about such a thing? a falsehood is never
a thing for a man. ”
She shut the box and pushed it towards him, and turned to
the selling of her bouquets. Her voice shook a little as she tied.
up a bunch of mignonette and told the price of it.
Those beautiful stockings! why had she ever seen them, and
why had he told her a lie?
It made her heart heavy. For the first time in her brief life
the Broodhuis seemed to frown between her and the sun.
Undisturbed, he painted on and did not look at her.
The day was nearly done. The people began to scatter. The
shadows grew very long. He painted, not glancing once else-
where than at his study. Bébée's baskets were quite empty.
She rose, and lingered, and regarded him wistfully: he was
angered; perhaps she had been rude? Her little heart failed her.
If he would only look up!
But he did not look up; he kept his handsome dark face stu-
diously over the canvas of the Broodhuis. She would have seen
a smile in his eyes if he had lifted them; but he never raised
his lids.
Bébée hesitated: take the stockings she would not; but per-
haps she had refused them too roughly. She wished so that he
would look up and save her speaking first; but he knew what
he was about too warily and well to help her thus.
She waited awhile, then took one little red moss-rosebud that
she had saved all day in a corner of her basket, and held it out
to him frankly, shyly, as a peace-offering.
"Was I rude? I did not mean to be. But I cannot take the
stockings; and why did you tell me that falsehood? "
## p. 10894 (#102) ##########################################
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OUIDA
He took the rosebud and rose too, and smiled; but he did not
meet her eyes.
"Let us forget the whole matter: it is not worth a sou. If
you do not take the box, leave it: it is of no use to me. "
"I cannot take it. "
She knew she was doing right. How was it that he could
make her feel as though she were acting wrongly?
"Leave it then, I say. You are not the first woman, my
dear, who has quarreled with a wish fulfilled. It is a way your
sex has of rewarding gods and men. Here, you old witch-
here is a treasure-trove for you. You can sell it for ten francs
in the town anywhere. "
As he spoke he tossed the casket and the stockings in it to
an old decrepit woman, who was passing by with a baker's cart
drawn by a dog; and not staying to heed her astonishment,
gathered his colors and easel together.
The tears swam in Bébée's eyes as she saw the box whirled
through the air.
She had done right-she was sure she had done right.
HOW TRICOTRIN FOUND VIVA
From Tricotrin>
IT
T WAS autumn; a rich golden autumn of France, with the glow
of burning sunsets, and the scarlet pomp of reddened woods,
and the purple and the yellow of grapes gathered for the
wine-press, and the luscious dreamy odor of overripened fruits
crushed by careless passing feet, upon the orchard mosses. Afar
off, in the full noonday, the winding road was white and hot
with dust; but here in a nook of forest land, in a dell of leafy
growth between the vineyards which encompassed it, the air was
cool and the sunlight broken with shade, while, through its still-
ness where the boughs threw the shadow darkest, a little torrent
leapt and splashed, making music as it went, and washing round.
the base of an old ivy-grown stone tower that had fallen to ruin
in the midst of its green nest.
There was no sound except one, beside that of the bright
tumbling stream, though now and then there came in from the
distance the ring of a convent clock's bells, or the laugh of a
## p. 10895 (#103) ##########################################
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10895
young girl at work among the vines; - no sound except one, and
that was the quick, sharp, gleeful crack of nuts in a monkey's
teeth. There were squirrels by the score there in that solitary
place who had right, hereditary and indisputable they would
have said, to all the nuts that the boughs bore and the grasses
hid: but Mistigri was no recognizer of rights divine; she loved.
nuts, and cared little how she got them, and she sat aloft in her
glory, or swung herself from twig to twig, crushing and eating
and flinging the shells away with all that gleeful self-satisfaction
of which a little black monkey is to the full as capable, after
successful piracy, as any conquering sovereign.
"Mistigri, Mistigri! " said her companion surveying her, "who
could doubt your human affinity who once had seen you pilfer?
Monkey stows away her stolen goods in a visible pouch unblush-
ingly; man smuggles his away unknown in the guise of 'profit'
or 'percentage,' 'commerce' or 'annexation,' the natural ad-
vancement of civilization on the simple and normal thieving.
Increased cranium, increased caution: that's all the difference, eh,
Mistigri ? "
-
Mistigri cocked her head on one side, but would not waste
time in replying: her little shiny black mouth was full of good
kernels.
"Why talk when you can take? " she would have asked.
Her owner did not press for an answer; but sung, carelessly,
snatches of Goethe's Millsong' and of Müller's 'Whisper,' his
voice chiming in with the bubble of the stream while he took
at intervals his noontide meal, classic and uncostly, of Chasselas
grapes and a big brown roll.
He was a man of some forty years, dressed in a linen blouse,
with a knapsack as worn as an African soldier's lying at his
feet, unstrapped, in company with a flask of good wine and a
Straduarius fiddle. He himself was seated on a fallen tree, with
the sun breaking through the foliage above in manifold gleams
and glories, that touched the turning leaves bright red as fire,
and fell on his own head when he tossed it up to fling a word
to Mistigri, or to catch the last summer-song of a blackbird. It
was a beautiful Homeric head: bold, kingly, careless, noble, with
the royalty of the lion in its gallant poise, and the challenge
of the eagle in its upward gesture; -the head which an artist
would have given to his Hector, or his Phoebus, or his God
Lyæus. The features were beautiful too, in their varied mobile
## p. 10896 (#104) ##########################################
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OUIDA
eloquent meanings; with their poet's brows, their reveler's laugh,
their soldier's daring, their student's thought, their many and
conflicting utterances, whose contradictions made one unity-the
unity of genius.
At this moment there was only the enjoyment of a rich and
sunny nature, in an idle moment, written on them, as he ate his
grapes and threw fragments of wit up at Mistigri where she was
perched among the nut boughs. But the brilliant eyes, so blue
in some lights, so black in others, had the lustre and the depths
of infinite meditation in them; and the curling lips that were
hidden under the fullness of their beard had the delicate fine
mockery of the satirist blent with the brighter, franker mirth of
genial sympathies. And his face changed as he cast the crumbs
of his finished meal to some ducks that paddled lower down in
the stream, where it grew stiller around the old tower, and took
up his Straduarius from the ground with the touch of a man
who loves the thing that he touches. The song of the water
that had made the melody to his banquet was in his brain;-
sweet, wild, entangled sounds that he must needs reproduce, with
the selfsame fancy that a painter must catch the fleeting hues of
fair scenes that would haunt him forever unless exorcised thus.
"Quiet, Mistigri! " he said softly, and the monkey sat still
on her hazel bough, eating indeed, but noiselessly. He listened
one moment more to the stream, then drew the bow across the
strings.
The music thrilled out upon the silence, catching the
song of the brook in harmony as Goethe caught it in verse,- all
its fresh delicious babble, all its rush of silvery sound, all its cool
and soothing murmur, all its pauses of deep rest. All of which
the woodland torrent told: of the winds that had tossed the
boughs into its foam; of the women-faces its tranquil pools had
mirrored; of the blue burden of forget-me-nots and the snowy
weight of lilies it had borne so lovingly; of the sweet familiar
idyls it had seen, where it had wound its way below quaint mill-
house walls choked up with ivy-growth, where the children and
the pigeons paddled with rosy feet upon the resting wheel; of the
weary sighs that had been breathed over it beneath the gray old
convents where it heard the miserere steal in with its own ripple,
and looked, itself, a thing so full of leaping joy and dancing life
to the sad eyes of girl-recluses, all these of which it told, the
music told again. The strings were touched by an artist's hand;
and all that duller ears heard, but dimly, in the splash and surge
-
## p. 10897 (#105) ##########################################
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of the brown fern-covered stream, he heard in marvelous poems,
and translated into clearer tongue the universal tongue which
has no country and no limit, and in which the musician speaks
alike to sovereign and to savage.
-
There was not a creature there to hear, save the yellow-
winged loriotes, and Mistigri, who was absorbed in nuts: but he
played on to himself an hour or more for love of the theme and
the art; and an old peasant woman, going through the trees at
some yards distance, and seeing nothing of the player for the
screen of leaves, laughed and stroked the hair of a grandchild
who clung to her, afraid of the magical woodland melodies: "The
wood-elves, little one? Bah! that is only Tricotrin! "
Her feet, brushing the fallen leaves with pleasant sound, soon
passed away; he played on and on,- such poetry as Bamboche
drew from his violin, whereat Poussin bowed his head, weeping
with the passion of women, as through his tears he beheld as in
a vision the "Et in Arcadia Ego. "
Then, as suddenly as he had begun, Tricotrin dropped the
bow and ceased, and struck a light and smoked,-a great Arab
pipe of some carved wood, black and polished by long use. On
the silence that succeeded there came a low laugh of delight,—
the laugh of a very young child. He looked up and down and
among the ferns at his feet; the laughter was close beside him,
yet he could see nothing. He smoked on indifferently, watching
the bright eyes of the birds glancing out from the shadow; then
the laugh came again, close at his side, as it sounded; he rose
and pushed aside some branches, and looked over a broken rail
behind him, beyond a tangled growth of reeds and rushes.
There he saw what had aroused him from his smoke-silence:
more than half hidden under the moss and the broad tufted
grasses, stretching her hands out at the gorgeous butterflies that
fluttered above her head, and covered with the wide yellow leaves
of gourds and the white fragrant abundance of traveler's-joy, was
the child whose laughter he had heard. A child between two
and three years old, her face warm with the flush of past sleep,
her eyes smiling against the light, her hair lying like gold-dust
on the moss, her small fair limbs struggling uncovered out of a
rough red cloak that alone was folded about her. The scarlet of
the mantle, the whiteness of the clematis, the yellow hues of
the wild gourds, the color of the winged insects, the head of the
child rising out of the mosses, and the young face that looked
XIX-682
## p. 10898 (#106) ##########################################
10898
OUIDA
like a moss-rosebud just unclosing, made a picture in their own
way; and he who passed no picture by, but had pictures in his
memory surpassing all the collected art of galleries, paused to
survey it with his arms folded on the rail.
Its solitude, its strangeness, did not occur to him; he looked
at it as at some painting of his French brethren's easels,— that
was all. But the child, seeing a human eye regard her, forgot
her butterflies and remembered human wants; she stretched her
hands to him instead of to her playmates of the air. "J'ai
faim! " she cried, with a plaintive self-pity: bread would be bet-
ter than the butterflies.
"Hungry? " he answered, addressing her as he was wont to
do Mistigri. "I have nothing for you. Who brought you there,
you Waif and Stray? Put down there and left, to get rid of
the trouble of you, apparently? Well, D'Alembert was dropped
down in the streets, and found a foster-mother in a milkwoman,
and he did pretty well afterward. Perhaps some dainty De Ten-
cin brought you likewise into the world, and has hidden you like
a bit of smuggled lace, only thinking you nothing so valuable.
Is it so,
eh? "
"J'ai faim! " cried the child afresh: all her history was com-
prised to her in the one fact that she wanted bread,—as it is
comprised to a mob.
"Catch, then! " he replied to the cry, dropping into her hands
from where he leant, a bunch of the Chasselas grapes that still
remained in his pocket. It sufficed: the child was not so much
pained by hunger as by thirst, though she scarcely knew the dif-
ference between her own sensations; her throat was dry, and the
grapes were all she wanted. He, leaning over the lichen-covered
rail, watched her while she enjoyed them one by one.
She was
a very pretty child; the prettier for that rough moss covering,
out of which her delicate fair shoulders and chest rose uncovered,
while the breeze blew about her yellow glossy curls.
"Left there to be got rid of clearly," he murmured to her.
"Any one who picks you up will do you the greatest injury
possible. Die now in the sunshine among the flowers: you will
never have such another chance of a poetical and picturesque
exit. Who was ingenious enough to hide you there? The poor
shirt-stitcher who was at her last sou? or Madame la Marquise
who was at her last scandal? Was it Magdalene who has to
wear sackcloth for having dared to sin without money to buy
## p. 10899 (#107) ##########################################
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10899
absolution? or Messalina who covers ten thousand poisonous
passions with a silver-embroidered robe, and is only discreetly
careful of consequences'? Which was your progenitrix, little
one, eh? »
(
To this question so closely concerning her, the Waif could
give no answer, being gifted with only imperfect speech; but
happy in the grapes, she laughed up in his eyes her unspoken
thanks, shaking a cluster of clematis above her head, as happy in
her couch of flowers and moss as she could have been in any
silver cradle. The question concerned her in nothing yet: the
bar sinister could not stretch across the sunny blue skies, the
butterflies flew above her as familiarly as above the brow of a
child-queen, and the white flowers did not wither sooner in bas-
tard than in legitimate hands.
"How the sun shines on you, as if you were a princess! "
he soliloquized to her. "Ah! Nature is a terrible socialist; what
republicans she would make of men if they listened to her. But
there is no fear for them,- they are not fond enough of her
school! You look very comfortably settled here, and how soon
you will get life over. You are very fortunate. You will suffer
a little bit,-paf! what of that? Everybody suffers that little
bit sooner or later, and it grows sharper the longer it is put off.
Suppose you were picked up by somebody and lived: it would
be very bad for you. You would be a lovely woman, and lovely
women are the devil's aides-de-camp. You would snare men in
your yellow hair, and steal their substance with the breath of
your lips, and dress up lying avarice as love, and make a miser's
greed wear the smile of a cherub. Ah! that you would. And
then would come age, a worse thing for women like
you than
crime or death; and you would suffer an agony with every
wrinkle, and a martyrdom with every whitening lock; and you
would grow hard, and haggard, and painted, and hideous even to
the vilest among men; and you would be hissed off the stage in
hatred by the mouths that once shouted your triumphs, while
you would hear the fresh comers laugh as they rushed on to
be crowned with the roses that once wreathed your own forehead.
And then would come the end,- the hospital and the wooden
shell, and the grave trampled flat to the dust as soon almost
as made, while the world danced on in the sunlight unheeding.
Ah! be wise. Die while you can, among your butterflies and
flowers! "
## p. 10900 (#108) ##########################################
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The child, lying below there in her nest, looked up in his
eyes again and laughed: "Viva! " she cried, while she clasped
her grapes in her two small hands.
"Viva? What do you mean by that? Do you mean, imper-
fectly, to ask to live an Italian? Fie then!
Fie then! That is unphilo-
sophic. Take the advice of two philosophers. Bolingbroke says
there is so much trouble in coming into the world and in going
out of it, that it is barely worth while to be here at all; and I
tell you the same. He had the cakes and ale too, but the one
got stale and the other bitter. What will it be for you who start
with neither cakes nor ale? Life's not worth much to a man.
It is worth just nothing at all to a woman. It is a mistake alto-
gether; and lasts just long enough for all to find that out, but
not long enough for any to remedy it. We always live the time
required to get thoroughly uncomfortable, and as soon as we are
in the track to sift the problem- paf! -out we go like a rush-
light, the very moment we begin to burn brightly. Be persuaded
by me, and don't think of living: you have a golden opportunity
of getting quittance of the whole affair. Don't throw it away! "
The good advice of Experience was, as it always is, thrown
away on the impetuosity of Ignorance. The child laughed still
over her Chasselas bunch, murmuring still over and over again
the nearest approach she knew to a name:—
"Viva - Viva — Viva! »
"The obstinacy of women prematurely developed. Why will
you not know when you are well off? Those whom the gods
love die young. ' If you would just now prefer to have your
mother's love instead of the gods', you are wrong. What have
you before you? You will be marked 'outcast. ' You will have
nothing as your career except to get rich by snaring the foolish;
or to be virtuous and starve on three halfpence a day, having a
pauper's burial as reward for your chastity. If you live, your
hands must be either soiled or empty. I would die among the
clematis if I were you. "
But the child, persistently regardless of wise counsel, only
laughed still, and strove to struggle from her network of blos-
som and of moss.
"Your mind is set upon living,- what a pity! " murmured her
solitary companion. "When your hair is white, how you will
wish you had died when it was yellow; - everybody does, but
while the yellow lasts nobody believes it! You want to live? So
## p. 10901 (#109) ##########################################
OUIDA
logor
Eve wanted the fruit of fairest colors. ' If I were to help you
to have your own way now, you would turn on me thirty years
hence as your worst enemy. Were you able to understand rea-
son—but your sex would prevent that, let alone your age. Let
us ask Mistigri. Mistigri, is that Waif to live or to die? "
The companion and counselor, who lived in his pocket and
was accustomed to be thus appealed to, had swung herself down
on to the grass, and was now squatted on the rail beside him.
The child, catching sight of the monkey, tried to stretch and
stroke her; and Mistigri, who was always of an affable, and when
she had eaten sufficient herself, of a generous turn of mind,
extended her little black paw, and tendered a nut, as an over-
ture to an acquaintance.
"You vote for life too? " cried Tricotrin. "Bah, Mistigri!
I thought you so sensible-for your sex! When a discerning
mother, above the weakness of womenkind, has arranged every-
thing so neatly, we should be the most miserable sentimentalists
to interfere. "
As he spoke, the little creature, who had been vainly striv-
ing to free herself from her forest-cradle, ceased her efforts and
looked up in piteous mute entreaty, her eyes wet and soft with
glistening tears, her mouth trembling with an unspoken appeal.
He who saw a wounded bird only to help it, and met a lame
dog only to carry it, was unable to resist that pathetic helpless-
He turned and lifted his voice.
ness.
"Grand'mère Virelois, are you there? Here is something in
your way, not in mine. "
In answer to the shout there came out from the low broken
door of the ruined tower an old peasant woman, brown and bent
and very aged, but blithe as a bird, and with her black eyes as
bright as the eyes of a mouse, under the white pent-house of
her high starched cap.
"What is it, good Tricotrin? " she asked, in that sweet, sing-
ing voice that makes the accent of many French peasant women
so lingering and charming on the ear, the voice that has in it
all the contentment of the brave, cheery spirit within.
"A Waif and Stray," answered Tricotrin. "Whether from
Mary Magdalene or Madame la Marquise is unknown; probably
will never be known. Curses go home to roost, but chickens
don't. The Waif is irrational: she thinks a mouthful of black
bread better than easy extinction among the ferns. Claudine de
-
## p. 10902 (#110) ##########################################
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10902
Tencin has left a feminine D'Alembert in a moss-cradle: are you
inclined to play the part of the foster-mother? "
Grand'mère Virelois listened to the harangue, comprehending
it no more than if he had spoken in Hebrew; but she was used
to him, and thought nothing of that.
"What is it I am to see? " she asked again, peering curi-
ously with lively interest among the leaves. Before he could
answer she had caught sight of the child, with vehement amaze
and ecstatic wonder; the speech had been as Hebrew to her, but
the fact was substantial and indisputable. Crossing herself in
her surprise, with a thousand expletives of pity and admiration, she
bent her little withered but still active form beneath the rail, and
stooped and raised the foundling-raised her, but only a little
from the ground.
Holy Virgin! Tricotrin! " she cried, "look here! the child is
fastened. Help me! "
He looked quickly as she called him, and saw that the withes
of osiers and the tendrils of wild vine had been netted so tightly
around the limbs, tied here and there with strong twine, that the
infant could never have escaped from its resting-place; it had
evidently been so fastened that the child might perish there un-
seen. His face darkened as he looked.
"Murder, then! not mere neglect. Ah! this is Madame la
Marquise at work, not Magdalene! " he murmured, as he slashed
the network right and left with his knife, and set the Waif at
liberty; while Grand'mère Virelois went into a woman's raptures
on the young beauty of the "petit Gésu," and a woman's vehe-
ment censures of a sister's sin.
Tricotrin smoked resignedly, while her raptures and her dia-
tribes expended themselves; it was long before either were ex-
hausted.
"Don't abuse the mother," he interposed at last.
"Every-
body gets rid of troublesome consequences when they can.
We've done no good in disturbing her arrangements. We have
only disinterred a living blunder that she wished to bury. "
"For shame, Tricotrin! " cried Grand'mère, quivering with
horror, while she folded the child in her withered arms. "You
can jest on such wickedness! You can excuse such a murder-
ess! "
"Paf! " said Tricotrin, lightly blowing away a smoke ring.
"The whole system of creation is a sliding scale of murders.
## p. 10903 (#111) ##########################################
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10903
All the world over, life is only sustained by life being extin-
guished. "
Grand'mère Virelois, who was a pious little woman, shuddered
and clasped the child nearer.
"Ah-h-h! the vile woman! How will she see Our Lady's
face on the last day? "
"How she will meet the world she lives in is more the ques-
tion with her now, I imagine. An eminently sagacious woman!
and you and I are two sentimentalists to interfere with her ad-
mirably artistic play. So you would live, little one? I wonder
what you will make of what you have got! A Jeremiad if you
are a good silly woman; a Can-can measure if you are a bad
clever one. Which will it be, I wonder? "
"Mon Dieu, it is an angel! " murmured Grand'mère; "such
hair, like silk,—such eyes,—such a rose for a mouth! And left
to die of hunger and cold! Ah, may the Holy Mary find her
out and avenge her crime, the wicked one! "
"The vengeance will come quick if the sinner live in a garret;
it will limp very slowly if she shelter in a palace. Well, since
you take that child in your arms, do you mean to find her the
piece of bread the unphilosophic castaway will want? "
"Will I not! if I go without myself. Oh, the pretty little
child! who could have left you? Wherever the mother dwells,
may the good God hunt her down! "
"Deity as a detective? Not a grand idea that. Yet it is the
heavenly office that looks dearest to man when it is exercised
upon others! Grand'mère, answer me: Are you going to keep
that Waif? »
The bright, brown, wrinkled, homely face of the good old
woman grew perplexed.
"Ah, my friend, times are so bad, it is hard work to get a
bit in the pot for one's self; and I stitch, stitch, stitch, and spin,
spin, spin, till I am blind many a time. And yet the pretty
child- with no one to care for it! I do not know,- she must
be brought up hard if she come to me. Not a lentil even to put
in the water and make one fancy it is soup, in some days these
hard times! But do you know nothing more of her than this,
Tricotrin ? »
"Nothing. "
His luminous eyes met hers full and frankly; she knew-
all the nations where he wandered knew-that the affirmative of
Tricotrin was more sure than the truth of most men's oaths.
## p. 10904 (#112) ##########################################
10904
OUIDA
"Then she must be abandoned here by some wretch to starve
unseen ? »
"It looks like it. "
"Ah! the little angel! What does the barbarous brutal heart
of stone deserve?
10888
OUIDA
THE SILK STOCKINGS
From Bébée, or Two Little Wooden Shoes'
"IF
F I could save a centime a day, I could buy a pair of stock-
ings this time next year," thought Bébée, locking her shoes
with her other treasures in her drawer the next morning,
and taking her broom and pail to wash down her little palace.
But a centime a day is a great deal in Brabant, when one has
not always enough for bare bread, and when, in the long chill
winter, one must weave thread lace all through the short day-
light for next to nothing at all: for there are so many women in
Brabant, and every one of them, young or old, can make lace,
and if one do not like the pitiful wage, one may leave it and
go and die for what the master lace-makers care or know; there
will always be enough, many more than enough, to twist the
thread round the bobbins, and weave the bridal veils and the
trains for the courts.
"And besides, if I can save a centime, the Varnhart children
ought to have it," thought Bébée, as she swept the dust together.
It was so selfish of her to be dreaming about a pair of stock-
ings, when those little things often went for days on a stew of
nettles.
—
So she looked at her own pretty feet,-pretty and slender
and arched, rosy and fair and uncramped by the pressure of
leather, and resigned her day-dream with a brave heart, as she
put up her broom and went out to weed and hoe and trim and
prune the garden that had been for once neglected the night
before.
"One could not move half so easily in stockings," she thought
with true philosophy, as she worked among the black fresh sweet-
smelling mold, and kissed a rose now and then as she passed
one.
When she got into the city that day, her rush-bottomed chair,
which was always left upside down in case rain should fall in
the night, was set ready for her; and on its seat was a gay,
gilded box, such as rich people give away full of bonbons.
Bébée stood and looked from the box to the Broodhuis, from
the Broodhuis to the box; she glanced around, but no one had
come there so early as she, except the tinker, who was busy
quarreling with his wife, and letting his smelting-fire burn a hole.
in his breeches.
## p. 10889 (#97) ###########################################
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10889
"The box was certainly for her, since it was set upon her
chair. " - Bébée pondered a moment; then little by little opened
the lid.
Within, on a nest of rose-satin, were two pair of silk stock-
ings! - real silk! - with the prettiest clocks worked up their sides
in color!
Bébée gave a little scream, and stood still, the blood hot in
her cheeks. No one heard her: the tinker's wife, who alone
was near, having just wished Heaven to send a judgment on her
husband, was busy putting out his smoking small-clothes. It
is a way that women and wives have, and they never see the
bathos of it.
The Place filled gradually.
The customary crowds gathered. The business of the day
began underneath the multitudinous tones of the chiming bells.
Bébée's business began too; she put the box behind her with a
beating heart, and tied up her flowers.
It was fairies, of course! but they had never set a rush-
bottomed chair on its legs before, and this action of theirs fright-
ened her.
It was rather an empty morning. She sold little, and there
was the more time to think.
About an hour after noon, a voice addressed her,-
"Have you more moss-roses for me? "
Bébée looked up with a smile, and found some. It was her
companion of the cathedral. She had thought much of the red
shoes and the silver clasps, but she had thought nothing at all of
him.
―
"You are not too proud to be paid to-day? " he said, giving
her a silver franc - he would not alarm her with any more
gold; she thanked him, and slipped it in her little leathern
pouch, and went on sorting some clove-pinks.
"You do not seem to remember me? " he said with a little
sadness.
"Oh, I remember you," said Bébée, lifting her frank eyes.
"But you know I speak to so many people, and they are all
nothing to rae. "
"Who is anything to you? " It was softly and insidiously
spoken, but it awoke no echo.
"Vanhart's children," she answered him instantly. "And old
Annémie by the wharfside - and Tambour-and Antoine's grave
—and the starling - and of course, above all, the flowers. "
## p. 10890 (#98) ###########################################
10890
OUIDA
"And the fairies, I suppose? though they do nothing for
you. "
She looked at him eagerly:
"They have done something to-day. I have found a box,
and some stockings- such beautiful stockings! Silk ones! Is it
not very odd? "
"It is more odd they should have forgotten you so long.
May I see them? »
"I cannot show them to you now. Those ladies are going to
buy. But you can see them later-if you wait. "
"I will wait and paint the Broodhuis. "
"So many people do that: you are a painter then? "
"Yes-in a way. "
He sat down on an edge of the stall, and spread his things
there, and sketched, whilst the traffic went on around them. He
was very many years older than she; handsome, with a dark
and changeful and listless face; he wore brown velvet, and had
a red ribbon at his throat; he looked a little as Egmont might
have done when wooing Claire.
Bébée, as she sold the flowers and took the change fifty times.
in the hour, glanced at him now and then, and watched the
movements of his hands - she could not have told why.
Always among men and women, always in the crowds of the
streets, people were nothing to her; she went through them as
through a field of standing corn, only in the field she would
have tarried for poppies, and in the town she tarried for no
one.
―――――――
She dealt with men as with women: simply, truthfully, frankly,
with the innocent fearlessness of a child. When they told her
she was pretty, she smiled; it was just as they said that her
flowers were sweet.
But this man's hands moved so swifty; and as she saw her
Broodhuis growing into color and form beneath them, she could
not choose but look now and then, and twice she gave her change
wrong.
He spoke to her rarely, and sketched on and on in rapid
bold strokes the quaint graces and massive richness of the Mai-
son du Roi.
There is no crowd so busy in Brabant that it will not find
leisure to stare. The Fleming or the Walloon has nothing of
the Frenchman's courtesy: he is rough and rude; he remains
a peasant even when town-bred, and the surly insolence' of the
## p. 10891 (#99) ###########################################
OUIDA
10891
"Gueux" is in him still. He is kindly to his fellows, though
not to beasts; he is shrewd, patient, thrifty, industrious, and good
in very many ways, but civil never.
A good score of them left off their occupations and clus-
tered round the painter, staring, chattering, pushing, pointing,
as though a brush had never been seen in all the land of
Rubens.
Bébée, ashamed of her people, got up from her chair and
rebuked them.
"O men of Brussels, fie then, for shame! " she called to them.
as clearly as a robin sings. "Did never you see a drawing be-
fore? and are there not saints and martyrs enough to look at
in the galleries? and have you never some better thing to do
than to gape wide-mouthed at a stranger? What laziness - ah!
just worthy of a people who sleep and smoke while their dogs
work for them! Go away, all of you; look, there comes the gen-
darme, it will be the worse for you. -Sir, sit under my stall;
they will not dare trouble you then. "
-
He moved under the awning, thanking her with a smile;
and the people, laughing, shuffled unwillingly aside and let him
paint on in peace. It was only little Bébée; but they had spoilt
the child from her infancy, and were used to obey her.
The painter took a long time. He set about it with the bold
ease of one used to all the intricacies of form and color, and he
had the skill of a master. But he spent more than half the
time looking idly at the humors of the populace, or watching
how the treasures of Bébée's garden went away one by one in
the hands of strangers.
Meanwhile, ever and again, sitting on the edge of her stall,
with his colors and brushes tossed out on the board, he talked
to her; and with the soft imperceptible skill of long practice in
those arts, he drew out the details of her little simple life.
There were not always people to buy; and whilst she rested
and sheltered the flowers from the sun, she answered him will-
ingly, and in one of her longer rests showed him the wonderful
stockings. .
"Do you think it could be the fairies? " she asked him a lit-
tle doubtfully.
It was easy to make her believe any fantastical nonsense; but
her fairies were ethereal divinities. She could scarcely believe
that they had laid that box on her chair.
## p. 10892 (#100) ##########################################
10892
OUIDA
"Impossible to doubt it! " he replied unhesitatingly. "Given
a belief in fairies at all, why should there be any limit to what
they can do? It is the same with the saints, is it not? "
"Yes," said Bébée thoughtfully.
The saints were mixed up in her imagination with the fairies
in an intricacy that would have defied the best reasonings of
Father Francis.
"Well, then, you will wear the stockings, will you not? Only,
believe me, your feet are far prettier without them. "
Bébée laughed happily, and took another peep in the cozy
rose-satin nest. But her little face had a certain perplexity.
Suddenly she turned on him.
"Did not you put them there? »
"I never! "
"Are you quite sure? »
«<
Quite; but why ask? »
"Because," said Bébée, shutting the box resolutely and push-
ing it a little away, "because I would not take it if you did.
You are a stranger, and a present is a debt, so Antoine always
said. "
"Why take a present, then, from the Varnhart children, or
your old friend who gave you the clasps ? "
"Ah, that is very different. When people are poor, very, very
poor, equally poor, the one with the other, little presents that
they save for and make with such a difficulty are just things
that are a pleasure; sacrifices: like your sitting up with a sick
person at night, and then she sits up with you another year
when you want it. Do you not know? "
"I know you talk very prettily. But why should you not
take any one else's present, though he may not be poor? "
"Because I could not return it. "
"Could you not? "
The smile in his eyes dazzled her a little; it was so strange,
and yet had so much light in it: but she did not understand him
one whit.
"No; how could I? " she said earnestly. "If I were to save
for two years, I could not get francs enough to buy anything
worth giving back; and I should be so unhappy, thinking of the
debt of it always. Do tell me if you put those stockings there? "
"No," he looked at her, and the trivial lie faltered and died
away; the eyes, clear as crystal, questioned him so innocently.
## p. 10893 (#101) ##########################################
OUIDA
10893
"Well, if I did? " he said frankly, "you wished for them:
what harm was there? Will you be so cruel as to refuse them
from me? ”
The tears sprang into Bébée's eyes. She was sorry to lose
the beautiful box, but more sorry he had lied to her.
"It was very kind and good," she said regretfully. "But I
cannot think why you should have done it, as you had never
known me at all. And indeed, I could not take them, because
Antoine would not let me if he were alive; and if I gave you a
flower every day all the year round I should not pay you the
worth of them—it would be quite impossible; and why should
you tell me falsehoods about such a thing? a falsehood is never
a thing for a man. ”
She shut the box and pushed it towards him, and turned to
the selling of her bouquets. Her voice shook a little as she tied.
up a bunch of mignonette and told the price of it.
Those beautiful stockings! why had she ever seen them, and
why had he told her a lie?
It made her heart heavy. For the first time in her brief life
the Broodhuis seemed to frown between her and the sun.
Undisturbed, he painted on and did not look at her.
The day was nearly done. The people began to scatter. The
shadows grew very long. He painted, not glancing once else-
where than at his study. Bébée's baskets were quite empty.
She rose, and lingered, and regarded him wistfully: he was
angered; perhaps she had been rude? Her little heart failed her.
If he would only look up!
But he did not look up; he kept his handsome dark face stu-
diously over the canvas of the Broodhuis. She would have seen
a smile in his eyes if he had lifted them; but he never raised
his lids.
Bébée hesitated: take the stockings she would not; but per-
haps she had refused them too roughly. She wished so that he
would look up and save her speaking first; but he knew what
he was about too warily and well to help her thus.
She waited awhile, then took one little red moss-rosebud that
she had saved all day in a corner of her basket, and held it out
to him frankly, shyly, as a peace-offering.
"Was I rude? I did not mean to be. But I cannot take the
stockings; and why did you tell me that falsehood? "
## p. 10894 (#102) ##########################################
10894
OUIDA
He took the rosebud and rose too, and smiled; but he did not
meet her eyes.
"Let us forget the whole matter: it is not worth a sou. If
you do not take the box, leave it: it is of no use to me. "
"I cannot take it. "
She knew she was doing right. How was it that he could
make her feel as though she were acting wrongly?
"Leave it then, I say. You are not the first woman, my
dear, who has quarreled with a wish fulfilled. It is a way your
sex has of rewarding gods and men. Here, you old witch-
here is a treasure-trove for you. You can sell it for ten francs
in the town anywhere. "
As he spoke he tossed the casket and the stockings in it to
an old decrepit woman, who was passing by with a baker's cart
drawn by a dog; and not staying to heed her astonishment,
gathered his colors and easel together.
The tears swam in Bébée's eyes as she saw the box whirled
through the air.
She had done right-she was sure she had done right.
HOW TRICOTRIN FOUND VIVA
From Tricotrin>
IT
T WAS autumn; a rich golden autumn of France, with the glow
of burning sunsets, and the scarlet pomp of reddened woods,
and the purple and the yellow of grapes gathered for the
wine-press, and the luscious dreamy odor of overripened fruits
crushed by careless passing feet, upon the orchard mosses. Afar
off, in the full noonday, the winding road was white and hot
with dust; but here in a nook of forest land, in a dell of leafy
growth between the vineyards which encompassed it, the air was
cool and the sunlight broken with shade, while, through its still-
ness where the boughs threw the shadow darkest, a little torrent
leapt and splashed, making music as it went, and washing round.
the base of an old ivy-grown stone tower that had fallen to ruin
in the midst of its green nest.
There was no sound except one, beside that of the bright
tumbling stream, though now and then there came in from the
distance the ring of a convent clock's bells, or the laugh of a
## p. 10895 (#103) ##########################################
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10895
young girl at work among the vines; - no sound except one, and
that was the quick, sharp, gleeful crack of nuts in a monkey's
teeth. There were squirrels by the score there in that solitary
place who had right, hereditary and indisputable they would
have said, to all the nuts that the boughs bore and the grasses
hid: but Mistigri was no recognizer of rights divine; she loved.
nuts, and cared little how she got them, and she sat aloft in her
glory, or swung herself from twig to twig, crushing and eating
and flinging the shells away with all that gleeful self-satisfaction
of which a little black monkey is to the full as capable, after
successful piracy, as any conquering sovereign.
"Mistigri, Mistigri! " said her companion surveying her, "who
could doubt your human affinity who once had seen you pilfer?
Monkey stows away her stolen goods in a visible pouch unblush-
ingly; man smuggles his away unknown in the guise of 'profit'
or 'percentage,' 'commerce' or 'annexation,' the natural ad-
vancement of civilization on the simple and normal thieving.
Increased cranium, increased caution: that's all the difference, eh,
Mistigri ? "
-
Mistigri cocked her head on one side, but would not waste
time in replying: her little shiny black mouth was full of good
kernels.
"Why talk when you can take? " she would have asked.
Her owner did not press for an answer; but sung, carelessly,
snatches of Goethe's Millsong' and of Müller's 'Whisper,' his
voice chiming in with the bubble of the stream while he took
at intervals his noontide meal, classic and uncostly, of Chasselas
grapes and a big brown roll.
He was a man of some forty years, dressed in a linen blouse,
with a knapsack as worn as an African soldier's lying at his
feet, unstrapped, in company with a flask of good wine and a
Straduarius fiddle. He himself was seated on a fallen tree, with
the sun breaking through the foliage above in manifold gleams
and glories, that touched the turning leaves bright red as fire,
and fell on his own head when he tossed it up to fling a word
to Mistigri, or to catch the last summer-song of a blackbird. It
was a beautiful Homeric head: bold, kingly, careless, noble, with
the royalty of the lion in its gallant poise, and the challenge
of the eagle in its upward gesture; -the head which an artist
would have given to his Hector, or his Phoebus, or his God
Lyæus. The features were beautiful too, in their varied mobile
## p. 10896 (#104) ##########################################
10896
OUIDA
eloquent meanings; with their poet's brows, their reveler's laugh,
their soldier's daring, their student's thought, their many and
conflicting utterances, whose contradictions made one unity-the
unity of genius.
At this moment there was only the enjoyment of a rich and
sunny nature, in an idle moment, written on them, as he ate his
grapes and threw fragments of wit up at Mistigri where she was
perched among the nut boughs. But the brilliant eyes, so blue
in some lights, so black in others, had the lustre and the depths
of infinite meditation in them; and the curling lips that were
hidden under the fullness of their beard had the delicate fine
mockery of the satirist blent with the brighter, franker mirth of
genial sympathies. And his face changed as he cast the crumbs
of his finished meal to some ducks that paddled lower down in
the stream, where it grew stiller around the old tower, and took
up his Straduarius from the ground with the touch of a man
who loves the thing that he touches. The song of the water
that had made the melody to his banquet was in his brain;-
sweet, wild, entangled sounds that he must needs reproduce, with
the selfsame fancy that a painter must catch the fleeting hues of
fair scenes that would haunt him forever unless exorcised thus.
"Quiet, Mistigri! " he said softly, and the monkey sat still
on her hazel bough, eating indeed, but noiselessly. He listened
one moment more to the stream, then drew the bow across the
strings.
The music thrilled out upon the silence, catching the
song of the brook in harmony as Goethe caught it in verse,- all
its fresh delicious babble, all its rush of silvery sound, all its cool
and soothing murmur, all its pauses of deep rest. All of which
the woodland torrent told: of the winds that had tossed the
boughs into its foam; of the women-faces its tranquil pools had
mirrored; of the blue burden of forget-me-nots and the snowy
weight of lilies it had borne so lovingly; of the sweet familiar
idyls it had seen, where it had wound its way below quaint mill-
house walls choked up with ivy-growth, where the children and
the pigeons paddled with rosy feet upon the resting wheel; of the
weary sighs that had been breathed over it beneath the gray old
convents where it heard the miserere steal in with its own ripple,
and looked, itself, a thing so full of leaping joy and dancing life
to the sad eyes of girl-recluses, all these of which it told, the
music told again. The strings were touched by an artist's hand;
and all that duller ears heard, but dimly, in the splash and surge
-
## p. 10897 (#105) ##########################################
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10897
of the brown fern-covered stream, he heard in marvelous poems,
and translated into clearer tongue the universal tongue which
has no country and no limit, and in which the musician speaks
alike to sovereign and to savage.
-
There was not a creature there to hear, save the yellow-
winged loriotes, and Mistigri, who was absorbed in nuts: but he
played on to himself an hour or more for love of the theme and
the art; and an old peasant woman, going through the trees at
some yards distance, and seeing nothing of the player for the
screen of leaves, laughed and stroked the hair of a grandchild
who clung to her, afraid of the magical woodland melodies: "The
wood-elves, little one? Bah! that is only Tricotrin! "
Her feet, brushing the fallen leaves with pleasant sound, soon
passed away; he played on and on,- such poetry as Bamboche
drew from his violin, whereat Poussin bowed his head, weeping
with the passion of women, as through his tears he beheld as in
a vision the "Et in Arcadia Ego. "
Then, as suddenly as he had begun, Tricotrin dropped the
bow and ceased, and struck a light and smoked,-a great Arab
pipe of some carved wood, black and polished by long use. On
the silence that succeeded there came a low laugh of delight,—
the laugh of a very young child. He looked up and down and
among the ferns at his feet; the laughter was close beside him,
yet he could see nothing. He smoked on indifferently, watching
the bright eyes of the birds glancing out from the shadow; then
the laugh came again, close at his side, as it sounded; he rose
and pushed aside some branches, and looked over a broken rail
behind him, beyond a tangled growth of reeds and rushes.
There he saw what had aroused him from his smoke-silence:
more than half hidden under the moss and the broad tufted
grasses, stretching her hands out at the gorgeous butterflies that
fluttered above her head, and covered with the wide yellow leaves
of gourds and the white fragrant abundance of traveler's-joy, was
the child whose laughter he had heard. A child between two
and three years old, her face warm with the flush of past sleep,
her eyes smiling against the light, her hair lying like gold-dust
on the moss, her small fair limbs struggling uncovered out of a
rough red cloak that alone was folded about her. The scarlet of
the mantle, the whiteness of the clematis, the yellow hues of
the wild gourds, the color of the winged insects, the head of the
child rising out of the mosses, and the young face that looked
XIX-682
## p. 10898 (#106) ##########################################
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like a moss-rosebud just unclosing, made a picture in their own
way; and he who passed no picture by, but had pictures in his
memory surpassing all the collected art of galleries, paused to
survey it with his arms folded on the rail.
Its solitude, its strangeness, did not occur to him; he looked
at it as at some painting of his French brethren's easels,— that
was all. But the child, seeing a human eye regard her, forgot
her butterflies and remembered human wants; she stretched her
hands to him instead of to her playmates of the air. "J'ai
faim! " she cried, with a plaintive self-pity: bread would be bet-
ter than the butterflies.
"Hungry? " he answered, addressing her as he was wont to
do Mistigri. "I have nothing for you. Who brought you there,
you Waif and Stray? Put down there and left, to get rid of
the trouble of you, apparently? Well, D'Alembert was dropped
down in the streets, and found a foster-mother in a milkwoman,
and he did pretty well afterward. Perhaps some dainty De Ten-
cin brought you likewise into the world, and has hidden you like
a bit of smuggled lace, only thinking you nothing so valuable.
Is it so,
eh? "
"J'ai faim! " cried the child afresh: all her history was com-
prised to her in the one fact that she wanted bread,—as it is
comprised to a mob.
"Catch, then! " he replied to the cry, dropping into her hands
from where he leant, a bunch of the Chasselas grapes that still
remained in his pocket. It sufficed: the child was not so much
pained by hunger as by thirst, though she scarcely knew the dif-
ference between her own sensations; her throat was dry, and the
grapes were all she wanted. He, leaning over the lichen-covered
rail, watched her while she enjoyed them one by one.
She was
a very pretty child; the prettier for that rough moss covering,
out of which her delicate fair shoulders and chest rose uncovered,
while the breeze blew about her yellow glossy curls.
"Left there to be got rid of clearly," he murmured to her.
"Any one who picks you up will do you the greatest injury
possible. Die now in the sunshine among the flowers: you will
never have such another chance of a poetical and picturesque
exit. Who was ingenious enough to hide you there? The poor
shirt-stitcher who was at her last sou? or Madame la Marquise
who was at her last scandal? Was it Magdalene who has to
wear sackcloth for having dared to sin without money to buy
## p. 10899 (#107) ##########################################
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10899
absolution? or Messalina who covers ten thousand poisonous
passions with a silver-embroidered robe, and is only discreetly
careful of consequences'? Which was your progenitrix, little
one, eh? »
(
To this question so closely concerning her, the Waif could
give no answer, being gifted with only imperfect speech; but
happy in the grapes, she laughed up in his eyes her unspoken
thanks, shaking a cluster of clematis above her head, as happy in
her couch of flowers and moss as she could have been in any
silver cradle. The question concerned her in nothing yet: the
bar sinister could not stretch across the sunny blue skies, the
butterflies flew above her as familiarly as above the brow of a
child-queen, and the white flowers did not wither sooner in bas-
tard than in legitimate hands.
"How the sun shines on you, as if you were a princess! "
he soliloquized to her. "Ah! Nature is a terrible socialist; what
republicans she would make of men if they listened to her. But
there is no fear for them,- they are not fond enough of her
school! You look very comfortably settled here, and how soon
you will get life over. You are very fortunate. You will suffer
a little bit,-paf! what of that? Everybody suffers that little
bit sooner or later, and it grows sharper the longer it is put off.
Suppose you were picked up by somebody and lived: it would
be very bad for you. You would be a lovely woman, and lovely
women are the devil's aides-de-camp. You would snare men in
your yellow hair, and steal their substance with the breath of
your lips, and dress up lying avarice as love, and make a miser's
greed wear the smile of a cherub. Ah! that you would. And
then would come age, a worse thing for women like
you than
crime or death; and you would suffer an agony with every
wrinkle, and a martyrdom with every whitening lock; and you
would grow hard, and haggard, and painted, and hideous even to
the vilest among men; and you would be hissed off the stage in
hatred by the mouths that once shouted your triumphs, while
you would hear the fresh comers laugh as they rushed on to
be crowned with the roses that once wreathed your own forehead.
And then would come the end,- the hospital and the wooden
shell, and the grave trampled flat to the dust as soon almost
as made, while the world danced on in the sunlight unheeding.
Ah! be wise. Die while you can, among your butterflies and
flowers! "
## p. 10900 (#108) ##########################################
10900
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The child, lying below there in her nest, looked up in his
eyes again and laughed: "Viva! " she cried, while she clasped
her grapes in her two small hands.
"Viva? What do you mean by that? Do you mean, imper-
fectly, to ask to live an Italian? Fie then!
Fie then! That is unphilo-
sophic. Take the advice of two philosophers. Bolingbroke says
there is so much trouble in coming into the world and in going
out of it, that it is barely worth while to be here at all; and I
tell you the same. He had the cakes and ale too, but the one
got stale and the other bitter. What will it be for you who start
with neither cakes nor ale? Life's not worth much to a man.
It is worth just nothing at all to a woman. It is a mistake alto-
gether; and lasts just long enough for all to find that out, but
not long enough for any to remedy it. We always live the time
required to get thoroughly uncomfortable, and as soon as we are
in the track to sift the problem- paf! -out we go like a rush-
light, the very moment we begin to burn brightly. Be persuaded
by me, and don't think of living: you have a golden opportunity
of getting quittance of the whole affair. Don't throw it away! "
The good advice of Experience was, as it always is, thrown
away on the impetuosity of Ignorance. The child laughed still
over her Chasselas bunch, murmuring still over and over again
the nearest approach she knew to a name:—
"Viva - Viva — Viva! »
"The obstinacy of women prematurely developed. Why will
you not know when you are well off? Those whom the gods
love die young. ' If you would just now prefer to have your
mother's love instead of the gods', you are wrong. What have
you before you? You will be marked 'outcast. ' You will have
nothing as your career except to get rich by snaring the foolish;
or to be virtuous and starve on three halfpence a day, having a
pauper's burial as reward for your chastity. If you live, your
hands must be either soiled or empty. I would die among the
clematis if I were you. "
But the child, persistently regardless of wise counsel, only
laughed still, and strove to struggle from her network of blos-
som and of moss.
"Your mind is set upon living,- what a pity! " murmured her
solitary companion. "When your hair is white, how you will
wish you had died when it was yellow; - everybody does, but
while the yellow lasts nobody believes it! You want to live? So
## p. 10901 (#109) ##########################################
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logor
Eve wanted the fruit of fairest colors. ' If I were to help you
to have your own way now, you would turn on me thirty years
hence as your worst enemy. Were you able to understand rea-
son—but your sex would prevent that, let alone your age. Let
us ask Mistigri. Mistigri, is that Waif to live or to die? "
The companion and counselor, who lived in his pocket and
was accustomed to be thus appealed to, had swung herself down
on to the grass, and was now squatted on the rail beside him.
The child, catching sight of the monkey, tried to stretch and
stroke her; and Mistigri, who was always of an affable, and when
she had eaten sufficient herself, of a generous turn of mind,
extended her little black paw, and tendered a nut, as an over-
ture to an acquaintance.
"You vote for life too? " cried Tricotrin. "Bah, Mistigri!
I thought you so sensible-for your sex! When a discerning
mother, above the weakness of womenkind, has arranged every-
thing so neatly, we should be the most miserable sentimentalists
to interfere. "
As he spoke, the little creature, who had been vainly striv-
ing to free herself from her forest-cradle, ceased her efforts and
looked up in piteous mute entreaty, her eyes wet and soft with
glistening tears, her mouth trembling with an unspoken appeal.
He who saw a wounded bird only to help it, and met a lame
dog only to carry it, was unable to resist that pathetic helpless-
He turned and lifted his voice.
ness.
"Grand'mère Virelois, are you there? Here is something in
your way, not in mine. "
In answer to the shout there came out from the low broken
door of the ruined tower an old peasant woman, brown and bent
and very aged, but blithe as a bird, and with her black eyes as
bright as the eyes of a mouse, under the white pent-house of
her high starched cap.
"What is it, good Tricotrin? " she asked, in that sweet, sing-
ing voice that makes the accent of many French peasant women
so lingering and charming on the ear, the voice that has in it
all the contentment of the brave, cheery spirit within.
"A Waif and Stray," answered Tricotrin. "Whether from
Mary Magdalene or Madame la Marquise is unknown; probably
will never be known. Curses go home to roost, but chickens
don't. The Waif is irrational: she thinks a mouthful of black
bread better than easy extinction among the ferns. Claudine de
-
## p. 10902 (#110) ##########################################
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10902
Tencin has left a feminine D'Alembert in a moss-cradle: are you
inclined to play the part of the foster-mother? "
Grand'mère Virelois listened to the harangue, comprehending
it no more than if he had spoken in Hebrew; but she was used
to him, and thought nothing of that.
"What is it I am to see? " she asked again, peering curi-
ously with lively interest among the leaves. Before he could
answer she had caught sight of the child, with vehement amaze
and ecstatic wonder; the speech had been as Hebrew to her, but
the fact was substantial and indisputable. Crossing herself in
her surprise, with a thousand expletives of pity and admiration, she
bent her little withered but still active form beneath the rail, and
stooped and raised the foundling-raised her, but only a little
from the ground.
Holy Virgin! Tricotrin! " she cried, "look here! the child is
fastened. Help me! "
He looked quickly as she called him, and saw that the withes
of osiers and the tendrils of wild vine had been netted so tightly
around the limbs, tied here and there with strong twine, that the
infant could never have escaped from its resting-place; it had
evidently been so fastened that the child might perish there un-
seen. His face darkened as he looked.
"Murder, then! not mere neglect. Ah! this is Madame la
Marquise at work, not Magdalene! " he murmured, as he slashed
the network right and left with his knife, and set the Waif at
liberty; while Grand'mère Virelois went into a woman's raptures
on the young beauty of the "petit Gésu," and a woman's vehe-
ment censures of a sister's sin.
Tricotrin smoked resignedly, while her raptures and her dia-
tribes expended themselves; it was long before either were ex-
hausted.
"Don't abuse the mother," he interposed at last.
"Every-
body gets rid of troublesome consequences when they can.
We've done no good in disturbing her arrangements. We have
only disinterred a living blunder that she wished to bury. "
"For shame, Tricotrin! " cried Grand'mère, quivering with
horror, while she folded the child in her withered arms. "You
can jest on such wickedness! You can excuse such a murder-
ess! "
"Paf! " said Tricotrin, lightly blowing away a smoke ring.
"The whole system of creation is a sliding scale of murders.
## p. 10903 (#111) ##########################################
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10903
All the world over, life is only sustained by life being extin-
guished. "
Grand'mère Virelois, who was a pious little woman, shuddered
and clasped the child nearer.
"Ah-h-h! the vile woman! How will she see Our Lady's
face on the last day? "
"How she will meet the world she lives in is more the ques-
tion with her now, I imagine. An eminently sagacious woman!
and you and I are two sentimentalists to interfere with her ad-
mirably artistic play. So you would live, little one? I wonder
what you will make of what you have got! A Jeremiad if you
are a good silly woman; a Can-can measure if you are a bad
clever one. Which will it be, I wonder? "
"Mon Dieu, it is an angel! " murmured Grand'mère; "such
hair, like silk,—such eyes,—such a rose for a mouth! And left
to die of hunger and cold! Ah, may the Holy Mary find her
out and avenge her crime, the wicked one! "
"The vengeance will come quick if the sinner live in a garret;
it will limp very slowly if she shelter in a palace. Well, since
you take that child in your arms, do you mean to find her the
piece of bread the unphilosophic castaway will want? "
"Will I not! if I go without myself. Oh, the pretty little
child! who could have left you? Wherever the mother dwells,
may the good God hunt her down! "
"Deity as a detective? Not a grand idea that. Yet it is the
heavenly office that looks dearest to man when it is exercised
upon others! Grand'mère, answer me: Are you going to keep
that Waif? »
The bright, brown, wrinkled, homely face of the good old
woman grew perplexed.
"Ah, my friend, times are so bad, it is hard work to get a
bit in the pot for one's self; and I stitch, stitch, stitch, and spin,
spin, spin, till I am blind many a time. And yet the pretty
child- with no one to care for it! I do not know,- she must
be brought up hard if she come to me. Not a lentil even to put
in the water and make one fancy it is soup, in some days these
hard times! But do you know nothing more of her than this,
Tricotrin ? »
"Nothing. "
His luminous eyes met hers full and frankly; she knew-
all the nations where he wandered knew-that the affirmative of
Tricotrin was more sure than the truth of most men's oaths.
## p. 10904 (#112) ##########################################
10904
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"Then she must be abandoned here by some wretch to starve
unseen ? »
"It looks like it. "
"Ah! the little angel! What does the barbarous brutal heart
of stone deserve?
